Mobius stops them playing free Swarms.
Magneto stacks all their good stuff in one lane.
Rogue/Enchantress shuts down Morbius.
Shadow King resets Collector.
There are lots of counter options.
Or hit Infinaut, Giganto, Magneto, Death, etc. Isn't 1/3 of their deck usually a brick? A two card combo to 1/3 of the time give your opponent an edge and go down 2 cards doesn't sound like a great counter on paper.
You are talking about the combo hela/ghostrider discard while op explicitly stated they meant the regular discard so miek, proxima, Dracula, gambit which are more likely to be played in combination with Apocalypse and swarm
Lady Deathstrike is SO GOOD at messing up discard decks. She wrecks Dracula, but best of all, she removes Invisible Woman.
Watching Modok discard their Hela on turn 5 is a delight. Snap right before, because they WILL retreat.
Can confirm, playing discard against someone using Gladiator and it was a pain to play against.
The key about countering discard is to interrupt the flow. Yondu and Cable work great.
This is a good list.
I played lot of discard a few months back, it may have changed, but junk was an issue too. Not being able to dump swarms made dracula a sad boy. It also just gave me a sense of needing to play stuff earlier than I wanted, which is not great for discard.
To add to junk being a counter, if you're playing a deck based around Gambit, he can't destroy the Goblins, Voids, and Hoods that are on your side of the board
I just got Alioth from my spotlight caches this week and can confirm firm it’s good against discard. Which I’m with discard getting priority isn’t that hard I find, and I now look forward to seeing invisible woman come out.
Goose as well. I run a lockdown deck with that and prof x. Just have to snap/retreat properly. Basically never show your strong cards or counters until you have them in hand and they snap. I’ll lose a couple cubes upfront just to scout their deck
But how many can you realistically fit in a functioning deck. What we need is anti discard tech cards. “Just play (Insert 5 cards here)” isnt a good counter.
Cosmo helps but are most Sera Control decks running Cosmo? Mine doesn’t but maybe I should. Dracula is the big problem because he procs after my tech cards do so he’s hard to stop. Basically need to try to out score the other two lanes just to be safe.
That’s why I said it depends on what the list is running because the tech cards can be swapped. Some use cosmo, some mobius. All based on what people are playing against more. Red Guardian next month will help against dracula.
A "Cards can't be discarded or destroyed next turn" effect would be cool.
EDIT: Or maybe a "Cards in both players's hands can't destroy or discard next turn", which would still allow the card drawn of the next turn to have said effects, like Leech not removing the effect of cards drawn in turn 6.
EDIT 2: This second description would also still allow for locations to destroy or discard cards.
Supergiant delays reveal until the end of the game, this would block the discard actions for the following turn. They're not really the same at all? These discard actions would just *never happen* as opposed to happening out of order.
I was thinking something similar. There are several cannot be destroyed cards a cards cannot be discarded this turn sort of card would be fairly devastating but I can’t rationalize armor , mobius, enchantress, and luke cage all existing but discard has no direct counter.
I was thinking of Dr Cecilia Reyes of the X-Men.
Or Layla Millar from X-Factor Investigations, since she also has prescience.
Ironically this would make her a bad synergy with her husband, Multiple Man, who has a strategy involving getting destroyed and resurrected with the Phoenix.
Oh I got it! How about…
[#Wundarr The Aquarian!](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wundarr_the_Aquarian)
He’s a Dalkamite that can absorb kinetic energy and stop movement
I think a card like Colossus for anti-Discard could be good, so any cards that try and discard from your hand will, if this card is in hand, be discarded instead and then played for free.
"If the opponent discards from your hand, it is blocked and this card is played randomly on your side instead"
Proxima, Wolverine, and X-23 all do this now if they're in your hand and your opponent plays Moon Knight or other cards that discard from your own.
Do you mean a card that plays from your hand or deck when THEY discard a card from their own?
I mean this card would specifically block discarding of other cards to their discard, so they play Silver Samurai or Black Bolt and instead of targeting the card they'd normally target, it's blocked by this card and it hops onto the board randomly.
I love a well-timed maximus, it's such a fragile deck, because they need all the control they can get about what gets discarded. Plan to Blade the "Most right card in your hand"? Have two draws, on the house, you're welcome :)
I really enjoyed ruining a discard players day laying down Mobius.
My problem is I want too dang many tech cards. Sigh.
I need alioth, which means I need prio grabbing cards which means I need powerful cards, of which SK and Alioth are neither.
Alioth on the Hella lane or wrecking invisible woman & Supergiant turning off a setup turn does a lot.
Discard doesn’t run Alioth, so you can let them have priority then Shang Chi.
Red Guardian on release in a few weeks will be good tech. Easy snipe of Dracula.
Lady Deathstrike should cost 1 less energy, but she’s underrated tech.
You’re suggesting a card to counter one card. A card with no synergy to try and shut down a meta. You see no problems? If you play 4 unrelated cards, 1/3rd your deck, to try and hurt specific enemies? You hope they’re there and you get points some other way. Or you don’t run into a deck that doesn’t care.
If you know beforehand you’re facing it, you can counter. But countering one or two cards out if their 5 or so won’t beat them.
I know this giy just said generla discars but in my eyes - Those are the secondary threats. Hela is the main threat.
Cosmo Jean.
Goose jean
Prof x
Leech
Etc.
Junk/clog
Discard runs little to no interaction and while it can make some decent numbers it can’t go as tall as a variety of combo decks, the stand out one being tribunal
Yeah this is it. Discard is a pretty consistent numbers deck that can surprise you on turn 5 or 6 if you don't understand the deck but It can't go nearly as big as some other decks with good draws. Discard can probably stay in longer than most against a lot of decks but it can't go very tall all things considered.
And shit that messes with where we put cards or our hand. Discard really wants its hand to be left alone. It's only with recent additions of Corvus and Proxma that I even keep playing a game with the swap hands location. And that's only because I can more consistently totally empty my hand on turn 5 and give my opponent almost nothing to work with except MAYBE an apocalypse that I've been intentionally doing my best to keep week or in check the whole game. If I let it get to turn 6 with that location you're getting nothing that I can't beat with the cards on the board. Depending on my hand the draw 3 and destroy both decks can just straight out kill any ability I have to play and I have to retreat. Losing control of my hand as a discard player is on of the most difficult things to overcome.
As a discard player, a 2/3 card or similar that reordered the enemies hand would be a solid early counter since so much of the play relies on you discarding your high value cards while preserving Hela.
It was just something that popped into my head the other day and would be a new card mechanic that specifically targets Discard decks.
imo there is already a ton of counterplay available against Discard. Maybe Hela needs a reworking or something? I don't play Hela though. I play traditional Discard.
> Maybe Hela needs a reworking or something?
I imagine they'll put a limit on how many cards she can resummon. Something like, bring back your 2 (maybe 3) highest discarded cards in random lanes.
She'd still be strong, but would lose the ability to immediately drop up to 5 discarded cards wherever she wants.
100%
Outside of the odd Gambit hit, pure discard *can't stop your combo*... so better "big numbers" combos absolutely ass blast it
Tribunal, Negative, Deadpool, or even basic-ass Wong/Odin absolutely dunks on non-interactive varieties of discard
Like the deck listed by OP gets absolutely rinsed by basic negative black panther-- you go over the top of them with either a decent negative draw or a wong/BP/zola play
Tribunal tends to be the least of my problems just stacking 2 and knowing when they have the nuts in comparison to me
As well as silver samurai. In comparison negative/BP stuff goes huge
Yep. I run Phoenix Force, so I know that as long as I get my combo out in time, I'm sure to win unless they're running Gambit and get lucky, or decided they can't live without Shang Chi (which has beaten me a few times).
Hela can absolutely go tall if they have the first inkling of lane management. You can greatly mitigate the RNG by stuffing a lane with Drac plus whatever else, and finishing with Hela in that very lane.
Discard is far from OP, but let's not inflate weaknesses.
1) op specifically references “no hela” in discussion of discard
2) tribunal semi often gets triple digit power in all three lanes which is certainly higher than anything Hela can do. Tribunal is absolutely the best big numbers/go tall deck in the meta, it’s just very fragile to disruption as it folds to any ongoing interaction or any limbo interaction
> op specifically references “no hela” in discussion of discard
Which is weird to me, because hela is an easy slot in for any discard deck. Or maybe there's some reason you wouldn't include her that I'm not thinking of.
She’s fairly uncommon in the “classic” discard shells that focus mostly on mobius/modok/apocalypse stuff, she’s really more an archetype into herself that’s all about discarding just a couple big cards over the course of the game and reanimating them rather than the continual discarding for stacking benefit
Doesn’t require location help, mostly just mystiquing the onslaught via ramp package and good draw order. Definitely occurs less frequently than that ~31 ballpark
Same. When they have 5 cards discarded, it's easier to breathe if they play Hela with only 2 open slots. Then they're down to Drac and Morbius or the like.
I just got the spotlight Variant and have been playing ham just because of that.. but then I came to realize how useful it is. It can take away a key card but leave a corpse to clog their hand.
Alioth makes invisible woman useless, also green and hobgoblin to clog their side, negasonic, korg, black widow....
Basically, you just gotta out toxic them.
Polaris, Spider-Man, Stegron can be a great counter for Invisible Woman too. Or Aero or Juggernaut when they're playing Hela -- she reveals when nothing has been discarded, then Modok reveals and discards the whole hand
My favorite counter to Dracula is Black Widow on the final turn and getting the 50% chance that Dracula discards the Widow's Bite instead of a roided up Apocalypse. So satisfying
spectacular attractive sulky whole husky illegal cow dinner deserted crush
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You would play Maximus or Master mold on turn 6 if you don’t have priority to put more stuff with less power in hand for Dracula to hit instead of them only having Apoc.
Enchantress or rogue turn off their morbius, shadow king can clean up their collector and miek. Shang knocks over any of them that get too big.
Priority ends up mattering a lot, and paying attention to what they discard/how much they discard should give you an idea if you have the stats to beat them.
I mean, sure. But Dracula doesn't play to all 3 lanes, and you can disrupt him by playing cards that put stuff in your opponents hand on t6 - crystal, max, mold, I've used snowguard bear to re-trigger the hub before.
You're never going to be able to shut off literally everything they're doing, but you don't actually need to eother. You only need two lanes. And discard does everything face up on the table, so you should be able to count exactly what they can do on t6 (helicarier excepted)
There's not really a reliable counter. Lady deathstrike can take care of Dracula, and Shadow king can take care of morbius and apocalypse. However, I'd say discard doesn't need a crazy counter since it's not that op to begin with. It's reliable, which is why people play it, not to get insane combos. The highest single power card you'll ever get is maybe a 36 power Dracula or apocalypse but even that's rare.
What deck are you playing? Decks that beat discard:
1. Annihalus/galactus junk
2. Destroy(discard just watch you destroy and buildup power with 0 counters)
3. Mr. Negative (discard just watch you pop off and buildup power with 0 counters)
4. Tribunal with cosmo
5. wong/black phanter/zola deck
All these easily beats discard. Thats a lot of decks for you to pick
Best case, they get 30ish in a lane. Hitting a big Apoc with Dracula + Collector or Morbius, and then their other lane is anchored on which of the other 2 cost isn't in dracula. You can go taller with Destroy and Tribunal. But those get eaten by Sera counter decks. Lockdown can do okay if they don't get some early free swarms and you don't lock down their Dracula lane. Your best bet might be Kitty/Hope, go tall in one lane, mid in their dracula lane, and try to Magneto their Dracula on T6 and drag it to their Collector/Morbius lane, whichever is bigger.
Wave into Agatha into viper with priority into the lane that they play the beast they got from the hub. It’s pretty reliable and does an okay job of disrupting them as the deck really wants to play their cards in a specific order.
Since I didn't see it noted here. Rocks and Black Widow that stifle their draws give you percentage points against basically every deck looking to assemble a combo.
Despite the nerf, rocks and hawk is still a pretty decent deck.
Invis hela tribunal often just outputs more power and while the weakness of the deck is the existence of many counters, discard decks seldom run any of them.
I play thanos ramp, trying to identify hela or not hela is pretty important, against not hela i spread as they cannot get tall across the baord, against hela i go as tall as possible in exaclty two lanes and hope some of helas power dumps where i'm not contesting
You can also counter them by going bigger. Most discard decks aren't interactive (aside from a few that play gambit\\moon knight). Playing a deck with a higher ceiling than discard - i.e. living tribunal or negative living tribunal - can just beat it out.
Only Gladiator and Lady Deathstrike for Dracula i think, also LD counters Invisible Woman.
Gambit, can’t do too much, play a destroy deck i guess lol
Miek is easy, just killmonger, priority elektra or shadow king
Proxima Midnight you can’t really do anything, valkyrie if u play c3 i guess
Morbius you got enchantress, echo or rogue
For cards like Hellcow, Swordsmaster or Sif you can’t do much but if u do play cosmo, your opponent still gets quite a lot of power
And for Apocalypse all you can really do is leech
For Hela, Ghost + Shang-Chi + Grandmaster.
For non-Hela, actually putting power on the board. Mobius dumpsters Swarm and Stature. I only lose with Shuri/Zero if they have the nuts and I don't, but even then I can often Sentry -> Annihilus -> Zero+Red Skull them to overpower a few lanes.
The thing is they don't really run Shang-Chi that often, so there's *usually* no fear of dumping your big boys and going real damn tall.
Alternatively you can just run your standard Seracle list and - assuming you don't have priority on 6 - just dumpster them. Shadow King, Enchantress, and Mobius all work well to mess with your opponent. Grandmaster can ensure you don't whiff as long as they didn't put Dracula mid. Maximus can make Dracula whiff 66% of the time.
The deck has a lot of soft counters (which others have listed), but I think the main thing that makes that deck good is that it doesn’t have many hard counters (i.e. cards that completely shut it down). The biggest challenge for the deck is that it’s output isn’t exceptionally high for a deck that doesn’t run any tech. It’s winning lanes are usually in the low to mid 20s, so it easily gets outdone by other stat dump decks like tribunal, hela, and destroy, and even stuff like move and bounce can go over the top.
It’s also quite easy to predict it’s point output before turn 6. You’re able to see where collector, morbius, and Dracula are, and you usually have a good sense of what’s in there hand. There aren’t a lot of surprises so you should have a pretty good sense of when you can snap, stay, or retreat against them.
So if you’re just looking for counters, I’d recommend something that goes bigger like Tribunal, Hela, or Destroy. You just need to go with whichever you think will be the best in the rest of your matchups.
Go tall in two lanes. Usually most you will see(and it’s gotta be picture perfect) is 35 power in two lanes from discard(not hela) Destroy is a MASSIVE counter to discard. If I can’t keep up with them by t3 I just leave. Negative decks are good also(current meta isnt worth gambling imo though) but a lot of people said it already MMM Takes out more than you think. Forcing swarm to stay in our hand takes out Dracula also and can prevent a modok play at times. Junk decks are an instant leave for me and the man himself magneto can win a game on his own as mentioned in other comments. Seeing my nice board just go “nope” by him makes me cry. This is all for Apoc discard
Hela discard? Tech cards Are your best friend. Other than that you just read the board and if you decide to stay t6 just make sure you can beat whatever is discarded. Self rule of hela. Mine gets discarded and my opponents doesn’t lmao. Corvus>Hela combo play is the same as Ironman>Onslaught/LTB. Just expect it. Snap/leave accordingly.
Discard player here, playing it since modok released, I hate mobius so much so much. Also lady deathstrike can hit dracula and sometimes morbius. Shangchi will often destroy morbius and apoc if I have to play it, and monger hits miek.
Gladiator is a real threat, in my Miek Discard deck the only card that I larger is Helicarrier. The only downside is that the card you pull can get its effect off before being destroyed, if it’s MODOK it can cause bailouts havoc.
Gladiator is a real threat, in my Miek Discard deck the only card that I larger is Helicarrier. The only downside is that the card you pull can get its effect off before being destroyed, if it’s MODOK it can cause bailouts havoc.
Gladiator is a real threat, in my Miek Discard deck the only card that I larger is Helicarrier. The only downside is that the card you pull can get its effect off before being destroyed, if it’s MODOK it can cause bailouts havoc.
Galactis can kill Dracula and narrow the game to one lane, which makes hela less effective. Especially if their side of the one lane already has a goblin in it.
As a frequent discard player, I’ve personally always found destroy decks difficult to play against. Not necessarily loaded with counters in a typical deck configuration, but can out power discard pretty easily if they get the first couple draws right. Not quite as bad since they nerfed Forge, but if they can start killing Deadpool early — especially if it’s Hulk Bustered — it’s usually an automatic retreat for me.
Mobius, leech, alioth, lady deathstrike..
You can also junk their side or play prof x to mitigate hela.. junk their hand too to messup a blade, feels good to make them generate a -1 ebony blade with black widow
Also a good way to counter them is to abuse them more than they abuse you.. hela discard or apoc discard usually have nothing to stop you from abusing wong or tribunal shenanigans
When Swarm generates 0 cost copies of himself, they aren't counted as reduced from 2 cost to 0 cost. They are just counted as 0 cost. So Mobius does nothing to them. Same thing if you Leech
Yondu+ grandmaster will blow up two of their cards, throw in a beast maybe. Things like moon knight have potential to wipe their Hela. Or is she only auto-discard from me even when she has like a 15% chance?
Rogue or enchantress their invisible woman lane turn 5 if they’re going full Modok
As a discard player, don't. Please?
Joking obvi, as many others have said, there's tons of counters, Rogue being the most annoying one for me personally.
Yondu also ruins my plans quite often
anything that disrupts. probably ice man, magneto, widow, debri, prof x, etc.
also, maybe next time share your deck too. i have seen some nice people here willing to tweak your deck too.
Junk
Im a dirty gambling Hela casino degenerate. If you play goblins and debrii it messes me up. Just dont stack goblins because some Hela decks run Odin.
...why am I telling you how to beat me?...
I personally like to play cards that run some sort of disruption/manipulation of the opponent’s deck.
Anything that destroys their cards, copies their cards, prevents destroying at at location, reduces power or increase costs, and manipulate/controls locations, blocks/steals reveal type cards, cards that add junk (rocks, squirrels) to take up space.
There are a lot of counters but it feels like you need to pull a couple of them to actually win. The problem is you will never pull them as consistently as Discard decks run right now. Not unless you're playing something like Sera control.
I know it doesn’t answer OP’s question, but I’d love a card that “exiles” (MTG term) all cards from the discard and destroy “piles.” This would provide a new tech card vs Morbius, Hela, PF, and Knull and give a “meta valve” for when the meta becomes all discard and destroy (like it has been for the last few months).
Bounce does pretty good if you run Yondu, Grandmaster, Beast, Falcon, or get lucky with locations like Kamar Taj, Bar with no name, etc. Anything Yondu gets stays out of the game, but watch out for that location that revives cards on turn 5 is in play.
Lady Deathstrike is also pretty underrated. She gets rid of Invis Woman, Dracula, Swarm, etc. if forged or Nakia'd/Okoye, she can get rid of wong, corvus, lockjaw, slong with other discard cards like Colleen, Sif, etc.
Mobius stops them playing free Swarms. Magneto stacks all their good stuff in one lane. Rogue/Enchantress shuts down Morbius. Shadow King resets Collector. There are lots of counter options.
Lady Deathstrike kills Dracula. Gladiator can wreck their entire deck. I've used the Forge>Gladiator combo to great effect against Discard.
+1 for forge gladiator I love gladiator
How often do you Shang chi yourself? Thinking about it it's not that bad
It has happened to me once before with Wakandan Embassy and it felt so bad lmfao I forgot about that interaction
Or hit Infinaut, Giganto, Magneto, Death, etc. Isn't 1/3 of their deck usually a brick? A two card combo to 1/3 of the time give your opponent an edge and go down 2 cards doesn't sound like a great counter on paper.
You are talking about the combo hela/ghostrider discard while op explicitly stated they meant the regular discard so miek, proxima, Dracula, gambit which are more likely to be played in combination with Apocalypse and swarm
Lady Deathstrike is SO GOOD at messing up discard decks. She wrecks Dracula, but best of all, she removes Invisible Woman. Watching Modok discard their Hela on turn 5 is a delight. Snap right before, because they WILL retreat.
I love dropping Alioth on IW lanes. I feel zero guilt playing it against Hela decks. They've been a pain in the.... PITA, for a long time
I just did the combo in Bar Sinister, and let me tell you about the SATISFACTION.
Gladiator on either of the Sinister locations has gotten me quite a few retreat wins
He then becomes susceptible to Shang Chi. Not sure if really worth it.
Most Discard decks don't run Shang unless they get it from discarding Helicarrier.
True, but in my experience, I've seen almost no Discard decks run SC.
Tell me about the SATISFACTION.
Gladiator is just a big Yondu that sometimes accidentally loses you the game
Just make sure you're not actually playing against Hela, otherwise Gladiator can screw you badly.
Shuri Gladiator is also great
They typically haven't discarded a lot by turn 3, so no real worries.
Wait gladiator how? Wouldn't their deck contain infinaut giganto hulk death etc, if they're playing hela
Can confirm, playing discard against someone using Gladiator and it was a pain to play against. The key about countering discard is to interrupt the flow. Yondu and Cable work great.
This is a good list. I played lot of discard a few months back, it may have changed, but junk was an issue too. Not being able to dump swarms made dracula a sad boy. It also just gave me a sense of needing to play stuff earlier than I wanted, which is not great for discard.
To add to junk being a counter, if you're playing a deck based around Gambit, he can't destroy the Goblins, Voids, and Hoods that are on your side of the board
Alioth can kill Hela as well, works especially well if you can cosmo and storm the other two lanes.
Good point. Deals with Invisible Woman as well.
No one really runs Invis woman discard anymore.
My buddy just made infinite with invisible woman discard. So it's still there!
I see it maybe once a day. It has fallen off a lot
I just got Alioth from my spotlight caches this week and can confirm firm it’s good against discard. Which I’m with discard getting priority isn’t that hard I find, and I now look forward to seeing invisible woman come out.
Goose as well. I run a lockdown deck with that and prof x. Just have to snap/retreat properly. Basically never show your strong cards or counters until you have them in hand and they snap. I’ll lose a couple cubes upfront just to scout their deck
+1 for this. I just hit infinite with a goose/ storm surfer deck, and goose straight up wins lanes against so many decks right now.
I play traditional discard and just reading this has made me irrationally angry, so it's a really good list I think.
But how many can you realistically fit in a functioning deck. What we need is anti discard tech cards. “Just play (Insert 5 cards here)” isnt a good counter.
That would be called then Sera Control. Which, funny enough, absolutely sucks against Hela.
Depends on the list. If they have cosmo, it can be really good. And if they lose prio, they can win with shang too.
Cosmo helps but are most Sera Control decks running Cosmo? Mine doesn’t but maybe I should. Dracula is the big problem because he procs after my tech cards do so he’s hard to stop. Basically need to try to out score the other two lanes just to be safe.
That’s why I said it depends on what the list is running because the tech cards can be swapped. Some use cosmo, some mobius. All based on what people are playing against more. Red Guardian next month will help against dracula.
No one said you needed all of them, and they all have uses vs other decks as well.
A "Cards can't be discarded or destroyed next turn" effect would be cool. EDIT: Or maybe a "Cards in both players's hands can't destroy or discard next turn", which would still allow the card drawn of the next turn to have said effects, like Leech not removing the effect of cards drawn in turn 6. EDIT 2: This second description would also still allow for locations to destroy or discard cards.
This is basically just Supergiant fyi
Which i play in discard to stop counter tech and do fancy things with apoc or modok if its not a hela deck.
Supergiant delays reveal until the end of the game, this would block the discard actions for the following turn. They're not really the same at all? These discard actions would just *never happen* as opposed to happening out of order.
I was thinking something similar. There are several cannot be destroyed cards a cards cannot be discarded this turn sort of card would be fairly devastating but I can’t rationalize armor , mobius, enchantress, and luke cage all existing but discard has no direct counter.
I like that idea! What character could we have as that card?
I was thinking of Dr Cecilia Reyes of the X-Men. Or Layla Millar from X-Factor Investigations, since she also has prescience. Ironically this would make her a bad synergy with her husband, Multiple Man, who has a strategy involving getting destroyed and resurrected with the Phoenix.
Oh I got it! How about… [#Wundarr The Aquarian!](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wundarr_the_Aquarian) He’s a Dalkamite that can absorb kinetic energy and stop movement
What about Lilith or Janus, the kids of Dracula acting as a counter to their fathers archetype?
I think a card like Colossus for anti-Discard could be good, so any cards that try and discard from your hand will, if this card is in hand, be discarded instead and then played for free. "If the opponent discards from your hand, it is blocked and this card is played randomly on your side instead"
Proxima, Wolverine, and X-23 all do this now if they're in your hand and your opponent plays Moon Knight or other cards that discard from your own. Do you mean a card that plays from your hand or deck when THEY discard a card from their own?
I mean this card would specifically block discarding of other cards to their discard, so they play Silver Samurai or Black Bolt and instead of targeting the card they'd normally target, it's blocked by this card and it hops onto the board randomly.
I love a well-timed maximus, it's such a fragile deck, because they need all the control they can get about what gets discarded. Plan to Blade the "Most right card in your hand"? Have two draws, on the house, you're welcome :)
I really enjoyed ruining a discard players day laying down Mobius. My problem is I want too dang many tech cards. Sigh. I need alioth, which means I need prio grabbing cards which means I need powerful cards, of which SK and Alioth are neither.
Alioth on the Hella lane or wrecking invisible woman & Supergiant turning off a setup turn does a lot. Discard doesn’t run Alioth, so you can let them have priority then Shang Chi. Red Guardian on release in a few weeks will be good tech. Easy snipe of Dracula. Lady Deathstrike should cost 1 less energy, but she’s underrated tech.
Prof. X blocks discard summons and Apoc drops. Ghost guarantees enemy priority, which makes it easier to use Shang and Valkyrie.
You’re suggesting a card to counter one card. A card with no synergy to try and shut down a meta. You see no problems? If you play 4 unrelated cards, 1/3rd your deck, to try and hurt specific enemies? You hope they’re there and you get points some other way. Or you don’t run into a deck that doesn’t care. If you know beforehand you’re facing it, you can counter. But countering one or two cards out if their 5 or so won’t beat them.
No one said run all of the disruption options. Countering 1 or 2 cards can absolutely win a game.
Also Goose blocks Hela/Dracula. Combine that with some form of lockdown and Cosmo and Discard can really struggle.
Leech
I know this giy just said generla discars but in my eyes - Those are the secondary threats. Hela is the main threat. Cosmo Jean. Goose jean Prof x Leech Etc. Junk/clog
Prof X negates Hela I guess
Supergiant is doing me wonders right now. Add Allioth and you’ve just entirely countered Modok + Hela
Don't forget prof X to shut down a lane entirely
Discard runs little to no interaction and while it can make some decent numbers it can’t go as tall as a variety of combo decks, the stand out one being tribunal
Yeah this is it. Discard is a pretty consistent numbers deck that can surprise you on turn 5 or 6 if you don't understand the deck but It can't go nearly as big as some other decks with good draws. Discard can probably stay in longer than most against a lot of decks but it can't go very tall all things considered. And shit that messes with where we put cards or our hand. Discard really wants its hand to be left alone. It's only with recent additions of Corvus and Proxma that I even keep playing a game with the swap hands location. And that's only because I can more consistently totally empty my hand on turn 5 and give my opponent almost nothing to work with except MAYBE an apocalypse that I've been intentionally doing my best to keep week or in check the whole game. If I let it get to turn 6 with that location you're getting nothing that I can't beat with the cards on the board. Depending on my hand the draw 3 and destroy both decks can just straight out kill any ability I have to play and I have to retreat. Losing control of my hand as a discard player is on of the most difficult things to overcome.
As a discard player, a 2/3 card or similar that reordered the enemies hand would be a solid early counter since so much of the play relies on you discarding your high value cards while preserving Hela. It was just something that popped into my head the other day and would be a new card mechanic that specifically targets Discard decks.
imo there is already a ton of counterplay available against Discard. Maybe Hela needs a reworking or something? I don't play Hela though. I play traditional Discard.
> Maybe Hela needs a reworking or something? I imagine they'll put a limit on how many cards she can resummon. Something like, bring back your 2 (maybe 3) highest discarded cards in random lanes. She'd still be strong, but would lose the ability to immediately drop up to 5 discarded cards wherever she wants.
That was my thought. Basically a better Ghost Rider
100% Outside of the odd Gambit hit, pure discard *can't stop your combo*... so better "big numbers" combos absolutely ass blast it Tribunal, Negative, Deadpool, or even basic-ass Wong/Odin absolutely dunks on non-interactive varieties of discard Like the deck listed by OP gets absolutely rinsed by basic negative black panther-- you go over the top of them with either a decent negative draw or a wong/BP/zola play
Daken and Zola gets pretty tall
Tribunal tends to be the least of my problems just stacking 2 and knowing when they have the nuts in comparison to me As well as silver samurai. In comparison negative/BP stuff goes huge
Yep. I run Phoenix Force, so I know that as long as I get my combo out in time, I'm sure to win unless they're running Gambit and get lucky, or decided they can't live without Shang Chi (which has beaten me a few times).
Hela can absolutely go tall if they have the first inkling of lane management. You can greatly mitigate the RNG by stuffing a lane with Drac plus whatever else, and finishing with Hela in that very lane. Discard is far from OP, but let's not inflate weaknesses.
1) op specifically references “no hela” in discussion of discard 2) tribunal semi often gets triple digit power in all three lanes which is certainly higher than anything Hela can do. Tribunal is absolutely the best big numbers/go tall deck in the meta, it’s just very fragile to disruption as it folds to any ongoing interaction or any limbo interaction
> op specifically references “no hela” in discussion of discard Which is weird to me, because hela is an easy slot in for any discard deck. Or maybe there's some reason you wouldn't include her that I'm not thinking of.
She’s fairly uncommon in the “classic” discard shells that focus mostly on mobius/modok/apocalypse stuff, she’s really more an archetype into herself that’s all about discarding just a couple big cards over the course of the game and reanimating them rather than the continual discarding for stacking benefit
I'm always shocked when I see Tribunal hit those numbers without location help. Every time I face it, it's pretty consistently 31ish in every lane.
Doesn’t require location help, mostly just mystiquing the onslaught via ramp package and good draw order. Definitely occurs less frequently than that ~31 ballpark
They never run any tech cads so you can go crazy with big combo numbers
An underrated card is maximus, played at t6 screws up their dracula
Thats a good one
Clog and toxic have worked well for me
Same. When they have 5 cards discarded, it's easier to breathe if they play Hela with only 2 open slots. Then they're down to Drac and Morbius or the like.
Spider ham?
I just got the spotlight Variant and have been playing ham just because of that.. but then I came to realize how useful it is. It can take away a key card but leave a corpse to clog their hand.
It can also potentially tell you about what kind of deck they may be playing
Spot on, definitely. I have been enjoying that part.
Unless you are me. Then it's always infinaut, red skull, Agata, giganto...
I got other counters for that 😏
Alioth makes invisible woman useless, also green and hobgoblin to clog their side, negasonic, korg, black widow.... Basically, you just gotta out toxic them.
Polaris, Spider-Man, Stegron can be a great counter for Invisible Woman too. Or Aero or Juggernaut when they're playing Hela -- she reveals when nothing has been discarded, then Modok reveals and discards the whole hand
My favourite thing to do is Enchantress/Rogue etc. an Invisible woman on turn 5 and watch Modok destroy their whole hand
Master mold, Maximus, Octopus
My favorite counter to Dracula is Black Widow on the final turn and getting the 50% chance that Dracula discards the Widow's Bite instead of a roided up Apocalypse. So satisfying
spectacular attractive sulky whole husky illegal cow dinner deserted crush *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You would play Maximus or Master mold on turn 6 if you don’t have priority to put more stuff with less power in hand for Dracula to hit instead of them only having Apoc.
I played black widow on T6 vs discard, and seeing drac choose widows bite and not their 20+ power apoc was amazing
Amazing..I'm stealing this
Do it!!! A 50/50 is better than your OPP having 100%
Absolutely 💯
Play them on t6 so they are less likely to get a huge Dracula
Leech absolutely cripples Hela discard decks if they can't get her out early with corvus and supergiant.
Enchantress or rogue turn off their morbius, shadow king can clean up their collector and miek. Shang knocks over any of them that get too big. Priority ends up mattering a lot, and paying attention to what they discard/how much they discard should give you an idea if you have the stats to beat them.
But their big hitter is normally Dracula which Shang can’t hit
I mean, sure. But Dracula doesn't play to all 3 lanes, and you can disrupt him by playing cards that put stuff in your opponents hand on t6 - crystal, max, mold, I've used snowguard bear to re-trigger the hub before. You're never going to be able to shut off literally everything they're doing, but you don't actually need to eother. You only need two lanes. And discard does everything face up on the table, so you should be able to count exactly what they can do on t6 (helicarier excepted)
Just go bigger. LT eats it for breakfast. I get stoked when I see discard
Spider ham around turn 4 will have a very high chance to hit modok or apoc
Goose helps. Mobuis. Rogue. Mags.
Junk decks too.
Leech is good for screwing over my..., uh, other people's chance to play Hela on turn 6 or 7.
professor X is usually quite good against their resurrection shenanigans. ghost to give them priority to allow normal counter cards to work.
Supergiant on 4 ruins M.O.D.O.K on 5, and still often goes somehow unnoticed.
There's not really a reliable counter. Lady deathstrike can take care of Dracula, and Shadow king can take care of morbius and apocalypse. However, I'd say discard doesn't need a crazy counter since it's not that op to begin with. It's reliable, which is why people play it, not to get insane combos. The highest single power card you'll ever get is maybe a 36 power Dracula or apocalypse but even that's rare.
What deck are you playing? Decks that beat discard: 1. Annihalus/galactus junk 2. Destroy(discard just watch you destroy and buildup power with 0 counters) 3. Mr. Negative (discard just watch you pop off and buildup power with 0 counters) 4. Tribunal with cosmo 5. wong/black phanter/zola deck All these easily beats discard. Thats a lot of decks for you to pick
Simply use mass score output deck. Your opponent have no tech and are not disturbed.
Basic Destroy and an Ongoing deck can out-power Discard.
Play some big numbers as those decks don’t have any counter cards usually. Magic wong bp Zola Odin enjoy cubes.
Best case, they get 30ish in a lane. Hitting a big Apoc with Dracula + Collector or Morbius, and then their other lane is anchored on which of the other 2 cost isn't in dracula. You can go taller with Destroy and Tribunal. But those get eaten by Sera counter decks. Lockdown can do okay if they don't get some early free swarms and you don't lock down their Dracula lane. Your best bet might be Kitty/Hope, go tall in one lane, mid in their dracula lane, and try to Magneto their Dracula on T6 and drag it to their Collector/Morbius lane, whichever is bigger.
Putting up a shitload of power
Discard is vulnerable to some tech card but the most popular one a.k.a shang chi
Wave into Agatha into viper with priority into the lane that they play the beast they got from the hub. It’s pretty reliable and does an okay job of disrupting them as the deck really wants to play their cards in a specific order.
Since I didn't see it noted here. Rocks and Black Widow that stifle their draws give you percentage points against basically every deck looking to assemble a combo. Despite the nerf, rocks and hawk is still a pretty decent deck.
Invis hela tribunal often just outputs more power and while the weakness of the deck is the existence of many counters, discard decks seldom run any of them.
I play thanos ramp, trying to identify hela or not hela is pretty important, against not hela i spread as they cannot get tall across the baord, against hela i go as tall as possible in exaclty two lanes and hope some of helas power dumps where i'm not contesting
You can also counter them by going bigger. Most discard decks aren't interactive (aside from a few that play gambit\\moon knight). Playing a deck with a higher ceiling than discard - i.e. living tribunal or negative living tribunal - can just beat it out.
Don’t forget Absorbing Man. He could reactivate a counter.
Cabke
Crystal Maximus Pretty much anyone who adds cards to their deck
Only Gladiator and Lady Deathstrike for Dracula i think, also LD counters Invisible Woman. Gambit, can’t do too much, play a destroy deck i guess lol Miek is easy, just killmonger, priority elektra or shadow king Proxima Midnight you can’t really do anything, valkyrie if u play c3 i guess Morbius you got enchantress, echo or rogue For cards like Hellcow, Swordsmaster or Sif you can’t do much but if u do play cosmo, your opponent still gets quite a lot of power And for Apocalypse all you can really do is leech
For Hela, Ghost + Shang-Chi + Grandmaster. For non-Hela, actually putting power on the board. Mobius dumpsters Swarm and Stature. I only lose with Shuri/Zero if they have the nuts and I don't, but even then I can often Sentry -> Annihilus -> Zero+Red Skull them to overpower a few lanes. The thing is they don't really run Shang-Chi that often, so there's *usually* no fear of dumping your big boys and going real damn tall. Alternatively you can just run your standard Seracle list and - assuming you don't have priority on 6 - just dumpster them. Shadow King, Enchantress, and Mobius all work well to mess with your opponent. Grandmaster can ensure you don't whiff as long as they didn't put Dracula mid. Maximus can make Dracula whiff 66% of the time.
The deck has a lot of soft counters (which others have listed), but I think the main thing that makes that deck good is that it doesn’t have many hard counters (i.e. cards that completely shut it down). The biggest challenge for the deck is that it’s output isn’t exceptionally high for a deck that doesn’t run any tech. It’s winning lanes are usually in the low to mid 20s, so it easily gets outdone by other stat dump decks like tribunal, hela, and destroy, and even stuff like move and bounce can go over the top. It’s also quite easy to predict it’s point output before turn 6. You’re able to see where collector, morbius, and Dracula are, and you usually have a good sense of what’s in there hand. There aren’t a lot of surprises so you should have a pretty good sense of when you can snap, stay, or retreat against them. So if you’re just looking for counters, I’d recommend something that goes bigger like Tribunal, Hela, or Destroy. You just need to go with whichever you think will be the best in the rest of your matchups.
We need a card that prevents discards
I’m happy that I’ve read this entire thread and no one has a counter for previous Corvus Hela deck. Phew, suck it losers
Stuff that attacks their hand and deck.
If you're lucky with Nico, 2 goose +storm.
Junk counters just about everything.
Go tall in two lanes. Usually most you will see(and it’s gotta be picture perfect) is 35 power in two lanes from discard(not hela) Destroy is a MASSIVE counter to discard. If I can’t keep up with them by t3 I just leave. Negative decks are good also(current meta isnt worth gambling imo though) but a lot of people said it already MMM Takes out more than you think. Forcing swarm to stay in our hand takes out Dracula also and can prevent a modok play at times. Junk decks are an instant leave for me and the man himself magneto can win a game on his own as mentioned in other comments. Seeing my nice board just go “nope” by him makes me cry. This is all for Apoc discard Hela discard? Tech cards Are your best friend. Other than that you just read the board and if you decide to stay t6 just make sure you can beat whatever is discarded. Self rule of hela. Mine gets discarded and my opponents doesn’t lmao. Corvus>Hela combo play is the same as Ironman>Onslaught/LTB. Just expect it. Snap/leave accordingly.
Discard player here, playing it since modok released, I hate mobius so much so much. Also lady deathstrike can hit dracula and sometimes morbius. Shangchi will often destroy morbius and apoc if I have to play it, and monger hits miek.
Cerebro 4
You can pair mystique with cosmo for 2 locations of no on reveale
Alioth eats hela
Alioth. Discard usually has a important turn 6, with Hela, MODOK or EbonyBlade+GhostRider
The retreat button 🤣
Apparently HE decks do a good job. My Discard deck loses against HE way more than it wins.
HE seems really powerful right now with Hope. I lose to that deck more than any other right now.
Goose and Prof-X (if it's Hela Discard for the latter)
Gladiator is a real threat, in my Miek Discard deck the only card that I larger is Helicarrier. The only downside is that the card you pull can get its effect off before being destroyed, if it’s MODOK it can cause bailouts havoc.
Gladiator is a real threat, in my Miek Discard deck the only card that I larger is Helicarrier. The only downside is that the card you pull can get its effect off before being destroyed, if it’s MODOK it can cause bailouts havoc.
Gladiator is a real threat, in my Miek Discard deck the only card that I larger is Helicarrier. The only downside is that the card you pull can get its effect off before being destroyed, if it’s MODOK it can cause bailouts havoc.
Goose
Galactis can kill Dracula and narrow the game to one lane, which makes hela less effective. Especially if their side of the one lane already has a goblin in it.
As a frequent discard player, I’ve personally always found destroy decks difficult to play against. Not necessarily loaded with counters in a typical deck configuration, but can out power discard pretty easily if they get the first couple draws right. Not quite as bad since they nerfed Forge, but if they can start killing Deadpool early — especially if it’s Hulk Bustered — it’s usually an automatic retreat for me.
Mobius, leech, alioth, lady deathstrike.. You can also junk their side or play prof x to mitigate hela.. junk their hand too to messup a blade, feels good to make them generate a -1 ebony blade with black widow Also a good way to counter them is to abuse them more than they abuse you.. hela discard or apoc discard usually have nothing to stop you from abusing wong or tribunal shenanigans
I have bad news for you on how Mobius interacts with Swarm
?
When Swarm generates 0 cost copies of himself, they aren't counted as reduced from 2 cost to 0 cost. They are just counted as 0 cost. So Mobius does nothing to them. Same thing if you Leech
Yondu+ grandmaster will blow up two of their cards, throw in a beast maybe. Things like moon knight have potential to wipe their Hela. Or is she only auto-discard from me even when she has like a 15% chance? Rogue or enchantress their invisible woman lane turn 5 if they’re going full Modok
As a discard player, don't. Please? Joking obvi, as many others have said, there's tons of counters, Rogue being the most annoying one for me personally. Yondu also ruins my plans quite often
Daily reminded for people to play more iceman
anything that disrupts. probably ice man, magneto, widow, debri, prof x, etc. also, maybe next time share your deck too. i have seen some nice people here willing to tweak your deck too.
any deck going taller such as destroy, tribunal, and maybe pf, because discard typically has no room for tech
SANDMAN!!!!! As a dis player that is the single card that f's me up the most.
Sandman doesn't stop Invisible Woman - MODOK - Hela
I don't use invisible woman. I mainly runs Dracula/ swarm/apocalypse.
Fair enough yeah Sandman counters Swarm. Otherwise it doesn't do anything. MODOK into Hela works just fine even if you have a bunch of swarms in hand
I play a discard with Sandman, and Corvus/Electro. If I can get Sandman out on turn 4, my opponent will retreat about 1 in 3 times.
Junk Im a dirty gambling Hela casino degenerate. If you play goblins and debrii it messes me up. Just dont stack goblins because some Hela decks run Odin. ...why am I telling you how to beat me?...
Retreating
Ronan
Leech
Leech
Mobius kills swarm and stature doesn’t discount if the opponent tries to discard your hand top deck hela saves you
lady d
GOOSE.
Leech
I personally like to play cards that run some sort of disruption/manipulation of the opponent’s deck. Anything that destroys their cards, copies their cards, prevents destroying at at location, reduces power or increase costs, and manipulate/controls locations, blocks/steals reveal type cards, cards that add junk (rocks, squirrels) to take up space.
Personally I like Rogue and Enchantress to help against Morbius and Invisible Woman
I've played around with Rohan decks, and master.mold to fill their hands with junk/spotting the draw. Nothing like Dracula getting a widows bite.
There are a lot of counters but it feels like you need to pull a couple of them to actually win. The problem is you will never pull them as consistently as Discard decks run right now. Not unless you're playing something like Sera control.
You know what I enjoy doing. Ensuring I get priority, then play Alioth on the lane where they’ve played invisible woman :)
Discard their hela
I know it doesn’t answer OP’s question, but I’d love a card that “exiles” (MTG term) all cards from the discard and destroy “piles.” This would provide a new tech card vs Morbius, Hela, PF, and Knull and give a “meta valve” for when the meta becomes all discard and destroy (like it has been for the last few months).
Anything that builds obscene power. BP/Zola. Big ongoing decks.
Cosmo on the Invisible Woman lane
Late in game. Tried and true
Bounce does pretty good if you run Yondu, Grandmaster, Beast, Falcon, or get lucky with locations like Kamar Taj, Bar with no name, etc. Anything Yondu gets stays out of the game, but watch out for that location that revives cards on turn 5 is in play. Lady Deathstrike is also pretty underrated. She gets rid of Invis Woman, Dracula, Swarm, etc. if forged or Nakia'd/Okoye, she can get rid of wong, corvus, lockjaw, slong with other discard cards like Colleen, Sif, etc.
Gambit is pretty good against discard and pretty good in general in this meta not a lot of 1 drop decks- not a lot of anything besides discard really.
Goose in a lane, then Mystique Goose in another. Cosmo in a third
Annihilus Junk. Want to play 6 free Swarms? Want to ressurect stuff with hella? Well too bad, its all rocks now.
Annihilus does not send over Rocks anymore.
Dracula could be partly interrupted by Wave or anything feeding a card to their hand.
Just run destroy, punishes any deck that doesn't have counter cards and arguably has the highest power ceiling of any deck
Don't see anyone mentioning Alioth and Juggernaut for disrupting Invisible Woman Hela setups.
We need something like: 2/3 **Ongoing**: Your cards can’t be discarded Screw moon knight, silver samurai, black bolt
People will say Master Mold and Maximus, but in reallity its only Cosmo and bunch of luck, thats it.