Marvel Super Heroes crashes the Avengers and their wider universe into Magic: The Gathering, packing Legendary characters, powerful Artifacts, and brand-new mechanics into the latest Universes Beyond addition. Releasing June 26th, this set has something for everyone, and as usual, you can pick up all of your preorders at pre-release on June 19th! There’s a heavy emphasis on Heroes and Villains, but also some re-works of existing mechanics to have a higher flavour fit: Teamwork (as a variant of Convoke), Power-up (as a variant of Level Up), and Plan (as a new variant of Quests). With an emphasis on Heroes and Villains, you can expect a long list of new Commander options(128 in fact, setting the record for most Legendary Creatures in a set). While we don’t cover options for Commanders in these lists, I’d urge you to cruise through our pre-order page to see the options! Let’s dive into some cards you should consider adding to your 99.
1. The Mind Stone
The Mind Stone is a two-mana Legendary Artifact White and comes with Indestructible to protect your investment. Its payoff is the Harness ability: for six mana and a tap, you unlock its ∞ ability, which then triggers each end step to exile up to one other target nonland permanent you control and immediately return it. That is a repeatable, Indestructible flicker engine on a mana rock, and any deck full of enters-the-battlefield triggers will happily pay the six mana once the midgame arrives. Cheap to deploy and resilient to removal, it scales beautifully as the game goes long.
2. The Wondrous Wasp
Sometimes your opponents play Creatures that generate them ongoing value or threaten to close the game with an infinite combo. Instant speed interaction can be critical for these types of threats and The Wondrous Wasp delivers. For one and a Blue you get a Flash Flyer that doubles as a tap effect and a silence on the opponent's scariest threat offering strong political leverage in multiplayer. Commanders leaning on static or activated abilities are especially vulnerable, and because the effect persists, this Hero can be the make or break for you staying in the game. She slots cleanly into blink decks that reset her trigger, and as a Legend she is a viable low-curve commander herself.
3. Too Evil to Stay Dead
Recursion spells that are on the cheaper end of the spectrum usually have higher price tags, it’s nice to see a new budget option with Too Evil to Stay Dead. For 3, you can return a Creature with mana value four or less to the battlefield or any Creature if the Teamwork cost is paid. There are many pivotal Creatures that meet the baseline criteria of this Sorcery, so I’d strongly consider it for any of your builds that have specific Creature synergies.
4. Hex Magic
Hex Magic is a three-mana red Sorcery that exiles your entire hand, draws that many cards, and lets you play the exiled cards until the end of your next turn. The result is a full hand refresh with a two-turn window to play your old cards alongside the new ones, giving access to a far larger pool than a normal hand allows. When hands stagnate with cards that no longer fit the board, a three-mana reset is an excellent rate, well ahead of Faithless Looting or Cathartic Reunion. As a self-wheel, your opponents are less likely to have contention with this play at more casual tables than they would with a Wheel of Fortune or Windfall.
5. Team Tactics
Two-mana Instants that grant Double Strike can lead to big swings that become memorable eliminations. Akin to Temur Battle Rage, Team Tactics also grants Trample if you can pay the Teamwork cost. While this could be considered bad by some as it goes against the singleton ethos of Commander, having a few redundancies for cards that are fun to play can mean it’s more likely you’ll get to “do the thing” your deck is trying to when the functional reprints are relied on too heavily.
6. Earth's Mightiest Heroes
Earth's Mightiest Heroes is a six-mana green Sorcery that reveals the top eight cards of your library, puts one Creature onto the battlefield, and dumps the rest into your Graveyard. We’ve seen this effect before with Selvala’s Stampede, Last March of the Ents and See the Unwritten, but that doesn’t take away from how fun it can be to rip off some big threats from your deck. The Teamwork upgrade turns a decent threat-finder into a game-ending mass deployment, and Green Creature decks routinely clear that threshold by mid-game. Even without it, a free Creature plus card selection at six mana is respectable, and the incidental self-mill feeds Graveyard plans.One last consideration: if you want to guarantee you’ll get a specific threat, this isn’t a good fit, but if you like some variety then Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is worth considering.
7. Epic Fight
Fight spells can be a great way to leverage your Creatures for removal in Creature focused decks. You may end up losing your Creature in the exchange, depending on the threat. Epic Fight adds some protection against that with the optional double Power and Toughness modality extending the reach of this removal spell. The reverse of this modality is also true, you could just use the doubling effect and that may be enough to remove an opponent from the game!
8. Restorative Technique
When it comes to three mana value ramp spells in Commander there are two staples every new variant is compared against: Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach. Both of these classic staples net you two Lands, so why would you play Restorative Technique? This may seem counter-intuitive at first, but the option to give an opponent a Land is a sneakily strong political play. Now, ramping is very strong in Commander, so you don’t want to blindly ramp an opponent, but rather, make some deals. Maybe you’re all facing down an Archenemy and one player can stop them, or perhaps someone is falling behind and not able to participate. Using this Sorcery to ramp another player can foster good will if positioned correctly. If you have shied away from political cards, this is one I’d consider dabbling with as it could become your new best strategy. Worst case you can always Ramp yourself.
9. Worlds Within Worlds
Living Death sees a lot of play in Commander, and it’s often over-leveraged by the player casting it. Worlds Within Worlds hits on a similar play pattern, but requiring vastly different setup. Cast it when opponents have the better board: you trade their battlefield presence for cards in hand while slamming your own best Creatures into play. Or play it when you’re ahead to save your board from an anticipated board wipe. You’ll need Creatures in hand for it to be worth the steep cost, but it can be defensive or aggressive, giving you some flexibility.
10. Baxter Building
Baxter Building is a Land that taps for one colorless freely, then offers two abilities gated behind a five-mana cost. The first, requiring four and a self tap, adds four Mana in any combination of colours, allowing for excellent colour fixing on a budget. The second gives you a Mana sink for some card draw, which can be beneficial in the late game. Both have a high cost, but the opportunity cost for sliding this into your Mana base is pretty low. This a great utility land to consider for any colour heavy decks being built on a budget.
Marvel Super Heroes blends thematic flavor with genuine Commander utility with some great new cards for your 99. The amount of Legendary creatures in the set is staggering, so you can expect to see some new decks when you play next. Where there any cards you were excited for that you think I missed? Let me know in our Discord or hit me up on Bluesky. There’s plenty more great cards in this set, and tonnes of goodies in the Commander specific set. If you haven’t looked yet, check out our pre-order page to browse through it all.
Don't forget to pop into the shop Tuesday nights for Commander night at Chimera Gaming!
