Hello everyone,

I really wasn't enjoying this season too much. I was playing a lot of discard bullseye, some combo shells, and some other stuff, but for the most part, I wasn't really having too much fun. Each game felt the same; I went in with a strict game plan, and if it didn't work out, I would retreat. This led me to attempt to build my own deck. I looked through my collection and realized no one was playing Nightmare; personally, I love this card. He unlocks so many different plays and ways to win the game. This deck mixes Nightmare and TOV, allowing you to play big bodies without having to worry about their drawbacks. I've been able to climb to around top 1000 while only playing a couple of games a day.

Gameplan:

The general idea is to play your huge stat cards and use either TOV or Nightmare to remove their text. Shadow King (SK) is here to help check some of those combo decks like zombies, allowing you to go big in one lane and a bit smaller in the SK lane. Iron Patriot (IP) and Nightmare add unpredictability to your hand, making snaps especially dangerous for your opponent.

Card Explanations:

Quinjet: Used to discount TOV. Allows a huge power play on T6 of Red Skull and TOV played on top.

Hydra Bob + Martyr: The biggest 1 costs in the game (besides Ebony Maw, but he's terrible). Makes it very easy to win IP lanes.

TOV: One of the deck's staples and essential to your game plan. Play on top of your cards, negate their abilities, and watch your board grow in power. This card puts up very large numbers over the course of the whole game.

Iron Patriot: We win lanes at the beginning of the game very easily; as such, having IP makes sense and adds some unpredictability to your board.

Lizard: Very big for his cost, great to have on the board.

Nightmare: Another staple of the deck, replaces the text of your cards with (hopefully) something better. He can lead to very scary snaps for your opponent where they have no idea what you might have in hand. Sometimes he leads to ridiculously broken card and text combinations. I tend to only play him if my hand is only full of my powerful cards; you definitely don't want to hit TOV, and usually you don't want to hit SK

Starbrand + Typhoid Mary + Attuma + Red Skull: Nothing more to be said besides that they have huge power and are great targets for TOV/Nightmare.

Turn by Turn:

T1: Quinjet > Hydra Bob > Martyr (I do not suggest playing Martyr if you do not have TOV in hand)

T2: IP > TOV > Lizard

T3: Starbrand on IP lane = Lizard + TOV (if Quinjet) or a 1 + TOV = Nightmare (read the board and your hand. If you have something you don't want to replace the text of, such as SK in hand and you may need to use him later, perhaps it is best not to play Nightmare)

T4: Nightmare + TOV = Starbrand + TOV > Typhoid/Attuma

T5: Redskull > Cards + TOV

T6: Use SK if you need and dump hand, TOVing whatever needs to be TOVed.

Conclusion:

While I believe TOV to be the best card in the deck, Nightmare offers a secondary game plan that can lead to some fantastic snaps if you get some good hits. While I would like to include maybe a Mobius, there's really not enough room to include any more tech with Nightmare being in the deck. That being said, this deck has proved itself to be great for me. I haven't had much time to climb due to real-life restrictions and stresses; however, I've been able to push quite easily and with a high win rate running just this list. I've really enjoyed playing this deck, and Nightmare has been a nice breath of fresh air within the current meta. If you guys decide to try this list, let me know how it goes, and if there are any questions, feel free to shoot them my way!

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: Not really something that should be impacting whether you grab either of the Season Pass packages, it is still worth noting that OTA changes could impact how well the Season cards this week are received.

This Week's Card

Vampire Deacon Frost
Cost: 4
Power: 5
Objective: 3 of your cards have stolen Power ➡️ Transform into Crimson Behemoth.

Transformation:

Crimson Behemoth
Cost: 4
Power: 9
On Reveal: Steal all the power of a front-row enemy card here.

Welcome to the fourth and final week of the Vampire vs Zombies season, this week brings us what many have bet on being the star of the season. Vampire Deacon Frost is perhaps the biggest payoff this season for the steal deck that has been teased since the opening of the season. A 4/5 with an objective ability that requires you to have stolen power on 3 cards in order to trigger his transformation into the Crimson Behemoth, a 4/9 with an On Reveal that steals all the Power of a front-row enemy card at his location.

Pretty beefy. But is it all that it's cracked up to be?

Synergies and Packages

Vampire Deacon Frost's primary synergy is obvious, he needs you to be stealing power and having that stolen power be on the board. Of course this leads us to some mechanical notes and while we normally hit those in the 'This Weeks card section' I think it might very well be worth noting here.

1. It's very likely that if you're on the final turn and with priority and only 3 cards with stolen power on the board and your opponent Shadow kings or destroys one of those cards that Vampire Deacon Frost will fail to go off. This is very important because it will likely be fairly difficult to have 3 cards on the board with stolen power and more-so difficult to do so in a way where all three cards are protected.

2. Notable since some folks have been making the mistake - this is stolen power, not afflictions. Your cards need to gain the power they are afflicting.

3. Speaking of opps - Cosmo, Shadow King, and Luke Cage are gonna sock you in the mouth all week long. If the Deacon manages to do well it's going to be off of the back of being able to overpower those cards in a meaningful way or at least . That being said, 9 power is still a pretty big transformation even if your opponent drops a Luke or even Cosmo on your head.

4. There is some clear anti-synergy bordering on nonbo with Selene Horseman of Famine since they are both objective cards they cannot complete one another's objective meaning that you will need to trigger Selene on a prior turn to triggering Vampire Deacon Frost though it may be possible depending on the deck you are playing for such a deck I don't think VKM is the play as he'll often be rather low on the power scale. That being said both Selene and Deacon being at 4-Cost will make that rather difficult to accmplish. SD PLS! It really would be nice to see fixes to the Objective cards to allow them to work together better.

Now as to the list of 'Steal' cards that we can work with, there are some notables.

• Silver Sable
  
• Scream
  
• Boomerang
  
• Zombie Blade
  
• Cassandra Nova
  
• Rocket Raccoon & Groot
  
• Spider-Punk
  
• Dragon of the Moon
  
• Selene Horseman of Famine
  
• Laufey
  
• Vampire Enchantress
  

Additionally we have one more Series 4 also releasing Tuesday as a reward from Deadpool's Diner, or you could pay to skip the grind, do note that typically there isn't a 'Premium' track to purchase so it's either buy bubs at a premium to skip the grind or play out the tables.

Vampire America Chavez
Cost: 3
Power: 4
On Reveal: For each location you're winning, steal 1 Power from the top character of your opponent's deck.

You may note that Scream is in the list despite having a significant build requirement - if you can crack the code on balance and ensuring that you hit the cards with stolen power requirements (maybe it's an AP Magneto angle?) there could be an interesting, albeit very clunky deck as you'd need to balance between cards that can bully your opponent's positioning to enable Scream as well as having at least two other cards stealing power and keeping that stolen power.

That being said, some of the cards lend themselves to certain play styles that are necessary in order to attempt to steal power efficiently.

Cards like Rocket Raccoon & Groot want you to jockey for priority and ideally want you to use a cards like Hydra Bob for early priority and cards like Nebula and Iron Patriot to entice your opponent's to play to their locations and give R&G a clear steal. R&G also have their own problems to contend with, that being that some decks are running high enough concentrations of skill cards that R&G may not have anything to steal even if you can land them in the same location as a Zombie Scarlet Witch or other ideal nesting spot.

Cassandra Nova can land into similar situatiuons where a skill card has no power to grant and so decks running 3+ collectible skills can reduce her power output significantly. Silver Sable by comparison was at least fixed and always steals power from the next Character they would draw unless your opponent's deck gets shuffled.

Speaking of Silver Sable, Bounce might be an interesting archetype to consider since you could fundamentally protect multiple cards with stolen power and thus ensure that your Vampire Deacon Frost goes off thanks in part to things like a Nico or Frigga copy into ideally bouncing those cards with Beast on final turn so that you can hopefully dump some cheap cards with stolen power on final turn and transform Deacon. Could there be some form of bounce adjacent shell that can create enough power and leverage these things to enable a powerful Deacon Frost turn?

WWBN shells may also be very likely here since many of the ideal 'steal' cards are also on-reveals.

The above, of course puts us on a collision course with the 'Halloween' Horde deck, but I believe that would be a trap albeit the 'easiest' place to start. VKM and Zombie Blade can both be represented in the deck, Vampire Enchantress as a top end, and if you were running Absorbing Man, Vampire Deacon Frost goes in that slot. I wonder if you could also somehow fit in Stryfe?

There may even be something along the lines of a Wiccan style deck that can afford to play Vampire Enchantress and AP Magneto, of course you would need some form of ramp or additional non-Objective cheat to get those two cards working together.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking Vampire Deacon Frost up?

How do you expect Vampire Deacon Frost to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Welcome back to Deadpool's Diner.

Event At a Glance

Diner Rules

• As with previous runs, Bubs are the currency to enter tables and fuel your progress on the Maximum Effort Reward Track, the track has borders, credits, boosters, nachos, bub cap and regen increases as well as an a Divebound Studio Vampire America Chavez variant

• Bubs refresh hourly and will cap at your current bub cap every 8 hours.

• Each Table has it's own associated minimum bub requirement to unlock and a separate, lower bub required to 'ante' up or play a round.

• You can only bet up to your maximum bubs, if for instance you only have 15k bubs and snap 3 times on Hell Burger you will cap at 15k, not the 24k maximum of the table.

• Bots 'do' exist to some extent to ensure fast matchmaking.

• For the sake of clarity, losing does not reduce progress on the reward track. So don't sweat the losses too hard.

• Each player can snap up to 3 times, doubling only their own wager. Making the mode a little friendlier to the casual and less comp oriented.

• No more Auto-doubling on turns 4, 5 and 6!

• Nachos for the event shop are earned through plate missions, see the event shop section for more details.

• Hot and Featured Locations will not be in this mode, however, there will be a number of LTGM specific locations that can spawn.

The Tables

Plate Missions

• each table has the same mission snap 3 times.

• can be done across games at that table, progress doesn't carry over between tables.

• auto-collects upon completion and resets allowing for replaying for the same reward.

Bub Refreshes

• Bub Caps changed for the better!

Card Reward

Vampire America Chavez
Cost: 3
Power: 4
On Reveal: For each location you're winning, steal 1 Power from the top character of your opponent's deck.

Reward Track

• Premium Pass? 800g - yep it looks like we've finally got a premium event pass for Deadpools Diner.
• Instantly, on purchase 4× Border: Green Brains, Skip 10 Milestones - get Vampire America Chavez

Event Shop

• Nachos are the event shop currency and are earned through Plate Missions which are completed by snapping in Diner matches.

• Plate missions automatically refresh upon finishing one.

• Wins and losses both fuel the plate missions, so no worries that your progress won't be tracked if you bomb out while attempting to complete a mission.

• Not listed is a daily shop that will have rotating rewards per SD those rewards are Borders, Boosters, Avatars, and Emotes.

Rotating Shop

All Offers

Locations

These Locations are specific to Deadpool's Diner and only appear in the mode.

• Appearance rate appears to be roughly 50% to get a Diner location.

• Table may not be complete, if new locations show up I'll be sure to add them as they are brought up.

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:

Zombie Black Cat
Cost: 3
Power: 5
When Discarded: Discard another When Discarded card. Jump to your location with the fewest cards.

Keeping in tune with the release discussion, there's not much in the way of substance to provide around Zombie Black Cat, our newest offering to the Discard archetype, her ability is a When Discarded ability that will Discard another When Discarded card and then jumps to your location with the fewest cards. Now, this -can- screw you over, have a Bar With No Name on the board, well you'd better play her out raw or she's gonna find herself nestled sweetly in that location.

Synergies

The synergies are simple here, she wants to be in discard and ideally in discard decks that are using cards that have the "When Discarded" ability, which are relatively few.

• X-23
• Scorn
  
• Swarm
  
• Wolverine
  
• Marrow
  
• Proxima Midnight
  
• Khonshu
  
• Apocalypse
  
• Helicarrier
  
• Weapon H
  

Of course worth noting is that X-23 just doesn't see play in any 'discard' decks and outside of some very specific decks such as Moongirl Discard Wolverine also does not see play. In general this does leave some of the considerations for homes that Zombie Black Cat might find worthwhile relatively small in number.

Essentially her best friends are likely to be the tentpole 'when discarded' cards other than maybe Proxima. Ideally I would want my Black Cat to be discarding a Khonshu, Apoc or Weapon H if she is hitting anything. That's not to say a Scorn, Swarm or Marrow aren't 'bad' hits but I would certainly rather see her hit the end-game threats.

If we're talking sub-types within Discard

• Dependable Discard- the OG of the Discard decks, used to be held aloft entirely by Mobius/MODOK/Drac/APOC but has since gained occasional co-stars in Khonshu and Weapon H.

• Zombie Power Man (Neo Classical Discard) - it's very similar to Dependable but tries to get a Zombie Powerman online early to constantly discard cards. This deck is a bit of a roulette wheel in functionality because sometimes you get it rolling and it starts eating all of your important cards.

• Bullseye Combo - not to be confused with Daken Combo. Bullseye Combo wants to be spreading a bunch of negatives across your board. Daken is sometimes in the deck but the general idea is Jocasta Activate shenanigans which can be hard to squeeze a single daken in that is only netting you 8 power.

• Moongirl Discard - typically with Supergiant, Blink, and MODOK. This deck has been more or less dead since the Blink nerf but it is functional, if not much worse for wear.

While she could likely fit in other sub-types within the realm of Discard these are likely to be her best current homes.

Feedback

The feedback has been generally low - however, there is a caveat here. The low feedback is less about Zombie Black Cat and more about the poor standing of Discard in the current meta of Marvel Snap. It didn't help that even after a small buff to the archetype in the last OTA that the Devs 'fixed' an interaction with Dracula and gave him a +1 buff to compensate out of fear that giving him too much of a buff would be less of a buff to discard and more of a buff to decks that aren't Discard running him. Of Note En Sabah Nur/APM decks were hit this last OTA so giving a off-shot within that wheelhouse +4 power when it just lost a bunch of power was likely the best course.

Returning to the topic at hand, Zombie Black Cat herself does have good stats, she has a compelling ability that can fit into the traditional discard deck archetype. But that archetype is currently struggling and that hurts the reception and the feedback on the card.

Decklists

Dependable Discard

Zombie Power Man Discard

Bullseye Combo

SuperGiant Discard

honorable mention

I'm including this because it's actually in the 'top performing' decks for Zombie Black Cat but I seriously doubt it's capability in higher ranked games.

Funtomex

Summary

Zombie Black Cat releases as the only Discard card so far this year and barring any changes to datamines, will be the only discard card releasing this year. Regardless of how well she would be received, this makes her both the best and worst discard card released this year. But the real question is, even in an archetype that is struggling, can Zombie Black Cat make the cut?

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Zombie Black Cat worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Zombie Black Cat here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Week 3 and the fruits of the last OTA have basically been realized.

Many top players and other creators are in agreement that Thanos' additional hit was a step too far, that the initial load was enough of a hit and that the collateral damage he took as a byproduct of the AP Magneto deck was too much with similar views shared towards Karen Page and HM Caliban where the real hits should have been AP Magneto and En Sabah Nur. I have come around to at least believing Thanos took collateral damage her and at least En Sabah should have been in place of one of the other two - I get why KM defends Caliban and kind of agree but Caliban was always going to be in the hotseat and this keeps any potential 'Doom 2099' decks from rising in popularity had the nerf to the ESN/APM deck been sufficient and we all know SD love to hate on D99.

As a result of the 'King of Midrange' being dethroned we have started to see some diversification, but at the same time a meta which seems to favor a situation of 'did they do the thing' vs 'did I stop them from doing the thing'. It feels like we're right back into a 'kick the castle' kinda meta and while I'd chalk this up to it being my pocket, I do currently have two accounts a low CL (1900) account and my normal account and I am seeing a lot of the same behaviors between the two accounts. But let's get the basic housekeeping out of the way.

Zombie Black Cat

Zombie Black Cat is a Marvel Snap card. She did release this week, and as many predicted she didn't move the needle much for Discard but this isn't the fault of Zombie Black Cat but rather the current state of Discard. She's been our ONLY discard release of the year after last year's trio Zombie Power Man and Cap as well as Weapon H.

Which is kind of interesting, plenty of us were pointing fingers at SD for constantly trickling out Destroy Cards that weren't finding homes. Perhaps SD should take the next couple of years trying to explore more of the Discard design space in a similar way to what they've done with Destroy.

Dependable Discard

Good ol' reliable, featuring the tried and true top end of Khonshu, Apocalypse, and Weapon H with Dracula and of course MODOK as our full enabler.

Neo Classical Discard

'Why the fancy name?' Because this isn't the typical 'Dependable' discard deck, this one is opting for a Zombie Powerman curve to try and hit consistant discards but without a Khonshu to bring something back I'm a bit lower on this list.

Bullseye activate Combo

Anyone remember when this deck was floating around? Just me? Well it's the 'other' Jocasta Activate combo deck looking to hit huge negative numbers on your opponent's side of the board. The deck kind of falls apart without being able to hit at least a Jocasta/Bullseye with MODOK stuff but it is fun to hunt for the big negative power swings.

Daken Combo

The classic 'make a good deck worse' by playing the new card in the deck. The numbers just prove that you're making the Daken deck worse by running black cat in the deck.

SuperMoongirl Discard

"Wasn't this deck dead" yes. But it's still doing decently and the recent buff to Swarm has put Bullseye into the deck over Daken.

The deck is clunkier with the Blink change, so please do keep that in mind. My only desire here would be to find a way to fit in Blade just so you can occasionally have two swarms in hand as well, why? Two early swarms are a decent target for Vampire Killmonger and since you're often not wanting to play them out and would rather discard them again with Bullseye to fuel your Morbius they are good magnets for VKM.

Vampire Killmonger

I won't say the Killmonger decks are completely solved until after we see what Vampire Deacon Frost brings along next week as we're ending the third week among the 'best' ways to play VKM are with Zombies or WWBN/Sasquatch decks.

If we break Vampire Killmonger down to the basic package it would be:

• Majestic Wingbeat
  
• Vampire Killmonger
  
• Joaquin Torres Falon II
  

The honorable mentions would be Nicholas Scratch, Collector, and Venus but they aren't necessarily 'required' cards. Even Wingbeat isn't 100% required but if you're doing JT things, why not look at a 5 or 6 and try to knock it's cost down a few points.

Classic Zombies w/ Abs-Man

Going all in on Zombies, why not classic Zombie Giant Man with Abs to close things out?

Zombie Squatch

Not much to say, Zombie Blade isn't a requirement here but he is in the 'best' build of the ZGM/Sasquatch deck.

WWBN/Thanos

A deck that can present you with some interesting 'problems' to solve as you get to turns 5 and 6. If you can hit a good curve it may actually be preferable to hold Thanos for turn 6 where you use turn 5 to try and dump 5+ cards to enable a final turn Thanos/Sasquatch + 0-Cost skill from Scarlet witch to move your WWBN to an optimal lane.

Vampiron Man

Want to die to both Mobius M. Mobius and Shadow King? This is the deck for you! Seriously though, when the stars align you are putting out ridiculous power, 2 or more 20+ power Superior Iron Men with one of them backed up by a Shou-Lao for another beefy buff. The good news is that the deck can do a decent job of dodging priority but it's so, so flimsy as well.

Weekend Team Clash

We are in the middle of a Weekend Team Clash, which to me is basically 'Scorpion/LBS the game mode' so not saying much here, if you're interested here's a good Breakdown of decks

The Meta

The question which I would pose is whether you believe that the meta is currently solved after 1 week, I would argue that it possibly is in my pocket with synergy and combo decks becoming the top dogs which has brought us to the tech being leveraged being specifically targeted at those things with the 'best' cards being a combination of MMM, Shadow King, and Stardust. Let's not forget that we're also looking to be in a decent Cosmo/Jugg meta as well which at least two top-ends are helping enable. There's also a place for Deafening Chord and Red guardian in the meta.

For the most part, many of the previous decks featured in this series are still good to some extent, don't see something you like here? Go dig through the last couple months.

As far as decks , Classic Zombies is good but the opposition is rising across the board as SK has begun to slowly trickle down, similarly Zombie Destroy is rising in stonks but the 'best' shells are up in the air, my bet on best is the FFDeath deck but that is complex to play and can clunk, more importantly there is MUCH more opposition with both Cosmo and Stardust coming out from mid-range decks which is going to hurt it's adoption outside of top infinite and players willing to put in the reps to understand the deck which probably puts players onto less powerful but slightly more consistent options in Dormammu or knull-less knull. As a result, a slew of different and yet similar tech decks have arisen to combat the threats ranging from Kluh to ToV the general shape is the same but the top 'ends' are generally in the 5's though both styles do occasionally try and fit in a 6.

Death Combo

Stemming from last week's OTA and the most recent patch which addressed part of the issues with the interactions with Death Fractured Frontier that were leading to crashes is the 'new hela'. There are a LOT of variations on the deck with some players making minute adjustments - Denish has done things with Crystal and ProfX, I've seen people trying to do things with on-reveal 1's with and without Morgan LeFay and of course I've seen folks trying to make OG Knull work within the shell.

The thing to keep in mind with this deck is that it is complex, in some cases you want to try and block off one location so you can force your loops to happen between two locations, there's the question of how to start your loop - is it Venom + Fastball, Venom + Misery, is it Kid Omega to eat a Venom, where does the venom go. The only real consistent answers I have seen is that the Death should always be played into the Firehair lane and that killing your Venom with Kid Omega might actually be preferable to get additional power onto the Kid Omega, bonus points if you activate the Kid Omega before destroying a fat lane with Kid Omega in the same lane so that he dies and then eats the Venom.

Zormammu

Continuing the trend of let's kick this off with Destroy is this Zombie Dormammu deck, unlike the previous deck, this one is pretty straight forward, no Death Fractured Frontier, instead we're rocking OG Death.

Get a Kluh, you need answers

Answers, answers, answers Well maybe not that many answers. Deafening Chord, MMM, Shadow King, and Gambit round out the answers, Kluh can help you realize getting big points on the final turn, I think I'd want to try and squeeze in an actual 6 but between Iron Patriot and Valentina you've got your 6's covered and with a natural discount if all goes well.

Fantomex

The 'modern' Sera Control. You could probably hit any of my previous weeklies where I talk about Fantomex for a better breakdown or maybe I should retool and get a post for the basic configuration up. Anyways, the deck is pretty self-explanatory once you've started playing with it, the only nuance is to remember when things allow you to be dumping your hand that you NEED a card in hand for Gambit to go off and that ordering matters, don't trigger Fantomex before you've got both halves satisfied.

Bonus points is that the configuration from another post: The Case for Stardust+Zombie Venom in Fantomex on our subreddit this week has also been doing well. It drops Mobius M. Mobius and Zombie Captain Marvel for Zombie Venom and Stardust. I will note that as I said in that thread, as it becomes more and more well known it will get worse, but you can always make the switch and try to juice extra cubes when folks don't expect you to be dropping a Fantomex. Further, I do think there's an additional argument to try and find say a replacement for Bucky especially if you're finding it hard to locate a destroyer before Stardust comes down. There's also the sad situation of needing to get the horde rolling before Stardust too, but I digress.

ESN/APM

It's still good. It's still a brainless, autopilot deck and for that it's one of my go-to decks when I don't wanna think. Play on curve, play 5-Cost, play APM.

Stryfe

I think this list shows up in one of the Pulseglazer videos I'll include in the pinned comment. Strye to copy Vampire Enchantress and then the ability to drop your own Vampire Enchantress on 6. This configuration is really interesting too, and if you caught one of KM's videos about tech earlier this week you'd recognize why - Beta Ray Bill but no Thor - because you WANT to be playing other 3's that can do more for you on 3 than you want to be playing Thor and Bill scales harder anyways.

Batroc

Looking for the 'skill diff' deck, this is it, while the DEath Combo deck might be harder to play in some respects, this deck is going to test your capability to properly assess the board, your opponent's output and try to outplay both with the ability to reposition your power and potentially deploy

ToV

A simple ToV deck and it's still a solid performer.

Zombie Galacti

And we'll wrap it up with a 'meme' Zombie Galacti is still a good deck. It can dodge some of the annoyances of the meta when things align although in some cases you'll need to retreat from Vampire Killmonger decks if they manage to hit your zombie Galacti too many times. Unless of course you want to chase the 'most negative Galacti of all time' award.

Hello everyone!

I've recently gotten back into Marvel Snap after a 2 year hiatus, and actually reached infinity for the first time since the game came out, this season!

I'd like to prepare for the future, but also have some jack of all trade cards that can slot into many decks..

I have pinned Surge and Mother Askani, and I do plan on getting both. Which of the 2 would you prioritize? Surfer decks are my bread and butter, but I am also loving the spells archetype with vampire killmonger/nicholas scratch, scarlet witch queen of chaos, slop.

Nothing big really but some notables. I'm including the 'shop' update info since that 'could' impact competitive players that are willing to spend money.

DECK BUNDLES

Deck Bundles are ready-to-play 12-card decks, typically built around a single strategy and sold as one package. Once you buy a bundle, you can equip the deck immediately and start playing. Deck Bundles may also appear as 3-card and 6-card packages, and contents can vary between base cards and variants depending on your account state.

A Deck Bundle’s price automatically drops based on the cards you already have, and your current discounted price is shown on the bundle. Deck Bundles are usually tailored to your collection, so different players will see different bundles, and the lineup rotates in limited-time windows. If you already own the whole deck, you won’t see it in your Shop!

Deck Bundles with variants will provide you with the base card if you don’t own it yet. If you own the base card but not the variant, you won’t receive a discount for that card, as the variant is part of the value of the bundle. If you own the variant, that discount will be reflected in the bundle price.

Deck Bundles start appearing in the Web Shop and in-game Shop in late October and early November with the first rotation of decks, with more waves to follow. We’ll be watching how these land as we shape what Deck Bundles become to better meet demand.

CARD AND LOCATION UPDATES

• Kid Omega and Dracula now both gain the Power the target card had at the moment it was destroyed/discarded. Venom already had this behavior, so this is a change to add consistency. Before, this meant unintuitive moments like Kid Omega gaining 0 Power if he destroyed a large Knull, or 16 Power after destroying an 8 Power Deadpool.

  • This does mean that Dracula will no longer gain the additional 4 Power that Apocalypse gained if Dracula discards Apocalypse. To help account for this, we’ve given Dracula an extra point of Power, bringing him from 4/1 to 4/2.

• Fixed Nico Minoru’s Spell that doubled her Power not working if Firehair used it, or if Nico was transformed by another source such as a Sersi played right after.

• Fastball Special is no longer an X-Men card, and Web Sling is no longer a Spider-Verse card. As of now, Skill cards don’t work particularly well with most of the Team Clash team effects, so we’re choosing to remove Teams from Skills for the time being. This shouldn’t affect gameplay currently, as neither of these two cards could interact with their team effects.

Bug Fixes

Card and Location Behavior Fixes in 58.x

• Superior Ironman should now be properly movable if given the ability from cards such as Madame Web

• A rare issue where Venom could throw an exception due to failing to find an appropriate target due to being triggered repeatedly and/or bounced to hand and then immediately pulled back into play should no longer occur

I apologize if I can’t post this here but I also posted it on the main Marvel Snap subreddit and haven’t really gotten an answer. I figured maybe someone here is smarter than me.

I know we’ve all seen these posts a million times but I’m legitimately stumped. I’ve been staring at the ending of this game for so long and I just don’t understand how I lost, specifically the mid lane.

They had fire hair on the right with the rest of the cards there and they played venom and carnage mid. There was a fast forward and a lot must’ve happened but my cards revealed in mid lane AFTER their turn. I played shadowking to reset their lane then I played enchantress. How in the world is their horde and carnage still winning that lane?

I’ve attached pictures of all available information for them.

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

Zombie Black Cat
Cost: 3
Power: 5
When Discarded: Discard another When Discarded card. Jump to your location with the fewest cards.

I promise to keep this one relatively short since our Week 3 card release is pretty straight forward while also riding on the coat strings of a recent set of OTA buffs: Zombie Black Cat is a 3/5 with an ability that when she is discarded discards another "When Discarded" card and then jumps to your location with the fewest cards.

This one is pretty straight forward and shares some design space with Proxima Midnight who when discarded goes to your location with the least power if able.

Synergies and Packages

The synergy and design space here is rather limited with her best home being rather obvious in Discard and most likely within the classic 'Dependable Discard' shell.

There are of course some questions there to be sure - what other archetypes might she work in? Despite the nerfs that have made it worse, could she work in a Supergiant style discard deck? If so, what is she replacing? Perhaps she replaces Wolverine? She strikes me as really interesting for the archetype since if you can double her up and depending on location in the hand she could ensure multiple additional Scorn triggers if you opt for Scorn in that deck.

Also, because some of you are touched - no she is not a Surfer Card. Discard Surfer isn't a thing, stop it.

Although, is there a possible Daken angle? Perhaps some janky off-shoot? Probably not, those lists are already tight as it is and even the more janky variations are generally considered optimized.

Speaking of positioning in hand - you would obviously want her last in hand or at least after most of the other 'when discarded' cards that you have in your hand, if we're talking best case scenarios for Dependable Discard as an example I would ideally want her positioned after Proxima Midnight so that there is a greater chance of her discarding your Apocalypse or perhaps getting both discards on your Khonshu in a single go - though do be wary, if your Khonshu has been discarded once and would be two more times in a turn, he will poof. He only comes back twice - once at 8 Power (Waxing) and the second at 12 (Full). If your Khonshu has been afflicted in hand and you're not sure which Khonshu you have, you can look at the moon in his name, if the crescent is white or lit it's Waxing, and if the moon is full it's well you guessed it. Full.

So, turning this over to you all.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking Zombie Black Cat up?

How do you expect Zombie Black Cat to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

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!

Bit of background, I've hit Infinite every season since M.O.D.O.K., and tend to gravitate towards buildaround midrange piles, with Fantomex being a favorite since his release.

This season has been a blast so far, especially after the recent OTA, and after waffling about with various Vampire Killmonger decks I soared to Infinite in about 90 minutes from the mid-80s with this, a modified Fantomex list. This isn't anything especially extraordinary, but does represent a swap from the standard Mobius+Zombie Captain Marvel for Zombie Venom+Stardust, in the respective 3 and 4 slot. As someone who plays a lot of Fantomex, Zombie Captain Marvel is consistently one of the worst cards in that deck, and I feel Stardust is very well-positioned right now to take advantage of many of the best decks, e.g. other Zombie Venom lists, as well as AP Magneto piles.

With Fantomex/Wild Child, you only ever need to destroy one thing, so the swap from a lane clear to a single pop of a Hood or Bucky is pretty great. The stats are also reasonable when accounting for cost, doubly so if you want to fuel up a lategame Carnage. The most impactful thing however is how Zombie Venom interacts with Demon & the currently very-played Killmonger. Normally, you're forced to save the Demon until after you Killmonger, or turn 6, or more often on turn 5 with a 4+1. With Venom, instead of losing 6 power to an opposing Killmonger, you're only losing 3, and while this doesn't sound fantastic it evens the distribution of good vs bad matchups.

There's some anti-synergy with ZVenom and Stardust/Shadow King, but it didn't really feel too bad. Any game you're getting ZVenom and another destroy, a deck like this is very happy. ZVenom feels like a Muse-like card that destroys something on its own, and that's something Fantomex has wanted for ages. In short - give this a look!

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:

Vampire Enchantress Cost: 6
Power: 7
On Reveal: For each different Cost among your cards in play, steal 1 Power from an enemy card here.

Carrying on from the discussion thread- Vampire Enchantress brings us our second Vampire of the season, a 6/7 with an on reveal that steals 1 Power from an enemy card here for each unique cost among your cards in play.

Mechanically, the good news is that she also counts herself. Which is great, given that you can assume you'll be seeing power swings typically in the 13-15 power range with exceptionally good curves and luck on draws making that a 17-21 Power swing, but these should be seen as the exceptions rather than the rule.

Synergies

We should probably talk synergies in two halves, because we've been getting support for the 'Steal' mechanic so far this month and while Vampire Enchantress might be the top end, Deacon Frost, which might be considered the star of the archetype releases next week, this week is Zombie Black Cat. So we will discuss the 'steal deck' later but let's discuss how the synergies line up today because I would assume they aren't going to be changing a lot even with Deacon's release other than the most likely home deck for Vampire Enchantress being fully realized.

Going back to last month's release of Kluh, Vampire Enchantress wants you to be curving out, she's also going to reward you for playing cards that summon tokens or get you additional cards with unique costs onto the board.

1. Sam Wilson, Zombie Mister Fantastic & Zombie Sentry, Askani'Son, Rhino, Zombie Venom (w/ a destroy), Debrii, and Luna Snow - each of these summon cards on their reveal Sam and the three zombie cards bring us 0-Cost tokens, Askani'Son has the most flexibility in being able to cover a unique cost you may not have immediate access to provided you're winning and Rhino, Debrii, and Luna Snow all generate 1-Costs. That could allow you to skip certain costs during deck building. Zombie Blade and Zombie Scarlet Witch also both generate a Horde providing you meet their requirements to do so.

2. Cards that allow you to cheat energy or cheat things onto the board are at a premium. Wilson Fisk and Monstro being the stand-outs since they reduce their own costs, Skaar could be a consideration but it's significantly difficult to enable a Skaar + Vampire Enchantress though if you're playing Skaar on 4 or 5 that should work as well. Lockjaw, Jubilee, En Sabah Nur, Dragon Lord, and Blink for cheating cards onto the board.

As for the 'Steal Deck' while the skeleton is there - and we do have a number of possible steal cards to go alongside Vampire Enchantress the deck is missing it's secondary power spike: Vampire Deacon Frost who releases on the 27th of the month. As such, I wouldn't go too hard on trying to make said deck work and instead work around the synergies that we have today.

Feedback

Most of the feedback has been pretty unified here - the card feels mid as a byproduct of a meta-game that is stacked against her, she's a respectable 6/Big but the meta is once again in a place where 6/Big isn't often not good enough because unless you are running a combo, you want to be running some form of reactive tech or rug pulling your opponent and that needs to happen on later turns where a 6/Big is rarely your call unless you have no other choices. A number within the community have taken to declaring Vampire Enchantress' release as being the official opening of the 'waiting for Deacon Frost' release room.

Decklists

Horde

FFThanos Tech

Fair Points min tech

Optimized 'Regis' Special

AP Sabah Nur

Werewolf n Stormbreaker

Summary

Carrying on from the feedback, Vampire Enchantress is the latest in 6/Big, a Cost/Statline that the Snap community at large has had a notoriously difficult time when it comes to appropriately rating and judging - see Blob, Red Hulk, and Galactus First Steps. Each of which were largely panned either until their release or shortly after. And while Vampire Enchantress has shown in some aspects to be a decent addition to a number of decks, the question is whether she has enough staying power on her own, if she'll need Vampire Deacon Frost to keep her relevant beyond her release week, or if we'll be needing further OTA changes to address the landscape of the game to make playing 6/Bigs an attractive game plan.

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Vampire Enchantress worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

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

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Second Week of our Vampires vs Zombies season is nearly in the bag and it's been an interesting week to say the least.

The Deacon Frost Waiting room has opened up with the release of Vampire Enchantress, I'm being slowly convinced that at least parts of the OTA on Thursday were bad or incorrect changes, and Grand Arena launched with a few changes but not enough to consider it a breath of fresh air for the deck seriously, can Ghost Rider get some help?

From a personal standpoint - one account is in infinite and the other is in the 90's. I'm just not pushing all that hard the last few months, thanks in part to obtaining an actual job and trying to enjoy other game releases. Seriously, I'm glad I found a job due to so many releases in the last quarter of the year and my backlog was already bad enough! Anyways, staying on topic.

Vampire Enchantress

You can't tell me whoever approved the art (hell I would even go so far as whoever was directing it) didn't know what they were doing here. It's blatantly obvious! Look at it!

Ahem, anyways. Vampire Enchantress is a 6/Big that competes with other 6/Big's but doesn't quite have a home yet which leaves her in a situation where she's an obviously good card but in a meta that doesn't favor her which leaves her feeling kinda mid. But how often has this been the story for cards releasing this year? In addition to a meta that is ill-suited to Vampire Enchantress we're also in a similar situation to the Horde deck as well as the EoT deck from last year where key cards were being gate kept, thankfully the LTGM card for the Steal deck (let's be honest, it's gonna be the SUCC deck) is probably going to not be necessary but we'll talk about Vampire Chavez in two more weeks. That's mostly a design flaw of Marvel Snap's release cadence though and while they could probably rearrange cards to make new archetypes more accessible, that's not a discussion for this thread.

As for Vampire Enchantress, I wasn't seeing very much of her until after the OTA, which should be pretty understandable thanks to the En Sabah Nur deck which was simply the best of the on-curve decks, for which Vampire Enchantress would be a great fit, if it weren't for AP Magneto being the best top end for the deck and arguably still the best top end. To which, basically if you're looking to complete weekend missions the obvious plays would be to run her alongside the Horde or the En Sabah Packages. That's not to say she isn't doing well elsewhere.

The Regis Special

'optmized'

The 'Regis' deck has seen some changes as players got their hands on it and optimized it, the optimized configurations go against the general principals of Ser Killbin and introduces tech cards. Those pesky cards that sap the fun and make for bad content because players retreat when they see tech. Still, the deck is a straight forward QS+Domino Wiccan deck with Kluh showing up as well. Making a return from his previous 'best deck' vid is Baron Zemo in one of the 3-Cost slots.

FFThanos Tech

An FFThanos deck after the OTA, how brave! But seriously, this is basically just trying to push Thanos into a more tech oriented position Cable for info and maybe stealing pivotal cards, Gorgon and MMM to deal with opposing Vampire Killmonger and QOC decks, Stardust to deal with any cheaty shenanigans and a choice between Thanos and Kluh. Vampire Enchantress of course rounds out the deck as the top end.

AP Sabah Nur

Showcased earlier this week on Regis' channel if you are subbed or at least following is the En Sabah Nur deck with AP Magneto, as I predicted in the weekly discussion Vampire Enchantress replaces Fin Fang Foom. Foom is probably better but almost impossible for this deck to play for obvious reasons.

Vampiric Horde

The typical horde deck from the start of the season, swapping out Sasquatch for Vampire Enchantress. It's again, straight forward in how to play this deck. Bonus points for double duty VKM completions. Speaking of Vampire Killmonger...

Vampire Killmonger

Vampire Killmonger, as opposed to the newest iteration on Thanos has essentially found himself in Archetypes decks. A Horde Deck, a Superior Iron Man power dupe/dump decks, as well as various decks in Zoo archetypes.

The meta has slowly begun to turn against VKM, I'm seeing a lot more Deafening Chords, Red Guardians, and Shadow Kings begin to make their presence known. Unsure if the lower ranks are seeing the same, but if not and you're in the cohort of being outside of top 50% infinite or simply a player that prefers to hit Dadfinite, it might be time to start packing those Shadow Kings and maybe even a Grandmaster Shadow King alongside your points packages to win games. Just a suggestion.

'Classic' Horde

As mentioned the Vampiric Horde deck is a good starting place if you have both Vampire Killmonger and Vampire Enchantress, if not perhaps this list can help. Missing from the list however is Absorbing man, you could opt to get him back in over maybe a Nicholas Scratch or if you don't have Sasquatch then the swap is obvious.

Superior Vampiron Man

We've covered this one before, it's a bit of a choose your own adventure that dies to both Mobius M. Mobius and Shadow King, but the points are certainly impressive when not facing either. JT is here to duplicate Wingbeat and Spears and maybe even Chord if you're lucky enough to be able to nuke two important low-Cost cards on your opponent's side fo the board. Wingbeat of course to make that Iron Man Cost one and either Duplicate him with Mother Askani to get two Superior Iron Men to play on final turn alongside Shou Lao or perhaps you're getting a pair of Shou-Laos. As mentioned though, the deck dies to both SK and MMM so do be wary.

Dies to SK and Gambit

Yea, I went there. Horseman Gambit has been creeping up in play rate and decks like this absolutely hate both Gambit and SK.

Grand Arena

There's a lot I could say about the mode, but I'll try and keep it succinct.

What do I like about this run?

Despite the 'best' champs still being 'best' there's a little more nuance this time where plenty of the decks have both tech and combo variations for example, there's a Hulk variation of the deck that cuts all of the hulks and instead wants to create a huge Man-Spider but there's also a variation on Hulk that is running Shadow King as well to combat not only the greedy Hulk combo but also the other green power decks. H.E.R.B.I.E. is mostly combo but there are also H.E.R.B.I.E. tech decks out there too.

I think the most frustrating part though is that in 'low cl' the only Champions that I'm seeing get play are Hulk and Carnage. Whereas in higher CL I'm seeing a much more diverse field, the only Champion I haven't seen on my main account is Ghost Rider.

If you're curious on breakdowns of the decks Snapcomplete has you covered

What do I not like about this run?

There's a litany of issues, mostly around lack of improvements. No Ban List changes to keep things fresh, no new Champions to introduce new decks - as someone pointed out why couldn't we have a Vampire or Horde themed Champion? Sure Deacon is two weeks out but if that's the case why not swap GA with Deadpools Diner and introduce a new freakin champion to the mode!

And while I do appreciate the buffs and changes to some of the decks, I don't think it's enough. And that leads into the LTGM issue in general where a lot of these complaints are simply flat across the board.

The Meta, Post OTA

While brewers and top players are going to be looking to figure out where the meta is going to point for the next two weeks we should be able to identify a few primary things ahead of all of that.

1. Combo decks - still good, IMO this is primarily going to be a Zombie Galacti angle where I would be shying away from Nimrod things mostly due to the number of Stardust entering the meta. Scorpion Brand New Day may still kicking around though it's consistency was certainly hurt and is actively being hurt by Stardust making your Blinks even worse than they already were making it less than ideal imo. Still you shouldn't be losing more than 2 cubes to any of the combo decks. If they snap, respect it and leave. Mister Negative is particularly good in low CL and if you were here during the login calendar event from last month and snagged it and Gorr.

2. Synergy decks - Batroc and Horde are likely to reign supreme here though both decks have issues with some of the control decks starting to take shape as to which deck is better is going to be a discussion on skill level. Batroc decks are going to be better in skilled hands while Horde decks will generally be better in the hands of the general populace.

3. Mid-Range - Mostly non-synergy decks but running good value. They often try to strike a balance between Synergy and Control though right now they are leaning more on value with control elements rather than synergy.

4. Control decks - these are going to be the weakest of the decks until we know exactly which direction to push. Fantomex is likely to be the best of the 'generic' control decks, being akin to old Sera Control since it can run both Killmonger and Shadowking which can keep ToV decks in check as well as keep Batroc decks in check. Super Giant isn't gonna be too hot as this deck is often best after a few days of the OTA once the main players are figured out but if things keep pretty heavy on the VKM vs En Sabah/APM decks Supergiant may have a punchers chance since it can mess up their turn 5's and hopefully pull priority. Oh and Craig's List is still out there.

Ms. Positive

Some folks are trying to bring back the Esme Cuckoo 'Ms. Positive' combo decks, these are 'light' on interaction though it is packing a Shadow king. The deck wants to win off of a Moonstone copying Mystique while another lane is carried by 'big' on the other side of the board. This deck can surprise folks with some explosive power when it doesn't clunk but it does practically die to a Mobius M. Mobius.

Ongoing

Don't try and go wide, this ongoing decks wants you to build two lanes tall. Iron Lad hitting a Moonstone can help seal the deal and Kluh on 5 to make everything cheap to try and dump your hand is a compelling consideration.

Zombie Galacti

If you're worried about VKM hitting your important cards it might be worthwhile to consider adding Deafening Chord back into the deck. Otherwise you can hope that your carry cards don't get dumpstered.

Negative Low CL

'optimized' Negative

Honestly, if you wanna go 'deeper' you could opt for Killmonger over Psylocke and just accept that you're retreating if you don't draw Ravonna. These decks have been terrors for me in low CL as almost no one is running an MMM there.

Dependable(?) Discard

An old favorite of many, once dubbed Dependable Discard by CozySnap the deck has recently fallen on hard times. Can this iteration of classic discard reclaim it's title or is it still lacking in output? Perhaps it'll do just fine everywhere else but top infinite.

Fractured Evolutionary

It's still a solid deck, it's not the 'best' home for Thanos Fractured Frontier but in my experience on both the main account and the low CL it's holding it's own. As usual, play to what is in hand or isn't in hand. Hulk in hand, try and float as frequently as you can. If Thanos is in hand or you have no hulk and no thanos in hand, play for the quickdraw unless you need to float for something specific. Don't overthink it, just make the best play in the current situation. This deck can be lucky to hit 3 shots on hulk but if time is one of them you're often golden.

SLDD Mid-Range

No ToV? No ToV. It is rocking a Deafening Chord instead and Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos shows up to do her thing. Tech is pretty standard - MMM, SK, Stardust and HMGambit for disruption.

Classic ToV

ToV Thanos

Plenty of ToV variations to choose from, there's even this Ozy Tov list if you wanna rock your opponent. Eh? No? Sorry, it will happen again. The 'classic' ToV is the good ol' SLDD mid-range shell we've been familiar with since the Spidey BND season including both Monstro and Tarantula for additional scaling which can make those Shadow Kings rather dubious. ToV Thanos is a return to a previous ToV configuration where the 'dead' tech cards in a match-up don't matter since they can fuel the ToV anyway and give you points.

Fantomex

The Shadow King/Killmonger deck of the format. Drag your opponent down to your level and beat them with experience. The big deal here is to keep track of what you need to enable Fantomex and obsess over play order and sequencing.

Supergiant

Gorgon and MMM return as well as Stardust. I'm curious if we actually want to be on a Supergiant game plan with so few above rate cards in this list, but it is doing well so maybe we can get commentary from /u/TopTier on how this deck is doing well into the meta so soon after the OTA?

Craig's List

Craig's List Luke+RG

There are 'two' configurations out there right now. The first is the one from last week, the second drops Echo and Cable for Luke Cage and Red Guardian. Play this base on what you're seeing in the meta. For example, if you expect to see a lot of Fantomex, Luke might be better.

We do have some emergent decks here, but they would all be 'stolen valor' as they are mostly coming from KM's Best Decks for day 1 of the new OTA so ALL credit to his video from the majority and there's also a Coougarrr list as well.

Zombie Venom Let's Go!

No apologies, straight ripped from KM's video, I was ecstatic to see folks immediately testing out the buffs to Zombie Venom and it seems to be a pretty interesting and somewhat powerful, if not the deck that is perhaps most dead to Shadow King and Mobius a deck has ever been dead to.

Daken Combo

Not so much an emergent deck as it is a return of an old favorite. As some folks will point out, you lose Bullseye to Thanos, but we're all intelligent players here, we're either playing around that by sacrificing pieces to a Thanos or we're retreating on a snap that we're certain leaves us dead.

C3

Stock C3 - you've got options, want to really go at the VKM decks, toss in Gorgon over one of the other cards. Deck also has some decent budget options if you don't have all the S5's, consider a Valkyrie over Bastion for instance if you don't have Bastion. Killmonger can come in over MMM if you aren't seeing use for MMM.

Hi all! This week we're giving Thanos Fractured Frontier another small tap, trimming the strongest pieces of the Anti-Polar Magneto deck, and handing out four buffs with a Discard focus. Here are the details:

Thanos Fractured Frontier

[Old] 5/8 – Game Start: Your cards have “Quickdraw: Thanos loads an Infinity Shot.” On Reveal: Fire all loaded Shots.
[Change] 5/8 > 5/7

The last nerf to Thanos Fractured Frontier's Shot count made filling the barrel a real trial, but he's still a little heavy on both play rate and win rate.

This extra point should make matches where Thanos only lands a few Shots a little closer, and make the Power and Space Shots matter more when he needs to close out a location.

Overall, we're happy with where the first nerf landed: his identity is intact and the Shot rate is down. The numbers are close enough now that a Power adjustment should get him to a stable long-term spot. We'll keep watching, and every knob is still on the table if it's needed.

Anti-Polar Magneto

[Old] 6/9 – On Reveal: Add a 3 or 4-Cost card from your hand to each other location.
[Change] 6/9 > 6/8

Caliban

[Old] 3/4 – Objective: Have 3 cards that are 4-Cost or more in play > Afflict the highest-Cost enemy card with -7 Power.
[Change] -7 > -6

Karen Page

[Old] 4/6 – On Reveal: Give one of your 1, 2, and 3-Cost characters +2 Power each.
[Change] 4/6 > 4/5

Anti-Polar Magneto has shot up in the ranks, using a package that sneaks some of the highest-value 3- and 4-Costs into play. The pure points offered by this deck have been too high, particularly when it's able to make full use of cards like Caliban, En Sabah Nur, and Karen Page at the same time.

We're taking a point off of Magneto himself, and targeting Caliban and Karen Page in particular: Caliban's Objective has proved easy to fulfill and has particular synergy with Magneto to trivialize it, so we're reducing the payoff a little.

Karen Page's point does double duty: it comes off this deck and helps keep Thanos Fractured Frontier decks in check, especially with Vampire Enchantress arriving as a new tool with similar incentives.

Now to the buffs:

Colleen Wing

[Old] 2/4 – On Reveal: Discard the card that costs the least from your hand.
[Change] 2/4 > 2/5

Apocalypse

[Old] 6/9 – When Discarded: Put this back with +4 Power.
[Change] 6/9 > 6/10

Swarm

[Old] 2/3 – When Discarded: Add two copies of this that cost 0 to your hand.
[Change] 2/3 > 1/3

Discard keeps sagging despite some buffs, and decks built around When Discarded effects haven't caught up. With Zombie Black Cat on the horizon, now is a good time to help them out.

Colleen Wing often misses Discard lists because her targeting is less reliable than Lady Sif's or Red Shift's, so we're giving her a point.

This flavor of Discard is a favorite of newer players, and we want strong Series 1 cards like Apocalypse to compete at every Collection Level. His numbers are still below average, so he gets another point.

Swarm is rarely played at full price. Dropping his Cost should make the first Swarm a more viable hit off Colleen Wing, and let an unlucky Bullseye still throw at least one bee.

Zombie Venom

[Old] 3/3 – On Reveal: Destroy your first other card here. After one of your other cards is destroyed, Horde +2. [Change] Horde +2 > Horde +3

Zombie Venom landed below the mark, paling (and not just in the zombie sense) next to Zombie Scarlet Witch, who just picked up new support in her Queen of Chaos form. Bumping the Horde per Destroy makes the mass-Destroy dream more rewarding and lets a big Horde form even if you only Carnage a single location.

That's everything for this OTA! Best of luck surviving the Vampires & Zombies, and we'll see you next time!

What is Grand Arena?

Welcome back to the Grand Arena the limited time game mode where you get to pick your champion and conquer the competition! You have the option of choosing a pre-constructed deck themed around a champion or you may customize a deck to your liking so even if you're new to Snap you can jump right in and play! This run features a really cool take on the event - Massive Melee but we'll talk about that shortly.

Notes:

• timer for the 8 hour ticket reset starts on the first time you enter Grand Arena. As such it is recommended to log in ASAP to get your timer ticking.

• Daily rotating shop features a discounted bundle for entry tickets once per 8 hours at 50 gold for 10 tickets.

• Paid event Pass Track is 800 gold.

LTGM Differences

Turn Structure: 6 Turns, 7 with Magik Energy Per Turn: +1 per turn, meaning 2 energy to start and 7 energy for final turn. Arishem is currently unbanned meaning +2 from turn 3 is possible.
Starting Hand: Champion Character + Associated Skill + 2 cards. Draw 1
Additional Info: You can see your opponent's chosen champion and the associated skill by clicking on the banner next to your opponent's avatar.

Rewards Per Match:

Notes on 'Economy' of the mode

Assuming from the previous event that SD expect the 'average' winrate to be around 50%.

The new card, Zombie Nova, is available for all players in the Free Track. Based on previous LTGMs, we expect the average Free Event Pass player to earn enough Glory to unlock Zombie Nova.

New Card Reward

Zombie Nova
Cost: 2
Power: 0
On Reveal and When Destroyed: Horde +3.

Rewards Track

Free

Event Total Breakdown

Shop Items

Portal Pull

• 600 Glory or 840 gold per pull
• Blade - Dark Gothic
  
• The Hunger - Lemon Art
  
• Victoria Hand - Envar Studio
  

Daily Shop

Main Shop

The Champions

Annihilus
Cost: 5
Power: 8
On Reveal: Your cards with Power below 0 switch sides. Destroy those that can't.

Skill: Lord of the Negative Zone
Cost: 2

On Reveal: Your Champion steals 1 Power from EACH other card here.

Human Torch First Steps
Cost: 3
Power: 2
End of Turn: +1 Power. Once per game, if your side here is full, double this card's Power instead.

Flame On
Cost: 1
On Reveal: Add your Champion's Power to the top card of your Deck.

H.E.R.B.I.E.
Cost: 2
Power: 3
Each turn this is in play, swap to a new Activate ability until one is used.

Activate: Next turn, you get +2 Energy.
Activate: Give 2 of your cards at each other location +1 Power.
Activate: Create a Rock here. Set its Power to 4.
Activate: Double this card's Power.

Helpfull Assistance
Cost: 4
On Reveal: Execute all 4 of H.E.R.B.I.E.'s abilities here.

Hulk
Cost: 6
Power: 12

Skill: Hulk Smash Cost: 3
On Reveal: Set the Cost of your Hulks to 4. (in deck or in hand)
Note: “Hulks” refer to Hulk, Red Hulk, She-Hulk, Hulkling, and Bruce Banner’s transformed Hulk.

Carnage
Cost: 2
Power: 2
On Reveal: Destroy your other cards here. +2 Power for each destroyed.

Maximum Carnage
Cost: 1
On Reveal: Banish this to move your Champion here. Repeat its On Reveal ability.

Sentinel
Cost: 2
Power: 3
On Reveal: Add another Sentinel to your hand.

Skill: Project Armaggeddon
Cost: 2
On Reveal: Give your Sentinels +1 Power for each created card you've played this game that isn't a Sentinel.

Rocket Raccoon
Cost: 1
Power: 1
On Reveal: If your opponent played a card here this turn, +4 Power.

Skill: Massive Arsenal
Cost: 2
On Reveal: Banish this to move your Champion here. Repeat its On Reveal and add a copy of this to your hand.

Ghost Rider

Cost: 4
Power: 5
On Reveal: On Reveal: Bring back one of your discarded cards to this location.

Skill: Penance Stare
Cost: 5

When Discarded: Play This. On Reveal: Your champion steals 5 Power from an enemy card here. It gains Movable once.

Banlist and Errata

While each champion has a pre-constructed deck, you can still opt to edit the deck. There is, however, a ban list.

First is that you cannot play any of the Champions in a deck other than their own, you can however use different versions of the characters. So for instance, you cannot play Mister Fantastic in an Invisible Woman Deck but you could play Mister Fantastic First Steps in both decks.

Banned List

• Agatha Harkness
  
• Alioth
  
• Annihilus
  
• Black Bolt
  
• Cannonball
  
• Carnage
  
• Cosmo
  
• Enchantress
  
• Galactus
  
• Ghost Rider
  
• Gorgon
  
• Hulk
  
• Human Torch First Steps
  
• Juggernaut
  
• Killmonger
  
• Living Tribunal
  
• Mercury
  
• Mobius M. Mobius
  
• Moon Knight
  
• Mr. Negative
  
• Negasonic Teenage Warhead
  
• Nimrod
  
• Professor X
  
• Rocket Raccoon
  
• Scream
  
• Sentinel
  
• Sera
  
• Shang-Chi
  
• Silver Samurai
  
• Spider-Ham
  
• Storm
  
• Wiccan
  

Notes from the mods:

• As always, keep things civil.

• If there are changes to the ban list, I will make an update to this post and also add an edit to the pinned comment.

• I will be providing the full decklists for each Champion in a pinned comment.

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.

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

Vampire Enchantress
Cost: 6
Power: 7
On Reveal: For each different Cost among your cards in play, steal 1 Power from an enemy card here.

Week two and we get to our second vampire of the season, Vampire Enchantress is a 6/7 and some of you know what's up so let's skip beyond that.

We've had a number of cards in the past that rewarded you for doing similar things, Doom 2099 was the first wanting you to play 1 card per turn, Moondragon was much more on the nose wanting you to spend all of your energy each turn to satisfy her EoT. Most recently was Kluh, who as we all know gives each player -1 Cost per unique Cost they have among cards in play.

Vampire Enchantress' On Reveal will steal 1 Power from each enemy cards at her location per unique Cost among your cards in play. Which helps inform us of what she wants you to do at her core.

Edit: it's not collective it's 1 per unique cost and randomly assigned. I got it wrong here but got it right in the next section with the total swing values

Synergies and Packages

Vampire Enchantress is going to most enjoy decks that can curve out on each turn, if you can manage 5 unique Costs that will amount to a -17 total swing in her location, if she counts herself that'll be a -18 swing.

So on the surface you could look towards any of the myriad of QS/Domino, Wiccan, or Doom 2099 decks. Unfortunately in the current meta, AP Magneto has supplanted Doom 2099 decks as the 'best' shell in the archetype of curve-out decks. That's not to say there isn't any room to mess around in this area, but it may be a hard hill to climb when by comparison you could just be dropping an AP Magneto for anywhere from 20 - 40 power swings depending on what is in your hand (and deck).

As far as individual cards go, I would consider cards that bring other cards along with them as solid potentials - Sam Wilson brings his 0-Cost Shield, Askani'Son can bring a card from costs 1-5 depending on if he came down early and you were winning the location, Rhino and Debrii both bring rocks but that can be deleterious depending on the deck you're running. Shanna brings a bevvy of 1's and even Baron Zemo who has been seeing some fringe play recruits your opponent's lowest Cost card still in the deck to your side of the board.

So let's call these 4 lay-ups, the easiest decks to consider starting out with, these are examples so consider them open for further interpretation

1. Affwiction - Wiccan Afflict - First in the Quicksilver Domino decks and a deck that at one point had managed to revive an otherwise ailing archetype. You'll almost certainly hit your 5 with this deck but this deck often wanted to try and guarantee ending on a Hazmat and not a 6-Cost.

2. En Sabah Nur - This is another deck where you're able to curve out, both a QS/D and a Domino version of the deck exists but the major problem here is that AP Magneto is just TOO good at this point in time. Is it possible that AP Mags gets tuned down with the upcoming OTA on Thursday to open up room in the 6-Cost slots or could she maybe make an appearance in the deck, if you saw Regis' most recent #1 deck video there was both a Gorr and a Fin Fang Foom, I opted to cut Foom for the example.

3. Doom 2099 - Doom 2099 has long needed another 6/Big since the nerf of Galactus FS, that's not to say Galactus FS has been bad but he reduced your cube equity with the fact that he announced his presence meant that your opponent knew your final output on turn 6. Vampire Enchantress could improve your snap equity since your opponent may not know whether the final turn will be 15 across locations with OG Doom, 19+ in two with APMagneto, or going tall in one with Vampire Enchantress.

4. Batroc Lockdown - this deck was another that enjoyed using Galactus FS and could use a solid replacement. The downside is that you've often got repeated costs on the board with multiple 1's and 2's. However, some configus do have 3's and 4's alongside the potential Prof-X to lock up a location. The biggest problem here might be the meta if move has any prevalence post Golden Gauntlet.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking the Vampire Enchantress up?

How do you expect Vampire Enchantress to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Just wanted to post as I was very unsure of playing Zombi Galacti into the current meta. Deck folds to Vampire Killmonger draining power from the wrong card. I know infinite is sort of expected but was still stoked the deck is still very strong.

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!

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:

Zombie Venom Cost: 3
Power: 3
On Reveal: Destroy your first other card here. After one of your other cards is destroyed, Horde +2.

If there's been one thru-line that has defined the last year of odd decisions when it comes to Destroy Designs, it's that Second Dinner have been pushing more and more Destroy cards that don't necessarily want to be in traditional destroy packages and have been actively encouraging sub-types that just can't compete with traditional Destroy. See cards like Dormammu and Horseman Archangel both having quests to complete, last year's Zombie Captain Marvel was our second activate destroyer after Kid Omega, Weapon X and Muse who are more traditional scalers. Even Wild Child and Fantomex want you to Hybridize with Discard. That's not to say we haven't had more straight forward destroy cards like Tombstone a few months ago, but far more Destroy oriented cards are obviously trying to push you away from the Deadpool Destroy theme and more towards a much more mid-range or value oriented playstyle.

Enter Zombie Venom, our first card for the Vampires vs Zombies season and one that hooks into the Horde mechanic as a 3/3 which destroys your first card in a location he's played at. Additiuonally he has a static ability which will Horde +2 whenever one of your cards is destroyed.

Synergies

There are two sets of hooks and both are obvious, Destroy and Horde. However, in practice this card is less 'let's get some value out of Horde' and more 'let's hook Horde into Destroy'. Which shouldn't be too surprising.

Destroy's typical payoffs are a big Knull, Free Death, and a big Deadpool. of course sometimes that Destroy payoff is about putting a bunch of really big Nimrods in multiple places, or much more recently finding recursion loops of resurrecting and destroying Death Fractured Frontier to get a big horde and hopefully a few really big dudes to help win your other lanes or failing that crash your opponent's game. Suffice to say, Destroy typically takes on the role of a combo deck, that's not to say that is it's only role, afterall we did mention Dormammu in the intro and Dormammu is less combo and more 'destroy value'.

And then we look at the Horde mechanic where the Horde is the payoff, you have cards that feed into that with Zombie Scarlet witch and cheap enablers like Vampire Killmonger, Zombie Blade, Kitty Pryde, and skills like the Hunger and Majestic Wingbeat. Each of these are in service of getting the Horde started and hopefully big enough that your capstone of Zombie Giant Man (and sometimes Absorbing Man) is enough to win you the game.

Let's close this loop and get back to Zombie Venom specifically.

Zombie Venom isn't necessarily hooking into Horde today perhaps that changes later next week but rather Zombie Venom is bringing Horde into Destroy. And Zombie Venom wants you to be destroying a lot of things, repeatedly. So his friends are going to be obvious with Killmonger being perhaps his best friend and I do suppose that would mean mentioning the 1's in Deadpool, Headpool, X-23, and Squirrel Girl. Of course this doesn't let you off the hook you'll still need additional destroy pieces which are more often than not gonna consist of our Usual Suspects: Carnage, Tombstone, Venom, and Deathlok. Some decks may prefer a Kid Omega or Zombie Captain Marvel of course and there's also a situational destroy option in Hellcow which is in one of the decks to discuss.

Depending on configuration you may even want a Firehair to repeat any valuable On Reveals.

A quick breakdown of what works well with Zombie Venom:

1. Destroy pieces - Typical: Carnage, Tombstone, Venom, Deathlok. Niche: Kid Omega, Captain Marvel. Rare: Destroyer

2. Horde pieces - Hunger, Zombie Giant Man, Abs Man

3. Feeders - One Time: Squirrel Girl, Rhino, Debrii, Shanna. Regenerators: X-23, Wolverine. Repeatable: Sabretooth.

4. Value Add - Firehair (and a Firehair Package), Arnim Zola

5. Scalers - Weapon X, Muse

6. Payoffs - Deadpool, Headpool, Death Fractured Frontier, Knull, Death

Typically we wouldn't talk about unreleased cards, but there is one that might be worth considering though it shouldn't be an active consideration for rating Zombie Venom as he stands today. On the 14th from Grand Arena will be Zombie Nova who is clearly seeded as attempting to be another of Zombie Venom's best friends.

Zombie Nova
Cost: 2
Power: 0
On Reveal and when Destroyed: Horde + 3

Feedback

Most of the feedback around this card hasn't been the highest of praise a few have pointed out that Horde + Zombies takes away much of the strength that Destroy enjoys: primarily in being able to fundamentally dodge priority on the final turn of the game as well as increased weakness to Shadow King. However, while our newest take on Venom hasn't been highly praised, he has been readily noted as a very fun and interesting card that does have some very cool and interesting hooks that once the bugs with Firehair + Death Fractured Frontier are resolved will lead to a new high-roll combo deck out there that may be worth keeping an eye on.

Decklists

Hellcow Zambies

Denish Combo

Classic Destroy

Classic Horde

No Fantomex

Summary

Zombie Venom kicks off our Vampires vs Zombies season with a card that looks to be a lot of fun with a sprinkle of possible competitive and if the first week of play would reveal anything it was a buggy mess of recurring loops in Firehair/Death Fractured Frontier combos. But there is a glimmer a bit below the surface, is there a truly competitive card to be found here or is this just another card that fits into the myriad of low-win/high-cube decks that currently exist and if so, how well can it compete in that niche?

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Zombie Venom worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

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

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Vampires vs Zombies season has kicked off and between my hand getting sucked dry and having to put my dancing shoes to dodge bullets it's been a pretty eventful week.

That's right, Vampire Killmonger has certainly landed and hit the ground running, something that I do find interesting so far is that while many, including myself have pointed out the fact that he and many of his decks are susceptible to Shadow King, it has admittedly taken longer to start seeing Shadow King being played than I expected and even then I'm not seeing him or decks that he'd be found in very frequently. And while he's much more limited in application I'm also not seeing a lot of Luke Cage.

And so we get into the crux of the discussions for this week. Starting with the Release Week Card and then going into Vampire Killmonger. If you're curious about Zombie Blade, he's a support card and probably an overall better card than Zombie Sentry he generally has a primary home in Horde decks and a potential home in Aurora as one of the EoT cards for the deck though there is a question as to whether he's better than Tarantula, I suspect he is since Aurora can have issues with finding enough power early to satisfy Tarantula.

Zombie Venom

The card that strikes me as the fun card of the month, there's a lot of cool, interesting, and potentially fun things to do with Zombie Venom but he continues to strike me as little more than clip farming and fun. Maybe that changes with Zombie Nova's release.

Zombie Nova
Cost: 2
Power: 0
On Reveal and When Destroyed: Horde +3.

For now Zombie Venom can do some cool things but combining two tier 2 strategies isn't revealing another tier 2, it's basically revealing what is most likely a tier 3 that might steal cubes from time to time but is otherwise floating around the 45% winrate at best. Still, I may be dogging it, but the card is genuinely fun when you can get it rolling.

Classic Destroy

Not much to say, the easiest thing to do is probably just to throw Zombie Venom into classic Destroy and let him do his thing. The biggest headaches are when one of your regenerators decides to flop into your Zombie Venom Lane. Still it's obvious here, it's a deadpool deck and the real goal is big deadpool.

'But why'

Zombie Venom. In Zombies. But no other destroy support. The good news is he does count as a destroy but you're going to have to really be careful with your placements here, far too often do you have something in the first location that you don't want to destroy. That being said, what if we're destroying a baby Horde to reposition it?

No Fantomex

An interesting cook. At first glance I was asking where Fantomex was and then I kind of start to see the vision where you could setup thing such as Frigga a Wild Child or possibly a Lin Lie to setup two big Lin Lie's while using Zombie Captain Marvel to cap a location so that swords are guaranteed to land where they need. But all in all it seems far too cute.

Denish Combo

There are a TON of variations on the Death Fractured Frontier combo, this one comes from Denish. Coougarrr featured the deck on his channel earlier this week. Do be wary, some of the loops of this combo can cause softlocks on one or both player's client requiring a restart.

Zombie Killmonger

"Card is Cracked" - Pulseglazer.

I'm not sure I completely agree here, but the card is solid. The thing is, the card also has plenty of counters which while the card might still be a solid 5 that does mean it's assailable in ways that other 5 star cards this year haven't necessarily been. And let's be honest, I don't think there has been quite enough time to begin drawing comparisons to other meta defining cards of this year.

The fun part to this, at least in my opinion is how the card's deck inclusions have changed over the course of the week with Zombie decks being the most obvious homes, but fairly quickly branching out and finding multiple homes in deck ranging from wanting to make copies of a cheap and buffed Superior Iron Man, chilling in 'all green' empower decks, and to the dismay of some, he has even been found in the company of that lowly desperado, Thanos Fractured Frontier.

Joaquin Torres seems to be a staple, but from a personal standpoint unless you're also intending to do things with Majestic Wingbeat I'm probably leaving JT on the bench but of course your mileage may vary.

Embrace The Green

It's buff city here, it lives and dies off of never being interacted with. One whiff of Shadow king and Killmonger will send this deck packing.

Vampire Thandos

Pretty obvious lines here, Cosmo can protect your Strange Supreme or Vampire Killmonger if you want to spend it early. JT can make hitting the quickdraws even easier and getting at least a green makes all of your spears free but unless you had an early Strange you probably don't have the room to weave a ton of skills in. That being said between stones, QOC, and Vampire Killmonger, the ethical HM Gambit can definitely pitch in and do some work.

'Anti-Meta VKM'

Not quite full out anti-meta, this deck is looking to copy your 'game changing' 5's and get multiple copies of them on the board final turn with the holy grail being able to pop a Psylocke into JT Powered Majestic + Mother Askani on Superior Iron Man and dump a ton of big, free Iron Men on final turn. Yes you die to the other anti-meta decks opting into MMM but those seem to be few and far between at least right now in my pocket showing up once in like 20 games if that.

Where does my power go

Similar to the above deck but instead of a Shadow King, it's looking to leverage getting multiple copies of VKM. I'll admit, I have run this list a bit and it's impressive but copying VKM isn't as good on day 4 as it was on days 1 and 2. I would personally also consider swapping Prowler with Queen of Chaos if I were being completely honest.

The Meta, playing within it, and attacking it

The meta as a whole hasn't completely devolved into VKM and Anti-VKM decks and while I wouldn't call this the most diverse meta we've had since we're still dealing with fallout from the last OTA and at least momentarily the old good decks are still good decks.

So, as someoen that does occasionaly brew and look to fight against the meta as a whole, what cards have I been looking at as possible answers?

The first are low-curve cards that have above average stats, I want to fight for priority early so I can try and shut down the tomfoolery that my opponents are leveraging. But I also don't want to over-index here. A Bob and a Good 2 can go a long way.

Where possible I also want my power to be either base or ongoing so I can take advantage of a Shadow King. That's not to say I won't ever play cards that can be empowered as some decks I am still interested in fielding a card like Kraglin or Shadow Lands DD.

• Deafening Chord - often played by itself and not followed up on with another card until later can leave Deafening Chord as a solid answer to shutting down a Vampire Killmonger.

• Gorgon - not only good vs VKM but many of the decks that he's being featured in.

• Luke Cage - mentioned previously, He's a half measure at best, preventing afflictions on the board but not to your hand.

• MMM - Another card that is good in a lot of the decks VKM is in but has some issues with being a low-tempo 3-Cost so you'll need to be making up that power elsewhere. Bonus points, I've been seeing a few Negative players out there and being able to surreptitiously drop an MM with a snap back is simply glorious.

• Shadow King - Resets power, a lot of the week 1 decks are also flirting with Zombie stuff which isn't particularly great but with Venus has been competitive enough. It's getting to the point where often you've got two locations that you can rock with SK + Grandmaster if you've got solid points and the room for this one-two combo.

• Super Giant - it's been a while but with all of the decks looking to setup payoffs on turn 5 SG might be well positioned to shut some of those decks down.

• Stardust - a number of decks are still looking to cheat cards out onto the board and a Stardust will keep those decks honest.

So interestingly enough a good portion of last months decks are still good but we've seen at a couple of emergent decks showing up over the last week. Coougarrr had one list that he got from Denish that we shared above, Husky was on a similar list which I'll include below because it was prior to the Zombie Venom Release. And then there is the list I'm leading off with because this deck is basically 'FU The Deck'

Craig's List

This deck is all tech all the time. Ok it has two point generators but who cares when this deck is just flipping people off left and right instead? See the pinned comment for Coougarrr's video on this deck.

Husky's Fractured Death Combo

Similar to Denish's deck above. I am uncertain who got the combo up and running first. This deck can create 'perpetual' loops of resummoning a death that then dies to something and creates a soft-lock but it can also put out some really absurd numbers too.

High Evo

Fractured Evo

Sure, I could have made you go back to another week for this, but I'll be honest, if you're low CL or on a budget, High Evo can do some very heavy lifting so here's two versions of the deck. And to head off the questions - whether you float for hulk or play to quickdraw generally depends on whether Hulk is in hand or not. I will generally play to quickdraw unless I need to float for one of the EoT cards otherwise once Hulk is in hand I am less inclined to float unless I have time shot on 5.

Fantomex

I personally wasn't having good luck with Fantomex, but the deck seems to be doing well for others and I'm happy to see that.

Scorpion Brand New Day was first nerfed on September 10^th from a 6/8 to a 6/6, two points which affected very little, and indirectly nerfed on October 1^st with the changes to Tao Mandala and Blink. Allowing Blink to tutor for cards with the same cost rather than greater cost only seems like a fine change going forward that would have balanced some former titans of the meta, but it is indisputable that The Ancient One died for Scorpion's sins. At three cost the play line to put down Tao Mandala and a six cost ongoing card on the final turn is tricky, and seeing as no one was playing The Ancient One with Gorr or Knull it's clear this was an attempt to bury Scorpion Brand New Day. The second attempt has failed – they should've gone for the head.

Decklist

1. Selene
2. Lady Bullseye
3. Scorpion
4. Mystique
5. Magik
6. Hazmat
7. Hellcow Fractured Frontier
8. Prodigy
9. The Ancient One
10. Luna Snow
11. Blink
12. Scorpion Brand New Day

Game Plan

The goal here is to play Scorpion Brand New Day on the penultimate turn of the game. If you do that, you win. If you don't, you lose. If you've drawn him you need to get Luna Snow or Magik down first, but if he's still in the deck by turn five you'll need to play Blink instead. In fact, you'll probably want to play her anyways.

Blink is more consistent than she looks in this deck, for two reasons. First, all of your cards other than Blink and Scorpion Brand New Day cost three or less, and seven of them cost three exactly. Second, there are six cards that only need to be played for their on reveal effect before they can be safely shuffled into the deck (Selene, Scorpion, Magik, Prodigy, The Ancient One & Luna Snow; going up to eight if you include Hazmat and Lady Bullseye under the right circumstances). This deck only runs two ramp cards, Magik and Luna Snow, but with the Blink change it's now possible to tutor them out using nine of the other ten cards. You have to pay attention to what's left in your deck, and there are some notable whiffs even under ideal conditions, but for the most part if you don't have the cards you need in your hand then you can gamble on a fishing expedition.

Once you have Scorpion Brand New Day out, go ballistic. Between Mystique, Prodigy, and The Ancient One, you can get anywhere from two to four copies of the double affliction effect. Three will almost always win the game outright, two is marginal but still strong, one is rarely enough unless you've gotten lucky with the locations. Two and three are the most common. You're often going to want to play Hazmat as well, but if you've gotten enough juice out of the other affliction cards or played Hazmat early you can safely go for more Scorpion BND copies.

Major changes

The best version of this deck used to run Sera and Psylocke Fractured Frontier, but Tao Mandala is now too expensive to combo with on the final turn without an incredibly specific line, like turn three The Ancient One followed by turn four Psylocke Fractured Frontier with quickdraw.

There's a version of this deck that runs Onslaught, but the quickdraw Psylocke Fractured Frontier → Sera → Onslaught → combo line is finicky and doesn't have a great alternate win condition. Sera also interferes with Blink, particularly if you're doing something like turn three Luna Snow into turn four Blink while hunting for Scorpion, and playing Sera on turn five doesn't give you enough gas to reliably combo off if you have to play Blink on turn six.

Without Sera, Psylocke FF only discounts Scorpion BND in the average game; and since we can't hit the quickdraw effect when the card gets tutored by Blink, Psylocke FF gets cut as well. That frees up two slots to play with.

Hellcow Fractured Frontier

A strong control card and lane winner. Unlike the other three costs in the deck, you don't want to use Hellcow FF as Blink fodder if you can help it, so the ideal line is playing it on turn three into the opponent's most important lane and setting up Luna Snow or Magic in a different location. Also provides a decent bit of utility, in that it can delete clog cards on your side of the board or ward opponents away from desirable locations. Hellcow Fractured Frontier wasn't quite good enough to make it into the OG version of this deck, but it totally qualifies today.

Selene

This is the one flex slot. Selene is okay as a curve filler and provides decent value when you hit something important in your opponent's hand (Iron Man is particularly vulnerable), especially because you don't care about the symmetric effect on your Magik or Mystique, but not as strong an inclusion. Definitely the 12^th card in this deck. Silver Sable plays the same role about as well, but Selene hasn't seen much love recently so she gets priority.

We can't really afford to run cards with four or more cost, lest they interfere with Blink, so the pool of possible substitutions is limited. One or two cost is ideal, three is pushing it. This could be a good slot for a tech card, maybe Gorgon in the early October 2026 meta, or U.S. Agent for the fire-and-forget affliction support.

Opponents

The secret sauce for this deck is that everyone seems to have totally forgotten how it works. If Scorpion BND comes down before the final turn and you don't have an answer for it, you need to retreat. There is no reason to lose eight cubes to a Scorpion BND that you can see coming. And yet.

This deck still goes over the top of almost everything else, and a lot of meta decks don't run enough tech cards to stop it. One of the biggest tech cards right now is Mobius M Mobius, for example, who does nothing to stop us now that we've dropped Sera and Psylocke Fractured Frontier. Having said that, watch out for—

Location Control

The single most common counterplay is to shut off Limbo on turn six. Absolutely devastating if it takes you by surprise. However, while your deck is telegraphing the Scorpion play a full turn in advance, the two most common types of location control in the game right now are even more telegraphed.

• If your opponent is playing a zombie horde/buff deck, they might have Merlin. However, they need to get him down before turn six in order to generate an Omniversal Presence. Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos from the same archetype can technically also generate Omniversal Presence, but this is vastly less likely and not worth worrying about unless they deliberately avoid playing an unseen skill on the turn it's discounted.

• Thanos announces himself before the game even starts. If your opponent plays Reality Stone on curve, enjoy a hearty chuckle before you destroy them. Otherwise, watch out.

Snowguard also falls into this group, theoretically. If you know your opponent can play location change, the best line is to get Scorpion BND out on turn five and play Hazmat/Lady Bullseye + Mystique/Prodigy/Tao Mandala on turn six. Having two copies of the double effect plus some affliction is usually enough to win against someone who had to sacrifice energy on turn six for a location change, particularly if you run good with Scorpion, Hellcow FF, and Selene earlier in the game. If they don't have it, just twist the knife on turn seven. Save Lady Bullseye for this if you know you'll be floating energy.

If you can't get Scorpion Brand New Day out on turn five, and you know your opponent is winding up to turn off Limbo, just retreat.

You can also get jumpscared by Scarlet Witch (sometimes included in the zombie horde deck specifically for the Triple Scarlet Witch) and Legion (Hela and Doom 2099 aren't popular now, but in principle). Use your head.

Cosmo

If your opponent snaps on turn five while they can see your Scorpion Brand New Day and has priority, it's probably Cosmo. They're going to play it into your Scorpion BND lane. Dodge it by playing Mystique and Hazmat or Lady Bullseye elsewhere. If you can't, think very carefully before you end your turn.

Shadow King

If it's not Cosmo, it's Shadow King. More common in this meta as a turn six counter to the zombie horde/buff decks, typically in decks like Fantomex, but less useful against Scorpion. You have enough affliction output that a single Shadow King isn't going to lose you the game just by freeing up one lane, so this one is also a judgement call. Try to throw priority on the final turn, just in case they can duplicate it with Grandmaster or Mother Askani.

Keep in mind that Hellcow Fractured Frontier can afflict her lane after the final turn, so smart Shadow King players will give that one up and focus on the other two.

Luke Cage

The secret-er sauce: nobody is running Luke Cage anymore. In theory you can try to throw priority and force cards into their back line using the Ice Cube from Luna Snow, but in practice this one is going to be tough. Still, chalk this one up as a win: the nerf was just strong enough to get everyone to let their guard down.

Zombie Galacti

The main deck that can go over the top of Scorpion Brand New Day. You want priority on the final turn so you can debuff their Maverick/Stick/Captain Carter cards and get negative points onto Zombie Galacti. This strategy also works for regular Galactus and other Maverick/Stick/Captain Carter combo decks. The version that plays Wong, Gwenpool and Shuri will probably beat you unless you have 4+ copies of Scorpion Brand New Day and a lot of affliction on top.

Sinister Six

This deck gets around Scorpion Brand New Day fairly decisively. Once the Sinister Six effect activates the affliction combo only applies once to the final merged card, rather than its constituents. Not very common right now, possibly being kept down by Shadow King and to a lesser extent Stardust, and it needs to hit Fastball Special and Adamantine Infusion to win more than one lane, but if it looks like the combo is pending (particularly if there's a Magik lane) you need to find the retreat button.

Echo

Do not play Scorpion Brand New Day into the Echo lane. On the off chance they correctly guess which lane you're going into on turn five while they have priority and Echo flips first, well, can't win them all.

Thoughts

It's surprising that this combo still works so well, but there you have it. Until people start playing Luke Cage again, Scorpion Brand New Day remains strong. Lots of affliction cards coming out this month though, and the Fantomex deck is on the upswing as a vehicle for tech cards, so that could happen sooner rather than later. Not sure if any of the affliction cards themselves warrant inclusion in this deck, unfortunately. There's synergy with Vampire Deacon Frost and Vampire Enchantress, but the full combo demands a lot of investment. We'll have to wait and see.

Code

U2xuNixMZEJsbHNDLFNjcnBuOCxIem10NixIbGxjd0ZyY3RyZEZybnRyMTgsTG5Tbnc4LE1nazUsTXN0cTgsUHJkZzcsVGhBbmNudE9uRCxCbG5rNSxTY3JwbkJybmROd0QxMw==

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.