Marvel Super Heroes Cube Review Part 1: New Mechanics and Themes

Ryan Overturf begins his first impressions Cube review of Marvel Super Heroes, going over the various product lines associated with the set, and the set's mechanics and themes! 

Transcript

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What's up, gamers? Welcome back to 180MTG. My name is Ryan Oberturf, and today marks part one of my two-part Early Impressions Cube review for Marvel Superheroes. So the way I do these, the first episode and these installments, I'm going over mechanics and themes of the set, and then next week I'll be back talking about a number of individual cards that maybe don't necessarily fit into the themes, but kind of stand on their own as a designs that could be appealing for cube. And before I get into things, this set is pretty unique relative to any set that I've tackled, kind of relative to the history of magic. There is such a high volume of new cards. So uh if you are familiar with Marvel's Spider-Man, that was a set that was very small, only had so many new cards, didn't really have much with supplemental releases, and didn't have a ton of cards to talk about. Marvel Superheroes has a main set which is 50% larger than Spider-Man. This is almost a 300 card main set. There is a jumpstart set that has a little bit over 150 new cards in the jumpstart set. There are four commander decks. The commander decks all have a bunch of new cards, and on top of that, there's a beginner box and also welcome decks that have mechanically unique cards. So there's a ton to unpack here, but I'm not going to be doing any kind of huge deep dive talking over every card that might be appealing. A lot of the purpose of this mechanics and themes breakdown is to point you in the direction of where you might want to look deeper. So there's just a ton of themes with everything going on with all these different products and all these different avenues for releasing new cards. I'm kind of going to look at each of these releases, each of these kinds of products, and what's going on with them and where you might want to look deeper there, as well as talking about some of the bigger themes in the commander decks and the main set. I'll be highlighting a number of individual cards that speak to these themes, and then if you are interested in looking into those themes, anything that I acknowledge as a theme is going to be something that you'll be able to dip into Scryfall and do a deeper search on in the set if you are interested in those themes. Something that I think that Marvel Superheroes does really well broadly across all these different products that are releasing for the set is that these largely are going to be cards designed for fans of Marvel characters. And there's very little here that Screams constructed staple, cards that people that are entrenched magic players are going to need to go out and get four copies of. Of course, there are strong cards in the set, they don't make cards nearly as weak as they used to. The average card is just much stronger than the average card was 5, 10, 15 years ago. That is absolutely true. But there's nothing, there's not a lot in this release across all of these products that has very high value over replacement. The one standout, there's just some designs we're going to talk about, but the the huge standout, the card that I think is kind of a design mistake in the file that you've probably heard some buzz about is the Fantasticar from the Fantastic War Commander set. We're going to talk about that one next week. But broadly, I think there's just a lot of appealing and cool designs here, and very little that really screams that you need to play with this. This is more a celebration of these characters for people that want to play with them, while also having some cards that will open some space that is interesting to explore. There's certainly some stuff I'm going to need to pick up for some of my cubes here. So let's kind of dig into the different products here first, break that down. I'm lumping this all together. I'm not going to do separate episodes for any of these products. I'm kind of just using a broad brush here because I don't want to do more than two weeks for Marvel superheroes. So I want to start today talking about the beginner box. There's not a lot to unpack there, it's just a few mechanically unique cards, and these are for new players. So they're at a lower power level, similar to old, like those planeswalker decks, where you have this like six-mana, really inefficient planeswalker if you're familiar with those. But there's something that is really amusing to me that stands out with the beginner box. And there's just three cards here that are functional reprints from Avatar to Last Airbender supplemental products, which are going to be the Wasp, Janet Van Dyne, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, and Happy Hogan Dauntless Driver. Two of these are very simple. Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes is a one white mana 2-2 that enters tapped. Happy Hogan Dauntless Driver is a one red mana 2-1 creature with no abilities, just a vanilla 2-1. And the Wasp Janet Van Dyne is 2 1 White for a 1-1 flyer that when it enters deals 4 damage to a tapped creature your opponents control. Now these are exact reprints of cards from Avatar. Like I said, you have Warship Scout, your 1 red mana, 2-1, Wolf Cove Villager is your 1 white mana, 2-2 that enters tapped, and Momo Rambunctious Rascal is your 3 mana 1-1 flyer that deals 4 damage to a tapped creature your opponent controls. Small differences between these cards, the Avatar 1 drops were not legendary, whereas the Marvel equivalents are now on legendary creatures. But we're still signaling here that one red mana 2-1 is a card that they are fine printing a bunch of different copies of, which is something that's a little bit jarring, you know, if you're used to the days of Jackal Pup, even Fire Drinker, Seder, the days of those cards being strong and constructed are long past. And now Vanilla 2-1 is just a card you put in front of somebody to teach them magic because it's not going to break anything in any constructed format. Same with the tapped white 2-2, and amusingly to me, the 3-mana 1-1 flyer that deals 4 damage to a tapped creature. That text box having a little bit more going on, this kind of this white ability that makes sense in white, but this exact shape of card we haven't seen in a regular booster release, even though it could totally appear in retail limited. It's funny to me that that one has now appeared in two different universes beyond supplemental products. So that's one I do have that Momo in one of my cubes, and I have Wolfkov Villager in two of my cubes. And while I don't know if I'll be picking up any copies of the Wasp's Janet Van Dyne, it's at least worth shouting out that it is a human over Momo's lemur, so a more relevant creature type there, and the one white mana tapped 2-2 and the one red mana 2-1. These are cards that could appeal to somebody for cube. Like I said, I am cubing with Wolfco Villagers, and that legendary super type on these two new one drops does mean that they can appeal if you're trying to facilitate the inclusion of Mox Amber while maintaining singleton. Just getting more unique named one drops could matter for that. So while these cards are not groundbreaking, I'm talking about them because they are amusing as functional reprints in this kind of capacity, the way that they're released, it does really amuse me, but they are potentially appealing cards. They are things that might appeal to somebody for cube, so I wanted to share them because they're kind of obscure and something you might not have heard about otherwise. Moving on to the welcome decks, Marvel Superheroes has one monocolor welcome deck for all five colors of magic, just like Marvel's Spider-Man, each of them with a small sampling of mechanically unique cards, also including one legendary creature that sort of leads the deck, even though they are just kind of played as decks you shuffle up and play. It's not a commander thing, and these cards are at a lower power level. This is very much a beginner product. These decks are given to WPN stores to give out to players, with the idea being that you use them to teach somebody magic. And for that reason, I really don't like the mechanically unique aspect here. I really don't like that there's cards that only come out in these decks, but they exist. We're gonna talk about them a little bit. They're kind of modest, but they are some cards that if you're playing in certain themes, you might be interested in playing with them. There's one of them that I personally need to track down. Again, these cards are at a lower power level than the other releases for this set. They are designed for new players, but they are still appealing on some level. They are modeled after beloved characters, and they are cards that they want people to play with. You want people to get into magic and the days of rocks being enough to get a player into magic, Thorn Elemental is not really cutting it anymore. So these cards are a little bit stronger, and with cube being so customizable, with there being just such a wide range of how powerful or how low power you want your cube to be, some of these cards might appeal to you. Take, for example, the blue face card, Iron Man Modern Marvel, two blue blue, three three legendary artifact creature, human hero with flying and other artifact creatures you control get plus one plus one. Whenever Iron Man attacks, if you control another artifact creature, draw a card. So 4 mana, 3-3, flying lord for artifact creatures that draws cards when it attacks. This is not quite cutting it for like the artifact tubert or some other artifact-heavy environments that I'm working on, but it's not entirely out of the question. I could put Iron Man Modern Marble in the Artifact Tubert, and it would play. It might be weaker than whatever blue card I cut for it, but it is just reasonable stats here. This would be a strong rare in some standard formats of old. It's a little inefficient to show up now, but because cube tends to encompass the entire history of magic, I could absolutely see somebody wanting to cube with this card. And there is more of an artifacts matter theme going on in the Marvel Superheroes main set. I just wanted to talk about the welcome decks here first, so I won't be talking about Iron Man Modern Marvel again, but I do also just want to quickly touch on two more cards from these welcome decks. One is the card that I'm looking at to acquire for one of my projects. This is Spider-Man Web Spinner, the red face card. 3 and a red for a 2-3 legendary creature, spider human hero with double strike, haste, and whenever Spider-Man attacks, target creature can't block this turn. Now on rate, there's a lot of four drops that are much more powerful than this, but I've been working on a cube that is largely built around uh Soul Flayer and Odric Lunark Marshall, cards that care about you having these kind of static creature ability keywords and being able to amass a lot of them. Odric to give it to all your creatures, Soul Flayer to have this card in your graveyard and to get those abilities for itself. So double strike and haste are both very significant keywords for both of these cards, and then fleshing out the environment, there's kind of a haste matters archetype and kind of a double strike matters archetype kind of loosely seated into there on top of feeding these two cards. And it so happens I have a red four-drop and that cube that has been underperforming. So this just checks a lot of the boxes there. And so this card is not like groundbreaking on rate, on power level. It's good. It has double strike, haste, it has the ability to make one creature unable to block every combat, so it likely comes down and hits for four on turn four. It's not busted, but it's not weak. And this is why I don't like this mechanically unique cards in the welcome decks things. So I just want to talk about that a little bit. I'm a little annoyed that I have to go attract down another welcome deck to get my hands on this card. I do understand designing rares for these decks in a different way than you design rares for the main set. I just think this distribution model where you're only able to get any cards from these welcome decks is pretty rough. I would like them to stop doing that. And just to beat this dead horse a little more, I want to talk about one more mechanically unique card from the welcome decks here. I'm pretty sure this information involved a lot of different surges and looking at different pages to read every card from this massive release. But there's an uncommon in the black welcome deck. So this is not the face card. I believe this card is only in the black welcome deck. It's Ultimo Civilization's End, four black, black, six, five, legendary artifact, creature, robot, villain, has menace, and when Ultimo enters, each opponent sacrifices a creature. And you can also pay two and a black to discard this card, each opponent sacrifices a creature. So this is the kind of thing that I think really works in like a medium or a lower power level cube. It's doing kind of a reanimator thing without having the really high power stuff like actual in tomb and reanimate. The fact that this is just kind of castable and has an edict attached to it, Menace Body, the fact that it's a built-in discard outlet and you have this interaction with that edict there. This is a card that could just be a part of Retail Limited. With this kind of release model, it's just really obscure. I expect a lot of players to not have heard of it. And I've played cubes where Ultimo Civilizations End would be a pretty sick card to have in that cube. So I'm talking about this card because I want that people to be aware of it. You know, if you have a cube that you would want to include Ultimo Civilizations End, you want this edicting 6 mana 6-5 managed creature with a self-contained discard ability that also functions as an edict. It just plays really well in kind of these lower power reanimator decks, then hey, now you've heard of the card, which you might not have otherwise, which is another unfortunate aspect of this distribution model. Alright, so now let's move on to the commander decks. There's four commander decks released alongside Marvel superheroes. Each has a pretty strong theme, so I'm just gonna break down the themes for all four commander decks and identify one or a couple marquee cards there, if you want to dive into that. Again, I think that these commander decks do a really good job of speaking to characters and themes that are really self-contained in these Marvel sets. For example, the first is Avengers Assemble, which is a Jesku Heroes Matter deck. So hero and villain are two creature types that we see introduced in Marvel's Spider-Man, and now we're seeing them show up again in Marvel Superheroes, and you just don't see hero or villain used in other magic releases, even other universes beyond releases, because the idea is that these card types can be contained and allow them to flesh out stuff in this Marvel world. So if you want to build a Marvel Commander deck, a Marvel Heroes deck, you can do that, and all these cards will play well together without really leading to them seeping into a lot of other archetypes and ways to play magic. So the heroes matter cards largely play with the other heroes matter cards, which means that the Marvel cards play best with the other Marvel cards. A really strong example of this: the face commander or one of the face commanders for the Avengers Assemble deck is Director Nick Fury, Jessai Mana, Blue, Red, White for a 2-4, legendary human spy hero. Hero spells you cast cost one less to cast. Whenever you attack, look at the top four cards of your library. You may reveal a hero card from among them and put that card to your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. A number of cards in this deck, and then also in the main Marvel Superheroes set, are going to have the type hero and also call out heroes for some kind of hero synergy, so they're going to play best together. A number of the cards in these commander decks are rated so that they could play well in two-player games, a lot of two and three mana stuff, which is where you can start entering the territory of accidentally making constructed staples. Again, more on that next week. But more to the topic at Hand on the Cube podcast, that means they can be more appealing for 40 card formats. I like that you are kind of forced to care about heroes if you want to play with most of these cards, and if you want to flesh out heroes as a creature type that matters, then the Avengers Assemble Commander deck is something worth taking a look at for your cube. The next commander deck is called Wakanda Forever. It's a Celestia Artifacts Matter and also Monarch Matters deck. One of the face commanders here actually stands out among Celestia cards for an Artifact Matters Cube environment. Green I've talked about on the podcast before. Anyone that's worked on an artifact matters cube, you know that green gives you the least to work with here, so it's meaningful to get a Celestia card that cares about artifacts. So one of the face commanders here, Shiri the Black Panther, green white for a 2-3, legendary human noble hero with lifelink. Whenever Shiri attacks, draw a card if you control three or more artifacts. Then if you control six or more artifacts, creatures you control get plus two, plus two until end of turn. So if you have green cards in your artifact cube, that is something that a number of curators will assume. Remember the artifact cube when that was on Magic Online was a four-color, not green cube because there's just so few green cards that play great with artifacts, but there are more all the time. So Shiri does stand out as a potential Celestnia card for an artifact-centered environment there. Beyond that, though, as I dug into this commander deck, there's something I like about it in terms of design, but I don't like about it in terms of appeal to me specifically. I think that this is really well designed to be for commander players. There's a lot of artifacts costing four or more, and it matters that you're casting expensive artifacts. And there's a lot of stuff that does cool things with the monarch that plays pretty fun for multiplayer games. And for me, you know, four plus mana stuff, my cubes tend to be pretty light on that. Monarch is a mechanic that is featured in very few of my cubes. I think today I only have it in a uh powered environment that I've been working on. And even there, I don't really spend much time reading new monarch cards. It's not something I'm particularly interested in cubing more with, but that mostly is just to say that I think that Wakanda Forever is a great design in terms of appealing to the players it's supposed to appeal to. I think it's just a well-designed commander deck. There's maybe a little bit worth looking into if you like cubing with the monarch. I would definitely check out this deck. There's gonna be some green and white cards that lend to some monarch games, and Shuri the Black Panther does stand out as a Celestia Artifact Matters card. The third commander deck is the Fantastic Four, a white, blue, red, green commander deck built around a lot of legendary creatures, with kind of a non-creature spells matter theme going on, and they tend to be a lot of things that are in that prowess space but only trigger once per turn. So to exemplify what I mean, let's look at one of the face commanders here, Mr. Fantastic, two and a blue for a 2-4 legendary human scientist hero with vigilance and reach. At the beginning of combat on your turn, if you cast a non-creature spell this turn, draw a card, so you can do that once per turn, you know, only if you've cast a non-creature before you move to combat there. And then for red, green, white, blue, you can tap Mr. Fantastic to copy target triggered ability you control twice. You may choose new targets for the copies. So there's one face commander that has these four color abilities for all of the Fantastic Four members there. So I was talking about the different four color cards when I did my color-based archetype breakdown here on the podcast, and how there is just way more blue, white, red, green four-color cards than any other four-color pair. So the Fantaster Four commander deck increases the lead there, which I do find pretty amusing. And then with this stuff, only caring about casting a non-creature spell once and triggering once a turn, these are gonna be cards that don't necessarily play into a prowess space. This is way more kind of an engine building thing. Controlling all of the members of Fantastic Four is gonna be good turn over turn value, kind of a storytelling thing and an engine building thing for commander. So again, this stuff is largely more commander stuff than cube stuff, which I think is great. That said, Mr. Fantastic is price to move. You could certainly play this card in the cube. It could draw you a card every turn on a three mana 2-4. With Vigilance and Reach, you know, it's nothing, it's nothing awful. This card is not weak, but I do think it speaks more to commander than it does to two-player games, which is how I like my commander decks designed. A pretty cool element of the Fantastic Four deck, and where I think that it is a little bit more worth delving into for cube considerations, is that there's a number of cards with rebound. That's a mechanic where when the spell resolves, then you put it into exile and you get to cast the card again at your next upkeep. So the idea there is that a rebound spell can trigger these caring about casting a non-creature spell abilities twice. You do it over the course of two turns the first time you cast it, and then when you cast it off of rebound, so it really works there. But then also rebound is just kind of an inherently strong mechanic, assuming that the card is priced to move and is reasonable to play because you get to do it twice. So the highlight there for me is going to be it's clobberin' time. Two and a green is a sorcery, you choose one, target creature you control deals damage equal to its power to target a creature an opponent controls, or destroy target artifact or an enchantment, and then it rebounds, so you do it again next turn. This is a little bit inefficient, but you do it twice. You have a green removal spell or a green naturalize effect, so it plays really well in this caring about non-creature spells theme here, and it really works with these cards that only trigger once per turn. And this is just a solid cube card. I think it's Clobber and Time could definitely show up in a lot of cubes, just having that green removal. Also kind of stapled onto the same card that is the naturalize effect. It can be really difficult for those kind of effects to make main decks, even though you want them in certain matchups and games. So I do like this design quite a lot. And then the final commander deck is Doom Prevails, a Grixis villains deck. Once again, villain. Villains being just kind of contained to the Marvel releases, so these cards largely meant to be played with each other, and then going back into the villains of Marvel Spider-Man. The face card here is Doctor Doom, King of Ladviria. One blue, black, red, three, three, a legendary, human, noble villain. Whenever you discard one or more land cards, each opponent loses two life, and to the inning of combat on your turn, target villain you control gains menace until end of turn, and it connives. Reminder that connive is you draw a card, then discard a card. If you discarded a non-land card, put a plus one plus one counter on that creature. So connive is a mechanic originally from Streets and Noob Capenna. We see it once again making a comeback in Marvel superheroes, and a lot of villains are conniving, very flavorful to have that happen. They're plotting, they're conniving. And once again, the Doom Prevails deck is really just stuff meant to be played with each other in terms of having to care about villains. So if you want to design a cube or work on a cube that has villains matter as a creature type, then the Doom Prevails Commander deck is worth looking at. And there's not really a lot that jumps out of the deck list really for cube considerations beyond that, at least as I looked over the list. But then the Doom Prevails decklist does kind of highlight and segue to something I want to say about Jumpstart. So when it comes to Marvel Superheroes, I'm going to get to the mechanics and themes on the main set, talking about the new keywords, but um it was not that difficult. You know, I took a little time here to talk about the four commander decks. They're pretty forward in what they do. There's just four themes to talk about, but then the jumpstart release, there are so many different themes and mechanics explored in jumpstart. I recommend just if you are interested in maybe picking up any cards from this set, which not everybody's going to be as too super reasonable, but I do just want to say that the jumpstart release here covers so many different themes. You can look over the list of themes. There is like a list of all of the different face cards for every jumpstart booster, so you can see all the supported themes there. There's a ton going on. Uh, the reason that I'm segueing off of the Doom Prevails deck here is that Mayhem, that's kind of the madness adjacent mechanic introduced in Spider-Man, makes a repeat a repeat appearance here in Marvel Superheroes, but not in the main set. It only appears in like the Doom Prevails Commander deck and in the Jumpstart boosters, only any of the supplemental product here. So you have this discard matter stuffs, connive does show up again in the main set, but the kind of limited the use of a bunch of different keywords in the main set, so mayhem only really showing up as a returning mechanic in those supplemental products, and then in jumpstart, there's gonna be all kinds of stuff, a ton of different plus one, plus one counters themes, blink themes, and everything that's in the main set, you're going to see some of that in jumpstart, heroes, villains, but then there also are a lot of really unique packages. There's like one that cares about dealing damage to yourself, and so there's some individual cards I'm gonna talk about from jumpstart next week. But as far as talking about the set's themes, I'm just not going to break down everything going on in Jumpstart. There's just too much going on with this release. Instead, I'm gonna focus a little bit more on what's going on in the main set, and you know, next week I'll circle back and talk about the most notable jumpstart cards, but truly it is worth just looking over the different packet types for jumpstart because they cover a ton of different mechanics, and you know, you're gonna have the stuff that's in the main set, but then also a lot of quirky stuff and a lot of stuff that really doesn't show up in the main set. So the jumpstart, like every jumpstart release, there's some really mechanically unique stuff there, and some themes not explored in the main set worth checking out. Now we are almost to the point of talking about mechanics and themes in the main set, but really quick, one of the main set themes, I had mentioned that Knive does appear in the Marvel Superheroes main set, but then Mayhem is in only the supplemental products. So there is a discard matters theme in the main set, but then you get a little bit more going on there in the commander deck, and then also in jump start. A pretty cool card from jump start in this discard matter space where you will see some mayhem cards is sadistic slash. It's an instant for three and a black. Target creature gets minus five, minus five until end of turn, and then it has mayhem for one and a black, so you can cast it from your graveyard for one and a black if you discard it this turn. And it's actually an instant, so unlike a lot of other mayhem things, you can only cast spells with mayhem with their normal timing restrictions. So sadistic slash being an instant does make it a pretty significant removal spell for a madness style deck. So pretty cool discard matters card there from jumpstart. But now let's lean in and actually talk about the mechanics and themes featured in the Marvel Superheroes main set. So just kind of starting continuing along this discard matters theme. You do see a number of conniving villains in the main set. Probably the coolest design here, so I'm gonna highlight this one is Baron Helmet Zemo. Baron Helmet Zemo is a 3-3 legendary human noble villain for black, black, black. So that triple black casting cost, kind of iconic for a number of really strong cards, and also some flops in Magic's history, but it's always a mana cost that turns heads. So what Baron Helmet Zemo does is whenever you cast a black spell from your hand, it connives and it has a boast ability. So if you've attacked with it this turn, you can activate this boast ability, which has a cost of exile any number of black cards from your graveyard with 15 or more black mana symbols among their mana costs. Copy those exiled cards. You may cast up to three of those copies without paying their mana costs. So huge payoff, but it does require you to be in a heavy black deck. Baron Helmet Zemo, probably only for color-restricted cubes or something. Maybe you're playing with like a lot of lot of Phyrexian mana. You have a card like Kirick, Son of a Yogg Moth. There's ways to do this in a cube that features all five colors. You do have to figure out a way to get players to have access to black, black, black. Guards like Dark Ritual or Borg Tomb of Yogg Moth can definitely do this on easy mode. It's gonna be for specific environments, but I do think that Baron Helmet Zemo is probably the most appealing Knive card in the set. Moving on to other themes, I've mentioned how heroes and villains, there's a commander deck for each of those. Those are gonna show up as themes and jumpstart, and that's of course going to be a theme in the main set here as well. You're gonna have heroes matter cards, villains matter cards, and there's also a small sampling of Murphok in the main set, and then some of this going on in the jumpstart sets as well. There's not a ton of murfolk cards, but the ones present are pretty appealing. So some stuff for Murfolk fans, these are all going to be variants or characters related to Namor the Submariner, which is the name of uh probably the biggest one here, Mythic Rear from the main set. Namor the Submariner is a 3 mana X4 for 1 blue blue, a legendary mutant Merfolk villain with flying. Namor's power is equal to the number of Murphok you control, so as a baseline, gives himself one power, and then whenever you cast a non-creature spell with one or more blue mana symbols and its mana cost, create that many 1-1 blue murfolk creature tokens. So Namor the Submariner plays really well with cards like Force of Will and Force of Negation because it just counts the blue mana symbols in the mana cost of the spell. It doesn't care about blue mana that you spend. So Taxi and Probe gonna trigger this right away. Your ponders, preordinance, are gonna play with Namor the Submariner, cards like Time Warp are gonna be really strong here, maybe more of an army and a can card than a Merfolk card, but Merfolk decks are gonna want some cards like Counter Spell, and then Namor is gonna make a bunch of Merfolk, and if you have some Merfolk lords, then those are gonna get pumped. So there's actually kind of a lot of ways to find Namor the Submariner appealing in the cube space. Certainly one of the more exciting cards from this set in terms of broad cube appeal, but then those heroes and villains cards, as I've been saying, they are more parasitic, more zoomed in on playing specifically just with Marvel cards. So for example, you have Avengers Assemble, four and a white for an enchantment with flash, heroes you control get plus two plus two, and the beginning of each end step, if you attacked with a hero this turn, or a hero entered the battlefield under your control this turn, draw a card. So kind of a typal payoff that is you pay for what you get. This isn't really breaking any records. You can get a lot of stuff that's kind of about this strong where you choose a creature type. So this is specifically to be played with Marvel cards with heroes. You get that Avengers assemble, the aesthetics really strong here. This is really only for people that are trying to play with this creature type with these cards. The villains cards are much the same, and actually the villains are even more modest than heroes generally. I was looking at the main set, and all the stuff is pretty rated for limited. So here's an example: the Masters of Evil. Five and a black for a five-six legendary human villain that says other villains you control get plus two plus one, and for one and a black you can discard the masters of evil to search your library for a plan card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle. So a six mana lord for villains, not that strong. Not a lot to talk about there, not a lot to talk about for villains. This is really for fans of Marvel that want to play with some of their favorite villainous characters. But uh the shout out there, find a plan card. You're probably wondering, what's that? Well, that comes to uh a new card type, another mechanic featured in the set. So plans. What are plans? Plan is a new enchantment subtype that appears on a handful of cards in Marvel Superheroes. These are really similar to quests from original Zendikar. So what they are, let's take an example. Doom reigns supreme, one in a black for an enchantment plan. Whenever a villain you control enters, each opponent loses one life and you gain one life, put a plan counter on this enchantment. When the fifth plan counter is put on this enchantment, sacrifice it. When you do target opponent exiles the top five cards with our library, you may cast up to two spells from among the exiled cards without paying their mana cost. So once again, you see kind of how modest the villain cards are, and you see the texture of what plans are. So plans, they have some criteria. You do a thing, you do that thing enough times, you accumulate enough plan counters by doing the thing, and then you get a payoff. All of the plans in this set are villainous plans, they all depict some antagonist here, Doctor Doom featured on Doom Rain Supreme. And like I was saying, these are just very similar texturally to cards we've seen before, very reminiscent of quest cards from original Xendicar, and then all of these they have a really strong aesthetic focus and the power level. These are really kind of designed to be played with other Marvel cards. Of course, Doom Rain Supreme, specifically calling out villains, a card type only supported in the Marvel sets. So not a lot to explore there unless you're specifically building a Marvel themed cube. There is a minor equipment matters theme in Marvel Superheroes that also kind of expands into modified creatures. This is touched on in the commander decks. This is something that you see in a couple of different themes in Jumpstart, a lot of plus one plus one counter stuff there, certainly more equipment matters stuff. There's one card that's really allowed in terms of being strong equipment support in the main set, and I want to highlight this card for a couple reasons. And that card is the Mighty Thor Jane Foster. So for one white blue, the Mighty Thor Jane Foster is a 3-3 legendary human god hero with flying. Whenever the Mighty Thor attacks, exile up to one target non-token artifact or creature, then return that card to the battlefield tapped under its owner's control. And whenever an equipment you control enters, draw a card. So you have this kind of pure steel paladin card, but it's on a blue-white, a gold card, a little bit more price to move. 3 mana, 3-3 flyer versus that double pipped white-white 2-2 makes this card, albeit a gold card, a little bit easier to cast for a lot of decks. Also with base stats that are just more appealing. And then you also have this blink ability. So that attack trigger, you exile up to one target, non-token, artifact, or creature. This could be to blink your own things. The return to the battlefield tapped though, so it can also be used to remove a blocker. So a pretty strong aggressive card here clearly plays in equipment decks, and then also has this blink thing going on, which is kind of a classic blue-white thing to do. So if you want to do like equipment in Boros and Blink in Azorius, the Mighty Thor Jane Foster is a really nice bridge card there. So this card definitely appeals if you're doing one or both of those things in cube. And white is often going to be a color where you're going to see the main focus for an equipment matters kind of archetype. So the Mighty Thor Jane Foster really stands out among cubable cards in the Marvel Superheroes set. In addition to equipment matters, also a bit of an Artifacts Matter theme. This is largely just going to appear on the Iron Man cards. Uh, probably the strongest and most appealing card here, and it is an equipment, is going to be Iron Man Armor, a three mana artifact equipment that says when this equipment enters, attach it to target creature you control. Equip creature gets plus two plus one and has flying. For two mana, if this equipment isn't a creature, it becomes a zero zero construct hero artifact creature with flying, and this creature gets plus one plus one for each artifact you control until end of turn, and equip for two. So either you can equip it for two to give the creature plus two plus one in flying, it also snaps on when it enters, or for two mana, you can turn Iron Man armor into like that flying construct, a carn struct that we've seen a number of times. So this card can scale to be really large. It does just snap on, plays really nicely as an equipment that grants grants a little bit of power and some evasion, or it can attack on its own. Pretty appealing card for Artifacts Matter. You have to spend the mana every turn if it's attacking as a creature itself, but it's pretty useful for an equipment to be able to do that while also snapping on. The rate tier on Iron Man armor does just make this stand out pretty significantly for Artifacts Matters type themes. This is one that I probably have to get my hands on for the Artifact Tubert. Iron Man Armor does strike me as one of the stronger equipments of all time for a more generalized artifact and or equipment matters theme for a cube. Compares, I would say favorably to a card like Nettle Syst. It doesn't immediately make a germ, and the way that it functions as a snap-on equipment versus the way that it animates, those are different textures, but the fact that when you animate the Iron Man armor itself, it gets flying, that does matter as a as compared to a card like Nettle Syst, which only attacks in blocks on the ground. So Iron Man armor, anywhere you're trying to play like a big artifact, making those Karnstruck kind of cards, seems like a quite strong cube inclusion. Now moving back into more modest space, there are a number of cards in the Marvel Superheroes release that call out attacking alone with the creature. So similar to stuff like Exalted, this is something that was more of a theme and Avicen restored with cards like Homicidal Seclusion. That was one that really cared about controlling one creature. So there's a number of different support pillars for this kind of archetype in Cube. It's not something that I generally see explored in Cube too much, but I do want to call it out because I do think it's kind of cool space. So to give an example of something happening in Marvel Superheroes. Agent 13 Sharon Carter is two and a white for a 3-2 legendary human spy hero that says whenever any creature you control attacks alone, you investigate. So there's a couple things going on here. Of course, you make clue tokens for attacking alone, so you can feed into a theme that cares about generating artifacts, specifically if you care about generating clues, if you're into cards like Academy Manufacturer for that kind of thing, and then just that payoff for attacking alone. This isn't space that I explicitly explore any of my cubes, but I do play a number of exalted cards, both noble and ignoble hierarch, or some cards that appear in multiples of my cubes. So Agent 13 Sharon Carter and these other whenever you attack alone cards, I give you some kind of benefit for that. It's something I could see as appealing to some cube designers, and so I did want to shout that out as a theme going on here in the set. And then there is another kind of mechanic that isn't named but shows up on multiple cards and marble superheroes. These are cards that do a little bit more if you have two or more creature cards in your graveyard. So the strongest example here is Killmonger Scourge of Wakanda, two black green for a 3-3 legendary human mercenary villain. When Kelmonger enters, you may sacrifice another creature. When you do, destroy target non-land permanent an opponent controls, and then as long as there are two or more creature cards in your graveyard, Killmonger gets plus two, plus one. So it'd be a 5-4 as opposed to a 3-3. That enters ability is pretty nice, destroying a non-land permanent attached to a creature. You know, you do have to sacrifice a creature to get that payoff, but the idea, of course, is you would be putting this into some kind of sacrifice deck, and then just generally getting stronger for having two or more creature cards in your graveyard. This plays in similar space to a lot of things that I like in Cube, decks like spider spawning that are going to be trying to put creatures in the graveyard, just any kind of sacrifice deck, any kind of self-mill kind of thing, you're gonna incidentally have creatures in your graveyard. Now you can tell by me highlighting Killmonger, and also probably from the fact that this ability doesn't get a keyword. There's not a ton of cards that do this, and these are all really rated for retail limited. But if you cube in this lower power kind of space, there's some cool stuff to look at here if you want to uh incentivize games going a little bit longer, games where you want to make some exchanges, get some cards in your graveyard, and get a little bit stronger for that. The payoff here on Killmonger, it's not exceptional. You get a free unholy strength, I guess, on your hill giant, but that's the kind of stuff that does appeal to a number of players, and that sacrifice ability to destroy a non-land permanent, that's not nothing either. So I think Killmonger is pretty cool, and I do like the texture of this mechanic, cards getting a little bit stronger if there's two or more creature cards in your graveyard. And that brings us to a named mechanic in power up. Power up is sort of kicker meets monstrous. This is an ability that shows up on creatures that is discounted if the creature entered this turn. So it's like an additional cost. You can think of this either as a full cost to pay later, or because it reduces the cost of the ability by the cost of the creature if that creature enters this turn. You can just look at the power-up ability as the full cost if you do it all on the same turn as if it was kicker. What I find interesting about power-up is definitely all different kinds of shapes of power-up creatures. There are creatures that are just strong on their own that get a little bit stronger with the power-up ability. There are creatures that don't do a ton on their own, and then the power-up ability is kind of like casting a spell. And then there's creatures that are somewhere in between where they are reasonably rated on their own, and then the power-up ability does give you access to a spell on top of that. So let's start talking about some cards so you get a better understanding here. I'm going to start with one of these cards. This one is just a strong creature on rate that happens to have a power-up ability. That is Captain Marvel Earth's Protector. So for three white white, Captain Marvel Earth's Protector is a 5-4 legendary human creed hero with flash, flying, and lifelink. So that's the base stats of the card. 5 mana, 5-4, flash, flying, lifelink. That's just a strong creature. You can really break open a damage race with this card, especially having flash on a lifelink blocker. Then it also has power up. So for 5 white white, you put a plus one plus one counter and an indestructible counter on Captain Marvel. So a lot of what you're doing at this card is just that surprise flash flying blocker. Though if you find your opponent tapped out and you have seven mana, you can cast Captain Marvel at sorcery speed, and then if the power-up ability is use the turn that you play Captain Marvel, it's discounted by five. So just for seven mana, then you would get a six-five flash flying lifelink indestructible creature. Alternatively, if you flash it in, you can always pay that power-up ability later, pay the full seven because it won't have enter to that turn, but your creature will now be indestructible. Now, notably, power-up abilities can only be activated once, so that's the similarity to monstrous there, but they can be activated at instant speed. So you can flash in Captain Marvel, and if you do it on your opponent's turn, you have seven mana, you can immediately power her up. And then to give an example of a power-up creature that's a little bit more reliant on the power up ability, we have She-Hulk Jade Defender, three and a green for a 4 4 legendary Gamma Hero. Gamma, also a creature type showing up for the first time in Marvel Superheroes. There's some support for this, similar to heroes and villains, just showing up in these sets. Not a lot to talk about, but anyway. She-Hulk Jade Defender is a 4-4 legendary gamma hero with reach and trample, with a power-up ability for 4 green green. Destroy up to 1 target artifact or enchantment. Put a plus one plus one counter on She-Hulk. So 4 mana, 4-4, Reach Trample, reasonable body. The reason you're playing this card is for that naturalized ability, the interaction to destroy an artifact or an enchantment. I would say She-Hulk Jade Defenter is like a 2026 Mold Shambler. Definitely a card that was beloved by me and many others in both Retail Limited, and then also was kind of a cube card for a pretty long time, a 4 mana 3-3 that you could kick to have this destroy a non-creature permanent ability. So She-Hulk, way more reasonable to just cast as that 4 mana 4-4 with Reach and Trample, and then having that naturalized ability. This one seems like a solid body for a more modest cube power level where you want to have some main deckable naturalize effect. Just generally, I like power up as a keyword. There's definitely a couple power-up cards I'll be picking up for my own cubes. It's not super groundbreaking, it really is kicker meets monstrous, but those are two good mechanics. Those are two mechanics that I like quite a bit, and just combining them. It did take me a couple reads to really get power up, but it's not that complicated. Once you know what's going on, it's really easy to follow any individual card with power up. You can either immediately cast the card and play the power-up ability right away, where you really are just paying the power-up cost to get the full effect there, or you can cast it for the cost in the top right hand corner and then pay the full power-up cost later for the power-up ability. It's a nice mechanic. I'm sure we'll see more of this in the future Marvel sets. And then on the topic of returning mechanics in Marvel sets, we do have five more entries into this transforming modal dual-faced card category. So five legends that are kind of the superhero alias that transform into the superhero. These are cards that have a front face, and then when you cast them on the front face, you can pay a cost to transform them into the back face, or you can just cast them for the cost of the back face, which is the same as the transform cost on the front face, but the back side can't transform into the front side. So they only transform one way. And I like that implementation a lot more than the transforming dual face cards in Lorwin Eclipsed, because those ones, every turn, you had to kind of factor in this card can transform every turn. What does the front side do? What does the backside do? Whereas the superhero cards with these transform abilities that can only transform one way, you do still have to know both cards, but on a given turn. You know, once it's on the big side, it's not going back to little side, so the complexity is a little bit lower here. I'm not going to talk about all five of these designs because we are just seeing more cards in this nature. This is a returning mechanic. You either played with the Spider-Man ones or you didn't. I think a lot of people didn't, but uh at least one of them was in the arena-powered cube, the Gwen Stacy card with whatever through the Omen Paths name that it had. I'm so glad we're not doing through the Omen Paths again, but that's one that they're kind of mono-color on one side and then gold on the other side. And you can assess them on the merits of playing that monocolor card or having access to the three-color card that they were all three colors in Spider-Man, but some of them are just two colors in Marvel Superheroes, and it was really cool. Specifically, the Gwen Stacy was a nice mono red card that sometimes you had the ability to pay Jess Kai mana, but then the implementations are a little bit different here in Marvel Superheroes. I'm going to talk about three of these cards. One of them I like because the two sides are so different, and this one is a three-color card, but you could play it as a mono blue card, or you could play it as a gruel card. This is Bruce Banner that transforms into the Incredible Hulk. Bruce Banner is one blue mana for a 1-1 legendary human scientist hero. For XX, you can tap Bruce Banner to draw X cards, activate only as a sorcery, so you can't leave up this ability and counter spells. You have to choose one thing, but paying two mana to tap a creature and draw a card, that ain't bad. You know, you don't have infinite time to do that. That is a lot of mana, but it's a useful ability and you can activate it multiple times. You could just do this every turn if you have access to mana and your Bruce Banner doesn't die. And then for two red, red, green, green, you can transform Bruce Banner, or from your hand, you can just cast the Incredible Hulk for two red, red, green, green, the backside here, an 8-8 legendary gamma berserker hero with reach and trample that has in rage whenever the incredible hulk is dealt damage, put a plus one, plus one counter on him. If he's attacking, untap him, and there is an additional combat phase after this phase. So really easy to close out a game with this creature once you get one attack off. Plenty of ways to deal damage to it yourself. If your opponent blocks at all, you're probably going to be able to hit them again, so you really are gonna have difficulty blocking your way out of the incredible hulk. There's an infinite combat step combo with this card, and a card called Kaltrops, which is a three-mana artifact, and whenever a creature attacks, deal one damage to it. That's more of a commander thing. You just don't need that much damage to defeat an opponent in a two-player game with 20 life. Lightning bolting your own in the Incredible Hulk will probably do it in a game of cube, but something that is worth pointing out. And just generally, I like this design, Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk. It is reasonable for any kind of three-color slot if you want a team or card. The Incredible Hulk is tremendously gruel. It ends the game pretty quickly if you're able to make attacks with it. And then Bruce Banner is a very mono blue card, the ability to draw extra cards there. So this is a cool design. I like how the front and the backside are so different here, really true to the character, and a really cool implementation of a dual-faced card. And the next entry into this cycle, I actually want to talk about largely just for the front face. You have King T'Challa, one white blue for a 3-2 legendary human noble hero with flash that says whenever a player draws their second card each turn, you draw a card. So this is that white ability. If your opponent is drawing extra cards, you also get to draw a card to keep up, but then it's on a white blue card. So it says when you draw a second card, you also get to draw a card. So you get bonus card draw for being blue, you get to piggyback off your opponent's card draw for being white. Really cool design. We haven't seen these two concepts married before on a card. So this is a really awesome use of a gold slot, I think. And then while we're here, we can talk about the transform ability. 4-4, white, blue. You can transform King T'Challa or from your hand, you can cast Black Panther Hope Enduring, which is a 3-3 legendary human warrior hero with flash and double strike. You prevent all damage that'll be dealt to Black Panther, and whenever Black Panther deals combat damage to a player, draw a card. So you know, in a way, this card is drawing some extra cards too, just the texture is pretty different. It's nice being able to transform into this double striking creature, so you hit harder. I mostly just like the design of King T'Challa as a standalone gold card there, but having upside, you get something extra, it is nice, and this one is just a two-color gold card. Both sides are blue-white. So I do really like the design of King T'Challa. And then the last of these transforming dual face cards I want to talk about. I like this one because it has a useful ability, and you have access to this on the front and back. This can either be a mono white card or a Celestnia card. Uh, the card is Jennifer Walters, one and a white for a 2-3, a legendary human advisor hero. It says your opponents can't cast spells during your turn. This is an ability we have seen on a few white cards. Voice of Victory being a pretty big one recently. A lot of what that card does has to do with the immobilize ability making tokens. But if you're in the space of like a white combo deck, this kind of ability can stop your opponent from disrupting you. Even just creature decks, you stop your opponent from being able to use removal spells in combat. That can make it so pump spells or whatever you do on your own turn is less vulnerable to any kind of interaction from your opponent. So it's a pretty cool ability there. Two-mana two, three is fine. That's a body that we get a lot these days, but you do have the upside here, and it's only one green pip if you want to transform Jennifer Valters, which you can do for three green white white, or you can cast the sensational She-Hulk from your hand for that cost. And the Sensational She-Hulk is a 6-6 legendary gamma hero with reach and trample, has that same ability that your opponents can't cast spells during your turn, and whenever a creature you control is dealt damage, you may have the sensational She-Hulk and yield that much damage to any target. Do this only once each turn. So She-Hulk is another big trampling creature that punishes your opponent for blocking. And she still has this, your opponents can't cast spells during your turn ability, which makes it so you can be pretty confident that your attacks are going to do what you think they're going to do when you are attacking with the sensational She-Hulk. So I like that this one has that static ability on both sides. You have a small creature that turns off your ability, your opponent's ability rather, to play on your turn, and then you transform into a giant creature that is more of a problem in combat, that also has that ability to turn off your opponent's instance on your turn. I can't really imagine playing the sensational She-Hulk without some number of green sources, at least to splash the transform ability there, but with just one green pip, it is very splashable. So that early ability for two mana, get your 2-3 online, maybe get under your opponent's counter spells, whatever, and then later you can transform Jennifer Walters into the giant sensational she-hulk and really take over a game that way. I think this is a really nice design. And then there is one more card I want to talk about today on the mechanics and themes episode for Marvel Superheroes. And this is just a card. We're gonna see one of these in all of the Marvel sets. It's more of a card than a theme, but because it is kind of a gimmick of the sets, I'm gonna lump it in for this episode. It is the Mindestone. One and a white for a legendary infinity stone artifact, it's indestructible, taps for a white. For five and a white, you tap it to harness the minestone, which once it's harnessed, its infinity ability is active, and its affinity ability is at the beginning of your end step. Exile up to one other target non-land permanent you control, then return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control. So we have the soul stone and spider-man, which is the black entry here. Looks like these are probably all going to be two mana rocks that are indestructible that tap for the appropriate color you spend on them, and then have some ability to harness them. The soul stone involves sacrificing a creature. The mind stone is just a mana ability, and then you get to use this blink ability every turn. That six mana ability, this is kind of a weird fit for a blink deck in a lot of cube environments. The price here, it's more appropriate for a commander game where six mana is, you know, just something you're expected to be able to generate every game. On a mana rock, you know, you're accelerating your mana, but you can't use the mana from the mindstone to discount on its own capability, so it's kind of slow going just from this one online. Mana rocks aren't necessarily what you're in the market for for a blink deck, but if you're into blink themes, this is certainly a card that you could feature in your cube. It's one worth paying mind to. These cards are not weak, it's not anything that really speaks to any of my designs, but these are strong cards, and I do want to talk about them. These are you're gonna see one of these in every set. I am waiting to see what the blue one is. I expect the blue one to be broken just by virtue of being in the same color as Tinker, if nothing else. But the Mestone is at least a neat one, more of a commander card than a cube card, but in your own cube, you can cube with whatever you want, and I could see doing some cool things with the Mindestone. And that's gonna do it for part one of my cube review here for the Marvel Superheroes release, the mechanics and themes episode. And next week I'm gonna be back talking about some individual cards that stand out kind of on their own merits that don't play into these themes. I have 20 some cards lined up to talk about. There's some pretty I mean, there's a ton of cards in this set, so naturally some of them are going to be cool and appealing, and you will have that much anticipated discussion of the Fantastic Car. So thanks for listening this week, for doing whatever you do to support the podcast, taking the time to like, comment, subscribe, share, review, all that stuff is really appreciated. And I will be back next week talking more cube. Later, gamers.