I should have taken a picture when I drew the -3 power, Sanctum Sanctorum, and Dream Dimension
I’ve also had Morag, Westview, and Luke’s Bar where Westview turned into Morag
Bleh. Nasty locations.
At least in those cases, you had somewhere to play! In the above situation, we both had to wait until turn 6, and then play one card which would hopefully win the game.
My “solution” to Plunder Castle has been to take Leader out of my “just in case” slot in my Surfer deck and drop in Heimdall. It sorta works sometimes! I’m not stealing 8 cubes off anyone, but I have had a couple fun wins, and I like to imagine my opponents are at least a little bit surprised.
What’s your Surfer deck? I don’t even have leader in the first place, but curious about your version of the Heimdall Maneuver (that was someone’s name for a deck where Heimdall moves a Destroy Deck around).
I’ve just been doing cheap “play 1-2 cost cards on curve into unrevealed locations” or “play Doctor Doom”. I’ve also messed with people by playing Wave on turn 5 to deny their 6-drop, and I read a comment about having Iron Fist punch Spidey into it on turn 5.
Current version:
Wolfsbane, Rogue, Mr. Fantastic, and Scorpion have rotated in and out in different combinations for two slots. Rogue is probably the least versatile in this group but she was clutch in disrupting big Wong plays. Without her I’m back to retreating on most Wong setups.
This used to have Leader instead of Heimdall, and with Leader being changed it was a quick lazy move to put in Heimdall for the potential of Plunder Castle hijinks. Leader wasn’t key, but he was one of the better counters for Death decks where I could see Death + some other heavy hitter coming on turn 6.
The most obvious improvement here (to me) would be Maximus instead of Sword Master in the role of another relatively high power 3-cost. One more power than SM, and generally a safer downside. Hate to lose SS on an early SM play, for example.
Thanks, lots to chew on! I don’t have Thor or Polaris, but can slot in Maximus. Maybe also Cosmo as a way to shutdown Wong, and Vulture to get both a Surfer buff and a Heimdall buff.
My main Surfer deck, but before the update and the new location was below:
I’ve been trying these two variants (LOL) lately to incorporate some recent pulls:
Almost as soon as I shared my surfer deck I started thinking about how much work it needed. Here’s a version I’ve been running with this morning with decent success.
Out:
- Heimdall, obviously. He was fun for a cute win or two with Plunder Palace, but truly wasn’t actually worth it even then, and without that featured location has no place anywhere near this deck.
- Leech. I started thinking about this one, and Leech has some utility on his own, even in a deck he doesn’t otherwise synergize with. You can still back plenty of people down on turn 5 if the 3-cost surfer plays you want aren’t going your way. But Leech was really effective with a Leader as a backup. It was nice to know that if they didn’t back down when their hand got Leech’d, they were about to just drop a bunch of inert power which you could simply copy. With Leader being nerfed, Leech loses more of his utility than I first realized.
- Scorpion, because I just needed the room. Weakens early tempo/disruption/power, but hopefully offset by extra Surfer plays later.
- Sword Master. Even riskier now that he discards the wrong thing. When I get Maximus, he’ll probably come in for the “heavy hitting 3-cost” role SM was in (probably ditching Killmonger or Rhino at that point).
In:
- Psylocke, Absorbing Man, Wong. Ideally a Psylocke on turn five sets up a surprise Wong + Surfer or Surfer + Absorbing Man for a double Surfer effect on turn six. Frequently this will mean no plays on turns one and two, so the best positioning for this seems to be two 3-power in one lane (ideally Thor and Polaris or whoever have the most base power you can manage) and Brood in another. Spread yourself much thinner and even a surprise double Surfer risks not winning your non-Brood location.
You have some flexibility if you don’t draw the Psylocke, you could just drop Wong on turn five and then another 3-cost + Surfer on six. A little riskier because it tips your hand and leaves Wong vulnerable to disruption, although sometimes you also scare off an opponent, which can be good or bad depending on the cubes on the line.
A Surfer on five and an Absorbing Man on six can also get you the double surfer if you don’t have Wong or Psylocke available, but this probably isn’t going to be enough since it means a pretty weak turn six outside of the second Surf. I’m not sure if I’ll keep AM in this deck, but I just unlocked him yesterday, and if you do have Psylocke when you need her, giving you two options for a double-Surfer on turn six is nice. AM also gives you a little flexibility on a crowded board because you don’t need to play AM + SS on the same lane (like Wong + SS), and slightly more power overall since AM is stronger than Wong, and the AM’s copied SS effect will give a little boost to the SS you just dropped, whereas a SS that’s doubled by Wong doesn’t buff itself.
Also if you have another energy boost from the board, sometimes you can pull off a third SS If you get Wong + SS+ AM in the same lane. Note that AM’s copy ability is what’s doubled, not the ability that was the target of his copy, so AM only adds one additional Surfer effect instead of two, but it’s still fun.
Also also, sometimes you can drop Mjolnir on Wong for another huge surprise power push. - Rhino, who’s proving surprisingly useful at taking the sting out of some bad luck with locations–or even facilitating sneaky plays. Twice this morning I’ve Rhino’d a Limbo on turn six to leave the opponent unprepared for the end of the game and given me the win, but that’s the exception. Lots of more mundane utility in making the board less hostile, or occasionally countering a Storm play.
omg, I just spent hours trying to figure out who the hell 'Wizard" was.
I’m back to my Patriot/Kaz deck and doing pretty well with it. Better than my other Kazoo and Surfer decks.
Keep Killmonger, ditch Rhino. For location disruption Storm is better in Surfer anyhow. I get you like using Rhino to counter Storm, but Storm-Brood is just too powerful.
Countering Storm with Rhino is satisfying, but the exception. Countering all the other annoying locations is much more useful. And if you’re pulling off a double Surfer, you usually don’t need Storm’s help to win your Brood lane. Rhino can also help on any turn, Storm needs you to know you’ve got the follow-up in hand, and if you can’t play her until turn six she’s just effectively a Rhino at that point anyway. I can see your argument, but Rhino “feels” more consistent.
All a matter of opinion. I’ve never run into someone hitting a location with Rhino and felt like I was screwed on a lane, absolutely happens multiple times a day with Storm.
Well I finally got tokens for Magneto. Bought him, and my next pull was Sera. Guess I’m pinning that too!
Anyhow first go with a Magneto deck. Also messing around with Kingpin as I’ve been trying to make him work. And honestly? I think he actually does here. Not a rely on card, but a viable one to play that has won me a few games today.
Magneto → Kingpin is absolutely a Established Combo in my experience across both the game and the subreddit. Aero too, which you already have.
I don’t have Kingpin but I’ve had very satisfying curveballs of changing my opponent’s Wong/Mystique play via Magneto.
I also denied a Hela Discard play via Magneto just yesterday.
Oh I had great fun when an opponent was cloning Goblins in what I expect was a Galactus deck. Middle location was Fisk Tower and on turn 5 I Aero pulled his flip (probably Hobgoblin) and destroyed it for an immediate retreat. Kingpin right lane and Fisk Tower mid? DESTROY ALL THE THINGS
But yeah, Kingpin felt very lackluster without Magneto. Sure Aero is great and useful there, but Polaris simply doesn’t feel like a fantastic turn 6 play. Magneto, however, does feel great on turn 6 to empty a lane you had previously played Storm to.
It can feel a little power light, which is why Cosmo and Shang Chi are critical. But being able to dictate when and how my opponent plays cards definitely is effective.
And man screwing them over with their own Cosmo? That is some chefs kiss style there
Best Weirdworld game ever.
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.
Kingpin: coming through even when I don’t play him.
New Wolverine super good times :D
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.
Whew, made it to infinite with a couple of days to spare:
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.
Thanos Fistbump
So with Onslaught Citadel I am seeing a lot of Wongbo plays. It seems the Wong-Gambit is gaining traction, and add in Odin for extra fun times
Well… turns out that Wolverine is the best counter for that. (Never mind how my opponent got Sera turn 4 so played both Odin and Hela turn 6)
I think people will catch wise to this particular trick, but it does come in handy. But I just had to document a 41 point Wolverine.
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.
