Marvel Super Heroes: Highlights for MSH and Jumpstart

Well, folks, it’s that time of year…again…two months later. That’s right, it’s time for the Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes set review! 

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Marvel Super Heroes is an awesome love letter to the comics-loving community. There are some sweet comic-panel art treatments, appearances from fan-favorite characters, and dinosaurs that refuse to cure cancer. In today’s article, we’ll be discussing set mechanics and individual cards from Marvel Super Heroes and the associated Jumpstart set. There is a frighteningly large number of cards to digest here: almost 300 cards in the main set, and 185 new cards on top of that from Marvel Super Heroes Jumpstart. With nearly 500 cards to look at, let’s dive right in!

To Go Even Further Beyond

Unlike some cinematic moments in media, these power ups are speedy and efficient. Similar to the exhaust mechanic from Aetherdrift, power-up is a one-time activated ability tacked on to several creatures. Given the single-use limitation, some of these abilities are quite powerful; Kang the Conqueror’s ability to give you an extra turn and a flying 5/6 for 8 mana is potent. Intended as a way to demonstrate a powerful superhero using their full strength as they arrive at the scene of battle, power-up is another way for creatures to create memorable moments and interesting interactions. Some cool power-up cards to look out for:

• Hulk, Gamma Goliath helps bring down the cost of power-up abilities even more than the discount based on the mana cost of the creature that’s powering up. Special shoutout to Advancing The Spirit for netting you one free power-up on each of your turns. Other cost reduction effects that work on spells or abilities can help with expensive activation costs too — consider the Medallion cycle, Training Grounds, or Agatha of the Vile Cauldron to get an even bigger discount for costly power-up abilities.
• Gamma Grotesque is a strong upgrade for counters-matter strategies; for six mana, it’s a Regal Force for go-wide counters decks, with the upshot that it itself is a 6/6 with vigilance.
• In addition to having some cheeky reminder text on the card, Wonder Man, Hollywood Hero is an effective enhancer for decks with a lot of power-up abilities. Though expensive at 5 mana, bear in mind that the second activation of power-up on each creature will still carry the discount if they entered that same turn. For the ostentatious price of 12 mana, Kang the Conqueror gives you two extra turns.

‘Til I Put On the Mask

There are a few MDFC Hero creatures, similar to the ones we saw in Marvel’s Spider-Man last year. The front creature represents the “civilian” identity or public persona of each character, with a smaller statline and lower-impact ability, and a backside that represents the full strength of the superhero with a splashy and powerful ability. Let’s go through each of them:

This version of the Hulk was shown as a preview to the community by Wizards a few months ago, so we’ve all had some time to digest it. By now, pretty much everybody is already aware of the combo potential with Caltrops, which creates infinite combat phases with the Hulk half of this commander. Beyond that, the gameplan is incredibly simple. Ping Hulk with small instances of damage while in combat and repeatedly attack your opponents into the dirt.

Surprisingly, this is not the only instance of Faerie Mastermind in the command zone that Marvel is bringing to Magic. T’Challa monitors your opponents and gives you a little bit of extra card advantage when they draw their second card per turn. On the other side, the Black Panther is a little less of a clear-cut powerful card. Double strike with a saboteur trigger to draw a card on combat damage is nice, but six mana for a 3/3 is a steep price to pay, and with only a damage prevention ability, the king doesn't come with great protection to stick on the board. Maybe T’Challa should leave the cat costume on the shelf for this outing.

The illustrious man in the metal suit is one of my favorite superheroes of all time, so I was excited to see that he got his own MDFC. On the front, Tony Stark is a simple but effective card advantage engine, allowing you to dig a few cards in to find an artifact from your library. With a high enough concentration, this should almost ever whiff. Once you’ve got some juicy haymakers in your hand, Invincible Iron Man lets you deploy one of them for free at the beginning of combat on your turn. If you want to build a Voltron-style deck, you also get to cheat on equip costs if the permanent you drop is an Equipment. Personally, I’ll be sticking to blasting the Iron Man 3 theme while dropping Blightsteel Colossus with a haste enabler on board.

Probably the most notable of the bunch, Jennifer Walters is a Voice of Victory in the command zone, which is already a powerful ability. This alone at two mana value pushes her into viability for cEDH, though she doesn’t protect against Boseiju, Who Endures and other ability-based interaction. The back side of this MDFC retains the hatebear effect, which is nice, but the second ability is a little less clear-cut. The suggestion seems to be that She-Hulk is a good commander for Fight Club-style decks like Neyith of the Dire Hunt, which seems reasonable, but not particularly exciting. Still, I expect to see plenty of this commander for…reasons…

Photon getting a lot of prominent and powerful cards in this set was certainly not on my bingo card for Marvel, but it’s a pleasant surprise. A three mana 3/3 with flying and prowess isn’t a bad start, but it’s hardly commander material. The backside is where she starts to shine: for five mana, you get a 4/4 with flying, prowess, and hexproof, and every time you cast a noncreature spell you Cathars' Crusade your board with +1/+1 counters. For those of you that enjoy playing dice-fumbling simulator (or you play digitally, where it’s much easier to track counters) this commander is very flexible to accommodate whatever shenanigans you’d like. Just make sure to pack plenty of token generators to maximize your buffs.

All According to Cake

Magic has received some interesting enchantments with subtypes in the past several years, and the Plan cards from this set are the latest addition to that category. Each Plan is a sort of progressive payoff, with each triggering event earning you some small bonus, for a larger payoff once you hit the requisite amount of plan counters. As with most things, the green entry Claim the Kingdom seems near the top end of these — four Landfall triggers is next to nothing, and an indestructible counter is plenty useful. There isn’t a ton of wiggle room with these, which is kind of a shame, but there are a few things to keep in mind with these:

• The enchantments only sacrifice themselves, so you’re free to recur them with effects like Sun Titan if the effect is impactful in your deck.
• You can use niche cards like Xavier Sal, Infested Captain or Scholar of New Horizons to remove plan counters and squeeze a few extra triggers in.
• Similar to Sagas, you can’t “skip” past the number of counters that causes the second ability of a Plan to trigger, so unless you can counter that ability, your plan will come to Forced Fruition.

The Home Base

There’s a new cycle of budget lands beginning in this set as well: Gathering Place, Training Compound, Dark Fortress, Hidden Lair, and Gleaming Bastion are all depictions of significant “home” locations for various groups in the Marvel multiverse, and the mechanics of the cards themselves are quite interesting. The lands only tap for one of two colors on the turn they enter or if you control a basic land. Like the “tango” lands, these lands actually get worse with a higher concentration of nonbasic or utility lands, and incentivize you to keep a healthy amount of basic lands in your decks to reliably use them. As more and more powerful utility lands get printed, it’s nice to see that we still get reasons to run basics too.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work...Kinda

The last big mechanic to come out of Marvel is teamwork, which is yet another spin on kicker. Unfortunately, outside of Limited environments, I don’t see any of these spells making a very big splash. Almost all of them are aimed at the tight margins and strict, combat-focused math that makes up the calculus of sealed formats. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is the closest thing this mechanic has to a usable spell, but even then, this effect has been done to death in green a dozen times over. If this card or one of the other spells with teamwork appeals to you, absolutely include it in your deck, but if you’re looking for the most powerful cards from the set to upgrade your decks with, look elsewhere.

All-Star Ensemble

Now that we’ve reviewed some of the cycles and mechanical themes prevalent in Marvel Super Heroes, it’s time to take a look at some of the strongest, coolest, and most interesting cards in the main set and Jumpstart set. Buckle up — there’s a lot to see.

The Mind Stone

Well, no surprises here. The next Infinity Stone is here, and The Mind Stone looks pretty similar to its sibling from the last Marvel-themed set. Much like The Soul Stone, the “harness” ability is rather expensive considering what you get for it — pretty much just a broader-use Teleportation Circle — but it’s still useful. Interestingly there is no additional cost for this harness ability, just the flat mana cost. I wonder what the other Infinity Stones will require for their abilities.

Quantum Entanglement

For fans of Zur the Enchanter and the long-lost Astral Slide meta of yore, Quantum Entanglement is a new spin. The initial investment of four mana is hefty for a singular blink, and having to repeatedly invest mana into it is not exactly ideal, but the flexibility here is interesting. With the way that the initial blink effect is designed into the enters trigger of this enchantment, you can essentially use a protection spell and deploy a blink engine piece at the same time, albeit for a high mana cost with an expensive maintenance. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this card showing up in slower, grinder, enters-trigger-focused decks.

Matt Murdock, Justice Seeker

Daredevil is yet another Marvel character for which I have a particular soft spot, and I was a little disappointed by the offerings across these two sets as far as playable commanders. Matt Murdock, Justice Seeker might not be a great commander, but he is a pretty great role-player in counters-matter themes. Paying mana to put counters on creatures is a worthwhile tradeoff for that extra layer of protection in ward 1.

Multiversal Recruitment

Copy spells aren’t anything new, nor are copy spells that work with legendary creatures, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore new entries to that list. Multiversal Recruitment lets you clone your big bad legendary haymakers, and it even has flashback for another round.

Immortus, Master of Eternity

This one is pretty weird. Immortus, Master of Eternity is a Wheels commander of a different philosophy. While he does benefit from the strategy by generating a ton of mana from the number of cards drawn in a turn, he also is a wheel himself. With a haste enabler, seven mana to cast Immortus and use his power-up can suddenly net you at least eight mana from the activated ability, or even more if you drew cards other ways that turn.

Doctor Doom, Unrivaled

Though slow, clunky, and susceptible to counterplay, Doctor Doom, Unrivaled is the first time a non-blue color has cared about having an empty library in relation to winning the game. Out of the Tombs addresses the situation where you’ve milled yourself out, but this Doom is the first instance of having a way to win the game with an empty library outside blue.

Thunderbolts Conspiracy

I’m a sucker for a good flash spell, and Thunderbolts Conspiracy is a great way to protect your Villain creatures from a boardwipe or stretch out fuel for an Aristocrats-style deck while also reusing enters triggers. If you can find an opportunity to use Artificial Evolution or have another way to make all of your creatures into Villains, this spell is even more flexible.

Fin Fang Foom

This one’s for you, Tomer! Fin Fang Foom is a really cool card that enhances token copy spells and targeted removal alike. For those among us that love BudgetCommander, copying Cleansing Wildfire while targeting indestructible lands like Darksteel Citadel or Cascading Cataracts is a great way to address mono-red’s ramp problem.

Heroes for Hire

Speaking of addressing issues in red, Heroes for Hire follows the example set by Professional Face-Breaker by allowing you to convert Treasures into additional impulse exile effects. As red gets more and more ways to create Treasure tokens, effects like this get more and more valuable for bridging the card advantage gap.

Devil Dinosaur

I would never have expected this set to be somewhere I’d see a strong new addition to Dinosaur Kindred decks, but here we are. Devil Dinosaur is a crazy card — four mana 5/5 with trample is already a good rate, but it’s basically just gravy here. The real prize is the +1/+1 anthem effect and hexproof for your board full of dinosaurs.

Lucky, the Pizza Dog

I’m not made of concrete. Cute dogs and pizza are two of the best things on the planet, and Lucky, the Pizza Dog is literally both of those things. 

Mole Man, Moloid Master

Just last year, we got the strongest rendition yet of Crucible of Worlds on a stick, and here we are again. While Mole Man, Moloid Master misses some of the elements that make Icetill such a strong card, it’s certainly still in the same conversation in terms of strength. Making tokens as a landfall trigger is already strong, but when those tokens also mill more cards themselves? I don’t even want to think of what the next version of Crucible on a creature will look like.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

It should surprise exactly 0 people reading this article that The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is splashy, fun, and goes infinite with a ham sandwich. Based on Marvel Rivals and the popularity of less-than-savory fanart spawned from that game, I'd say it's a safe bet that Squirrel Girl will be terrorizing tables at Commander night for months to come.

Armor Wars

“Draw a card for each artifact you control” is dangerous text on a Magic card, and previously the cheapest way to get that text was Edgar, King of Figaro. At four mana, everything after that the first chapter of Armor Wars is pretty much fluff.

The Serpent Society

Probably one of the most-discussed creatures I’ve seen from these sets so far, The Serpent Society has a zany ward trigger that makes it nearly impossible to target, at least more than once. But the real meat of this commander is that second line of text: Grave Pact for nontoken creatures in particular is a backbreaking effect to have access to in the command zone, even if you’re required to sacrifice creatures with deathtouch to trigger it. My prediction is that this commander gets banished to Bracket 4 jail almost immediately for being antifun.

H.E.R.B.I.E. Scout Unit

As time goes on, Solemn Simulacrum has started to lose some of its appeal despite its ubiquity. H.E.R.B.I.E. Scout Unit addresses some of the speed issues that Simulacrum presents by being a Growth Spiral instead of a Rampant Growth on a body. It's no longer as valuable as sacrifice fodder or a chump blocker, but it can help you get in for a combat damage trigger with flying as well.

Ultron, Artificial Malevolence

Who better to serve up some cold robotic copyslop than the self-replicating drone-producing Ultron, Artificial Malevolence itself? Ultron is capable of copying everything from artifact lands to mana rocks to copying copyslop itself.

On Your Left

And there we have it: a breakneck breakdown of some of the hottest and strongest new cards from Marvel Super Heroes and Jumpstart. There were a ton of cards to cover, and I'm sure that I missed some interesting cards. Did I miss any of your personal favorites? What commanders are you excited to build?

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