Master Manipulator of the Highest Order
The Grand Master is finally upon us! The Collector’s Older Meaner brother likes to play games to determine the universe's fate out of boredom. He is practically one of us; the only difference is that on Marvel Snap, the scales are slightly lower than in the universe. Let’s have a nice good look at the card:
At first glance, he might seem weak, considering he is a 2-cost with 0 power. However, he has an extremely powerful effect: he activates one on-reveal card another time while moving it to the middle location. No matter what, he is a combo card through and through. He’ll be less than useless if you play him without comboining some powerful on-reveals.
The Ultimate Strategist
The Grand Master is like a very cheap, powerless Odin that works on a single card. Another comparison we could make is Absorbing Man. If you thought that he was good with his 4 mana cost, you better get ready for an even cheaper combo. You have no idea how powerful reactivating an on-reveal for only 2 mana can be. Since he is so Cheap, we can set up some combos before we use him on the last turn with a bunch of powerful cards.
Let’s look at some cards that look very obviously synergistic with him. firstly, we need powerful On Reveals, and a few come to mind when considering the Grand Master's possible reactivation.
Another possibility is trying to capitalize on the On Reveal and the moving part of the card. There are quite a few cards that we could use to try to do that:
That’s quite a list, huh? Now, you might have realized that most of those cards don’t work well together. This is the pivotal moment we must choose which direction to go with our Grand Master deck. Since he is a combo card, it makes sense to use energy-cheating cards. If we are going big with a ton of 6 drops, we should use Wave to cheat big On Reveals out earlier to reactivate their effects with Grand Master. Another big energy cheater is our local good boy, Lockjaw. If we go with cheap cards, we can go to Sera to throw a bunch of them together with the Grand Master on the last turn. Another powerful combination is Ravonna Rennslayer since she has a great synergy with the Grand Master, Jubilee, Wolfsbane, and Ironheart. One last card we might consider in our decks is Wong since he works so well with On Reveals.
We have one last thing to consider, our strategies are useless if our On Reveals don’t work. and there is another local good boy (or girl if you are a Guardians of The Galaxy movie kind of person) that is a menace to the Grand Master’s plans. Cosmo is here to destroy us hard! The only possible thing we can do to stop it completely is to play the only card that can stop the reign of terror of Cosmo: Maya Lopes, also known as Echo. if you play her in the middle location, you’ll make sure that your cards that are moved there by the Grand Master will work. You’ll need to maneuver on the sidelines to avoid Cosmo.
One last thing that we should keep in mind is when locations help us out. Since they are a big part of the game, we should be way more confident when they show up for us. By far, the best location for the Grandmaster is Kamar Taj. Since our deck usually has powerful On Reveals, we can use it in our favor quite a lot.
Another great aspect about the Grandmaster is the moving of a card to the middle location, so if the middle location is difficult to play with, we can usually win it by moving a card there with our Strategist. Or we could use Storm to guarantee that the middle location would be difficult to reach in every game.
Now that we mastered every aspect of Master, let’s put that to practice with a few decks.
Dualglove’s Day 1 Grand Master Decks
The Master and the Dog
Have I ever told you that I’m a greedy player? Well, this deck is what I want to try on day 1. We try to cheap a ton of power and powerful on reveals with Lockjaw and Wave to use Grand Master and Odin to activate them again (you can even use the Grand Master to activate Odin again for some wacky stuff)
The Grand Finisher
Now this is a mean and elusive deck! how about finishing the game using Doctor Doom twice out of nowhere? Or how about throwing Shang-Chi or Enchantress in two different locations? Or maybe you can reactivate that Killmonger to surprise some Zoo decks. I truly feel like this deck or some different, more refined version of it is going to rule.
Masterfully Moving
Okay, hear me out. I got Hercules, and you can bet that I will try to make this work. By reactivating our On Reveal cards, we can make some big monsters with our move cards in conjunction with Hercules. I don’t think this will be meta, but it will be extremely fun to pull off.
Surfin' Strats
One thought always occurs when playing a Silver Surfer deck: I wish I had another Silver Surfer. Well, now that we have the GrandMaster, we can do just that! You need to do some maneuvering to not activate a bad On Reveal like Gladiator’s
Grand Negative
I promise this is the last Mister Negative deck I make. But honestly, I feel like the archetype gets much stronger with the addition of the Grand Master. You can do some crazy stuff with a negative Master and Zola combo.
One Week Later…
Exactly one week after the Grand Master’s Spotlight, a new challenger will arrive, and I think he will work quite well with the Master. I’m talking about Beta Ray Bill. He is a bigger, more expensive Thor. And I believe that many decks will rise by using them both together. This is the deck that I will use with Grand Master and Beta Ray:
Two Hammers and A Dream
Variants
Unfortunately, The Grand Master only arrives with his Spotlight Variant. There aren’t many options to look distinguished with him, but I must admit it is a striking piece of art. Hopefully, we’ll have more options in the future.
Should You Go for the Grand Master?
There is no right way to answer that. As I mentioned, he is a combo-piece card. He doesn’t work by himself. If your collection is missing many cards that would work well with him, it might be a good idea to skip him. With that said, I honestly believe that he'll be a great addition to the game. He is flexible like Iron Lad and can make crazy combos that no other card can pull off. Your decision to pull the trigger should also be weighed if you have those other cards in his spotlight. Go have a look and consider it:
