Marvel Snap Creator Shares 3 of His Best Decks

There are a ridiculous amount of different decks to be built from Marvel Snap’s vast cast of characters. But which will help you win the most matches? That’s the golden question. We spoke to creator Ben Brode and asked him for the inside scoop on three of his best decks as well as what his favourite overall card is.

Deck 1 - The “Omega” Deck

“Okay, so the deck I was playing earlier today is an Omega Red deck, and it's a sneaky deck”, says Brode. “It has a combo. The combo is three cards. It's Omega Red, Iron Man, and Onslaught. With that combo you have just a humongous amount of power in a location because Omega Red is five power, Iron Man doubles it, and then Onslaught doubles the double again. So it's just like you're going to win that location for sure. But Onslaught also doubles Omega Red's power. Omega Red's ability is if you're winning by 10 or more, then you get plus four power to the other locations. With Onslaught, it's plus eight power to the locations.”

“So here's what the deck does. On turn two, plays Invisible Woman somewhere. And then on turn four, five, and six, it plays the combo. But your opponent doesn't see it coming at all, so they don't know they've lost that location. They also think that they're going to win one of these other two locations perhaps, but you have actually eight more power at those locations than they think you do. And so you only have turn one and three basically to do anything besides Invisible Woman, Omega Red, Iron Man, and Onslaught.”

“So on turn one I play like Ebony Maw somewhere, and on turn three I just play like Punisher, or maybe Mister Fantastic. Or just a one drop and a two drop to try and just get as much power as I can somewhere, to make it so that my plus eight power will eventually win it. It's really fun, and Invisible Woman has some really cool other kind of combos. On turn two I could play Invisible Woman, and then on turn three I could play Ebony Maw there, and his downside doesn't matter at all because he doesn't get revealed until the end of the game. So I get seven power for one energy, but I don't have to worry about his downside.”

Deck 2 - The “Butthead” Deck

“Okay, so this deck used to be called Dickwad, but my son was offended, so he made me rename it to Butthead”, chuckles Brode. “So here's the deck. It's a lot of really, really mean cards. So it plays The Hood and Viper. So I play The Hood and then give you The Hood. It plays Debris, so it fills the board with rocks. It plays Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Polaris, so I'm trying to basically lock you out of some locations. And then it plays a bunch of cards like Spider-Woman, and Hazmat, Black Widow to clog your board and then give all your cards minus power. That’s kind of the shtick.”

“It plays Korg, which is one of my favorite cards because making it draw rocks is very satisfying. And it plays Carnage because I want to make use of - if I can't Viper over Hood, or there's too many rocks on my side because of Debris - I could Carnage away that stuff. Then I also play Nova just because, you know, I'm playing Carnage, why not?”

Deck 3 - The “Beast” Deck

“So I was experimenting with this deck”, explains Brode. “I don't know how good it is, but I was messing around with it. I was trying to make a Beast and Falcon deck, so the deck is a lot of cheap cards. The most expensive card in the deck is cost three. There's no four, five, or six cost cards in this deck.”

“So Beast returns your other cards to your hand and they cost one less, so you can make one cost cards free that way. Then, Falcon will return them again and they'll still be free. So you can play them multiple times. I'm playing Iceman. I'm playing Korg. I'm playing Elektra. I'm playing Hood. And The Collector, because I bounce the cards back to my hand all the time. Black Widow is really, really fun to play multiple times, because you can stop your opponent from drawing a card ever again by continuously playing Black Widow over and over. I'm playing Ironheart, Nakia, and Debris, just some simple on-reveal cards that would benefit from being played multiple times.”

“So you don't need a four, five, and six cost card because you're playing the cards, you know? You have lots of cards because you're bouncing them over and over again. What's very rude is playing Black Widow, and then Iceman, and then catching the widow's bite with Iceman. You make them create or draw cards again.”

Ben’s Favorite Card

“My favorite card is Mysterio. Mysterio is actually one of the cards that were one of the earliest cards we designed over four years ago. But it really kind of highlighted what's really fun about the game, which is the mind games, right?”

When you play Mysterio he's a five-power card for two energy. Very powerful. But he disguises himself, and he plays two other disguises to the other locations, so your opponent doesn't know where you played Mysterio. They just see three Mysterio question mark cards. And they have to kind of guess like, "Where would he have played that real Mysterio?"

“You can sometimes make it obvious, but then actually do the really unobvious thing, the really bad play. And they start playing around like, ‘Oh, well he definitely would've played it like... There's Kyln, and so obviously he played at the Kyln because he needed to get some power there before the location locked down’. And you're like, ‘That's what you think,’ and you played around that. But in the end, I actually had him over here. I sacrificed Kyln to make you play really badly in the future. So there are some really interesting mind games with that card. I just think it's fascinating.”

So, those are three decks that Marvel Snap creator Ben Brode is currently playing with. Hopefully they’ve given you some ideas of your own as you battle for dominance in the Marvel Card Universe.

Simon Cardy is the proud owner of a disgusting Onslaught-centered Ongoing deck. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon.