Archetype pages are updated after each Tier List is made. If a page isn’t up-to-date, it means there was nothing worth mentioning in the last report, either because there was no data about the archetype or it did poorly.
Ranked Performance
den
I kind of feel silly for not thinking about the Ongoing synergy when thinking about War Machine becoming an Ongoing card. This change makes the deck click on so many more levels than I imagined, as now you have both Madame Web and War Machine to work around Ebony Maw. This finally gives the deck it’s long awaited second 1-Cost alongside Ant Man! Sorry Howard the Duck.
The rest of the build is fairly standard compared to the previous lists, with Goose gaining some upside over Mojo due to Madame Web and War Machine easily playing around the limitation.
Conquest Performance
den
Ongoing got a nice boost with War Machine bringing Ebony Maw to complement Ant Man early on, and Madame Web makes the deck much more flexible in how you can position your cards. Still, Ongoing too often needs to rely on disrupting its opponent to compete with the proactive synergies. Conquest isn’t exactly the best place to do that, as your opponents will quickly know what to play around after a few rounds.
How to Play
The Ongoing synergy features mostly what I call “deckbuilding-based decks”, which is to say most of the work for these decks is done during the deckbuilding phase. As a result, Ongoing decks are fairly simple to play due to following pre-established play patterns, and they have little flexibility to work with.
During a match, the pilot’s most important job is recognizing those patterns, figuring out the safest way to develop onto the board, and anticipating potential disruptive cards from their opponent. Once the game is mapped out, the only decision left is when to Snap in order to maximize your gains. Indeed, considering you are playing a very synergistic deck, you aren’t particularly difficult to recognize from your opponent’s perspective. As such, if you let the game develop for too long, it will be very simple for them to guess your total points potential and your Snap will do nothing but scare them away.
Overall, Ongoing decks tend to be perfect to grind the Ladder; they limit how many elements of a match you need to control while making positioning your cards fairly simple. However, their success is mostly due to the environment not punishing this type of strategy. If you start facing a lot of counter cards (such as Enchantress and Rogue), this could be a signal that your Ongoing deck isn’t a good idea to run anymore.
Archetype Evolution Over Time
- The War Machine change makes the deck click on so many more levels than I imagined, as now you have both Madame Web and War Machine to work around Ebony Maw.
Ongoing remains limited in how it can develop, but it gained some much-needed flexibility with Madame Web and War Machine now in the mix.
- With Speed and a stronger Man-Thing in the mix, the Ongoing deck has resurfaced. Unfortunately, it isn’t a big contender, but hopefully it builds some momentum going forward.
- With more flexibility around, Ongoing can’t disrupt the opponent like it used to, and The Living Tribunal is a little too famous to catch many opponents off guard. As such, the Ongoing synergy is solid, but it lacks a spark in the current meta.
- Ongoing needs to think about disruption first when building its list right now. Fortunately, Cosmo is excellent with all the On Reveal decks around, and the Destroy synergy is picking up momentum so Armor should also be valuable.
- The Living Tribunal synergy isn’t doing so great because there are quite a lot of disruptive cards to be mindful of when playing the deck. However, the Ongoing deck based on Spectrum has been a top tier archetype for two weeks in a row.
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