Spider-Man Final Previews
- Mike Sigrist
- Sep 18
- 6 min read
We officially have the full preview of the highly anticipated Spider-Man set. While the set is on the smaller side, let's see if it will leave a big impact in Constructed, after they finally rid the world of the scourge of Vivi and its consistent dominance in Standard.
Let's take a peek at some more interesting cards.
Spider-Man 2099 looks fairly solid. While you can't play this two-drop on turn two or three, it works well with the new Mayhem mechanic, allowing it to deal damage the turn it is put into play, and it attacks for four damage on subsequent turns. Clearly designed with Mayhem in mind, there are other ways to utilize its conditional triggers, such as plot and numerous red cards that play things from exile, including Gwen Stacy. Most notably, it seems like it would pair really well with Expressive Iteration in any format where it's still legal.
The spell's cost efficiency makes it interesting, but it's not a card I'd expect to see tons of play due to its prohibitive trigger.
It's an interesting card that isn't worth building around, but it's worth considering if your deck can consistently use its conditional trigger.
Jackal, Genius Geneticist is one of the set's most interesting cards. It's a two-mana 1/1 that can leave a devastating effect on the battlefield almost immediately.
Ideally, we can play a mana dork on turn one, follow up with Jackal on turn two, and possibly an additional mana dork, creating a copy allowing us to play a two-drop on the following turn and a three-drop on top of that. In the meantime, we're copying all of it and have a massive battlefield presence.
Jackal asks you to play a low curve of creatures and a lot of them for redundancy, but the payoff is massive.
Inherently, Jackal and any deck fully utilizing it will be weak to sweepers. Hopefully, you can close the game out quickly before that occurs. Since we're playing blue, we can play some cheaper soft counters to protect the battlefield presence. Keep in mind that this is at odds with what a Jackal deck wants you to do, so it will be a delicate situation. Jackal will often want you to build a deck similar to Collected Company, which is tons of low-curve creatures that leave a lasting effect. Maybe we'll see these two cards in action together in eternal formats.
Jackal is the kind of card I hate to play with, but also a card I'll be terrified of facing down. It's an extremely cool card that has the potential to see play in a variety of formats because of its powerful effect and low-mana cost.
Symbiote Spider-Man is disappointing because it's my personal favorite Spider-Man version. The card looks great artistically, but it lacks an evasive ability that a radioactive Spider-Man abducted by an alien symbiote would possess. Spider-Man can fly above the buildings, so at least give it a jump ability, and I can connect to trigger the ability.
Find New Host is an interesting flavor win, but ultimately, Symbiote Spider-Man will have a difficult time connecting because of its low power for a three-drop.
I'd love if this card saw play, but with no deathtouch or flying, it will likely sit in play and not connect. If I were to play with this card, it would be with the play style of a deck like Dimir Midrange already seen in Standard. It has a lot of creature interaction to clear the way and small evasive fliers that it can host to start drawing more cards.
It's possible we see Symbiote Spider-Man in this deck style, but there's a high barrier of entry for three-mana creatures, and I'm not sure Symbiote Spider-Man makes the cut.
Hydro-Man, Fluid Felon is a new and unique design that nails the character's flavor while being mechanically sound.
I don't know Hydro-Man's character well, but I've seen enough to know it's a villain that draws power from water and manipulates water to cause terror among everyday citizens.
If you play this card with a bunch of cantrips, you can attack for chunks of damage. When your turn ends, Hydro-Man will disappear into the water and become the land itself. It will protect itself from sorcery-speed removal while giving you more mana on the opponent's turn, or in niche cases, your end step.
This card is difficult to evaluate because it's a potentially potent creature and somewhat of a Rampant Growth, as it lets you cast instant-speed four-drops on turn three and makes it easier to hold up counter-magic for the game's duration.
The design is amazing. I'm not sure it's good enough to see a lot of play, but it has a good amount of potential in a well-built deck.
I'm excited to see what happens with this one.
Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior is a hate bear that I think has some longevity to her because of her hybrid-mana cost and ability to play across all formats. Spider-Woman could even see vintage play as a card that can be used to discard to Force of Will while having a profound impact on the early turns against Moxes and Black Lotus.
While I doubt it breaks into Vintage, we've seen this effect before on smaller ground creatures at two mana. However, Spider-Woman is also a flying creature, meaning it won't only prevent creatures from blocking the turn they enter, it can maneuver around a lot of opponents' creatures in combat and leave a lasting threat on the game.
Spider-Woman is likely to be included in white and blue aggressive decks because its effect is instrumental in stopping potential combos.
While this effect has been done before, we rarely see this type of thing from blue, which is the most interesting part of the card. Blue hate bears are scary because blue is the best at playing a tempo-focused game.
It's not an all-star card, but I bet Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior will move in and out of decks of all formats for years to come.
We've seen a million versions of Fiend Hunter, but this one is different, as the card's wording makes it very interesting. It's designed so that you exile your opponent's best permanent and a card from your own graveyard. If it dies, both cards go back to their owners' hands, so you get your best card from your graveyard back and your opponent gets their best permanent back. However, if The Spot were to die, the opponent's permanent doesn't go right back into play. Instead, it goes back to their hand, so they must recast it before it can start attacking or blocking or any of that stuff that might come up if The Spot died at instant speed.
Where it gets more interesting is that The Spot has to die for these cards to be returned. If The Spot is exiled, returned to your hand, or if you happen to have a way to blink it, those cards are gone forever.
This makes the card extremely interesting and potentially powerful. Where it has obvious Commander implications with the ability to exile cards as a favor to an opponent, these applications also make it a useful tool in a competitive environment.
The Spot has a legitimate chance to see play in Standard because it's more than just a Fiend Hunter. It's only held back by its mana cost, but even then, it will likely find a home somewhere because it's too easy to exploit, and it's hard for it to backfire because it sends permanents back to players' hands.
This is a cool card, and while I don't know anything about the character, I'm suspecting it's flavorfully brilliant, as well.
This will likely wrap up my Spider-Man set review. Spider-Man is a uniquely smaller set that feels a bit underpowered. It's hard to get an exact feel for a set this new and creative. It feels like many cards have a lot of text on them, but that text isn't translating to raw power to the naked eye. I've heard criticisms that the set feels too weak to impact Standard, especially with Vivi lurking around every corner. Those are valid criticisms, but we'll need to play with this set first before making that determination because cards like the transform creatures will play out differently than they look on paper. I can vouch for this because I evaluate transform cards differently since we could never cast their backside and had to meet a specific condition to flip them. This is a new ballgame, and I'm excited to participate.
We'll get our first look at the set in the Omenpath Early Access Streamer event, which I'll participate in. Omenpath is the Arena name for The Spider-Man set because they didn't get the rights to the digital assets, so while the cards have different names, they will functionally be the same.
I'll dive into the new pick-two draft format and try to learn it well because it will be an entirely different way of drafting that may take a while to master. I'm always up for the challenge and can't wait to start.
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