Marvel Snap is a fast-paced card game that has a surprising number of card effects and deck archetypes to try out. One of the most powerful decks, featuring the Mad Titan himself, is the Thanos Lockjaw deck. This deck involves cycling through your cards to activate the powerful effects of the Infinity Stones.
Despite its popularity in the ladder, the Thanos Lockjaw deck isn’t the easiest deck to play, but can be extremely powerful in the right hands. Below, we’ll take a look at some of the most popular cards to use in this deck, what they do, and some tips for playing it.
Thanos And The Infinity Stones
Thanos is a series five card, and the feature of this deck. If this card is in your deck, at the start of the match, the six Infinity Stones will be shuffled into your deck. Below, you can check the effects of each of the Infinity Stones.
| Card | Cost | Power | Ability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mind Stone | 1 | 1 | On Reveal: Draw 2 Stones from your deck. |
| Power Stone | 1 | 3 | Ongoing: If you’ve played all 6 stones, Thanos has +10 Power. (wherever he is) |
| Soul Stone | 1 | 1 | Draw a card. Ongoing: Enemy cards here have -1 Power. |
| Reality Stone | 1 | 1 | On Reveal: Transform this location into a new one. Draw a card. |
| Space Stone | 1 | 1 | On Reveal: Next turn you can move 1 card at this location. Draw a card. |
| Time Stone | 1 | 1 | On Reveal: Draw a card. Next turn, you get +1 energy. |
Despite their low Power, the Infinity Stones are very effective, and, when combined with Lockjaw, allow you to quickly cycle through your deck and play your higher-cost, more powerful cards like Devil Dinosaur, Magneto, and Thanos.
Deck List
Below, you can find a list of the best cards to use in a Thanos Lockjaw deck. Some of these cards are essential picks, while others can be safely swapped out for alternatives. In these cases, we’ve listed a few substitutes below.
| Card | Cost | Power | Ability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunspot | 1 | 1 | At the end of each turn, gain +1 Power for each unspent Energy. |
| Quinjet | 1 | 2 | Ongoing: Cards that didn’t start in your deck cost 1 less. |
| Lockjaw | 3 | 2 | After you play a card here, swap it with a card in your deck. |
| Shang-Chi | 4 | 3 | On Reveal: Destroy all enemy cards at this location that have 9 or more Power. |
| Blue Marvel | 5 | 3 | Ongoing: Your other cards have +1 Power. |
| Devil Dinosaur | 5 | 3 | Ongoing: +2 Power for each card in your hand. |
| Leech | 5 | 3 | On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all cards in your opponent’s hand. |
| Aero | 5 | 7 | On Reveal: Move all enemy cards played this turn to this location. |
| America Chavez | 6 | 9 | You always draw this card on turn 6, and not before. |
| She-Hulk | 6 | 10 | Costs 1 less for each unspent Energy last turn. |
| Thanos | 6 | 11 | At the start of the game, shuffle the six Infinity Stones into your deck. |
| Magneto | 6 | 12 | On Reveal: Move all opposing 3 and 4-Cost cards to this location. |
The cores of this deck are Thanos, Lockjaw, Quinjet, and Leech. Quinjet is an extremely important card for this deck, as it makes the cost of all your Infinity Stones zero. This allows you to cheat out good effects while keeping your energy for playing stronger cards, buffing Sunspot, or playing She-Hulk on the next turn.
Leech, on the other hand, can remove the abilities of your opponent’s cards, allowing you to dodge counters that the opponent may have, like Killmonger to destroy your Stones, Shang-Chi to destroy Thanos or Magneto, or Aero for disrupting your Lockjaw cycling. Overall, Leech is a great inclusion, and is especially good when summoned to the board through Lockjaw.
Substitutes
There are a few cards you can swap out of this deck, either for countering a popular card that you see frequently, or simply because you don’t have one of the cards listed above.
Magneto is one of the most flexible cards in this deck, and can be swapped for a few different options. Doctor Doom is a good choice that lets you contest closed-off Locations with his Doom Bots, like Sanctum Sanctorum or Death’s Domain. Although Doctor Doom takes up valuable board space, he can be great for countering these locations or applying equal pressure to all three Locations.
Another alternative for Magneto is Kang. Kang the Conqueror can really fit into any deck, and provides the powerful ability to look at your opponent’s turn before turning back time to the previous turn. This allows you to see where your opponent is likely to play cards, and use Aero to move them or contest different areas with Thanos or Devil Dinosaur.
Playing The Deck
The general idea of the Thanos Lockjaw deck is to play as many Infinity Stones as you can, then put Thanos (who will have 21 Power if you played all six Stones) into a lane of his own. To facilitate this, you can use Quinjet and Lockjaw to reduce the cost of the Infinity Stones, and trade them out for other, more powerful cards.
Something to keep in mind is that to gain the Power boost for Thanos from the Power Stone, the Infinity Stones only need to be played a single time. After that, if they are put back into your deck with Lockjaw, or destroyed by Killmonger, the Power Stone will still count them as being played. The Power Stone is the only card that needs to remain on the board to give Power to Thanos.
Drawing Quinjet or Lockjaw early is a great way to put yourself in the lead. Try to always play Infinity Stones on Lockjaw’s location. This will ensure that they are traded out for your more powerful cards, while only spending one or two energy to do so. In a similar vein, the Space Stone can be used to move Lockjaw to a new location when the old one is full, allowing you to get another cycle or two.
The Reality Stone is perfect for trading out unfavorable locations. Typically, you will have a lot of cards in your hand because most of the Infinity Stones draw a card, so try to change out locations that add cards to your hand like Lechuguilla or Orchis Forge, or locations that prevent you from playing cards there or destroy your cards, like Plunder Castle, Death’s Domain, or Rickety Bridge.
Because of the amount of card draw you have with this deck, Devil Dinosaur is an obvious inclusion that almost always has 13 or more Power, making it extremely cost-efficient. This card, along with Thanos, can contest two separate lanes on their own.
There are a lot of different factors to consider each turn when playing your cards. Leech is one of your best counters against a number of cards that can ruin your game plan, like Killmonger, Aero, Wave, or Sandman. Removing the abilities of these cards makes them effectively useless in the enemy’s hand, giving you a massive advantage. However, to compensate for this effect, Leech has a high cost and lower Power, meaning you’ll want to cheat Leech out with Lockjaw.
