Magic: The Gathering‘s latest Universes Beyond crossover set, Marvel Super Heroes, has officially debuted in its preview season with a host of powerful, deck-worthy cards. Perhaps learning lessons from the lukewarm response to the Spider-Man set, this new arrival is jam-packed with potent Legendary Creatures, cool art treatments and stacked cards great for multiple styles of play.
For those who enjoy your typical Commander matches, there are plenty of Legendary Creatures that could serve as powerful multi-colour (or even mono-colour) leaders. There are also a bunch of reprints for powerful Enchantments, cool Artifacts and novel Instants that can add flavour and style to your plays.
With everything revealed so far – and there’s still more to come, including a ScreenHub-exclusive preview card – this new MTG set is looking like a real treat for Marvel Comics fans.
MTG Marvel Super Heroes preview – quick links
Four major highlights from the MTG Marvel Super Heroes set so far
As part of preview season, Wizards of the Coast has released first looks at a bunch of new cards, as well as special card treatments found only in the Marvel Super Heroes set. There are too many cards to call out individually, but we do want to highlight four major set features that have already caught our eye.
Marvel Super Heroes Logo Cards
Hiding in Play Boosters and Collector Boosters, you’ll find an array of very cool-looking ‘Logo’ card treatments, featuring iconic heroes and villains on a plain background, with their signature logo behind them. These cards are particularly striking as they allow the heroes to be front-and-centre, with this spotlight art making for a clean, good-looking and very playable card.
It’s particularly nice that these will be collectable in Play Boosters, unlike their busy comic art counterparts, which are Collector Booster-specific.
The new Teamwork mechanic
On certain cards, you’ll find a new Teamwork mechanic. This allows you to tap any number of creatures of a total power X or more to activate an additional ability for some Sorcery and Instant cards. It’s particularly flavourful, as it adds that all important ‘team vibe’ to any decks.
While it does mean you’ll have to tap creatures to make select Sorceries and Instants stronger, you get that all-important rush of feeling like your deck has synergy, and that heroes are working together to achieve their goals.
The Power-up mechanic
Beyond Teamwork, there’s another important mechanic introduced in MTG‘s Marvel Super Heroes set, and that’s Power-up. Some heroes have a very special Power-up ability that allows them to fire off a huge attack, or grow stronger, as long as you have mana to spare.
In the case of the flame-wielding Human Torch, his Power-up ability lets you tap six generic mana, one red mana, to put three +1/+1 counters on him permanently. Kang the Conquerer lets you tap five generic mana, three blue mana, to put a +1/+1 counter on him, and take an extra turn.
These one-time-only skills are very fun and lore-heavy. Obviously, powering up makes the Human Torch more fiery and therefore more deadly. Kang the Conqueror is known for manipulating time, so adding an extra turn makes sense.
Even with high costs, these power-ups seem great – they’re a fantastic way to ‘level up’ on the battlefield, and push for an eventual victory.
There are so many cool, potent Commander options in MTG’s Marvel Super Heroes set
What’s most novel about the entire MTG Marvel Super Heroes set is just how many Commander options there are, even without the additional card previews from media and influencers, or the full list of cards included in the formal Commander Decks.
There are so many neat multi-colour Heroes and Villains to build around, and even a few strong mono-colour ones, too. You could build a witch-themed deck of cheaper Sorceries and Instants with The Scarlet Witch. You could build a whole team of heroes and villains with Power-up mechanics with Hulk, Gamma Goliath as their helpful, cost-reductive leader.
You could even build a devastating Avengers: Infinity War / Endgame-themed deck around Thanos, the Mad Titan, whose Power-up ability lets him destroy half the the creatures on the board, depending on their power level (odds or evens).
There’s also heaps of potential in a deck for The Incredible Hulk, fun potential for chaos in The Sentry, Golden Guardian, and plenty more to play around with.
In all, the MTG Marvel Super Heroes set is shaping up to be a very strong, very flavourful new set with plenty of options for those looking to build new decks of all kinds, or to enhance existing ones. We’re still awaiting more card reveals in future, but it’s certainly looking bright so far.
