Spider-Man Draft One Week Later

While I was privy to the early access event last week, this week we all got access to play Spiderman Limited. Err, I mean, Omenpath. Whatever they want to call it, the set's reviews have been, to put it politely, mixed.

I love the idea of pick-two and a new way to draft, but I think WotC did themselves no favors with the set design, which only supports five archetypes of allied color pairs. This creates mini-games of chicken inside the draft, where if you and another player start in a color pair, you will have a difficult time trying to navigate the draft. Ideally, you can pivot out of your color pair and into an adjacent color pair, but that can be difficult if you start in certain archetypes. For example, it's easier to pivot out of UW Modified into GW Enweb than it is to pivot out of Rakdos Mayem into a Gruul deck. The cards don't overlap as well from one archetype to the next.

Ideally, you want to identify the open archetypes as fast as possible. With experienced drafters, this gets exceptionally difficult because some people are more adaptable than others. If all players are constantly adapting, and no one stays in a lane, then it becomes quite difficult to read the draft.

One thing that bothers me about the set is how inelegantly some of the cards are designed, so they don't work together in a fluid manner.

Spider-Gwen is the source of constant frustration for me. We have Mayhem haste creatures and Mayhem sorcery speed removal, both of which make this design of a discard outlet obnoxious to use. Tapping her to attack and being unable to cast the removal spell has single-handedly downgraded this card so that it's not a solid enabler for Rakdos, and this looks like a signpost common for that archetype.

Red, in general, has underperformed for me, and this is definitely a contributing factor. A more elegant design would allow for the sorcery stuff to be cast to clear the way, or for Gwen to help us put our haste Mayhem creatures into play before our combat step. If we were ignoring possible flavor concerns or were not concerned with the number of words on the card, I'd have it trigger at the beginning of the first main phase, and if a card was discarded, force Spider-Gwen to attack when the ability was used, if able. It would play out much better and be functionally the same otherwise.

As far as strategy is concerned, red has underperformed for me overall. There are a lot of powerful creatures in this set, most of which have high toughness, and red has a limited amount of removal that can interact with these creatures. While Shock can be one of the best cards in your opening hand at times, it's almost always a terrible top deck because the games often come down to getting on board quickly and pressing your advantage. Modify, enweb, and connive are all keywords that mean you need creatures in play. This often means someone is just winning with the largest unchecked threat rather than having grindy, interactive back-and-forth games. Often, this is a rare, which can make it feel like rares are overtuned at times, but it's more so that a lot of larger creatures are must-answer threats, and there are limited tools to answer the large creatures because a lot of the set's removal gets blanked by larger toughness.

My early pick for best common is Skyward Spider/Wonderweave Aerialist. This card, when modified early, always trades up on mana and deals a significant amount of damage when unchecked. White has been the best color in my early estimation. Between this and Web Up/Mothwing Shroud at common, it's easy to have a complete deck. Both Selesnya and Azorious are overperformers, while Gruul and Rakdos are underperformers.

It is wise to stay in the open colors regardless of what it is, as you can't fight for specific archetypes because there's such a limited amount of cards available. When we draft with eight players, we open 24 packs. You only open half the packs with this set. With only five archetypes and four players, one archetype should be undrafted, and there should be exactly one player per other archetype. Once you start fighting for Rakdos cards with another Rakdos player and no real way to pivot out, you're going to have a low-quality deck. It's more important to identify the open colors in this pick-two format, but it's also much harder because you only get several data points throughout the draft. Once you've selected too many cards, especially with 14-card packs with lands in them, it's too late to pivot. Since we're taking two cards per pack, you're also seeing packs half as often in total to analyze the draft.

Because of all this, reading the signals is extremely important, and it's crucial to send good signals. Making small "speculation picks" early in the draft can have massive consequences because when you take that off-color great uncommon that you want the option to pivot into, you're sending a card from your archetype into the pool of another drafter who's, at most, two seats away from you.

Overall, the experience has been solid so far; however, it's fading quickly. While I form my own opinions on sets, even routinely on the record, the community has spoken about Spider-Man Limited. From what I can see, it's almost all negative feedback. The set would be fantastic if they made it bigger and supported all the archetypes. Instead of multiple Gruul gold uncommons, make one signpost Gruul uncommon and add an Izzet uncommon. These kinds of adjustments would make a smaller set more replayable and approachable. As it stands, this feels like we've only received one-third of a full block of sets, and there are no more sets forthcoming.

Additionally, there are no major events involving Spiderman pick two, even on Arena. This has taken the wind out of the sails of the Limited community at large, leaving avid Limited players like myself lost with what to do with themselves for the time being.

With a limited amount of cards, paper cards having different names than Arena cards, no major events, and a new draft format, it's no surprise that Spiderman's set release has been a massive flop compared to a few short months ago with Final Fantasy. I'm still enjoying the set, but I'm unsure how long I'll continue to find it enjoyable. It doesn't help that the format is basic and lacks flexibility beyond "stay in your lane." Regardless, I'll continue playing and learning the format as best I can, at least to get reps in a pick-two draft. This won't be the last time we see it, and it's the only way to practice for now.

This weekend, we have the Pro Tour coming up, and I'll be interested in watching EoE Limited in its final form with participants having months to prepare. See you soon!