Another day, another Marvel Snap deck from your favourite Features Editor at TheGamer, Ben Sledge. That’s me. This week my ego has been buoyed by the knowledge that two of my colleagues have been using decks I published in articles just like this one for weeks, if not months. One of them is even named after me. Thanks, guys.
So, with my head increased to a size where I’m not sure it’ll fit out of the door and my ego suitably stroked, I’ve decided to highlight a very appropriate card. No, not Ego, that’s a location not a card, but this little bait and switch is particularly appropriate when talking about Magneto.
If I was to ask a thousand Marvel Snap players what they thought the most annoying card in the game is, I’d stake a hefty wad of cash that Leader would emerge victorious by a big margin. But maybe you should be saying Magneto.
I’ll freely admit that Magneto is less toxic than Leader. He’s more about disrupting your opponent’s plans rather than simply copying everything they play on the final turn, doubling their On Reveal buffs if applicable. Even talking about its abilities gets me angry. Leader really sucks. Leader? More like Loser. Magneto, on the other hand, needs a little more precision, you have to put some thought into playing him, and do some counting to ensure everything adds up to your victory.
Magneto’s ability drags your opponent’s three and four cost cards to his location. If they have more applicable cards than open slots in that location, he seems to choose at random, which adds an element of risk to proceedings. However, the ability to disrupt your opponent’s painstakingly laid plans on the final turn is regularly the ace up your sleeve that wins you the full eight cubes. It also helps that Magneto has an impressive 12 Power, meaning that he can top up a location with enough power that you still win, despite pulling more cards on the opposite side of the board.
However, he’s also well utilised on an empty location, if you’re certain that you’ll win the other two without a Jessica Jones or Wong that you’ve pulled over. Which brings me to another strategy: pulling those crucial cards away from their positions and ruining synergies. Oh you wanted to Odin into your Wong location for quadruple ability activations? Well, Wong’s over here now. Better luck next time.
Magneto is an incredibly useful card, and disrupting the most perfect plans at the last moment is the best way to ensure you’re winning eight cubes a game and not just four. I’ve talked before about how important it is to embrace the element of surprise, and by doing this with a final turn Magneto, I immediately climbed ten ranks. It became harder after that, but the initial boost was just what I needed to give me the confidence to keep pushing up the leaderboard.
I don’t run a fully disruptive Magneto deck. You could include Spider-Man and Hobgoblin and a host of other cards purely to mess up your opponent’s board, but don’t forget you need some power on your side, too, hence the easy Moon Girl/Devil Dinosaur combo. Shoutout at this point to News Editor Lu-Hai Liang, who loves dealing in the most chaotic and disruptive decks I’ve ever seen. Magneto will fit right into your playstyle.
Here’s the deck in full, although I should caveat it and say that I think it still needs some iteration before it’s perfect.
The Aero/Magneto combo in the final two turns is the perfect amount of chaos for me, and Cosmo is a surprisingly versatile card in the deck, too. Don’t forget, if you just need pure power, playing Magneto on Cosmo is like playing Hulk. Underestimate White Queen at your peril also, she’s perfect for scouting your opponent’s deck to know exactly where to play Magneto. Devil Dinosaur is rarely your win condition here, so Moon Girl isn’t always necessary.
Magneto straddles the line between trolling and toxic, and just about lands on the right side. Be warned, though, if you combine this trump card with the thumbs up emoji, then you’ve crossed the line. There’s no coming back from that.