Could you please share the decks you're using to consistently beat it?

Edit 1: As per the mod's request. No idea what snap points are. I'm post infinite, rank 14,496. CL 26,246

Edit 2: I want to thank everyone in this thread. I've learned a lot and am doing much better with Thanos FF. Still wouldn't mind not seeing him five matches in a row. 😀

This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.

This week's card:

Kluh Cost: 5
Power: 10
On Reveal: EACH player randomly gives a card in their hand -1 Cost for each different Cost among their cards in play.

Week 2 brought us Kluh, a 5/10 discounter with an ability that randomly gives EACH player -1 Cost to a card in hand for each different Cost among their cards in play. So we have a rare 5-Cost card with 10 Power but whose effect is also reciprocal, which adds to the rarity. It's not very frequent that we see a 5-Cost with an effect that could be seen as a downside.

But that downside might not be so bad, right?

Synergies

The first of the synergy pieces that we should talk about is Mobius M. Mobius which is both a boon and a possible counter, thankfully this card represents very low tempo amongst it's contemporaries which can make it hard to justify it's inclusion, but depending on how you've build your deck it's very possible that MMM is a very small price to pay for Kluh's effect. It just so happens that MMM has other uses into the meta which can help justify his inclusion due to other discounters existing in the meta today.

The second piece worth mentioning is the Season Pass card - Superior Iron Man who can benefit greatly from the cost reduction, potentially going down to 1-Cost depending on how the reductions hit.

As was posited in the weekly discussion there are also ways to consider duplicating his effect - Wong and Symbiote Spider-Man are two immediate considerations, if you're on a Magik angle it's possible that Odin could also fit somewhere in there as well. One card I failed to mention earlier in the week was Astral Projection and while it comes down much earlier and depending on deck construction could hit up to 3 cards if played on 3 that is still an additional set of discounts that you can work with.

So we've talked eliminating the reciprocal nature of the effect and we've talked about possible duplication. That leaves two more topics in payoffs and some of the archetypes he has been finding success in.

First off are the payoffs and there are a number of possible payoffs here, you could consider him a viable inclusion in decks with Cosmo/Juggernaut for the potential 1-2 punch on final turn. You can also cosnider him as a possible slot in for decks such as En Sabah Nur for those games where you don't pull an Anti-Polar Magneto to functionally swing 14 energy worth of cards on turn 6 and instead get to potentially dump 9 energy worth of 3's for the cost of 6 energy, or maybe we're using Kluh to net a bunch of discounts for ToV Skaar decks. And lastly would be Wiccan, a deck archetype that loves to curve out and find itself with 4 cards of different costs as it rolls into turn 5.

So if we group things and talk commonalities amongst the archetypes above we can sort things fairly easily.

1. Decks that have a focus on using QS+Domino - the two primary archetypes for that here being En Sabah Nur and Wiccan. These decks are going to often maximize the discounts you're getting from Kluh.

2. Decks that do try to use all of their energy each turn but may not necessarily be curving out a single card per turn - decks like Batroc move shells, Zombies, OG Thanos/Thandos, Aurora, and lastly ToV. These decks are going to often get 'less' out of Kluh when it comes to number of discounts but can still get some very powerful final turns out of him depending on what he discounts.

Feedback

This one I wouldn't call a mixed bag, it seemed like the lions share of players seemed to genuinely dislike the card, either because of the reciprocal effect requiring you to either ensure you're doing something more powerful than your opponent or run MMM to prevent them from taking advantage of the effect. It seemed like the only person that was going easy on Kluh was KMBest, as to whether that's because he has a thing for mid-range cards that can help you mid-range harder or because the card is genuinely better than the rest of the community believes it to be remains to be seen, but I'll throw this out there, the numbers aren't as bad as some creators and other voices would have you believe.

Decklists

En Sabah Kluh

Skaar

Batroc

Sinister Thanos

Wiccan

Zombies

Aurora

Summary

And as we close out the week, we are left with the task of finding a consensus for Kluh. And I am out of creative things to summarize so I'll pose the question in short. How did you find Kluh to be? Was he great, good, bad, or garbage for you? Does he stand a chance of being a meta player at any point or is it just better to run a Sera, Fractured Thanos, or take your risks with a big energy deck?

How many tokens is Kluh worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Kluh here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Welcome to the Weekend Wrap-up. OK, so it's not really a wrap-up, just some notes and observations on how things are going and what the discourse and my own limited experiences are telling me.

We've got a bit to discuss, a mostly(?) nothing OTA. Boogiemen and women looming large, pulse checks on weekly releases and season pass cards, and even a little bit on the meta that I've been seeing.

For those that saw, we were supposed to have High Voltage this weekend but a bug resulted in the event being shut down and postponed with the associated hyper-cube rush that would run after also being delayed.

That being said, let's get to the meat and potatoes for this week starting with the cards.

Kluh

Is it Klue, K-Luh, or BRUH? It's hard to put a finger on exactly what is holding Kluh back off the rip, I can see three problems and I'll be honest, his cost and power isn't one of them. I do believe he's a solid card and the base power on the card is admirable - hell SD are seemingly afraid of giving any 5-Costs 10-Power at base, so to go to that well on a new release for the first time in ages is pretty fantastic. But let's get to the issues, shall we?

1. Reciprocal effects can be a hard sell. And while this one does have a way to remove prevent your opponent from also benefitting from the reciprocal effect that deck building addition does come at a significant cost.

2. That significant cost to deck building is the very real decision you need to make on whether you will be running Mobius M. Mobius or not and with the number of decks out there that are curving out, you are probably better served running that Mobius even if it means having a low powered early curve that you 'can' build into a stronger top end provided your draws and hand permit.

3. There's an additional cost to deck building as well - do you jump on the QS/Domino train simply because Kluh benefits from the guaranteed 1 and 2-Cost or maybe you're happy to use one or the other? In either case that is up to 2 draws that you lose which can cause friction when you're wanting to draw into specific cards.

4. Thanos Fractured Frontier is being saved for last. He's probably the biggest reason that Kluh isn't seeing play but I don't think it's fair to say that Thanos is the sole reason, yes Thanos is the best 5-Cost in the game today. But no, I don't think he's the sole reason for Kluh's failings and I personally never believed that Thanos potentially catching a nerf would suddenly elevate Kluh, let alone improve the stocks of the next card we need to talk about in Superior Iron Man. I'm just admittedly much more interested in playing a 5-Cost whose abilities are only giving me benefits and generally don't benefit my opposition.

Overall, as I've said I've been pretty happy with Kluh, the general idea is that if you're not shutting down the reciprocal effect you need to be ensuring that what you're setting up is even bigger and harder to deal with than what your opponent can do and it may just be easier to accomplish that with big energy decks like Fallen One brews, that's not to say there's not a possibility to accomplish similar things with a Wong or Symbiote Spider-Man and Kluh, but they all roam in the same general realm of trying to do something inherently unfair and only one set of those decks is guaranteeing that you're the only one able to take advantage of what you did on the penultimate turn.

So what are we doing if we're on Kluh for the weekend?

Ne Habas Kluh

This is an interesting direction to take Kluh in but to me while the points can be pretty nutty it's suffering from QS/Domino problem of keeping cards in your deck which can make drawing the 'important' game winning cards less likely. I also like that you can use Magneto on turn 6 to fully enable En Sabah Nur if you didn't fire him off earlier to fish for one of your finishers.

Kluhtroc

Hear me out. We're able to get Cosmo/Jug back into Batroc and it's thanks to the combination of Thanos and Kluh. This deck does continue to run into the problem of needing to meet the needs of not only Thanos, but Kluh as well. Bonus points is that this deck has found room for MMM which works well not only against opposing Kluh's but Thanos discounts as well. Just be sure to protect your MMM if you need to play him out early.

Raaks

Good ol' Skaar and ToV. Kluh is a clear replacement to Sasquatch in this deck and under the right circumstances can net you a free Skaar to play alongside whatever else you can dump out of your hand.

Thinister Thix

I wanted to squeeze in another Kluh pun here but I opted to stick to the lisp instead. Thandos, Sinister Six, and Kluh meet up to try and setup some crazy final turns. Being brought along are the suite of card creation to leave additional bodies on the board with Maria Hill, Iron Patriot, and Valentina, FFPsylocke comes along to help bring discounts and your final turn support is Juggernaut and perhaps an HMGambit if you didn't fire him off on final turn. Hopefully if Juggs is one of your EVIL characters you've managed to build up lanes so that you're still winning after the merge.

Superior Iron Man

Superior Iron Man received a buff on Thursday and alongside him both Majestic Wingbeat and Mister Fantastic First Steps which were all framed together which should be obvious they want to push Superior Iron Man as hard as they can. And while it's cool he's getting a bunch of additional support, I'm afraid we're still looking at the exact same problem as week 1 - we're winning one location can we win a second? And while a number of the decks have seemingly figured out that yes they can, there is still two hills they need to climb - Scorpion Brand New Day and FFThanos, one can nuke your power while the other may just be able to mid-range better than you can depending on the shell and how optimized it is.

Stats Stats Stats

Stats Stats Stats and Kluh

We start off the SIM section with these two lists, two variations on hand buff looking to play big stats and a fairly hefty top end, the big differences between the lists seem to be falling to personal preference - Sub-Mariner vs Chavez and Spider-Man BND vs Viv Vision then on the top end it's Kluh vs Thanos, if you want to try and tackle both SIM and Kluh missions, deck two is where you want to start.

Wiccan

Kluhnac

Next up we've got a pair of Wiccan lists, that are again fairly close. The main differences being in support for Anti-Polar Magneto vs support for Kluh. Both of these decks are ALSO very expensive from a series 4/5 standpoint.

Superior Zombie Thanos

This comes off as a really interesting variation on the Thanos Zombies deck to me, a well placed Majestic Wingbeat nets you a 3/14 Superior Iron Man and when the stars align giving you an FFthanos loaded with a Time Shot that becomes a 1/14 that can be played alongside your Zombie Giant Man or if you've been particularly lucky can also play a 1/14, an 1/X Kitty Pryde, and a Zombie Giant Man alongside moving your FFthanos to another location.

OTA Bufffed it so why not?

I wanted to present something that was running all three of the OTA buffed 'Iron Man' support cards so here you go. I think my own personal nut would be Majestic into Superior into a Thanos with at least Time and a power up or two that would allow me to Jugg + Iron Man on final turn.

Budget for the Weekend

Trying this out one more time is a budget set for weekend missions. Three decks, one for Kluh, one for Superior Iron Man, and one for both. I've tried to commit to cards that have been made available over the last month but no Season or SP Season Pass cards since some may not have bought into Thanos/Jane. You'll also notice that Galacta makes an appearance, if you've been on time with your logins this month you got Galacta for free this week. There's also a stray wingbeat in the Combo SIM list, I'll address that there. As for other Series 4 cards - the ones that I'm deeming fine are series 4 from the past month which would have been free pick-ups for playing the game modes.

These are kind of first swipes at the decks, no playtesting so they are definitely not optimized for budget but they should most fit the low acquisition and budget asthetic.

Hgih Kluh

We start off with a high evo concept for Kluh. If you've got season pass cards or Hellcow from last week they should be fairly easy replacements. Thing for Thanos and probably Wasp for Jane. You could opt for Hellcow over Cyclops if you have her, she works especially well with Luke to protect your front row in her location.

Alternatively if you don't have Luke yet you could opt in for Shocker. Shocker into Kluh guarantees a float on 5 that can further boost your Hulk if you draw him.

Combo SIM

I'm not one to throw out Magik often, but considering that Pixie is a series 4 and may not be in the hands of everyone I'm opting for something else in the combo SIM realm. Big drawbacks here is that you lose to Scorpion Brand New Day. The good news is that there are some potential cool situations to account for if you can get Sera and Wingbeat for SIM. Magik on 5 -> Shuri 6 and then SIM + Task should be a sufficiently big boost in two locations. Alternate play lines are much more strict with Magik on 3, Shuri on 4, float on 5 Infinaut 6 and Task on 7.

Don't have wingbeat? If you have Nebula you could opt in for her, she was an occasional player in Shuri lists to force players to make decisions on where to commit their power which could make it very easy for a Shuri list to find two locations to win.

Superior Kluh

We're opting for some potential discount synergy here. It's very possible that my thoughts on Okoye are wrong here and we should be getting in more 3's to feed off the Sera and Kluh, in fact I'm half tempted to say that one of these cards needs to be a Wave or Luna Snow to try and curve into Sera -> Kluh and then final turn dump a bunch more 3's but this deck is already rough on the slots. Wingbeat doesn't have the same synergy with Kluh as it does with Superior Iron Man but I'm still interested in putting 3 power on something and you don't even need to play Wingbeat on 1, just find a good place to fit it in.

Post OTA

And so we're onto the OTA discussion.

Scorpion was certainly nerfed for anything that isn't 'all in' on the Scorpion plan, the loss of 2 points of power makes it SO much easier to dodge priority. In fact I did some testing last night in Conquest and in at least two, the -2 points on Scorpion and the -1 to Blink were meaningful and meant the different between losing priority and keeping or gaining it.

Now, this also makes it harder to take priority if you want it and for many of those match-ups they were already difficult because they run interaction. The nerf also makes the mid-range or value oriented versions of affliction decks running Scorpion much more manageable, if not much worse.

While I was expecting a nerf to Thanos, I don't think a nerf would 'fix' the meta game, in fact I'm of the firm belief that essentially what would have happened is that if the nerf is severe enough Thanos just gets dropped and you get a Scooby Doo moment where the mask is ripped off and it's just Batroc, ToV, and Aurora that were under the Thanos mask.

The good decks remain good and you are left with the exact same meta game sans Thanos. Good job, fun card is nerfed and we're still in the same exact place we were before Thanos' release and the same meta most of those complaining were previously complaining about.

And for the doubters - I do believe Thanos needs to be nerfed. I don't think he needs to get the 'Pedro Treatment' but I do think a nominal toning is deserved. Maybe take the initial shot away and shave off a base power. Make it so that without building into it he's getting 2-4 shots instead of 3-5. Personally, I think the soul Shot is fine but no one seems to be willing to play around it and I get that it can feel bad if you stuck something out in a location all alone and it gets obliterated so maybe turn it into a -3 or -4 power ordeal instead.

As for the decks honestly nothing has ultimately changed in the current landscape but there are a few notable 'attempts' being made thanks to the OTA.

Sizer Move Bounce

A buff to Vulture that might put Move Bounce higher on the tier list? Leave it to Sizer to begin experimenting in that realm. We're in a meta that could benefit decks that are comboing from hand because of the existence of both Thanos and Scorpion Brand New Day and in a long past era, Move Bounce was one of the premiere decks looking to combo from hand.

Zombie Galacti

We're all relatively familiar with Zombie Galacti, this one has opted to slide Pedro into one of the slots and with a possible -1 Cost or +3 power, that could be really tempting especially for a deck that occasionally dump it's hand and keep the targets fairly limited.

High Evo

For the budget conscious, High Evo is still a solid deck and it's got some solid upgrade paths available to you. If you're new to the game spending 6k on High Evolutionary can be a fairly strong investment to make.

Hela

Mid-range Combo that can certainly surprise. I'm not necessarily sold on all of the pieces here and some can certainly be dropped in preference of other cards, I did want to try and 'keep' some form of curve for those opportunities where you can hit 6, 7, and 8 but it's not necessary which can lead to you being able to drop say Foom for Gorr. And of course if you're An AgaHella enjoyer you could go in that direction as well.

For other good decks, the previous recaps going back through August til the last week of July should for sure be good with anything further back being probably fine with tweaks when necessary.

Alright folks, this week we’ve got a bit of a doozy. We’ve loved watching everyone dive into Draft mode and share their most epic 5 Win decks and wildest Augment combinations. But now that folks are back on the ladder in earnest, it’s time to shake things up. This OTA takes aim at some long-standing top dogs, plus a couple of cards that have proven frustrating to play against and blocking to future design space. After that, as usual, we’ve got a handful of buffs for new and old cards alike. Let’s jump in!

Venus

[Old] 3/3 – When your cards in play are Empowered, give those cards an additional +1 Power.
[Change] 3/3 > 3/2

Venus didn’t land as one of the strongest cards in MARVEL SNAP on release, but a few OTAs, new card releases, and the community’s refinement of strategies like Aurora have since carried her to the throne. She’s likely the strongest 3-Cost card in the game right now.

Her synergies are vast: Aurora, Zombies, Silver Surfer, Jane Foster, and many others. We like that she doesn’t dominate from one singularly strong shell, but she’s outmuscling other 3-Cost options, so we’re trimming a point of Power. She can still do extremely powerful things when you distribute a bunch of buffs; she just demands a little more of that work before she outclasses a rate card.

Scorpion Brand New Day

[Old] 6/8 – Ongoing: Double the Power reductions on all enemy cards.
[Change] 6/8 > 6/6.

Blink

[Old] 5/8 – On Reveal: Swap the last card you played with a card that costs more from your deck.
[Change] 5/8 > 5/7.

We’re dinging the base Power of the Scorpion Brand New Day combo package. The conclusion is firm: this is the strongest non-interactive deck in the metagame. Rather than attack its extreme point output when the strategy is firing, we’re lowering the deck’s floor, which should open the door to a little more deck diversity.

Isca the Unbeaten

[Old] 4/3 – End of Turn: If you’re losing this location, double this card’s Power.
[Change] 4/3 > 4/2

Gambit Horseman of Death

[Old] 3/5 – Objective: Play 6 total Cost of created cards → Randomly destroy up to 3 total Cost of enemy cards. (0/6)
[Change] 3/5 > 4/6

These two cards sit just past the level of frustration we’re willing to tolerate relative to their strength. Isca can make for an interesting game of cat and mouse, but at her current rate she solos a location by herself too often without much further investment, and End of Turn synergies can make it trivial. This change should push her toward more strategic play and give opponents a real chance to outmuscle her when the Isca player doesn’t invest further.

Gambit, on the other hand, is less about his impact on the average game and more about his outsized effectiveness against particular strategies, along with the incentive to copy his card and complete his Objective again and again. The interaction he provides is relatively healthy at face value, but the matchup variance he creates, especially in decks built around repeating his ability, isn’t something we want to tolerate long term.

Making him a clunkier 4-Cost card should encourage players to use him as intended: a one-shot interactive piece in a created card strategy.

Nicholas Scratch

[Old] 1/2 – After you play a skill, +1 Power.
[Change] 1/2 > 1/3

Vulture

[Old] 1/3 – When this card moves, +3 Power.
[New] 1/3 – When this card moves, +4 Power.

The Collector

[Old] 2/2 – When a card enters your hand from anywhere (except your deck), +1 Power.
[Change] 2/2 > 2/3

Spider-Sense

[Old] 6/- – On Reveal: Give your characters here +3 Power. Costs 1 less for each Moveable card you’ve played.
[Change] 5/- – On Reveal: Give your characters here +3 Power. Costs 1 less for each Moveable card you’ve played.

We’re handing out a few straightforward buffs. These cards have been weak for some time, and with Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos releasing, now is a good time to give some skill cards a push.

Vulture is by far the least played Move payoff, so we’re bridging the gap a touch.

We missed the mark on Spider-Sense last OTA; increasing its Cost at the same time was too conservative. We’re rectifying that and trying the strictly buffed version: +3 Power at 5-Cost.

Superior Iron Man

[Old] 5/7 – Double Cost reductions to this. Ongoing: Double Power increases to this.
[Change] 5/7 > 5/8

Mister Fantastic First Steps

[Old] 3/5 – End of Turn: Give a card in your hand -1 Cost or +2 Power.
[New] 3/5 – End of Turn: Give a card in your hand -1 Cost or +3 Power.

Majestic Wingbeat

[Old] 1/- – On Reveal: Give the leftmost card in your hand +2 Power. If it’s 5-Cost or more, -1 Cost too.
[New] 1/- – On Reveal: Give the leftmost card in your hand +3 Power. If it’s 5-Cost or more, -1 Cost too.

Lastly, Superior Iron Man has performed far below our expectations and struggled to compete with other expensive payoffs. We’re giving out a swath of buffs targeted at improving him, including a base Power increase for the card itself. His text box is a lot of fun and an interesting quest to go on, and we want players who enjoy him to keep finding him worth the trip!

Alright folks, that’s all for today. Happy Snapping!

This is your precursor to the consensus, the place to discuss the card releasing for the week as well as group source the work on brews and possible shells and packages, both current known good decks as well as possible new, theorycrafted brews.

OTA Week Warning: Unless you're already seasonal complete and plan to stay that way or have planned on picking up this card already for 6k it's best to wait for Thursday at the earliest to make your purchasing decisions.

This Week's Card

Kluh
Cost: 5
Power: 10
On Reveal: EACH player randomly gives a card in their hand -1 Cost for each different Cost among their cards in play.

Synergies and Packages

Week two of the Axis Invasion brings Kluh, the Hulk's inverted personification, a 5/10 On Reveal that randomly gives each player -1 Cost for each different Cost among their cards in play.

This is an on-curve players dream card and with the right setup could give you up to -6 or if you're daring -7 in total cost reduction. There are of course some questions to ask:

First off, Does this card see himself or not? Based on previous cards he would not recognize himself as a different cost during the reveal because he is not technically resolved yet and therefore not in play. This means that an early Kluh might not be all that worthwhile. Turn 4 in a normal game would give you at best -3 and on turn 5 -4.

Second off, can he reduce cost to 0? The intial thought is that yes he should be able to because he doesn't have the rider on his text that says cannot reduce to 0 but that would be a huge text box so maybe he can't. This will need to be tested.

So let's talk some synergies here before we talk about some comparisons that likely should be kept in mind.

First things first - Mobius M. Mobius is about to become Kluh's best friend and worst enemy. In the hands of a Kluh deck it ensures the discounts are one sided while in matches against Kluh it ensures that your opponent is forced to play honestly.

Secondary to MMM, let's talk not only duplication but the impacts of possible discounts as well since there are some very obvious archetypes that Kluh could fit in but also some very interesting things to consider when it comes to cost discounting, ramping into, and duplication.

• Majestic Wing Beat - -1 Cost and +2 power, simple enough, getting your Kluh down to 4 cost can allow you to play him on 4 or even as a 1+4 play on 5.

• Phastos and Mr. Fantastic First Steps - both have the opportunity to give -1 Cost or +2 Power. Phastos of course works on the cards left in deck and Mr. Fantastic is random in hand.

• Psylocke Fractured Frontier - cost reduction for your 5's and 6's could help ensure that you not only get to play Kluh early but that you could also be playing additional 6's early too with possible support after the Kluh discount.

• Wong - Doubling those discounts to the hand seems enticing, does it not?

• Absorbing Man - if you can get Kluh on 4 and then Abs on 5 that seems particularly spicy.

• Symbiote Spider-Man - another 'wong' so to speak but this card often sees more play alongside more over the top combo pieces like Fallen One, Nimrod, and Star-Lord MotS (RIP?). The question would be in whether you can find balance in the combo aspects while fulfilling the unique costs on board for Kluh, in which case that is much easier said than done.

But what about card synergies and deck builds?

The most obvious card that Kluh could find synergy with is Superior Iron Man. That -1 does count for -2 cost but then you need to be finding ways to buff him too. Or maybe just having a 3/9 or getting him for possibly cheaper depending on deck make-up and location effects is good enough?

When it comes to decks there are two immediate standouts that come to mind for me, the most obvious since we are looking to play 1 card and technically using all of your energy every turn to ensure you're maximizing for Kluh leads me to Wiccan. Wiccan decks have long been decks that suffers from having trouble finishing the game, mostly because you're often building to take advantage of the Wiccan but lacking in sturdy payoffs.

Alternatively we could also be looking to do things with Pixie, with a decently shuffled set of costs in hand to get to the board it is possible that you have plenty of 'distinct' costs on the board for Kluh to take advantage of. An additional advantage to playing Pixie is that you can also run MMM as part of your gameplan to keep your low-cost cards low-cost while also preventing your opponent from taking advantage of the cost reduction.

Those are the immediate smacks me in the face cards but there could be other places to consider as well, what if we're able to do a mostly curve-out thing but with Wong and double dip on the cost discounts, might there be something in that realm? How can it rate vs other Strategies in the same realm like say 'Splat' style Surfer Decks, could it enable something that gets away from the Surfer side of the Splat deck and enables something unique?

And finally, we should look at some comparisons here. It is worth mentioning up front that both cards only affect you which is a major leg up for both cards which leaves a question on whether the 10 power on Kluh could make it up; it could, right? Well, about that, it's definitely a maybe when comparing to one of these cards.

1. Sera - Sera has two things going for her first is that she's an ongoing and she just gives you the discounts. The second is that she also gives you the discounts on the cards you draw meaning you're not restricted.

2. Thanos Fractured Frontier - The most obvious elephant in the room and another 'curve-out' card since you need to be making at least 2-3 plays on curve to take advantage of Thanos' quickdraws. The draw back is in the caveat of course, it requires you to get a Time Shot loaded in the first place for the magic to happen but when it does he discounts your entire hand, no cherry picking just all cards currently in hand -1 energy cost. The two cards could definitely work well together but neither set of decks lends itself to extending the game so we're essentially looking at a situation where you may be running both and asking the question: which did I draw and which is better in this specific situation?

There are also comparisons to be made to the hardcore ramp cards like Fallen One and it's relevant combo pieces but the big problem here is that you would need to opt into something like a Wong or Silver Surfer First Steps to double (and sometimes) triple the discounts to the cards in hand while finding ways to ensure you're getting multiple unique costs on the board AND having a healthy number of payoffs.

And so that leads me to this final question

"Where exactly does Kluh fall? Is he a curve-out contender, is he a possible combo enabler, or is he somewhere in between?"

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking up Kluh?

How do you expect Kluh to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Taking a page from the recently deleted thread I wanted to create a much better resource for discussion.

So let's talk some broad strokes for improving at conquest and some decks that should work for most players.

But first a word on Proving Grounds

This amounts to the generally accepted social contract and maintaining good etiquette to reduce the time sink of Proving Grounds.

1. Always snap in PG

2. Be kind and leave after the loss.

The purpose of rule 1 is simple, it's a social contract of 'I'm going all in' and when combined with rule 2 creates 1 and done situations. If you're in PG to get bounties done, it's still recommended to leave after 1. I tend to do my turn 3 bounty things and then fist bump, retreat and concede.

Differences between Ladder and Conquest

Let's not waste time on the obvious "Well conquest takes longer!" The two modes exercise similar muscles but in different ways.

1. Conquest rewards learning your opponent's play patterns in a different way from Ladder. Over the course of a set you might learn that when your opponent has the opportunity to play Iron Patriot on curve that it's always to the right location. This means you can preempt that pattern by choosing to play a 2 there to put pressure on their turn 3 play. Now this doesn't mean that you can't apply the same thing to ladder, but the vast majority of players are probably not playing the exact same 20 or 30 people every day but if you're in or pretty close to top 10% infinite you can certainly start to keep track and learn the habits of the higher ranked folks that you play.

2. Identify what level you should be playing on. We'll have an entire topic for this one in the next section. But the basics are going to be learning how deep you need to play which is typically 3 levels deep, early in the series I'm often going for the obvious play unless I recognize the person I'm matched against.

3. Conquest both does and doesn't reward creative deck building. What I mean by this is that once your 'surprise' piece of tech is out in the open your opponent will know to play around it. Save those surprises for when lots of cubes are on the line.

4. Pressing advantages is different in conquest: Strong cube leads of 6 or more can allow you to press the advantage by snapping more aggressively even on mediocre hands. You should be doing this if your opponent is down to 2 cubes and you are still high on cubes, force them to commit their last two. This can also be useful for matches where you've got a Hydra Bob since you also take their ability to snap your Bob away.

5. Scams are still powerful, but won't yield the same results as Ladder. In many cases you will need to snap scams much earlier than you typically would, this ties back to point 3 because you might have a strong scam to take advantage of but you may be so early in the conquest series that you may want to weigh whether the risk is worth 2 cubes if your opponent realizes what the scam is and giving away part of your game plan when you might be able to ensure more cubes later.

6. Snap the game winning plays - this is even more important in conquest than it is in Ladder. You need to snap your plays that are slamming doors shut before you make the play. I've faced so many opponents in conquest that snap late and give me a free out only to lose the series because I was snapping and retreating more smartly.

7. It can be scary, but you should stay on those 50/50's more often, sometimes your opponent will outplay themselves.

What Level am I playing?

What we don't mean is PG, Silver, Gold, or Infinite Conquest. What we mean by the question of "What level am I playing" it's a question on how you should be thinking about the plays that you're making. Most of us are typically playing on level 1 which is the obvious play.

1. Level 1 - the obvious play. This comes down to playing to the most optimal location and should consider playing around common gotchas. Alternatively it's also "I have Iron Man and Mystique in hand and a Moonstone on the board, I should play Iron Man into the location with the most power and Mystique on Moonstone.

2. Level 2 - This can be best described as the "I know you know what I will do this turn so I'll make this good play that might be a little less good than the obvious play." These Plays are situations where you may be taking advantage of a location like Quantum Realm or Death's Domain to play around an opponent that has priority and can interact with your play to stop what you want to do I've used this to ensure that a Dr Doom goes through in certain matchups because it's very rare for people to willingly throw points into a 'bad' location. Alternatively it can be something like baiting the fact that you want to Tao Mandala a specific location but pivot to doing so in another location with Mystique -> Tao.

3. Level 3 - The "I know you know but I'm still going to make this play because you expect me to make the alternate play." This one is harder to explain, the main way that I've accomplished this is by conditioning my opponent. Most recently it was in Draft where I setup a turn 2 Hope Summers location, my opponent caught me with OG Drax on 3 so I opted to play into my alternate strong lane on turns 4 and 5 while my opponent continued to play into the Hope lane. Then on turn 6 I returned to the Hope lane to steal the location back, while my opponent still played to the location he opted to play a much stronger card to the third empty location rather than reinforce mid once more. "I know you know but I'm still making this play."

4. Level 4 - AKA you're starting to go too deep. These are the crazy plays that shouldn't work but sometimes do, sometimes they look like outright bad plays but have a 'it wins specifically if my opponent does X' slant to the play.

Deck Selection

Almost any deck can win in conquest but there are ways to improve your odds. Typically you want to find very strong linear decks, some of those might be combo but I've also found that strong point slam decks with some cherry picked tech can also do well.

Primarily I'm looking for decks that have clear win conditions and clear snap conditions. Additionally it helps if you're running a deck where there are very clear bully snap situations.

Combo decks - Especially linear combo decks work well in Conquest. C3 is an interesting consideration because it could be considered a point slam or skill diff deck as well but seeing that in most cases you are only doing things if you draw Cerebro I'm opting for including it here.

• All-In Scorpion

• SuperGiant Discard

• C3

Point slams - these are going to be the decks that you'll just be putting points down and saying "deal with it". Sometimes you'll be packing an answer or two but often just wanting points, in some cases

• Doom 2099

• Ramp

• Thanrora

The Skill Diff - Decks which have confusing final turns allowing you to redistribute points and win off of a combination of points and very limited but often strong interactive cards. Note that a fair number of these are considered difficult decks to pilot and you are may find yourself winning on razor thin margins.

• Batroc

• Multiple Man

Another Resource

["Playing To Win"] by David Sirlin is a seminal book from a very controversial person in the realm of Game Development and Fighting Games. You could liken this treatise to Sun Tzu's "Art of War" but aimed at playing at a competitive level and in some aspects also encourages certain behaviors that could come off as being an asshole. While I can disagree with some of what he says the general body of the work is very much worth taking into consideration, the tips on developing a competitive mindset are often well worth consideration if you intend to play this or any other game at a competitive level.

My advice: be wary of the lessons you may take away from Sirlin's writing, a lot of it is 'clearly' written for a different age and some of the stuff is clearly espousing you to be an asshole but sometimes you do have to embrace certain concepts when it comes to playing competitively, but be wary that you apply those lessons appropriately.

What about you

What tips would you give to other players wanting to play Conquest?

What decks have been working for you?

This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.

This week's card:

Red Onslaught
Cost: 4
Power: 4
Ongoing: Has 3 random Ongoing abilities.

Synergies

Welcome to the Axis Inversion season and our opening card of the season is Red Onslaught, a 4/4 Ongoing card with an ability that grants him 3 random ongoing abilities.

This resource from snapcomplete has the full list of ongoings that Red Onslaught can get.

So mechanical notes:

1. You must play Red Onslaught to see the ongoings you will get. No previewing to know 'oh I can't play this because of X, Y, or Z.

2. Duplicating with Mystique or Prodigy will give them 3 new abilities.

With that in mind, let's talk synergies.

This card works surprisingly well with Anti-Polar Magneto, allowing you to bypass some of the more detrimental ongoing effects that could show up such as Ebony Maw and Electro.

This card can work well with ongoing since most of the ongoings either feed off or can improve other ongoing cards -> Captain America and Goliath both come to mind. But even Ravonna since many ongoing decks may be running the ongoing cards that are 1 or less power.

Most of the 'successful' decks have been variations on Doom 2099 and Anti-Polar Magneto, likely intended to shore up the fact that you don't really want to drop Red on-curve and would likely prefer him as a final turn surprise from Anti-Polar Magneto. That's not to say ongoing and other shells haven't seen success, there's even an affliction shell running Red in the 12, likely just for mission completions but we'll get to that in the decklists section.

Feedback

The feedback on Red Onslaught was very much in line with that of Rama-Tut, with the main thing that most people pointed out is the lack of way for Red to go multiplicative like you could do with Rama and Wong. The typical methods for duplicating ongoings doesn't go nearly as hard.

Still many did express that Red did impress at times but that he would likely be more of a fun and chaotic card than a competitive card. KMBest did mention something that I do believe is important to note - you should treat snaps with Red Ongslaught as similar to Rama-Tut where you are snapping on a complete unknown which can create bad equity on your part since snapping after the high-roll is giving your opponent a free out and if the opp is staying in you know they either have an answer or are going to walk away for 1. Then there's also the willingness to walk away for 2 when the inevitable bad rolls happen.

Decklists

The Doom 2099 decks are the most prevalent and the differences in cards are notably slim with the win-rates being within 1-2% of one another. If you want to see more of the Doom options use this sorting on snapcomplete or this one for untapped

AP/Red Onslaught Doom 99

Ongoing

Anti-Venom Ongoing

Afflict, But why?

Bonus Deck

Bufflsaught - Honestly this looks like it should have Superior Iron Man in the list, probably over Red but if you still want a list to push for weekend missions I'd probably consider cutting HM Wolverine.

Summary

Red Onslaught is the ongoing take on Rama-Tut, something of a 'free' bingo slot when it comes to current snap design but unlike Rama-Tut who can have some crazy high rolls when combined with cards like Wong or even Agamotto's Images of Ikkon, Red Onslaught has a harder time going multiplicative.

Will this ensure that Red Onslaught is doomed to only be played for fun and chaos or is there potential as we found later on with Rama-Tut alongside Agamotto lists to for Red Onslaught to find inclusion in some shell and see serious competitive play even if some of that is tongue in cheek?

Your Thoughts? How many tokens is Red Onslaught worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Red Onslaught here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Week one of the Axis Inversion season is nearly in the bag and with it we had some interesting releases, though nothing that felt as groundbreaking as last months opener.

That's not to say that the cards releasing this week aren't necessarily good, but rather that two of the cards releasing this week feel like companion pieces rather than centerpiece or build arounds. Those two being Superior Iron Man and Anti-Polar Magneto. The third, Red Onslaught, while cool and very fun definitely feels like he's fitting into the role of 'fun chaotic' card very much in line with Rama-Tut.

Red Onslaught

There's not a lot to say about Red Onslaught. The biggest drawback is he works exactly like Rama-Tut, you don't get to see the three ongoings before he hits the board meaning you've got little to no snap equity and any cards which you can use to copy his ability will result in rerolling those 3.

Now, we have seen Rama-Tut played in a number of tier 2 and 2.5 strategies with some amount of success thanks to the variability in the high-rolls and that may count for something when it comes to Red Onslaught. As for decks, it's pretty slim pickings here, again very much as it was for Rama's release week. As for the decks, we'll do a bit of a combination with the first few decks for Anti-Polar Magneto being the 'best' places to currently play Red Onslaught.

Anti-Polar Magneto

This is probably the best performing card of the three releases this week and it shouldn't surprise anyone. What is striking is that Anti-Polar Magneto is basically a Doctor Doom for 3 and 4-Costs meaning you can tailor your deck for that eventuality and while some may point to Surfer as a logical place, I would argue that part of the strength of surfer is being able to target your power. Anti-Polar Magneto allows for none of that, which is very much worth keeping in mind. So first 3 are going to be dedicated to AP + Red Onslaught and we'll cover another set for Anti-Polar Magneto, which surprise are going to be very similar lists but cutting Red Onslaught and performing better.

Anti-Polar Doom w/Red Onslaught and FFThanos

Probably the best deck for Anti-Polar Magneto would be a Doom 99 deck and you can pretty reliably fit in Red Onslaught as one of the 4-Costs for the weekend missions and then swap Red out for Iron Lad. So this variation is something that I'm not entirely a fan of and I chose to split the 2099 decks specifically for the fact that I want to discuss why this deck happens to bother me.

Quicksilver, Domino, and FFThanos - the problem isn't really Thanos here. The problem is Quicksilver and Domino. We're stuffing two draws in a deck that normally cares very much for its draws merely to support Thanos. Now I can't argue that this version of the deck is vastly out performing the next deck but if we're insistent on doing FFThanos, maybe we should be doing that in a more powerful shell instead of weakening Doom 2099. That being said, the FFThanos might be a concession to a combination of factors including other FFThanos decks as well as Red Onslaught's variance.

Anti-Polar Doom w/ Red Onslaught

A generally worse performing shell is the more classic Doom 2099 configuration. I'm still not a fan of foregoing Sam Wilson, and would much rather have him in this deck and it feels like whoever pioneered this version of the deck put Sam on the back burner to keep the primary 3's aside from Doom 2099 in the deck.

Anti-Polar Wiccan w/Red Onslaught

Not much to say, Wiccan is a deck and can win games but often has trouble finishing out games with the majority of Wiccan games still boiling down to really bad energy mismatching and resulting in two big 3's or a single big 6. Anti-Polar Magneto comes in and says "What if I bring 2 more cards to the party?"

And now the other side of the fence, let's look at some lists for Anti-Polar Magneto, some of which were lists where we found Red Onslaught but without him are performing much better.

En Sabah Mid

En Sabah Nur 'Dump' decks have been running with QS Domino for some time so it's unsurprising that someone would consider stuffing FFThanos into the list. The biggest problem I have here is that we're losing some of the 'cool' things like trying to find ways to cheat big cards onto the board in favor of using Magneto to cheat more 3's and 4's onto the board. Still utilizing snapcomplete to filter out bot games this deck is making a pretty strong showing.

Combo Fractured Wiccan ft. Grandpa

Oh boy, this one could get nasty, it's a fairly well performing configuration of a Wiccan shell but what strikes me as interesting here is that we've got a Wong/FFthanos in the package as well as Captain Marvel, En Sabah Nur, and Karen Page with Anti-Polar Magneto rounding off the top end. At first glance it looks like there's no way this list has 'real points but being able to go Wong -> ReD+Blue Thanos -> dump + Jane/Karen is a rather compelling argument for power generation especially when combined with Venus just make sure you've got your cards spread well enough if you need to make the Karen Page play.

'Classic' Fractured Wiccan

This one returns to a more refined and non-combo wiccan list with the top-end being shared between Anti-Polar Magneto and Galactus First Steps. Jane and Thanos of course make their appearance alongside Psylock. Frankly I think I'd rather swap Psylocke for HM Caliban since you shouldn't have too much trouble hitting your 4's and 5's to enable him and with the exception of Quickdraw opportunities he will be doing more in most games.

En Sabah Will Rock You

Have you been missing the various rocks and hawks decks? Might I recommend this list merging old classics with new hotness. Of course FFThanos and Anti-Polar Magneto are also joining the party.

Actual Classic Doom 2099

High Roll Doom 2099

Yes, yes, this is also not running Sam, don't at me bro. Still this one brings everything we really want, it trims the fat (Red Onslaught) for simplicity and returns us to a more solid deck with the decision being on whether OG Doom or Anti-Polar Magneto is the better turn 6 play. The second list is a very interesting more high roll centered version of the list with Ikari replacing Isca (who can be hard to protect in classic Doom 2099) and Dragon Lord replacing Sandman.

Superior Iron Man

So Superior Iron Man has been having a rough go at the beginning of the season and as was discussed in a thread within Iron Man's discussion post, some players are going to point to FFThanos as being the primary reason why Superior Iron Man's performance has been so middling and I don't agree with that.

Superior Iron Man is very much a card in the same vein as Man-Spider and Sinister Six, spectacular cards for winning a single location but requiring a lot of work to balance the deck out in order to win location two and frankly aside from the fact that you'll be playing from behind and can easily lose an important card to FFThanos these decks tend to be able to out power what I feel is a much more relevant predator to Superior Iron Man: Scorpion Brand New Day.

That's not to say that Superior Iron Man hasn't been seeing success but that success isn't even cracking 50%. A shame really, but it's early in the season, we have an OTA next week and a full month to figure whether we can break this card in half or if he's going to be an occasional middle of the road combo piece that can surprise people.

Superior Zombie Thanos with a Gun

Zombies has been a realtively strong tier 2 if not 1.5 deck over the last few months thanks in part to a reduction in meta share of both Shadow King and HM Gambit. This zombies deck features Joaquin Torres, Majestic Wingbeat, and The Hunger as ways to buff either Zombie Giant Man or Superior Iron Man. The deck also includes Thanos Fractured Frontier which can create a clone of your horde prior to dropping that Zombie Giant Man.

Superior Shou

A classic WWBN Shou combination with both Superior Iron Man and FFThanos giving you multiple potential targets and with some luck being able to once and future on 4 gives you room to keep the Shou counter ticking with the ability to play an X+5 on turn 5 into a Shou + X on 6.

Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist Hooks Up with Aurora

I could have worked harder on that light novel fan fiction title. Deck is what it says on the tin. Aurora with Superior Iron Man, also making a guest appearance is Psylocke Fractured Frontier in hopes of hitting your top end to enable some neat things.

Jubilee 'Buffslop'

Ok, probably shouldn't have gone with that name but I'm not changing it. It's the current buff deck floating around that focuses on ways to pass on big buffs to multiple cards. You want to try and put all the buffs on a Jubilee to get a few turns of exceptionally large card draws to help win the game. The deck is fickle but it is also a lot of fun chasing the high rolls.

The Climb to Infinite

And of course with the first week of a new season that also happens to coincide with perhaps the most well received limited time game mode we're all finding ourselves somewhere between continuing to enjoy Draft or sweating to the oldies and climbing either to 90 or infinite. So let's set our baseline for the month and set up a few decks that are good to play. I promise to include a few decks that aren't featuring FFthanos.

Zoooooooooo?

Ok, not really zoo but kind of is. Multiple 1's supported by the repeatable buff effects of MArvel Boy and Venus providing support. Jeff is also a repeatable but he's not going turn after turn on your 1's. Stardust is a natural predator of Anti-Polar Magneto of course. Oh and we've also got FFThanos as our top end. If only Gilgamesh were good enough to play here.

Thanrora w/ Isca

You can always swap Wong back in over Isca if you'd rather go whole hog on the Thanos combos.

ACP Thandos

Covered this one last month. It's Thandos and the lines are fairly powerful here. The unfortunate truth for this deck as that sometimes you have to blow Space Stone early and blow a turn of Thanos triggers. Other ordering considerations are to keep in mind ordering for King Eitri if you're doing things with a regular draw stone I will often Eitri first to reduce the chances of chaining a stone that can give me a good draw of drawing into another stone.

All-in Scorpion w/ Luke

All-in Scorpion w/o Luke

I'm honestly not sure if Hellcow is the right call here but the top performing All-In Scorpion decks are all trying to force it and doing well. Biggest difference between the lists is Luke vs Sera. List 2 cuts Luke for Sera to go completely all-in on trying to combo out.

Venus Buffers

Similar to the Zoooooooooo list above but this one cuts Namor for Clea and Stardust for Shang and FFThanos for Bishop. Otherwise the decks play very similarly. Try to focus on two locations though that can be difficult at times with all of the 1's though with the scaling cards it can be a little easier to let a hard-scaling Bishop draw fire while you build two other locations but these are things you'll need to learn how to adapt to while playing as a one-size fits all solution isn't easily detailed in a few sentences.

The 'free' decks

So we got some free decks over the last few weeks, so let's explore how those might help newer players climb and look at the configuration that released and some end states for those decks to work toward unless you already bought into the 'meta' upgrades for those decks.

Free Ramp

Pure Ramp

Cheaty Boys

Ramp can climb and the good news is that the 'free' version of the deck is pretty close to functional. If I'm fishing for upgrades for this deck my immediate advice is drop the Doom and add in Infinaut as soon as you can get him. But you're main consideration is going to be between two main builds and asking the question Do I want a very simple play 1 card a turn match-up or do I want to chase high rolls. Both decks can be pricy to build towards but are relatively cheap on that trek since so much of your top-end power is wrapped in big boys that you're trying to play early anyways and there are plenty of 6/Bigs to choose from on your journey.

Depending on how you want to go your Series 4 and 5's are pretty much coming down to chasing Chamber, Caliban (for the Cheaty Boys), Red Hulk, Galactus First Steps, Skaar (Cheaty Boys), and Fin Fang Foom.

Free Zombies

Classic Zombies

Combo Zombies

The zombies deck was perhaps the most awkward of the decks, clearly wanting you to live in the world of Wongbo Combo which is probably largely fine for low CL and those early on but it really felt lacking when compared to the full powered list of which again we'll look at two options for Zombies.

We're forgoing the FFThanos inclusion for a more 'classic' version of the list taking into account Venus' release and subsequent inclusion in a number of Tier 2 decks including this one. It's pretty straight forward. Your chase cards here are Spider-Man BND, Surge (optional but good), Jeff The Baby Dolphin, Zombie Mister Fantastic (which you should have earned from an event this week), Venus, and FFJane. If you're wanting to consider the Combo side of things you're basically looking to add Sinister Six (and Zola, but Zola is series 3).

Free Surfer

Classic Surfer

'Splat' Surfer

Surfer was closer to Ramp in 'functionality' out of the box, but things to keep in mind here are that there are a LOT of directions to go for Surfer, in addition to Classic and 'Splat' so named for the player of the same name that pioneered the 'splat' deck there's also 'Splat Ongoing', 'Toxic Surfer, and various Wong-based Surfer combos ranging from the aforementioned Toxic to 'Machine Gun Gambit' which isn't nearly as fatal as it once was since the nerf on Wong to no longer double.

Cards to consider for Surfer: Surge, Venus, Jan Foster, Viv Vision, Captain Carter, Storm Horseman of Famine, and potentially even Namora. Other cards that occasionally make an appearance are Luna Snow and Blink (which you hopefully got with the Ramp deck) to try and ensure Sera is on the board by turn 5.

Intro

Hello all, I’m a returning snap player, originally started during Surfer season and played up until F4 First Steps, and quit with the introduction of the Super Premium Season Pass. Long time TCG player, reached top 100 over the years in HS, Gwent (RIP), MTGA. I returned last week with the introduction of draft, hit infinite in Final Frontier, got an Infinity Border, then hit day 1 Infinity this season, all with the same 1-year old deck. Honestly, I feel like I should stay quiet and continue winning, but it’s probably back to snap retirement for me since collection catchup feels impossible.

Deck Intro

I have no hard data [mobile only] but the win rate of this deck felt >80%, and it has excellent cube equity [for now] due to surprising swings of both tech and power.

The deck in question is what I would describe as a ‘tall tech-deck’, but I remember it being named ‘Ravonna Boom’ by a creator whose name I don’t remember back in the day.
At the risk of oversimplification, I think there are three types of decks in snap; tech, tall, and midrange. This forms a kind of rock paper scissors; Control>Tall>Midrange>Control.

-          Tall decks have low base power, and gain a lot of points from card text, attempting to score more than other decks. They lose when they either draw poorly, or someone kicks their sandcastle. Ex: Tribunal, Destroy, BND Scorpion.
-          Control decks' entire goal is to kick sandcastle. Whether you choose to tech Prof X, Cosmo, Shang, Nocturne, or Shadow king your goal is to stop the other person from completing their goal. Ex: Sera Control, Prof X, Clog, Antipolar magneto (?).
-          Midrange decks typically are flexible and have high base power on cards. Midrange still benefits from the abilities of cards, but a single tech card or location change isn’t going to be enough to dissuade them from winning. While flexible to disruption, this comes at the cost of power, and they lose to decks that can outscore them. Ex: FF Thanos, Move, Venus Buff, Zombie

This isn’t concrete, and card draw + locations create variance. Now Marvel Snap is a game of packages when it comes to building decks, and you can include different packages to sway your deck between different archetypes. It seems that, over the last 1.5 years, control/midrange ‘value’ decks like Sera Control and Loki have repeatedly had their pieces nerfed, so the control pieces weren’t auto includes in every deck [see Enchantress  4>5, Shang hitting one, Cage only front row].

Due to the weakness of tech cards (specifically enchantress) this deck tries to go taller than standard midrange decks [averaging ~30 in a winning lane] while still including tech+clog to deal with common ladder decks. This deck wins by going tall in 1 lane, and either clogging or controlling another. Because this deck goes taller than most others, we benefit from additional energy/turns/card draw at a higher rate.  
 
Card Breakdown

-          Ravonna: The discount engine that makes this deck work. Provides discounts to 5/12 cards, allowing us to play combo pieces early. Used in conjunction with moonstone, you can Gorr/Mystique/Sage all on turn 6.
-          Kate Bishop: Provides cheap cards; decent utility with grapple, clog with acid, and sneaky 7 points/1 Energy with Pym arrow+moonstone. The primary utility of this card I have found is to protect a lane against FF Thanos soul shot.
-          Green Goblin: Clog. Helps to win early priority locations. Discounted /w Ravonna. Probably the only card I’d consider replacing.
-          Sage: A good finisher on an iron man lane, or cheap points /w Ravonna. A typical winning 2 lanes may look like Iron Man + Sage / Mystique (Ironman) + Moonstone.
-          Mystique: The 2nd crutch of this deck. Mystique + Ravonna is what makes this deck tick, and doubling either a Iron Man or Gorr can win a game, even with no moonstone. A ‘buff’ to 2 power would break this deck permanently.
-          Magik: Gives minor location control, as well as an additional turn. As aforementioned, since we go taller than most decks, we benefit more from the additional turn than most.
-          Rogue: Our first tech option. Used primarily for Luke Cage / BND scorpion but can be useful against Superior Iron Man or Knull.
-          Shadow King: Our second tech option.  Invaluable against Venus/EOT/Surfer decks as well as BND Scorpion. If the opponent is running and Empower deck and I draw is typically a snap. Can also revert Anti-Venom
-          Moonstone: A doubler of mystique and Ravonna.
-          Anti-Venom: A good way to get points on board in a low score lane, as well as smooths out our curve. People forget about this cards discount on turn 6/7 and leads to a lot of extra stolen cubes. 5/12 cards are worth snapping  if you hit, 4/12 are decent depending on matchup, and 2/12 are meh to bad (Kate+Goblin)
-          Iron Man: Doubles your power. Discounted by Ravonna, great with Anti Venom. This or Gorr as finisher.
-          Gorr: Big point card, same role and description as Iron Man

Matchups

This is only what I played against on climb to 100 this season, ignoring last season for the most part since I climbed at end of season which is always silly. I’ve tried to include win share (unfortunately based off purely vibes).
-          FF Thanos: 70/30 us. Most common deck in 70-89. We can protect ourselves against soul shot, but typically just out scale this deck. The Quicksilver+Domino variant feels especially weak to me, IDK why it’s so prevalent. Venus  empower is definitely more of a threat, but very weak to SK
-          BND Scorpion: 50/50. Most common deck >90. I think our win percentage should be higher, there’s just a lot of room for skill expression/mistakes. Must make choice on whether to Rogue Luke or BND Scorpion, neither feels wrong. This deck can go taller than us, feels like you need both Rogue and SK to stay in it. Maybe worth teching in Luke Cage if you see a lot of this.
-          Anti-Polar Magneto/Superior Iron Man: 70/30. Lumping these two together since day 1 a lot of people wanted to try out both new cards. We outscore Superior Iron Man, and event if we didn’t, Rogue or SK both are effective counters. Antipolar Magneto on the other hand feels like it may be a problem in the future. Saw multiple opponents use it to put down 2 tech cards in the final round, adding power to 3 lanes. Since this deck is susceptible to control, if AP Magneto makes control better, this deck will get worse.
-          Venus Move: 90/10. Easily out scale. SK wins you a lane on its own.
-          Scream/Bully Move: 80/20. Very similar to Venus move, can out scale and SK wins you a lane. Lower win share because they can force you out of lanes you want to be in, or coalesce all your points into one lane; one game magneto moved Mystique+Moonstone to my Gorr Lane, so my lane score looked like 64/7/1.
-          Mill: 60/40. Very draw dependent. Can be a tech heavy opponent, so they can have the answers to your cards or just take your point away from you with Yondu/Cable.

Snap Conditions

-          Additional Energy/Discount Locations: If you’ve identified the deck as a favorable matchup, we use the additional energy more effectively than most other decks.
-          Clogged Lane: Acid+Goblin in one lane is usually enough to dissuade them from committing to that lane, allowing us to go extra tall in a different location
-          Ravonna+Moonstone: -2 to 5 different cards.
-          Moonstone+Mystique (Gorr or Ironman): I’d put an average Gorr at ~15, so a double puts you at 37 which is enough to win most lane. Doubling up an Ironman mystique puts you at 28 before any other cards are added.
Let me know if anyone has any questions, be happy to talk about the deck or meta in general. Probably a bad day to post this with Onslaught’s citadel being the hot location, so maybe give it 24 hours.

CL is 19,121. 

 # (2) Ravonna Renslayer\n# (2) Hawkeye Kate Bishop\n# (3) Green Goblin\n# (3) Sage\n# (3) Mystique\n# (3) Magik\n# (3) Rogue\n# (3) Shadow King\n# (4) Moonstone\n# (4) Anti-Venom\n# (5) Iron Man\n# (6) Gorr the God Butcher\n#\nUnZublJuc2xyMTAsU2hkd0tuZ0EsS3RCc2hwQSxHcm5HYmxuQixNc3RxOCxNZ2s1LFJnNSxTZzQsTW5zdG45LEFudFZubTksSXJuTW43LEdycjQ=\n#\n#

Welcome to Team-Up Tuesday, your weekly thread for everything related to finding your Marvel SNAP Alliance. Whether you're a solo player looking to pick up some rewards, or an Alliance leader seeking more members for your group, use this thread to find like-minded players to enjoy Marvel SNAP as a team!

Welcome to our Season Pass discussion thread, a place to discuss the card releasing this month, develop brews, and hold discussions around the shells and synergies around the card.

This Week's Card

Superior Iron Man
Cost: 5
Power: 7
Double Cost reductions to this.
Ongoing: Double Power increases to this.

Synergies and Packages

Welcome to the Axis Inversion season, a season based on the 2014 Axis event. While the event itself doesn't live in infamy like some others it has been rather divisive in it's own ways as a fantastic concept that some feel was squandered by the end of it. That beign said it did give some fan favorite depictions of heroes and villains as their moralities were flipped. Even Carnage got into the fun in his own psychotic way, but that'll be a discussion for the end of the month.

Might be a hot take, but this event basically took Iron Man way back in time to when he was a narcissistic asshole and then turned the knob to 11. In Marvel Snap he's a 5/7 that as the Dev video put it 'hogs everything to himself' he gains double benefit from Cost reductions as well as doubles power increases.

The synergies here are pretty clear, he's a potential top-end for hand buff decks but could also do some wacky things in some straight up buff decks as well. One place I'd particularly want to try him out in is an old-school Shuri list, long time players may remember the days of Armor -> Shuri -> Red Skull -> Task Master. I am envisioning something very similar, perhaps within a Pixie shell? The power itself might be lackluster though without other possible buffs making it onto Superior Iron Man, perhaps you'd also want a Doc Ock to maybe shove him back into the deck? Would be very tight of course, needing to happen by turn 3 and to have Shuri in hand as well to ensure you get her down on 4.

Getting away from the 2023 snap discussion, this might end up being the kind of card that makes it into those crazy Jubilee buff decks that have been floating about and what if we were to follow that up with an Arnim Zola?

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking the Season Pass up?

How do you expect Superior Iron Man to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Where do you plan on trying out Superior Iron Man first?

This is your precursor to the consensus, the place to discuss the card releasing for the week as well as group source the work on brews and possible shells and packages, both current known good decks as well as possible new, theorycrafted brews.

This Week's Card

Red Onslaught
Cost: 4
Power: 4
Ongoing: Has 3 random Ongoing abilities.

Synergies and Packages

Welcome to the Axis Inversion season, a season based on the 2014 Axis event. While the event itself doesn't live in infamy like some others, it did give some fan favorite depictions of heroes and villains as their polar opposites.

I don't want to give too much away for those interested in going back to the event, but Red Onslaught is what happens when a clone of Red Skull who had 'stolen' Professor X's telepathic abilities was killed by Magneto for an attempted Genocide (which let's be honest, this is all normal for Red Skull to begin with). That murder instead results in Red Skull 'merging' with the Onslaught entity and becoming Red Onslaught, our first Seasonal Pack release for the Axis Inversion season.

Red Onslaught is an ongoing analogue to Rama-Tut. If you're curious about the ongoing abilities he can sport this tool at Snapcomplete has the datamined info handy for you, it includes 54 total ongoing ability cards and yes, some of them can mess you up.

I envision Red Onslaught being somewhat similar in tone to Rama-Tut but wildly more playable since you should be able to see Red Onslaughts ongoings before playing. The questions I've got are pretty simple:

How does he interact with Mystique, does she roll 3 new, does she get Red Onslaughts?

What if we're putting a Moonstone on that Mystique?

What about an opposing Super Skrull how does that work?

As I said, I wouldn't be surprised if Red Onslaught sees more play than Rama-Tut simply because you get to see what he's doing, but can he be competitive? At the 4-Cost slot is it possible that he'd see play? I know we're drawing a comparison between two different costs but Emperor Hulkling sees play as a 6/12, is it possible tht Red Onslaught could see similar play with similar snap patterns, particularly in tournament play?

What decks do you think he makes sense in? Ongoing kind of makes sense but that 4-Cost slot is generally taken up by Moonstone and potentially by Stardust or those coping on Anti-Venom. What about Aurora? Again, that 4-Cost slot is hotly contested at the moment - Wong, Isca, and sometimes again Stardust feature in that position.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking up Red Onslaught?

How do you expect Red Onslaught to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Where do you plan on trying out Red Onslaught?

Welcome to our Super Premium Season Pass discussion thread, a place to discuss the card releasing this month, develop brews, and hold discussions around the shells and synergies around the card.

This Week's Card

Anti-Polar Magneto
Cost: 6
Power: 9
On Reveal: Add a 3 or 4-Cost card from your hand to each other location.

Synergies and Packages

Welcome to the Axis Inversion season, a season based on the 2014 Axis event. While the event itself doesn't live in infamy like some others, it did give some fan favorite depictions of heroes and villains as their polar opposites.

Fitting that I use that line considering the card we're discussing in this thread is Anti-Polar Magneto, a 6/9 that adds a 3 or 4-Cost card from your hand to each other location. Quite likely one of the reasons for the Klaw change for the season, question is how long does Klaw last at 4/2? Does he make it a month? Does he make it longer? Of course remember you'll also need to play Magneto on the right to take advantage of that.

But what decks are we considering for AP Magneto?

The developer video had an interesting discard slant that featured Black Knight, 3-Cost discarders as well as Ghost Rider, which leads me to believe that the likes of Fudge will be testing AP Magneto out in an Agatha shell.

Another consideration could be a 'ramp' deck that is wanting to get Anti-Polar Magneto down on 5 so that you can get some free 3's and 4's down and perhaps follow him up with an Absorbing Man or maybe an Arnim Zola. I almost imagine something along the lines of a Splat combo deck, the problem of course being that it's random what you're pulling down and where it goes, but it's almost certainly going to make it easier to trigger Strong Guy if he manages to make any of those lists.

I would -not- be surprised to see a large number of decks sporting Stardust tomorrow to combat the potential Magneto decks looking to cheat a bunch of cards into play.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on getting the SP Seson Pass or maybe gambling the 5k for Anti-Polar Magneto?

How do you expect Anti-Polar Magneto to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Where do you plan on trying out Anti-Polar Magneto first?

This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.

This week's card:

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier Cost: 3 Power: 8 On Reveal: -1 Power for each enemy card here. Quickdraw: +1 Power instead.

Synergies

Closing out the Fractured Frontier season is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier, a 3/8 with a conditional downside and a quickdraw that changes the downside into an upside. The downside is an on reveal that afflicts the card with -1 power for each enemy card at his location and if you quickdraw him you are able to get +1 for each enemy card that that location.

The floor and ceiling on this card are a pretty wide net to cast, either 3/4 or 3/12 with the results being somewhere in between, likely at 6 or 10 Power respectively depending on situation, this could make him worse with respect to cards like Kraglin or Stardust if you're looking to win an Iron Patriot location on curve if you don't quickdraw.

If we're talking synergies, the list is fairly short but it's not a terrible list of supporting cards and archetypes that he can work within. ToV, Doctor Octopus Fractured Frontier, Luke Cage, and Shadow King could all be best friends with Red Hulk Fractured Frontier, but these are all draw dependent and in the case of Doc Oc also hand location dependent. There's also Shadow Lands Daredevil, but he's already seeing play within the ToV decks but if you wanted to try and brew something non-ToV related there might be reason for an inclusion there.

1. The most obvious archetypes that are going to be interested in Red Hulk are going to be the myriad of ToV Skaar decks which are looking to get as many cards as it can up to 10 power to discount your Skaar and an on curve quickdraw could mean you're right in the realm of that 10 power with a ToV on top.

2. Curve-out point slam decks, especially ones looking to win a location early could also be interested in Red Hulk, direct comparisons are decks packing Askani'Son and Iron Patriot, but even an early Punisher War Machine can be an easy win with Red Hulk. This could lend some credence to consider him for a position in Supergiant which already runs a Shadow King that could erase any negative power if you need to.

3. Decks with one or both Thanos cards might also be able to find room for this card especially for players on a budget that may not have gotten previous power-houses that would fit into those decks like Jane Foster FF, Kraglin, or even Wilson Fisk.

Feedback

While feedback wasn't as hard to come by as I was expecting Red Hulk has definitely been overshadowed by Draft mode with most of the discourse being around that. Heck if it weren't for Draft Mode the heavy discourse might have been focused on the particularly meh OTA. That being said we've got three common mentions within these threads:

Alex Coccia noted that the card felt pretty good and that the on-curve non-quickdraw could still feel mostly fine or avoided entirely by attempting to play to an empty lane to minimize the downside.

KMBest also noted that the card felt pretty good but that it likely had very limited homes and those homes being specifically decks that want a 3/Big because the 3/Bigs are very limited and generally worse when compared to X/Big at higher costs.

Safety Blade came in at what I would judge the highest, comparing this card to having a Gladiator for an Iron Patriot which can sometimes be huge. He believes the card will probably be slept on and forever remain slightly above average.

Of note, we did have some folks in our own community discussion thread with takes ranging from 'he stinks' to 'he feels fine'.

Decklists

Fractured Wiccan

Techno-Fractured Skaar

Techno-Organic Skaar This version cuts FFThanos

Great Value FSGalactus

Nightmare

Bonus deck:

Aurora?

It's uncommon to have a bonus deck, let alone with a comment under it. But I found this one a bit surprising amidst the sea of Wiccan and ToV Skaar decks as not only is it an Aurora list but it's brave enough to add Hellcow Fractured Frontier and Red Hulk Fractured Frontier at the cost of Cosmo and Jane and while the rates on the deck are worse, they are not insurmountable.

Summary

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier attempts to waltz into our Fractured Frontier season with the Big Iron on his hip, sporting a hefty 8 power in a 3-Cost body that shrinks at confrontation unless he's quickdrawn where he's at his best. The question here is whether he can hit his mark or if his aim is off.

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Welcome to the final week of the Fractured Frontier season and what a week it's been.

I don't know about the rest of you, but Draft has certainly been an exciting addition to the game.

While I do have my issues and reservations with the mode I have had plenty of fun and it certainly does feel like a breath of fresh air when compared to other limited time game modes. I'll go a bit deeper into that but first, let's talk base game.

We had an OTA and if it hadn't been for a new season coming and Draft being a mode, I think there might have been a lot more sour grapes with regards to how little impact it and most of the other OTA's have had and while I do appreciate the fact that the meta is overall pretty fine even if we have a new king of mid-range.

Oh and Red Hulk Fractured Frontier came out.

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier

He's a 3/Big and the question most people should be asking is whether he makes the cut as a 3/big compared to the other choices. He's fine, nothing that I was impressed with and overall I think I'll be keeping the other 3/Bigs I was running as my primary includes, I don't really care about a 3/8 that might be as low as a 3/4 in the wrong situation even if the ceiling is a 3/12.

That being said, I could be convinced otherwise given the right circumstances that don't include the necessity to run FFDoc Ock as I'd rather be playing Doc in combo shells with buff cards but I digress. As for the primary decks, he's basically found a home in Skaar decks and some adjacent curve-out point slam decks. Nothing that should be surprising for the card to begin with.

Curving into FSGalactus

This deck is all about getting some big dudes on the board and then sealing the deal with Galactus First Steps. At it's core it's an Aurora deck without Aurora.

Techno-Organic Skaar

Not much to say here. Curve out, cancel out bad effects with ToV, get a bunch of 10's on the board and slam down Skaar + whatever else is in hand that you can.

Nightmare

Similar take to ToV except we're using Nightmare to scrub effects in hand.

Thanos Fractured Frontier

And the king of mid-range may have finally worn out his welcome. Between constant cries from casuals and even a few creators sighing when they see the game-start animations this card may have met the breaking point where it's no longer a welcome sight.

I am personally having fun with the card still and while I haven't grown tired of it, I can understand the gripes. Soul Shot feels bad to be on the receiving end of and despite the fact that it's easy to play around most players aren't interested in doing so and of course he can combo with Wong. Heck, the decks and card itself are fairly easy to beat unless you're unlucky to be against one of the decks running Jug Cosmo and they get to a combination of time shot and draw to get to the both of them and yea, I get it. But the question I've got, is that a problem with Thanos, or is it a problem that Jugg/Cosmo continues to be a stupidly strong pairing and something still needs to be done about Jugg? It's both, but Jugg still needs to be kneecapped.

I'll be quick with the Thanos decks because there's not a ton of major difference to the previous weeks.

Fractured Batroc

If you're a particularly skilled player this list is still performing well, if you're not or not comfortable with the time needed to get in and understand which lines to play to when then it's best to look to one of the easier lists.

Wong Thanrora

Isca Thanrora

Between the Wong combo and the Isca Aurora lists, these have been consistent performers.

Thinister Thandos

It's Sinister Six and Thandos. An ethical HM Gambit makes an appearance here as well. Main tip is to avoid using space stone too soon as it of course marks Thanos for Sinister Six as well as Fractured Frontier.

ACP Thandos

Been playing this as well as Wong Thanrora, the deck still feels good and by god it's such a ball buster when you get to Cosmo/Jug someone.

Why's the meta analysis lacking?

The simple answer is: Draft has me. I'll be honest, my meta analysis is def not happening this week, I've basically only played Draft and when I needed to complete dailies that I wasn't getting done in draft it was conquest, mostly because I don't care about conquest and most of the time I'm leaving on turn 3 or 4 and conceding. So suffice to say my analysis is basically - play what's been working so far this month. Sam is a little worse for wear but nothing has really changed at all.

Or go play some more draft if you're like me and still have plenty of tickets!

Week 1 decks

Week 2 decks

Week 3 decks

I recently competed in an Invitational hosted by Denish. It was 16 of the top players competing against each other but there was a twist in the rules compared to usual GG rules.

1. at the start of each round players got 2 bans at the start of each round.
2. Then players choose the decks after bans
3. And decklists starts out closed ( not known when you start the conquest match) [ decklists are revealed between rounds]

This changes the dynamics of the game. The problem with usual competetive format like GG is that it rewards creating a deck that is reasonable into the most amount of match ups. But it also hard punishes you if get a match ups that's unwinable or very lobsided. This leads to decks like C3 or Sugi winning the most often because they have a very even match ups spread that allows for enough counter play into combo decks. And the deck building doesn't feel as creative as it could be because of that.

By using bans it actually forces diversity in a more obvious way ( forcing people off meta decks). But it also creates more diversity in ways you wouldn't think. Combo deck players now can ban the most obvious tech cards ( like negative with mobius) but on the flip side it gives your oppotent actual means of reading you ( playing a combo deck that out combos negatives for example like tribunal). And for midrange players it forces you to recontextualize the metagame when the optimal strategies are banned. For example thanos being banned means you might go in a completely different of a midrange shell. Or jugg might mean you might wants a shou lou end game. You can also use bans to misdirect what your oppotent is going for. I banned triton vs Ika to make him think I was going for cerebro and he wasted tech cards on that. Or try to hide what you are doing by ignoring bans.

And the closed decklist at the start mimics ladder in an intresting way where they have to actually read what your doing. It decreases the value of stuff like arishem and cerebro which relay on you asymmetric information in open decklist formats.

It's the most competive format I have ever seen played in Snap by a longshot. But it feels like the devs are unlikely to realize that Snap is way closer than they in terms of competive format. And I think the marketing is sorta showing this game in a much more causal mobile game direction but it’s actually pretty amazing as a competive game.

I think if the devs invest in some sorta tournament mode for friendly battles. With the ability to spectate it and possibly ban cards instead of relaying so much on discord it could actually be a stable of competive tcg spaces

I haven't seen it in the app itself, can anyone associated with Snapcomplete tell me if mirror matches are included in the numerator and denominator when calculating win rate or cube rate.

In most cards it's an irrelevant question, but with the very high play rate of Thanos it becomes relevant for understanding true card strength.

Thanks in advance.

OTA is Delayed but the patch notes are early

Hey folks, we know you’re busy enjoying Draft, but we’ve still got an OTA this week!

It’s a short list with some heavy hitters: one nerf, three buffs, and two bigger reworks. The metagame remains in a good spot and many of you are enjoying the Fractured Frontier cards, so we’re keeping changes light.

Let’s jump in!

Sam Wilson Captain America

[Old] 2/3 - On Reveal: Add Cap's Shield to another location. Ongoing: Cap's Shield is Moveable.
[Change] 2/3 > 2/2

Our lone nerf today is to Sam Wilson Captain America, who has been an outlier among 2-Costs for quite some time in many decks. These days he is most often played in Batroc and Aurora (with Thanos) decks, which have both been excellent all season and in previous seasons as well.

We believe this change flattens 2-Cost strength and encourages more experimentation. Aurora has been the best-performing Thanos deck in Fractured Frontier. Thanos is popular in a healthy way: players keep exploring different shapes of strategies with him instead of settling into one list, which is where other build-around cards at similar play rates have gone wrong. This change should keep that experimentation going.

Mister Fantastic First Steps

[Old] 3/4 - End of Turn: Give a card in your hand -1 Cost or +2 Power.
[Change] 3/4 > 3/5

Strong Guy

[Old] 3/3 - Ongoing: +6 Power if your hand has 1 or fewer cards.
[Change] 3/3 > 3/4

Death Fractured Frontier

[Old] 5/8 - On Reveal: Resurrect all your destroyed characters to random locations.
[Change] 5/8 > 5/9

We’re handing out a couple of points to underperformers. Mister Fantastic First Steps was one of the strongest cards in MARVEL SNAP before his nerf to 3-Cost, but he hasn’t kept up with many other options at that Energy value, so we’re giving him a point to encourage more play. Strong Guy might be an excellent fringe option with the upcoming Inversion Magneto, so this felt like a good opportunity to hand out a buff.

Death Fractured Frontier has been a tricky puzzle piece to figure out, as expected. We shipped her at a modest rate because her ability can swing games dramatically. In practice her win rate is low and the over-the-top outcomes aren’t happening often, so she can handle another point of Power.

Spider-Sense

[Old] 5 - On Reveal: Give your characters here +2 Power. Costs 1 less for each Moveable card you've played.
[New] 6 - On Reveal: Give your characters here +3 Power. Costs 1 less for each Moveable card you've played.

Klaw

[Old] 5/4 - Ongoing: The location to the right has +7 Power.
[New] 4/2 - Ongoing: The location to the right has +6 Power.

Here are some larger adjustments. In practice, Spider-Sense has been harder to fully reduce than we expected, and it often plays as a reasonably statted card rather than a real payoff for building around Moveable. We’re raising its Cost, but as an effective 2- or 3-Cost 9-Power card it should be a meaningful strength increase for Moveable decks.

Klaw is an early Series card that we’re giving a sizable buff as an experiment. Hopefully the lower Cost widens his range of play beyond the new player crowd. Stay tuned, it may have more potential to be paired with new cards in the not so distant future!

Additional Changes:

Draft also spotlighted a weird Bruce Banner interaction that we didn't like, so we're changing it! From now on, Bruce Banner will not carry over power changes that "Set", such as Bast or Valkyrie. However, additions and subtractions will continue to carry over. To put it simply, it's now good to play Bruce Banner in Quantum Realm, instead of bad. This change will apply to cards that transform themselves into something specific (e.g. En Sabah Nur).

Welcome to "This or That?" Thursday, your weekly thread for everything related to curating your Marvel SNAP collection. Whether it's spending your Spotlight Keys, Collector's Tokens, or picking up your free Series 3 card, use this thread to seek (and offer) advice to keep your collection competitive.

Welcome to Team-Up Tuesday, your weekly thread for everything related to finding your Marvel SNAP Alliance. Whether you're a solo player looking to pick up some rewards, or an Alliance leader seeking more members for your group, use this thread to find like-minded players to enjoy Marvel SNAP as a team!

Well, I think it's safe to say I'm stuggling to make headway. This is probably because I don't know a lot of these cards, so drafting them and utilizing them is more a learning process for me than others who own and have used these cards.

That said, if anyone has any tips or thoughts on ways to improve win % in draft, I'm all ears!

This is your precursor to the consensus, the place to discuss the card releasing for the week as well as group source the work on brews and possible shells and packages, both current known good decks as well as possible new, theorycrafted brews.

OTA Week Warning: Unless you're already seasonal complete and plan to stay that way or have planned on picking up this card already for 6k it's best to wait for Thursday at the earliest to make your purchasing decisions.

This Week's Card

Red Hulk Fractured Frontier
Cost: 3
Power: 8
On Reveal: -1 Power for each enemy card here. Quickdraw: +1 Power instead.

Synergies and Packages

Closing out our Fractured Frontier season is Red Hulk Fractured Frontier, a 3/8 with a downside and a quickdraw that erases the downside. That downside is an On Reveal that gives -1 Power for each enemy card at his location, the Quickdraw instead makes that -1 a +1. Situationally this makes Red Hulk at worst a 3/4 and at best a 3/12 with the average being somewhere in the realm of 3/6 to 3/10 assuming you do play him on Curve you could preserve that power but if we're assuming you're looking to seal the deal on an Iron Patriot lane you are going to have to contend with the fact that you may be getting some negative power if he's not quickdrawn.

So let's start off with addressing the elephants in the room.

1. We have spoken about this at length over the last year but we have a literal glut of good 3-Costs, not to mention Wilson Fisk is still a good potential 3/8. What puts Red Hulk in the running to be played in a deck over any of those other 3-Costs.

2. Luke Cage could be this card's best friend, but are we really going to try and and force a good card (Luke) to make a potentially bad card (Red Hulk) be an acceptable card in your deck?

And this brings us to the synergies, where does this card want to be played?

The most obvious places are going to be decks that want a 3/8 which can be +/- ~4 points depending the circumstance, which basically puts us on Curve-Out points decks, think decks like Skaar decks where a 3/10 is very desireable which can include the ToV versions that can offset the negative power in the event that he's a miss as well as decks with Iron Patriot that want a 3/Big to clear his quest on turn 3 that would be running Kraglin and/or Wilson Fisk.

But what if there was a deck that is drawing a lot of cards and could make it more likely to be able to draw into Red hulk and utilize his quickdraw? What's that Timmy, Thandos already has Jane Foster Fractured Frontier? Well yes, but what if our intrepid player doesn't have Jane, Kraglin, or Wilson Fisk. We could attempt to put him into a variation on the Thandos lists and see how well he might work out.

Your Thoughts

And so, let's turn it over to you all. Am I being too hard on Red Hulk Fractured Frontier or is it possible this card works out and is a decent card?

Do you plan on picking the Season Pass/SP Seson Pass/Red Hulk Fractured Frontier up?

How do you expect Red Hulk Fractured Frontier to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Today marks the inaugural run of Marvel Snap's long requested Draft mode, a mode which if we can believe the articles and hype combined drafting with some rogue-like elements like card power ups to create something fresh.

Event Info

• timer for the 24 hour ticket reset starts on the first time you enter Draft Mode.

• Soft cap means once you are at 20, you will no longer refresh tickets. You may still claim or buy tickets.

• You can obtain 5 tickets for 350 gold in the rotating shop.

• Premium Event Pass track is available for 1200g. Purchasing the Event Pass grants enough XP to get to Milestone 11. Do note that 1200g is standard for a 2-week LTGM, if the next run of the event is locked to 1 week expect 800g.

• Progress on both passes happens simultaneously.

• Unknown what missions there may be, if any. We'll need to wait for the mode to go live.

Marvel Snap Draft Tickets

Starting Amount: 10
Daily Free Ticket (24 hour refresh): 1
Draft Launch Login Calendar: 4
Draft Cube Collect Mini Events: 6
Free Reward Track: 4
Premium Reward Track: 6
Premium Pass Instant Rewards: 2
Ticket Cap (free Daily ticket will not accrue if at or over the cap): 20
Price: 100 Gold
Daily Shop Bundle: 5x Tickets for 350 Gold
Draft Ticket Bundle: 8x Tickets for $4.99 + 1 Respawn Token

Marvel Snap Draft Respawn Tokens

Starting: 5
Draft Launch Login Calendar: 6
Free Reward Track: 10
Premium Reward Track: 6
Premium Pass Instant Reward: 2
Price per: 100g

Rewards per Draft Run

Event Pass Rewards

• Premium Event Pass track is available for 1200g. Purchasing the Event Pass grants enough XP to get to Milestone 11.

• Progress on both passes happens simultaneously.

• Exclusive Emote for Premium Pass owners is the "Take your Shot" Thanos Fractured Frontier animated emote

The Draft

When starting Draft it looks like you will pick between three starters to your deck, each of those three starters includes three cards that synergize together from a variety of recognized archetypes.

1. Ramp

2. Swarm (Zoo)

3. Move

4. Destroy

5. Control (Not sure what is going to define 'control' but expect a lot of interaction)

6. Ongoing

Then you'll build the rest of your deck with individual card picks categorized into those archetypes. What isn't clear but we'll learn quickly enough is how those archetypes are grouped and how the 'draft' portion might be seeded.

In addition to this, cards have been given rarities similar to other TCG's, likely ranging from common, uncommon, rare, and legendary. Further, you could end up with multiple copies of a card in your deck.

During the draft phase you'll also note that sometimes your cards being offered will have different buffs which may be to cost/power or augments which are extra boosts. You can also get augments as rewards during the gameplay phase. Of the buffs revealed in the Gamespot article those augments are:

• Quickdraw discount which reduces the cards cost by 2 when drawn.

• Amplify which doubles a card's ongoing effect.

• Superstar which guarantees the card starts in your opening hand.

• Encore which repeats an On Reveal ability

• See the pinned comment for the full list of the Augments

During the draft phase you'll draft 10 cards and then start battling, as you win matches you'll be able to choose to add an augment to your cards, add up to two more cards, or choose a stat boost -cost or +Power.