Magic’s newest expansion takes us to the bustling streets of New York City, home to a multiverse worth of Spider-Men. A new set means new cards, and we’re kicking off our review with the multicolor cards that serve as signposts to let you know what direction each color pair is trying to build in.
Marvel’s Spider-Man will release to Magic: the Gathering Online and Arena on September 23rd, 2025 as “Through the Omenpaths”, and to the tabletop on September 26th.
As usual we won’t be looking at everything, but what we will be looking at we’ll be looking at primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play.
Biorganic Carapace
Saffgor: This seems like a slam dunk in something like Arna Kennerüd, Skycaptain but its floor is a Rogue’s Gloves with extra stats. Not a card you’ll see everywhere, but it has at least one home, which is more than can be said of many of the cards here.
Loxi:Â I think this is fantastic for dedicated equipment decks. You don’t realize just how much mana you save from effects that can equip for free until you really sit down and play with them, but it makes that 4 mana casting cost feel a bit lighter when you’re skipping some of the overhead cost that you normally have to circumvent with other effects. Ideally this works best on creatures that already have evasion of some kind naturally or if your deck has a bunch of other ways to give them evasion, since this makes your creature getting chumped feel pretty rough.
BPhillipYork:Â That’s potentially a lot of card draw, especially for decks that are modifying everything, that’s just sort of a win more scenario. It has no built in evasion, and if you’re already connecting with lots of modified creatures, you’re probably able to do a lot of damage and close the game out already. It would be pretty fun in some kind of weird Esper shadow deck where you’ve got built in evasion and you’re distributing +1/+1 counters or equipment or something like that. Might have some interesting potential with all the station cards, since it lets you draw off them not being creatures yet, or if you have some other reason to modify lots of creatures but not hit with them.
FromTheShire:Â In the average game this is probably only drawing a card or two when you connect, but combined with the reasonable pump and getting the first equip for free I think that’s probably fine on its face. The biggest problem with it is being in both white and blue really restricts the amount of decks it can go in, and since you’re in blue you likely have better draw engines.
Sp//dr, Piloted by Peni
Loxi:Â I actually see the best use case for this card being as a support piece is a Bant counters or Bant Enchantress deck, or at the helm of a weird Azorious counter deck (which, if you do this, rocks). I’ve always found that the “scales with modified creatures” effects often tend to work best with counters, since it tends to be easier to spread those out while many aura/equipment commanders want to stack up value on a few creatures.
BPhillipYork: So this is basically like the Biorganic Carapace but a Reconnaissance Mission version. It’s 5 mana, which is even more expensive than an already expensive 4 cost enchantment with several variants, but it’s a 4/4 on it’s own, drops a +1/+1 somewhere (probably on itself by default) and then will give you draw. It’s fine, if not terribly exciting as a Commander, or would work well with aura replenish, mask (Estrid) or some other weirdness going on.
FromTheShire:Â Agreed that this is probably best in Bant Counters, though I’m not big on my draw engine dying to board wipes unless it’s some SERIOUS draw, which this isn’t. Too fragile and require too much other work going right.
Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior
Saffgor: A fairly solid hatebear at face, but not exciting. This taking up a rare slot is likely for limited, a laughable choice given the state of the set’s design for non-constructed formats.
Loxi:Â I like this as a hatebear specifically if you have that sort of deck, but in a control shell I think I’d generally reach for some other options. Hitting both artifacts and creatures is great and can really stall decks that rely on treasures.
BPhillipYork: For a 2/2 that makes artifacts and creatures enter tapped it’s an escalation in hate bears, having built in flying is pretty nice.
FromTheShire:Â I think everyone in Standard who is sick of dying to Red Deck Wins and to a lesser extent Izzet Prowess is pretty excited about this card actually. For the time being it doesn’t solve the Vivi problem, but if that eats a ban in November as expected, prowess will still be a thing. The format is extremely fast right now, with lots of hasty threats, and if some sort of control deck materializes I expect this to be part of it. The question is how much of a problem being 2 toughness is… in a Shock and Burst Lightning format it could be a big one.
Wraith, Vicious Vigilante
Loxi: This is a very solid piece for a flying men deck, although notably I think the colors restrict it from really making waves in that archetype (and since it doesn’t actually have flying, it loses value in a lot of other Azorious options). I do think this is an absolutely A+ carrier for artifact/equipment decks, especially since it can help enable things that synergize with historic cards in equipment heavy strategies too.
BPhillipYork: This is super good for some Lord of the Rings crossover Nazgul deck. I’m not sure what else you’d do with it. I mean okay you could throw the carapace on it and then draw 2 and deal 6 damage a turn, that’d be okay.
FromTheShire:Â Nothing too flashy but built in evasion and double strike makes this a terrifying Voltron commander. It will be interesting to see what a deck that doesn’t need to devote a bunch of slots to those roles looks like.
Doctor Octopus, Master Planner
Saffgor: While being 7 mana and lacking Green is a downside, this Doc Ock is fundamentally a Damia, Sage of Stone with trinket text about Villains. Happening on your End Step reduces the clunkiness of the card, and makes him a reasonable top end to casual control strategies.
Loxi:Â This can really be a great enabler for card draw just based on mana per card standards, but I’m not super sold on actually using him with Villains either. Realistically I think this is a really big draw spell tied to a creature, and if you’re playing a deck that often dumps their hand he can be a good way to refuel. I wouldn’t really expect to have him survive for too long, although he does have a big enough butt to survive a lot of damage based removal.
BPhillipYork: To me the big thing here is the dump your hand, reanimate, redraw to 8 cards, which is pretty nice. It screams bury it in the yard, and not use it as a commander. Also I guess it’s a Villain lord, which is, fine?
FromTheShire:Â Yeah the lord effect isn’t particularly exciting right now, with only 63 Villains in the game, and that’s including a bunch of silver border cards and ones with colors you can’t run in this deck. Drawing up to 8 each of your turns is wildly powerful, especially if you have a deck full of cheap spells and discard outlets.
Morbius the Living Vampire
Saffgor: This card is almost too easy to make fun of, but why could this not at least be a Strategic Planning from the yard? This set is rife with unnecessary safety valves.
Loxi:Â It’s morbin’ time.
In all sincerity, I think this card wouldn’t be bad if it was cheaper but it seems a bit criminal at 4 mana.
BPhillipYork: Is this bad just because the movie was so bad?
FromTheShire:Â This is Wimp Lo, we intentionally trained him wrong as a joke!
Superior Spider-Man
Saffgor: For fans of ‘secret Commanders’, this is here for you, and for those looking to play Dimir reanimator with a solid plan B, the Superior Spider-Man delivers. Become a Valvagoth, a Tidespout Tyrant, etc, with the potential to flicker for the occasional bit of gravehate. I’m higher on this card than most.
Loxi:Â Not bad in reanimator decks as a way to make a (usually) smaller copy of something that can flexibly hit things in other graveyards as well as your own. I don’t think I’m super sold on this in the command zone but I do quite like it in the 99 of some of those strategies.
BPhillipYork: This doesn’t seem that good unless you really want to like, dump something to your yard then copy it, to turn your Commander into an Archon of Cruelty which is a strong card but feels unreliable and too many hoops.
FromTheShire:Â It’s a solid mill-and-clone commander, but it doesn’t do anything new or particularly interesting. In Standard this could be real nasty if things slow down.
Symbiote Spider-Man
Saffgor:Â This feels like a worse Nashi, Searcher in the Dark with none of the sauce, given you’re only ever getting one card per poke. It’s even in the wrong colors for easy access to Double Strike, so there’s no double-dipping.
Loxi:Â I wish this had evasion instead of a higher toughness stat, but being able to slap its abilities on anything makes this pretty solid in a self mill deck, as you can mill it, still get some value off it, and further enable you to mill more/draw cards. Those decks often rely on creatures in the graveyard as well, so that can be a nice boon here.
BPhillipYork: This seems pretty neat, both for card selection and also dumping useful stuff to your yard. But it’s a 2/4 for 3 mana with no evasion, so there’s a decent chance you can’t just easily swing through and connect with it to trigger it’s ability. The other option is defaulting it to being exiled, which is a nice recursion to get more value, but kind of expensive.
FromTheShire:Â There are so many ways to benefit off of self mill that don’t require you to deal combat damage. This seems like another example of too many hoops for too little benefit.
Carnage, Crimson Chaos
Saffgor: This to me reads as a 60-card design, and for those purposes I’m actually a huge fan. Getting back a Fear of Missing Out or Tersa Lightshatter makes some kind of Carnage midrange deck feel real in Standard, once Vivi is dealt with.
Loxi:Â I can see this being quite strong in limited as well given the right amount of aggressive creatures, although frankly I’m not sure how much people will end up drafting this set. That being said, this allowing you to potentially get a crazy amount of stats on board for a short time, and this might be a nice way to enable you to win over the top with some light burn.
BPhillipYork: This kind of makes me aggravated, not to be too “loyalist” to the comics but Carnage was a huge threat and Spider man had to originally assemble a team in order to defeat him; you can discard and cheat this out for 2 mana, which is okay, and then it’ll reanimate something, which will then fling itself? Hardly seems like enough. The recursion is okay if you want a creature to come back that has a nice ETB or death effect.
FromTheShire:Â This is a good time to mention the new Mayhem mechanic, which lets you cast the card from your graveyard as an alternative cost if you discarded it this turn. This expressly does not allow you to break timing restrictions, so don’t try pitching it if someone else forces you to discard on their turn. This is a solid piece for a discard deck in Standard, giving you a trampling threat for just 2 mana that can also bring a temporary body along for the ride.
Green Goblin, Revenant
Saffgor: Similar in spirit to Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, and alongside Skirge Familar there’s no doubt this does profoundly silly things. Lacking Haste and a means to translate this trigger into mana natively does hurt though.
Loxi:Â Having flying and deathtouch is great for making sure he can attack pretty freely, and you know this is going to just draw an obscene amount of cards if you have some solid discard outlets. I’ve always been partial to Chainer, Nightmare Adept as a commander, and I think this could be a great card there.
BPhillipYork: This is a solid enough ability, and red can discard a lot, and benefit from it, so fairly easily to make a discard/draw red black deck around this ability. It’s a solid commander if a little slow. Red and Black will have a field day with discarding big fatties, and reanimating them out, and lots of ways to generate lots of value off that mechanic.
FromTheShire:Â Madness and mayhem chaps, you know the drill…. Getting to rummage for 1 when you attack is already a nice rider, and in this deck no way it just going to stop at 1. You’ll churn through lots of cards to cast for cheaper, fill your yard, and reanimate in no time.
Ultimate Green Goblin
Saffgor: Back in my day, Rotting Regisaur was cool. Well, not really, but neither is this.
Loxi:Â I honestly wish the mayhem cost for this actually made it cheaper, but I can get how that would be a silly amount of stats. I can see good synergy with the above version of Green Goblin, I think I prefer other discard outlets usually for commander though.
BPhillipYork: This is really a pretty nice draw engine if you can leverage it with things like Conspiracy Theorist or the like, or just want to discard huge creatures for reanimation. It’s also pretty big, especially for something with mayhem at 3 mana, I assume this card will be a hassle in Standard.
FromTheShire:Â I think the theory is that the mayhem cost DOES make it cheaper, because you’re also trying to flip Norman Osborn into Green Goblin and getting that sweet reduction. More likely this is a great discard outlet for enabling mayhem that also gives you a Treasure to pay for it and is also an undercosted big beater. It’s not an insane card but it really does a ton for you in a mayhem-centric deck.
Cheering Crowd
Saffgor: Now this is an absolutely intriguing design. Benefits from Flash, counters, and a little bit of politicking, with the gears to play like Belbe, Corrupted Observer if you get a turn cycle. I think this will encourage some wrong play, given every player who buys in gives each of their foes incrementally more mana, but I am utterly fascinated to see what happens when this hit the board.
Loxi:Â I don’t really like this card for group hug unless you have ways to manipulate the counters on it yourself. My philosophy for playing group hug has always been “share the love and juice up everyone on the board, but make sure you’re always able to take advantage of the situation best”. Realistically, the player just before you in the rotation will get the most mana out of this, so if this gets blasted before coming back to you every player but you will have gotten more out of this than you, and this is something you risk pretty much every turn cycle. While I don’t think that’s the play most people will make with this, the risk of it makes me want to pick options I’d actually have more control over.
BPhillipYork: This is a bit dangerous and a bit group hug, but obviously if you’re running it you’re probably able to get a lot more counters out a lot more quickly than your opponents. Generally I shy away from effects like this, especially with +1/+1 counters just not being very good if that’s the focus of your deck. Handing one to an opponent is risking them doing something much more useful with it.
FromTheShire:Â I’m not known for being a group hug guy – I get why some people like it but it is a bad plan that is frequently misunderstood and played poorly in my experience. Even more than most group hug cards you are going to struggle to break symmetry with this, and handing out that much free mana to the table while being the last to take advantage of it is practically begging to get bodied. Hard pass.
Scarlet Spider, Ben Reilly
Saffgor: Plays well with discounts, aggro, and big Gruul smash gameplay, but this is a card that needs Haste for the whole team to feel worthwhile. Notably, the interaction between Web-Slinging and Convoke/mana dorks is very favorable, to the point I’m covering one of the options in a Commander Focus, so be on the lookout for that. Last shoutout for Ben is Bard Class, and boy I might need to cook something up with that.
Loxi:Â Yeah I’m a big fan of this as a way to reuse large creatures with big cast triggers while still getting value out of something being…well a large creature. Even from a raw stats perspective, this can be a hell of a lot of power for a two mana cast, so as long as you can benefit off recasting things to make this basically all upside, this is a real powerhouse.
BPhillipYork: Web slinging is a really weird ability. I guess it sort of implies that it is taking on the Spider-Man mantle and throwing on the outfit. I just think it’s odd there’s not a bunch of like “Peter Parker, Student” cards that cost 1 mana and then you draw and discard, or they tap to draw and discard a card, something like that, that you want to pop back into your hand. Anyway, it’s a fine mechanic, I just don’t really understand the logic of it. It feels like one of the Universe Beyond sets where they don’t really care about it. This is a fine card if you have a solid thing you want to return to your hand for some kind of value, which there’s plenty of decent 1 and 2 drops that will do something then you pop them back and cast them again. Another option is maybe doing something like Sneak Attack out something huge, attack, then web-sling it back to your hand before the sacrifice.
FromTheShire:Â Here we see our first card with web-slinging, which like mayhem is an alternative cost. If you use it you pay the indicated cost – including returning a creature to hand. This means if you don’t have one to bounce you can’t web-sling so keep that in mind, as well as the fact that this also doesn’t break timing restrictions. This is expressly not a Ninjutsu style effect, though we do have at least one instant with the ability. As a mechanic I think it’s fine, though it does require you to be either getting some good effects from the card itself or rebuying some pretty great abilities to be worth the tempo loss. We have seen decks like Esper Pixies that thrive on that type of loop so I’m not counting it out.
Bernhardt:Â Hell yeah, the best Spider-man gets a pretty decent card.
Mary Jane Watson
Saffgor: Spider Typal support stuck in at minimum Selesnya, awesome. This pleases absolutely nobody.
BPhillipYork: Well, Spider deck enabler is fine.
FromTheShire:Â The fact this isn’t mono green is criminal, though I guess that will keep me from ever seeing it in a normal Spider deck so uh flavor win?
Silk, Web Weaver
Saffgor:Â The way the trigger is arranged is unfavorable to what you want to be doing with Web-slinging, so Silk here gets an F from me, in comparison to her peers with the alternate cost.
Loxi:Â I think if you’re already in a go wide token deck, this isn’t too bad for the web-slinging cost as it can provide an alright board buff and reasonably make a lot of token dorks, as well as having the Human typing. Human tokens I think can utilize this reasonably well, even if it’s not breaking any molds with design.
BPhillipYork: This is an okay shell to build a Selesnya go wide and tall deck around.
FromTheShire:Â I don’t know if this even hits ‘fine’ honestly, the web-slinging does nothing for you besides come down a turn early and the Overrun effect isn’t because it doesn’t give out trample.
Mister Negative
Saffgor: Yes this is splashy, but it’s also 7 mana in non-Green, non-Red. This feels like Lord Xander with an actual direction of play, and blinking this will accrue a Peer into the Abyss worth of cards, which is likely the correct direction.
Loxi: Selenia, Dark Angel just got a real serious new toy to play with. That deck already did silly things with stuff like Axis of Mortality, so this will just be another great way to enable kills and draw a downright stupid amount of cards off the top.
BPhillipYork: This is awesome. So funny and swingy you could do huge things with this and some goofy huge life gain and loss.
FromTheShire:Â Feels more like a 99 card than a Commander, though of course you can make it work if you want to with flicker and reanimate effects. The 7 mana worries me less since black has things like Dark Ritual, Cabal Coffers, and Crypt Ghast in it’s arsenal.
The Spot, Living Portal
Saffgor: If this were in Blue, I would have the joys of explaining how clones interact with inherited death triggers but instead this is only okay. It feels like there’s loops to be had but it’s frustratingly designed to prevent them.
BPhillipYork: I don’t know what I’d do with this, I mean it’s complicated and if triggers prevent anything immediately broken. Then it’s just a weird 4/4 for 5 that does an exile until trigger.
Spider-Man 2099
Saffgor: Odd comparison but this is likely worse River Song once you climb the power level, and being only on your End Step is just not enough, given you’re only hitting one target.
Loxi:Â This could be pretty neat as a flashback/”cast spells from your graveyard” commander, but I do agree that only once per turn makes this tricky if you don’t have ways to copy the trigger, and at that point you’re really jumping through some hoops. It’ll require finesse but the damage potential here is definitely there.
BPhillipYork: I like the trigger, it’s fun for some Grixis “cast from places other than your hand” deck. The thing about not casting it early is fine if you’re spending that time building up your cast from exile engine.
FromTheShire:Â As not a big Spider-Man guy, this is at least one of the cards in the set that I immediately get the flavor of which is something. It’s okay I guess? Double strike and vigilance is a solid combo, and obviously you want to be buffing this up which also fits. That means you kind of want a deck full of pump spells or Equipment, plus casting from exile enablers, in order to whack one thing pretty solidly each turn. Feels like you are going to be very prone to drawing the wrong half of your deck games.
Kraven the Hunter
Saffgor: This guy rips. Translating removal to draw and inevitability with Trample too, and you have one of the best, easiest to build Commanders in the entire set. Even makes use of some underplayed edicts, get your Make an Examples while you can.
Loxi:Â For his cost, he’s got a whole lot of juice. Even if you only get a few cards off him, he’s a pretty good draw engine in a Jund shell, and even as a commander he can definitely do a lot of work – he restricts what you reasonably might want to use your removal on, but turning all your removal into cantrips is quite a scary thing when he also provides a reasonable win condition on his own.
BPhillipYork: This card makes more sense than that movie that was so bad it was awesome. Like, he’s a hunter, he gets bigger when big prey dies. That all sort of tracks. It’s 3 for 4/3 that gets bigger and has trample. Sure you’d think it would have hunt or fight or some kind of mechanic like that, but okay. I wouldn’t play it, other than ironically, but sure.
FromTheShire:Â Definitely another flavor win, and bonus points for encouraging people to play more spot removal. You for sure want to be hunting down their biggest threats not relying on them to naturally die, though you’ll happily take it when they do. I have a Toshiro Umezawa deck I could see porting over nicely and being a lot of fun to play and politic with.
Araña, Heart of the Spider
Saffgor:Â What are we doing here? This is just embarrassing compared to something like Nahiri or Neyali in Commander. You guys realize this is in the same Standard as Anim Pakal, who is also seeing no play. No home for this card.
Loxi:Â I almost wish she had web-slinging as a way to get her in super early. She isn’t too shabby honestly, she does a bunch of things to generate little bits of value, so I think if you’re playing something that can use these all pretty well (Naya counters maybe?) I think she’s alright.
BPhillipYork:Â This set seems concerned with modified creatures, which makes sense, given all the Spider-Mans and Womans and Villains are essentially modified via lightning or a spider bite or radiation or something. This is an okay draw trigger, cheaper at 3 mana than others we’ve seen but it’s exile to play rather than draw, which is a decent enough trade off. Works well for those cast from not your hand triggers.
FromTheShire:Â Good for like a Boros go wide Equipment or Counters deck… which isn’t really a thing. At least she doesn’t have to attack herself to trigger her abilities which is something.
Jackal, Genius Geneticist
Saffgor: I want to like Jackal a lot, but 1. Not being Ben Reilly Jackal is lame and 2. Requires a pretty specific curve/hand to work out. The games where this is going to rot at 1/1 will feel terrible, and the upside isn’t so great as to make up for that—he’s Volo for 2 mana cheaper.
Loxi:Â The one tricky part with this is that he can eventually get big enough that it might be awkward to actually get the copies off his trigger, but at that point you’re probably already in a pretty powerful board position. I do quite like it, but I definitely agree that I think he’s going to require a good bit of draw/hand manipulation to make sure you can actually curve out with him properly and not have a high chance to just end up with a hand that you can’t work with.
BPhillipYork: I think this is a totally cool trigger. It’s a little complicated, but copying spells at mana cost = power than pumping is like a sort of Birthing Pod variant, and fits into Simic really well. Generally probably just going to be a value play, though there might be ways to manipulate the tokens and keep casting the same spell over and over, like some sort of Dualcaster Mage loop, because of the counters it would get really complex.
FromTheShire:Â Neat but yeah a lot of the time you are going to draw in a way that makes this very awkward I suspect.
Cosmic Spider-Man
Saffgor: In the trough of 5-color slop this is another addition of rotten feed and gristle. Instead of an interesting option for dedicated Spider typal, like Ishkanah or Shelob, we have a flavorless keyword soup. Morlunn, kill this guy.
Loxi:Â I do like that this card actually exists for people that just want to run all the stuff from the set. I think it’s not really super exciting, but it does at least make it so people can play all the cool Spider characters from the set in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re just slamming them in a random 5c deck. It doesn’t have a ton of synergy, but I don’t think they inherently designed the spider heroes to all have natural synergy, so this is just a way to brute force them into working together. It’s cool that it’s a thing for that purpose.
BPhillipYork: Okay so this is the ultimate Spider lord commander card, which is really kind of boring. Like, okay if you want to run 5 color Spiders here you go.
FromTheShire:Â Exists so people can jam this set into one deck, which is fine since I prefer keeping things set in the universe we actually live in out of my games of Magic. It’s nakedly powerful in the laziest way.
Dock Ock’s Tentacles
Saffgor: Now this intrigues me, especially as a non-Legendary card. For 60-card, Warping out a Nova Hellkite for this is going to hurt, but I’ve yet to see a viable partner in crime. In Commander, discount-heavy options like my beloved Gorex, the Tombshell will be considering this, on top of Nahiri or similar cost-evading options.
Loxi:Â It’s a lot of stats, if you have Commanders that scale really well with getting more stats and need a boost it might be nice to have, although I don’t think I’m really jumping on this for regular equipment decks.
BPhillipYork: It’s kind of neat because it’s cheap and just sits there, you know you’ll cast your Commander at some point, or it’s to super power something you’re cheating out.
FromTheShire:Â Coming down early and auto-equipping later is solid if not exciting.
Interdimensional Web Watch
Saffgor: Prosper…prospers, with this. If you do end up playing both cards, this is arguably the single-best 4 mana rock printed, and while it takes a specific deck I have faith this can find a home beyond the obvious.
Loxi:Â Yeah this exists for exactly one archetype and it’s cast from exile dedicated decks. My recent suggestion would be Tannuk, Steadfast Second as a way to discount all of the cards you warp, and red isn’t exactly flooded with ramp options for this to compete with anyway.
BPhillipYork: I like this a lot as an enabler for all those from exile or not from hand triggers. Really just a mana rock, but also built in exile to play, and you could do things like flicker it and such.
Iron Spider, Stark Upgrade
Saffgor: Honestly this is really neat! Steel Overseer is a known card for a reason, and between Vigilance and the added mechanism to recoup value, I could see this overtaking Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter for its role in Commander.
Loxi:Â This can generate a ton of stats really quickly – since it also hits itself, it realistically can make 3/3 of stats from tapping once if you have two other targets, which is quite a lot for something you can casually drop for 3 mana. The draw effect (for a pretty good cost!) is just frosting here, so honestly I think this is a pretty great piece for a lot of decks.
BPhillipYork: Potentially this is really good. Tapping to dump out a +1/+1 counter on each artifact creature or Vehicle you control could be a lot of counters, and then being able to pay 2 to remove 2 counters to draw a card is also potentially really a lot. It’d have to basically be in a deck that’s about +1/+1 counters, or artifact creatures, like modular, but there’s also ways to make those multiply really quickly.
FromTheShire:Â Hey how’d this Unwinding Clock get in here? Neat to see a viable deck that cares about artifact creatures, and this is capable of popping off big.
Peter Parker’s Camera
Saffgor: Nothing was stopping them from simply calling this ‘Reporter’s Camera’ or similar, but I digress. This is flat-out good, and if you have a single trigger you’re relying on, the going rate is already ~3 for a single repetition via Spell, with this breaking parity by its second use.
Loxi:Â If all you care about is copying triggered abilities, I’d probably still often favor Strionic Resonator, but if activated effects are on the menu this is really good. The options are pretty endless but things like The Jolly Balloon Man can get really spicy when you can just double tap your ability for huge value.
BPhillipYork: These kinds of effects are really popular in durdle commander, and I’m sure it will see a lot of play there. It’s good if you have a really strong trigger you want to copy, and of course you could just do something like copy Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice Proliferate ability, thus ensuring an endless supply of counters. For just general value copying it seems underwhelming by the time you cast it, and have the 2 mana ready to copy the effect.
FromTheShire:Â This stupid thing is probably going to be $100 in a few years because people love this effect and it’s going to be forever to get reprinted, if ever, with this extremely specific name that can’t go in normal sets.
Rocket-Powered Goblin Glider
Saffgor: The fact this isn’t a combat trick hurts a bit, and it’s one of those occasions where Mayhem is significantly worse than if this had been Madness.
BPhillipYork: This seems decent for discard decks and over costed otherwise, a solid enough way to get an evasion ability onto a Commander, basically.
FromTheShire:Â I mean it’s going to be nasty when you discard this to Ultimate Green Goblin and punch someone for 7 in the air. The haste is a great addition as well.
Oscorp Industries
Saffgor: This is insane, and it pains my soul to see it locked behind at-minimum Grixis colors. Could have very easily added Colorless and called it a day, but instead this cool design will make Wizards less money from a lowered ubiquity. Bit of a shot to the foot.
Loxi:Â Yeah this is sick, if anything I think the colors might have been a way to taper the balance of this a bit – I don’t think it would have been too strong since it still enters tapped, but it makes this a bit more of a fun niche card. It is a shame we likely won’t see it too often though since so many of the decks that would love this are in Rakdos colors.
BPhillipYork: Neat, value from discard land isn’t particularly new but it’s nice to have the option.
FromTheShire:Â If a land comes with multiple downsides, you know it’s strong as hell.
Urban Retreat
Saffgor: If the last example had me disappointed, this one has me weeping. A bounce land that turns bodies into ramp, the perfect option for Monowhite! What’s that? It’s restricted to at-minimum Bant? Call me a Life Foundation symbiote because I’m in Agony.
Loxi: Really cool way to ramp and/or enable landfall triggers. It also is a fun way to re-do a cast trigger with a pretty low opportunity cost. Not that he really needed more support, but this is fantastic for Chulane, Teller of Tales as a way to get an extra creature cast.
BPhillipYork: Great if there is a creature you want to get back to your hand for additional ETB triggers or maybe a hatebear you want to remove so you can do stuff on your turn, stuff like that. It’s also a decent enough ramp, you can turn 2 this to get lands out quickly by returning a turn 1 mana dork. It sort of interrupts your tempo but it’ll get you to an expensive Commander faster (5+, generally)
FromTheShire:Â Solid ramp for decks that can fit it.
Daily Bugle Building
Saffgor: Oh but this one gets to be Colorless. I see how it is. It’s…fine, and for Commanders that need to get in I could see it take a slot, but the potential was so great.
Loxi:Â I’m such a huge believer in so many cards (especially Commanders) benefitting so much from evasion that I think this is a fantastic utility land, comparable to Rogue’s Passage with the ability to fix and a slightly lower overhead, but without the raw power of making something fully unblockable.
BPhillipYork: That’s pretty strong. Indiscriminately handing out evasion abilities to commanders is super useful. You just have to really carefully judge how many colorless mana you can afford to have in a deck.
FromTheShire:Â Menace is great to hand out but I only care that this is here to pair with the best card in the set which we’ll see in our next article. I think you can probably guess.
Multiversal Passage
Saffgor: This not being fetchable is a real downside, and I feel it compared unfavorably to Starting Town. Neat for Standard mana though.
Loxi:Â I really hope this card is cheap – I think this is pretty perfect for budget mana fixing in 5c decks and I don’t think it’s high enough on raw power to end up being super pricey. I don’t always like bringing up card prices when it comes to initial reviews, but I can see this being a great budget card if it retains a lower price point.
BPhillipYork: This is a fairly elegant design for a balanced card. Mana fixing, allows to enter untapped, or not if not necessary. I think it’s really just a nice card, but not anything to get super excited about.
FromTheShire:Â Always like to have better mana fixing.
Miles Morales / Ultimate Spider-Man
Saffgor: Miles becoming colorless is such a flavor win, it gives me the sense this was a card someone behind the curtain actually wanted to make. Ending up as Spider/Legendary Typal in Naya is whatever, I’m sure this is going to hit its mark in terms of popularity.
BPhillipYork: Well this is a decently solid Naya counters Commander. The fact it’s Spiders and legendary creatures means you could also use this to enable certain things, Shalai and Hallar for example would go nuts with this and a bunch of Spiders. It’ll also lets you ramp up him with extra mana, which can be nice and would be a pretty rapidly escalating threat.
FromTheShire:Â Doubling things gets out of hand, news at 11. It’s nice that you can just wait and cast the transformed side of these rather than having to protect their fragile alter ego bodies.
Gwen Stacy / Ghost-Spider
Saffgor: This synergizes extremely well with the Proliferate stuff from Jeskai’s precon in Edge of Eternities, given that second ability on Ghost-Spider doesn’t specify +1/+1 counters. I’ve seen praise for this, as was so with Miles, and I feel it hits the same highs.
BPhillipYork: This could easily lead to you dumping out your whole deck if you’ve got a way to double counters, Doubling Season isn’t in these colors but there are other ways. So there’s a lot of ways to build around this, even just a generic Jeskai deck with a lot of exile to play instead of draw to generate value.
FromTheShire:Â We’re continually getting more support for casting from exile, and while you miss out on a few things by not having access to black, you’ll do just fine. Trust me.
Eddie Brock / Venom, Lethal Protector
Saffgor: This is the first MDFC from the set where the front half is what actually interests me. Eddie Brock enables some gnarly value, and as small-ball aristocrats along the lines of Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker I could see it working out. Venom meanwhile is the exact opposite, and it’s just a hair frustrating to see the two sides be in such a conflict of interest.
BPhillipYork: The front side ability doesn’t seem particularly impactful for Commander, but it will probably net you something. This seems great with things like Sneak Attack or other ways to cheat out huge creatures, leading to a kind of revolving door of huge creatures slamming out, getting sacrificed, big draws and dumping out other big creatures, then reanimating your sacrificed creatures, which seems fun. Doesn’t really have anything to do with Venom, per se, but oh well.
FromTheShire:Â Yeah I am also in on the Venom plan not the Eddie one, churning through your deck and slamming big idiots and cackling maniacally. And you have to do it fairly, no tutor involved, so really what’s the worst that could happen?
Norman Osborn / Green Goblin
Saffgor: Oh you mean Fleem? Goben’s Creation, that Fleem? Jokes about the instant popularity of this card’s Universes Within version aside, gobby approaches cEDH material with its back half, especially given he doesn’t gate you from freecasting 2 mana Artifacts. Letting this guy stick is going to be a bad time.
BPhillipYork: This enables a whole deck around discarding and replaying, essentially giving madness to everything in your deck, though, obviously it’s mayhem. You could be dumping cards out various ways for mana or other value, and then replaying them. With eggs this could get really nuts, dumping out 2 or less cost artifacts endlessly. Which screams combo deck, and there’s any number of ways to win off of that.
FromTheShire:Â Remember earlier how I was like oh yeah clearly this is what they want you to have flipped to get max value off of your Ultimate Green Goblin? Yeah nobody is doing that, because this dude right here is going to be too busy absolutely waxing people. 2 mana is a huge discount, before anything else is even factored in, and this can turn you mana neutral in no time flat for a big storm/combo turn.
As an aside re: Fleem, the fact that this set isn’t licensed for Arena play so has to have a whole parallel online only set is extremely dumb and aggravating and confusing for newer players.
Peter Parker / Amazing Spider-Man
Saffgor: Something something Web-Slinging plus Convoke/dorks, but this specifically calls out the fact that no, Eldrazi cannot swing through the streets of Manhattan. That removes many of the big names you’d want to cheat out, so frankly I’ll pass, unless you intend to hard tutor for Painter’s Servant.
BPhillipYork: It’s fine for sort of cheating out stuff, but locking out Eldrazi is one of the biggest things you really want to get out cheap. Draco isn’t actually very good.
FromTheShire:Â There’s still plenty of busted stuff you can do in Bant with this big of a discount. Maybe start with some Praetors and work your way backwards.
Next Time: The Set’s Monocolor Cards
That wraps up our look at the multicolored and colorless cards of Marvel’s Spider-Man. Join us next time as we begin reviewing the monocolor cards, picking out our favorites, and talking about the future build-arounds.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website, and more.
