Magic: The Gathering‘s new Marvel Super Heroes set is a real triumph. It feels gratifying to say this after months of doubt, inspired by the initial part of the MTG x Marvel collaboration, the much-maligned Spider-Man set.
As I said in my review at the time, I quite enjoyed MTG Spider-Man. The novelty of new mechanics like Web-slinging, the appearance of fan-favourite characters and the comic art-inspired reprints were all highlights for me. What I didn’t enjoy so much was a lack of powerful creatures to build Commander Decks around, and a general sense of an odd lack of synergy between its heroes.
For Marvel Super Heroes, it appears Wizards of the Coast has listened deeply to feedback, because this set arrives as a very powerful one, complete with a smorgasbord of possible Commander creatures, all buoyed by novel and highly thematic mechanics.
It also brings back the cool comic art reprints in a major way, adds in a host of recognisable and highly synergistic heroes, and arrives with a curated range of ways to play.
The Spider-Man set was a rocky test run. Marvel Super Heroes gets everything right that it got wrong.
MTG Marvel Super Heroes review – quick links
MTG’s Marvel Super Heroes set brims with personality
The first thing that should be noted is this is a deliberately larger and more encompassing set than Spider-Man. Where this earlier set only included some boosters, booster variants and Welcome Decks, Marvel Super Heroes gets the complete MTG treatment – you’ve got boosters, booster variants, multiple pre-built Commander Decks, Scene Boxes, Welcome Decks, and more.
Naturally, a larger number of cards means a more ambitious scope, but beyond this, the most important points of comparison are quality and intention.
Instead of providing a limited scope on the Spider-Verse – which, as an aside, is maybe the least interesting part of Spider-Man history – this new set aims to evoke historic and modern battles from the wider Marvel Comics universe.
It’s a theme as old as time: heroes vs villains. Really, it’s hard to go wrong with that.
Cards and decks in Marvel Super Heroes are split fairly evenly between heroic and villainous archetypes, with some characters – like the Thunderbolts – being both, for synergy in either type of deck. The vast majority of cards brim with flavour in their designations, allowing you to create decks that really have a sense of story or personality.
Plenty have witty one-liners that hark back to fun character moments or comics history, which is a nice nod to long-time fans. And what feels best-designed about this set is that each character has strong and lore-aligned abilities that allow you to really embody them on the battlefield.
Heroes and Villains all have synergistic, lore-accurate abilities
Hawkeye, Trick Shot, and Hawkeye, Master Marksman are both great examples of flavourful MTG cards with lore-relevant abilities. Both let you fire out ‘trick arrows’ to devastate your opponents, with these causing additional, usually non-blockable damage.
In rounds of standard gameplay, I was bullied by Hawkeye, Master Marksman multiple times, as his unique ability let him sneak damage past my defences, and I didn’t manage to draft any creature destruction cards in my pool.
Captain America also gets his own array of super powerful cards, all of which have lore-accurate abilities that buff fellow heroes. He functions as the rallying leader of The Avengers, with many of his MTG cards adding indestructible to other heroes (as in, he protects them with his shield) or adding counters to buff them.
Black Widow’s duality is well-represented in her lot of cards, which allow for additional card draw or card exile, all depending on whether you can inflict combat damage.
The Hulk is also a very powerful addition to decks, with his cards focused on making a massive impact, raging, Trampling and/or drawing cards, depending on whether you can play Bruce Banner before he ‘flips’ and turns into the Hulk.
When the full lot of cards for this set were revealed, there were some questions about just how many variants each character has. The primary heroes of The Avengers have multiple cards in this set, all of which have divergent colours and abilities. I actually think it’s a clever choice, as it means multiple versions can be included in the one deck, and that players have multiple options to build around.
If you don’t particularly like the Enrage mechanic of the red, blue and green Incredible Hulk – which requires you to damage your Gamma Berserker Hero to make him more powerful – you can opt for the mono-blue Professor Hulk, which still has Trample, but lets you draw cards when you deal combat damage to a player instead.
You can also consider Hulk, Strongest There Is, which has Trample and lets you double the number of +1/+1 counters on your Gamma creatures at the beginning of your upkeep.
The added benefit of having so many MTG card variants is that it makes Booster Pack openings a bit more exciting. There are plenty of heroes and hero variants in this set, and decks can be built around each with some clever thinking and attention to those all-important synergies.
Playing blue and green at MTG prerelease
As part of the review process for MTG Marvel Super Heroes, and as part of my own personal curiosity and excitement for the set, I did something rare: attended a prerelease event. For those unfamiliar, this is a launch event where attendees are given a pack of six cards, and are tasked with creating their own synergistic deck on the fly.
I’m not very good at deck-building without hours of research and playtesting, so I’ll be upfront and say that I ended up with a single draw and two defeats on my register. But regardless, it was a great event to see exactly how card synergies work here, and what you can really do while playing around with your heroes.
By luck of the draw, I had the most viable combination in blue and green cards, which aren’t MTG colours I usually play – so I started on the backfoot. But with some really cool Villain synergies running through these colours, I was still able to make a solid impact.
Blue has the benefit of including many fliers, including simple but strong defenders Aerial Doombot and S.H.I.E.LD. Deployment Drone (which saved quite a few of my games, as it pinged my opponents for flying damage).
I also found villains Kid Loki and Leader, Super-Genius to be very powerful, as they worked in tandem to allow me extra card draw, and to cycle through my deck until I found more powerful cards to make an impact.
Connive (draw a card, discard a card, put a +1/+1 counter on a target creature if you discarded a non-land card) is a great ability that appears on many Villains for this set, and it proved to be very useful in draft gameplay to ensure I had my most powerful creatures out.
Add in some very handy card cycling from green sources, a powerful flying ant that could tap my opponent’s creatures, and a scattered assortment of counter buffs and equipment cards, and I was able to put together a fairly handy deck.
While luck of the draw meant I missed out on ultra-powerful attackers (of which there are many in this MTG set), I quite enjoyed how cohesive green and blue were together, and the ways in which the action flowed (as long as I wasn’t misplaying).
Putting together a new Commander Deck is the real draw here
Even with this experience, I do think the best part of MTG Marvel Super Heroes so far has been the opportunity to put together an array of creative, fun and flavourful Commander Decks.
In the first wave of card reveals, I already knew what I was going to build.
My two personal favourite Commanders released as part of this set are: The Sentry, Golden Guardian and Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk. Flavour-wise, these are my favourite two weirdos from the Marvel universe, with their dual personalities lending themselves well to fun and tricky gameplay shenanigans.
The Sentry, Golden Guardian has a very neat quirk. When he enters, he creates The Void, a token creature that matches his abilities and is goaded, meaning it attacks each turn if able. Blinking The Sentry in and out of gameplay using cards like The Mind Stone or Teleportation Circle can create multiple Voids per player, unleashing high chaos – all while the player controlling The Sentry gets to sit back and enjoy it.
The neat thing is that The Sentry will always have a defence against The Void as he’s Indestructible, so it will usually turn on other players. It’s a very good bit of flavour for one of Marvel’s most complex heroes.
Bruce Banner / The Incredible Hulk is an equally flavourful Commander to build around. Unlike The Sentry, Bruce Banner actually transforms into The Incredible Hulk by card flip, so you’ll need to think deeply about when to play him – or whether to play him at all.
Play Bruce Banner, and you get card draw and the ability to transform into The Incredible Hulk when the going gets tough, as an unwelcome surprise to your opponents. That said, playing The Incredible Hulk directly may be more viable, as he’ll stomp his way onto the battlefield and immediately make an impact.
The Incredible Hulk is particularly good when paired with other creatures with Enrage abilities and cards that can damage them – like Pyrohemia, Earthquake, and others. Damaging Hulk will spark his secondary ability: you can add a +1/+1 counter to him, and if he’s attacking, you can untap him, and there’s an additional combat phase after the current phase.
Of course, beyond these two fantastic freaks, there are so many other great options for Commander players, with each hero getting their own clever impact and synergies.
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Plenty of variety makes the MTG Marvel Super Heroes set shine
There really is so much you can do with this set – to an almost overwhelming degree.
There are hundreds of cards available across various product releases, including half pre-built decks in Jumpstart kits, Hero and Villain-themed Scene Boxes, Commander Decks with ample synergy (and we’ll have a review of the Fantastic Four deck in future), as well as plenty of fun hiding in Booster Packs.
As someone who already adores the Marvel universe, and who’s been enjoying Magic: The Gathering for several years now, this is a set that feels perfectly tailored to my interests. My favourite characters all have cards with a novel array of abilities and synergies, perfect for creating Commander Decks.
There are also so many cool card treatments and art styles that feel well-designed for long-time fans.
There will be those that begrudge yet another Universes Beyond release for MTG. That criticism seems hard to escape in an era where players are more particular about their wants, and when two Universes Beyond releases are back-to-back (The Hobbit follows this one).
But as a standalone release, with such a plethora of options, cleverly-designed mechanics, cool card treatments, and multiple ways to play, MTG Marvel Super Heroes is excellent. For the right player, it will likely be a new favourite set, with plenty of flavour to keep the excitement going long-term.
Should the next MTG x Marvel collaborations be as thoughtful and fun as this one – surely there’s a supernatural / Midnight Sons one on the way, with characters like Ghost Rider and Doctor Strange (mostly) missing – there’s a bright future on the horizon.
MTG Marvel Super Heroes Booster Packs, Collector Booster Packs, a Commander Deck, a Bundle, and a Scene Box were provided by Wizards of the Coast for the purposes of this review.
