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Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel's Spider-Man Prerelease Guide

Feature Sep 5, 2025

Jubilee Finnegan

The global release of Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel's Spider-Man swings into local game stores starting September 26, 2025. But if you're itching to join the ranks of your fellow Spider-Heroes before then, you can start at the set's Prerelease events. Combining casual gameplay with fresh cards, Prerelease events are the perfect place to learn about a new set. They're exciting, friendly, and amazing!

Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider Man
Prerelease Pack

But what is a Prerelease event? These events are hosted at local game stores and let you play with a new set a week ahead of its release. When you register for one of these events, you'll receive a Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man Prerelease Pack that contains the following:

• 6 Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man Play Boosters 
• 1 Traditional foil year-stamped rare or mythic rare card 
• 1 Deck box 
• 1 Spindown die (from among five total color variations) 

Prereleases are typically run as Sealed events, which means you'll construct a 40-card deck out of the contents of your Prerelease Pack and any number of basic lands. While every Prerelease event is welcoming to new players, Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man is poised to be many players' first foray into playing Magic. Don't hesitate to ask questions if you're a new player or offer a helping hand if you're a more seasoned Magic fan.

For now, it's time to learn how to build a sealed deck and play Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man.

Building Your Prerelease Deck

Sealed Magic looks quite different from other formats like Standard and Commander. Rather than designing a specific deck from a wide pool of cards, you're drawing from a randomized selection of a single set's cards. While it may be tempting to play all the cool cards you open, you'll be able to play better games of Magic if you stick to a two-color deck.

To decide what colors you'll be playing, look for the most powerful, game-changing cards you open. These cards, called threats, are often massive creatures, board-clearing spells, or enchantments that supercharge your strategy.

0011_MTGSPM_Main: Rent Is Due 0037_MTGSPM_Main: Mysterio, Master of Illusion

If you're looking for an easy way to identify threats, look for cards that would change the tone of the game when you cast them. A card like Rent Is Due might provide value over the course of a game, but it won't have your opponent quaking in their boots. Mysterio, Master of Illusion, however, acts as an army-in-a-can card that can stave off attacking creatures and swing in for the win.

Your Spider-Senses aren't fooling you; your opponents are going to have threats of their own you'll want to prepare for. That's what removal is for! These cards take care of opposing threats by returning them to your opponent's hand, destroying them, or preventing them from hitting the board altogether.

Most pieces of removal are common and uncommon cards. Below, you'll find a list of the most noteworthy monocolor pieces of removal in Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man Limited. Keep an eye out (or eight) for these cards in your Play Boosters!

White

(Select for card list)

Spectacular Tactics
Sudden Strike
Web Up

Blue

(Select for card list)

Amazing Acrobatics
School Daze
Spider-Byte, Web Warden
Whoosh!

Black

(Select for card list)

Sandman's Quicksand
Scorpion's Sting
The Spot's Portal
Venom's Hunger

Red

(Select for card list)

Electro's Bolt
Shock
Shocker, Unshakable
Wisecrack

Green

(Select for card list)

Damage Control Crew
Kapow!
Rhino's Rampage
Scout the City
Terrific Team-Up

By letting your threats and removal guide your deck's colors, you'll have the outline of a two-color deck in no time. The rest of your deck will be filled with other cards from among those two colors. To help decide which cards should go into your deck, you'll want to consult the mana curve.

Deck Building with the Mana Curve

Spider-Man doesn't swing into action without a plan (most of the time), and neither should you. The mana curve helps you efficiently and effectively cast your spells. Each spell has a mana value, which you find by adding up the mana symbols in a card's cost. For example, a card with a mana cost of would have a mana value of 4. A card with a mana cost of would have a mana value of 3.

In Sealed, your mana curve should look something like this:

• 1 Mana: 1–2 cards
• 2 Mana: 7–8 cards
• 3 Mana: 5–6 cards
• 4 Mana: 3–4 cards
• 5 Mana: 2–3 cards
• 6 Mana: 0–1 card
• and 17 lands! 

Spells with a mana value of 3 and lower should primarily consist of creatures and cards that establish your presence on the board.

While cards like Risky Research will keep your hand stocked, they won't put you on the path to victory without proper support. Low-cost creatures like Angry Rabble or Lurking Lizards will keep your opponent under pressure until you draw your game-winning threats.

Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man Draft Archetypes

Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man features five draft archetypes: broad themes focused on a specific two-color pair. Finding the cards that support your deck's draft archetype will guide you as you build.

Some cards work well in multiple draft archetypes. For example, Doc Ock's Henchmen works well in the blue-black Villains deck and the black-red mayhem deck. It's a Villian for the former and a discard outlet for the latter! But other cards are designed primarily for a single archetype. While Spider-UK is a mono-white card, he is a better fit in green-white web-slinging decks than white-blue modified decks.

Additionally, each draft archetype has multiple two-color uncommon cards called signpost uncommons. These cards loudly signal a draft archetype's strategy, helping you orient yourself in a brand-new Limited environment. Here are each of the draft archetypes, an explanation of their strategies, and one of their signpost uncommons. You can explore all of the signpost uncommons in the set's card image gallery.

But you can't just win the game off powerful cards; you need a strategy to build your deck around. The last piece of honing your deck involves finding which cards do support your draft archetype.

White-Blue Modified

Your creatures are modified if they're equipped, have a counter on them, or are enchanted by an Aura you control. Load up evasive creatures like Wraith, Vicious Vigilante with counters from Unstable Experiment or Equipment like Web-Shooters. Then strike hard for unblockable damage!

Blue-Black Villains Connive

A Super Hero needs a super villain, and Spider-Man has them in droves! Assemble an army of ne'er-do-wells like Doc Ock's Henchmen and Beetle, Legacy Criminal, then send them soaring at your opponent with Vulture, Scheming Scavenger. Many of these Villains connive, so don't be afraid to dip into mayhem synergies.

Black-Red Mayhem

While discarding cards can be a downside, this deck takes advantage of cards going to the graveyard with a flurry of mayhem spells. Balance discard outlets like Inner Demons Gangsters and payoffs like Hobgoblin, Mantled Marauder for a delightfully devilish black-red deck.

Red-Green Large Spells

Red-green decks hit hard with a barrage of massive creatures and bombastic spells. Notably, spells with mayhem or web-slinging count their mana cost for their mana value, not their alternate costs. That means Spider-Islanders, even if you cast it for , will trigger Rhino, Barreling Brute's ability that cares about spells with mana value 4 or greater.

Green-White Web-Slinging

Web-slinging, the marquee mechanic of this set, brings the action of Spider-Man comics to your Limited games. Spider-Man India and several other cards depicting Spider-Heroes will swing into action with this new keyword ability. Gallant Citizen is a great card for web-slinging decks, as you can replay it to draw additional cards each time you return it to your hand.

That's everything you need to know about Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man Prerelease events. After a few short games, you'll be web-slinging and wall-crawling with the best! If you want your cards to look the best, check out this article going over the Booster Fun treatments of the set. It has everything you need to know about collecting this spectacular Magic release. 

Magic: The Gathering | Marvel's Spider-Man releases worldwide on September 26. You can preorder the set now from your local game store, online retailers like Amazon, and elsewhere Magic products are sold.