Do not index
Do not index
Oh the Agony! You've conquered High Voltage, unlocked Marvel SNAP's newest Series 4 Card, but now what decks do you play?
Agony is the first Series 4 card to release in some time and its painfully obvious why this card was chosen as the free reward. The stats at Rank 70 and above land her in the middle of D Tier, with both a negative cube rate and winrate. The popularity is quite low, but that may be due in part to players still on their way to unlocking the card. If you're having trouble, be sure to check out our Best High Voltage Decks to Get Agony article.
With strong 1-Cost card releasing recently, like Silver Sable and Scorn, Agony just falls short. Its best home seems to be the Destroy Archetype, sometimes with Nimrod, but variations on the Phoenix Force Archetype and Agent Venom Archetype are also seeing success. Unfortunately, it looks like these established shells have similar if not better metrics without including Agony, which begs the question, is the card performing well in these lists or is it the archetype's existing performance? Find out our verdict on Agony below.
The Raw Data
Agony has a -0.05 average cube rate and 48.6% winrate at Rank 70 and above, placing it at Tier D on the Card Tier Rankings. Although the Destroy Archetype is maintaining mild success in Tier B, the Agony variations of Destroy decks are performing poorly. Its 0.7% popularity means there's either very few players experimenting with the new card or they're still unlocking it.
We'll be watching to see if Agony's performance improves as more player's unlock it and experimentation begins to ramp up. For now, the card's metrics match the winrates and average cube rates of cards playing in a similar space, like Angel and Lady Deathstrike.
Agony’s Best Decks
With thousands of games already logged by the Untapped Companion at Rank 70 and above, we have good picture of which decks are working for the Agony and which are not. Here are the best-performing options:
The standout here is an established deck with a high winrate: the Agent Venom Archetype. At first glance, this variation is performing better than the archetype average or most popular deck, but its important to recognize the sample size here. As more games are logged, these metrics are sure to drop, as losing the consistency and flexibility of cards like Bast, Mystique and Sage severely limit the deck.
Similarly, the Phoenix Force Archetype variation is demonstrating great stats, but the sample size is small and will taper off. No Shuri or Ghost-Spider lowers the deck's ability to stay agile dramatically, instead going all in on telegraphed lines. In a meta where Cosmo has a 17.5% play rate, this could be a death sentence.
Destroy has an adequate amount of games played to truly be analyzed, and the fact is including Agony hinders the deck and brings its performance below the tried and true options at Rank 70 and above. The highest-performing Destroy deck has an average cube rate of +0.70 and winrate of 59.2%, well above the Agony variation.
DESTROY ARCHETYPE
If we look at the current Marvel SNAP meta, the Destroy Archetype is sitting in Tier B with a 52.7% winrate and +0.26 average cube rate using data at Rank 70 and above. The most popular deck, however, comes in with a slightly lower +0.25 cube rate.
Final Thoughts
Is Agony worth the effort? Card evaluation revolves around two dimensions, the card's immediate power level and how strong its core archetype is in the current Marvel SNAP meta.
The raw data shows Agony is putting out poor metrics with low popularity. Popularity may increase as more players unlock the card, but its unclear if this will improve its performance metrics or further prove the card is a dud. On an archetype level, the Destroy Archetype is sitting in Tier B.
How is your High Voltage climb going? Are you aiming to unlock Agony or are you passing? How is the card performing for you? Let us know your thoughts over at @UntappedSNAP on Twitter/X. Alternatively, come and chat with the wider Marvel SNAP Community on our Discord Server!
Written by
