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Marvel Snap: best decks for beginners

Jesse Lennox
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The hardest part of any deck-building game is, well, building your first deck. Even in a game as friendly to those unfamiliar with the genre as Marvel Snap is, it can easily look intimidating when asked to narrow down all the available cards into a single deck. The fact that decks can only have 12 cards in total does make it more manageable in some ways, but also raises the importance placed on each card you choose to fill one of those slots.

In the early hours of Marvel Snap you won’t be overwhelmed with available cards. Even so, the beginning set alone will give you thousands of possible deck possibilities. If you’re more interested in getting a feel for how the game is to actually play before worrying so much about managing your deck in Marvel Snap, here are a few favorite decks you can build early on that will help you get into the game faster.

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Further reading

How to get new cards and what card pools are

Marvel Snap's card progression levels.

Marvel Snap is a free-to-play game, and doesn’t let you buy cards with real money. Instead, to keep everything fair, all cards you get are earned playing and awarded at random. The more you play, the more Credits and Boosters you will earn. Credits can be used to upgrade any card in your deck, while Boosters can only be applied to certain cards. However, these upgrades are just cosmetic in nature.

The way to actually unlock a new card is by improving your Collection Level. This is done by upgrading your cards using those Credits and Boosters, or purchasing duplicate cards from the shop and upgrading them as well.

At certain Collection Level milestones, you will unlock a Mystery Card. This card will be a random card from your current card pool. Card pools are broken down based on your Collection Level, with three total:

Pool 1: Collection level 18 — 214

Pool 2: Collection Level 222 — 485

Pool 3: Collection level 486+

You won’t have to worry about the second and third pools for a while, so all the following beginner decks will only use cards you can get in the first pool.

Kazoo deck

Deck of cards in Marvel Snap.

Our first beginner-friendly deck is well known among the community as the Kazoo deck. This is because it is a very reliable and easy-to-play setup that packs in a ton of one Energy cost cards, with Ka-Zar being the high-cost anchor. His Ongoing effect really ties the deck together and makes all cards that cost one Energy have +1 Power.

  • Ant-Man
  • Blade
  • Elektra
  • Hawkeye
  • Nightcrawler
  • Squirrel Girl
  • Angela
  • Captain America
  • Wolfsbane
  • Ka-Zar
  • Blue Marvel
  • Onslaught

Scarlet Witch

Marvel Snap promo image of multiple Marvel characters.

This deck is, as you can guess, built around Scarlet Witch. This is a more brutal, heavy Power focused deck that encourages buffing your other cards and shifting them from one Location to another to keep your opponent on their toes.

  • Scarlet Witch
  • White-Tiger
  • The Watcher
  • Iron-Fist
  • Cable
  • Angela
  • Nightcrawler
  • Jessica Jones
  • The Punisher
  • Hulk
  • Enchantress
  • Bishop

The Avengers

Iron Heart in Marvel Snap's animated trailer.

Time to assemble The Avengers! It just so happens that the core members of The Avengers synergize quite well, especially their Ongoing abilities. Iron Man can double other cards’ Power, while Captain America also grants additional Power, but it is Onslaught that is this deck’s real kicker. Onslaught’s ability to double any Ongoing effects in the same Location basically ensures you will win that Location.

  • Iron Man
  • Captain America
  • Ant-Man
  • Hawkeye
  • The Watcher
  • Armor
  • Kraven
  • Namor
  • Mister Fantastic
  • Ka-Zar
  • The Punisher
  • Onslaught

Dinosaur Control

Marvel Snap trailer shot of Miles Morales, America Chaves, Iron Heart, Venom, and Black Panther in a mech.

Finally, if you want to overwhelm your opponent, the Devil Dinosaur-focused deck isn’t quite as easy to pull off as the others, but very fun once you do. Devil Dinosaur is your main unit here, and you’re going to focus on his ability to get +2 Power for every card you have in your hand. Knowing that, the rest of your deck is focused on filling your hand as much as possible, such as Sentinel which adds a copy of itself to your hand when played, and Cable which takes the bottom card from your opponent’s deck and puts it in your hand.

  • Ant-Man
  • Mantis
  • Nightcrawler
  • Cable
  • Sentinel
  • Cosmo
  • Jessica Jones
  • White Queen
  • Iron Man
  • Devil Dinosaur
  • Onslaught
  • America Chavez

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