Spider-Man spoiler season has come and gone, but there’s a good chance you haven’t seen everything. Cards came out so quickly that many players haven’t had the opportunity to properly digest everything they’ve seen so far. As a result, some very powerful cards fell through the woodwork.
Four more Spider-Man cards can create some interesting synergies in established archetypes. These aren’t quite as flashy as the headliners for the set, but these overlooked cards can provide some powerful upgrades to commonly seen archetypes and popular Commander precons.
Biorganic Carapace
Biorganic Carapace is an interesting equipment that, in the right deck, can draw a ton of Magic cards. The buff itself is not that interesting, but in Commander decks, the ability to start drawing a lot of cards immediately is incredibly interesting. At its worst, when dealing combat damage, Biorganic Carapace will always replace itself, but it has the potential to do a lot more.
Biorganic Carapace looks best as an upgrade to the Final Fantasy Counter Blitz precon. Going wide with Modified creatures in that deck is incredibly easy, which allows Biorganic Carapace to refill your hand more often than not. Biorganic Carapace is hindered by the lack of Trample, something that this archetype struggles with commonly. Fortunately, with new Final Fantasy additions like Sphere Grid and Maester Seymour, Counter Blitz is already playing with this downside in mind. This allows Biorganic Carapace to slot in much easier, making it a welcome upgrade to the precon.
Hobgoblin, Mantled Marauder
Hobgoblin, Mantled Marauder seems like a fantastic addition to Modern Hollow One decks, as well as any deck that’s constantly discarding cards. If you’re discarding two cards with an effect like Faithless Looting or Tersa Lightshatter, Hobgoblin will swing for five Flying Haste damage. That’s a ton of pressure from a two-mana creature.
Whether or not Hobgoblin sees play more depends on how the decks that would adopt it are doing. While this is great in Hollow One, that is not a popular Modern deck at the time of writing. Tersa isn’t a particularly popular inclusion in Standard Mono-Red decks, either, but the card is so aggressive that it could change how those decks are built. The card certainly has potential, but only part of a larger shell.
Alien Symbiosis
For two mana, Alien Symbiosis is more interesting than it may look at first glance. Not only will this Aura ensure that Boggle-style decks always have an Aura to attach to their creatures, but Alien Symbiosis can also enable Mayhem should any of those strategies adapt the mechanic.
Alien Symbiosis does have direct competition in Auras decks with Sentinel’s Eyes, in Pioneer and Historic. Symbiosis will make your creatures more difficult to block, however, which is particularly valuable in decks like this. Symbiosis, in combination with Lightpaws, Emperor’s Voice, the common key payoff for Auras decks nowadays, can also find much more powerful Auras, like Sheltered by Ghosts.
This card may not look like much, but between Pioneer and Historic Auras decks, and aggressive decks that want to take advantage of Mayhem, Alien Symbiosis may have some play.
Maximum Carnage
Maximum Carnage is not a two-player MTG card. In Commander, this card can wreak some absolute havoc, and plays very well alongside any Commanders that care about Goading creatures. It also speeds up the game significantly alongside aggressive Commanders like The Lord of Pain. In those decks, all three modes of this card are fantastic. The first mode is certainly the best, and what makes this card worth playing. That said, adding three mana to ramp out powerful cards, especially after your opponents were forced to attack one another, can make Maximum Carnage that much more devastating. In that way, this works as an upgrade to the Duskmourn Commander precon Endless Punishment.
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