Images credited to Marvel Comics and Wizards of the Coast
Get Me Pictures…
Spider-Man was a game changer for cape comics. He was the first ever teenage superhero to swing onto the page solo – all the rest had started out as sidekicks. He’s had hundreds of episodes of television, eight solo movies, and a lot of video games. The guy’s popular and beloved… in our world. The Parker Luck has never been good when it comes to his own existence, because the only people who hate Peter Parker more than his villains gallery are the Marvel editors.
I’m incredibly excited about the upcoming Magic: The Gathering Spider-Man set and have been eagerly wondering what we could be getting. To set the stage, here’s a quick rundown of what we know:
- Standard-legal set
- Scene Box with 6 cards
- 26 cards with code SPE (not Standard-legal, Collector Booster/Scene Box exclusive)
- 40 cards with code MAR (not Standard-legal, these do appear in Play Boosters)
- 5 Welcome Decks which feature Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Gwen Stacey, Spider-Man 2099, and Venom
Let’s Speculate, True Believers!
Amazing Spider-Folk
We’ve already gotten it confirmed that we’re getting some number of cards depicting not just original Peter Parker, but also Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, and Miguel O’ Hara. The Spider-Verse has been a big, amazing part of Spidey lore for years, though it wasn’t conceptualized as such until 2014. (Spider-Ham originally debuted in 1983!) That 2014 event changed a lot about the webhead, and his media has followed suit. One show and three movies have dipped into the concept, which is bonkers to think about.
A central point in the original Spider-Verse event was that all the Spiders were connected to a Spider-Totem. This makes being a Spider-Hero a sort of destiny that manifest somehow. This more mystical side of Spider-Man’s stories contrast heavily with the science-fiction parts of it, and not everyone loves that aspect. Another major part of the story was Morlun and the Inheritors, a group that “feed” on totems like Spider-Man. (He killed my personal favorite alternate Spider-Man of Marvel 1602!) I… don’t predict that they’ll have a heavy presence, for reasons I’ll talk about later.
I don’t think we’ll be getting enough Spider-Folk to run out a full “Spider Hero” theme with no problems (that would take up an impossibly high number of cards from a standard set), but we’ll get a good start. (I predict 10 within the main set.) I also predict most Spider-Folk to be within Bant colors (white, blue, and green), and a Bant Spider-Man at least. (Our first Spider-Man card being white-blue leans towards this prediction. Very excited.)
Quick rundown of potential Spider-Folk color identities:
- Peter Parker: green-white-blue
- Miles Morales: red-green or green-white
- Gwen Stacy: red-white or green-white
- Miguel O’Hara: blue-white or white-black
- Peter Porker: blue-green
The Hero creature type debuts in this set, and I imagine we’ll get some Hero and Spider rewards, though most of the “team-up” stuff is more likely to be held off for future Marvel sets.
Spider-Man Rogues Gallery
Great heroes need great villains, and no one’s got villains quite like Spidey.
Before the announcement that the set would have no Commander decks, I was banking on a Sultai Sinister Six deck. Spider-Man’s villains are mostly a mix of scientists or science experiments gone wrong. They rely on genetic engineering and advanced mechanics. We’ve already seen three of them in the Scene Box preview, although those cards won’t be in the main set.
I think most of the villains are going to fall under Sultai. Rhino and Sandman could easily be mono-green. Mysterio and Chameleon would fit in mono-blue. Plenty of the villains could be done in mono-black. There are a handful outside of this, like Shocker (who would want red to best represent his powers) and Kingpin (who would want white to better represent his methodologies).
I’m banking on some kind of mechanic that simulates the idea of forming the Sinister Six. At least one card will ask you to control six Villains at once! (I personally think this could be a rare opportunity to do a four-color legend in non-white as a Villains-Matter legend for this Sinister Six concept, but we’ll see?)
Venom has already shown up in green-black, but Carnage is absolutely a red-black maniac who would give the Rakdos a good show. Maybe they’ll let them be entirely separate and mechanically distinct, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Jund Symbiote Commander (maybe with an uncommon symbiote card with the “you can have any number” ability?). Calling that shot now!
Spider-Man Setting Representation
Before Spider-Verse left the webhead constantly teaming up with alternate reality versions of himself, Spider-Man spent a lot of hours slinging alongside tons of other heroes in the Marvel Universe. Any given arc of Spider-Man is bound to have Iron Man, Daredevil, Johnny Storm, or Wolverine running around somewhere and… hang on.
We have 40 cards with the “MAR” set code attached to the set, likely as a “Special Guests” Bonus Sheet. This is a Spider-Man set and the main set cards should be centered on the webhead, but the “Marvel Bonus Sheet” could let us get a few extra cards from the surrounding universe. Perhaps even cards like…
Yep. Maybe not all at once, but I do predict that these Secret Lair exclusives will get non-borderless prints in the Marvel Bonus Sheets.
Now, what effect will there be in draft? I think there will be some amount of “Hero-Matters” cards (maybe a focus on hero pairs to better represent how the team-up stories go) to represent this phenomenon. I know I’d be excited to send Miles Morales and Iron Man into the red zone with some kind of cool pair-up bonus.
The Hero-Matters will also work well with the amount of Spider-Folk running around!
On a tighter focus than the surrounding Marvel Universe, the streets of New York have been an important part of Spider-Man’s history and lore. Magic: The Gathering has always had a great way of showing the world through its basic land slot, and this one is going to be challenging in a lot of different ways.
This is going to be the first premier set with a real-world setting. It’s New York; we’ve got Central Park and the Empire State Building, and there’ll probably be some kind of shout-out to those in the basic lands (betting Central Park is on a Forest). Ravnica had this issue to an extent, where the basic lands all resembled one another by virtue of being pictures of buildings in different lighting.
I think this is a quirk of Magic’s basic lands that has been largely accepted and moved on from, but I do wonder if the setting will prompt some pushback on these.
Locations I’m especially interested to see represented:
- The Bell-Tower used to get the symbiote off of Peter
- The George Washington Bridge
- Hell’s Kitchen
- Daily Bugle
- Chrysler Building
No matter what, though, I’m excited for it!
Multiple Cards of the Same Character
I don’t mean the different dimension stuff, clones, time travel, or any of that. For the record, I’m not even counting the different cards for Spider-Man necessitated by different products like the Scene Box and Welcome Decks.
Spider-Man has existed as a character for over 60 years now, and a lot of the characters have been with him that time. Venom’s pushing close to 40 and has not only been Spider-Man’s archenemy, but anti-heroic ally and even outright hero (when the symbiote was bonded to Flash Thompson, another one of the Spidey characters who has had major changes through the years).
Lord of the Rings pulled this tech off to solid effect, with the most important characters getting 4-6 different cards. This represented the characters at different moments and made sure that fans of the character were more likely to have at least one version of them to actually play and enjoy.
Wizards of the Coast has mentioned a time or two that they’re aware of the “overabundance of legendary creatures” and trying to pull back on that where they can, but Mark Rosewater has also stated that Universes Beyond is a spot where legendary creatures are not only expected but required, and this is one of those reasons. Players opening up Spider-Man boosters don’t want to see a bunch of random mooks, henchmen, and androids – they want to crack open cool characters they recognize from their favorite comic, show, or movie.
And let’s be real, they’re going to want to reference every Spider-Man title; so take your bets on the color identities and abilities for:
- Amazing Spider-Man
- Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
- Spectacular Spider-Man
- Avenging Spider-Man
- Superior Spider-Man
- Ultimate Spider-Man
- Symbiote Spider-Man
I don’t know if we’ll hit the 85 mark from Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, but I wouldn’t be surprised (especially with that mysterious Marvel Bonus sheet).
For the record, aside from the Scene Box, I think that other mysterious set code (SPE) will be 20 cool cards from Magic given a Spider-Man themed re-skin and not unique designs.
I could be completely offbase and have egg on my face when it turns out the Marvel Bonus Sheet and the mysterious SPE are reversed somehow, but based on the distribution methods, this is what I’m banking on for now.
…Pictures of Spider-Man!
I could rant about all the cool things I hope and expect to see (final shout-out: at least ten Sagas referencing famous Spider-Man storylines), but this hits my high notes! I’m incredibly excited for the set, and could have talked a lot more about it. But for now, I’ll be back to my regular hang-out over on Commander’s Herald. Check it out, and get ready for the Wall Crawler this September!
Want more set predictions? Check out our recent guesses at what we’ll see in the Final Fantasy set.
