We’re closing out the War of the Nine Realms season in Marvel SNAP tomorrow, and you know what that means: One last go around to cover the last card release in Gorr, the God Butcher and give a final verdict on Surtur! Has the God Butcher overturned the metagame, or is he just another replaceable big guy? Does Surtur have staying power or is he doomed to suffer his own Ragnarok once his season has passed? Find out all this and more on this edition of the Snap Back!
Gorr Gets Gigantic and it’s Great
Gorr was another highly anticipated Marvel SNAP card this season, and for good reason. With his ability to gain power for EVERY On-Reveal card that’s in play, it’s extremely easy for him to climb upwards of 14 power in most games. He readily outclasses older Big Idiots like the Hulk, and often can scale higher than even more recent cards like Blob or Red Hulk. His role in the game is to be a card that wins you a lane on turn 6, and at that, he is very successful.
That said, Gorr is far from unstoppable. His power is almost always over 10, making him vulnerable to Shang-Chi, and his Ongoing nature means that he is further susceptible to cards like Enchantress, Rogue, or even Echo. On top of that, since he is constantly checking the board state for the total number of On-Reveals in play, Destroy-based deck lists actually end up being very strong against him. By the end of game, a Destroy player has usually destroyed most of their On-Reveal cards, leaving only a scant few left for Gorr to boost himself with.
So far, Gorr has shined the most in decks that allow the player to cheat him out earlier than turn 6. This lets players use either Mystique, Taskmaster, or sometimes both to double or triple up on the power to win multiple locations. The most obvious method is through a Mr. Negative deck, but multiple versions have been seeing play with fairly good results.
All things considered, Gorr the God Butcher is a very powerful 6-Cost, but it does not quite feel like a must-have in the way that cards like Blob were when they were released. It may require changing a few other cards as well, but he seems to be pretty easily replaced with any other powerful 6-Cost of your choice.
Snap Back Verdict: Mild Recommendation!
A Final Verdict on Surtur
Surtur came out of his corner swinging in the first weeks of this Marvel SNAP season, so much so that he was hit with a mid-season nerf, a pretty rare thing for Season Pass card offerings. Even after having a point of power shaved off of him, though, he’s still a very solid and powerful card. You only need to play two cards with ten or more power to get him to a 3/10 on his own, which is already on par with a Cassandra Nova played on turn 3. Going all-in with Surtur and Skaar still makes for an incredibly powerful deck. Skaar’s cost to play goes down to zero with an alarming consistency, and even as a 10-Power card himself instead of the previous 11, still provides a level of power that’s hard to properly contain.
Even so, there’s something about Surtur that struck me over the final series of weekend missions that I would be remiss to not point out: He’s really kind of boring. The kind of gameplay that Surtur decks engender tends to be extremely deterministic – play Surtur, then play 10-Powers in every lane until the game’s over. There’s essentially no strategy to it whatsoever! It reminds me a lot of the old Shuri/Red Skull/Taskmaster decks – it’s just going to put a lot of power onto the board and you either deal with that power or lose. It’s great if you’re just trying to relax after a long work day with a simple card game, but if you enjoy making decisions and playing off your opponent’s cues, Surtur really isn’t the card for you.
All told, there’s still more to love about Surtur than there is to hate. He’s a strong card that fills his role very well, but isn’t so overbearingly powerful or lacking in counterplay that he’s obnoxious or not fun to play against. If you’re willing to shell out the $10 USD to get the Season Pass, you’ll likely get some use out of him for sure.
Snap Back Verdict: Strong Recommendation!
Looking Back (And Ever Ahead)
Though it was not without its setbacks, the War of the Nine Realms season has largely been a good one for Marvel SNAP. There are a large number of varied deck lists that have been proven to be viable, and there’s no singular deck at the top that bullies everyone and sets the pace of the metagame. Both Surtur and Agent Venom have settled into a comfortable section of the meta, providing strong opportunities that are still imminently beatable by numerous other strategies.
Discard decks have proven themselves to be the real winner of this war, however. From season to season, the Discard archetype has continued to receive new support in the form of cards like Proxima Midnight, Scorn, and Fenris Wolf. As a result, these kinds of decks have gone from mostly mid-tier options for players at lower Collection Levels to absolute powerhouses that can stand against the craziest deck brews in the highest echelons of Infinite Rank. The mostly-odd-costed Moon Knight/Black Bolt/Stature deck has gotten incredible value from the inclusion of Fenris Wolf to become a deck with one of, if not the, highest win rates in the game right now, and the classic Discard shell involving MODOK and Apocalypse has been putting up really good numbers as well. Discard and Destroy are classic deck archetypes that Marvel SNAP players start building when they first start dipping into the wider world of the game, and in my opinion, these decks being competitively viable are a sign of a strong, healthy metagame. Discard in particular once languished in the shadow of Destroy, but lately it seems like the opposite may be more true.
The new Marvel SNAP season looms on the horizon, however, and with it, a whole slew of interesting new cards! This time around, Marvel SNAP is teaming up with NetEase’s Marvel Rivals, a soon-to-be-released Marvel hero shooter, with all new cards inspired from the characters featured in the game! But how will these cards impact the metagame? Will it be enough to bring players back in after the Series Drops discontentment? More importantly, will Second Dinner manage to find a solution to their card acquisition concerns that makes players happy? Find out when I do by coming back for the next edition of the Snap Back!
