Ongoing, On Reveal, Move, Destroy. Cards in Marvel Snap have some interesting buzzwords tied to them and how they play, but none is more daunting than Discard, which is built around throwing your hard-earned and well-built deck into the garbage.
But sometimes, you’re better off removing a card from your hand entirely, especially if their abilities are centered around the Discard mechanic. Discarding your cards may seem like a waste, but some are built just to be fodder to help other cards get bigger.
Here’s everything you need to know about Discard cards in Marvel Snap, good decks to build around them, and how to counter them.
How does Discard work in Marvel Snap?
It’s all in the name, really. Discarding in Marvel Snap means you get rid of a card completely. But some cards benefit from this mechanic, and that’s why these decks are fun and successful, let alone playable.
You can find a number of Discard decks in your collection by using the search function and typing in “Discard” to see which cards have the word in their ability text. This is the easiest way to find cards that will synergize with discarding.
You can build decks entirely around just a few Discard cards and still find a way to dominate your opponents for some easy cubes, especially if they don’t see it coming.
Without further ado, here are the best meta Discard decks in Marvel Snap.
Best Discard decks in Marvel Snap (January 2024)
Standard Discard
The Standard Discard deck is the most consistent offensive strategy which involves the discard mechanic. Here, you have a handful of options to create Power on your locations by discarding your cards on all parts of the game.
Your discard enablers for this deck are Blade, Collen Wing, Gambit, Lady Sif, Silver Samurai, and MODOK. All of them have prescribed timings of play which can give you a handful of advantages, especially in somehow controlling what cards you can discard. They are also the little pieces to gradually build up the Power in your locations.
Wolverine, Swarm, Daken’s Muramasa Shard, and Apocalypse are your discard targets for this deck. All of them gain additional Power every time you discard these cards, so it is best to wait for them in your hand before you play your discard enablers. This will allow you to potentially gain the maximum value of these discard targets’ abilities on their designated timings of play.
Morbius has an Ongoing ability to gain plus two Power for each card you discard in the game. Finish the deck with Dracula, which lets you discard a card at the end of the game while gaining its Power.
Black Knight Discard
The Black Knight discard deck mainly revolves around the effect of Black Knight to give the Ebony Blade to your hand when you discard a card for the first time (as soon as Black Knight is in play). Ebony Blade is a four-cost, zero-Power card that gains the Power of the discarded unit. It cannot be destroyed, and its Power cannot be reduced, making it immune to the likes of disruption cards like Shang-Chi and Shadow King.
Skaar, Magneto, and The Infinaut are the best targets for Black Knight’s effect. So, it is best to have at least one of those cards before you play Black Knight, as well as a discard enabler that can give you Ebony Blade in the process. Discard staples such as Blade and Lady Sif are also in this deck.
Caeira is there to protect your one and six-cost cards, while Sera lowers the cost of your cards in the hand by one. Four-cost cards such as Shang-Chi (for destroying your opponent’s cards with ten or more Power on the location where you play it), Ms. Marvel (for giving plus five Power to its adjacent locations as long as there are at least two cards there with unique costs), and Ghost Rider (for bringing back a discarded unit to one of your locations) are in this deck as well, making Zabu a useful card since it lowers the cost of your four-cost cards by one (including Ebony Blade).
Hela Tribunal
The last deck in this list is the Hela Tribunal strategy which relies on a specific combo to call out multiple high-cost and high-Power cards all at once. This engine embodies the high-risk, high-reward mantra. But once you can successfully pull the combo, it would be worth it for your side.
Hela calls all of your discarded units to random locations. This ability combined with MODOK’s effect to discard all of your cards in the hand all at once can be hidden under Invisible Woman, which reveals all cards played under it by the end of the game. The combo will then allow you to call all of your discarded cards regardless of their costs.
Some of the cards that can be targeted by Hela’s effect are Iron Man (for doubling the current Power of the location where it is placed), Blob (for merging itself with the cards in your deck, gaining their total Power in the process), Onslaught (for doubling the Ongoing effects of cards that are placed on the same location as it), The Living Tribunal (for equally distributing your total Power to all of your locations) Giganto and The Infinaut (stable massive Power sources of the deck).
Magik is there to extend the game to a turn seven by transforming a location to Limbo, while Crystal allows both players to draw a card upon playing. Finish the deck with Iron Lad, which is a four-cost, six-Power card that copies the text of the top card of your deck.
Discard decks’ current state in the meta
All the discard decks above are reliable deck engines that you can use in the current meta. In terms of stability and toolbox of effects, the Standard Discard deck is the best choice. If you want to play a deck with a balance of consistency and fun factor, then Black Knight should be your pick. But if you want to go explosive despite having a high-risk, high-reward mantra, then Hela Tribunal is for you.
How to counter Discard decks in Marvel Snap
There are a few cards that are a complete nightmare for Discard decks in Marvel Snap, including:
- Enchantress
- Leech
- Sandman
Enchantress will destroy your Morbius and Dracula, and Leech will destroy anything you had in mind to play on turn six.
Sandman is also annoying, limiting you to just one card play after turning four or five and hampering your ability to play out multiple cards for the big win play in the endgame.
Even if those particularly destructive cards appear, there are enough ways to customize your Discard decks in Marvel Snap that you can find and create clever workarounds to ensure victory.
