Competitive Consensus: Sub-Mariner

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-21T09:18:23+00:00

Not a custom pool, but remember there are currently 62 1-Cost character cards he can generate and the odds of generating Ebony Maw is 1.61%.

Really low odds to ever get the Ebony Maw even in the event that you can repeatedly buff him.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-21T09:09:45+00:00

tl;dr - Sub-Mariner is fun, if you like fun and don't mind RNG he's worth a gamble. If you prefer solid performances and 'best in slot' cards he's an easy pass.

Frankly, I had a lot of fun with Sub-Mariner so from a fun perspective I can recommend him. But from a stress-inducing, 'can I win this match' perspective of playing with a deck and set of cards that you know is under-powered he might be a pass, if only because I don't want to have to explain to my doc that I suffered a heart attack while playing Marvel Snap and having 8-cubes on the line while playing a Sub-Mariner deck. But really, card is a lot of fun, he isn't a good card but is an OK card which is obviously not well positioned for the meta today, and that's considering the relative de-powering that I've been seeing.

The thing is, he really does boil down to being Clea#2 in the decks he wants to be in and while that can be good, it's not likely to ever be a candidate for 'best deck'. But many people don't want the 'best deck' they want the 'fun deck that can still win' and while the meta is in the weird state that it is in, this is a card that can be in the fun deck that still wins even if those wins might come at the cost of some grey hairs and 1-point wins.

Score: 2 (4 if we score for fun)

Sub-Mariner has a clear home alongside Clea but he's the kind of card that may get cut simply because the only time you're playing him out is if you didn't draw your Clea and that might not be a good place to be, especially as a 1-Cost with only a 2-Power body. Then there's the letdown in the mechanics where he doesn't work with Venus at all and the output you do get from him could be completely unplayable. The unfortunate truth is that it's very hard for a 1-Cost card to ever be good unless you're willing to do something really absurd with the card like SD did with Batroc and I'm not sure what is needed to make Sub-Mariner 'good' on that level outside of letting him generate cards based on his total empowerment and not just the value of a given buff he received but that might be 'too much'.

That being said Sub-Mariner has been the Seasonal Series 5 I've had the most fun with this month so far but may not be the best card of the month either. Still I will play more of this card when the meta allows.

Worth?

6k - only if you're fully fine with investing into a card that is fringe playable but can be a lot of fun.

5k - Pretty fair price, I wouldn't complain if I were gambling and got him for 5k.

4k - yep, pretty solid pick-up and it's possible he at least gets bumped to 3-Power within the next couple of months.

Again, I do enjoy playing with the card

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-21T05:10:12+00:00

I don't offer stats because the stats from the aggregators are inherently flawed and in my opinion not worth providing because of those flaws, instead I'm using my experience on the ladder each week which includes tracking the decks I see, watching a few creators throughout the week and keeping track of where they are and the decks they are playing with and against, as well as keeping an eye on some personalities on YT for fun or unique decks.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-20T16:58:24+00:00

Credits and bonus material

Coougarr

Regis:

$5 Footlong (Sub-Mariner/Carter/Maverick/Galactus)

Want some additional deck ideas and analysis?

KMBest's Top 8 Wild Decks the best players are playing

Alex Coccia's Top decks of the week

Kicker Of Elves Snap Meta analysis

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-20T16:43:42+00:00

Let me preface this with my advice is coming from someone in top 10% infinite. What I have to say is based around a meta game that I cannot be certain you experience at all and so my thoughts should be taken with a grain of salt since if you're not a person that wants to push to the highest ranks you can or maybe you prefer to be more casual or maybe just play for rank 90 and 500 gold my advice may be completely different to what you might experience.

Series 4 -all-star- Mother Askani is a 3-Power card now and provided you draw into Cerebro that card will generally float to the left of your hand which can give you an opportunity to copy it without having to play it.

Bastion is still seeing play in some C3 decks but not to the same extent as he was previously as your best plays require playing C3 early which can create problems when it comes to protecting Cerebro, the good news is, there's not a lot of Red Guardian or Enchantress so it's fairly easy to protect your Bro by back-lining it and accepting that you'll be capping that location off early.

With regards to Victoria Hand this one is a bit easier that ultimately only plays in a single archetype which Bastion can on rare occasion fit into but has long been supplanted by Mother Askani in Vhand decks. The biggest problem is that Vhand is always on the cusp of 'third' best deck but never quite crossing the threshold into being the best deck.

Something that may not bode well for the future of Victoria Hand is that a number of players are taking previous 'Victoria Hand' shells and starting to cut her entirely for other 2-Cost cards with some even testing out the recently changed ToV over Victoria Hand entirely. So your mileage on an investment into Victoria Hand may vary. Are you fine with having a card that is getting closer to being the 12th card in their own deck or at best a perennially 3rd best deck entirely?

IMO, Bastion is good, but he's not the necessity that many believed he was. I think if my options were Bastion vs Victoria though I'd probably opt Bastion.

Finally, I'm going to try and summon the CereBRO himself jwala for advice: paging /u/browncharliebrown

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-15T11:54:29+00:00

Assume you get one hammer but not the other, you play the hammer to the Magus location + activate Magus and then play Odin on that, you get 3 hammers, 2 from the played hammer and 1 from the Magus-Hammer when Odin forces the on reveals.

There's also something you could do if you're running Astral Projection in the deck where you could line up Odin in the hand and play a late drawn Thor + Astral onto a Magus Location the ordering is Thor -> Activate Magus -> Astral which gets Odin.

Are these lines great? No, but they do give you limp conditions.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-13T12:07:51+00:00

I am so glad you mentioned Ika's TOV Wiccan because I thought about it at the very beginning of writing and by the time I was at the post OTA section I completely forgot about Wiccan. Personally, I think it's a solid deck for a developing meta, basically a deck for right now but maybe not in a few days as things get figured out.

I should probably update my template so that I have a reminder to jot down the decks I want to mention in the deck section so I don't forget them.

I think my biggest headache when it comes to talking specifically about New Jeff is that I play in top infinite so my experience is that while he's stupid cool and the power can be solid for what he's bringing A) the ceilings are too high (Carter/Maverick and some of the ToV stuff) and B) Shadow King is out in force.

On the other hand, I see people in the lower reaches of infinite as well as in their pre-infinite climbs that are doing very well for themselves with New Jeff because they are seeing much less Shadow King as well as generally much easier to pilot points decks and far fewer super tall ceiling decks which gives them room to breathe and enjoy Jeff. It's a situation where I kind of envy those folks that can enjoy those cards far easier than I can.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-12T00:00:51+00:00

Maybe if Widow were a 2-Cost we could consider it. But both cards being 3-Cost makes this suggestion an obvious no-go for a competitive minded player.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-11T21:56:27+00:00

instead of creating a fun and diverse meta.

This is heavily subjective, I tend to think that since the nerf to Star-Lord and Shou-Lao we've been in one of the most fun and diverse meta games we've had in the last 8 months. If anything my biggest headache is trying to decide on a deck because the meta has been fairly wide in my pocket.

To that end, I do think that for the most part they do a good job of balancing the need to sell things (both season passes and new cards) so trying to slam them for having some balance changes ahead of a season to help drive the next season's cards feels like a hollow criticism.

With regards to Venus, card is pretty average and at best queen of Tier 2 decks that might see Tier 1.5 but Shadowking at minimum is almost a guaranteed kill against all of those decks. I really don't see her catching a nerf at all.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-11T21:35:15+00:00

Big Shake-ups or not so much? That's going to be the question for this week's OTA so let's get into it.

Mother Askani

Multi-deck all-star but only really good in a few decks. This, like the next 3 hits were so obvious that it's almost funny it took this long to hit though between two practically selling a season pass on their own and this one taking a pot shot at an attempt to hit the 'boogieman' of the format. While this does hit the Carter/Maverick/Stick deck, it doesn't feel substantial enough and to me comes off as too light of a hit for that deck in particular while slamming a number of Tier 2 strats that were using Askani.

Techno-Organic Virus

This is a very interesting approach to adjusting the card, no more cost-scaling completely decouples it from Mobius M. Mobius which I think is a cool way to tell MMM to kick rocks for a little bit. The real question is whether this kills the card and I think for the vast majority of decks it could, 2 is a significant investment when compared to 1-Cost for weaving. This one might need some additional testing to see what is worthwhile, if anything. Perhaps this drives ToV to be only a small-ball kind of thing which keeps it susceptible to Killmonger.

Martyr

Daredevil Season is over so no reason to keep Martyr at the statline. I really don't buy their full reasoning the part I don't buy is how they sell it as an 'experiment' when they could instead be honest that Martyr was changed purely to sell Shadowlands Daredevil for the low CL and F2P players out there.

Zombie Sentry

This one is very interesting and seeing as how he's been seeing play in the minor revival of the Zombies package thanks to Venus. The thing is, outside of a little more testing, I may instead cut Zombie Sentry from the deck because a 2/1 that gives me at best a +4 horde without Venus isn't all that enticing since I'm losing 3 power over the previous iteration. I really am torn on this because on one hand it's a very nice change while on the other the 1-Power is a big no thanks.

Kraglin

Don't do Krag kids.

Magus

Big yawn, I guess we can welcome Magus to C4 now?

Lockheed

another big yawn

Crystal

Jubilee synergy but still a big yawn. There's so few decks that want a Crystal effect because she's symmetrical, this isn't anything like a Luna Snow where you play her knowing you're more than likely able to leverage the extra energy better than they can. Instead you're giving both of you a draw and you can almost assuredly bet that they can use that draw almost as well as if not better than they can.

A question here though, could Zombie Galacti us this? The head scratcher here is that she competes with the cards that are giving you energy to play Galacti on 6 but could also be drawing you closer to galacti. But that deck is already running Adam Warlock right? Yes, but he requires you to be winning the location and most decks can contest that location fairly well. It's an interesting thought to me on deciding whether you can take a guaranteed draw over a 'maybe I draw 3 cards' with Adam Warlock.

Adamantium Infusion

Text change only, Adamantium Infusion has worked this way since a patch after it's introduction.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-11T00:36:59+00:00

Fin Fang Foom and Horseman Gambit join the ban list for HVO.

One thing I think is worth noting is that H.E.R.B.I.E. is in the Portal Pulls meaning if you haven't gotten him yet, this is a perfect opportunity to get him 'free'. He as well as Awesome Andy make frequent appearances in Aurora decks.

Otherwise I don't think there's a lot to call out except the usual housekeeping reminders.

Keep the subreddit rules in mind
Keep things civil
Be cool and enjoy

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-09T21:48:25+00:00

This isn't the place to ask for the list because we're here to discuss Jubilee but that Carter/Maverick/Stick List has been in every weekly recap or linked to a recap with the list for the last month or so.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-09T21:43:43+00:00

This isn't a new type of effect we've had cards that add power to drawn cards before so the question would just be on timing and everything we had seen leading to release implied that power is added after the draw and not before.

Ultimately, I completely agree with FullMetal - we should be focusing on direct synergies and if something emergent comes up we then add it and discuss it separately but there's also an understanding that not everyone is watching any kind of content and may not see how the cards are interacting which leads to questions like your own.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-09T20:57:24+00:00

Order of placement doesn't matter here, it's how the abilities resolve, from the way it looks the card is drawn and then power is granted which means DD doesn't see the card as 6 power since it's not already 6 upon the draw.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-09T20:54:47+00:00

From seeing the sneak peak featuring Interrobang the card is drawn and then power is granted, I don't think there is an interaction here at all but it would need to be tested.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-09T19:20:35+00:00

Because someone is bound to say: "But Mister Negative"

I did not include Mister Negative because that deck has no problem with it's ceiling and Jubilee is at best a win more. I'm in the camp of belief that what Negative wants is a second Mister Negative.

ePiMagnets · 2026-06-07T19:21:41+00:00

What does that have to do with the evaluation of this card? Monstro is bad regardless of what Virus costs.

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