We’ve just wrapped up another Golden Gauntlet, the first of the Qualifiers for the World Championship. I’ve noticed that among players on social media, Marvel Snap’s current metagame feels bad in large part due to the newest archetype End of Turn, spurred on from the release of Invisible Woman First Steps.
This archetype has been dubbed the “p2w archetype” and sentiment has been down because of that. Most of the general public have been calling for nerfs to this deck and are calling the deck overpowered.
Lucky for us that wasn’t the winning deck! Our newest Golden Gauntlet champion, f0x, was piloting his own version of Spectrum Ongoing! Talk about a dark horse. No one I was talking to would have called this archetype as the tournament winner.
Before we look at what others brought to the tournament I wanted to talk to the winner and get their thoughts on how it went down.
F0x, how long have you been playing Marvel Snap and do you have experience with other competitive card games?
I started playing Marvel SNAP in April 2023. I have played quite a few other card games, but not really at a competitive level. I like building decks and making card evaluation decisions, optimizing for winning, but do not enjoy the process of playing out those decks as much.
You’re now the latest Golden Gauntlet Champion. Other than this, what are your Marvel Snap accomplishments? What’s the highest rank you’ve gotten?
My greatest Marvel SNAP accomplishments are building several strong but unusually-constructed decks and calling Arishem overpowered before its release. My peak ladder rank is top 10 Infinite during August 2024 playing exclusively Thena Clog (I forgot the exact number).
How often do you play Marvel Snap to maintain this level of skill?
I used to play regularly until mid-December 2024. I have been playing intermittently since then. Between mid-June 2025 and last Tuesday, I did not play any SNAP. Between last Tuesday and the beginning of the tournament, I spent approximately 6 hours building decks and playing ladder to prepare.
Do you think taking a long break has put you at a disadvantage? Is taking breaks in Marvel Snap like you have generally feasible?
I am definitely much worse at the game if I haven't played for a while. The ramp-up time to get in shape is fairly quick, though.
You can definitely take breaks and still have viable decks to play when you come back to the game. You won't be able to play the hot new decks immediately unless you have tokens saved, but new decks aren't necessarily better than older decks. Personally, I had 46k tokens before my most recent break, but ended up not buying any of the new cards since I didn't need them for the deck I was playing.
The Deck
Golden Gauntlet Winner - f0x
I’ve seen many players from the general public calling Invisible Woman First Steps and the End of Turn deck unbeatable. How concerned were you about it? Why not play it yourself?
I don't think that the decks that want to copy Invisible Woman First Steps are super busted, but they are very playable decks with a strong combo that is not vulnerable to the most commonly played tech; Shang-Chi is still the most commonly-played tech card in the game (despite the vast majority of decks having zero targets for it). I included Elektra in my deck specifically to beat Invisible Woman First Steps decks.
I believed that the End of Turn decks would be heavily targeted by players with Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Supergiant, and I didn't think the Invisible Woman First Steps decks were resilient enough against being targeted to justify bringing them (unlike Thanos in the first Golden Gauntlet).
The Mercury Cannonball package has an established pedigree, but why the choice to merge it with Spectrum Ongoing?
Mercury is a natural fit in Spectrum decks, as its ability to move makes the power distribution of a turn 6 Spectrum much less predictable.
Cannonball doesn't have Ongoing synergy, but it does support one of the deck's gameplans very well. Moonstone is very good at rendering one location completely unwinnable for your opponent, and Cannonball is the best way to win a second location when a first is completely secured.
Let’s talk about Mercury Moonstone, what first brought you to this obscure interaction?
I did not know about this interaction before playing my initial draft of the deck (which had Mobius instead of Elektra). Eventually, there was a game while testing where the two of them ended up in the same lane. I realized that this interaction made the deck a fair amount better than it would otherwise be.
I am fairly sure that the Mercury allowing Moonstone to move is not intended based on Moonstone's wording, but it's a two-month-old interaction that Second Dinner has not acknowledged as being a bug. I did ask the tournament organizers before the tournament started and got permission to move Moonstone.
In a tournament like this, every deck needs some form of interaction. Tech cards. Why did you choose Elektra and Gorgon?
I chose Gorgon because I wanted a fourth 2-cost Ongoing card for curve reasons. I expected a decent amount of Victoria Hand decks and a decent amount of Hood/Merlin/Werewolf by Night decks, and Gorgon is good against both.
In the Elektra slot, I was initially considering playing either Armor or Mobius M. Mobius. I decided against Mobius because it was underwhelming in every matchup except for Mr. Negative and Sera Control, and didn't think there was going to be much of either. Armor was to improve my matchup against Fenris Wolf decks, but I realized that the only real use of Armor in those matchups was protecting other cards from Negasonic Teenage Warhead. I also did not like Armor preventing your own Cannonball from destroying cards. I ended up choosing to play Elektra, since it is good against the end-of-turn decks that aim to copy Invisible Woman First Steps, and is also a cheap, expendable body to sacrifice to Negasonic.
A good chunk of your deck is from the early three Series of cards. Was “budget” a consideration in your deck choice? Did you just not have resources to get newer stuff and had to work with what you had or are people underestimating the “older stuff”?
I did not make any budget substitutions. It is possible that I should be playing Mr. Fantastic First Steps instead of Gorgon, like my semi-finals opponent who was also playing Spectrum; I had enough tokens to purchase and test Mr. Fantastic, but he didn't show up in my shop before decklists were due.
I think that Second Dinner has done a good job of giving Series 1 and 2 cards interactions that allow them to see play in higher-Series gameplay. In the case of early-Series Ongoing cards, they are carried by Sam Wilson; Cap's Shield makes enabling Ant-Man easier, gives Captain America up to +4 additional Power for free as well a free Ongoing target to buff, and receives +2 Power from Spectrum.
Finals
During the finals KMbest said this match would come down to a battle of tech cards. Would you say you felt that was accurate when you built your deck? Was that your expectation?
I feel like that is an accurate statement, as that matchup will often come down to whether you can stop Invisible Woman First Steps from being copied by Prodigy, The End of Turn deck has relatively weak point output without two copies of Invisible Woman, and has to rely on priority-based disruption such as Juggernaut to win those games.
I believe the presence of Elektra in my deck also made it bad for my opponent to play Sunspot before turn 6, which is a decent amount of free value from tech, even in games where I didn't draw Elektra.
Quite often Cannonball ended up being your turn 5 play, instead of the expected turn 6. What is your advice about when to play Cannonball?
You shouldn't play Cannonball before the final turn without a compelling reason, but it's capable of stopping many game-winning combos when played early.
During the last game, it was still early in the round. Both of you are only down by 3. Your opponent snaps you. You only had played 3 cards at this point. Why not leave?
I did not think I was in a winning position. However, leaving put me to 5 Cubes while leaving my opponent with 7, which is also not a winning position. I thought that my odds of winning in that specific game were better than the odds of me winning while down 5-7.
Last game, last turn. The middle location was completely yours. What made you so sure about securing a second lane? Walk us through your final turn thought process.
I had less than a 50% chance of winning in that position, but I tried to maximize my chance of winning.
There are five relevant cards that the opponent could play on the final turn.
- Sunspot
- Havok
- Negasonic Teenage Warhead
- Juggernaut
- Fantasticar
The opponent is very likely to only play two cards in order to give +12 Power to Thena, and a third card is unlikely to be relevant since I had 50 Power in the middle location to my opponent's 0. The opponent had no 1-Cost cards on either the right or left location. The highest-Power cards on the left location were Thena and Mobius M. Mobius (both /6). The right and left locations both have three enemy cards.
I had Elektra, Cannonball, and Mercury in hand, with 6 energy. My only real option is to play Elektra, then Cannonball on the same lane; this plays around Negasonic. The middle lane is full after Cap's Shield moves there, so Juggernaut always shifts both cards from the right or left location to the opposite one; this was set up the previous turn with Ant-Man on the center location.
If I play Elektra+Cannonball on the right location, I beat Negasonic, Fantasticar, or Sunspot right, but I lose to Havok.
If Juggernaut is played right, it sends my play to the left lane. Following that, if Negasonic or Sunspot were played left, whether I win the left location is decided by whether the Cannonball hits the Thena or Mobius. This is a 50/50. If Fantasticar or Havok are played left, I lose.
This is not actually my analysis during the game, as I did not consider Fantasticar a relevant card in the situation. If accounting for the potential play of Fantasticar left and Juggernaut right, I should have retreated when my opponent snapped that round, as my opponent is likely to be able to play both with Surge and Mr. Fantastic First steps in play. Elektra+Cannonball is my only viable line in that situation, so playing around it is an obvious choice.
Golden Gauntlet Runner Up - detinator10
The runner up, detinator10 was running the boogieman of the current format, End of Turn Invisible Woman.
Expect to see variations of this build on your ladder climb!
Over 90 players qualified for the Golden Gauntlet World Tournament in November. If you haven’t qualified don’t worry! There are still 2 more chances in the coming months. September and October. Dates and times have yet to be announced, so stay tuned!
Here are some of the lists we at Snapfan liked from the Golden Gauntlet. Did you watch the live coverage? Let us know down below who you like seeing on screen!