Marvel's Spider-Man Limited

Intro

Marvel’s Spider-Man Pre-Release has just taken place, and the season for this new Limited format has begun. If you want to have a head start on how to defeat the evil villains while slinging through Manhattan, New York City, or become the villain yourself, you are at the right place! 
I’ll be giving you an overview of the new mechanics, the five draft archetypes, and the best tips to take down your draft pods and sealed RCQs, no matter what side you pick. 

This set is unique in a couple of different ways. It is a lot smaller than your average Standard legal Set with only 188 unique cards. In addition to that, the way you draft is different from what we are used to. For one, instead of an 8-player pod, you draft within a 4-player pod. Meaning in practice, you will not see 24 different packs during the draft; you will only see half of that. Fewer packs and, therefore, fewer cards in the draft tend to decrease the power level of the decks you will end up with. It could lead to more splashing and greedier mana bases, for example. Wizards said they designed the Limited format of Spider-Man to be in line with the 4-player pod drafting.

This isn’t the only difference between the normal Booster Draft and Marvel’s Spider-Man Draft. The “Pick-Two” Draft rule is in place for this set. We have seen this rule most prominently in the Double Masters Set in 2020. Instead of picking one card out of each pack, you choose two cards out of each pack and pick them at the same time. One thing is for sure, the drafting process will be a lot faster with only twelve packs and half the picks compared to a normal Booster Draft. I am excited to see how the Booster Draft will play out with these new changes. 

One unfortunate aspect about Marvel’s Spider-Man is that on Magic Arena and Magic Online, the set will use different card names and different art for all the cards. Wizards was not able to secure the licensing for the Spider-Man cards online. The name of the Online Version of this Set is Through the Omenpaths and will be released on Magic Arena and Magic Online on September 23. For clarification in this article, I will be using images and card names of the paper version of Marvel’s Spider-Man.

Last but not least is the unique aspect that this Set only features five different supported draft archetypes, not like the usual ten for each color pair. Dimir Villains, Rakdos Mayhem, Selesnya Spiders, Gruul Monsters, and Azorius Modify. You would need a very good reason to end up in Golgari, Orzhov, Simic, Izzet, or Boros, as they are not supported. It’s not out of the question to end up in one of these archetypes, but the cost of having to forego the synergy and the strong gold cards is high.

New Mechanic: Web-Slinging

Web-Slinging allows you to cast your creature at a mana discount by returning a tapped creature as an additional cost back to your hand. The ability is found on ten cards, with eight of them being in the Selesnya colours, one red-green, and one on a blue rare instant. Aside from the blue instant, the new mechanic is unique to spider creatures, as the name already suggests. To make the best use out of Web-Slinging, you want to bounce back creatures to your hand with abilities that give you something when they enter the battlefield or leave the battlefield. Evasion or a way to tap your creatures for benefit, like a mana dork, for example, help enable this mechanic by giving you easy access to tapped creatures. I’ll go into more detail on this mechanic later in the article when talking about the green-white archetype. Web-Slinging does not circumvent timing restrictions, which means you won’t be able to cast a spell you could only cast at sorcery speed at instant speed via web-slinging.

New Mechanic: Mayhem

Mayhem is very similar in name and effect to an old, famous mechanic in Magic called Madness. If you are a fan of Madness, as many of us, including myself, surely are, you’ll be happy to see it back. The two key differences between the mechanics are as follows. You can cast Mayhem cards at any point during the turn you discarded them. Madness, you had to cast in the moment when you discarded them when the Madness ability triggered. This difference adds extra flexibility and optionality to Mayhem compared to Madness. A downside of Mayhem compared to Madness is that it is time-constrained. You can only cast a creature spell during your turn; you can’t discard it in the opponent’s turn and then cast it at instant speed to flash it in during combat. A clear downside compared to Madness, which lets you cast sorceries and creatures at instant speed without timing restrictions.

To build a good Mayhem deck, you want a mix of payoffs and payoff enablers. In practice, Mayhem cards and discard outlets. This set offers plenty of those in the Grixis colours. We have a total of twelve cards with the Mayhem ability, mostly found in the red-black colour pair. More on Mayhem in the archetype section.

Returning Mechanic: Connive

Connive makes a return with Marvel’s Spiderman and is featured on seven cards (3 blue, 2 blue-black, 1 black, 1 colorless). Very flavourful ability coming from the organized crime-ridden world of New Capenna to the world of Spiderman, featured predominantly in the Dimir Villains Draft archetype. Connive enables Mayhem perfectly, which makes me think that Grixis Villains is going to be a prominent three-colour archetype in Marvel’s Spiderman Limited.

When Connive triggers on a creature, you draw a card and discard a card; if the discarded card was a nonland card, the creature receives a +1+1 counter. This ability helps to fix your draw by mitigating flood or screw. It enables graveyard synergies, which is a theme in Dimir, multiple black and blue cards reward you for filling up your graveyard, similar to what Dimir was doing in Final Fantasy Limited. In addition to that, it enables Modified payoffs.

Returning Mechanic: Modified

Modified was first introduced in Neon Dynasty: Kamigawa and is represented on seven white cards in this set. It is the leading mechanic of the Azorius archetype. Modified describes a creature that is equipped, enchanted, or wears counters of any sort. In this set, the only counters to be found on creatures are +1+1 counters and, in one instance, Ingenuity counters on “Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor.

The set features a bevy of cards that provide your creatures with +1+1 counters, most of them in white. +1+1 counters are the most common way to enable Modified bonuses, as this Set offers only a handful of Equipment and Aura cards. Modified is a creature-based mechanic that wants you to build up a powerful creature and protect it to win the game.

Marvel’s Spiderman: Limited Archetypes

Each of the five two-colour archetypes comes with three signpost uncommons and one hybrid-costed common that enables the respective synergies of its archetype. The clear goal in this draft environment to me seems to be to end up in the open archetype at your table with the best deck driven by the synergy pieces you were able to pick up during the draft. Rakdos Mayhem, Azorius Modified, and Selesnya Web-Slinging seem like the most synergy-driven strategies out of the five. Dimir Villains and Gruul Monsters seem to have more flexibility and can perhaps rely on “good” cards and less on synergy, more than the other three archetypes. 

Green-White: Web-Slinging and Go Wide Aggro

Green-White wants you to play cheap, evasive threats with Enter or Leave the Battlefield triggers to power out the various Web-Slinging payoffs. You want your deck to have a low curve, a high creature count, plus a few pump spells, go-wide buffs, or removal spells to power through your opponent’s blockers. The archetype has a spider synergy sub-theme going on, as all of the Web-Slinging creatures are Spiders. On common and uncommon, you can find “Grow Extra Arms”, “Wall Crawl”, and “Aunt May” that beef up your spiders effectively. 

You might find yourself implementing some of the Modified Payoffs, as many cards in Selesnya come with +1+1 counter effects. This archetype seems fun to draft, but perhaps less easy to come by in Sealed, as its power level looks to be reliant on getting a good mix of payoffs and enablers for Web-Slinging.

Blue-White: Modified Aggro

This archetype reminds me of Theros Blue-White Heroic in Limited (and Constructed). Skyward Spider is a very powerful payoff on common, able to perform a Boggle impression, leading to the early demise of opponents without the proper interaction. I have this card as one of my top commons in the set. One unfortunate thing about the two white Limited archetypes in this set is that they are fighting for some of the same cards. Creatures that are cheap and evasive are just as good when you buff them up with +1+1 counters as they are with Web-Slinging. City Pigeon is the most glaring overlap on common. 
This strategy tries to curve out, play evasive threats like flyers, and modify them. Similar to Green-White, a high creature count is where you want to be. As interaction, you want to play tempo spells, removal, and one of the most important commons to support Skyward Spider for the All-In Boggles version “Spectacular Tactics”. A modal spell that can serve as a removal or protection spell, which even modifies your creature. 
Connive, while being the main mechanic of Dimir Villains has some effective overlap into this archetype as it modifies your creatures.

Blue-Black: Villains and Graveyard Matters

Blue-Black leans into multiple synergies and can play out in different ways. Filling up your graveyard via Milling or Conniving to enable graveyard matters synergies is one of them. Those synergies should be more incidental than something you should be actively going for, though. What makes me say this? Most of the good cards for this archetype you want to pick up have Connive, so you will end up playing them no matter what. If you reach a certain quantity of them, adding cards that have value after being discarded, like Venom, Evil Unleashed, Beetle, Legacy Criminal, or Mayhem cards, becomes more appealing. But you shouldn’t pick the graveyard payoff cards early, as they are not that impressive without the enabling.

The more powerful and strongly supported theme in Dimir is all about Villains. If you are drafting Blue-Black you should certainly put a higher emphasis on picking up creatures with the Villain creature type. 

Connive and Mayhem work hand in hand, which likely leads you to splash for red in some of your Drafts or Sealed. Red also offers a bevy of Villains to add to your deck if you are choosing to go for those synergies.

Blue-Black has card advantage, strong removal, and scales well into the late game. Perhaps a prime archetype to be in for your Pre-Release Sealed Tournament, if you are lucky enough to open the right pieces. I would certainly be on the lookout.

Red-Black: Mayhem and Discard

Red-Black is all about Mayhem and discard Outlets. You want your deck to be Mayhem cards, discard Outlets, and interaction spells like Burn and black removal. There are some incredibly good payoffs rewarding you for going deep on the synergies. If you are not quite getting there, luckily, many of the cards are fine to cast for their full cost, meaning the downside of not getting there isn’t that high. Many of the Mayhem creatures are leaning aggressive, and the signpost uncommons paint the same picture: Rakdos wants you to beat down your opponent. Two of the strongest common enablers in this archetype are red - Romantic Rendezvous and Masked Meower - incentivizing being heavier in red than in black when deciding what your main color is going to be.
 

Red-Green: Ramp into Mana Value 4 or more

Red-Green is perhaps the closest to a generic Gruul strategy that we see repeated over the years in Limited. Ramp into beefy creatures to overpower your opponent’s board with sheer size. A successful Limited recipe as old as time. We see some payoffs that care about casting spells with mana value 4, that is the mechanic you are supposed to aim for, but in practice, the general Limited advice of drafting a good curve, quality cards, and 4-6 removal spells stands above the goal of drafting around the mana value 4 synergy part. You’ll have some versions of this archetype that lean harder into it and some that lean less into it.

Mana Fixing 

The set provides a cycle of friendly color dual lands with a strong ability attached to them. These might be some of the best common dual lands of all time. Colorless options to splash include Vibrant Cityscape, Spider Bot, and Hot Dog Cart. 

Green fixing comes in the form of Subway Train, Spider-Man, Brooklyn Visionary, Guy in the Chair, and Supportive Parents. This will make it easier to go for Naya, Jund, or Bant if you receive powerful gold rares and/or uncommons out of two different archetypes. 
I assume it won’t be that often, but also not that rare to go for a fusion of two archetypes (Grixis, Esper, Jund, Bant, or Naya) to get the most power out of your pool. The fixing in this set is certainly able to support this avenue pretty well.

Pre-Release and Sealed

Going into your Pre-Release or Sealed events, you need an open mind to build whatever your pool dictates you to build. Synergy-driven decks are harder to come by than in Draft, as you don’t have any control over what your pool will look like. If you are lucky enough and you open a synergistic deck with a decent curve, go for it. If you are not, try to build the deck that utilizes the highest amount of quality cards. The best removal, rares, and ways to generate card advantage. Sealed tends to be slower than Draft, which allows you to play more card advantage and higher cost cards on average. Unconditional removal is really important in Sealed due to the high amount of Bombs you will face. If you have the fixing, splash for the very best removal like Web Up, the Spot’s Portal, or Venom’s Hunger.

Mayhem and Connive are the two abilities that stand out to me as being strong in a slowed down environment. They both produce value in their own way. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Grixis colors outperform the green and white decks in Sealed on average.

To round out this article I will leave you with my top three commons ranked in order in each colour.

White:

1. Web Up

2. Selfless Police Captain

3. City Pigeon

Blue:

1. Whoosh
2. Unstable Experiment
3. Doc Ock’s Henchman

Black:

1. Scorpion’s Sting
2. Venom’s Hunger
3. Swarm, Being of Bees

Red:

1. Electro’s Bolt
2. Shock
3. Romantic Rendezvous

Green:

1. Kapow
2. Professional Wrestler
3. Spider-Man, Brooklyn Visionary
 

Outro

And that is all you need to know to crush your next Arena Draft or Sealed RCQ in Spiderman Limited!

I hope you'll have as much fun as I've had with this format.

Good luck slinging and webbing!