Best Ajax Decks in Marvel Snap

Fans of inflicting negative energy should prepare their Spotlight Keys for the first piece of a meta-defining deck as Ajax releases this week. Here’s the best deck for Ajax in Marvel Snap.

How Ajax Works in Marvel Snap

Ajax is a 5 energy, 7 cost card with an ability that reads: Ongoing: +1 Power for each card in play afflicted with negative Power.

As this is an Ongoing effect, if you inflict more negative power on turns after Ajax is played, he’ll grow in size. Likewise, he will decrease in size if those negative afflictions are removed through Luke Cage or buffs.

There isn’t really much more to know about him, as his card text is rather similar to the likes of Darkhawk, Devil Dinosaur, and Ronan the Accuser.

Best Ajax Decks in Marvel Snap

Ajax will be a much better card with the addition of Cassandra Nova’s release as part of the Deadpool’s Diner event, as she inflicts negative power on each card in your opponent’s deck. However, if you pick him up and want to play him right away, Ajax fits into a couple of shells: Toxic High Evolutionary and Toxic Silver Surfer. Here’s the first:

• Sunspot
• Hazmat
• Scorpion
• Magik
• Cyclops
• Moon Girl
• High Evolutionary
• The Thing
• Ajax
• Abomination
• She-Hulk
• Hulk

Click here to copy this list on Untapped.

This is a relatively inexpensive deck if you have High Evolutionary already, so there is no need for specific replacements.

You’ve likely seen this High Evolutionary list almost card-for-card before. It’s a less popular take on the She-Hulk and The Infinaut versions; that said, Ajax, when combined with Hazmat near the final turn, may put this deck over the edge. The goal here is to try and copy the likes of Abomination and She-Hulk with Moon Girl before skipping a turn to drop Ajax or the Hulk alongside huge 0 cost cards. Hazmat debuffs both sides of the board, so if your opponent is playing something a bit greedier, you’re very likely to nearly hit 20 power with Ajax. Expect to see a lot of this kind of list during the first week or so of Ajax’s release.

I believe the strongest negative-power affliction deck at the moment is Silver Sufer, thus it’s worth trying to squeeze Ajax into that tight list:

• Hazmat
• Ironheart
• Mystique
• Brood
• Magik
• Silver Surfer
• Luke Cage
• Sebastian Shaw
• Wong
• Sera
• Ajax
• Odin

Click here to copy this list from Untapped.

If you don’t have Sebastian Shaw, the only Series 5 card on this list, consider swapping him out for another high-powered 3 drop like Gladiator. Absorbing Man is also a good choice to copy Brood and Silver Surfer effects.

The goal here is simple: play out the likes of Brood and Sebastian Shaw before dropping Wong into Hazmat into Odin at some point. This will greatly buff up Ajax. However, if you drop Luke Cage as well, you’re going to decrease his power somewhat, so keep that in mind while you’re playing this list. Magik is included in here to extend the game so you can get an extra turn of shenanigans off, so be mindful of Nocturne and Snowguard plays that can turn off Limbo.

Ajax Counters in Marvel Snap

Ajax gets wrecked by Luke Cage, turning him into a 7 power card at best. Some theory crafters are slotting the likes of Rogue into Ajax decks to steal his effect; however, I believe a good player will hang on or protect their Luke Cage until the final turn. After that, Ajax is susceptible to both Rogue and Enchantress turning off his ability, and Shang-Chi can snipe him as well. As pretty much every deck right now is running one or more of these tech cards, Ajax will have a hard time not being countered – at least initially.

Who is Ajax?

Ajax is most notable as an adversary of Deadpool and being part of his comic origin story. Fixed with cybernetic enhancements, Ajax – also known as Francis – tortured Deadpool and his friends within Canada’s Weapon X program. This eventually led to Deadpool discovering his healing factor and escaping the facility after presumably killing Ajax. Ajax would later hunt down and kill those experimented on during the Weapon X program, including defeating Deadpool twice, until the foul-mouthed mercenary killed him once and for all by short-circuiting his armor and snapping his neck.

Is Ajax Worth Spotlight Cache Keys or Collector’s Tokens?

Ajax is a tough one. I do believe he will eventually be worth Spotlight Cache Keys or Collector’s Tokens, but the meta will have to significantly change for that to happen. Because of Arishem decks, Darkhawk lists are everywhere. To counter them, most decks have Rogue or Shang-Chi in them, which also counter Ajax. And with the impending release of Cassandra Nova, more players will be running Luke Cage to mitigate some of her powerful effects. I can see Ajax becoming a meta staple, but unless you want to run negative affliction decks right away, it’s not a bad idea to pick him up for tokens a month or two down the line.

Marvel Snap is available to play now.