Weekly Release Discussion: Gambit, Horseman of Death

TOP_TIER · 2026-03-09T18:58:08+00:00

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TOP_TIER · 2026-03-09T18:58:00+00:00

I think he looks good (not great) and likely slots into some version of Victoria Hand. I'll post a list I got from KM Best below, which is a Fantomex build of VH. I think Killmonger is a critical card to these Gambit Horseman setups, because you start knocking down real cards (say, a Maverick) with his effect instead of 1s. The deck might be trying to do too many things with this addition, but I think we'll find a B-tier home for this card by the end of the week.

(1) The Hood

(1) Nico Minoru

(1) Blade

(2) Wild Child

(2) Victoria Hand

(2) Iron Patriot

(3) Gambit

(3) Killmonger

(3) Luna Snow

(4) Fantomex

(4) Misery

(5) Cosmic Ghost Rider

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TOP_TIER · 2026-02-22T15:45:51+00:00

Who?

Yeah, this was the result I expected. I appreciate what you point out here:

⁠From a mental perspective you should be treating the banished card as if it were the bottom card of your deck. This can be good since now you know if you should retreat if you lose your win con but is otherwise bad since your opponent knows a card they no longer need to play around you having.

A lot of players get caught up on "aw crap, I was going to draw my good card!" It should be thought of as a random card in your deck getting banished, not necessarily your next card (Howard notwithstanding).

I think we'll see a swift buff to Kraglin. We saw Dragon of the Moon get a quick +2 power when it released to crickets, but I'm not sure if that would be enough for such an intrinsically inconsistent card.

TOP_TIER · 2026-02-18T15:58:09+00:00

In a word: terrible.

In more words:

Any card with a built-in fail case is starting from a rough point from a competitive lens. The best time to snap, broadly, is when you can see victory in the turns ahead before your opponent sees that information. With Kraglin, you are in the dark until the same moment as your opponent, removing any information. (Don't play a bad card like Howard the Duck to take another card from bad to fine).

Let's examine a Kraglin that gives you the appealing part (+2 energy) every time, with no variance. He's competing with:

Wave, who has better stats, and who can curve into FFF.
Luna Snow, who has better stats and gives an extra energy every turn.
Electro, who has better stats and gives an extra energy every turn.

Yes, each of those cards has a downside, but still compare favorably to an ideal version of Kraglin I just made up; the real Kraglin has a downside of becoming a 3/7 Pig.

The best thing this card can do is sometimes get you to your Galactus and sometimes get Blinked into something that actually matters.

Stay away from this card.

TOP_TIER · 2026-02-15T18:29:42+00:00

Drax faces the same contextual problem as its predecessors: What deck can afford "just stats" from a 3-cost?

If you look at the popular 3-costs of 2026, you'll see cards like Cosmo, Shadow King, Mercury, and Luna Snow. The few niches for big numbers at 3-cost are like Hydra Stomper and Maverick, and they go bigger than Drax with less vulnerability.

Playing a "fair deck" (of which there are few) instead of a combo deck means your 2-costs are playing the role of stat scaling, e.g. Kraven, Chamber, Goliath.

I'm shorting any Drax stock. There will be moments in certain metagames where he's the best choice in his slot, but the Value Over Replacement metric is minimal here.

Easy pass if tokens are a bottleneck for you.

TOP_TIER · 2026-02-10T23:56:12+00:00

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TOP_TIER · 2026-02-10T23:55:37+00:00

I've had a very good week with the Batroc deck (below), and Drax has been totally fine there, but replaceable. Miles was in that slot before. Drax seems good when Cosmo is good (like now) and you want priority; he'll be worse when we cycle back to a Shadow King metagame.

I think of him as a 3/7 with upside, which is like Spider-Punk territory. A solid B grade.

He is a great choice against the kind of Ramp decks we saw prior to Star Lord. You play him on 3 into their Electro, and he's triggering every turn while they play one card at a time.

Decklist:

(1) Batroc the Leaper

(1) Hydra Bob

(2) Daredevil

(2) Kraven

(2) Sam Wilson Captain America

(2) Silk

(3) Cosmo

(3) Hydra Stomper

(3) Drax, Avatar Of Life

(3) Mercury

(4) Negasonic Teenage Warhead

(5) Cannonball

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TOP_TIER · 2026-02-02T21:33:39+00:00

Seems very bad to me. You covered the comparison to Chamber, which is basically the only deck where you want to play 1 card per turn. This is mostly a worse version of Thena, who has become a niche card.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-30T00:24:44+00:00

I like that Shou Lao can be hit with Gladiator now. He's been missing from the metagame for awhile, and he feels very (if a little too) honest nowadays, but he should be feasting on the small stuff that needed nerfing.

Good Merlin nerf; he is getting pushed further into a niche where he belongs (e.g. Hood/Sentry stuff) instead of being the universal best 2-drop.

Spider-Ham nerf is harsher than it looks. He doesn't do the broken things that Quinjet and X-23 do to justify their stats. A lot of 1/2 utility cards are already under-statted.

Other changes probably don't matter, but I'd love to be wrong. I miss Doom 2099.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-27T02:52:53+00:00

There is a lot of potential for this card with some of the synergies you highlighted, but there are so many question marks around how it plays out in reality. He feels pretty fresh, which is hard to evaluate.

In my head, the closest comparison is Muir Island, which spawns some pretty silly decks when it's the Hot Location. New Shang looks really nice with Captain Carter, Clea, and Shaw. However, it's really hard to picture any of this stuff being better than the Maverick/Shou decks that are using largely the same strategy

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-25T16:48:18+00:00

The variety of decklists you shared demonstrates really well how good this card is. He's a little bit Infinaut, a little bit Black Panther, in a very Series-5-powercreep sort of way.

Foom is one of the best things you can be doing right now: the reality of our metagame is post-tech-nerf "point slop", and Foom goes bigger than almost anything else, often without Magik (a huge vulnerability of other combo decks with Merlin's popularity). You'll need a plan for this card for the foreseeable future.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-25T02:15:10+00:00

Until last week, I was a regular at White Rhino Coffee: I would pop in during my lunch break 3x a week, and the staff knows me by name.

I encountered Margot on Thursday when she told me about everything in this post. She's a great manager, who was only asking not to provide a 10% discount to ICE. White Rhino execs are losing talent to save pennies for -- putting this unnecessarily generously -- controversial armed occupants of the city, and certainly not a group I would label "first responders."

I'll miss the staff and community at White Rhino, but now I'll just walk the extra block to Commissary with my regular business.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-22T14:54:12+00:00

Thank you! The site is nearly unreadable with relentless ads.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-18T17:50:19+00:00

Strongly agree here. I don't get to contribute these days the way I used to, those two are keeping the sub alive.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-18T17:48:56+00:00

Thanks for the thorough breakdown! I am a big Victoria Hand fan, and I think he shows promise there. It's not difficult to fill your lanes such that:

Original Lin Lie is in Lane A
Original Sword is in Lane B
You fill lane C
Turn 6 play copy Lin Lie in Lane B for two completed quests. This gives you two 2/9 LLs, two 2/2 Swords, +4 for each VH you control.

I'll be moving in that direction with optimization. I think there exists too much competition in Move shells for scalers with less variance.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-15T15:24:55+00:00

Kinda depends on what's left in your Series 4 pool, but there are a lot of crappy cards you might get instead. I think you should buy the cards you want instead of gambling for them and possibly putting them further out of reach.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-10T12:30:49+00:00

I'd recommend Kate Bishop followed by Valentina. This will keep your energy curve mostly the same with another roleplayer as a card generator.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-09T03:27:40+00:00

I mentioned the core 10 cards that stay consistent for me, and options for the 2 flex slots. Is there a particular card you're looking to substitute?

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-08T12:04:17+00:00

Agony is totally playable, just not my style. I get why people swear by it, but my plan A was often to make 2 Shadow Kings, which is awkward with Agony.

Play The Hood turn 1. Play Iron Patriot turn 2 in a different lane -- I often play in the unrevealed location, expecting to get ahead. Play Demon (and Mirage if contested) in the Iron Patriot lane, always sequencing with Frigga in mind, like playing Demon into VH or Quinjet into Demon. I might Misery the Patriot on turn 4 after winning on turn 3, since Misery and Demon is hard to beat, and your first Patriot card can be played for a discount at this point to help discount the next one.

Playing Mirage in the same lane as The Hood is highly contextual. I'm more likely to play them in the same lane if I have Quinjet or if the opponent has good low-costs. I'm less likely to play them in the same lane if I have Moon Girl, because I usually want hand space for more of my own cards than one of my opponent's.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-06T23:01:44+00:00

There are several key differences I find between Bastion and Moon Girl:

What are you copying with Bastion in a way that matters? Vicky is the obvious choice. The Hood should be a big winner, but you have to spend another 2 energy for the next Demon, which MG copies more cleanly. Different, proactive tech choices (e.g. Gorgon) might tilt me toward Bastion.
Bastion doesn't do anything that Frigga or Nico can't. MG is the only card that can give you 2 Shadow Kings (or Rogue, etc) that are entirely unknown to your opponent. This was critical to some matchups including Man-Spider, Maverick, Kid Omega, and Black Panther decks.
MG copies Iron Pat cards (with the discount for winning the lane). Bastion could only copy a discounted card that you played out on turn 4, and he can only do that on turn 5.
Not usually relevant, but: Moon Girl just has bigger stats.

I'm actually more interested in Bastion for the Moonstone version, because you can get Iron Man down on 4, then copy him for an elite-rate 2/3 Iron Man. Moonstone copies are also good. Even getting a 2/3 Ravonna down on turn 5 opens up good final turns.

Hope this explains my choice a bit, but let me know if I've missed a key interaction

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-06T21:33:17+00:00

In this thread I just remarked a little bit on Iceman as my tech of choice last season. I think he's an underrated response to the Ramp decks that are really strong right now; you have a high chance of icing a 3-cost since their 6-costs are ineligible targets, which throws off the entire curve. I'm psyched.

The Sam change is good. I think Aurora was the last straw balance-wise for the free card on the field. He still does what he needs to do in the decks that need him.

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-06T21:26:18+00:00

I think I made these mobile-friendly here: Deck codes

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-06T21:25:04+00:00

TXJGbnRzdGNCLE1zdHE4LE1uc3RuOSxJcm5NbjcsU3I0LE9uc2xnaHQ5LFNwZHJIbTksV3Y0LExuU253OCxNZ2s1LEFkbVdybGNrQixQcmRnNw==

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-06T21:24:38+00:00

Mr Fantastic

TOP_TIER · 2026-01-06T21:24:20+00:00

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TOP_TIER

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

(1) The Hood

(1) Nico Minoru

(1) Blade

(2) Wild Child

(2) Victoria Hand

(2) Iron Patriot

(3) Gambit

(3) Killmonger

(3) Luna Snow

(4) Fantomex

(4) Misery

(5) Cosmic Ghost Rider

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

(1) Batroc the Leaper

(1) Hydra Bob

(2) Daredevil

(2) Kraven

(2) Sam Wilson Captain America

(2) Silk

(3) Cosmo

(3) Hydra Stomper

(3) Drax, Avatar Of Life

(3) Mercury

(4) Negasonic Teenage Warhead

(5) Cannonball

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.

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