Writer: Torikun | Editor: ItsGuestGaming
Hey everyone, Torikun here again.
The Season 13 Battle Arena 2 just concluded over the weekend, which I would describe as an incredible tournament to remember. I was able to cast a tournament for the first time (Thank you to everyone who sent me kind words for my efforts.) and I got to bear witness to an utterly insane and surprising Top 8 composition beyond my wildest predictions. Who would have expected that in a meta supposedly dominated by High Evolutionary decks, we would end up with no High Evolutionary decks at all in the Top 8 this time? Such a special tournament deserves a special article accompanying it, and so I secured interviews with all eight Top Cut finishers for this edition of Battle Breakdown, where I asked them about their deck choices and other relevant questions. There is so much to cover with this insane tournament, and it’s time to break it all down.
Tournament Stats Overview
Top 8 Interviews
Winner: Dmoney
What made you decide to bring Bounce to the event? Could you explain some of the deck building decisions and reasons why you chose to include the cards that you did?
- I brought Bounce because it’s my favorite deck to play, and I believe it to be the strongest. I ended up using the same list I brought to the UK Creator Clash tournament since it performed very well there. I also figured many people would still bring some kind of Lockjaw deck, and Bounce just puts more power down on the board very consistently. My version specifically is fully focused on raw stats, so I also feel favored against other Bounce decks. I don’t think any tech cards like Iceman, Spider-Ham, or Shang-Chi are necessary since the deck beats everything anyway!
I fully accepted that Galactus and Wave/Sandman decks would be very tough matchups, but I firmly believe anything is possible in Battle Mode matches.
If you could run it back, were there any changes you would make to your deck submission? Perhaps cards you would include instead if you had them?
- I believe my deck is perfect as is, but the America Chavez debate is interesting with Bounce. Chavez does give you a couple of extra percentage points to draw Kitty on turn 1, which is very important.
You were branded with a curse of being the perennial Runner Up due to falling short at two different Creator Clash events (as someone who lost twice at the Finals of the Snap.fan Open and in the finals of several other tournaments, I understand the feeling as well). How does it feel to finally break that curse at an open tournament? Where would you rank your achievement at Battle Arena compared to your Creator Clash finishes, and would you have the same ranking if you ended up finishing 2nd in this Battle Arena instead?
- I am pleased with my 2nd places at the Creator Clash tournaments, but of course it always stings a bit to get so close to #1.
This Battle Arena tournament was my first open Snap tournament, and I had just found out about it 12 hours prior to the start. That being said I am thrilled with the result, as there were over 100 participants and I was feeling very sick. After barely making it to the Top 8, I honestly did not expect to make it any further. I rank this achievement highly considering it was my first open tournament. I got pretty lucky with my matchups in the Swiss, but the level of competition was fairly high and similar to Creator Clash, especially in the final matches. I think there is a lot more pressure at an in-person event and they are fairly different tournaments, but this first place finish is up there with the others.
What does it mean for you to have qualified for the Snap.fan World Championship?
- I honestly don’t know much about the World Championship, but I am ecstatic to be a part of it! I love to compete, especially against the best of the best.
Runner Up: WhatAmI
What made you decide to bring Kitty Tech to the event? Could you explain some of the deck building decisions and reasons why you chose to include the cards that you did?
- Pretty simple really, I wanted to play the most powerful cards in the game as well as a package that let me beat those cards. Kitty tech has just enough room to do both of those things at once.
If you could run it back, were there any changes you would make to your deck submission? Perhaps cards you would include instead if you had them?
- Nope, I stand by the deck 100%. I honestly think I cracked the format and was only let down by my own sub-par play in the finals.
You already qualified for the SFWC before thanks to finishing Runner Up at the Snap.fan April Open in a meta right after Red Skull was nerfed in an OTA. Compared to then, do you think today's meta has more variety or not? Which meta do you find more enjoyable?
- I find both metas to be extremely fun. That said as far as variety goes I would say there was more back then than there is now. If we want to open up the competitive metagame again I would look into targeted nerfs at both Kitty and the High Evolutionary package.
Top 4: DrAnansi
What made you decide to bring Bounce to the event? Could you explain some of the deck building decisions and reasons why you chose to include the cards that you did?
- These were my first two tournaments in Marvel Snap, so I wanted to bring a popular meta deck rather than brewing something myself. But I'm looking forward to bringing some spice in the future. I registered with Evo Lockjaw for the event but switched to Bounce last minute because I figured that Evo has too much variance for a tournament. To be honest I never played the archetype since I only recently got Hit Monkey. So I looked at some decklists and picked the one I liked most.
As for specific card choices, I think the cards in consideration for a swap are Iceman, Chavez and Collector. I liked Iceman over Spider Ham because I think delaying an important low drop like Storm, Lockjaw or even Wasp is more valuable than transforming an expensive drop that they often don't need anyway. Also, Iceman is better in multiple uses. I like the Collector as an additional payoff for the bounce effects. Between Angela, Bishop and Collector it's very likely to draw two of them in the early stages of the game. I'm not sure about the Chavez. I see it more as a deck thinner that makes it a bit more likely to draw Kitty than an actual card I plan to play. It's good against Wave decks though when you need to play out your hand on turn 5 to have something big to play on turn 6.
If you could run it back, were there any changes you would make to your deck submission? Perhaps cards you would include instead if you had them?
- Like I mentioned, I play Chavez for the draw consistency. I just looked up the numbers. It increases the chance that you have a specific card in the opening hand from 11% to 12.5% and the chance that you drew a card by turn 3 from 50% to 54.5%. I'm not sure if it is worth it to play a basically dead card. I would probably change it for Shang-Chi which will also often be a dead card because you ideally want a big Monkey turn 6.
You had an incredible back-to-back Top 4 result just a week after reaching the same Top 4 in the Snap.fan June Open. Could you comment on the drastic meta changes in the Top 8 that happened in a week since that tournament? Which tournament was harder for you, in your opinion?
- Since I didn't really follow the tournament scene at all until now, I don't know if that's normal, but I like that there is a huge variety of decks that can compete on a competitive level. I think I only played a handful of times against Negative since the nerf, and now there are two of them in Top 8. I mostly played against decks that are not on top of the meta in both tournaments.
I'm surprised that there was only 1 Sera Miracle in this week’s tournament. I really like the deck because of the versatility. With Killmonger, Shang-Chi and Enchantress you are well-equipped against a lot of decks, though the deck is very priority dependent. The June Open was definitely easier for me. I was familiar with the deck because I played it a lot in Conquest mode. Since I never played the Bounce deck before, I wasn't quite confident with some decisions I made. I also think that you have way more room to make errors with the Sera deck because you have cards that can bring you back from a bad spot.
Top 4: cimz
What made you decide to bring Negative to the event? Could you explain some of the deck building decisions and reasons why you chose to include the cards that you did?
cimz only pulled Mister Negative from a Collector Cache two weeks ago, and found the playstyle enjoyable despite the inconsistent win rate. The deck they used underwent a lot of different variations as they played in different tournaments and various Conquests - their original was even more dependent on Negative than the current version by including cards like Valkyrie. They even went through an iteration that was a Deadpool Negative deck. A few days before the Battle Arena, they had the thought: “Why destroy my cards when I can destroy theirs?” - and thus the current version of the deck was born.
The deck utilizes Zabu, Magik, and Jane Foster to get to swapped cards, and then utilizes those swapped cards to win games. Arnim Zola is a key card that hits many targets like Iron Man, Knull, or even Shang-Chi. Sunspot was cited as a strong unit that soaked plenty - especially due to unspent energy after played Negatived cards.
If you could run it back, were there any changes you would make to your deck submission? Perhaps cards you would include instead if you had them?
- Right now I think it’s quite strong enough, and I don’t think I’ll change any card for the time being.
Top 8: WaCeLei
What made you decide to bring Junk to the event? Could you explain some of the deck building decisions and reasons why you chose to include the cards that you did?
- That's my comfort deck, I often use that deck when joining tournaments. And I rarely face Destroy decks (which is my 'nemesis' deck) in any tournament, so that's why I’m often choosing it.
The first idea for this deck is that I just wanna make a synergy for Sentry and Viper, and I develop the deck from there. Goblin-Titania is a good combination too to fill an enemy location.
If you could run it back, were there any changes you would make to your deck submission? Perhaps cards you would include instead if you had them?
- I don't think so, for now at least. I feel the composition is already at its finest for my strategy and play style.
Top 8: rusinho
What made you decide to bring Thanos Control to the event? Could you explain some of the deck building decisions and reasons why you chose to include the cards that you did?
- I’ve been playing a lot of Thanos Control, so I’m confident with it. It gave me really good results in a lot of tournaments. Daredevil should be core alongside having Spider-Man and Professor X. And Titania + Green Goblin is really good. I think that for the last 2 weeks since High Evo was released I played exclusively Thanos Control, because I didn’t have High Evo haha. Now that I bought him last week, I played it and I wouldn’t bring him. And with Thanos I’m beating Bounce, so I’ll still choose Thanos.
If you could run it back, were there any changes you would make to your deck submission? Perhaps cards you would include instead if you had them?
- Maybe Jeff is good, but I don’t have him, so I played the Ghost Spider for some locations and plays such as moving a Dino on 5, or to avoid locking out myself vs other Control decks.
Top 8: ZET
What made you decide to bring Negative to the event? Could you explain some of the deck building decisions and reasons why you chose to include the cards that you did?
- I brought the Negative deck because before I lost to cimz in another tournament, and losing against a Negative deck was very painful.
My negative deck can counter many decks; I have Morph for Evo-Lockjaw decks, Darkhawk for Thanos decks, and Knull for Destroy decks.
If you could run it back, were there any changes you would make to your deck submission? Perhaps cards you would include instead if you had them?
- Maybe swap Morph with Sunspot or Leader, Darkhawk with Professor X.
Top 8: ManAce
What made you decide to bring Sauron Shuri to the event? Could you explain some of the deck building decisions and reasons why you chose to include the cards that you did?
- So, I was very undecided about which deck to bring, after the Dr. Doom nerf I guessed that both EvoLock and ElectroRamp had a drop. From that moment my indecision was born, between SauronShuri and Cerebro 2… I started thinking that with the drop in power of EvoLock and ElectroRamp the presence of Shang-Chi would also drop, consequently SauronShuri for me was one of the few decks that could afford 2 locations with 28+ Power (and here I reasoned wrongly because Shang-Chi never leaves the meta haha).
If you could run it back, were there any changes you would make to your deck submission? Perhaps cards you would include instead if you had them?
- Going back I would probably have chosen Cerebro 2, because there wasn't even a shadow of Enchantress, plus C2 also has a good staple department that damages the opponent, while SauronShuri doesn't. But all in all I am (obviously) satisfied!
Other Meta Trends
A Changing of the Guard From High Evolutionary to Kitty Pryde
Despite all the craziness that occurred during this tournament, I think the biggest winner of this tournament was most definitely Kitty Pryde, who essentially witnessed the mantle of “Best Archetype” passed on to her from High Evolutionary. Kitty Pryde enables the strongest package in the game - the Bounce package, which is characterized by its high power output whilst retaining an insane amount of flexibility. Running Kitty, Angela, and Bishop has always been an insane amount of power on its own, but when combined with other activators such as Bast, Beast, or Collector, it just leads to an insane amount of power.
In my previous Battle Breakdown article, I called out Bounce as the successor to High Evo and I was proven right in this tournament, where three Kitty-based decks made it into the Top 4, and the Finals were contested by two Kitty decks that were built to beat the standard Bounce deck as well. There are a few reasons why Bounce is so strong. The first reason is that the strongest cards in the deck that enable snaps come down on Turn 1. This means that compared to other decks in the meta whose power turns come later, such as HE Lockjaw on Turn 3 mainly, Kitty Bounce decks get a lot of early Snap equity from hands they can Snap with as early as Turn 1.
The second reason is that their cards are cheap and have low power. With cheaper cards, this means that Bounce decks can play more cards per turn, and thus the amount of possible plays they have increases. While HE Lockjaw is limited to playing one big dude per turn, maybe with a few 0-Costs, Bounce decks are able to delegate their power cards with more granularity and thus respond to their opponents better. Low power is also a huge benefit not only for making Shang-Chi not an automatic counter, but also enabling the Kitty decks to run Bast, which is one of the most powerful 1-Drops in the entire game when put in the right conditions (Remember Beta Nakia? Bast often gives +3s instead of +2s to your whole hand.).
Finally, the nature of Kitty means that the deck often loses priority, making it hard to actually challenge the huge boards Bounce puts out. It’s thus no surprise that WhatAmI hit on having to use Invisible Woman to get his tech cards to work against Bounce. The deck is hard to play, supported by the fact that the archetype had a negative win rate overall due to most of the players crashing out with the deck early and dropping out, but has a high ceiling where the best players could make their mark.
Meanwhile, HE Lockjaw struggled big time in this tournament, posting another sub-50% win rate, with no representation in the Top 8 at all despite being the archetype most brought by players. After a few weeks of terrorizing the high-level and low-level metas, people have started to wise up on how to beat this deck. Shang-Chi was the card most-brought this week, featured in 45.7% of decks, while also being able to be slotted into most archetypes. Other decks with bigger high-rolls than HE Lockjaw have also emerged - Bounce, Negative, Shuri Sauron, and Ramp have all emerged as decks capable of going bigger than HE Lockjaw in at least 2 locations. And probably the most important reason to the deck’s lack of success, I believe that people just understand how the deck works and how not to bleed as many cubes against them, after spending so much time having to deal with the predictable nature of the deck.
Lack of Counters and OTA Changes Mean Old Archetypes Return
You saw the Top 8 decks we had in this tournament, and how out-of-field many of them seemed. Negative? Junk? Thanos Control? Shuri Sauron? Further inspection of the decklists brought to the tournament show that the Top 2 decks by popularity, HE Lockjaw and Kitty Bounce, did not even reach a meta share of 30%. This tournament was probably one of the most open in terms of deck variety.
There are a few reasons why we likely saw more archetypes. The most likely reason is a lack of tech cards beyond Shang-Chi (45.7%), Spider-Ham (23.8%), and Wave (21.0%), and many of these tech cards were not as splashable as Shang-Chi is. The 3rd most common deck by tournament meta share, Destroy, clearly benefited from a lack of Armor (6.7%) and Cosmo (10.5%). Negative decks didn’t have to worry about much Enchantress (7.6%) or Sandman (3.8%), and Sauron decks only had to worry about Shang-Chi, and not Aero (5.7%). It generally seemed like people would rather spend their energy advancing their own game plans, rather than countering their opponent’s plans, which makes sense as more efficient cards slowly get introduced and including more tech cards comes with a higher cost to the deck.
Besides the lack of counters, the OTA changes also inspired people to pick up the newly buffed cards. Red Skull’s buff brought back the old Sauron Shuri decks. Nimrod encouraged a few Destroy decks. Nick Fury’s cost reduction inspired a few people to pick new decks, from Dinohawk decks, to a deck archetype I’m calling "Card Gen", which relies on generated card effects from cards like Agent Coulson and Nick Fury without the inclusion of even Devil Dinosaur (the deck I’m linking was one game away from qualifying for the Top Cut).
From the interviews with the Top 8 as well, I also got the general sense that some people definitely preferred bringing decks they were more comfortable over the most common meta decks that they never played. Of course, there are many reasons why the tournament featured so many decks that people didn’t consider Tier 1, including pure variance, and so it’s impossible to draw too many conclusions from a single tournament.
Closing
There will be no major SFWC tournaments this coming weekend, so this iteration of Battle Arena will actually be the last major SFWC tournament that will feature the High Evolutionary/Bounce meta before I believe the decks will be addressed in some form with the July 11 patch. Overall, I think having a meta that was untouched by devs for a relatively long period was a nice change of pace from the frantic weekly changes every week during the OTAs of May. We got to see High Evolutionary decks rise, get refined, and counters emerge - characteristics from a metagame that had enough time to evolve and settle. Even if Bounce ends this leg of tournaments as the undisputed Tier 0, it’s at least not a skill-less deck and the Bounce mirrors we’ve seen have been incredible viewing experiences with a ton of skill expression.
The next SFWC event will be on July 15, as Battle Arena once again kicks off a new season of Snap.fan World Championship tournaments. Will the additions of Phoenix Force and Jean Grey alongside new patch changes bring forth entirely new successful decks in the Top 8? I’m definitely looking forward to finding out. Anyway, to close my most ambitious Battle Breakdown article yet, this is Torikun, signing off for now.