For the most part, Wizards reserves its wacky mechanical experiments for sets like Modern Horizons. Standard-legal expansions tend to be much more conservative, for obvious balancing reasons. That said, it seems they’re letting that rule slide a bit for Spider-Man, perhaps as a tribute to all the experiments of the series’ many villains. Today, we got our first look at Oscorp Industries, one of the most legitimately exciting MTG lands we’ve had in years.
This is a land that packs the set’s new Mayhem mechanic, which means it can be played from your graveyard if you discard it. We’ve never seen anything like this on a land before. In fact, Mark Rosewater specifically pointed out how such a design wouldn’t be possible back in 2021. Now, four years later, it’s here in our hands, and the potential for shenanigans is off the charts. As any long-time Magic player will tell you, weird rule-benders like these are always worth watching.
Oscorp Industries MTG
- Type: Land
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Text: This land enters tapped.
When this land enters from a graveyard, you lose 2 life.
Tap: Add U, B, or R.
Mayhem (You may play this card from your graveyard if you discarded it this turn. Timing rules still apply.)
To get the obvious out of the way: yes, Oscorp Industries will see a ton of play in MTG Commander. Lands that tap for three colors of mana are extremely rare, with only Xander’s Lounge and Crumbling Necropolis filling that role for Grixis right now. Simply by virtue of being another option in this arena, Oscorp Industries will be added to a ton of Grixis decks. Unless you’re in a hyper-aggressive pod, it’s often worth taking a turn off to fix your colors perfectly.
There are also plenty of decks that can make use of the card’s Mayhem ability. To clarify: if you can discard this land, in any way, you can play it as your land drop for the turn. This doesn’t give you an extra land drop, but it does get you some extra value out of your discard effects.
Naturally Norman Osborn//The Green Goblin wants it, but so do a number of other Grixis icons. Rising cEDH star Kefka, Court Mage will love it, as will casual powerhouse Sauron, the Dark Lord. Even outside of dedicated decks, incidental discard is very common in Magic designs these days, as we’ll see here shortly. Oscorp gives you a new way to use that to your advantage. The two life you need to pay to do so is basically irrelevant in Commander, to boot.
The Skyscraper’s The Limit
While it sounds like a long shot, I think there’s a real chance that Oscorp Industries also sees a bit of play in other MTG formats, specifically Standard and Pioneer. This isn’t because there are Grixis decks crying out for fixing in those formats. Rather, it’s because discard is such a pivotal part of the top decks in each.
Current Standard is dominated by Vivi Cauldron, which runs a ton of ways to discard cards. Between Fear of Missing Out, Winternight Stories, and Tersa Lightshatter, the deck does it all the time. Generally these discards don’t really progress the deck’s gameplan, so Oscorp Industries gives the deck potential for some extra value. It could easily sub in for the Thundering Falls the deck plays already, since both are enters-tapped lands.
In Pioneer, Rakdos Midrange is a similar proposition. The deck plays Bloodtithe Harvester, Fear of Missing Out, and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker as standard, so triggering Oscorp’s Mayhem would be trivial. While it doesn’t currently run any enters-tapped lands for an easy switch-in, the possibility of a ‘free’ land drop here could be worth cutting something for.
The smart money in Magic typically isn’t bet on tap lands, especially in constructed. That said, Oscorp Industries plays so differently to its peers that it could well be an exception. Getting to hit land drops via discard totally changes a lot of in-game math, which could easily push this card into contention.
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