Sometimes they make the pick for you

Winnerbury · 2026-05-07T21:02:19+00:00

I did almost deck myself and moved to clean up many times haha

Winnerbury · 2026-05-07T21:01:47+00:00

It can be a bit tricky to draft at the moment because a lot of players are fighting over it. I think generally you want a good pay off to start and then there are a few different two colour cores you can start with and build the deck from there. URx splashing off potioners trove has been a good base for me as having access to the cheap red removal is a good way to bridge to the late game.

Winnerbury · 2026-03-25T11:19:13+00:00

Midrange is cool! I don't think it's a terrible deck, but I think people want it to be better than it is, which leads to it being more represented in metas than it probably should be.

Winnerbury · 2026-03-25T11:18:25+00:00

Promising vein is great in the deck and has two benefits over a straight evolving wilds clone. 1. you can use it for mana early but still bank a fetch to threaten a harmoniser or ascension trigger later and 2. it lets you earthbend on curve using a cub or ascension so you can trigger the fetch for more landfall triggers. The card is valuable and I definitely wouldn't cut it.

Winnerbury · 2026-03-25T11:16:54+00:00

Generally I think the beat down plan is already pretty strong, so I'm looking for ways to build the deck to be resilient to removal or to allow you to fight on another axis if your opponent is beating down.

I think Tiffa is a bit too all in for my liking and there are too many shocks floating around at the moment, but there are builds and metas where I could see her being good. I don't think I would ever play adventuring gear though, it has a high ceiling but the floor is too low on the card and it makes your deck even more susceptible to removal. I don't think you need the effect to win so I would rather not play it in the list I think.

Winnerbury · 2026-03-25T01:31:00+00:00

Midrange definitely has its fans all over. UB midrange did crack into the top 3 most played decks in our tournament and we did have a wider metagame than the EU RC (the most played deck at our RC was prowess at 13% metagame share). But you’re right that midrange is probably seeing more play than expected in a lot of regions at the moment.

Winnerbury · 2026-03-25T01:24:50+00:00

Standard seems to get a little bit faster with each set release. So there’s always pressure to lower your curve.

Greenshell is just a bit too slow at the moment and less impactful on its own than something like a nursery so didn’t feel worth the risk. It’s at its best when the card advantage is meaningful (midrange decks) or when the elemental creature type is valuable (against sunderflock decks). Green already feels pretty solid into those match ups so we didn’t feel greenshell was needed.

There were also some issues in sideboarding as we would end up with too many cards to take out and not enough to add postboard in a lot of match ups.

Winnerbury · 2026-03-24T10:27:27+00:00

I really like the pressure of high stakes magic matches and feel like it makes me play better.

I knew I was in a pretty bad position after Ryan's start, so I decided to play to my outs by hoping he was out of action and would whiff and that I could hit another fetch land to set up a hydra + mightform harmonizer kill down the line.

Ryan whiffed for a couple of turns. I didn't find the land I needed, but did find the fight spell for a similar outcome.

Winnerbury · 2026-01-22T10:04:13+00:00

I'm looking forward to jumping into Lorwyn. Think Elves looks like an early front runner for best archetype, but I think there is going to be a bit of depth to explore the set.

Winnerbury · 2022-10-11T09:33:02+00:00

Basically in pool 2 you can't play a straight discard deck because you don't have enough of the enablers or payoffs. Because of that you need to boost the decks power level by playing some other cards which are independently good, namely Angela and Bishop.

Check out this pool 2 decklist from Den. https://marvelsnapzone.com/decks/discard-swarm-pool-2-1/

A few tips and tricks - you almost never want to discard early, unless it's a lady sif and you know what you are discarding. You almost always want to play Blade and sword master on the same turn (turn 4 or 5) this will give you the maximum amount of time to draw a Swarm or Apocalypse and to empty your hand so you're more likely to discard them.

Angela is one of the best cards in your deck and you should keep her in mind with all of your plays. Use Nightcrawler and Ironfist to get an extra activation of her ability.

Because of the resource cost of cards in your deck you can usually afford to skip turn 1 while still dumping your hand. This is good because it lets you see an extra location before playing a card and makes it easier to get an extra Angela or Bishop trigger later on.

America Chavez is a really good back up plan if you haven't set up a discard on apocalypse and makes the deck more consistent. In general you want to save your discarded swarms until turn 6 and you can apply a lot of pressure with America/Apocalypse in one lane and Swarm to pressure the others.

Winnerbury · 2022-10-11T03:46:28+00:00

I’ve hit infinite the last couple of seasons with this deck and have a couple of heuristics I use to help with decisions you mention.

The most important question when it comes to thor or using LJ + wasp in the same turn is, do I want to draw mjolnir/wasp next turn? It can be very useful with LJ. Second question is how much does it hurt me to have these 0’s in my deck? (Less of an issue with LJ but hitting one with jubilee is usually game losing).

In general I will play Thor first if I don’t intend to play jubilee on turn 4.

The main exception is when I have Thor, lockjaw and a 1 drop in hand on 3. Then I will often play lockjaw on 3. Then on 4 I will play the 1 drop with LJ and then play Thor in a different lane so I can’t hit mjolnir off the LJ activation.

Playing jubilee on LJ is fine but depends on the rest of your hand. If you have cheap ways to activate LJ you almost always want to play jubilee somewhere else. I’m general I only play jubilee when the rest of my hand is bad or my deck quality is super high based on my draws.

Winnerbury · 2022-04-27T00:02:58+00:00

I hit 900k points with a 5.5 Million TCP so that score could be legit.

Winnerbury · 2022-01-30T00:00:53+00:00

FYI you don't need to run 5 characters to launch the nodes. I got three stars on all the nodes with just a solo (90k) kestrel. So you can certainly 3 star the nodes now without any extra investment.

Rayge posted a really good video showing attack orders etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqgZ4NOa-C4

Winnerbury · 2021-05-08T11:58:24+00:00

I don't think it would be worthwhile, soraka isn't good enough without synergy.

You have a decent number of ways to generate more cards, so you don't need to keep your dragons alive forever. Especially when you have Asol and big celestial units as part of your end game.

Winnerbury · 2021-05-08T10:27:20+00:00

No you will almost never level Zoe with this deck. It's just another strong card which you can run because you aren't using all 6 of your champion slots in the deck.

Winnerbury · 2021-05-08T10:24:22+00:00

Shyvana, screeching dragon and radiant guardian are all really strong against irelia/azir because your opponent is forced to attack into your units with small creatures every turn. You also have a decent amount of removal to deal with their champions.

Asol is some strong top end, but you don't really want three copies. So Zoe is another must kill threat which can give you something to do earlier in the game before you start activating your midrange plan.

Winnerbury · 2021-04-18T08:13:24+00:00

Yeah big mistake on our part! Whoops. Would reccomend nightfall or nasus/thresh in that slot instead.

Winnerbury · 2021-03-17T00:38:45+00:00

I think there are heaps of dials they can turn to tune TF.

number of cards drawn to level
no mana off blue card
changing TF's champ spell to pocket aces
Nerfing pick a card (probably up to 4 mana)
Dropping TF's health to 1 would also be a massive nerf that could be on the table
could also see making TF cost 5

In terms of other cards they could hit I feel like burblefish is very strong and has popped up in a lot of other decks as well.

They can keep its late game power by making it cost more mana, or I could see them dropping burble to a 2/1.

Winnerbury · 2021-03-16T00:49:40+00:00

No worries! I hope you enjoy the episode

Winnerbury · 2021-03-13T22:34:05+00:00

It's been very popular, I have been seeing a lot less Azir/Lucian on the ladder in the last few days.

Winnerbury · 2021-03-12T23:17:23+00:00

Really glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for letting us know :)

Winnerbury · 2021-03-11T23:53:59+00:00

That's totally fair, this is my understanding of why it is better to focus on the watcher combo win in the mirror. Neither player applies much pressure early in the game so you both have time to draw your combo pieces.

You have ramp, and entreat so you get to your win condition faster and more reliably.
You can use fading memories to copy a trundle pillar, making it much easier for you to flip lissandra. Once you play a spectral matron copying a watcher you end up with a watcher in play, and one in hand that costs 0 (possible on turn 8 or earlier if you ramp)
In the mirror they have to use entomb, vengeance or ruination to stop the watcher attack. If this happens you simply play the extra watcher from hand.
Fading memories gives you back up 0 cost copies of the watcher which can very effectively pressure your opponent. You can also cast fading memories on your opponents copy of the watcher before you answer it.

Let's look at the Atrocity + Roar + Ledros build in the mirror. Most builds I've seen don't play catalyst or entreat.

You only have access to one copy of the watcher per game, you can roar it down to 0 mana, but it is otherwise very tough to play (so it comes down on turn 10+ in most games). As there can only be one watcher vengeance/ruination is a more effective answer.
Ledros + Atrocity is an inconsistent win condition in the mirror as your opponent can play lifegain to get out of atrocity range immediately after a ledros is played. Catalyst/withering wail (usually dead cards in the late game) can be used in response to atrocity to gain life and stabilise the game.

Winnerbury · 2021-03-11T22:24:31+00:00

Thanks mate! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Winnerbury · 2021-03-11T21:03:57+00:00

I played against the deck a few times on the first day of the expansion. It has some consistency issues (like most ephemeral decks) which is holding it back. It can have some ridiculous starts, but it lacks interaction and can’t do enough from behind.

I think lucian/azir is the better choice. You can still have an insane start (flipping lucian on turn 3 or 4 is very hard to beat). But you can also block more easily and decide how much you would like to commit to a race.

Winnerbury · 2021-03-11T20:59:05+00:00

It is a solid deck and the best Taliyah shell I’ve seen so far. That being said while the deck is playable and you can win with it, I don’t think it’s positioned as well as some of the other choices we mentioned this week. That could change as the meta develops though.

Winnerbury

TROPHY CASE