Hear me, and rejoice! The Mad Titan is finally coming to MARVEL SNAP in all his purply glory. While he was obtainable from sources that generate random cards, this is the first time you can put him in your deck and access the awesome power of the six Infinity Stones. Read further to see what these ancient pillars of existence can do and how to fully utilize their power.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Thanos and the Infinity Stones
At the start of the game, shuffle the six Infinity Stones into your deck.
Huh, looks like Ebony Maw somehow got to write the intro to this guide. He sounds so excited for his master coming to SNAP, too, even though the two of them don't really have any synergy.
But yeah, Thanos! He's been in the game for a while, but could only be obtained from stuff like Agent 13 and The Hub. His effect is that it shuffles the 6 Infinity Stones into your deck at the start of the game. The Stones are powerful cards with a very wide range of effects, and we'll go into all of them in this guide, followed by some cards that synergize with them. Let's see what we're dealing with!
Common Effects
Before getting into each individual stone, there's a number of attributes that all of them share:
- They all cost 1.
- All but one of them has 1 Power.
- All but two of them have an On Reveal ability to draw a card and are independent of the other stones.
A small note, the Stone were known as the Infinity Gems in the comics, before the MCU made things muddy. In this article, we'll refer to them as Stones, but we'll be talking about the comic Gems when assessing how lore-accurate the card effects are.
Power Stone
Ongoing: If you’ve played all 6 stones, Thanos has +10 Power. (wherever he is)
Let's start of with the black sheep purple stone of the bunch. This is the only one card of the six with 3 Power and without any sort of draw. It's effect gives Thanos +10 Power wherever he is (important for Discard synergies and stuff like Morph), but only if you've already played the other stones. Note that you only need to have played them, not have them on the field.
Lore-wise, this fits perfectly with the ability to give Thanos a great boost of power while also being physically stronger than the other Stones, though it's a bit odd that you need to play all of them for that boost.
Mind Stone
On Reveal: Draw 2 Stones from your deck.
The other card that sticks out due to its effect. This Stone will draw you two other Stones specifically, allowing you to play more of them next turn.
Lore-wise, this one is really odd. You'd expect that effect on the Soul Stone, while the Mind Stone would get control of an enemy card. Perhaps it was like that initially, but the effect was deemed way too strong, and the devs shuffled things around.
Soul Stone
On Reveal: Draw a card. Ongoing: Enemy cards here have -1 Power.
Has an Ongoing effect that gives enemy cards at the location -1 Power. The only one with an Ongoing effect aside from the Power Stone.
Lore-wise, this effect is kinda odd. As the name implies, the Soul Stone in comics would usually deal with character's souls. It could be interpreted that the weakening of Power is a result of the Stone attacking the souls of the cards on that location.
Reality Stone
On Reveal: Transform this location into a new one. Draw a card.
On reveal, transforms the current location into a new one.
Lore-wise, it's obviously the stone's ability affect reality. Of note is that it has the same effect as Scarlet Witch, who got her powers from the Infinity Stone in the MCU (though not the Reality Stone specifically).
Space Stone
On Reveal: Next turn, you can move 1 card to this location. Draw a card.
On reveal, it lets you move a card at that location. Notably, it says "1 card", not "1 of your cards", meaning you can potentially move opposing cards and disrupt your opponent. Not entirely sure how that would work with other cards that can move themselves.
Lore-wise, it fits with the Stone's ability to open portals in space to easily travel from one point to another.
Time Stone
On Reveal: Gain +1 Energy next turn. Draw a card.
Gives you an extra Energy the following turn.
Lore-wise, the effect can be interpreted as traveling to your next turn, in the future.
Synergies
You can’t play this on turn 6. On Reveal: Change this location to ‘Limbo’.
Ongoing: Cards that didn’t start in your deck cost 1 less. (minimum 1)
Ongoing: Your 1-Cost Cards have +1 Power.
Anyone running Thanos will add 6 card to their deck, increasing its size by more than 50% and tanking any sort of consistency. This means that you'll want to extend the game as much as possible to increase the chances of getting the cards you want, making Magik a must-include in any sort of Thanos deck.
You'd also want to draw as many cards as possible, but that's not easy to do in Snap. Your only real options, aside from the Stones themselves, are Adam Warlock and Crystal, both extremely situational.
Looking at the cards themselves, two very synergistic options are Quinjet and Wong. The former makes the Stone cost 0, since they didn't start in your deck, while the latter doubles the On Reveal effects of 5 of them, letting you draw a lot of cards on turn 5, though only Space and Time benefit from doubling their other effect (Mind would theoretically draw 4 Stones, but in practice you'd either already have a bunch of them or not have hand space).
Taking advantage of the fact that the cards cost one, two great options are Ka-Zar and Lockjaw, though both come with downsides. The former gets easily shut down by Killmonger, so you'd need to run Armor in your deck to prevent that. The latter could be run in a deck with a lot of 4-6 cost cards that are brought out by the Stones, but you can just as easily bring out other Stones or draw your expensive cards.
On Reveal: Destroy your other cards here. +2 Power for each destroyed.
On Reveal: Destroy ALL 1-Cost cards.
Cost 1 less for each card destroyed this game.
Something else to keep in mind is that the stones will occupy half your board if you play them all. A destroy package will help with this, as it frees up space and lets you play cards that benefit from destruction, and 4 of the 6 Stones have no benefit by sticking around. Carnage will double the power of almost any Stone he eats, while Deathlok and the aforementioned Killmonger will simply create space.
Destroyer could also be an option thanks to the Time Stone and Magik, and you should have a fairly cheap Death to work with. Venom is the one card that's kinda bad in this deck. Whatever path you chose here, just make sure you play Power Stone last, so any potential Thanos could benefit from it.
What do you think of The Mad Titan's power? Are you exited to try out a 16 card Snap deck? Let us know in the comments below!
Comments
Thanos is bad. Increasing size of your deck by 50% is terrible. There is reason why ppl play Chavez in many decks - better chance to draw other cards. Stones aren't that powerful (and you want to remove them anyway) and playing them all isn't that rewarding. Infinaut has bigger body and decks with him are more viable. Maybe if Purple Stone would have better effect, for example: "If u played all 6 stones win the game" then maybe you could risk to play Thanos.
I don't think there's enough data to say that. Yes, although increasing size is awful, most of the stones give you draw. And the effects are quite strong and flexible enough to adapt and take different game plans depending of the match.
As much as we can't say it'll be broken and be a T0 card, we can't also confirm it'll be bad. Having that much of resources available and a power slam of 18 points (which can potentially increase to 28 in certain locations) is not something weak. The only thing we require is a way of reducing the disadvantage that the deck size gives you. If it's not viable now, it'll be viable at some point of the game with the right support.
Maybe, but you need something in other locations too and you fill them with stones mostly. But even if you get some support in the future it won't be viable. You already have tons of cards which can counter it - Cable, Moon Knight, Mantis, Yondu, Baron Mordo, Black Bolt, Black Widow, even Korg can fck it up, not to mention some locations. In Marvel Snap you have tons of Theotars so I think that overcomplicated combo decks never will be viable.
Yes, but point of that deck (as showcased by Hooglandia some hours ago) is that it's also good as a control deck given the various effects the Stones give. So the deck could find it's way to work as a control deck with an extra-punch in case you mange to play all the stones.
Regardless of that, if I see it in the token shop I'll insta-buy it not because I find it good, but because it's fucking awesome.