Super Trashed TV’s Marvel Snap Tournament

Posted November 13, 2023

Written by Jack Cunningham, Jacob Rubin, Jesse McGrath, Seamus Calder, and Stephen Ku

A new hot game is making its way across the internet, which means only one thing: STTV has to find out who in the crew is the best at it.

For the uninformed: Marvel Snap is a mobile game where you build 12-card decks of characters from Marvel Comics (and movies and cartoons and whatnot) and battle to control territory on an unpredictable board. A few of us at STTV have gotten really obsessed with the game, and when they rolled out the Friendly Battle system that allowed us to play anyone we wanted, we knew we had to run a little tournament to determine our best player.

The JaRules for this tournament were as follows:

• You must use the same deck for the entire event.
• The tournament is a round-robin, so everyone got to play everyone. Because we had an odd number of players, there were eight matches across five rounds, with each player getting a bye in one of the rounds.
• All matches will be held in the Friendly Battle game mode, where each player starts with 10 HP and play several matches, gradually losing HP with each loss.
• The score at the end of each round would be: the winner would earn points equal to their remaining HP, and the loser would get 0. (This would largely just function for tie-breakers).
• You have to do a write-up about each match for this blog post that you’re (hopefully still) reading.
• There were no drinking JaRules, as the time most people play Snap is during a work break or while poopin’.

Let’s get into the decks!

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This tournament took place entirely during May of 2023. This article will be published in November 2023. Many of these cards have changed and some of these decks may no longer be viable, especially as new cards have entered and altered the meta. Re-create and play them at your own risk. And if you run Mobius M. Mobius, go to hell.]

Player: Jacob
Deck Name: Dracpocalypse



This is my version of the “Dracula into Apocalypse” strat that’s been fairly popular. My version has the backup strategy of utilizing Gambit to pick off enemies while still boosting Apocalypse for Dracula’s eventual feast.

KEY CARDS: Dracula and Apocalypse, obviously. It’s also very valuable for me to get Wong out as early as possible, so I have Zabu and Psylocke to help me get either Wong or Dracula out on T3. Then I use Wong to double my discard potential, which is where Lady Sif and MODOK come into play.

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT: Morbius is a great drop and can be played at any point. Mystique can copy him, Zabu, or Wong for different useful effects. And finally, I have Yondu and Iceman just as solid 1-drops to fill out the rest of the deck.

This deck used to have Sera and a very specific play order (T2: Zabu or Psylocke, T3: Dracula or Wong, T4: Wong or Dracula, T5: Sera, T6: MODOK and Gambit on Wong’s space, with Apocalypse in hand) but I took her out and subbed in Mystique to give me a few options that were less rigid. Every so often I get to Wong-Mystique-Gambit, which is always a treat.

Player: Jesse
Deck Name: Comeback Kids



This is by no means my most competitive deck (that probably goes to my Darkhawk/Devil Dino deck), nor is it my most annoying (lmao, Galactus), but it is my most fun. I am a sucker for miracle decks, and this one is particularly satisfying because of all the different win conditions. If the cubes I gain from people snapping when they think my goose is cooked weren’t reward enough, winning every location in a game while only having one card over five power in the deck is a worthy prize on its own.

Playing the deck is pretty straightforward. The ideal situation is to get to the final turn with some combination of Sera, Wong, and Zabu all out on the field. This sets up for a final turn in which you can drop all of your reveal cards all at once. Enemy has a board full of little units, like a Patriot or Thanos deck? Hazmat them straight to hell. Are some beefy boys locking down the lanes? Gambit should cut through it with no problem. 

Player: Seamus
Deck Name: J'accuse The Dark



Initially, I actually wanted to play a bounce deck but because of the nature of PvP forcing you to play multiple matches with the same deck, I didn’t want to risk running something that could be picked up on super quickly or shut down by a solid Cosmo or Killmonger play. This deck was originally called “The Spanish Inquisition” because “Nobody suspects the Spanish Inquisition,” the Inquisition of course being Ronan. Funny enough, this isn’t the idealized version of this deck. During my first match, I actually realized I had picked the wrong one and just decided to go with it.  What I wanted was to have multiple win conditions that I could alternate if need be. The idea is to run this like a generic Darkhawk deck and get as many things into your opponent’s decks. Hopefully, you’re able to get Zabu out early and that leaves you with a surprise turn 6 of Darkhawk and Mystique. However, what I like about this deck is that it’s full of subterfuge. Debrii, Black Widow, and Baron Mordo, are all there to fill up lanes, fill up hands with cards they can’t play, and generally try and disrupt the curve. If I’ve limited their ability to play cards, suddenly Ronan becomes a viable option because their hand will be loaded and in the rare cases where I’m able to get a reduced price on cards a last turn playing Mordo or Black Widow into Wong ensures that they will have the maximum hand size. In a non-PVP environment, I would add something like Wave, Sandman, or maybe Electro to try and cut down how many cards they can play, and this deck is obviously missing Sera or anything that can combat a location I can’t play into and honestly should have Storm to force a lockdown. But I think there’s enough good power in the cards I have and enough variability that I have at least 3 obvious win scenarios. Cover their side and hand with junk and play strong cards like Maximus and Rockslide, give them all the rocks and drop Darkhawk on 6, or fill their hand with nonsense and eliminate areas they can play cards to sneak in Ronan. It probably won’t climb the ladder in regular play, but I think in this format that variety is gonna pay off. Originally I had intended to drop Goblin for Rogue, and Debrii for Devil Dino. I’d still drop Goblin, but I ended up liking this version more as the matches went on. It’s also gotten me pretty far in Conquest mode since that dropped because nobody expects that Darkhawk is a decoy and I’m actually playing a Ronan deck. Still might be better with Sera.

Player: Stephen
Deck Name: Hot Rod Nimrod



This deck tries to keep flexible about the turn 6 play, depending on what’s available. I’m too cowardly to build decks that hinge on drawing 1 specific card (which is why I can never get Mr. Negative to work). Wong/Panther/Zola is a powerful combo when you can pull it off, but the unexpected fun comes from Wong/Destroyer for double Nimrod. A backup option is dropping Carnage/Venom to get double Nimrod activation too. Since this tournament, I’ve dropped Forge as he’s too much of a tempo hit and replaced him with Colossus, but I’m iffy about that too. Okoye and Nakia are useful when they work, and something to put down anyways since I don’t have anything else really planned for Turn 2/3. I’m thinking about dropping Wave too. If I do keep Wave, it’s to put down with Wolverine and bluff my opponent into thinking I’m running Galactus.

Player: Jack
Deck Name: Ongoyng



I initially created this deck in order to meet the requirements for a “Play Ongoing Cards” mission, but I then quickly realized how valuable this archetype was. Not long afterward, this became my favorite deck! I think it’s important context to mention that I built this around the time that Leader was super OP, so I wanted to be sure to use Spectrum as the crown jewel of the bunch so it wouldn’t help my opponent if copied on Turn 6 (my destruction deck uses Destroyer for the same reason).

Relying mostly on low-cost cards, this deck has a lot of versatility and can surprise my opponents late in the game. I love dropping Ant-Man or Mojo either as early threats or as late-game power shake-ups, and comboing with Lizard → Enchantress, Captain America → Punisher, Blue Marvel → Spectrum, etc. gives me some very satisfying options throughout. These days, I mostly run a different expression of this deck type that incorporates Thanos and friends, but this is the blueprint that started it all!

Round 1



MATCH 1: Jesse vs. Jacob



WINNER: Jesse with 8 points

JESSE’S TAKE: Hey, won my first-ever friendly battle! Jacob’s deck was pretty similar to mine but with the hazmat win condition swapped for a Dracula/Apocalypse situation. Honestly, most of this came down to sheer luck, especially since neither of us was packing any meaningful counters. It felt like my Gambit kills were hitting WAY more high-value targets than his all match long, and that was the difference.

JACOB’S TAKE: We were both running Wong and Gambit decks, so it was a lot of destroying each other’s shit. His deck also featured Hazmat and Typhoid Mary with Luke Cage, and my deck has a lot of low-power cards feeding into high-power cards. Lesson learned: have Mystique copy Morbius more; I can get a lot more points on the board that way. The one time I won, it wasn’t even because of Dracula at all!

MATCH 2: Stephen vs. Jack

WINNER: Stephen with 10 points

STEPHEN’S TAKE: Drawing Wong and Destroyer in my opening hand for both matches, I definitely expected to double-Destoryer Nimrod, but both times Jack Enchantress’d Wong after. That took any Black Panther play off the table too so for both matches my move was to Nimrod/Carnage/Venom.

JACK’S TAKE: Hoo boy, I did not kick the tournament off to a good start - I got absolutely cooked by Stephen’s late-game destruction deck. I got cocky a bit too early in Game 1, Snapped on Turn 3 or 4, and then got absolutely smoked when Stephen Snapped himself before pulling a Nimrod/Carnage/Venom combo out of nowhere. I was happy to have stopped a couple of his Wong shenanigans with Enchantress, but the whole affair still cost me 8 cubes. In Game 2, things played out in almost exactly the same way (with the exception of Armor showing up in my hand for the very first time all match on Turn 6 😭). I could have retreated on Turn 4 or 5 of that second game to save myself a cube and attempt a reverse 10-0 comeback, but I was not feeling quite that motivated, so I took my chances on letting things play out. Spoiler alert - it did not go well. Stephen put together a formidable deck, but the lesson I took away here was: “Do not Snap so early, you big idiot.”

CURRENT STANDINGS:

Stephen and Jesse tied with 1 win each.

Round 2:



MATCH 1: Stephen vs. Jesse

WINNER: Jesse with 6 points

JESSE’S TAKE: I’m on a roll! Destroy decks are usually a mixed bag against this deck because of the potential of Gambit actually helping them (especially when they run Nimrod, as Stephen was), so I had to depend on Hazmat and Ironheart exclusively. Luckily, I was almost always able to pull them. There was a great match where he managed to Arnim Zola a Nimrod right after I had flipped Hazmat into Wong, making a bunch of ittybitty Nimrods.

STEPHEN’S TAKE: Blown out the water against Jesse. I was expecting to be able to do the same trick against Jesse, but my Nimrods couldn’t boost enough to make a difference against Hazmat.

MATCH 2: Jacob vs. Seamus

WINNER: Seamus with 4 points

SEAMUS’ TAKE: This was a match that I did not expect to win off the bat. Jacob playing Discard eliminated any possibility of me using Ronan as a win condition, so I had to fully lean into Darkhawk. I was conservative with my cubes because, right off the bat, it looked like Jacob had my number. A brilliant Gambit play in one of our first matches left me afraid to put big numbers on the board early. I played it safe and did things like retreat if I hadn’t drawn Zabu by turn 3 or had any locations that were going to boost his discard ability. With a little luck, a bold snap by Jacob in game 3, and some finesse, I was able to whittle him down. The last two matches felt like a blessing from the RNG gods as all of the locations helped me and I was able to pull out a win after the 7th match.

JACOB’S TAKE: I put up a better fight this time (won half the matches) but a bad decision to Snap in the third match cost me dearly. His Darkhawk-Ronan deck (with copious Rockslide and Korg, plus Mystique and Baron Mordo) is somewhat weak to my discard-heavy deck, but even a supercharged Gambit firing four times couldn’t net me a win in Game 4. I’m noticing a trend that I have difficulty holding down two zones. If I get Dracula and Apocalypse, that’s one easy, but I need Morbius with Mystique copying him in addition to help spread my power out more. Otherwise, I just get a big boosted Dracula with nothing to show for it. Oh well. On to Round 3!

CURRENT STANDINGS:

Jesse leads with 2 wins, Stephen and Seamus tied at 1 each.

Round 3



MATCH 1: Stephen vs. Seamus

WINNER: Stephen with 5 points

STEPHEN’S TAKE: Totally lucked out, as Seamus actually won more matches against me, but as we went into games 4/5, the “high stakes” cubes fell in my favor. Seamus’s board flooding really messed with my plans for Carnage/Venom’ing the Nimrod slots, and would force me to use Destroyer instead.

SEAMUS’ TAKE: All I can say about this match is I hate when Armin Zola actually works. I got a little overconfident early on because I was getting good locations and cards on the curve, but when it came down to it I kept guessing wrong on lanes Stephen was playing to not planning for Zola. I also lost two matches in a row because I played Green Goblin and that further cements my feeling he shouldn’t be in the deck.

MATCH 2: Jesse vs. Jack


WINNER: Jack with 10 points

JACK’S TAKE: Whoa, a true zero-to-hero turnaround! Having a bye immediately after losing so viciously made me anxious, but maybe I needed that time to revisit regular online play and Get My Groove Back. I think this match showcased a good combination of preparedness and good fortune for me. Once again, I was able to counter a few Wong plays with Enchantress, and I got some good reads on Jesse regarding where he was going to play cards after dropping Titania. On top of that, Jesse didn’t seem to be able to draw Luke Cage until our third and final game, but played cards like Hazmat and Typhoid Mary anyway, which I think ended up doing him more harm than good. We ended the match with a game where Jesse Snapped and I ran away with it, which always feels very satisfying. Let’s keep this gravy train a-rollin’!

JESSE’S TAKE: OOF, can’t win 'em all I suppose. Had a rough snap in this one and with every move I made Jack had an answer. He ended up with my Titania far more often than I did, and he was able to counter my Wong and Luke Cage at varying points, completely undoing my strategy. Just strong play from Jack with a deck that felt like it was built to counter mine

CURRENT STANDINGS:

Stephen ties with Jesse at 2 wins each, and Jack gets on the board to join Seamus at 1 win each.

Round 4:



MATCH 1: Seamus vs. Jesse

WINNER: Seamus with 3 points

SEAMUS’ TAKE: Let me be clear, there was no match-up in this that I was more determined to win than Jesse. If you’ve been following Trashed Bros for a while, watching our streams, our clips, or anything, you would know that I never beat Jesse at video games. Insert the links to that time we played Kirby Golf and Jesse became the luckiest person to ever play that game. So here’s what made this funny. I was at work. It was dead and I told Jesse I could get our match in because there was literally no one in the restaurant. Cut to 2 rounds in and suddenly I have a party of 5 sitting at the bar and all of them are indecisive and want to sample the wine before they order a glass. So here I am running back and forth helping customers while trying to put up a cohesive strategy. Thankfully, he was running a deck similar to Jacob’s so I knew what I had to do. He pulled out Shang Chi, so I kept my big cards hidden, he pulled out Gambit once so I spread my cards out better, but multiple times I thought if he played Gambit turn six I was screwed. He told me after the match that he only pulled him twice and one of those was after a turn 6 Maximus. This was the most competitive match I had and it could have gone either way, but oddly enough I was able to rely on Ronan a lot and just kept pumping his hand, and then turn 6 was Mystique and Maximus. The last round came down to us picking the right lane and when I saw the cards drop I yelled fuck yes way too loud in the kitchen and my manager actually scolded me about my language. I didn’t care, for once, I had beaten Jesse McGrath at a video game.

JESSE’S TAKE: It’s not how you finish, it’s how you start, right? Right?? This was by far my most competitive match of the tournament and at times my most frustrating (which I believe is the point of this deck Seamus is running). Of note: in seven matches I drew Gambit ONCE, and that was on a final turn Maximus played by Seamus. He’s not my only way to win with this deck by any means, but it was so noticeable that Seamus even remarked “I kept waiting for him to pop up” after we finished.

MATCH 2: Jacob vs. Jack

WINNER: Jack with 4 points

JACK’S TAKE: This was a funny one. Jacob and I took a while to schedule a good time for our match, so we ended up doing it in the middle of a workday during the week. I had planned on playing Jacob during my lunch break, but I cut it too close and ended up needing to split my time between this match and a Zoom call (where I was off-camera and muted). Even funnier is that Jacob was my only opponent who wanted to be on a call with me the whole match, so I needed to explain all this to him at that moment. And then my work Zoom ended right as our match did! Wow. Anyway, it didn’t take me long to realize that Jacob was running a crazy discard deck with Morbius, Dracula, Apocalypse, and all the other usual suspects. Pretty early on, he even managed to play Wong and Gambit on Kamar-Taj, which simultaneously boosted his Morbius up to God-like levels while eradicating almost every card I had played up to that point (he would’ve cleaned me out entirely had I not played Armor on another location beforehand). Don’t remember whether we had to watch every animation or if the game resorted to the Fast-Forward display, but either way: embarrassing. We played a bunch of games back and forth, but it all really came down to Game 7. I keep Quiksilver and Agent 13 in my deck to round out the low-cost spots, but I never expected one of them to come through quite so well for me! The last location revealed in this game was the Orchis Forge, which gives you a Sentinel in your hand every time you play a card there. In this game, Agent 13 had given me the Collector, which I knew could beef up enough to combat Jacob’s Morbius while the Orchis Forge and its resultant Sentinels were available. I caught Jacob off-guard, amassed more power for the Collector than he was able to for Morbius by discarding, and eked out another win!

JACOB’S TAKE: And with this, I have locked down a guaranteed last-place performance in this tournament. This was a close one! I managed to squeak out a couple of killer victories. Jack’s Ongoing deck utilized Enchantress, which became a pain in the ass with my reliance on Wong, Morbius, Mystique, and Zabu, but I managed wins with my beefy Dracula and even got to go full Exodia with Gambit once. It went to seven matches, one of the longer sets in this game. I just had nothing to answer for his lower cost, higher power. This is the issue with this deck, high-cost cards but only a few with a base power over, like, 4. Lesson learned: use decks with multiple win strats.

CURRENT STANDINGS:

Jack, Jesse, Seamus, and Stephen are all tied at 2 wins each. Jacob has zero. It all comes down to Round 5.

Round 5:



MATCH 1: Jacob vs. Stephen


WINNER: Jacob with 10 points

JACOB’S TAKE: Unreal. After three rounds of terrible luck, I got everything I needed in this game. I never even used Morbius! All my wins were based on feeding Dracula. I now see the issue with my deck: it has no counters! Nothing I do affects my opponent, aside from the possibility of a Gambit attack. Ku seemed to rock a deck with many layers of strategies (at one point he scored big using Arnim Zola to launch Carnage into two locations with Nimrods already in them) but he couldn’t stack up to my absurd, improbable luck.

STEPHEN’S TAKE: This one felt like another blowout, because I got some optimal plays with my deck of getting the Nimrod train rolling, but at my best, I still couldn’t close the power gap. Matchups like these are the ones that make me consider tinkering my deck, as its best-case scenario can’t seem to hold up to Jacob’s!

[EDITOR’S NOTE: With Jacob earning his one and only win over Stephen (locking Stephen at 2 wins), and Jesse’s season over with his bye in Round 5 (also locking him at 2 wins), the winner of the tournament would be determined in the final match.]

MATCH 2: Jack vs. Seamus



WINNER: Seamus with 8 points

SEAMUS’ TAKE: Jack and I played this match in person after seeing the new Spider-Verse movie. He was playing a mix of an ongoing and zoo deck. Wished I had Rogue. It also meant that flooding the lanes would only help him. I knew I could beat him on base power and didn’t think he really had anything that stalled my deck until the most important match of the series. With my Darkhawk out early I played Mystique in the rightmost lane. He countered that by playing Enchantress to get rid of my Darkhawk and kill any chance Mystique had of copying him. Brilliant play by him, and we both snapped because he had kept her hidden to this point so I thought I was about to run away with it. What we didn’t realize was that we were tied for priority, but I had the higher point total, so my Mystique went off first, he neutralized my Darkhawk, but I was able to stuff enough power into another lane on my last turn to win. The last game, honestly, could have gone either way. Thanks to me throwing out garbage all game and trying to stuff his lanes, I didn’t realize that thanks to locations I could only actually play a card in one lane and I had priority, meaning that if he played Enchantress I was done-zo. He still had the full board to play with so I went with my best bet and dropped Ronan for the first time in our whole match-up and it worked.

JACK’S TAKE: Regardless of how the round-robin schedule shook out, I always knew that Seamus would serve as the final boss of my run. Prior to the tournament even being proposed, he had shown me a small handful of creative, complex decks he’d built, and I know he dives deeper into the mobile game sphere than I tend to. Still, at the end of my previous match, Jacob told me that I “could likely counter” some of the strategies that Seamus would be using, so I remained optimistic. We sat down for the final match of the tournament right after seeing the new Spiderverse movie together. Our first two games were pretty uneventful, and we both knocked two points off the other. Our third game, however, is where things really took a turn. I knew at this point that Seamus had been stuffing both my hand and my deck with junk and using Darkhawk to stay ahead of me, but I hadn’t yet been able to play Enchantress. I saw an opportunity to do so and Snapped right away. Unfortunately, Seamus also Snapped at that same moment. I first saw this as a great opportunity for me to lock the tournament down in one clean blow, but my joy didn’t last long. The two of us were tied for priority at that point, but with Darkhawk already out, Seamus had higher total Power, and therefore first flip, on this next turn, which set my fate in stone. He played Mystique, which copied Darkhawk and gave him an even bigger boost to his power. When my Enchantress was revealed, it took Darkhawk out, but not before Mystique took over for him - my strategy was gone, and I needed to quickly pivot if I was going to prevent myself from losing. I thought I had a great hand lined up, but on the last turn of that match, Seamus played Ronan, which I had not yet seen. This gave him a huge power boost on one location, which was all he needed to come out on top. It was a perfect back-and-forth and the flawless execution of a tight setup from Seamus. A true anime ending! The worst part is that I remembered the lesson I learned at the end of my match with Stephen, but still fell victim to it anyway.

An even worse kicker - because of my (apparently) excessive Snapping, the matches I lost had big point differentials, so I was only able to place higher than Jacob, who was behind because he had fewer wins. I’ve got a lock on the structure of this game mode now, and I’ve been tinkering with a couple of new cards and deck structures, so hopefully, we do this again before too long - I want to show everyone what I’m really made of!

FINAL RESULTS:



CLOSING THOUGHTS FROM CHAMPION SEAMUS: With that, I won the tournament. I really didn’t know how it was going to go, after almost losing to Jacob and then getting demolished by Stephen I figured I might finish looking ok, but after I beat Jesse I just said fuck it and decided I could do it. As someone who grew up around bad losers, I used to always make a “mistake” towards the end of a game, figuring it was better to save someone’s feelings, take a loss, and ensure they would keep playing with me. But with the win in sight, I took no prisoners and played harder against Jack than anyone else. Full Cobra Kai, no mercy. Can’t wait to do this again! I have like 5 different decks I want to try out!