First Take on Spider-Man/Omenpaths Limited

This week, I finally got to play Spider-Man Limited in the streamer event. Unfortunately, because of a copyright issue, Arena and the set's cards have different names, though they are functionally the same. The name change on Arena is Through the Omenpaths.

Regardless of the cards' names, I had a good time with the set, especially with the new draft format. With this set, we'll be opening packs with three other players at the table, taking two cards per pack, and drafting as such.

This solves a few logistical problems with the set's implementation. First, they wanted to attract Commander players to Limited and thought this would help. Also, while you get the same number of cards, you are opening a smaller number of packs. With many legendary creatures at common, this is an important change because you'd often end up with tons of legends at common if we were drafting with eight players.

Additionally, there's no support for enemy color pairs in this set. You can easily splash cards and play multiple colors, but don't expect too many gold cards for your Boros or Izzet deck. There are some at rare and mythic rare for enemy colors, but not signpost uncommons. With so much mana fixing in the set, it's easy to facilitate some splashes if you focus on having allied color pairs as your main colors.

The set's speed is average. It can be fast, but a lot of the games get bogged down. The creatures don't attack for a ton of damage off the bat, but they can start to snowball. Modified is a supported archetype in Azorius, so it often plays a bunch of small fliers like City Pigeon and loads them up with auras and counters.

I don't enjoy drafting linear aggro much. I also like to explore the depths of the format, so I prefer to splash and draft cards with raw power. A deck I drafted many times over the course of the event was five-color spiders.

Here's an example of a trophy deck.

5c Spiders

I only recommend drafting this deck if you get Scions of the Ur-Spider/Cosmic Spiderman (paper). It's a mythic, so it won't happen that often. The set is small, and the card is hard to fit into any old deck, so you will get them out of almost any pack that's opened. I imagine more so on Arena, where there are fewer rare drafters, but regardless, it's a solid build-around. Scooping up powerful rare creatures, some removal, and Hot Dog Stand/Treat Trolley copies is a strategy that has merit.

In this draft, I played against some strong players with good decks and still managed to get a trophy, which was carried by my rares.

The two-color strategies that have looked the best to me so far are UW Modified and Dimir. Dimir has a couple of plausible strategies in self-mill and control, and both seem solid. Blue has access to counterspells and black to efficient removal.

Outside of fast starts, rares and strong uncommons are of the utmost importance. It's not hard to get good rares and uncommons; however, you have to be flexible in four-player draft and willing to abandon more cards than normal. You need to be able to pivot to an open color and take advantage of what the other three players are leaving for you.

Remember that these smaller draft pods make it much easier to figure out what is happening at the table and how to adjust to maximize the value of each pick. If you noticed there are no red cards left in packs early, and you happen to have a couple of red cards, abandon them and pivot into what's open. For this reason, colorless cards and good lands like Multiversal Passage are higher picks than usual because they always end up in your deck and allow you to read the table before committing to a color.

Here are a few more decks I liked from the streamer event.

Rakdos Mayhem

This deck's core strength is that it gets value out of all of its cards. Excess lands turn into food for connive or get discarded to Romantic Rendezvous or Spider-Gwen, Free Spirit/ Wardens of Silverweb Summit.

This archetype is solid but a bit worse than Dimir and Azorius. Rakdos has sufficient removal and makes good use of its resources, but the creatures are under-statted and rely on synergy to get the job done. It could be my small sample, but I felt more comfortable playing against Rakdos than a deck like Dimir or Azorius.

The last deck I'll highlight may be my favorite, though I had a couple of bad draws in a row during best-of-one. You're out after two losses in the new system, so I only managed 1-2 with what I thought was a fantastic deck.

Esper

This Esper deck was super fun and would have been more enjoyable had I found a copy of Prison Break for my reanimator package.

I had Knife Trick/Pumpkin Bombardment to discard my bomb seven-drops and Superior Spider-Man/Kavaero, Mind Bitten to turbo out my seven-drops effectively, which came up in multiple games. Sadly, in one of the games, I stumbled on blue mana, so my opponent was ready with the answer at instant speed when I copied Neach Pinnacle Pariah/Doctor Octopus, Master Planner.

Overall, this is an archetype I'd like to explore more, but it won't come up often, as you do need some overpowered high-end creatures to reanimate to make a deck like this tick.

This deck desperately wanted some Hot Dog Carts/Treat Trolleys, but none were available in the draft.

Overall, while the set and new way to draft are fairly fun, I suspect the set will get stale faster than normal because it's so small. The cards will feel too repetitive quickly, and with bonus sheet cards being distributed more rarely in this set, we don't get much of that to add to the variety of packs.

The fact that the cards are different in paper and online isn't a huge deal to me, but it craters the enthusiasm for many people, which has muddied what would otherwise be a highly anticipated release.

As of right now, I'm eager to play the format when it opens on Arena. Part of me, for the first time in a while, has the urge to check out a pre-release. I won't do it because I have stuff to do, but I will feel FOMO for the first time in a long time.

If you're wondering if this set is worth it and you're hesitant about drafting a new way, my honest opinion is that you'll barely notice a difference after a bit, and it's not any less fun than what we're used to. It's worth playing until you get bored, which I admit may happen sooner, but only because of the set size and not because it's poorly designed or the new draft style is an issue.