If you’ve never played Magic: The Gathering (MTG), the prospect of getting into it can seem pretty daunting. This is a game, after all, with 30+ years of history. That’s more than three decades of cards and mechanics, worldbuilding and lore. If you’ve ever lived and breathed a live service video game you’ll know just how much energy and time it can take simply to keep up. Constant new releases and updates that drive an ever-evolving meta mean it can be tricky to be even a casual fan… let alone finding your feet as a completely new player.
Magic: The Gathering definitely has many of the same challenges, but it also has more ways to interact with its cards and its history and its gameplay on your own terms. The fact that it’s mostly played as a physical game, for instance, means that it doesn’t necessarily matter what the best decks are, and what the most competitive players are doing. If you have a bad but fun deck and I have the same, we can still play and have a good time.
Wizards of the Coast has also been doing “Universes Beyond” content for more than five years now, and many of these releases essentially act as an onramp to Magic. Are you a fan of Final Fantasy? The Lord of the Rings? Avatar: The Last Airbender? There’s a Magic set for that. While many of these sets do have ramifications for the wider player base, they can be self-contained for those that simply want to try out MTG, without having to know any of the official lore or characters.
Magic’s gameplay still has a learning curve, of course, and every set is likely to have cards that require either a knowledgeable friend or a quick Google to decipher. Even so, a standalone Universes Beyond set is a pretty good place to start for the curious. All of which brings us to Marvel Super Heroes, the latest such release.
Super, Thanks for Asking
As an entry point for Marvel fans, this is about as welcoming as it gets. A great heaping helping of heavy hitters from the Marvel universe are here… in card form: Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Doctor Doom, The Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, Daredevil, Thanos, Black Panther, Elektra, Ant-Man, Loki, Thor, Storm, Wolverine, Jessica Jones and Nick Fury, the list goes on.
The themes and mechanics are built to resonate with these characters and the settings they’re from too. There are Hero and Villain creature types, each with tribal synergy (meaning that heroes often get bonuses for fighting alongside other heroes, and villains have the same). There’s a keyword called Teamwork, which lets you utilise members of your team (i.e. creatures you control) to activate an additional effect.
Some characters – both good and bad – can “Power-up” once per game to trigger a strong additional ability. When “Thanos, the Mad Titan” powers up, for instance, not only does he get a stat bump, but you can choose odd or even and then destroy every other creature with a mana value of the chosen quality. Snap!
A small subset of characters come on dual-faced cards. On one side you might have Bruce Banner, the flipside, The Hulk. On this side Peter Parker, the reverse, Spider-Man. Each has value and you can choose which side to play, but you can also transform them mid-game, so Tony Stark can become Iron Man just in time to turn things around.
And no superhero set would be complete without villainous plots, which is where Plans come into play. These have conditions that typically take multiple turns to be met, but the longer the build-up, the bigger the pay-off. “Doom Reigns Supreme”, for instance, lets you play a couple of your opponent’s cards for free, while “Construct a Cosmic Cube” helps you spawn token creatures and eventually lets you take over and play your opponent’s turn!
Another villainous mechanic in Marvel Super Heroes is “Connive”. This is drawing then discarding a card, and can help you boost a creature’s stats, cycle through your deck, trigger “second card draw” effects, and synergise with discard mechanics.
All these gameplay elements fit neatly into the Marvel world, and the way many of the characters – and their abilities, backstories and gear – have been implemented is pretty fun. Take “Mjölnir, Hammer of Thor”. This Legendary Artifact is powerful in and of itself, but in a cool twist, a creature must be “worthy” in order to equip it. So yes, Captain America can wield Thor’s hammer. As can… Agent Phil Coulson?! Love it.
Marvel fans will also dig a lot of the art. It’s cool to see iconic characters and scenes through the eyes of the incredible stable of MTG artists. And as always with Magic there are countless slick variations to collect. The cards featuring source material art – from a wide array of eras and artists – are particularly eye-catching, whether that’s a three panel card showing a scene, a card presented like an actual comic book cover, or just a super slick borderless presentation.
That said, we’re delving into the collectable side of the game here, and that’s not really the purpose of this piece. This article is about whether this set is a good entry point for Marvel fans curious about MTG, and if so, what the best way to get started is. The answer, for me, is yes, and the best way to get started is to ignore the collecting side of things. Why? Because you need to learn to walk before you can run. There’s little point spending money on regular booster packs before you understand the core mechanics, how different colours play, what the different archetypes are and – above all – how to identify strong cards and build a rounded deck.
Where to Start
Learning how to play with as little complexity as possible (although there’ll always be some) is where Jumpstart comes in. The idea is that you buy two Jumpstart booster packs and combine them to create a deck. It’s a low friction way to start playing immediately, and if you’re playing against a friend doing the same thing, chances are the power levels of each deck will be reasonably close. This is a good option to start getting a feel for the game, although you’ll only get very basic instructions in the pack so will still need to consult an online resource (or friend) if you’re completely new.
In fact, if you’re genuinely starting from zero, the Beginner Box should probably be your first purchase. This contains eight Jumpstart half-decks, but crucially, it also contains two tutorial decks with instructions that you literally follow step by step. The tutorial is simple but it introduces the basic turn flow, mechanics and highlights some stuff you should be thinking about in combat. The box also has two playmats so you can see how to arrange your cards, and a rules reference guide to consult if you get stuck on a keyword or interaction… although chances are you’ll still need to Google some stuff as you go.
Once you’ve done the tutorial you can then switch across to Jumpstart and muck around with different colour combos and archetypal strategies. With 51 different Jumpstart booster themes, some are definitely better than others, and you’re very much playing in the shallow end of the pool, but it’s a good way to start and from here you can always pick your favourite Jumpstart deck and modify it.
Once you understand the basic mechanics and gameflow, another good option for beginners is to play Commander using preconstructed decks. Commander is a format where you build a deck of 100 cards, with no duplicates (other than basic lands, which are used to create mana). As a result, every game is completely different, but the twist is that you pick a legendary creature (it can also be a handful of other things) to be your commander, and rather than having to draw that card, it sits to the side from the start and can be summoned into battle from there. Each time it dies you can return it back to that zone, but it costs more to call back into play. It’s a cool concept and the right commander can give you a powerful engine, despite having a deck with so many different cards.
There are four of these preconstructed Commander decks available for Marvel Super Heroes, each with its own theme. Avengers Assemble, for instance, is a red, white and blue deck using Captain America (naturally) or Nick Fury as its commander. Cap buffs himself and other heroes as they enter, as well as letting them attack and defend straight away. Nick Fury, meanwhile, is a commander that lowers the cost of hero spells to cast, as well as letting you sift through your library to find hero cards.
The four colour Fantastic Four deck is even more versatile, as you can choose between any of the Fantastic Four to be your commander. Each has the same condition to activate their core ability, but the effects are all different and so too are their bonus effects. This deck is all about choosing the commander that best suits your play style.
What’s great about Commander is that it’s a friendly format that’s about fun first and foremost. It can also be played with up to six players. Three or four is optimal, though, and adds a whole new layer of strategy and alliance forming as you can choose who to attack or target each turn. The downside of Commander is that these precon decks aren’t exactly cheap, retailing for around AUD $140 each. On the other hand, the Beginner Box is more like AUD $65 and individual Jumpstart booster packs (for which you need two to make a deck) are AUD $12.95 each.
Whichever way you choose to go, there’s a reason Magic has been around for so long – it’s an infinitely playable game, and it’s a great excuse to hang out with friends or go make some new ones at a local Magic event. And for Marvel fans? It seems likely that there’s more Marvel Magic to come. Unlike most Universes Beyond sets, which are one and done, we’ve already had last year’s Spider-Man, and given that release debuted The Soul Stone and this one includes The Mind Stone… well, it seems likely this infinitely playable game could get itself an Infinity Gauntlet. Excelsior!
Marvel Super Heroes is out now and you can find out more about it here.
Cam Shea is a former IGN staffer, now freelance writer and craft beer evangelist.
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