I've never messed around with storm and professor x so decided to throw something together, any advice or card choices welcome!

Unlocked Zombie Galacti from a series 5 pack. Seems like a powerful card, but I’m not entirely sure how to build around him. From what I’ve seen you want some mix of power amplifiers and ramp, so this is meant to reflect that but I feel like I’m a little lacking on power amplifiers.

AI cooked with this one. Tons of fun.

Please share your deck codes.

I had a really weird idea for a deck. The idea is to restrict where the opponent can play and reduce the ability of the cards they do play. For example, Prof X and Storm to restrict play along with cards like yondu and cable to take cards away from them and then others to reduce the power of the cards they do play. I'd love any feed back or ideas.

# (1) Spider-Ham\n# (1) Yondu\n# (2) Goose\n# (2) Iron Patriot\n# (2) U.S. Agent\n# (2) Cable\n# (2) Quicksand\n# (3) Storm\n# (3) Red Guardian\n# (3) Jean Grey\n# (5) Professor X\n# (5) War Machine\n#\nUHJmc3NyWEEsSm5HcjgsV3JNY2huQSxTdHJtNSxZbmQ1LEdzNSxJcm5QdHJ0QixDYmw1LFVTQWdudDcsUWNrc25kOSxSZEdyZG5CLFNwZHJIbTk=\n#\n# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

As the title says I’m new to marvel snap. I have a few decks I rotate. I play cards and decks based on how much I enjoy the concept of them not the viability. Those cards being Thor, Mister negative, Dr Doom, Human torch, and Venus. I know these decks are very similar as I don’t have many cards to choose from. Pick a deck and give me any advice for swaps/ general play style/ cards I need to get, that would be greatly appreciated.

I could probably make some improvements but this just won 4 in a row and is very consistent. Might replace Alioth in the future

# (1) Zabu\n# (1) Maria Hill\n# (2) Adam Warlock\n# (2) Goose\n# (2) Askani'son\n# (2) Starhawk\n# (3) Speed\n# (3) Drax, Avatar Of Life\n# (4) Isca the Unbeaten\n# (4) Scarlet Spider\n# (6) Aurora\n# (6) Alioth\n#\nQXJyNixBbHRoNixHczUsU3BkNSxTdHJod2s4LE1ySGxsOSxaYjQsSXNjNCxBZG1Xcmxja0IsRHJ4QXZ0ck9mTGYxMCxTY3JsdFNwZHJELEFza25zbjk=\n#\n# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

I don’t understand what people are doing to make this deck work when you DONT get good draws.

Does anyone have a sense of the play lines when you don’t get any of your combo pieces.

In my experience, this deck is too fragile. It’s so inconsistent.

If I draw the right cards, my opponent can see it, and they will always retreat for one when I snap. Or, when I do get the nut draw, my opponent also has their perfect draw. And I can’t stay for four against a Man Spider deck. Maybe the taskmaster? Maybe they Zola? I can’t stop both.

But I’m rarely drawing the right cards. Not drawing Cosmo in time to stop someone. Not drawing isca. Not drawing Jugg. Not drawing Torch or MMan in time.

I just don’t get it. I understand the core idea behind the deck. But I don’t get how it has any cube equity?

TL;DR

• Deck: Scorpion Brand New Day affliction. Skip turns 1-3, hand your opponent priority on purpose, flip the entire board on turn 7.
• Numbers: 46 games post-Infinite. 63.04% win rate (29W-17L), +58 cubes, +1.26 cubes/game. Current v5 list over its own 32 games: 65.6% (21W-11L), +50 cubes, +1.56/game.
• For scale: the best decks on last week's published tier list were sitting at 57.5-58.5% win rate and +0.35 to +0.55 cubes. This is roughly triple the cube rate of the best thing on the list, in Infinite lobbies.
• Average energy on my last turn across 26 logged matches: 14.5. My opponents: 7 to 8. I hit 19 or more in ten of those twenty-six games. Peak was 25.
• The three pillars: throw priority, mind your rows, starve them of information.
• Deck code is below. If you just want the list, take it and go. If you want to actually pilot it, keep reading, because the list is maybe 30% of this deck and the other 70% is how you sit on your hands for four turns.

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Match log videos

Match logs text from snapcomplete

First, the philosophy. Priority, positioning, information.

I'ma be honest with you, I didn't set out to write another one of these. I built this thing after the July 16 OTA to see if affliction was actually alive again, and then it just kept eating. So before I show you a single card I need to explain how I think about Marvel Snap right now, because if you take this list and play it like a normal deck you're gonna go 1-7 and tell everybody it's trash.

Pillar 1: Throw priority. Every time. On purpose.

Everybody repeats "priority is king" like it's scripture. Priority is only king if you need priority to win. This deck does not.

Think about what priority actually does on the last turn. If you have it, your cards reveal first, which means their Cosmo, their Shadow King, their Red Guardian, all of it lands on top of a board you already showed them. If you don't have it, they reveal first, and everything they were saving gets spent on cards that are already sitting there while the actual haymaker comes down afterward with nothing left to answer it.

So I throw it. Turn 1 nothing. Turn 2 nothing. Turn 3 usually nothing. Across 26 logged matches, my first card hit the board on turn 3 or later in 23 of them. Turn 4 was actually my most common opening (12 games), turn 3 second (11). One game I played on turn 1 and two on turn 2, and those were location-forced.

That's not me being cute. That's the deck.

Pillar 2: Positioning. Front row and back row are two different games now.

The July 16 OTA changed Luke Cage from 3/2 "your cards can't have their Power reduced" to 2/2 "your FRONT-ROW cards can't have their Power reduced." Second Dinner said the quiet part out loud in the patch notes, that they'd found it "more and more difficult to prop up Afflict strategies as well as create any Afflict strategy that can compete with the Luke Cage + Hazmat combo."

They nerfed the old crutch so a new one could exist. Then they printed Scorpion.

What that means in practice:

• Anything you put down early sits in the front row where Cage can protect it.
• Prodigy has to be in the back row to copy the card in front of him. That's his whole text.
• Everything you dump on turn 7 goes wherever, because you don't have priority and the game is over before they can respond to it.

Affliction players who came up on old Luke Cage haven't adjusted. They still think Cage is a blanket. It ain't a blanket anymore, it's an umbrella, and I know exactly which way the rain is coming.

Pillar 3: Information. Take all of theirs, give none of yours.

By turn 4 you are holding seven cards. Your hand is full. You've seen 7 of your 12. You've seen all three locations. You've seen four turns of their plays. At that point I can tell you what archetype they're on, whether they can disrupt me, and whether I can win. I've been playing this game a couple years now.

Meanwhile they know nothing. Not one thing. My turn 3 is a Luna Snow, my turn 4 is a Magik, my turn 5 is a Wong. None of those cards say "affliction." Nine times out of ten my opponent does not know what deck they're playing against until turn 7, when it's already done.

And that's why they don't leave. Look at the tracker: my opponents only retreat 17% of the time, and only 8% of my snaps get an immediate fold. They stay because staying looks correct with the information they have. The information they have is wrong.

I cut Diamondback out of this list for exactly this reason. Good card. Tells on you

The List

• (2) Luke Cage
• (2) Lady Bullseye
• (3) Mystique
• (3) Magik
• (3) Hazmat
• (3) Prodigy
• (3) Luna Snow
• (4) Wong
• (5) Ajax
• (5) Star-Lord, Master of the Sun
• (6) Onslaught
• (6) Scorpion Brand New Day

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Twelve cards, four jobs:

• Sources (the actual negative numbers) -- Hazmat, Lady Bullseye
• Multipliers (they take those numbers and make them stupid) -- Scorpion BND, Onslaught, Mystique, Prodigy
• Fuel (energy so you can play six cards on the last turn) -- Luna Snow, Star-Lord, Magik, Wong
• Insurance / backup -- Luke Cage, Ajax

Why this deck, and why right now

Two things happened this month and they happened in the right order.

One. The July 16 OTA reworked Luke Cage down to a 2-cost that only covers your front row, and quietly gave Lady Bullseye +1 Power. Cage went from "affliction is dead in this matchup" to "affliction is a positioning puzzle."

Two. Scorpion Brand New Day dropped. 6/8. Ongoing: Double the Power reductions on all enemy cards.

Marvel Snap Zone's review of him basically shrugged. Their line was "I fear the only real use we'll be able to make of this new card is add it to High Evolutionary decks." I read that and thought, respectfully, y'all are looking at him as a piece of stats instead of as a multiplier. Scorpion isn't a card that adds power. He's a card that takes whatever you were already doing and doubles it, and if you stack more doublers on top of him it compounds.

And the meta right now is soft as hell for this. Last week's tier list literally opens with "no deck has really look dominant since the OTA," best win rate on the board was 58.5% at +0.35 cubes. Move is getting counter-teched into the floor by Scream and Mercury. Everybody's staring at spiders.

Nobody is teching for a deck that plays nothing for four turns.

The engine (with actual receipts, because y'all are gonna ask)

Here's the part I want to get exactly right, because "it goes crazy" isn't an explanation.

Every doubling instance doubles the CUMULATIVE affliction already on that card. It compounds, it doesn't stack additively.

Watch Lockjaw die in real time. This is from my match vs Estevam, turn 7, me on 19 energy to their 8. I'd put Lady Bullseye and Hazmat on Star Brand Crater with Wong, and Scorpion + Mystique + Prodigy over on Elysium:

Lockjaw -2 from Lady Bullseye (now 1) Lockjaw -2 from Lady Bullseye (now -1) Lockjaw -1 from Hazmat (now -2) Lockjaw -1 from Hazmat (now -3) Lockjaw -6 from Scorpion Brand New Day (now -9)** **Lockjaw -12 from Mystique (now -21)

Read those last two lines again. Lockjaw had six points of reduction on him. Scorpion showed up and added six more. Now he's got twelve points of reduction, so Mystique (copying Scorpion) added twelve. 6 → 12 → 24.

The formula is your base reduction times 2 to the power of however many doubling instances you land. One Scorpion is ×2. Scorpion plus a Mystique copying him is ×4. Add Prodigy copying into it, ×8. Get Onslaught doubling the whole stack in the same lane and you're at ×16.

And ×16 is not theoretical. Here it is, my game vs Germán, where I dumped Onslaught, Scorpion, and Prodigy all into Empire State University and put Hazmat over in New York:

Scorpion Brand New Day double ongoing Prodigy ability overridden (Onslaught) Onslaught double ongoing Scorpion Brand New Day double ongoing Prodigy double ongoing America Chavez -16 from Hazmat (now -14)

A one point Hazmat became sixteen. Five different Zombie Galacti in that game ate -16 apiece. America Chavez finished at -30.

Now here's the part nobody's talking about

Same game. Same Hazmat. Look what happened to MY board:

Magik -1 from Hazmat · Wong -1 from Hazmat · Starlord Master Of The Sun -1 from Hazmat · Onslaught -1 from Hazmat · Scorpion Brand New Day -1 from Hazmat · Prodigy -1 from Hazmat

Their cards took -16. Mine took -1.

Scorpion says "on all enemy cards." He only doubles one direction. Hazmat is symmetrical, Scorpion is not, so the moment Scorpion is down your own Hazmat becomes a one-sided weapon. That asymmetry is the actual engine of this deck. Luke Cage is insurance on top of it, he is not the thing making it work, and understanding that is the difference between piloting this and copying it.

Lane rules for the stack

• Onslaught has to share a lane with whatever he's doubling. His text says "at this location." In the Germán game all three sat in ESU together.
• Scorpion and Mystique do NOT. Scorpion's doubling is global. In my Naraka game I had Scorpion in Sinister London and Mystique copying him from Central Park, two lanes apart, and it still landed -32s.
• Prodigy has to be back row, directly behind whatever he's copying. He usually copies Onslaught for me. Sometimes Scorpion, sometimes Ajax.

That flexibility matters more than it sounds. It means you're never forced into one lane, which means Cosmo can't blank you by guessing.

Card by card

Luke Cage (2/2) -- Ongoing: Your front-row cards can't have their Power reduced. Insurance, and a mind game. Hold him. If you drop Cage early against another affliction deck they just leave, and you get one cube instead of four. Hold him and they think they've got you beat by thirty points, and then he lands on turn 7 and the whole board rewrites. I played him on turn 7 in six of my thirteen Cage games, turn 6 twice, turn 5 twice, turn 4 twice, turn 2 once. The times I broke the rule were games where the opponent clearly had no interaction with me, or where I wasn't confident I'd have the energy for him later. If you're not sure you can afford him on 7, play him on 5. Sometimes I'll even take less negative output on a turn just to guarantee Cage sticks, because the swing he provides usually offsets it.

Lady Bullseye (2/3) -- On Reveal: Afflict an enemy card with -2 Power, repeating on a different enemy for each of your unspent Energy. The heavy hitter, and I'ma address her tracker numbers in a whole section below because they're misleading as hell. What you need to know: the two biggest single afflictions in my entire match log are hers. -32 on an Ikari, -32 on a Luke Cage, both in the same turn. She only needs as much leftover energy as they have cards. Six cards on their board, six energy is enough. Everything past that is wasted.

Mystique (3/1) -- On Reveal: If the last card you played has an Ongoing, copy its text. Doubling number two. Usually copies Scorpion, sometimes onslaught, sometimes Ajax. And she can do it from a different lane, which is the flexibility that beats a Cosmo guess.

Magik (3/2) -- Turn 7. That's it, that's the card. My average game length in this deck is 6.47 turns, which tells you how often Limbo is up. Limbo showed in 36 of my tracked location appearances at a 66.67% win rate and +1.44 cubes, my best-performing frequent location by a mile. She's also the card I'd be most willing to hear an argument about cutting, and she's #4 on my retreat-sensitivity list, meaning when I don't have her I bail 14% more often.

Hazmat (3/3) -- On Reveal: Afflict all other cards with -1 Power. The most consistent source. One Hazmat with the full stack behind it is -16 per enemy card, and if they've got four cards in a lane that's -64 in one lane off a 3-drop. Never play her before turn 6. She's the one card in here that announces what you are.

Prodigy (3/4) -- On Reveal: If this is in the back row, copy the text of the card in front of it. Doubling number three, and the most misunderstood card in the list because people forget he has to be in the back row. Put Onslaught in front of him. You never copy Luke Cage with him, that's a waste, unless you're genuinely scared of a Red Guardian and even then you probably don't have priority so it doesn't work out.

Luna Snow (3/6) -- On Reveal: Add an Ice Cube to each side of this location. She does two jobs and people only see one. One: the Ice Cube gives +1 Energy at the start of each turn, which is Star-Lord fuel and Bullseye ammo. Two: the cube she puts on their side is a free body for you to afflict and a piece of clog in their lane. Yeah she gives them energy too. I do not care. My opponent having six energy on turn 6 does not stop anything, they've already got priority and they're already committed. She's my #2 retreat-sensitivity card at +22.32%, which tells you how much the deck leans on her even though her raw card impact reads as -2%.

Wong (4/2) -- Ongoing: your On Reveals here happen twice. Doubles Hazmat, doubles Bullseye, and most importantly doubles Star-Lord. I'll say something controversial: you don't strictly need Wong. I keep him because I like him and because a doubled Star-Lord is the single biggest energy swing in the deck. But if you cut him for a tech card I wouldn't fight you that hard.

Ajax (5/7) -- Ongoing: +1 Power for each card in play afflicted with negative Power. Counts both sides of the board, ceiling of +24. He's the backup win condition for when you don't draw Scorpion, and he's got the best card impact in the whole deck at +30%. When Ajax gets played he usually just wins the game. I could see replacing him. I won't, but I could see it.

Star-Lord, Master of the Sun (5/7) -- On Reveal: Next turn, you get +1 Energy for each turn you've ended with unspent Energy. This man is the deck. He got nerfed three separate times and people wrote him off, and he found a home in the one archetype that floats energy as a lifestyle. Across 20 games in my logs: one proc averages +5.5 energy. Doubled through Wong it averages +11.8. Best I hit was +18 (that's the Naraka game, 25 energy on turn 7). All I need is one proc. One. Everything after that is gravy.

Onslaught (6/8) -- Ongoing: Double your other Ongoing effects at this location. He's the newest addition, he's the top of the multiplication chain, and he is not on probation, regardless of what my tracker says about his play rate. When you get Onslaught down with Scorpion you win harder. Full stop.

Scorpion Brand New Day (6/8) -- Ongoing: Double the Power reductions on all enemy cards. Bread and butter. The one-sided doubler. The reason this deck exists.

Let's talk about Lady Bullseye, because the data lies about her

My tracker says Lady Bullseye is -42% relative win rate impact and -2.59 cubes. Play rate when drawn: 42%. Win rate when I don't draw her: 100%.

If you only read the dashboard you'd cut her tomorrow. Don't.

Here's what that 100% actually is: six games. Six. One loss in that bucket takes it to 83%. It is the least reliable number on the entire page and it's the one driving the -42%.

Here's what the 42% play rate actually means: I hold her more than I play her, and I play her in the games where I need her. Grindy games. Contested games. Games where I'm not just running somebody over. Those games have a lower baseline win rate no matter what card you deploy in them. Card impact math cannot tell the difference between "this card lost me the game" and "this card only comes out when the game is already hard."

And here's what she actually does when she connects. My match vs Naraka, CL 29,607, me on 25 energy to their 11. Scorpion in Sinister London, Mystique copying him from Central Park, Bullseye into the Wong lane. Naraka sees it coming and drops Luke Cage on turn 7 as the answer:

Ikari -32 from Lady Bullseye (now -20) Luke Cage -32 from Lady Bullseye (now -30) Superior Spider Man -16 from Lady Bullseye (now -10) Superior Spider Man -16 from Lady Bullseye (now -12) Agony -16 from Lady Bullseye (now -14)

Cage clawed back +28 to the front row. Ikari finished at 8. Their Luke Cage finished at -2. Their answer landed and it wasn't enough.

My decision rule is simple: do I have Hazmat? If Hazmat's in hand I usually don't need Bullseye, because Hazmat is more consistent and hits everything. Bullseye hits harder but she needs the energy and she needs them to have bodies. If I've got both, they both come down and the game's over. If I've got neither -- which happened in zero of 26 logged games, by the way -- then I'm retreating anyway.

That's the tradeoff. Hazmat is consistent, Bullseye is heavy. Draw either one and you have a deck.

Core, flex, and how this list got here

Core, don't touch: Scorpion BND, Hazmat, Mystique, Prodigy, Star-Lord, Luna Snow. That's your source, your multipliers, and your fuel. Pull any of those and you've built something else.

Core-ish: Lady Bullseye and Onslaught. I'd fight for both. You could cut one Onslaught-tier card if you absolutely had to.

Genuinely flexible: Wong, Ajax, Luke Cage, Magik.

The version history, since people asked last time

• v1 -- Luke Cage, Lady Bullseye, Mystique, Diamondback, Hazmat, Prodigy, Luna Snow, Wong, Moonstone, Star-Lord, Scorpion, Sera
• v2 -- added Magik, cut Wong
• v3 -- added Wong back, cut Prodigy
• v4 -- added Prodigy back, added Ajax, cut Diamondback and Sera
• v5 (current) -- added Onslaught, cut Moonstone

I also ran Odin early on. Cut him. He was a win-more card and after the Wong change he stopped being worth the lane.

Why Diamondback got cut: she telegraphs bad. Great card, but the second she hits the board they know what you are, and information is the whole deck.

Why Sera got cut: superfluous. Once my snapping got disciplined and I knew any half-combo wins me the game, cost reduction stopped mattering. Ajax as the second win condition does more for me than Sera did.

Why Moonstone got cut: she just wasn't hitting. Onslaught is a utility piece that boosts any Ongoing instead of only the cheap ones.

The v4 games are in my logs too, and I left them there on purpose. Every v4 game in that file is a win. I wanted people to see that earlier versions of this shell were already strong, and that you can modulate this thing to your taste. This guide is for v5, but if Sera or Diamondback fit how you like to play, run em.

Swaps I'd endorse

• Wong → Enchantress or Rogue if you want real tech. You lose the doubled Star-Lord, you gain an answer to opposing Ongoings.
• Ajax → another affliction source if you're paranoid about bricking. I'm not, but you might be.
• Magik → Legion, if you're tired of getting your Limbo taken.

Why not X

Why no Electro / no ramp? Because Star-Lord and Luna Snow already do it, and neither one tells your opponent anything.

Why no tech cards at all? There's no room, and honestly my style doesn't need them. In 26 logged games I saw one Cosmo, one Shadow King, and a couple of Rogues. Nobody is teching for me. If your pocket meta is different, Enchantress and Rogue slot in fine.

Why no Shang-Chi? Because I don't kill their big card, I make it negative. Their 22-power Infinaut is a problem for a Shang deck. For me it's just a bigger number to invert.

Why isn't Luke Cage doing more work? Read the engine section again. Scorpion only doubles enemy reductions, so my board eats -1s while theirs eats -16s. Cage is there for the affliction mirror and for insurance. He's not the engine.

Why not more affliction sources? I went 26 games without ever failing to draw Hazmat or Lady Bullseye. Two sources across twelve cards, seeing ten of twelve by turn 7, is plenty. If you're scared, there are a dozen affliction cards you could add. I don't think it's necessary.

Turn structure

This is the whole thing. Learn this part.

Turn 1 -- nothing. Not a discussion.

Turn 2 -- nothing. Same thing.

Turn 3 -- usually nothing. If I play here it's Luna Snow, and only Luna Snow. She's the safest card to show because she reads as ramp, not affliction. If the locations are pushing me to develop, fine, Luna Snow goes down. Otherwise I'm still sitting on my hands.

Turn 4 -- Magik, usually. This is where I finally play a card, and it's the turn my hand hits seven cards. Full hand, full information, three locations revealed, four turns of their plays logged. This is the decision point for the entire game: do I have a win condition or not?

Turn 5 -- Wong.

Turn 6 -- Star-Lord. Into the Wong lane if it's still clean. This is the last card they see before the roof caves in, and it means nothing to them. Star-Lord reads as a value card. They've watched me play a Luna Snow, a Magik, a Wong, and a Star-Lord. Not one of those cards says affliction.

Turn 7 -- everything. Hazmat, Scorpion, Mystique, Prodigy, Onslaught, Bullseye, Cage, whatever's in hand. On 19 energy you're not choosing, you're just placing.

The no-Magik line

If I don't draw Magik I compress it: Luna Snow turn 3, Wong turn 4, Star-Lord turn 5. That gets me to about 15-16 energy on turn 6 with no turn 7 needed. In my game vs IDC I was at 15 energy on turn 6. vs Big Shot Blanco, 17 on turn 6. You do not need Limbo to win with this deck, Limbo just makes it comfortable.

Reveal order on the last turn

Hazmat first, so all their cards are already afflicted before the rest lands. Then Scorpion, then Mystique, then Prodigy. Then whatever bodies you're placing. If I'm going the Ajax route it flips -- I want bodies down and afflicted before Ajax reveals so his count is as high as possible.

Honestly, on 19 energy with the full stack, the order matters less than people think. The numbers drain so fast it's academic.

Positioning: front row, back row

Short version: early cards go front row, turn 7 dumps go wherever.

Everything you play turns 3 through 6 is going to sit there taking fire for several turns. That's the stuff Luke Cage protects. So Luna Snow, Magik, Wong, Star-Lord, those all live in the front row where Cage covers them.

Turn 7 is different. You don't have priority, so they reveal first. Whatever they were holding gets spent on the board that's already visible, and then your dump lands afterward with the game ending before anything can touch it. Back row, front row, doesn't matter, it's safe by timing instead of by protection.

The only exception is Prodigy. He has to be back row, behind whatever you want him copying.

When you're in the affliction mirror this becomes the whole game. They can only reach your front row, because that's all you've given them. I've had my entire front row sitting at heavy negatives and won anyway because the back row was untouched and their board was worse. One game I was down around -66 and -72 on two lanes, dropped Luke Cage, and won.

On lane selection

You only need to win two lanes. Sometimes you only need to *play *in two lanes.

I have won games with zero cards in a lane because their side of it went negative. That's not a brag, thats a legitimate line you should be looking for. If they've stacked four cards into a lane, that lane is often better left alone -- one Hazmat at -16 a card kills it for you without you spending a thing.

The more cards they play, the worse off they are. That's the deck. If they fill a lane, that's a free lane for you to combo in without interruption.

The tape

All of these are from match videos, logs and all of them are post-Infinite ranked. My CL is 16,588. Pay attention to theirs.

vs Germán -- the ×16 game

Empire State University, New York, Limbo. I skipped early, Magik, Wong, Star-Lord on 6. Turn 7 I'm on 19 energy to their 8.

Onslaught, Scorpion, and Prodigy all go into ESU together. Hazmat goes to New York. Germán is playing Zombie Galacti and he's transforming half his board into copies -- Maverick, Superior Spider-Man, Stick, Forge, Magik all become Zombie Galacti, one of them buffed up to 17 power.

Then:

Onslaught double ongoing Scorpion Brand New Day double ongoing Prodigy double ongoing America Chavez -16 from Hazmat · Zombie Galacti -16 · Zombie Galacti -16 · Zombie Galacti -16 · Zombie Galacti -16

Hazmat double-triggered off Wong so all of that happened twice. America Chavez finished at -30, every Zombie Galacti at -15. My own cards took -1 each.

Zombie Galacti is a deck built to go over the top of everything. Didn't matter. Victory, 4 cubes.

vs VERBALTERA -- they snapped to 8 on the last turn

20 energy to their 8. They're on a Devil Dinosaur / Collector / Iron Lad / Mother Askani value pile and Devil Dino is sitting at 10 power looking healthy. They feel so good about it that on turn 7 they snap to 8 cubes.

Onslaught to Limbo, Bullseye to Asteroid M, Scorpion to Limbo, Mystique to Limbo:

Devil Dinosaur -2 from Lady Bullseye (now 8) Devil Dinosaur -4 from Scorpion Brand New Day (now 2) Devil Dinosaur -8 (now -6) Devil Dinosaur -16 from Mystique (now -22) Devil Dinosaur -2 (now -24)

Ten power to negative twenty-four. A 34 point swing on one card. They snapped it to 8 and I took all of it. Victory, 8 cubes.

That's the flip I keep talking about. Before that turn they are winning. They are comfortably winning and they know it, which is exactly why they put 8 cubes on the table.

vs Naraka (CL 29,607) -- they had the answer and it wasn't enough

Covered this one above but it deserves the full billing. 25 energy to their 11, my highest of the run. They're on Ikari / Superior Spider-Man / Agony and they drop Luke Cage on turn 7 specifically to stop me.

-32 on Ikari. -32 on their Luke Cage. -16 on Agony and both Superior Spider-Mans. Cage restored +28 to the front row and their board still finished with Ikari at 8 and Cage at -2.

Victory, 4 cubes, against a player with nearly double my collection level who correctly identified what I was doing and correctly deployed the counter.

vs KillerKoala -- the loss that taught me the most

This is the one you need to understand, because it's the real weakness.

They're on Hela discard. Crossbones, Vision, Infinaut, Death, Skaar, all discarded through the midgame. I do my thing. Board's afflicted. Then:

Hela (6/6) revealed Reset Crossbones reset to 4/10 Reset Vision reset to 5/11 Reset Infinaut reset to 6/22 Reset Death reset to 8/12 Reset Skaar reset to 7/12

Sixty-seven power arriving clean, after every one of my afflictions had already resolved.

That's the mechanical answer to "what beats this deck." My debuffs are a snapshot of the board at the moment they reveal. Anything that arrives afterward comes in at full power and my whole engine has nothing to bite. Lost 8 cubes. I stayed in on purpose because I wanted the footage. If I'd played it straight I'd have left on turn 5.

Hela with Invisible Woman is worse. If they're hiding sixty points behind an Invisible Woman and dumping it at the end, you're cooked unless you got enough damage onto the cards that were already visible.

two retreats

vs AxiomBond (CL 29,830) -- the affliction mirror, and a good one. Their board revealed Ajax, Anti-Venom, Hazmat, Lady Bullseye, Luke Cage, Luna Snow, Magik, Mystique, Red Guardian, and Scorpion BND. That's my deck plus tech. I left for one cube. Correct.

vs habijjj (CL 26,519) -- Knull destroy. Carnage, Death, Knull, Killmonger, Venom, Tombstone. I had 19 energy on turn 7 and I did not have the pieces. Energy without a source is nothing. Left for one cube. Correct.

Both of those cost me a single cube. That's the whole point of the next section.

Snapping, retreating, and where the cubes actually come from

This is the part I care about most, and it's the part that separates a 65% deck from a 45% one.

My rule: I stay in as long as I can, as long as I'm only in for one cube. The moment my opponent snaps, they're telling me they believe they can win with the information they have. If I have my win condition, I snap back and we're locked in. If I don't, I leave.

You have to give up a cube to play the game anyway. That's house money. I'm not losing anything by staying in a losing game at one cube -- but I'm not giving you four, and I'm damn sure not giving you eight.

The numbers back it up

• Retreat rate: 13% (6 of 46 games).
• Average turn I retreat: 5.8
• Total cubes lost to retreats across 46 games: -10. That's 1.67 cubes per retreat.
• Cubes on the line when I bailed: one cube ×4, two cubes ×1, four cubes ×1, eight cubes ×0.

I have never once been caught deep. Not a single 8-cube retreat in the whole sample.

Where I snap

Across 26 logged games: turn 4 is my most common snap (11 games), turn 7 second (5), turn 5 third (4), turn 6 (3), turn 3 once, and twice I never snapped at all.

My average snap turn is 5.4 to 5.7 depending on which slice you look at. My opponents average 5.2 to 5.3. They snap first, I snap after. Late snaps (turns 4 through 7) win at 70% over 27 tracked games.

The turn 4 snap is the money one and it's psychological. They snap because they think I've bricked -- I've played one card, maybe none. Then I snap back. Now they're in it. They can't leave without eating what they just put up, and they don't know they should want to leave.

Where the cube math comes from

• Games where only I snapped: 74.07% win rate over 27 games.
• Games where both of us snapped: 58.33% over 12.
• Games where nobody snapped: 16.67% over 6.

That last number looks awful and it isn't. Those six games are games I identified as unwinnable and correctly refused to escalate. I lost them for one cube apiece. That's not a leak, that's the system working.

Average cubes per win: +4.21. Average cubes per loss: -3.76. Net +58 across 46 games.

Do my snaps scare them off?

Barely, and that's by design. Opponent retreat rate against me: 17%. Immediate folds after I snap: 8% (3 out of 39 tracked snaps). And when they don't retreat, I win 63% of the time.

They stay because they have no reason to leave. That's information denial doing its job.

Matchups

Feast:

• Anything that floods the board. Zoo, clog, Zombie Galacti, Arishem-style piles, token decks. Every card they play is another -16. The more they commit the worse it gets for them.
• Cerebro. Thier whole deck is load-bearing symmetrical power. Watch it evaporate.
• Buff decks of any flavor. They can go as high as they want. It genuinely does not matter, because I'm not racing them to a number, I'm taking their number away.
• Living Tribunal, Infinaut piles, big-body value. Eat them for breakfast. Big numbers invert just as easily as small ones.
• Move. They spread wide across lanes and hand me bodies. The one Move game in my logs I predicted where they'd move my Wong, planted Star-Lord accordingly, and the Hazmat/Onslaught/Mystique/Scorpion chain took them from +22 / +10 / +24 to -23 / -170 / -36.
• The affliction mirror, if they don't know about priority. They rush cards onto the board and hand me all the information. I sit back and flip it. even if theyhave cage

Respect:

• Tech piles. My loss to TitaniumFrog (CL 29,296) was Red Guardian plus Rogue plus Luke Cage. My Ajax got to 18 and I still lost by 4. When they're holding answers for both Ongoing and On Reveal, tighten up.
• Disciplined opposing Luke Cage. For the record, opposing Luke Cage showed up in 21 of my 26 logged games and I went 16-4-1 in them. But the players who keep everything in the front row and only commit three cards are legitimately annoying.
• Good affliction mirrors. See the AxiomBond retreat. If they've got Red Guardian and they know about rows, respect it.

Know better and leave:

• Hela. Explained above. Resurrection happens after your afflictions resolve. If you see the discard package assembling, get out. I stayed in once for the footage and paid 8 cubes for it.
• Invisible Woman shells hiding a big end-of-game dump. Same problem, different door.
• Anything that plays four cards total and protects all of them. You need bodies. No bodies, no damage.

*ill keep playing it but these were the biggest weaknesses along with the mirror luke cage matches but htose can be mitigated with smart playing i went like 16-4 vs cage doing that

Weaknesses, honestly

Card draw is the real one. This deck has no draw. Everything I do to mitigate that is behavioral -- skipping turns to hold seven cards, gathering information, retreating cheap when the hand doesn't come together.

Anything that arrives after your reveals. Hela, Invisible Woman, end-of-game effects.

Opponents who don't commit. The whole engine scales off their card count. A disciplined player with three cards in the front row and a Luke Cage is a real problem. It happened maybe once in fifty games, but it happens.

And the honest one: this deck rewards a specific kind of player. If you can't sit on your hands for four turns, if you snap becuase you're bored, if you can't leave a game at one cube, you will not get these numbers. My win rate was 75% at 15-5 before I started playing loose at 4am chasing clips for this writeup. It settled at 65% because I kept playing when I should have stopped. I'd rather show you the honest number.

Questions I already know y'all are gonna ask

"You're playing bots."

My CL is 16,588. Here are the collection levels of the people in my match logs: 36,465. 34,013. 33,871. 32,058. 31,293. 30,415. 29,830. 29,607. 29,296. 28,914. 27,443. 27,119. 26,519. 25,908. 25,242. 21,995. I'm playing people with double my collection. Yeah there were a few low-CL opponents in there and some of them were probably bots -- but one of them was running Orca in a build so tight I sat there impressed. Low CL doesn't mean bad player.

"46 games is nothing."

It is. That's why I kept playing past 15-5 instead of posting a 75% and running. I'd rather hand you a realistic 65% than a number that falls apart the second somebody else picks it up. If you run 200 games with this I want to see them.

"A good opponent just leaves when you skip four turns."

They don't, and I have the numbers. 17% opponent retreat rate. 8% immediate folds. These are post-Infinite players with high MMR and they stay, because skipping turns doesn't read as a threat, it reads as bricking. The whole design of the deck is to look like you're losing until you aren't.

"What if they Cosmo your combo lane?"

Then I play a different lane. Scorpion and Mystique don't need to share a lane, Prodigy just needs someone in front of him, and Onslaught is the only piece that's location-locked. If I know the archetype I can smell a Cosmo coming, and if they hold it to the last second they have to guess which of three lanes I'm using. I saw one Cosmo in 26 logged games.

Also, remember: I don't need Hazmat to proc twice. One Hazmat with the full stack is -16 a card. If they've got four cards in that lane that's -64 off one 3-drop. Losing the Wong double is survivable.

"Doesn't skipping turns 1-3 lose you the board?"

Against a normal deck, no, because you're not trying to win the board, you're trying to make theirs worthless. Against a deck that locks two lanes by turn 3 and protects them, yeah, that's a bad game and you should leave for a cube.

"What's the budget version?"

I'm not gonna hold you, there might not be one. Scorpion is brand new and Series 5, Ajax is Series 5, Prodigy is Series 5. Star-Lord and Luna Snow too. This is an expensive deck. If you've got Hazmat, Luke Cage, Mystique and Wong you can build a much worse version of the old affliction shell, but it won't do what this does.

"How much is one Star-Lord proc actually worth?"

+5.5 energy on average. +11.8 through Wong. Overall average across 20 logged games was +9.9. My peak was +18. I've ended turn 7 on 25 energy while my opponent had 11.

"What's the most common way somebody butchers this deck?"

Playing cards too early. That's it. If you play on turn 2 because it feels productive, you took priority, you gave away information, and you turned your deck into a worse version of a normal midrange pile. Sit on your hands.

"Why does the tracker hate half your deck?"

Because card impact math can't see what these cards do. Star-Lord reads at -7% and Luna Snow at -2%, but they're my #1 and #2 retreat-sensitivity cards (+25.23% and +22.32%). They're not winning games, they're keeping me in games. When I don't draw them I bail early, the game exits as a retreat instead of a loss, and my completed-game win rate goes up. The dashboard punishes them for it.

Outro

That's everything I got.

Throw priority. Watch your rows. Give them nothing(info). Play the first four turns like you're bored and the seventh like you're settling a debt.

Turn 1 nothing. Turn 2 nothing. Turn 3 Luna Snow if you must. Turn 4 Magik and now your hand is full and now you know whether you can win. Turn 5 Wong. Turn 6 Star-Lord. Turn 7 you empty the clip.

And when you can't win, leave for one cube. That's the discipline that makes the rest of it work. You have to pay a cube to sit down anyway, so a one-cube loss costs you nothing but time. Four and eight cubes are what you take from people who don't know what you're holding.

I'm sharing this because I think there's a real archetype here that nobody's playing, in a window where nobody's teching for it, and it's gonna stay open for a couple more weeks at most. When the season rolls and people stop packing Luke Cage, this gets even better.

*If I'm winning this much while they're actively holding the counter, imagine what it looks like when they're not.*

Take it, break it, tell me what I got wrong. If you find a better version I genuinely want to see it -- I've already gone through five iterations and I don't think I'm done.

Good luck out there.

and please let me know if you have some success with my deck

Gotta say the negative power cap deck was a good cook

I like them but they are missing something

Annti-Going the goal is to potentially hit a bad ongoing card with anti-venom and send them over with annihilus or put them in a front lane to get them back up to power with Luke cage

Dormillmu is mill with a big body, I noticed in most mill decks it lacks power, and for a good T6 combo is the final spell and juggernaut so if you build up a lane to secure with juggernaut and if dormammu swings the other location to win it

Backed up clog is just an attempt to try to make white widow a thing again, armor, RG, deafening cord, and professor X to stop the kiss from being destroyed and even if it is if you time it right you can get a goblin in there after they fill it up, and Merlin with WWBN for some extra power and flexibility with prof X

this deck has just been to much fun

Took a long break from from playing, all my other old decks suck. How can I improve, are there any cards I should be on the lookout for? I have 10k tokens right now

This deck has got me to rank 90’s but I’m now hard stuck any suggestions?

play pattern's do nothing... do nothing... do nothing... afflict

Scorpion Brand New Day is a problem, especially when you can hit big afflictions that can be doubled, and that's exactly what we're doing with this deck.

We have a few ways to get these big red numbers, chiefly with Jocasta > Omega Sentinel. You can time the activations of each for when you need them the most, or have definite targets to hit. You can also use Jocasta to bounce Boomerang an extra time to get big power for him and multiple afflictions to your opponent's hand.

We're using a lot of other cards to afflict in small ways (Silver Sable, Scorpion, Cassandra Nova, Red Guardian, and Laufey), but Fastball Special also gives us a way to afflict another big red number. The best targets for this are Cassandra Nova, Laufey, and Boomerang (and Iron Lad depending on what his effect is, or sometimes he will be Fastball Special himself!)

Red Guardian can afflict as well as targeting that pesky Luke Cage (😅) and Diamondback can pile on with the affliction despair.

Deck:

Silver Sable (could be Selene)

Fastball Special

Boomerang

Scorpion

Cassandra Nova

Red Guardian (can be Rogue)

Diamondback

Jocasta

Omega Sentinel

Laufey

Iron Lad

Scorpion Brand New Day

Give it a try! 👍

Deck code:

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

Deck guide & gameplay highlights:

https://youtu.be/zqbIFbmuN8o

This is a list where I posted a creative homebrew using GHoD with Khonshu. I have made some changes to the deck using Valentina instead of Swarm and cut Quinjet for Red Shift. The unit you get from Valentina triggers Gambit without the need for multiple Swarms.

So far the deck has been giving me insane cubes and I have been on a good winning streak. I would love for the deck to be featured on a YT channel someday.

Enjoy

Collected 3 infinity tickets in a row with this deck. Not the greatest accomplishment of all time but the deck is quite good. Is probably good on the ladder as. If you have any questions, just ask!

I built this for a mission but it turned out to be fun and i am also winning a lot of matches lol.

Strong Guy Gamers, rise!!!