Marvel Snap: Hit-Monkey Decks and Synergies

Hit-Monkey Guide

Welcome to our first guide series where we cover new card releases and how to use them. April is an exciting month as the new battle pass is featuring “Hit-Monkey.”

Hit-Monkey incentivizes decks to run low-cost cards to make the most of his effect. This guide will be closer to a first impressions of Hit-Monkey. As meta decks appear with the new card, be sure to stay updated with our Full Deck Tier List to see where Hit-Monkey lands.

Alternatively, we will also be writing a guide on How to Counter Hit-Monkey, so if you’re F2P or you don’t like playing zoo like decks, check out that article instead.

Let’s get right into the guide.

Hit-Monkey Effect

On Reveal: Gain +2 Power for each other card you played this turn.

• Colorist – Ryan Kinnaird
• Artist – Roberto Di Salvo

Hit-Monkey Synergy

The ability of Hit-Monkey is fairly straight forward. The more cards you play, the bigger he gets. On a simple turn 6, you can get him to become a 2 for 8 if you play out four 1-cost cards.

However, there are plenty of cards that work well with Hit Monkey. I’ll go over a quick list to showcase some examples.

Sera

Ongoing: Cards in your hand cost 1 less. (minimum 1)

Sera is an immediate thought when thinking about Hit-Monkey. Being able to discount your cards by 1 lets you play lots of cheap cards on Turn 6, and makes Hit-Monkey only cost 1. Hit-Monkey may be able to simply slot into Sera Control decks, or he may be better off in decks with cheaper cards.

Mysterio

As you play this, play Illusions to other locations. Disguise this as an Illusion until the game ends.

Mysterio is one of the only cards in the game that lets you “play” multiple cards. Because of this, playing out Mysterio counts as playing 3 individual cards. For Hit-Monkey, this means you end up spending 2 energy to play 3 cards, giving Hit-Monkey +6 power.

Bast

On Reveal: Set the Power of all cards in your hand to 3.

As a card, Bast has synergy with basically any card that has 0-3 base power. The main reason I’ve listed Bast here is that the Bounce archetype as a whole uses cards like Mysterio, Bishop, Angela, Beast, etc. All of these cards have low base power, making Bast a perfect inclusion in these kinds of decks.

Falcon & Beast

Falcon: On Reveal: Return your 1-Cost cards to your hand.

Beast: On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less.

Speaking of the Bounce archetype, Hit-Monkey almost assuredly will slot into Bounce decks. Bounce decks are great at flooding the board, beefing up cards like Angela and Bishop. Falcon and Beast are both cards that will let you keep doing this as you return cards to hand.

Falcon has decent synergy with Hit-Monkey, but I could see Bounce decks cutting him in favor of Hit-Monkey. Falcon is nice to return more cards to hand, but with Hit-Monkey, that doesn’t matter until turn 6, when you actually play Hit-Monkey. Even still, getting to replay some 1-cost cards after buffing up Angela or Bishop is nice.

Beast, on the other hand, is amazing with Hit-Monkey. Hit-Monkey does not care if you reveal, only if you played the card. So you can play Hit-Monkey on turn 5, and also return him back to hand with Beast. This can buff your Monkey up to 6 power and he will only become bigger when you play him on turn 6.

Moon Girl

On Reveal: Duplicate your hand.

Moon Girl doesn’t technically have a ton of synergy with Hit-Monkey, but like Bast, the archetype of Moon Girl decks can work well. Moon Girl decks often run cards such as Titania, She-Hulk, The Hood, and other cheap cards to copy and play out on Turn 6 or 7 with Magik.

In this deck, being able to play two Hit-Monkeys on turn 6 or 7 will definitely allow for some explosive turns. Your opponent will have a hard time figuring out exactly how much power you can put on the board on the final turn.

Mister Negative

On Reveal: Swap the Power and Cost of all cards in your deck.

Anytime a card is released with low base power, Mister Negative is always in the conversation. However, I’m not a huge fan of Mister Negative decks in general, as the consistency isn’t great. The payoff for Hit-Monkey being a 0/2 instead of a 2/0 also isn’t huge.

When things line up, Negative Hit-Monkey can absolutely hit huge numbers, but in general, I’m not the biggest fan of Negative decks.

Hit-Monkey Decks

For this section, I’ll be going over some decks that will likely be strong with Hit-Monkey. Keep in mind that these decks are all first impressions, so things can definitely change rapidly. As new discoveries are made with Hit-Monkey, I will be updating our Full Tier List, rather than update this article. Be sure to check it out to see what the best decks are, or if Hit-Monkey is even in the best decks at all. (He probably will be there)

Bounce Hit-Monkey Deck

The Bounce archetype has been repopularized by Jeff Hoogland, and his deck can fit Hit-Monkey in quite nicely. Instead of running Falcon, you have Hit-Monkey as another power play. The deck uses many synergistic cards, such as Bishop, Bast, Mysterio, and more.

Sera Hit-Monkey Deck

Sera Control is a deck that basically never goes away. At the start of months, there’s usually an uptick of Sera decks as it’s a strong deck into many things. As time passes, people usually start to play the flavor of the month deck. Until then, Hit-Monkey is a nice card to slot into Sera decks.

The discount from Sera will make it fairly easy to play around 3-4 cards on turn 6, making Hit-Monkey a one energy card for 6 or 8 power. Pretty good.

Moon Girl Hit-Monkey Deck

Moon Girl decks are not super common, but using Moon Girl to copy cards like Titania and She-Hulk can make for an explosive final turn. With Hit-Monkey in the mix, this only makes your final turn more explosive.

Previously, you would sometimes see The Infinaut paired with She-Hulk for turn 7, but Hit-Monkey is a nice alternative, and is also playable with She-Hulk even if you don’t draw Magik.

Zoo Hit-Monkey Deck

Zoo as an archetype is quite common, but not talked about too much in the upper tiers of decks. The gameplan is very simple and straight forward. For this list, you can safe skip turn 1 as even on turn 6, you won’t have too many 1-cost cards to play alongside Hit-Monkey.

You can also run a Zoo variation that runs cards like Red Skull and Dracula as well. If you were lucky enough to pull cards like Shanna or even Dazzler, you can look to also run Zabu and lean more into these 4-cost cards.

Negative Hit-Monkey Deck

Lastly, I’ll be showing off a simple Negative Hit-Monkey deck. Hit-Monkey slots in quite easily as a free card to play after Negative, but his ceiling is determined by what cards you are able to draw with the Negative bonus.

Zabu and Psylocke allow you to play Negative on 3, which is quite big as an additional card can be huge for this deck. Overall, I’m not too big on the archetype or deck, but it is an option to play around with.

Conclusion

That wraps up my quick little guide on the new card, Hit-Monkey. Lots of players are excited for Hit-Monkey as there are plenty of archetypes that he can slot into, and he’s seeming to be a very powerful card.

Hit-Monkey will likely be the best Battle Pass card we’ve seen since the likes of Zabu and Silver Surfer pre nerf.

Hope this guide helped you out a bit, good luck in your games, and snap away!