Spider-Man is swinging into Magic: The Gathering — and he’s bringing a whole bunch of supervillains with him. MTG publisher Wizards of the Coast gave fans a deep dive into the upcoming Universes Beyond crossover set (which launches on Sept. 26) during a special showcase on Aug. 29 during PAX West. There’s a ton of cards to check out, but as head designer Mark Rosewater told a group of journalists at a special press preview event attended by Polygon, this is just the beginning of an even bigger team-up.
“We luckily get to do a whole bunch of Marvel,” Rosewater said, “but we’ll start with Spider-Man.”
There’s a lot to see, starting with all the main set Spider-Man cards.
Now that you’ve seen a bunch of the cards, let’s talk about this set’s core mechanics.
Green-White is all the heroes of the Spider-Verse, including characters like Pavitr Prabhakar (aka Spider-Man India). This color-pairing also introduces a new and very flavorful mechanic called Web-Slinging that lets you play a creature for cheaper than its normal mana cost if you return another tapped creature to your hand.
Black-Red features the set’s other new mechanic, Mayhem, which lets you play cards for cheap from your graveyard if you discarded them on the same turn. The flavor of this color-pairing is all about Spider-Man’s most iconic villain: the Green Goblin.
White-Blue is all about “modified” creatures, which means lots of equipment, aura enchantments, and +1/+1 counters — plus some creatures designed to take advantage of them.
Red-Green is all about playing big, stompy creatures and other expensive spells, with extra payoffs for casting anything with a mana cost of four or higher.
Blue-Black, finally, is all about villains and the return of the Connive mechanic, which allows players to both draw cards and strengthen their creatures. “Conniving represents the plotting nature of villains… showing off the sneaky things villains might be doing,” said principal game designer Jadine Klomparens. To that end, the new set also introduces a “villain” creature type along with cards that synergize well with other villains. That’s right, villain tribal just became a thing in Magic.
Moving on, let’s take a look at some of the fun variant art you can find in a Spider-Man booster pack, which ranges from full-art versions to special designs meant to replicate the style of a comic book. Here’s a look:
In a similar vein, Wizards also revealed a creature card called Spectacular Spider-Man that comes in seven different variants inspired by different moments in the character’s comic book history — from the “black suit” in Secret Wars (1984) that was later revealed to be a symbiote, to the time Peter Parker wore a brown paper bag over his head.
And last, but definitely not least, we got a look at some of the Bonus Sheet cards coming to Magic’s Spider-Man set. These are reprints of popular, pre-existing cards featuring art pulled directly from the pages of iconic Spider-Man comics. That includes Jack Kirby’s drawing of Spidey on the cover of the character’s very first comic book appearance for the card “Heroic Intervention,” along with at least one clever pun.
“Making a ‘Shock’ with shocker was one of the things we had to do,” Rosewater said.
That’s all we’ve got for now, but there’s plenty more. Spider-Man might have fewer cards than your average MTG set, but there’s still lots we haven’t seen yet. Stay tuned!
All images provided by Wizards of the Coast.
