First Impressions of Marvel Limited

This week, I got my hands on Marvel for the Early Access event and learned more about the set and what it offers.

My first impression is that we're not in Strixhaven anymore. Let's expand on that sentiment.

Strix was a format where we often saw polarizing strategies. Midrange was beaten out of the format by various control soup decks and decks like Prismari Control. Aggressive decks wanted to be built linearly, with few removal spells, a high creature count, and cards that protected those creatures.

Strix, however, was an outlier to what we normally see in 2026 Limited Magic. Marvel is more of the typical, but has some twists.

One thing I felt during early access is that removal was incredibly scarce. It wasn't easy to come by efficient removal and expensive spells that were four or more mana, but I always felt like I wanted more than what I had.

The creatures in the format are incredibly powerful. I guess that's why they call them superheroes and supervillains. Needless to say, even one-drops are scaling into the game to become must-answer threats at some point, so a lot of the games came down to races, or a single creature dominating the board.

Even though the games were not very grindy relative to a format like Strix, you do need to spend your mana in productive ways each turn. The format doesn't feel overly aggressive, but you want to build decks that can flood the board and interact with the most meaningful creatures in your way. That's to say, I like aggressive strategies far more than slower ones thus far.

I found an archetype I really enjoy and felt was under-drafted in Early Access. Many people dubbed blue as the best, and while I agree for the time being, it's far too early to tell.

Blue has a bevy of cheap, efficient threats that scale into the game. Notably, blue has a ton of good one-drop creatures at common and uncommon. Aerial Doombot is my current favorite common in the set. It can come down on turn one, wear equipment to deal damage early, and, as you get deeper into the game, it turns into an air elemental when you have free mana. It's a villain to boot, so it plays well with those synergies, especially Villainous Hideout, which has been fantastic for triggering effects that require you to have drawn two cards.

Here's a look at a couple of these types of decks.

Dimir Villains

This deck used the cheap curve to enable Rewrite History, allowing me to filter a bunch of cards while picking up value when it cracked, bringing back cards like Hour of Defeat and I am Iron Man. It's still a work in progress, but while Rewrite History looks fairly bad, it's near the top of your curve, and you can flood the board. It can smooth out your draws, trigger your Kid Loki and other draw-two effects, and give you two extra cards eventually.

More Bad Guys

What I learned so far, at least for the best-of-one Arena meta, is that you want to be the aggressor. This means you need to focus on your one- and two-drops. Good two-drops are hard to come by in this format. In fact, it feels like there are a lot more good one-drops than two-drops. Good two-drops will be at a premium, as will the cheap removal like Lightning Strike, which will likely be the best common in the set. It may not have the highest win rate unless red ends up being the color with the highest win rate, as the two always correlate.

Power-Up is a punishing ability that plays out exactly like Monstrous, where the threat of activation makes blocking difficult and heightens the feeling of always being in a footrace against the opponent. Cards that fit into that paradigm, like Justice, Vance Astrovik, are simply outstanding. We just had a set where there was a Man'O'War that wasn't a high pick because the format was not tempo-reliant. Because Marvel is a tempo-heavy format, cards like this shoot up in value.

The rares didn't feel overpowered, which is kind of great. I like having powerful rares in sets, and this set has strong and fun rares, but because the overall power level is high they mostly didn't feel too bad to play against. Given how light interaction felt, I'm grateful that not every game will center on who cast the first rare.

Overall, I'm having a lot of fun with the format. I have the hunch that it's not going to have nearly the staying power of a set like Strix. It may even end up in the far less replayable camp that Lorwyn fell into, despite being an objectively better set. It's still mostly just creatures attacking every turn, and anything cool and interesting is likely going to be too slow. For instance, splashing is supported just fine, but I don't want to draft decks that splash because I want to be on the front foot as much as possible, so drafting four- and five-color soup decks is not on the menu right now.

Regarding the format being removal-light, I have some theories as to why it felt that way, and it may not actually be that true. The player base is overall used to Strixhaven, where every card was either a removal spell, a creature, or a way to draw a bunch of cards. The average player was likely conditioned to take removal more aggressively in Strixhaven, which I believe should have happened a long time ago. The average player in early access is far better than the one in Arena queues because it's filled with full-time content creators and Pro Tour players. As such, the removal was picked more aggressively, whereas on Arena, I'm sure we'll see Lightning Strike wheel on occasion. That kind of stuff always happens during the first week or so when newer, less experienced players are added to the mix.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to playing more with Marvel and will play quite a bit, as I plan to help my testing team prepare for the Pro Tour despite not going myself.

I'll have more to say next week. See you then.