Magic: The Gathering‘s new Marvel Super Heroes set is one of the biggest for the year, comprising multiple styles of card releases, from Booster Packs to Jumpstart and Beginner kits, and more. One of the more notable aspects is that it arrives with four unique Commander Decks, all introducing new hero or villain teams, with a good does of synergy between them.
It’s likely this new release will attract a whole new crew of MTG players, so having ‘pre-con’ Commander Decks – pre-built, with a mid-range power level – is a clever choice. These decks are really ‘pick and play’ so you can quickly learn the ropes and begin battles with a fair chance at synergistic hands.
That said, the new Fantastic Four-themed Commander Deck is a bit more complex than the usual beginner deck, so those starting here might need a primer before setting their heroes on the battlefield.
MTG Fantasic Four Commander Deck – quick links
Who’s the best Commander in the MTG Fantastic Four Commander Deck?
There are four viable MTG Commanders in this particular deck: Human Torch, The Thing, Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman. While each has their own main colour, as you’ll see in their secondary abilities, they are actually all four-colour: red, blue, white and green.
Each has their own benefit. Mister Fantastic has reach and vigilance, so he’s good against flyers and doesn’t tap to attack. He also lets you draw cards for every noncreature spell you cast, and he can power-up to copy triggered abilities.
Human Torch gains flying, double strike and haste if you’ve cast a noncreature spell in your turn. He can also power-up to deal additional combat damage to all opponents.
The Thing has trample and is the strongest of the heroes, so he can make a major impact. He gets four +1/+1 counters if you’ve cast a noncreature spell in your turn. Additionally, he can also double the number of each kind of counter on any number of cards you control, so he can spiral and grow bigger fairly fast.
Invisible Woman lets you create 0/3 colourless Wall creature tokens with defender and reach if you’ve cast a noncreature spell during your turn. She can also power up during her attack to add +1/+0 for each creature you control, and the creature that’s buffed can’t be blocked.
Personal preference plays a part, but I do think Invisible Woman is the most viable MTG Commander here, as her ability to create ‘force fields’ in the form of Wall tokens is very powerful, and means you can protect whichever creatures you play per turn.
She’s also the best Commander for a simpler reason: this deck doesn’t have a significant focus on playing creatures, so you’ll want to be able to protect the creatures you do play each turn.
The MTG Fantastic Four Commander Deck is largely focused on spell-slinging
Looking at the array of cards in the Fantastic Four deck, there are significantly more Sorceries, Instants, Artifacts and Enchantments than there are Creatures. Drawing cards per turn, you don’t often get a bulk array of combatants, so you’ll need to get crafty to ensure you’ve got defenders on board and that you’re not being hit early and hard.
This is a deck that takes some time to ramp up, particularly with its four-colour Commanders. While having mono-colour in their cost means you can speed up their play, you’ll need to stay patient to get all four colours on the battlefield, and to unlock each hero’s secondary ability.
The play here is to bide time to play your Commander – in this case, Invisible Woman – then immediately start slinging noncreature spells to put up those invisible force fields to protect yourself.
Early on, if you get lucky with card draw, you might be able to play a handy card like Alicia Masters, Skilled Sculptor. This allows you to create Treasure tokens as long as you’ve cast a noncreature spell on your turn. She also lets you return all owned creatures to their owners, if you’ve had any particularly nasty steals during play – although this ability didn’t figure into my own rounds.
Alicia Masters, Skilled Sculptor has zero attack but is a strong defender, and that untapped Treasure generation lets you speed up the entrance of Invisible Women, who swiftly becomes essential to play.
Other handy low-cost creatures that may boost your early turns are Medusa, Inhuman Queen, who gets +1/+1 counters whenever any player casts a noncreature spell, H.E.R.B.I.E., Lovable Robot, which is a flyer that lets you surveil and adds generic mana, and Willie Lumpkin, Postman, who lets you and an opponent draw a card, with some manipulative shenanigans where they can’t then attack you during their next turn.
Crystal, Inhuman Princess is also a really important card that’s a flyer, and lets you deal X damage to opponents where X can be up to four, depending on the number of colours that spell is. It also taps for all four colours of the deck, which should be very useful.
Once you’ve played some of these creatures – or perhaps you didn’t luck out with your draw – you can play Invisible Woman, and turn your focus to slinging an array of spells, which can be multiplied, and/or creating Walls per turn.
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Noncreature spells give you an array of benefits
This particular deck is most concerned with you playing noncreature spells as a primary ability, and the resulting benefits. With plenty of creatures having their own abilities triggered when you play noncreature spells, you can initiate turns where you’re playing a single spell, then drawing cards, creating Wall tokens, creating Treasure tokens, and adding +1/+1 as a direct result.
The actual spells also benefit from various doubling mechanics so you can increase this impact exponentially. Cosmic Crucible lets you copy a noncreature spell you cast, and choose new targets for that copy. It also lets you add four mana in any combination of colours, which speeds up your plays dramatically.
Quantum Misalignment is another favourite MTG card of mine, with this allowing you to create a token that’s a copy of a target creature you control, except it’s not legendary – that is, you can copy your Commander and thereby get two triggers every time you cast a noncreature spell.
Doubling Invisible Woman, I was able to get endless Walls, creating a significant barrier to my opponents getting even a single hit through. Because of Quantum Misalignment’s Rebound ability, you can actually play it again quite easily, allowing another copy, and thereby three Invisible Woman cards.
Lots of removal and fair ramp make this a balanced MTG deck
Beyond these key cards, which will likely form part of your victory conditions, the Fantastic Four Commander Deck also has an array of other useful but devastating cards included.
This deck, for whatever reason, has a lot of removal – perhaps a bit too much, if you’re somebody wary of off-siding your Commander pod. Between Cleansing Nova, Collective Effort, Hull Breach, It’s Clobberin’ Time!, Nova Flame, Tragic Arrogance, Bovine Intervention, and the classic Path to Exile, there are plenty of options.
While it means getting to wipe the board of significant threats – and it’s in-line with the moves of classic Fantastic Four villain, Galactus, who’s also included here – it does potentially mean pain and frustration for your opponents, which isn’t always the right vibe for games of MTG Commander.
Beyond this oddness, there’s a good mix of other spells here, with a balance of card draw and Treasure-making, and some classic ramp cards in Three Visits, Cultivate, Farseek and Terramorph. You’ll need it, given the four-colour nature of the deck, and it works well to speed up your early plays.
Overall verdict on this new MTG Commander Deck
This is an intermediate-level Commander Deck by design, with some thought needed to maximise its spell loops, and to ensure you’re doubling impact where possible and that you’re playing noncreature spells at the right time, for the greatest impact.
There is some minor tweaking that feels necessary here. You might want to swap out some of the destruction and removal spells for more creatures with noncreature spell triggers. Cards like Willie Lumpkin, Postman are also more flavourful than practical, and I personally dislike that Bovine Intervention is there to create Ox tokens – this doesn’t really gel with the rest of the cards.
But overall, this is a solid deck as a pre-con, with powerful ramping abilities that can double or triple to cause high chaos. Those more used to creature-focused decks will find the strategy here more complex, but once you understand how to utilise the Rebound abilities and certain Sorceries to get your noncreature synergies going, this deck will eventually go very fast, and very hard.
It’s got a novel central mechanic and a real flexibility in its design that allows for plenty of flavour, and an equal amount of power.
The MTG Marvel Super Heroes Fantastic Four Commander Deck was provided to ScreenHub for the purposes of this review.
