Magic the Gathering: Marvel's Spider-Man Review – Card Slinger
As a very casual Magic fan and player, it’s always interesting to see the reception faced by Wizards of the Coast and the MtG designers for any Universes Beyond sets, especially in light of recent announcements like The Office getting its own Secret Lair drop. Across 30 years, the proliferation of cross-synergistic media practices fueled by generational nostalgia (evidenced by trans-media texts like Ready Player One and GaaS like Fortnite) means this sort of ‘cross-contamination’ as some see it of Magic itself, speaks to both its enormous popularity and ever-expanding audience. Realistically, it kind of boils down to one thing – Magic as a whole isn’t for one specific kind of fan anymore, and despite what FOMO and the potential of a speculative market might have you believe, you don’t need to buy, own or play it all, especially if it isn’t doing something that appeals to you. Spider-Man, the latest Universes beyond drop, is a release for Marvel and Spider-Man fans featuring scintillating art, familiar foes and thematic cards that should get a chuckle out of anybody who has seen a Spider-Man film, whether it be Tobey Macguire or Tom Holland swinging around in spandex.
Foregoing Commander Decks and Starter Kits to instead focus on the standard Bundle release (one of which Player2 received from Wizards) alongside Play/Collector Boosters and a Gift Bundle, this is a pretty tight release that is kitchen-table catnip for Webheads. The Bundle we received contained 9 Play Boosters, a themed d20 spindown dice, one alt-art Radioactive Spider foil card and 30 land cards, featuring some Full-Art Spiderweb lands unique to this wave. Personally, I find the Spiderweb Spider-Lands to be pretty middling and much prefer the gorgeous art on the regular land cards for this set that show off the settings of Brooklyn and Manhattan much more evocatively.
Mechanically, there’s nothing major going on that will shake things up for MtG as a whole but there are a few fun additions like the ‘Mayhem’ and ‘Connive’ key words for Villain characters. ‘Web-slinging’, a new mechanic which reduces the cost of playing a spell (provided you return a tapped controlled creature) is perhaps the most exciting for its combo potential for certain decks. For many cards, artwork and considered naming drive the Spider-Man theme home with Bagel and Schmear, Rent is Due and Hot Dog Cart reminding us that at least for Peter Parker, heroism doesn’t pay enough to afford a decent place or meal.
One of the best things about Spider-Man is his extensive rogue’s gallery, many of whom are on display across the set like Norman Osborn flipping over to become Green Goblin, or Mysterio, Master of Illusion creating Illusion creature tokens. It’s clever and fun, reminding me of Marvel Champions in the way some good design work can make gameplay itself feel thematic. This dedication to theme however means that for Standard play, Spider-Man is likely to fall flat given the tonal whiplash that will come from such a cacophony of worlds and characters forced together for the sake of meta. It’s this aspect that I suspect is at the heart of some MtG players complaints about UB really, that there comes with it a lack of thematic cohesion and a large amount of dissonance. Limited format however? What a treat for fans of the source material playing around with some of the possibilities and seeing what legendary match-ups they can craft from across the Spider-verse. It seems quite plain that this is likely the intent of this set rather than something that would feed heavily into Commander or Standard for any length of time, especially as I have no real idea what sort of licensing deals Wizards is signing and for how long they expect these UB waves to hang around the meta.
With great popularity, comes great responsibility to shareholders – Magic after all needs to make money for Wizards, not just scalpers and speculators – so I understand the ongoing push to expand what the game can be and who it can be for. Spider-Man is a great example of what I think a UB set should be, pushing the world and theme of the IP within the bounds of MtG and aimed squarely at the intersection of the fanbases. Perhaps there’s the odd card that will be drooled over as a Commander deck addition or moneymaker (Soul Stone anyone?) but it feels safe to advise anyone uninterested in Spider-Man as a character to give this set a miss and either keep playing Edge of Eternities or start gearing up for my most anticipated set this year, Avatar: The Last Airbender.
