Welcome back to Meta Monday! Compensation, Bugs, and the US are back. The game has experienced a lot this past week, so let's see what has happened in the meta game.
Pillar One: Bullseye
The release of a new card is always exciting and while the first hour or so of this card's release people were not as ecstatic Bullseye has become a serious meta contender as the hours and days went by. Bullseye decks are typically just trying to produce more stats than your opponent and limit the way that they interact with the other players' decks considerably. Realistically they are as much a combo deck as any other deck that needs the correct pieces in the correct order to win. However, with the addition of Bullseye, the deck is a lot more consistent with multiple ways to deal out a ton of points.
Bullseye
Bullseye MoonGirl
While these two decks are only one card different they both have unique play lines to get the maximum amount of points. However, the main idea here is that Daken plus Frigga if you have a Bullseye on the board just absolutely goes off. Also, while the lists I have here do not include Grandmaster he is another option that lets you just go way over the top of anyone.
Pillar Two: Mill
Out of the last 28 Meta Mondays I have not once put Mill as a pillar because honestly, I don’t think the deck is that good, and the stats typically back up this assertion. However, recently Mill has taken a decent upswing in the stats department and has become popular enough to be around 8% of the Meta Game. Midrange decks that don’t require specific pieces to do well are not doing so well and combo decks have taken over for the most part with Bullseye, Negative, Move Bounce, and even clog to some degree making Mill an interesting prospect. Also, the game has a lot more doubling effects for On reveals and ways to get rid of the opponents' cards a lot faster with Yondu, Misery, Gladiator, Grandmaster, and Baron Zemo.
Mill
Mill 2
The added benefit of this deck is that it also runs Killmonger which can help the move bounce and clog matchups. I would go with the list that is running Shadow King because while that card never seems to be the most “popular” tech card within the general snap population he is by far one of the best cards in the game.
Pillar Three: Negative and Surfer
While these two decks are vastly different and are not taking up a vast majority of the meta game they are two of the best-performing decks at the moment for gaining cubes. Negative can go over the top of pretty much any deck and Surfer has been quietly putting up great numbers for weeks. (although, this week a certain bug* might be padding the stats a little).
Negative
Negative Panther
These are the two main versions of Negative running around. One is heavy on the On Reveals and using Gorr, Mystique, Sage, and Taskmaster to do the heavy lifting with a good dose of Iron Man just in case you need to get big. The other has the Wong, Panther, Zola combo for some old-school snap fun.
This is the version I have been running in the top 100 of the ranked ladder and having a fun time with.
Moonative
Moonstone is like a second Mister Negative and if it lands on the Ravonna lane it's pretty much game over for anyone.
Surfer
Surfer 2
Surfer hasn’t changed much but there are a lot of high-quality 3-cost cards to help Surfer do some amazing things. My suggestion is to mess around with the different 3-cost cards you have in your collection till you find something that you like and works for you.
Pillar Four: Wiccan, Iron Hand, Move Bounce
Pillar Four just includes all of the midrange style decks that have been around since the start of the season as well as move bounce which has been going strong for a couple of months now. Clog could also be in this section but it has fallen out of popularity in favor of Mill as that “toxic” type deck in the format.
Wiccan
Iron Hand
Move
Move Bounce
Move players have started to revert a little bit to the alioth Cosmo builds to help combat the combo-type nature of the different decks in the format because those are the only two cards that stop the different decks in the upper pillars from doing their thing.
What was that * for?
For those that are unaware, there is a current bug in the game that causes On reveals to trigger 31 times if certain conditions are met. The most basic description is when a card goes through two levels of text indirection change it triggers 31 times. For example, Copy Cat gets Iron Lad (1 text change) then Iron Lad copies an On reveal (2nd text change) and that card triggers 31 times. This has manifested in some members of the snap community abusing the bug to produce massive power via Symbiote Spider-Man, Absorbing Man, and another on reveal like Surfer or Gambit. While this deck (that I will not show because exploiting glitches is not the most honorable thing to do) is not exactly meta if you see a lone Symbiote hanging out and the decks seem a little fishy be weary.
JFsnap’s Pick for the Week
Moonative
Negative has felt the best for me this past week and I highly advise those who like Negative to give this build a shot.
Bullseye MoonGirl
Otherwise, Bullseye is the way to go for this week and training to climb and gain cubes or ranks. However, this deck might result in more mirror matches overall.
Meta Health
The meta game has gone through some decent switches these last few weeks with a lot of players shifting from one best deck to a perceived other best deck so the popularity rates of the decks hanging out in pillar one are high. While this might make the meta game look like it's leaning towards one direction and unhealthy it isn’t taking away from other decks. All of the other decks are still completely viable there is just a lot less of them. This means mirror matches are a lot more common which can be annoying but no one single deck is warping the format to combat it.
There are just a lot of viable options and players are just choosing to play the “deck” of the week. But, if you are an Arishem player, a clog player, a move player, or whatever deck you like there is no reason why you can’t play those decks and continue to have a fantastic experience and climb in ranks. To me that makes the meta decently healthy although it could be annoying to some. What do you think of the current state of the meta game?