Not pictured: my opponent had priority turn 6. They played Lockjaw turn 4 on Muir island. Pulled Vision. Some things happened and net result is turn 6 I play Magneto right, their play nets with Juggernaut kicking me left, Polaris pulling my Sunspot from mid, and after Juggernaut boots me it flips into Kingpin from their deck (because they had played Kingpin the turn before so it moved into their deck by Lockjaw rules). They also have Thor left.
So my Magneto is mid when he reveals, with Vision there. Magneto pulls Kingpin first, and erases everything in glorious chaos. Funniest damn game ever.
I had other cards in play, but you can see the Citadel combo my opponent set up. Plus a very hungry danger room (it destroyed 4 of my cards, none of them were ones I want it to destroy either!). But lol nope, as long as when the music stopped it wasn’t on the bridge I would win this match.
I’d been close-ish before and then slid back down, but Onslaught’s Citadel as a hot location really made the climb smooth this time around. The 78 games I played since the start of the event got me a net 76 cubes, which is way higher than my usual per-game rate. It wasn’t even that I’d made a special deck for it, but my usual Zabu control deck was just on fire. Even drawing Zabu on round 5 was not a problem, it was rare that the opponent had something on the board that I didn’t have the solutions for.
Rock Slide is there just for the stats, if I were tuning the deck specifically for this hot location I’d put in Omega Red for the ability instead. The intended use of Typhoid Mary is to debuff it with your own Enchantress, which is a bit clumsy normally but amazing when you’ve got a double Zabu.
I like how the hot and featured locations go through an accelerated metagame evolution process like that. People figuring out stuff that works, those tricks spreading and others needing to learn to counter it once it gets common enough, etc.
I think I saw a single Wong-Gambit on that whole climb, and Cosmo’d it before it got off a shot. But it’s super easy to believe that somebody found that combo works well with this location, and it just spread quickly from there.
It’s not great how for the last two months the new locations have been either increasingly extreme constraints on playing cards, or just straight out free boosts to the self-destroy archetype, primarily Death. But that’s just a problem with the execution, not the idea.
In what I assume was not just a personal first, but a first for all of Marvel Snap, Angel was useful. My opponent stole a win after setting up a board full of fragile stuff with Squirrel Girl and some others—they had a full board, literally no where to play on turn six. Normally I would’ve backed out without pulling my Surfer in this game, but this seemed like a lock for me. I had a Killmonger and had checked my math. Never would’ve occurred to me an Angel would come soaring in and catch all the buffs to win them a lane. Well played.
I tried playing around with this but without Daredevil or Omega Red, neither of which I have. Apparently Scorpion and Enchantress aren’t acceptable subs because I just got smoked.
Yeah Omega Red can easily be swapped for any other high power 4 drop. Crossbones, Jessica Jones, White Queen all should be fine. But the professor really needs the Daredevil here I think. Without that you’re better with a different 5 drop entirely. His job is 100% to either snipe locations like the Altar of Sacrifice or to use DD to read a location to steal.
Spider-Man could work instead of Professor X? With Storm and Cosmo there’s already a ton of lockdown, so Spidey locking down just the one lane for round 6 will constrain them a ton.
Also, the obvious counterplay to Kingpin is for the opponent to just play their cards on that location in round 6. Spider-Man can counter that. Kingpin on 3, Spiderman on the Kingpin lane in 5, and then Aero or Magneto on 6 on the same lane.
As for what to put sub for DD for a 2-cost, it feels like Mojo would have good synergy with Magneto (use the pulled-in cards to trigger Mojo’s ability). Kraven too, but might telegraph your gameplan a bit too much? Invisible Woman would be nice for hiding Kingpin, but would make it a Cosmo magnet.
(Man, the deckbuilding in Snap is just so good. It’s just so much easier and satisfying to theorycraft a 12 card deck that you’ll see the majority of in a game, than a 30-50 card one like in most CCGs.)
Yeah there are several ways to counter this, filling the location does work, but at the cost of me dictating where you play to greater or lesser degrees. Also in most cases one Magneto has more power than 2-3 cards totaling 6 cost.
What I like to do is turn 3 play Storm or Kingpin, follow up with Juggernaut in that lane (winning it outright with Storm or keeping it more clear with Kingpin). This often means that if that lane is still open, they will try and play their turn 5, usually giving me a lane opening for Professor X. Then I can Magneto either into the Kingpin lane, or pull cards away from the Storm lane.
It doesn’t always work, and flexibility is key. But generally between all the cards that move opponent cards, or force them into/ away from certain lanes there is an opportunity there.
Brood-Surfer is, as always, the biggest failure point. In theory X and Cosmo can negate that, but in practice the Sera-Surfer deck is still the one that is most likely to beat you. No shock as it is hands down the best deck in the game by a fair margin (only Darkhawk-Zabu comes close)
Yep, this was more brainstorming what the variant of this without DD could look like given @ineffablebob’s card pool, not a comment on the efficacy of the original deck :)
(But actually… You probably have priority on Surfer for round 6. A Kingpin lane that the opponent can’t play on + priority would basically be a guaranteed kill with Aero before Surfer procs…)
Get your Zabu Surfing fun in when you can! Offhand, I think I’ll go refine a Surfer Patriot deck, and this probably kills my 4-cost heavy deck where I use Drac, Omega Red, Jubilee, Hell Cow and Ghost Rider to drop crazy power.
Then again, I just started using Valkyrie for a Cerebro3 deck with decent results so this proposed nerf is timely as I was already weaning off those two cards.
Ending Zabu season at rank 62. Last hurrah of Zabu Surfer deck for me today.
Me at the end of every Marvel Snap season: “Well I easily passed Level 50 on the season pass…the regular season pass should be fine for next season. I don’t need to spend $15.”
Me when the new season starts: “One deluxe season pass please! Here is my $15!”
I have absolutely zero pity for that one. Surfer still absurdly strong.
Honestly there is one further thing Surfer needs, and that is Broodlings. They should be zero cost. That would alleviate the biggest source of Surfer abuse, without hurting other archetypes that use it, like Patriot.
Yep, I seem to have support cards out the wazoo, but getting the key components that make a deck actually work is another story. The one big exception is Sera, got her early on and have been riding that Sera Control deck ever since. Other stuff I build is fun for change of pace, but all are missing a key card or two and thus not anywhere near the win rate.
The Zabu and Silver Surfer nerfs are live, which are probably pretty reasonable changes, but now that they can push card changes without an app update it should absolutely throw a pop-up alert in your face when that happens. Currently no communication I could find in the game, and even a rotating notice on the home screen would be easy to miss.
