In just a week, Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes will hit tabletops everywhere, and to prepare players for the multiverse, I’ve listed five hidden gems players can add to commander decks for heroic (or villainous) purposes.
Heroics are back on the agenda at Magic: The Gathering, and it seems almost all Marvel Super Heroes are invited. This means the set is loaded with memorable moments, iconic comic book artwork, and, most importantly, fun mechanics to slam the tabletop with sound-effect bubbles pulled straight from a legendary John Romita Jr. panel.
While many fans have joked that this set is the return to the Plane of New York City (Spider-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles both take place in NYC), new mechanics, heroes, villains, and most importantly, excellent card designs begging to be synergized await in this new Universes Beyond offering. Marvel Super Heroes is not just ‘another trip to NYC,’ and WOTC proved it with their extensive previews.
While this Universes Beyond set also has an extensive list of reprints in its Source Material cards (as did TMNT and Avatar: The Last Airbender), we could list five cards that are absolute killers in Commander and call it a day (spoiler alert, this set reprints Chaos Warp), but we won’t. Just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spider-Man sets that have come before, Marvel Super Heroes is also mobbed by legendary creatures, and because of that, they aren’t hidden gems. The following list is the cards that fit in the middle of all the big excitement, the reliable cards that have versatility and can buy you another play or two down the stretch of a particularly gruelling game.
This list is for the true Magic: The Gathering Marvel Super Heroes hidden gems. While The Mind Stone is an almost auto-add to decks that play White, it will undoubtedly cost a small fortune on release, and everyone knows about it. The same goes for The Incredible Hulk, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and The Serpent Society; these cards are instant bangers, and they are not hidden whatsoever. What we list below are the true diamonds in the rough. Cards so heroic they can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
The versatility provided by the following five, combined with their current low projected prices on marketplaces, makes them worth a look when it’s time to don the super suit on a Friday Night Magic.
Hawkeye’s Bow
Hawkeye’s Bow might be one of the best cards in Marvel Super Heroes; I’m not kidding. For one red mana and a 1 equip cost, you can start inflicting massive harm on opponents nearly instantly with this diabolical bow. If Hawkeye’s Bow is used in tandem with Impact Tremors, your opponents are going to have a very bad day.
This situation can get out of hand quickly with Hawkeye’s Bow having a mere 1 mana for its equip cost. You can equip this bow to something like Tarkir Dragonstorm’s Sunset Strikemaster, and start tapping for mana to deal damage to all of your opponents with no drawbacks each turn.
If something like Intruder Alarm is in play, you can untap your creatures each turn and continue the punishment on each opponent’s turn (possibly even more than once), allowing you to pour on the damage with a small cost. If you have a Token vehicle deck, you can abuse the paltry equip cost and put the bow on multiple creatures per turn, and tap them to overcrew a vehicle like The Regalia to tap them and activate the 1 damage. It gets worse.
This Marvel Super Heroes equipment can be a nuclear bomb in waiting, with commanders like Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin, as dealing one damage to each opponent will increase his power by +1/+1. While this synergy is cool, Hawkeye’s Bow becomes unbeatable when used in tandem with untap cards, specifically the green card, Seeker of Skybreak. With Seeker of Skybreak’s built-in ability to tap itself and untap a target creature, you can deal infinite damage with just two cards by continuously tapping and untapping Seeker of Skybreak. Fair warning, this is a villainous way to use the equipment, and you might not be too popular after the dust settles.
Super Soldier Serum
This turns any creature it’s attached to into a souped-up version of the Secret Lair released Captain America, First Avenger (which is getting a notable reprint in Marvel Super Heroes), making it an auto-addition to Voltron decks, or nearly any white identity deck with a commander made of glass. Instead of only being able to attach one piece of equipment during your combat step (which is what the Captain does), you can put ALL equipment when the attached creature attacks or blocks (without paying for them), and they can likely blow up an attacker due to first strike being built-in.
With supremely dangerous equipment like Colossus Hammer and Excalibur, Sword of Eden, the Super Soldier Serum bypasses their inflated equipment costs and sticks them to a creature for free. Interestingly enough, this Aura also gives the creature +2/+2 and first strike and vigilance, making this enchantment viable even without equipment on the board.
If players use this Aura with Hawkeye’s Bow, you can trigger the tap ability two times with a single attack (provided you used it before, and provided the equipped creature can tap) with a free equip to another creature, and you can even trigger this on an opponent’s turn due to the block effect. With the right combo, you can tag Basilisk Collar and a Colossus Hammer to a creature and swing for the fences. On your opponent’s turn, you can have the Super Soldier Serum creature block and grab the equipment before damage, torching a threat and getting over 10 life in return. Voltron just got stronger.
Hex Magic
Marvel Super Heroes also rolled out the red carpet for card advantage, and there might not be a better option than Hex Magic. By casting this card, you can drop all of your cards into exile and then cast them until the end of your next turn. This can net you the advantage of over 7+ cards with three mana, but you can make this work even better.
With commanders that benefit from playing cards from exile (looking at you, Prosper, Tome Bound), you can really put a world of hurt on your opponents with seven extra cards in play. With Commander Liara Portyr, you can reduce the cost of the seven cards in exile so you can attempt to play all of them before the clock runs out, and this could net you a tidy win depending on the cards exiled.
With a commander like Stella Lee, Wild Card, you can copy this spell and get the effect doubled, allowing you to drop even more card advantage on the board. If you get lucky and exile something like Demonic Tutor, you can cast it as your second spell the following turn and get it copied with Stella Lee’s effect, really giving you a leg up in the game. Having more plays available than your opponents is the best advantage in Magic, and Hex Magic gives that to you in spades.
Powerful Broker
Powerful Broker is one of the more straightforward additions in Marvel Super Heroes. It’s basically a watered-down creature built for proliferation, and it rocks when used in tandem with +1/+1 counter-leaning deck strategies. When this taps, it adds another counter to all permanents, making it a double-edged sword. But it serves the user far better than your opponent, considering it’s very possible opponents do not have counter production.
For a different strategy, you could use this in a Black Panther, Wakandan King deck and pass out +1/+1 counters like they’re going out of style. Just tapping Powerful Broker will bring more +1/+1 counters to the table, and Black Panther will hand them out accordingly. In an infect or stun counter deck, this card is just plain mean. All you need to do is put a single poison counter on your opponent or a stun counter on a creature, and Powerful Broker will do the rest (eventually). In proliferate or counter-leaning decks, Powerful Broker is a must-add, and can lock down or slowly destroy an opponent.
Blazing Crescendo
Blazing Crescendo is just good magic, and it’s a common to boot, making it immediately viable in Red Pauper decks. If this card is used in Stella Lee, Wild Card, Kess, Dissident Mage, or even Seifer Almasy, it can do serious damage. In Seifer Almasy’s (and Kess, Dissident Mage) case, this card can be played twice, and Stella Lee can copy it, netting even more card advantage and even more damage. Spellslinging commanders need this one.
Cards like Veyran, Voice of Duality, and Slickshot Showoff can also become bombs with this instant in play. In Veyran’s case, the creature can become a 6/4 until the end of the turn, but if you can copy the spell (with something like Mirari or Storm of Saruman), you can cast it even more times, giving you a potential one-hit-KO. If you can’t get the one-hit-KO, you have a bunch of additional card advantage to tinker with in exile (provided you copied the card). Out of every card on this list, Blazing Crescendo takes the cake on being the most versatile, and it can succeed in nearly any deck that has a red identity.
That wraps up the Top 5 Hidden Gems from the Marvel Super Heroes Universes Beyond set! Of course, this is not the entire list of viable cards from Marvel Super Heroes (there are a boatload of non-hidden gems, I promise), just the ones I can’t wait to get my hands on to throw down during games when the set drops on June 26. Marvel Super Heroes pre-release events are happening all week, so fans can head to the official WoTC website to check for any heroic events near them.
