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 card 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.

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.

My rank isn’t showing up, pretty sure it’s the 2,100 range

CL 12,060

# (1) Deafening Chord\n# (2) Lady Bullseye\n# (3) Magik\n# (3) Chameleon\n# (3) Cosmo\n# (3) Jocasta\n# (3) Hope Summers\n# (3) Prodigy\n# (3) Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos\n# (4) Omega Sentinel\n# (5) Sera\n# (6) Scorpion Brand New Day\n#\nUHJkZzcsQ2htbG45LFNyNCxNZ2s1LEpjc3Q3LEtybVNocG5kckYsU2NybHRXdGNoUW5PZkNoczE4LEhwU21tcnNCLERmbm5nQ2hyZEUsQ3NtNSxMZEJsbHNDLFNjcnBuQnJuZE53RDEz\n#\n# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

Generally skip T1

Lady Bullseye T2

SW T3 (Magik or Jocasta works as well) (cosmo if you can see a play being made)

T4 Hope Summers + SW spell (pray for Shield Throw)

T5 Sera + Deafening Chord + SW spell (Aiming for zombie SW, Venus, Zombie Blade, [fry their zombie meta])
- Play Sera on Hope Summers (both spells look for max value)

T6 Jocasta, Chameleon, Prodigy, Omega Sentinel (all in one lane yes)

T7 Scorpion BND

I to tend to play Cosmo on my Magik to protect limbo sometimes.

You can win easily with just Omega Sentinel activating twice if you read the board right.

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

This Week's Card

Vampire Killmonger
Cost: 2 Power: 2
End of Turn: If you spent all your Energy, get a Vampiric Spear.

Vampiric Spear
Cost: 1
On Reveal: Vampire Killmonger steals 2 Power from a character in your opponent's hand.

It's Spoopy Season and our Season Pass Card is certainly going to raise some hackles. People seem to hate steal and affliction cards and Vampire Killmonger is bringing a whole slew of spears that aim to suck the life from your opponent's hands. In fact, while we've been getting pieces here and there to support a 'steal' style affliction deck we hadn't really seen a LOT until this season and it would appear that SD have decided to go all in with the Vampire themed cards giving them each ways to succ your opponent's hands and wills to play and it all starts with Vampire Killmonger. Later this month we'll see the likes of Deacon Frost as a Series 5, it's so annoying they are calling him Vampire Deacon Frost, the dudes already a suckhead, why do we need to- sorry, give me a moment.

I've been informed that we should not use the derogatory term Suckhead, sorry. Anyways, next week we have Vampire Enchantress, and the final week introduces Deacon as well as Vampire America Chavez a series 4.

So SD are definitely lining up some pretty interesting, and frankly, strong cards.

Synergies and Packages

So long as you are spending all of your energy at the end of your turn you'll get a Vampiric Spear, the Spear itself is a skill which costs 1 and On Reveal Vampire Killmonger will steal 2 power from a character in your opponent's hand. Pretty straight forward and easy.

I do think it's worth mentioning that just about every early scaling 2-Cost in the game has been good to fantastic and even without Venus, I suspect this card will be fantastic.

The Synergies here are pretty obvious, he hooks into the exact same things as every other skill generating card does, and he might, in some cases be a better Merlin. So let's dive into things.

1. Joaquin Torres - he's been seeing a bit of play over the last few months, typically as an engine piece to take advantage of your on reveals, we occasionally see him in certain combo variations of Zombies decks so don't be surprised if some all-in Vampire Killmonger decks lean into the Zombies motif.
2. Zombie Blade - Our Super Premium Season Pass and boy does he look enticing. Zombie Blade is a 2/3 which on End of Turn if you played an On Reveal your Zombie Horde steals 1 Power from a chracter in your opponent's hand and will Horde first if necessary.
3. Play here or Play to Scale - Thena, Angela, Bishop, Zombie Scarlet Witch, Hope Summers, and Hitmonkey all come to mind with various levels of strength in the current meta.
4. Venus - You're gaining energy each time you steal power which effectively makes every spear a +3 boost (even if it's still just a +2 succ).
5. Werewolf By Night - Might have fit above, but he requires you to be playing on-reveals specifically. It won't be all that surprising if we were to see WWBN chilling out with Vampire Killmonger and Zombie Blade in a 'three's company' Horde deck. We've even got some Ninja that could join that party!

With these ideas in mind, it should be relatively easy to figure out placements for Vampire Killmonger.

But what if you are wanting to combat this vampire menace?

• Luke Cage - the problem is he's only saving the cards that get sucked that get played to the front row. It's not nothing, but it is limited in scope.
• Gorgon comes down on 2 and immediately makes every one of the spears cost 2.
• Shadow King - Pretty obvious what he's doing here.
• Shang Chi - look no one said the counters had to be actively good but do keep in mind that there are a number of decks packing a pocket shang so keep an eye out and do be wary of pushing your Gambit too far, too soon.
• Gambit Horseman of Death - not a direct counter, but if your opponent is also relying on a Zombie Horde the Gambit might be able to nuke not only the horde but also the Zombie Killmonger which can make it hard for those decks to find wins. While it's not a guarantee keep in mind that if the Gambit nukes a 3-Cost right away or goes 2-Cost/1-Cost it might leave the Horde completely alone.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking the Season Pass up?

How do you expect Vampire Killmonger to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

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

For those not in the know, the Super Premium Season Pass card can either be purchased as part of the Super Premium Season Pass package ($19.99 USD) or can be gambled on in the Seasonal Snap Pack for 5k when it releases with this seasons launch.

**This Week's Card**

> Zombie Blade

Cost: 2

Power: 3

End of Turn: If you played an On Reveal, your Zombie Horde steals 1 Power from a character in your opponent's hand. (Horde first if necessary)

**Synergies and Packages**

Our Super Premium Season Pass card is a card that is more than likely going to end up being a support or periphery card. He's certainly not going to be the best card in your deck but if you're missing your Zombie Scarlet Witch he might be able to do a bad impression of her. If I were to draw a comparison it would be Lockheed, although it is certainly likely that Zombie Blade will be the better card - Lockheed needs to be deployed to a lane with something in it to attack while Zombie Blade is just getting you a horde and then enabling your horde to steal power from your opponents hand provided you're meeting his admittedly easy to achieve quest.

And what exactly is that quest? Play an On Reveal card each turn he's down to enable his End of Turn ability which rewards you with your Horde stealing 1 Power from your opponent's hand and if necessary will also Horde first so that you have a horde.

There's also a consideration to running him as a pure support card, playing an on-reveal multiple turns in a row isn't too hard to accomplish and with say a Venus on deck and an on reveal each turn that's +2 on your horde. It's certainly not perfect but it could be an interesting place to be. Could we maybe be looking at an Aurora style deck or with maybe an AP Magneto top end over Aurora that has a supplemental Horde package? Something to think about.

Fundamentally, Zombie Blade can do wonders with Vampire Killmonger, in the event of being able to go Killmonger - Blade you have a guaranteed proc for Killmonger as well as a guaranteed proc for Blade. Similarly, if you can keep that momentum up you're ensuring that both continue to provide value to you.

As for the decks, as I mentioned, might there be some form of Aurora-esque AP Magneto deck looking to maximize on reveals in some way? You would even look to just plop AP Magneto into the Horde deck similar to how folks were playing Arnim Zola so that you could go T5 Zombie Giant Man into APMagneto that drops an Abs-Man + X on your opponents head and adds one extra point of succ on turn 6. Otherwise, this seems like it could be just another one of the 2's you'd consider for your Horde deck and little else.

As a final 'meme' consideration, what if we're running an EoT deck with a regular Invisible Woman to hide a Zombie Giant Man behind and then kicking off a chain reaction of Venus driven procs that results in a big Horde? I know it's not gonna work, but I'm charging one of you mad folks to either get this idea in front of LaurenWhatevs or try and pull it off yourself.

**Your Thoughts**

Do you plan on picking the SP Season Pass up or Gambling 5k on Zombie Blade?

How do you expect Zombie Blade to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

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

Synergies and Packages

SD are providing us with yet another Mid-Range destroy piece, this time in the form of a Venom that destroys the first card in a given location and after one of your other cards is destroyed, Horde +2's. Not bad, but we've seen plenty of these Mid-Range destroy cards essentially go nowhere after week 1.

What is this card doing, that the other cards have not and is it possible to take advantage of that in a meaningful way?

Well, fundamentally this card is setting up an On Reveal that has a 'Surge' style ability, after he's done his thing each time you destroy another card he's going to give you another proc so we can look at doing an 'all the booms' style destroy deck that dumps out a potentially massive Horde.

We've got some pretty obvious pieces to toy around with here.

1. Firehair stuff tends to start blowing a bunch of cards up starting on turn 3 or 4 and can sometimes do that repeatedly which can lead to MASSIVE Hordes. In fact there was already a Horde Firehair deck archetype floating about from a few months back, could this new venom have room in such a deck?

2. Muse/Weapon-X decks are often trying to scale big and dump a ton of things that you clean up with some of your boom booms. If we can hold off on starting those chains up til turn 3 and really start going to town on turn 4, 5 and 6? Could we end up with utterly disgustingly sized Hordes with a massive supporting Weapon-X and Muse?

3. In a similar tone to the above, what about Dormammu?

4. He's not out yet, but we do have Zombie Nova which gives you a Horde +3 as an on reveal and when he's destroyed.

5. Blowing all of these things up and then following up with Death Fractured Frontier?

The ultimate drawback is that a lot of these ideas sound like they are going to either be a Clip Farmer's dream or purely for fun 40% winrate decks that might steal a tonne of cubes when the stars align for you.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking the Zombie Venom up?

How do you expect Zombie Venom to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

It's that time again, Golden Gauntlet Qualifier 4 sign-ups have begun.

When is Q4?

• Swiss
  • October 10th, 2026 @ 11:00 AM CT to (projected) 5:00 PM CT
• Bracket Stage
  • October 10th, 2026 @ (projected) 5:00 PM CT to (projected) 9:00 PM CT

Where to sign up: Link to Discord Server

What Format is Q4?

• Conquest Rules
  • Open Swiss
  • Top 16 cut to Bracket Stage single Elimination
• Full Rules can be found at this google doc
• There is actually a conditional ban: You aren't allowed to play Firehair and Death Fractured Frontier in the same deck. (This is because of a bug that softlocks the game.) Thanks /u/f300xen for the heads up.
  
• In the event that a new card is introduced, or a game-altering bug, glitch, or other player-controllable issue arises, the Tournament Admin Team reserves the right to impose a global ban on the affected card or instance at their discretion. Any global bans will be clearly communicated to all participants.
• Note: All players with a final record of 5-1 or better qualify for the Golden Gauntlet World Championship Qualifier

Prize Structure:

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:

Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos
Cost: 3
Power: 4
Start of Turn: Add an EXTREMELY random skill to your hand. It costs 0 this turn.

For a 'full' list of the datamined skills please see this link

Do note that per SD's Brady in a response to a question on Team-Answers SD do intend to occasionally update the list of skills that she can generate, as to what 'occasionally' actually means and what ends up happening we'll have no idea so wait and see and hope for the best.

Synergies

While Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos does have some immediate synergy pieces, she is also a fantastic generalist card and in some ways has some similarities to old Nocturne or even Copycat. A solid generalist 3-Cost that you can slot into almost any deck and get use from. That being said, our newest edition of Scarlet Witch does have some hooks that you could consider hooking into if you're inclined to dig into her synergies.

Something a little different, because I suspect there is a lot of excitement and interest around Scarlet Witch from not only enfranchised players but new, F2P, and Budget players alike, for those that have been with us since at least August and completed both the August and September deck giveaways you've got two decks that our newest Scarlet Witch can synergize with to varying degrees based on the cards included or cards that you can get.

First is Zombies and if you happened to pick up Zombie Scarlet Witch for that deck you've likely noticed that ZSW loves cards that you can play on her that either move or don't take up space, Kitty Pryde is one of the most ubiquitous but skills also fit the bill as well though they can create some pain points in a few cases.

The second is the Created Cards Victoria Hand deck. You may be wondering why I'm pointing out the Victoria Hand deck, well it's because the 'free' version of the deck included The Collector who gains +1 power each time a card enters your hand from anywhere but your deck. So while Scarlet Witch's spells do not directly benefit from the +2 from Victoria Hand, if you haven't done much changing to the decks construction Scarlet Witch does synergize with Collector. In addition, on occasion Scarlet Witch may give you a skill that can generate created cards in the event that she gives you Sandstorm. There's also the possibility that as more skills release and if her skills are expanded that another card generation skill is eventually made. Is she the 'best' way to play hand, no. But if you're low on CL you're often trying to put together things that can work well together. Downside is that the free version also runs Dino and you kind of want to keep more cards in hand and unless the 'free' card from Scarlet witch is actively bad for you, you probably want to play most of the skills to keep your hand free.

Sandstorm
Cost: 2
On Reveal: Add 2 Rocks to your hand. Give them +1 Power for each of your front-Row characters.

So what other synergies are there?

• Nicholas Scratch - long time series 4 meme, Nicholas was recently buffed to 1/3 and gains +1 each time you play a skill. He's in a similar place as clea where her decks were generally missing 'something' and while Nicholas might still be missing a piece or two (we're getting another potential piece on Tuesday) he hasn't quite found his footing. Still, dragging back new, F2P and low CL if you do have Nicholas he's probably an easy include if you happen to have him and want more synergy pieces that will benefit from Scarlet Witch.

• The Collector - mentioned in the Victoria Hand section above, if you're running multiple card generators The Collector isn't a bad consideration as a possible include.

• WWBN - probably the most obvious piece, Werewolf By Night moves with each on reveal you play and having a free on reveal to move him each turn is massive. Bonus is that while there are some skills that aren't that great, they are still free and in some cases you can blow them in a location you don't care about.

• Zombie Scarlet Witch - we'll expand this outward to include any card that wants you to play cards either on their location or just play them - Hawkeye, Angela, Bishop, Hope Summers, Rescue. Four of the aforementioned cards - Angela, Bishop, Hope, and ZSW all love multiple repeated plays but that can be hard if you're potentially filling you locations early, skills are the perfect way to trigger them repeatedly though sometimes you do need to be careful - looking at you Polymorph and Once and Future.

Feedback

Most of the feedback on this card has been wildly positive, very few folks have found issue with the card directly citing the possible cube equity from the information asymmetry. While there is strong competition in the 3-Cost slot, the recent OTA also helped even the playing field, even if only a bit more.

Decklists

Honifer's Zombies

Coougarrr's Agamotto Chaos

MastarPuppet's Wiccan/Thanos

Safetyblade's Wolf Like Me

WWBN Bounce

Summary

Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos is our final Seasonal card for the Axist Inversion season and she seemingly brought with her a lot of excitement around the card. The question left is - will she be a force within the meta or be left behind?

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Final week for the Axis Inversion Season and we've had not only one of the most impactful OTA's (and yet kinda bad OTA's too) but we also got the Developer Update for the Vampires vs. Zombies season which looks cool but I suspect a number of folks are already wanting the next OTA to show up to deal with one of two potential bogiemen. I'll save the hot takes and meta jibberish for the First 48 section ahead.

Todays intro instead is going to be rather subdued. I've not been having the most fun with the game and that hasn't actually been Thanos' fault, it's been the fault of Draft. I want to interact with draft and play draft, but draft isn't inherently fun this time around. But we'll have a section and some observations on draft from my less salty side.

Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos

MY KWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN.

Man, this card has been fun. I've seen her a few times in draft and she's been my favorite part of draft so far. I've rolled some WWBN and Zombies decks for ladder and conquest and she's been a ton of fun with those decks as well.

And frankly I don't want to put that negative energy out there, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this card get 3/3'd if she really takes off. A free skill every turn from the turn you get her down is absurd even if you're not hitting the good skills. That being said, there's enough variance in the good vs the mediocre that I think the only way she gets nerfed is by becoming ubiquitous enough that she doesn't seem to 'go away' and that I don't think is something that will happen.

Anyways, I'm having a blast with Scarlet Witch.

WWBN was the easy call

WWBN and Shou with both Scratch and Collector as scaling power, it should be obvious but when you've got the opportunity keep Nich and Collector separate in case of A) HMGambit and B) Shadow King. For those who haven't played Shou-Lao in a while, do remember that Shou doesn't care about Skills, only the last character played so if you need to take advantage of bouncing WWBN in a specific order you can always Character -> Skill on 5 and the character will still receive the buff.

Zombies was also the easy call

Easy to pilot. The hardest decision to make here is Venus vs Scarlet Witch QOC when making plays, my main considerations when both were in hand were always whether I also had a 3+1 for turn 4 and a good follow-up for turn 5. If not then it was often Scarlet Witch.

WWBN and Zombies was the first call but third in line

But it obviously wasn't the best, you've got some competing lines on turns 3 and 4 which is what lead to the decks above opting to split out and do their own things.

It was inevitable

The ESN/Thanos/APMagneto deck is still good and it might be one of the best places left to play Thanos provided you're drawing on-curve.

Superior Iron Man

It should be of no surprise - SIM is still hanging out in the land of mid. Some notes to cover as we wrap up SIM's month.

1. With one discount yes, he is essentially a Wilson Fisk. But he's not as good as Fisk unless you can hit that discount by turn 2.

2. With a Wingbeat he does beat fisk. But do we really want to play a 3/14 on turn 3? I can see an argument for it, but without protection he's sitting there waiting begging for interaction.

3. Even if he's just a 3/8, there has been an argument that he's a 3/8 with upside, I want to correct this misconception. The only way he is a 3/8 with upside is when you've worked to either establish buffs that will go to him when you play him or if there are locations that benefit him. Upside implies he's bringing something extra, he is not unless he is getting buffed.

So what are the 'best' strategies for Superior Iron Man doing?

It looks like we're down to finding value plays and the occasional buff but in almost all of the top performing decks he's still competing with Thanos. The few decks where he isn't he's an obvious buff target for Shou-Lao but with the additional need to figure out how you're winning location 2 and it seems for a good portion WWBN or Shadowlands DD is the answer that seems to be most prevalent.

WWBN meets Superior Iron Man

This one, to me is fairly interesting, plenty of bounces but the SK can cause some real headaches here, especially with regards to timings and play order. Still, SK is going to be stealing cubes for the next few days and you can almost always ensure that you're correctly sequencing plays.

The Best List isn't AP Magneto (for now)

Now this is an interesting list, attempting to leverage an SLDD and Eitri to get 2 loads for your Thanos as well as keep the counter going up for Shou-Lao. Some brief tips - there's a question on whether you always play to Shou without him in hand. If I have no Kitty in hand I'll often hold two 1-Costs for turn 2 if I have Kitty, we're always a Kitty gamer on 1. If I have Eitri -> SLDD I'll go for the Eitri -> SLDD line so that I can prep for lots of Thanos shots. Majestic to me is almost always needing to go onto Superior Iron Man, but there is an argument for when the opportunity arises to hit Thanos with it if you've got a good set of loads for him and can dump him early, it's rare but a possibility.

En Sabah APM is Still in the DM's tho

No notes, the deck tends to pilot itself. You could even swap the 'It was Inevitable' list above and pull Scion for SIM.

Draft is an LTGM

Man, I could type an entire monologue on this mode. Wait I am doing that already, sorry let's continue. I loved the first run of Draft, I didn't like how absurd Boost and Destroy felt but the run was enjoyable and while I didn't do well I wasn't feeling like my drafts were dead from the draft, it was often not until I got into the actual games when you found people who had been given better drafts would walk all over you.

For me and a number of others that's not the case this time around. SD said they were changing weights around on top of adding a few augments. However, after some experience with the new weights and even after the changes that SD said they had made with the OTA, drafts continue to have moments where they feel bad if not horrible from the start, not only with getting 3 'bad' starters but choosing the best amongst them and immediately getting the worst options for follow-ups on draws 1 and 2 which can lead to a need to branch out because the options for picks are that bad. Unfortunately that can lead to skewing the weights so far from where you want to be that you're now drafting garbage and with this mode you're then needing to draft for points and utility. While it's possible to still get those wins with decks like this that I got on one of the first drafts on my alt account those moments often feel few and far between, especially in the instances where you're facing off against multiple people that look like they got the nuts from their drafts.

Then there's the Sanctum Scoring, I really do hate shoving Sanctum Scoring into EVERY game mode that exists. It's not fun, especially in a mode where on turn 3 you get snapped and see a 3/20 Black Panther drop followed by a 4-Cost Task or Zola. And while it was fun the first time I got to do it to someone else it quickly lost it's luster because of how many times I was on the receiving end. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth where the victories don't feel earned and a worst taste to have to leave on turn 3 because you're so far behind that there is no legitimate excuse to remain in the match.

Beyond that, if I'm looking to optimize my favorite 'decks' so far have been control, move, boost, and swarm. I've seen some nutty Destroys but Destroy is so finnicky that I've been leaving it alone. Serious, I did a draft with Destroy last night that looked like it could hook me up but it said 'here's a Deathlok' and then later 'here's a regenerating deathlok' and nothing else.

As for how to approach the mode? I often found it best to fight for the sanctum points on 1, 3, 4, 6+ and to fight for sides on 2 and 5 since without snaps the sides keep you at parity if you're 'close' to your opponent. The biggest headache I've got here is that if you're losing the sides and the main points you're better off leaving because the snowball is way too powerful in this version of sanctum scoring. Or you could be polite to your opponent and give them as many points as possible. I'm petty though so they can have 18 and I'll go next.

Post OTA

So I've done a bit of testing myself and found that the Thanos nerf does feel relevant, I've already seen him being pulled from a number of decks. Rough estimate, it's a loss of around 1-2 bullets for decks that aren't built to curve out or able to take advantage of playing off-curve with High Evo and Zombies feeling ok but likely better off without Thanos. Swarm/Zoo decks could go either way but it depends on the specific make-ups since once you're getting to turns 3 and 4 you need to make specific plays and playing to Thanos instead could leave you in a worse place. Batroc on the other hand I don't think makes it out of this with Thanos in the list, you really need to be making the correct plays since Thanos lost a significant amount of his power from losing the load.

That leaves the 'big 3' - so a quick blurb.

1. En Sabah Mags - probably the one deck next to Thandos where I think he'll still make sense and see play but if we end up with more relevant cards he may get yoinked overall. I would expect a nerf to AP Magneto in the next two OTA's if this deck continues to see massive play across the board.

2. Thandos - just like En Sabah Mags this one feels like a fairly natural home for FFThanos, the inconsistency of getting draw stones does mean the deck is less than stellar.

3. Thanrora - it's a deck with enough pieces that it can immediately play that I suspect Thanrora might be the 'combo' Thanos list going forward, though granted this deck still wants/needs to play certain cards on curve so the number of bullets you're getting is still going to be significantly lower unless you have an opportunity to get green/blue/red for a Wong, but that should be much less likely in the grand scheme of things. Of course there is going to be someone that points at this, points to their 'Thanos copying Wong' screenshot folder with several hundred screenshots and says "fuck you, you're an idiot, this keeps happening to me."

As for the Blink nerf, we LOST a lot with the blink decks, just a few, though not an exhaustive list.

1. Supergiant Discard - may be dead now. The 'best' lines involved blinking one of the 4's for MODOK. Unfortunately unless you've got all of the 4's in hand you can brick pretty consistently.

2. Splat - ok, the different variations on splat combo were already bad but could high roll. Now you can just flop from one 3 into one of the many 3's in the deck. This deck may as well be completely dead.

3. Hela - I'm not sure Blink -> Hela is 'dead' there aren't a lot of 4's in the deck to flip into, however blinking a Corvus into a Gambit that discards your hela? Yea that could be bad.

4. Scorpion isn't completely dead but it is definitely much worse for wear. The brewers are also working over time as I have seen a few takes where they are approaching this deck like Tribunal where they are trying to hit a Sera -> Onslaught -> popoff.

So what's good so far?

A lot of the same decks are still good, some of them you're much more free to remove Thanos and go back to whatever pieces you were previously running without much problem. I also won't be surprised to see additional nerfs, as I mentioned previously the En Sabah/Thanos/AP Magneto deck is largely fine and as such is probably going to catch more nerfs over the next month, though who knows. SD seem to be in a weird place of 'let the meta sit here for a few months' before taking a bunch of swings. I do hope they find a better balance between doing nothing and taking swings on things when there are problems.

Of note there are a LOT of low-curve decks that are relying on combinations of Venus and other green power and as those decks rise answers to those decks will be rising as well. In fact, I think Fantomex might be well positioned to take advantage of folks putting away their Luke Cage's in expectation of fewer Scorpions in the wild.

So what tech is good?

1. The OG's - Shadow King, Killmonger, and HM Gambit are good if there is a lot of small-ball stuff being supported by Venus.

2. Stardust - ruins the days of the En Sabah decks, catches the occasional Hela and even the stubborn blink enjoyers as well.

3. Cosmo/Juggernaut - Cosmo continues to be fairly fine. However, Juggernaut is a much more questionable consideration, if we continue to see a lot of En Sabah and AP Magneto things, Jugg is much worse into those decks for obvious reasons.

Essentially your 'good' tech is going to depend on the pocket of the meta you're in. Still seeing lots of APMagneto, maybe lean off of Juggernaut as a tech piece as well as Fantomex and consider whether you should be rocking a deck that can leverage Stardust.

The Decks

Something that I do think is worth noting, the OTA has definitely put the meta into a flux, some of you may still be seeing a ton of Thanos be that with or without En Sabah and Magneto, if that's the case a deck like Fantomex is probably not going to do you much good and you're going to want to look to a different set of tech cards to get your work done. However, if you're seeing a lot of the Zoo and early scalers, it's very possible that decks such as Fantomex that can run a Killmonger and Shadow King can begin to do well or even Victoria Hand/HM Gambit decks could win the day here for you.

Outside of that - combo decks are still good though Nimrod decks should probably be on the downswing considering the number of Stardust in the meta has increased significantly as players look to find ways to combat AP Magneto. Though, as usual if you notice a gap in your pocket of the meta - take advantage of it and climb while you can.

Aurora

Aurora has been pretty good, though it does seem like Wong is sticking around at least for the time being which should probably be to no ones surprise. Not much to really point at here - Echo protects against Cosmo and while she doesn't have an ability that Aurora buffs that's still a good enough use for her.

En Sabah Dracula

The return of the En Sabah Dump lists, they hadn't really gone anywhere but their points and reliability hadn't been nearly as good as the ESN/Thanos/APM versions, I suspect that may hold for a bit longer but this deck can high roll so much harder than the ESN/Thanos lists can.

Fantomex

Make no mistake the changes to Bucky and Zombie Captain Marvel aren't that important but as Scorpion is pushed out of the meta a bit more and Luke's play rates begin to dip Fantomex can prey on that opening. This might not be the best week though since some folks are going to be keeping Luke in their lists maybe wait a week or two.

Zombie Galacti

It's been solid and remains solid. This one is probably the easiest of the on-rails combos you can play since it's basically 'can I buff Zombie Galacti enough' and 'did I draw Zombie Galacti'. I really want to try and get away from Magik and go to a 6-Turn F/U game plan but we're probably never realistically making it to that point.

It's the Wong Way

America's 12 years old and tomorrow she'll be a - whoa wait, sorry, I was possessed by the spirit of Bradley Nowell. Honestly, a Wong list doing well in 2026? SIGN ME UP.

Hey folks, today we're nerfing a few Fractured Frontier strength outliers and taking a bigger swing at the Scorpion Brand New Day deck, since the Power cuts a few weeks ago didn't do the job. Then, as always, a few buffs. Let's get to it!

Thanos Fractured Frontier

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

Thanos Fractured Frontier has been a tricky one. Players overwhelmingly enjoy playing with the card, but as we near two full seasons with it, there's understandable fatigue with playing against it. That very high, sustained play rate comes from its strength, its flexibility, and how fun it is to play. The last two are great, especially for a Season Pass card. The first gets tiring over a long enough timeline, and we need to rein it in to keep the game fresh and let more cards shine.

Put simply, we expected chaining Thanos's Quickdraw turn over turn to be harder than it turned out to be. We pre-loaded an Infinity Shot as a hedge against that difficulty (we've missed on quest-style cards before) and to make “living the dream” of firing all six Shots more achievable.

We know now, of course, that players have managed pretty well with being able to get a reasonable outcome of Shots on average. Even getting to 3, or so, makes Thanos a perfectly competitive midrange card with a very high ceiling beyond that, which has led to its sustained play rates. This should shift Thanos away from being the de facto splashable midrange piece and toward being a central card in Double-Thanos strategies and other decks built around a high density of cheap cards or extra card draw. We prefer this approach over taking a hatchet to a bunch of Shots and Thanos's Power, as it should shift Thanos towards being more of a dedicated build-around while retaining all of the texture that many of the more unique Shots provide to his play experience.

Domino

[Old] 2/4 – You always draw this card on turn 2, and not before.
[Change] 2/4 > 2/3

Jane Foster Fractured Frontier

[Old] 3/4 – On Reveal: Judge 4 other random characters. +1 Power (if yours) or -1 Power (enemies). Quickdraw: Judge the worthy again.
[Change] 3/4 > 3/3

The Quicksilver and Domino package was never the strongest way to play Thanos, but with a card that powerful to subsidize, its floor was high enough that it undeniably made games feel more homogenous and repetitive. For the long-term health of the game, supporting Wiccan and Thanos Fractured Frontier that easily should cost a little more.

Jane has proven a little over on rate. Alongside Venus, she's comfortably been 1A or 1B among 3-Cost cards since the two could team up. We have faith she'll still be an excellent addition to many decks at 3 Power.

Blink

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

Tao Mandala (from The Ancient One)

[Old] 2/- – On Reveal: Copy the text of one of your Ongoing cards here onto your other characters here. [Change] 2/- > 3/-

We hoped the Power adjustments in the last OTA would move the needle on Scorpion Brand New Day. They didn't, so we're taking more substantial action.

We know Scorpion Brand New Day wins by miles once it assembles its pieces. Our hope was that a lighter touch, more player knowledge, and tech cards would let us avoid a bigger hit. We'd rather stay conservative so as many players as possible get to enjoy their decks for as long as is fair to everyone else.

Unfortunately, that just didn't pan out this time, so we'll be making much larger changes this week to attack Scorpion's consistency and ability to replicate its Ongoing.

Reverting the Ancient One's Tao Mandala to 3-Cost makes one piece of the combo clunkier to deploy. The bigger change is Blink: the Scorpion deck will need considerably different deckbuilding, and a higher Energy curve, to keep putting its namesake into play deterministically. That should be a healthy ding to the deck's consistency and push it toward a real backup plan when Scorpion doesn't land early enough to copy its Ongoing repeatedly.

Onto some buffs!

Zombie Captain Marvel

[Old] 4/5 – Activate: Destroy your other cards here to get +3 Power for each. Move to a location you're losing.
[Change] 4/5 > 4/6

Winter Soldier (from Bucky Barnes)

[Old] 2/7
[Change] 2/7 > 2/8

Tombstone

[Old] 2/4 – On Reveal: Destroy your lowest-Power card at each other location.
[Change] 2/4 > 2/5

We're buffing a handful of Destroy cards. Destroy as an archetype continues to be weaker and less represented than we'd like for a core archetype overall, and with the upcoming Zombie Venom this felt like a good time to make some changes. Particularly, we're looking to help prop up the “Mass Destroy” deck a little more with these changes and move some more strength into Destroyers that aren't just Carnage and original Venom.

Kluh

[Old] 5/10 – On Reveal: EACH player randomly gives a card in their hand -1 Cost for each different Cost among their cards in play.
[Change] 5/10 > 5/11

Basic Arrow (from Kate Bishop Hawkeye)

[Old] 1/1 – On Reveal: If you play a card at this location next turn, +3 Power.
[Change] +3 Power > +4 Power

Finally, rounding some things out, Kluh has underperformed a bit. Some of this is naturally having Thanos as a competitor as a 5-Cost card, but even with the nerf to Thanos we think Kluh can comfortably get the point given its symmetric nature and deck-building ask. Basic Arrow is getting an extra point, a nice flavor mirror to the recent Hawkeye buff, mostly to give some strength back to a fan-favorite that's fallen a bit out of favor over the course of the year. Kate Bishop is a fun, flexible card with potential in a variety of archetypes, so we're giving her some love.

Text Change:

Hellcow Fractured Frontier – Added “Other” to more clearly communicate Hellcow cannot destroy itself.

Alright, that's all for today folks, we hope that you enjoy this shake up to the metagame and have a great start to your Zombies vs Vampires season!

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.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnapDecks/s/i0HD6VdLZP

I took a version of this from the Reddit post above earlier this summer, and it has already shown me a lot of potential (at least 4 infinity tickets are waiting for me thanks to this).

The 3 big lane winners are Supreme Strange, SRDD, and GalactusFS.

⁃ Squirrel helps take priority early and serves as Supreme food.

⁃ KingE pulls demons, Adam either pulls cards which help trigger more SRDD activations or buffs 1 which becomes 2 with Venus (that combo has won more lanes than I would've expected).

⁃ Cosmo and Professor X are great for locking down those lanes that get passive buffs like Supreme or DD, and they're incredibly effective at maintaining prio whichever lane has GalactusFS' Herald.

- Obviouslv, Venus does wonders for any card prone to buff, but especially Strange as the game counts the merge as 2 buffs which grants 2 bonus power from Venus for every merge.

- Debrii feeds Strange and her high power helps keep prio.

- TWAG is a recent addition because frankly, its hard to find a buff-centric deck that he doesn't slot into.

There's been a rotating spot where I've tried things like Marvel Boy, Enchantress Cull Obsidian, and Luke Cage. I almost always leave the house packing Luke Cage, but the one time I met ScorpionBND in conquest, I was able to neutralize it very well between the lock down cards and Strange eating the negative afflicts.

Seems like there is still some improvement to be had, and I'd love to hear any suggestions!

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 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

Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos
Cost: 3
Power: 4
Start of Turn: Add an EXTREMELY random skill to your hand. It costs 0 this turn.

Welcome to the final week of the Axis Inversion Season. This week brings us a new Scarlet Witch, this time envisioned as the Queen of Chaos, a 3/4 with a Start of Turn ability that adds a random skill to your hand which for this turn costs 0. It's kind of a nuisance that they decided that EXTREMELY random was necessary here, but I get it, need to somehow imply that she can generate a number of skills that don't belong to her, including collectible skills, those generated by other characters (Clea, Merlin, Prowler, and Agamotto), as well as a couple of Grand Arena spells(??).

This List from @ZeroSkill_Samus on Twitter shows the skills she can currently generate based on datamines. Unfortunately, SD are generally hush hush on what cards or abilities their 'EXTREMELY RANDOM' cards can generate so we must rely solely on datamined information. Of note to me is the potential to get a 'free' Spider-Sense. Winds of Watoomb, or Bolts of Balthaak.

Also, I can confirm as I had her in a run of Draft that she can indeed generate Cap's Shield Throw from Grand Arena. I kinda wish that Adamantium were included for the dream of being able to Fastball/Adamantium without them in the deck but I digress.

Synergies and Packages

If we're talking on her merits alone this new Scarlet Witch has a very obvious hook which we'll eventually get to. But let's talk a few other considerations.

1. Quinjet - you'll generally be able to throw most of the spells out immediately, but one in particular stands out to me in ToV as it can replace itself and with Quinjet you have a permanent 1-Cost ToV that you can weave in.

2. Nicholas Scratch - buffed a few weeks ago. Nicholas isn't a great card but having yet another vector that can scale off of things you're going to want to do regardless is amazing. Unfortunately as a 1-Cost it's rather difficult to protect him from all of the potential predators.

3. Collector - another recently buffed card, though really all he received was the one power he lost due to his association with pre-nerf Loki right around 3 years ago.

And of course we get to the primary drivers.

1. Werewolf By Night - for the longest time Merlin has held a near monopoly as WWBN's companion with Prowler occasionally acting as third wheel. Is it possible that Scarlet Witch find herself as one of WWBN's favorite people mostly because not only is she generating skills each turn, but also because said skills are FREE for the turn they are generated? Potential headaches of course would be hand size and the problems inherent with card generators and frankly the difference between receiving curated spells from the likes of Merlin and Prowler vs the random generation despite the cards being free for the turn from Scarlet Witch. Of course, I would imagine that you wouldn't necessarily run all 3 without being able to ensure that A) you will continue drawing and B) you have a secondary win-con to WWBN. Which hey, Cosmo, Jugg, and Thanos are still in the meta barring any changes coming from Thursday's OTA.

2. Cards that want you to play 'on them' Angela, Hope Summers, Zombie Scarlet Witch. The primary concern here is that the latter two are also 3-Cost. We have at times 'made it work' with the 3 -> 4 play especially with Zombie Scarlet Witch where you play say Venus or ZSW on 3 into the other + 1 on 4 so it's not unheard of that we might opt for this but it's going to take some real thought and commitment to decide on which 3's you're aiming for if you're going for a deck with cards like these.

As for opposition to Scarlet Witch, there is one possible piece of opposition that I can see here and that would be Mobius. M. Mobius as a way to fight against all of the 'free' skills, thankfully most of the skills are 1-Cost which can allow you to at least chuck things to try and keep your hand clear enough to draw.

If I were going to think of any specific decks it comes down to two possible directions depending on your CL and MMR band.

For a person that is either collection complete or has the cards, I would be considering a Zombies/Merlin/WWBN package to start. This was one of the early takes on the archetype last year and it did fairly well as it was able to bounce WWBN into and out of ZSW while not really taking up card space thanks to Merlin's skills. Maybe something like This Zombies deck No Thanos is blasphemy (lol) I know. Seriously though, it's unrefined and I know we're far too heavy on 3's so feel free to tool around with it and customize to your liking. I'll probably get around to messing with it in a day or so.

For those on a budget, low CL or just new to the game if you managed to pick up or have Venus, I would certainly consider a Collector/Venus/Devil Dino deck. While the skills aren't going to synergize directly with Victoria Hand, you could consider other created card generators since you're on a Devil Dino plan. In fact, we just got the Card Generation deck with Victoria Hand and there are a few potential cuts I'd be considering for sure with regards to that deck. I'm not entirely enamored with Devil Dino but not everyone has the suite of sweet card generators that can give you more outs. Retooling the Free Vhand deck This might be the starting place I would consider as a low CL player. Of note I'd love to get my hands on a Frigga and probably Venus and start trying to work out more cuts. Maybe we dunk Devil Dino and rely on our generated create a cards from a Valentina and if you happen to have him, Iron Patriot? Coulson was included with the deck so maybe Coulson stays since he's generating 2 cards for Collector. Hood would be cool but we lack reliable ways to get rid of the Hood and -3 power especially at low CL can be hard to deal with since you may not have reliable tools to get rid of him and hoping to get one of the cards that will deal with hood from Scarlet Witch QOC is a massive stretch.

Your Thoughts

Do you plan on picking Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos up?

How do you expect Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos to perform?

What other possible shells and synergies might there be?

Welcome back to Marvel Snap's Draft mode, pick your starter pack, draft 7 more cards and then go play to earn two more card picks and a few more augments while seeing if your drafted deck can take you to 5 wins or if you scrub out as an X-2.

Event Info

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

• Soft cap means once you are at 12, you will no longer refresh tickets. You may still claim or buy tickets.

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

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

• Progress on both passes happens simultaneously.

• Sanctum Scoring! And things are a bit different with that ruleset.

Marvel Snap Draft Tickets

Starting Amount: 8
Daily Free Ticket (24 hour refresh): 2
Draft Cube Collect Mini Events: 6 (3 events, 2 tickets per) Free Reward Track: 2
Premium Reward Track: 6
Premium Pass Instant Rewards: 2
Ticket Cap (free Daily ticket will not accrue if at or over the cap): 12
Price: 100 Gold
Daily Shop Bundle: 5x Tickets for 350 Gold
Draft Ticket Bundle: 8x Tickets +1 Respawn Token for $4.99 or 35 Tickets + 5 Respawn Tokens for $19.99

Marvel Snap Draft Respawn Tokens

Starting: 5
Free Reward Track: 3 (down 7)
Premium Reward Track: 6
Premium Pass Instant Reward: 2
Price per: 100g (one continue per run)

• Unspent respawn tokens expire with the event, no use in saving them. Use them!

• Ties no longer count as losses. Both you and your opponent go back to the draft screen with the same record and queue again.
• Ties do not give Draft XP or Currency
  
• This only counts for true ties of 18 - 18, both players exceeding 18 doesn't automatically result in a Tie game.
  

Sanctum Scoring

• Snapping is unlocked on turn 3 as usual.
• Sanctum Scoring has been modified, the chart below explains how things have changed.

Rewards per Draft Run

Event Pass Rewards

Card:

The Inversion
Cost: 3
On Reveal: Invert the Power of the lowest-Power card(s) here. (Positive becomes negative, and vice versa.)

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

• Progress on both passes happens simultaneously.

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

The Draft

When starting Draft you will pick between three starters to your deck, each of those three starters includes three cards that synergize together from a variety of recognized archetypes. This is not an exhaustive list of the starters, I took the liberty of getting some of the more interesting Epic's and Legendaries listed, there are plenty of variations within the 6 base decks archetypes. If you're interested in ALL archtypes snapcompleted ltgm - draft- decks

1. Ramp

2. Swarm (Zoo)

3. Move

4. Destroy

5. Control

6. Ongoing

7. End of Turn (Sunspot, Invisible Woman, Fantasticar) Legendary

8. Tribunal (Punisher, Iron Man, Living Tribunal) Legendary

9. Galactus ( Jennifer Kale, Maverick, Galactus)

10. Silver Surfer (Brood, Silver Surfer, Makkari) Legendary

11. Devil Dino (Agent 13, Hawkeye Kate Bishop, Devil Dino ) Legendary

12. Arishem (Quinjet, Valentina, Arishem) Legendary Ramp

13. Anti-Polar Magneto (Crystal, Jubilee, Anti-Polar Magneto) Legendary Ramp

14. "Discounts" ( Surge, Esme Cuckoo, Iron Man) Legendary

15. Wiccan ( Quicksilver, Domino, Wiccan) Legendary

16. Quickdraw (Maria Hill, Jane Foster Fractured Frontier, Thanos Fractured Frontier) Legendary

17. Zombies (Kitty Pryde, Zombie Mister Fantastic, Zombie Scarlet Witch) Legendary

18. En Sabah Nur (Lockjaw, En Sabah Nur, Blink) Legendary

19. Rocks (Sandstorm, Rhino, Ozymandias) Legendary

20. Superior Iron Man (Surge, Mister Fantastic First Steps, Superior Iron Man) Epic

21. OG Thanos ( Hope Summers, Mockingbird, Thanos) Legendary

Augments

We've got some new augments. Which I'll highlight right off the bat for this run:

Apex - doubles the power of a card if it's the only card at a location

Taunt - Asymmetrical Jean Grey effect, the first card your opponent plays must be to the location the card with Taunt is at.

Unstoppable - combination of Jeff and Colossus effect can be played anywhere, can't be destroyed, and can't have it's power reduced.

Slingshot - moves another card at the location to the right and gives it +1 power.

Full List of Augments:

Afterimage - When this moves, add an unmodified copy to the old location.
Amplify - This card's Ongoing effect applies an additional time.
Apex - Ongoing: If this is your only card here, double its Power.
Clone - Game Start: Shuffle a copy of this into your deck.
Deadlink - On Reveal: Horde +4. (Give your Zombie Horde that much Power.)
Encore - This card's On Reveal ability repeats.
Hot Pursuit - Costs 3 less if a card moved last turn.
Maneuverable - Moveable once.
Mentor - On Reveal: Add this card's Power to the top character of your deck.
Overcharge - On Reveal: If you're winning here next turn, +1 Energy.
Overload - At the start of each turn, +1 Energy if you are winning this location.
Overtime - This card's End of Turn ability repeats.
Quickdraw: Discount - Quickdraw: -2 Cost.
Quickdraw: Power - Quickdraw: On Reveal: +3 Power.
Rally - Ongoing: +1 Power for each of your other cards here.
Reality Warp - On Reveal: Replace this location with a new one.
Regeneration - When Discarded or Destroyed: Regenerate this with +2 Power at a random location.
Regroup - On Reveal: Return your lowest-Cost card here to hand to give it +3 Power.
Reinforce - When this is Empowered, gain an additional +1 Power. (if in hand, in deck, or in play)
Salvage - On Reveal: Destroy your lowest-Power other card here for +4 Power.
Sidekick - On Reveal: Add a random character to your hand. Give it -2 Cost.
Silence - Remove this card's text.
Slingshot - On Reveal: Give one of your other cards here +1 Power and move it to the right.
Superstar - Starts in your opening hand.
Tag In - When one of your cards is destroyed, this replaces it from your hand or deck.
Taunt - On Reveal: Your opponent must play their first card at this location next turn.
Unstoppable - Can be played anywhere. Can't be destroyed or have its Power reduced.
Wakandan Tech - On Reveal: Double this card's Power.

Event Shop Details

Portal Pulls

• 2000 Bits
• Major Victory - Ivan Fomin
• Dr. Strange - Dark Dimension
• Medusa - Sonderflex

Rotating Shop

Event Shop

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:

Friendly Neighborhood Carnage
Cost: 3
Power: 4
On Reveal: Move your other cards here to the right. +2 Power for each moved.

Week 4 brings us the inversion of Carnage reimagined as the Friendly Neighborhood Carnage and while he's still somewhat greedy, he's not eating your cards anymore, merely shoving them into a different locale to gain +2 and that is an important distinction, similar to his destroy counterpart Carnage only gains +2 if a card can be moved.

Synergies

The synergies here are pretty apparent. Carnage fits in well with all sorts of move decks, though his application can of course vary from deck to deck. He also doesn't directly improve the cards he's moving so the scaling cards are scaling normally, depending on who you ask this can be a deal breaker but both Ghost Spider and Iron Fist don't give boosts and are both seen to varying degrees.

In addition, Carnage can also do well in certain mid-range or value oriented shells giving you possible edges in game play by offering point redistribution while leaving a strong card behind to continue contesting a location.

Then there's the potential for LTGM game modes, particularly those featuring Sanctum Scoring where we already know that being able to reposition power can be very strong, being able to move 'movable' cards without using up possible moves is definitely a powerful strategy which can leave us able to get a 3rd or possibly even 4th move. from some cards.

Feedback

The general feedback has been relatively middling to strong though depending on the creator it's worth considering that many are relatively down on anything that isn't directly unseating or challenging Thanos so the question is - would they be higher on Carnage if Thanos weren't the proverbial albatross around the neck of the Snap Meta and if so, how much higher?

Decklists

Batroc

Thanos-less Batroc

Heimdall move

Multiple Man

Multiple Man+ Man-Spider

Summary

Friendly Neighborhood Carnage as our latest Axis Inversion release might be one of the strongest contenders for 'best' Seasonal Pack release of this month, of course we still need to see how well it stacks up against next week's aptly named Scarlet Witch Queen of Chaos. Still a card that clearly fitts into an archetype with a number of already contentious slots can be a hard sell and especially in the current Meta does the psychotic symbiote stand a chance at finding some redemption while on his hero arc in Marvel Snap?

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Friendly Neighborhood Carnage worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Friendly Neighborhood Carnage here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

Work has definitely been catching up with me the last few weeks, as if it's not noticeable, seriously TWO monday's of screwing up the Weekly Release vs Comp Consensus. What a scrub!

Anyways, welcome to the fourth week of the Axis Inversion event, and this week we had a lot of the same as previous weeks except of course Friendly Neighborhood Carnage released this week. And guess what decks have been his best performing! Actually, let's table that and talk about the difficulties I've had the last few weeks and how I plan on approaching things when the meta is 'stale' i.e. very little movement over very long stretches of time.

The main question to pose is how should we be handling things when we've got long stretches of the same decks. I've been trying to keep an eye out for emergent decks but often times we'll know what's good and the ways to attack the good decks. For instance, Thanos is good. Scorpion is a bad deck that does well, before I'm called out on this, what I mean is that I'm in agreement with a number of high level players - you should never be losing more than 2 cubes to this deck. And how do we attack either of these decks? With combo's that trump their output or decks that can hide their power in hand until final turn and blow them out, but in both cases - the good decks and the decks that beat the good decks we can end up in a process of trying to repackage the same commentary each week.

So that got me to thinking, how exactly do I tackle that beast? And I did try a couple things last week, I started doing deck searches ommitting Thanos and Scorpion and if I felt like I still needed more, I excluded other cards as well. And well, it kinda scratched the itch but one thing was bugging me while I was gathering decks I wanted to feature which was leading to most of the decks getting cut, that fact is that Thanos made most of them better it's why I ended up with Ramp, C3, TKO, and Zombie Galacti on the list and only Zombies and Classic Evo, both OG Zombies (Horde) and High Evo are BETTER decks with Thanos than without though you can certainly win with both decks without Thanos.

And so the problem - I can try and post interesting decks without certain cards but it's an inevitable (sigh) truth that Thanos probably makes the deck better. So barring another OTA with no movement against Thanos, I think the basic gist is if I'm posting a deck and it's not a pure synergy or combo list you should assume that Thanos makes the list better.

Editors note: It's funny, I skipped watching any content last night while I was writing the thread and KMBest had a very similar set of thoughts for his Friday video. I think what strikes me is that this thread probably should be more in line with where he's positioned his Friday videos 'interesting decks to play day 1 post OTA' and 'off-meta' for non OTA weeks.

Friendly Neighborhood Carnage

A lot of hopes were hung from this psychotic symbiote 'he'll unlock move in new ways', 'he's gonna be great in Multiple Man', 'he can do cool things for Batroc', 'certainly move bounce can only benefit!' And well, the card does seem pretty good, a situational 3/10 that can help scale your move cards that scale but that thing that I wasn't expecting was one of the things I asked about in the discussion thread: "What if we were using him in 'mid-range' to reposition points?" And that, it would seem for this week is one of his best uses.

Also, I've been using him in HV alongside AP Magneto and En Sabah Nur and it's kind of funny being able to setup positioning on turns 1 and 2 and then us AP Mag and Carnage to swing in and say but what if we shuffled these points around? I can imagine him doing very well in modes featuring Sanctum Scoring.

Friendly Neighborhood THANROC

Thanos Batroc returns and has finally realized that it should cut MJ and Venus for Cosmo/Jugg, Some may point out 'yea but Thanos sucks here you aren't getting all shots' honestly, so long as you can manage 2 or 3 shots anything more is gravy, especially if one of those shots is time shot allowing you to drop Cosmo/Jug on final turn.

'Classic' Heimdall

Not much to say, I say classic Heimdall but this has Spider-Punk over Human Torch and I'm not entirely sold on that being the correct play, but I'm only a dabbler in move so what do I know?

Multiple Men try to carry Isca

Not sure who the players are that are sticking by Isca, but bless their hearts for trying.

Why Not Arishem?

Ok, I admit that I'm phoning this in a bit. But if you're just looking for completions for Carnage, you could do worse.

Superior Iron Man

Still not doing much, and I'll be honest. I'm not blaming Thanos at all for the lack of performance here. SIM was always going to struggle and Thanos is not (entirely) to blame for this. Superior Iron Man is a combo card, he requires you to find ways to cheat his cost, buff him and ideally find ways to either clone him or clone his power. I can also imagine that he was doing FANTASTIC in testing with old Mother Askani, but since her nerf one of his best potential pairings got so much worse.

Anyways, Superior Iron Man has a stupidly strong power but so many needs that the act of trying to figure out how you want to approach him makes him a chore at best and a practice in tedium not worth the effort at worst. At least that's how I'm viewing him and this is coming from someone that absolutely adores janky combos and does like SIM but finds most of his decks too demanding for too little when I could just be doing stronger things with fewer hoops to jump through.

Double it up

Swiped from the KMBest video from Friday (link in comments), I think I posted a similar list in one of the earlier threads this month. This deck is attempting to leverage the Mother Askani synergy but gives a lot of room for doubling things - Juaquin can double Majestic, Hawkeye, Chavez or Nico. Psylocke -> Mother Askani can get you a double of either Iron Men or Shou-Lao. This deck can have surprising output but in my experience piloting it, some of the play-lines are rather complicated. Ultimately, this deck will reward your time spent but don't expect a lot of easy wins until you can identify which play-line you need to be on. Early advice for someone picking this up with no experience: don't play to Shou on turns 1 or 2 unless you've got Shou in hand, just play for your strongest lines.

Anti-Sabah-Thanos

It's probably still the best deck to complete the Superior Iron Man missions with and you can probably even get away with running the deck as-is in High Voltage this weekend. (No really, you can).

Superior Iron One

This deck strikes me as a fairly interesting deck, if you can manage ALL of the buffs on Iron Man you have the possible opportunity to dump a Superior Iron Man + Zola and win two lanes with big Men.

Superior Shou-Lao

It's not really Shou-Lao making this deck Superior, it's Thanos, but let's not look at the titan behind the curtain.

High Voltage

HV is back and not much to say, surprisingly my first 4 of the day were all wins and I'm not proud to admit it was with the En Sabah Nur/AP-Magneto deck subbing out Speed for Carnage for some quick completions.

I forgot to add Superior Iron Man back to the deck otherwise I'd have 4 of those quests done too. Anyways, best decks are gonna be the usual point dump and En Sabah cheat decks. Snap Complete HV decks

Complete aside - but I really do hope Second Dinner revisit their bans in LTGM's sooner rather than later. It's been getting pretty boring that the SAME strategies have been successful between runs of LTGM's. At one point they were varying the bans for HV but seem to have just settled on the same list without bothering to revisit to keep the modes at least feeling somewhat fresh and this isn't the only mode where that's the case. Team Clash did add two cards but has otherwise been essentially the same mode for the last few runs (Lady Bullseye vs Everything else).

What should we be playing on Ladder and Conquest?

Rehashing from the intro - honestly, so long as you can protect your important lanes with a low-power card to protect high value targets you can play just about anything that puts points on the board against Thanos. The only real headaches are going to be the AP/Magneto list which has so many variations that it is admittedly hard to know exactly 'what' their output is going to be - when I'm on that deck I'm not highrolling for things like Crossbones + Ikari, I'm looking for late scams like Caliban, En Sabah, and Captain Marvel or worst case Jane + Karen. That's not to say Crossbones/Ikari isn't bad, they are good in their own right but I want my power to be more predictable for me 'if I play Magneto in X place and get Captain Marvel she covers me in X and Y position.'

Ultimately, all of the good decks remain good and yes, there are plenty of decks forgoing Thanos that are better with him slotted in but that perform well enough without that while you're leaving points on the table. Just when you're in the mirror and your opponent has the Thanos, they'll be advantaged but you can play around that, either leave on a snap or take advantage if their draws force them to stumble.

Negative

We got a Mr. Negative list last week as part of the login calendar and were blessed with Gorr a few days later. Fun fact I've got an 'F2P' account that I started with the logins last month and my goal was to hit infinite off of the login decks and what I could put together. Mission Success, and the deck that did it? This Negative List I don't have Zola yet, kinda sad cuz I passed on him early on without considering I might be able to put together a deck using him especially since this last week I was encountering a ton of destroy and being able to Knull -> Mystique would have been FANTASTIC.

Anyways, depending on your meta, Negative can be good and at least in my experience Scorpion seems to be on the downturn and NO ONE is running MMM so you might be able to steal some 4's and 8's if you're able to catch people off guard or disrespecting you, just be wary of location control.

Sinister Destroy

Now this is an interesting consideration so long as you don't draw into Sinister and Zola although drawing into Zola alone could still work if you can manage a turn 6 6+1 and have a big Deadpool. Oh the potential spice!

En Sabah DRAAAAACUUUUULAAAAAAAAAAA

I do love a dracula dump deck even though they never work for me. AP Magneto does some extra heavy lifting and can help us clear our hand to ensure that we're getting only the biggest and coolest cards for our Drac.

Budget Wongers

Have you ever wanted to play Marvel Snap the Wong Way? Well here's your chance. Classic wongers stuff here, you've got a definitive ceiling of course with Wong -> White Tiger -> Odin and frankly I'd want to find a cut to fit in Zola to enhance the Black Panther lines but this is your quintessential low CL deck that dies to a single tech card: Cosmo.

(1) Ant Man\n# (1) America Chavez\n# (1) Iceman\n# (1) J. Jonah Jameson\n# (1) Mantis\n# (1) Black Cat\n# (1) Hydra Bob\n# (3) Cosmo\n# (3) Shanna\n# (4) Ka-Zar\n# (5) Blue Marvel\n# (6) Aurora\n

\nS1pyNSxDc201LFNobm42LEJsTXJ2bEEsQXJyNixBbnRNbjYsQW1yY0NodnpELEhkckJiOCxCbGNrQ3Q4LEpKbmhKbXNuRCxNbnRzNixJY21uNg==\n#\n# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

Fairly standard Kazoo deck featuring Aurora for extra boost. This list is great with Cosmo as you are very capable of gaining priority to disrupt jubilee/thanos/arnim zola plans. Strong draws will produce 25-30 in each lane which is usually enough to overpower most midrange decks. Loses to killmonger, but haven't seen it yet.

Feel free to change out the 1 mana cards for whatever you like, aiming for a mixture of ongoing, on reveal and end of turn. Avoid spider ham as you don't have time to use him unless you draw him on turn 1.

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