The first week of the War of the Nine Realms season of Marvel SNAP is almost done, and what a week it has been! In the spirit of the season’s name, we are truly witnessing a clash of titans as a new meta powerhouse rises to take on the old. What does this mean for the future of the Marvel SNAP metagame? And which of the new cards is it that’s become such a force to be reckoned with? All this and more in this week’s edition of The Snap Back!
Surtur Is Bringing Down the House
I’m not really interested in burying the lede here: Surtur has hit the ground running in the battlefields of Marvel SNAP, and is looking to make the competition his own personal Asgard as he tears it to the ground. I predicted this card would be powerful in its chosen deck, but I didn’t fully grasp the scope until he actually released.
As a 3-Cost, 5-Power card, Surtur is already at a relatively high rate of power for 3-Cost cards. Gaining +3 with every 10-Power or higher card play means that after only a single trigger, he becomes 3/8 and immediately in the running for the strongest 3-Cost card in the game not named Sebastian Shaw, sitting right up there with Gladiator and Speed. Two triggers and he works to buff Skaar, guaranteeing that the son of Hulk’s cost is reduced to a staggering zero energy, giving you a free 11-Power play wherever you need it the most. Which, of course, also triggers Surtur again to gain 3 more power.
This first week of SNAP has been absolutely overloaded with Surtur/Skaar decks on the ranked ladder, and now that those are more broadly being built against with cards like Mobius M Mobius, players are experimenting and finding that Surtur still plays for impressive amounts of power in less all-in strategies. He’s quickly finding a new role in things like Wiccan decks that want to consistently have a 3-Cost card they can play on curve, where Surtur fits in as an easy 3/8 or 3/11 most games.
Simply put, Surtur is outrageously strong right now. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to be nerfed to a 3-Cost, 4-Power card at some point in the not-so-far future. Even that won’t be enough to make him anything less than a major contender in Marvel SNAP’s ranked ladder. If you’re an avid Marvel SNAP player, you should probably be getting the season passes every month as is, but I cannot recommend this one enough right now.
Snap Back Early Verdict: Strong Recommendation!
Frigga Finds a Home, Fails to Inspire
Meanwhile, the other new card this week, Frigga, has flown under the radar in the wake of Surtur’s attempt to bring the end of days of Marvel SNAP. She has proven to be an interesting and unique card, but with a level of clunk that keeps her from being truly overpowering.
There’s simply no other card that lets you double up a targeted card quite like Frigga. Moon Girl’s ability doubles your hand and is largely dependent on how and when you play your cards. Frigga can take the one card you absolutely have to have one more of and give it to you. Because of this, she has settled in quite nicely in the Move-based Bounce deck list.
A regular Bounce list wants to play certain cards as many times as possible to power them up. A Move Bounce list, on the other hand, powers up its cards by playing them once, moving them around the board a few times, and then picking them up to place them elsewhere. Frigga’s ability to give you a copy of the last card you played allows you to build up a Dagger or Human Torch to impressive proportions, pull it off the board with Beast or Toxin, and then replay it with Frigga on turn 5 to get a high-powered copy you can play wherever you’d like on turn 6. If you played the original buffed card into a Madame Web lane, then you’re only increasing the unpredictability of your final play.
It is a very powerful deck list right now, and one of the few that is actively capable of overpowering the Surtur/Skaar decks with relative ease. Outside of the Move Bounce lists, though, Frigga’s 3-Cost nature makes her difficult to fit into the game’s energy curve for anything larger than a 4-Cost card copy. But, like a lot of other cards releasing recently such as Misery, with a unique ability like Frigga’s, she’s easily just one new card or slight buff away from greatness.
Snap Back Verdict: Strong Recommendation for hardcore climbers and Move Bounce players, Mild Recommendation for everyone else!
Looking Ahead
We’re heading into an interesting metagame as we forge ahead through this latest season of Marvel SNAP. Agent Venom decks are still holding strong, even as the Bounce decks are falling out and being replaced by Frigga’s Move Bounce lists. The Agent Venom/Iron Man/Mystique package still holds up powerfully against Surtur-based decks that look to just slam 10-Power card after 10-Power card onto the board, and the Agent Venom/Sera tech-based lists are similarly capable of meeting the threats of these decks. Even things like Destroy and Discard, classic deck lists that most players start unlocking very early in their Marvel SNAP progression, have been seen to be relatively viable to climb the ladder.
The key word right now seems to be consistency. Combo decks have largely fallen by the wayside this season, replaced by things that can constantly and reliably put impressive numbers onto the Marvel SNAP game board. Only time will tell if cards like Malekith and his end-game surprises will upset this balance, however.
Look forward to some changes coming up very soon in Marvel SNAP, as well! There will be a client patch tomorrow, November 12th, and an OTA update on Thursday, November 14th. Patches are often not intended to bring with them balance changes, but the adjustments to Hellcow last time proved that isn’t always the case. Even so, it’s Thursday’s OTA that will be the one to look towards. It’s very likely that adjustments to Agent Venom or some of his most common accomplices are going to be targeted for nerfs, but with Surtur’s newfound dominance on the field, it may be that Agent Venom is the only thing keeping us from a Ragnarok where Surtur is the undisputed best card/deck in the game.
What do you think will happen in the OTA? Will Surtur get an early adjustment or will Agent Venom fall prey to the power of the developers? Will Malekith enter the ring as a powerful new competitor instead? Come back next week to find out what happened on the Snap Back!
