Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel's Spider-Man at Bad Wolf

MTG x Spider-Man: Universes Beyond-er the Spider-Verse

September 5, 2025

What is Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel's Spider-Man?

What happens when one ever-expanding multiverse, Magic’s Planar System, meets another– Marvel’s ever-growing Spiderverse of wisecracking webslingers? Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel's Spider-Man. Beyond the Spider-Verse indeed.

Of course, this is hardly new for Spidey and, at this point hardly new for Magic either, so let’s take a look at what we’re getting. I’m not massively invested in the Spider-Man property, but I’m definitely in the crowd that puts the first two Sam Raimi films at the top of the pile of 21st Century Spider-Man media, and so the best bit of No Way Home was when Toby Maguire rocked up.

Set Codes explained

This time around we’ve three different set codes—for you Marvel fans, these are distinct sets of cards, some of them in the same boosters and boxes. Coming in this release are Marvel’s Spider-Man (SPM), Marvel’s Spider-Man Eternal (SPE) and regular ol’ Marvel (MAR). Of these three sets, SPM will enter into Standard while SPE and MAR will be straight to eternal formats. Let’s have a look at what’s going on. For more information, check out Wizard’s official page

Spider-Verse Legends in Commander

First things first, we’ve got lots of Spider-Men, which is good news for a Magic x Spider-Man set. We’ve also got a good few Spider-Women and one determined Spider-pig. Also a Spider-Dino. I’m deciding not to ask. (No word yet on whether we’re getting a giant robot, but we can hope.)

At first glance, we’re definitely looking at a set where the cards you’re supposed to run as your commander are lit up with neon signs - basically the legends in two or more colours. Peter Parker // Amazing Spider-Man (one of six cards representing Peter Parker at time of writing), Gwen Stacy // Ghost-Spider, Miles Morales // Ultimate Spider-Man. You see the pattern. The major Villains also get multicoloured cards, but if you like Doc Ock then I hope you enjoy 7-mana Blue/Black commanders that don’t do a whole lot to win you the game when you do finally cast them.

Beyond that, there is a frustrating disconnect in this Universes Beyond set between the flavour and the mechanics on a lot of the legends. Spider-Man 2099 (Not to be confused with Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O’Hara, a different card), is a 2 mana 2/3 in red and blue which reads like he wants to exist with green in his colour identity with having Double strike and a power-based damage trigger if you Paradoxed this turn (Oh, wait. It’s not a Dr Who set, so the flavour word isn’t applied). He’s screaming to be in the same commander deck as Colossification, but that can’t be done in a deck with him at the helm. Another example of this is Spider-Punk. Don’t give us a Spiders Matter commander in mono red, WotC. Come on.

MTG Spider-Man unique mechanics

Enough moaning. What do I like about the set? Well, Web-slinging is Freerunning with a different shade of paint, but I like how it’s less awkward to pull off. It might also give Standard self-bounce decks a new lease on life: return your Fear of Isolation, replace it with a 1-mana 3/3 that lets you start the whole bounce sequence over again. We don’t have many cards with Web-slinging yet (which is wild, considering how many cards represent a Spider-Thing Web-slinging we have) but I’m hoping that we get something better than the common Spider-Man, Web-Slinger for these purposes.

My commander picks for the Spider-Man set

Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer

Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer is another interesting looking card. With a unique mana cost of 5 white pips, we’ve got a card with a callback to All Will Be One’s Phyrexian Vindicator (which Standard recently lost to set rotation).. Instead of the Vindicator’s damage redirection and lack of legendary typing however, we get Commander Vigor: [explain what Vigor does, I forget]. Can’t wait for him to lose games due to not having trample. It’s the first time we’re getting this kind of effect in the command zone itself, and lends itself strongly towards a voltron strategy. Having inbuilt protection means he can survive whole categories of removal, and then you can use his reanimation ability to pull a creature back, which can drop a vigilance counter on him, and you’ll have a terror of the lower brackets - where the fun games happen. For maximum opponent horror, run Scavenged Brawler, and put all the counters on Anti-Venom. This might be the first Voltron commander that I’m excited about running in years.

SP//dr, Piloted by Peni

Finally, we come to the commander I’m looking at building at bracket 2, SP//dr, Piloted by Peni. Now, ignoring the abject disappointment of the artwork on the card, we’re left with a fun little go-wide/modification commander. It lets me indulge in all my worst impulses of using bad token doublers and triplers along with putting +1/+1 counters on all of them. Being in Blue/White gives us a solid balance of white’s token generation and blue’s draw and protection. Probably wouldn’t be much fun in bracket 3, but a big, dumb token go-wide deck thrives in the lower brackets. Having a commander without the coward clause of “once per turn” that draws cards? I love a commander where I’m scared of my draw being so powerful that I need to play around decking myself out of the game!

Final Thoughts on Magic: The Gathering's Spider-Verse Crossover

So overall, what does the Magic x Spider-Man set feel like to me? On the bad, it feels like it’s a set that’s been heavily impacted by Wizards deciding to include universes beyond sets into Standard, but it also contains some genuinely interesting middling power level commanders that are worth building around. Certainly a step up from the drudgeries of Edge of Eternities’ commander suite, which lends itself to More Of The Same. (Red/white artifacts? How original!). Knowing Wizards, we’ll probably be getting a five colour All-The-Spiders-You-Can-Eat commander, for anyone who prioritises playing their faves over actually winning games. (If that sounds like you, we salute you.)

For all of my complaining, this set feels exactly like what a comic tie-in to Magic should be. Flavour-heavy to a fault, deeply weird, and full of excuses to infodump to your poor opponent about the history of the obscure spider-person you just cast and how it’s a good thing that we got the Spider-Verse movies and not another Clone Saga. (There is, at time of writing, not a Ben Reilly in sight in either this set or the Spider-Verse movies. Huzzah!)

[It looks like I spoke too soon about the Clone Saga. Luckily it ends after three chapters. - Ed.]

When and where to buy or play Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel's Spider-Man, including shameless plugs.

If you’ve stuck with us this far, I can only assume that you’re interested in what we’re doing when the cards for this crossover hit the shelves. We’ll be stocking the full product lineup (Bundles, boxes and boosters) which are available for pre-order now and ready to collect from 26/09.