Strange as it is to say, we’re now in the back half of Magic: The Gathering’s Spider-Man preview season. By tomorrow, we’ll have the full set in our hands. For all the players who like to joke about Magic’s endless spoiler season, this is a seriously speedy turnaround. We’ve seen a lot of great stuff at the higher rarities so far, including a five-color Spider Typal Commander and some tasty Bonus Sheet reprints. Turns out, however, that Spider-Man has a lot of MTG goodness to offer down at the uncommon slot.
Since last night, we’ve seen a series of uncommons with a ton of potential. Even in the current, highly restrictive Standard, some of these cards have a legitimate chance to see play. Beyond Standard, others will have solid homes in Commander decks for years to come. While it got a lot of flak early on, Spider-Man is shaping up to be a very well-rounded Magic set indeed.
Rhino’s Rampage
- Mana Value: R/G
- Type: Sorcery
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Card Text: Target creature you control gets +1/+0 until end of turn. It fights target creature an opponent controls. When excess damage is dealt to the creature an opponent controls this way, destroy up to one target noncreature artifact with mana value 3 or less.
Rhino’s Rampage is a pretty absurd Magic card. Several players on Reddit have already called it the best card in the set, and it’s easy to see why. This is a one-mana fight spell that can also destroy a cheap artifact, making it an easy two-for-one in many scenarios.
Rampage is particularly well-suited to the current Standard metagame. This is a single, cheap card that can take out both Vivi and his pesky Cauldron in one fell swoop. The ‘just play Abrade‘ argument has become a meme because doing so leaves you behind tempo-wise, but Rampage doesn’t have that problem. When it works, it’s essentially both halves of Abrade for half the cost.
The card is also fantastic in the Mono-Red decks that are on the rise right now. As a fight spell, it’s an easy way to trigger Screaming Nemesis, and therefore counter lifegain strategies. The combination of a power boost and a fight effect makes it a great way to apply pressure on the board, too, since you can clear out a blocker, then get through with your pumped creature.
I haven’t even mentioned the card’s hybrid cost, which makes it easy to slot into a huge range of decks. The card is so efficient that I wouldn’t be surprised to see it beyond Standard, as a tech option in the likes of Modern and Pioneer. For a humble MTG Spider-Man uncommon, that’s not bad going at all.
Heroes’ Hangout
- Mana Value: R
- Type: Sorcery
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Card Text: Choose one –
- Date Night – Exile the top two cards of your library. Choose one of them. Until the end of your next turn, you may play that card.
- Patrol Night – One or two target creatures each get +1/+0 and gain First Strike until end of turn.
While it’s not seen so much now, Opera Love Song was a legitimate staple in Standard Mono-Red Aggro decks for a while post-Final Fantasy. The ability to choose between ‘card draw’ and damage as needed proved incredibly useful. Heroes’ Hangout is almost exactly half of Opera Love Song, for half the price, so it has potential right out of the gate.
You do ‘draw’ one less card here, but you get to go just as deep as with Love Song, so it’s comparable. The buff effect is also halved, but comes with First Strike, which may actually make it even better. When you factor in the cheaper one-mana cost, which is crucial in a deck as fast as Mono-Red, Hangout starts looking like a much better option.
Naturally, this means the card has potential in Standard Mono-Red lists. It could even be worth running in Vivi Cauldron, assuming that deck dodges bans for much longer. Both decks love cheap card draw, and Cauldron appreciates a cheap noncreature spell. In a similar vein, Pioneer Mono-Red decks, with all their Prowess creatures, could easily find slots for this too. Sorcery speed may end up killing the card, but for now, it looks exciting enough to try out.
Flash Thompson, Spider-Fan
- Mana Value: 1W
- Type: Legendary Creature – Human Citizen
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Card Text: Flash.
When Flash Thompson enters, choose one or both –
- Heckle – Tap target creature.
- Hero Worship – Untap target creature.
- Stats: 2/2
Moving from constructed to Commander now, the next spicy MTG Spider-Man uncommon from today is Flash Thompson. Excellent flavor aside, this card doesn’t look particularly exciting at first. Tapping and untapping creatures are both fairly common effects, after all. What gives Flash its potential, however, is the fact that it’s legendary.
As some players have already pointed out, this makes Flash a great addition to Sisay, Weatherlight Captain decks in cEDH. This deck often wins games through Derevi/Emiel combo lines, where they tap a mana dork like Bloom Tender, use the mana on Emiel’s ability to blink Derevi, then untap the dork and repeat infinitely.
Flash offers a new, cheaper alternative to Derevi for these lines. This also makes it easier to tutor up via Sisay’s ability, which can be a big deal in some games. While it lacks Derevi’s potential as a grindy value card, the turn or two you’ll save on your combos is well worth the trade-off.
Outside of Sisay lists the card looks much less appealing, but I wouldn’t count it out. There are lots of blink decks in casual Commander, and this is a solid piece for those. Being legendary also offers advantages with cards like Mox Amber and Delighted Halfling, so there’s a chance a lot of decks want this.
Molten Man, Embodiment Of The Inferno
- Mana Value: 2R
- Type: Legendary Creature – Elemental Villain
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Card Text: When Molten Man enters, search your library for a basic Mountain card and put it onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
This creature gets +1/+1 for each Mountain you control.
When this creature leaves the battlefield, sacrifice a land.- Stats: 0/0
Here to close things out, we have one of the more obscure Villains from Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery. Appropriately enough, Molten Man also taps into a fairly obscure Magic: The Gathering mechanic: temporary ramp. You get to tutor up a tapped Mountain when it enters, with the trade-off that you need to sacrifice a land when it leaves.
We’ve actually seen a near-identical design to this before, in the form of Alpine Guide. That was a fairly eclectic Modern Horizons card, so it’s cool to see the same mechanic in Standard. As with that card, Molten Man is best suited for Landfall decks, or those that can make good use of lands in graveyards. With the recent World Shaper Commander precon and cards like Icetill Explorer from Edge of Eternities, there are more ways to do this now than ever before.
There are plenty of lands-matter decks in Commander that will appreciate a card like this. The fact that it can actually be a well-costed threat later in the game is a nice bonus, too. What will be really interesting to see is whether or not it can make an impact in Standard. We’ve seen Landfall decks do well there recently, and this is another great piece for those. It may even see testing in some spicy versions of Mono-Red, as a chunky body that gets you multi-spelling quicker.