Any Modern Playables in Marvel's Spider-Man?

Marvel's Spider-Man is coming in hot next week, so it’s time to dive into a handful of singles that are getting some buzz for constructed format play. 

Let’s not waste time, and dig in!

Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior

Spider-Woman is yet another entry into the “is this stax piece playable?” category of Magic cards. Its design is simple. For two mana, you get a 2/2 (that’s notably a Human creature type) with flying that carries with it an asymmetrical stax effect: Artifacts and creatures your opponents control enter tapped. 

Effectively, Spider-Woman is a Blind Obedience with legs. Blind Obedience itself is actually a fairly playable card even without its built-in extort mechanic meaning that Spider-Woman is at the very least worthy of consideration in constructed formats. 

The issue with Spider-Woman is that it’s not clear which decks would want to leverage her stax effect when they could just be playing Blind Obedience anyway. Her being a creature with flying isn’t irrelevant, but it’s tough to justify that fringe benefit alone as a motivation for playing her. Beyond this, it’s not obvious that this card would see play in a mainboard of any constructed deck, therefore relegating her to the sideboard, which even then feels like a stretch. 

Why am I so down on this card? I’m simply not convinced by the $14 preorder price (which has dropped dramatically after pre-release) and some of the hype around the card in the context of constructed formats. My guess is that this piece will settle close to a couple of bucks (similar to Blind Obedience). 

Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior	CardKingdom $1.99	TCGPlayer $1.99
Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior (Borderless)	CardKingdom $2.49	TCGPlayer $3.37

Spider-Punk

Spider-Punk is a fascinating and pretty innovative piece from this set that’s a borderline staple in some of the formats that can utilize it. In a one-versus-one format, Spider-Punk acts kind of like Defense Grid in that it prevents your opponents from interacting with you meaningfully as your spells and abilities can no longer be countered. 

Having said that, there is a double-edged sword aspect to this in that your opponent (or opponents) also gain the luxury of neither having their spells nor abilities countered. Thus, the risk you run with this particular card is that, while you can utilize it to protect your win attempt, your opponent also has full protection to potentially stop you, depending on the spells they can cast. Or, more relevantly, if you can’t win and leave Spider-Punk in play, you may enable your opponent to have a protected win attempt. 

As far as Modern playables go, this one has feasible sideboard potential as a Silence effect in decks that are just looking for that extra edge to push through a win against more interactive shells. Eldrazi as a shell, for example, folds incredibly hard to Consign to Memory, thus Spider-Punk represents a potential answer to Consign giving Eldrazi a little bit more resilience against one of the single most devastating answers to their best cards.

Financially, Spider-Punk was preordering at around $17 a copy. While Spider-Man as a set is relatively weak compared to Edge of Eternities and Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy, Spider-Punk has utility outside of Modern and is even being considered as a sideboard piece for Legacy, and as a mainstay for turbo shells in cEDH. 

Spider-Punk is in an interesting position where, as a sideboard card it’s terrific, but it lacks any real staying power in mainboards of 60-card formats. I’d imagine this settles somewhere between $5 and $7.

Spider-Punk	CardKingdom $4.49	TCGPlayer $6.52
Spider-Punk (0207) (Borderless)	CardKingdom $11.99	TCGPlayer $9.99
Spider-Punk (0210) (Borderless)	CardKingdom $12.99	TCGPlayer $13.50

Arachne, Psionic Weaver

A flexible stax piece, Arachne is one of the most interesting singles from this set to feature the web-slinging mechanic, which enables Arachne to be cast at an alternate cost of one white mana if a tapped creature is also returned to its player’s hand. There’s some interesting interactions this presents. For example, you could have a Witch Enchanter in play as a creature, go to combat, and swing in for three damage, and then post-combat web-sling the Witch Enchanter to your hand and play it as your land for turn as Witch-Blessed Meadow. Now you’ve made your land drop, and can stax out your opponent by making their most relevant spells one generic mana more costly (save for creatures, of course). 

In Orzhov Blink shells, Arachne seems to be right at home. The question is whether or not it’ll see play in the mainboard, the sideboard, or both. My intuition tells me that this is a serviceable sideboard piece at the very least.

No doubt, Arachne will see play in Modern and in other constructed formats. There are a couple sticking points that might make Arachne a little less desirable if you look past the surface level. For starters, you can’t name “creatures” as the spell type you aim to stax out, which may be the most relevant type for some matchups. Secondly, web-slinging as an alternate casting cost still must adhere to timing restrictions, so you can’t flash out Arachne using web-slinging, rather you have to at sorcery speed web-sling Arachne out, which can also act as an inherent limitation as well, depending on the game state. 

Nevertheless, Arachne is still a terrific stax piece with an effective cost reduction in the web-slinging cost that makes it an appealing sideboard tool.

Arachne, Psionic Weaver	CardKingdom $1.79	TCGPlayer $1.20
Arachne, Psionic Weaver (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $3.49	TCGPlayer $2.05

Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor

Lady Octopus has significant potential across multiple formats. As a one-mana legend in blue, it already has a pretty high floor in terms of its base-level utility in-game. It turns on Mox Amber, it can be cast one turn-one (which, as we know from Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student, is often enough to play it outright in most decks that can). The ceiling, however, is quite fascinating, as Lady Octopus allows you to put ingenuity counters on her each time you draw your first or second card each turn (including draws on your opponents’ turns). 

What do these ingenuity counters enable you to do? Well, with Lady’s activated ability, you can cast an artifact spell for free if its mana value is less than or equal to the ingenuity counters on Lady Octopus. This enables you to cheat some potentially powerful artifacts into play for free, but not without some caveats. 

Firstly, you don’t simply get to “put” the artifact straight into play, rather you can cast the artifact without paying its mana cost. So in a sense, Lady Octopus isn’t as cheeky as, say, Jhoira, Ageless Innovator, which similarly uses ingenuity counters to cheat some artifacts into play. Because you still “cast” these artifact spells, your opponents potentially have an opportunity to respond with counter magic. 

Furthermore, cards like Vexing Bauble render Lady’s ability relatively useless as your free spells will simply be countered automatically. Another very real drawback is that timing restrictions still apply. Therefore, you can’t use Lady Octopus to cast an artifact spell on an opponent’s turn unless it also has flash or there’s something else in play that gives your spells flash (like Shimmer Myr, for example). These limitations, while corner cases, do make the ceiling for Lady Octopus perhaps lower than what it could be if templated slightly differently. 

Nevertheless, this single is an enticing one with a lot of potential inside and outside of constructed formats. The market price just outside the release window is around $10, but trending downward. While this card is neat, I do expect it to settle around $2 or $3. 

Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor	CardKingdom $4.49	TCGPlayer $3.48
Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $6.49	TCGPlayer $5.33

Slinging on Out

Wrapping things up and slinging on out, we see that while Marvel's Spider-Man brings a swathe of new cards and flavor to the market, there aren't too many that look like outright staples in any one format. The general consensus out of the gate is that as a set, it’s relatively weak. There’s some merit to this criticism, but it’s also tough to follow up Final Fantasy and Edge of Eternities, which left a massive mark on the game in terms of overall card quality, design, and format relevance across multiple formats. 

Spider-Man is actually a pretty decent set that happens to be the follow-up to two massive outliers that preceded it. Like most Standard sets, the impact of Spider-Man on Modern, and other eternal formats, should be minimal, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing here. 

Having said that, there’s a lot of potential for some latent sleeper hits, depending on what comes along in the future. 

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