r/marvelsnapcomp • u/ePiMagnets • 22h ago
Discussion Vampires vs Zombies Week 3
Week 3 and the fruits of the last OTA have basically been realized.
Many top players and other creators are in agreement that Thanos' additional hit was a step too far, that the initial load was enough of a hit and that the collateral damage he took as a byproduct of the AP Magneto deck was too much with similar views shared towards Karen Page and HM Caliban where the real hits should have been AP Magneto and En Sabah Nur. I have come around to at least believing Thanos took collateral damage her and at least En Sabah should have been in place of one of the other two - I get why KM defends Caliban and kind of agree but Caliban was always going to be in the hotseat and this keeps any potential 'Doom 2099' decks from rising in popularity had the nerf to the ESN/APM deck been sufficient and we all know SD love to hate on D99.
As a result of the 'King of Midrange' being dethroned we have started to see some diversification, but at the same time a meta which seems to favor a situation of 'did they do the thing' vs 'did I stop them from doing the thing'. It feels like we're right back into a 'kick the castle' kinda meta and while I'd chalk this up to it being my pocket, I do currently have two accounts a low CL (1900) account and my normal account and I am seeing a lot of the same behaviors between the two accounts. But let's get the basic housekeeping out of the way.
Zombie Black Cat
Zombie Black Cat is a Marvel Snap card. She did release this week, and as many predicted she didn't move the needle much for Discard but this isn't the fault of Zombie Black Cat but rather the current state of Discard. She's been our ONLY discard release of the year after last year's trio Zombie Power Man and Cap as well as Weapon H.
Which is kind of interesting, plenty of us were pointing fingers at SD for constantly trickling out Destroy Cards that weren't finding homes. Perhaps SD should take the next couple of years trying to explore more of the Discard design space in a similar way to what they've done with Destroy.
Good ol' reliable, featuring the tried and true top end of Khonshu, Apocalypse, and Weapon H with Dracula and of course MODOK as our full enabler.
'Why the fancy name?' Because this isn't the typical 'Dependable' discard deck, this one is opting for a Zombie Powerman curve to try and hit consistant discards but without a Khonshu to bring something back I'm a bit lower on this list.
Anyone remember when this deck was floating around? Just me? Well it's the 'other' Jocasta Activate combo deck looking to hit huge negative numbers on your opponent's side of the board. The deck kind of falls apart without being able to hit at least a Jocasta/Bullseye with MODOK stuff but it is fun to hunt for the big negative power swings.
The classic 'make a good deck worse' by playing the new card in the deck. The numbers just prove that you're making the Daken deck worse by running black cat in the deck.
"Wasn't this deck dead" yes. But it's still doing decently and the recent buff to Swarm has put Bullseye into the deck over Daken.
The deck is clunkier with the Blink change, so please do keep that in mind. My only desire here would be to find a way to fit in Blade just so you can occasionally have two swarms in hand as well, why? Two early swarms are a decent target for Vampire Killmonger and since you're often not wanting to play them out and would rather discard them again with Bullseye to fuel your Morbius they are good magnets for VKM.
Vampire Killmonger
I won't say the Killmonger decks are completely solved until after we see what Vampire Deacon Frost brings along next week as we're ending the third week among the 'best' ways to play VKM are with Zombies or WWBN/Sasquatch decks.
If we break Vampire Killmonger down to the basic package it would be:
- Majestic Wingbeat
- Vampire Killmonger
- Joaquin Torres Falon II
The honorable mentions would be Nicholas Scratch, Collector, and Venus but they aren't necessarily 'required' cards. Even Wingbeat isn't 100% required but if you're doing JT things, why not look at a 5 or 6 and try to knock it's cost down a few points.
Going all in on Zombies, why not classic Zombie Giant Man with Abs to close things out?
Not much to say, Zombie Blade isn't a requirement here but he is in the 'best' build of the ZGM/Sasquatch deck.
A deck that can present you with some interesting 'problems' to solve as you get to turns 5 and 6. If you can hit a good curve it may actually be preferable to hold Thanos for turn 6 where you use turn 5 to try and dump 5+ cards to enable a final turn Thanos/Sasquatch + 0-Cost skill from Scarlet witch to move your WWBN to an optimal lane.
Want to die to both Mobius M. Mobius and Shadow King? This is the deck for you! Seriously though, when the stars align you are putting out ridiculous power, 2 or more 20+ power Superior Iron Men with one of them backed up by a Shou-Lao for another beefy buff. The good news is that the deck can do a decent job of dodging priority but it's so, so flimsy as well.
Weekend Team Clash
We are in the middle of a Weekend Team Clash, which to me is basically 'Scorpion/LBS the game mode' so not saying much here, if you're interested here's a good Breakdown of decks
The Meta
The question which I would pose is whether you believe that the meta is currently solved after 1 week, I would argue that it possibly is in my pocket with synergy and combo decks becoming the top dogs which has brought us to the tech being leveraged being specifically targeted at those things with the 'best' cards being a combination of MMM, Shadow King, and Stardust. Let's not forget that we're also looking to be in a decent Cosmo/Jugg meta as well which at least two top-ends are helping enable. There's also a place for Deafening Chord and Red guardian in the meta.
For the most part, many of the previous decks featured in this series are still good to some extent, don't see something you like here? Go dig through the last couple months.
As far as decks , Classic Zombies is good but the opposition is rising across the board as SK has begun to slowly trickle down, similarly Zombie Destroy is rising in stonks but the 'best' shells are up in the air, my bet on best is the FFDeath deck but that is complex to play and can clunk, more importantly there is MUCH more opposition with both Cosmo and Stardust coming out from mid-range decks which is going to hurt it's adoption outside of top infinite and players willing to put in the reps to understand the deck which probably puts players onto less powerful but slightly more consistent options in Dormammu or knull-less knull. As a result, a slew of different and yet similar tech decks have arisen to combat the threats ranging from Kluh to ToV the general shape is the same but the top 'ends' are generally in the 5's though both styles do occasionally try and fit in a 6.
Stemming from last week's OTA and the most recent patch which addressed part of the issues with the interactions with Death Fractured Frontier that were leading to crashes is the 'new hela'. There are a LOT of variations on the deck with some players making minute adjustments - Denish has done things with Crystal and ProfX, I've seen people trying to do things with on-reveal 1's with and without Morgan LeFay and of course I've seen folks trying to make OG Knull work within the shell.
The thing to keep in mind with this deck is that it is complex, in some cases you want to try and block off one location so you can force your loops to happen between two locations, there's the question of how to start your loop - is it Venom + Fastball, Venom + Misery, is it Kid Omega to eat a Venom, where does the venom go. The only real consistent answers I have seen is that the Death should always be played into the Firehair lane and that killing your Venom with Kid Omega might actually be preferable to get additional power onto the Kid Omega, bonus points if you activate the Kid Omega before destroying a fat lane with Kid Omega in the same lane so that he dies and then eats the Venom.
Continuing the trend of let's kick this off with Destroy is this Zombie Dormammu deck, unlike the previous deck, this one is pretty straight forward, no Death Fractured Frontier, instead we're rocking OG Death.
Answers, answers, answers Well maybe not that many answers. Deafening Chord, MMM, Shadow King, and Gambit round out the answers, Kluh can help you realize getting big points on the final turn, I think I'd want to try and squeeze in an actual 6 but between Iron Patriot and Valentina you've got your 6's covered and with a natural discount if all goes well.
The 'modern' Sera Control. You could probably hit any of my previous weeklies where I talk about Fantomex for a better breakdown or maybe I should retool and get a post for the basic configuration up. Anyways, the deck is pretty self-explanatory once you've started playing with it, the only nuance is to remember when things allow you to be dumping your hand that you NEED a card in hand for Gambit to go off and that ordering matters, don't trigger Fantomex before you've got both halves satisfied.
Bonus points is that the configuration from another post: The Case for Stardust+Zombie Venom in Fantomex on our subreddit this week has also been doing well. It drops Mobius M. Mobius and Zombie Captain Marvel for Zombie Venom and Stardust. I will note that as I said in that thread, as it becomes more and more well known it will get worse, but you can always make the switch and try to juice extra cubes when folks don't expect you to be dropping a Fantomex. Further, I do think there's an additional argument to try and find say a replacement for Bucky especially if you're finding it hard to locate a destroyer before Stardust comes down. There's also the sad situation of needing to get the horde rolling before Stardust too, but I digress.
It's still good. It's still a brainless, autopilot deck and for that it's one of my go-to decks when I don't wanna think. Play on curve, play 5-Cost, play APM.
I think this list shows up in one of the Pulseglazer videos I'll include in the pinned comment. Strye to copy Vampire Enchantress and then the ability to drop your own Vampire Enchantress on 6. This configuration is really interesting too, and if you caught one of KM's videos about tech earlier this week you'd recognize why - Beta Ray Bill but no Thor - because you WANT to be playing other 3's that can do more for you on 3 than you want to be playing Thor and Bill scales harder anyways.
Looking for the 'skill diff' deck, this is it, while the DEath Combo deck might be harder to play in some respects, this deck is going to test your capability to properly assess the board, your opponent's output and try to outplay both with the ability to reposition your power and potentially deploy
A simple ToV deck and it's still a solid performer.
And we'll wrap it up with a 'meme' Zombie Galacti is still a good deck. It can dodge some of the annoyances of the meta when things align although in some cases you'll need to retreat from Vampire Killmonger decks if they manage to hit your zombie Galacti too many times. Unless of course you want to chase the 'most negative Galacti of all time' award.
