Did you see our reveal of Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy crossover last week and think to yourself, “video games are all well and good, but where are the superheroes?” Well then do I have great news for you: Today we’ve got a first look at six new cards from Magic’s upcoming Spider-Man set, as well as all the products and packaging that will accompany it. You can preorder the cards at Amazon.
Click through the image gallery below to see all the Spider-Man cards from its Commander-focused Scene Box, booster packs, Welcome Decks, and more, and read on to hear about the set from Wizards of the Coast.
Arriving September 26, Marvel’s Spider-Man will be the second fully draftable, Standard-legal set in Magic’s Universes Beyond line of products after Final Fantasy, and the third overall after 2023's Modern-legal Lord of the Rings set. It won’t have any preconstructed Commander decks like you might expect, but the cards in the Scene Box shown above won’t be Standard-legal, and are instead designed with Commander in mind.
Preorder Marvel's Spider-Man x Magic: The Gathering Cards
While a Secret Lair with Wolverine, Captain America, and more was the first step Magic took into the Marvel universe last year, Spider-Man will also be the first full set inspired by the comics so far. Wizards of the Coast Executive Producer Max McCall says that’s because they just wouldn’t have had room for all of the characters and moments they wanted to include from Spider-Man if they had made a smaller product instead.
"Spider-Man needs a full set to do justice to the character..."“Spider-Man needs a full set to do justice to the character, and incorporate the many villains he’s come across over the years,” McCall explains. “Picking characters from the Spider-Man canon as part of a wider set would leave far too many characters on the cutting room floor. We could probably have found room for Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales in a non-Spider-Man specific set, but there wouldn’t have been room for Aunt May.”
McCall says that designing for a Universes Beyond set “flips the worldbuilding on its head,” in that a typical Magic set needs its cards to lay the groundwork of its location and setting while also being fun to play with in order to get players on board, whereas most people already have some familiarity with a character like Spider-Man. “When we make a card that speaks to great power bearing great responsibility, there’s room to add mechanical complexity because folks understand the story the card is telling. We don’t have to make Universes Beyond cards that are ‘simple’ - we just have to pick moments that are recognizable, and they’ll be easy for fans to understand.”
As for how exactly they translate those moments and the world around them into a Magic set, Head Designer Mark Rosewater tells me Magic’s color pie “is robust enough that we have the ability to show heroism and villainy in all five colors.” As an example, Rosewater says Spider-Man would be white, blue, and green (although the specific version in the Scene Box above is only those first two).
“Spider-Man feeling obligated to use his power to help people is core to him being part of the white color pie. Spider-Man is also the product of science, being bitten by a radioactive spider. This, and Peter’s aptitude for science and invention (like his web-slingers) is very blue. Finally, Spider-Man's powers are based on an animal, and the comics have shown that there is a certain destiny to his connection to both spiders and the Spider-Man universe, which is all core green.”
"We're not limiting ourselves to any one [comic] run or series."In addition to the Scene Box, the set will have the usual Play Boosters, Collector Boosters, Bundles, and Prerelease Packs, all of which can also be seen in the gallery above with more details. And while there won’t be any preconstructed Commander decks, this will mark the return of Welcome Decks – those are themed introductory decks typically given out by game stores for free so that new players can have a low-pressure way to learn the game.
In addition to this year’s Final Fantasy set, Wizards of the Coast also recently announced a set themed around Avatar: The Last Airbender. There will also be two more in-universe sets before that in Tarkir: Dragontsorm and the space-themed Edge of Eternities.
Read on for the full, unedited interview with Wizards of the Coast’s Max McCall and Mark Rosewater:
IGN: Wizards of the Coast obviously has big long-term plans for Magic: The Gathering’s collaboration with Marvel, but why did you start with Spider-Man when it comes to the first full set in that universe?
Max McCall, Executive Producer: Spider-Man needs a full set to do justice to the character, and incorporate the many villains he’s come across over the years. Picking characters from the Spider-Man canon as part of a wider set would leave far too many characters on the cutting room floor. We could probably have found room for Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales in a non-Spider-Man specific set, but there wouldn’t have been room for Aunt May. We could include Green Goblin, but not the full Sinister Six. Spider-Man has so many iconic moments and characters that we wanted to make sure we got as many as possible onto the cards, and a Spider-Man set was the best way to do that.
You’ve spoken previously about how you see Universes Beyond as a great way to introduce new players to Magic, and Spider-Man seems primed to be an especially good example of that. With that new player experience in mind, did you approach this set differently than you would a Universes Within set in any ways?
MM: Designing Universes Beyond sets is an interesting challenge because it flips the worldbuilding on its head. Cards designed for a new world like Bloomburrow have to introduce folks to the world in addition to being fun game pieces. Cards designed for Spider-Man don’t have to introduce people to Spider-Man – everyone's familiar with Spider-Man at some level – but they do have to pay off folks’ conception of the characters and the big canon moments.
That is a huge opportunity when designing for an acquisition audience – new players are going to recognize the story moments we put on cards. So, when we make a card that speaks to great power bearing great responsibility, there’s room to add mechanical complexity because folks understand the story the card is telling. We don’t have to make Universes Beyond cards that are ‘simple’ - we just have to pick moments that are recognizable, and they’ll be easy for fans to understand.
Can you talk a bit about how you fit Spider-Man’s characters or themes into Magic’s color pie?
Mark Rosewater, Head Designer: In terms of Magic’s color pie, Spider-Man is white, blue and green. Spider-Man feeling obligated to use his power to help people is core to him being part of the white color pie. Spider-Man is also the product of science, being bitten by a radioactive spider. This, and Peter’s aptitude for science and invention (like his web-slingers) is very blue. Finally, Spider-Man's powers are based on an animal, and the comics have shown that there is a certain destiny to his connection to both spiders and the Spider-Man universe, which is all core green.
Are there any challenges to keeping those colors both interesting and accurate in a Super Hero universe?
MR: The color pie is robust enough that we have the ability to show heroism and villainy in all five colors. Every color has positive and negative qualities allowing us to have a lot of nuances to how we use them.
I imagine “spider typal” Commander decks are about to get some unexpected new toys across this set - do you take any special considerations into account when a common Magic creature type holds a very different meaning in the context of a Universes Beyond setting?
MM: Specifics matter a lot with issues like this. Often, we’re playing in the same trope space as our Universes Beyond partners – things like ‘assassins’ are rarely an issue. Spider-Man will of course contain many Spiders, but a lot of the deckbuilding hooks for those characters will key more into the Hero creature type.
The Final Fantasy set is going to stretch across many different games and stories, but should we expect this set to have a specific Spider-Man story, or are you treating it as a showcase of popular characters, events, and locations from the comics?
MM: Spider-Man features characters and stories from across its history – we're not limiting ourselves to any one run or series.
Marvel comics are beloved by a huge audience, but there’s no denying that the MCU has dominated the public perception of these characters in recent years. Was it tricky to design around the comic book versions with that in mind, or did you enjoy getting back to some of their roots instead?
MR: The Marvel expansions are based on the comics, but we’re always aware of the movies’ impact, so we find overlap when we can. Luckily, the vast majority of the movie material was based on the comics.
With the Spider-Man scene box, why did you go the route of including four legendary creatures this time rather than building a box around a single character as a little Commander starter pack of sorts like the previous ones were?
MM: Scene boxes tell visual stories. Spider-Man's storytelling is very character-driven and has a great rogue’s gallery, so we wanted to include as many characters as possible. You’re generally not going to have Spider-Man and villains in the same Commander deck, so once we committed to lots of characters, we knew that meant you wouldn’t be putting them all in the same deck, and so that made for a great opportunity to make each villain more distinct and emphasize their different goals and methods in the card designs.
Spider-Man is going to be included, of course, but how did you land on the other three characters for this debut?
MM: Doc Ock, Venom, and Green Goblin are of course way up there when you’re making a list of iconic Spider-Man villains, but the nature of those characters makes it easier to draw a scene where they all get equal visual weight. Green Goblin on his glider doesn’t get in the way of Doc Ock’s tentacles, and Venom can be lurking anywhere for a chance to strike – they all have their own space in the scene to shine.
Is it freeing to design cards for a product like this since they don’t have to fit into the context of a larger set or preconstructed deck?
MM: Yes – the goal is exciting, appealing cards, preferably light enough on text that the art can really shine throughout the scene. Not having mechanical constraints makes this much easier – they don’t have to pay off the rest of the set’s themes or mechanics, and that gives them room to be made charming and delightful of their own accord.
Tom Marks is IGN's Executive Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.
Connexion
