Magic: The Gathering’s Marvel Crossover Features “600 Mechanically Unique Cards,” Here’s An Overview

Last year, Final Fantasy became the highest-selling expansion in Magic: The Gathering history in a single day, smashing all expectations for the first Universes Beyond set to be eligible in all competitive formats. This year, Wizards of the Coast is turning to Marvel Comics to try to replicate that success, as Marvel Super Heroes will launch on June 26. According to Wizards of the Coast, Marvel Super Heroes will feature over 600 mechanically unique cards across the main set, the Commander decks, and the Jumpstart offerings. Naturally, these cards will come a whole menu of new and returning mechanics. This will serve as your guide to those mechanics, including Teamwork, Power-Up, Connive, and more, along with example cards that show off these new abilities.  Now that the WeeklyMTG livestream has concluded, we are officially in preview season. Keep an eye out for more new Marvel Super Heroes cards leading up to launch, including a special preview card here at GameSpot on June 4.  Teamwork The Teamwork mechanic falls into the category of things like Convoke or Improvise, in which you can tap permanents you control as an additional cost to casting the spell in order to enhance it. If you see Teamwork X, you'll have to tap any amount of creatures with combined power X or more to gain the extra effect.  If you look at HULK SMASH! above, the Instant spell costs one generic and one red mana, and you can choose to either destroy a noncreature artifact or have one of your creatures deal damage equal to its power to a creature your opponent controls. However, if you tap creatures with power equal to 4 or more, you can do both.  Power-Up There's an old joke among Magic players that "everything is Kicker," or when you boil a mechanic down to its essence, it's just a variant of the Kicker mechanic from Magic's early years, in which you can pay an extra amount of mana to gain an extra effect.  Power-Up is a, well, powered-up version of Kicker, where an incoming creature can gain powerful extra effects for an extra cost. However, here there's a twist: that cost can be discounted by the creature's casting cost if the Power-Up effect is activated on the same turn the creature is cast.  Take Thanos, The Mad Titan above. He costs one red, one white, and one black mana to cast, while his Power-Up cost is one of every color of mana including colorless (six stones, six mana pips, very thematic). If you choose to power-up Thanos right after casting him, however, the Power-Up cost becomes one blue, one green, and one colorless, or half of what it would normally cost. Heroes and Villains Heroes and Villains are the main creature types in Marvel Super Heroes, as one might expect. The set is filled with a who's who of good and evil faces from across Marvel's comic history, and each one adapts their specific abilities and attributes into the MTG landscape.  Thor, God of Thunder is one of the many Heroes revealed during today's livestream, and true to form, he can pull a spell or Equipment from your graveyard back into the game as soon as he hits the battlefield. He can also deal extra damage whenever you cast noncreature spells, and considering Thor is the God of Thunder, and lightning has been a part of MTG since the beginning, that power is very much on theme. On the Villain side, we have Madame Hydra, who adds more Villains to the board every time you cast a Villain spell. One of the leaders of Hydra being able to fill the board with Villains at will makes a lot of sense, and she figures to be a sneakily powerful card if left unchecked. Plan Plans are new takes on Enchantments, permanents that create a persisting effect on the battlefield until they are removed. While you'll cast a Plan normally, performing certain actions will add plan counters to the card, and once a certain number of counters is reached, another effect will immediately trigger.  For Doom Reigns Supreme, each Villain you cast after casting the Plan will make each opponent lose 1 life, while also gaining you 1 life and adding a counter to the card. When five plan counters are on the card, you can sacrifice it to exile the top five cards from one of your opponent's libraries, then cast two of those five cards without paying any costs. A devilish turn of events worthy of a major Marvel villain, no? Worthy Worthy refers to Mjolnir, Thor's legendary hammer, which can only be wielded by those the hammer itself deems "worthy." For Magic, this means that Mjolnir and any other Equipment with the "worthy" mechanic can only be equipped to a certain type of creature, and while you might assume that's a Hero, it's actually more specific than that.  For a creature to be "worthy," it needs to follow these parameters: It must be a legendary creature It must not have the Villain subtype It must have red or white in its color identity The broader implications of this mechanic are pretty funny when you think about it. Cloud, Midgar Mercenary can now wield Mjol

Last year, Final Fantasy became the highest-selling expansion in Magic: The Gathering history in a single day, smashing all expectations for the first Universes Beyond set to be eligible in all competitive formats. This year, Wizards of the Coast is turning to Marvel Comics to try to replicate that success, as Marvel Super Heroes will…

Last year, Final Fantasy became the highest-selling expansion in Magic: The Gathering history in a single day, smashing all expectations for the first Universes Beyond set to be eligible in all competitive formats. This year, Wizards of the Coast is turning to Marvel Comics to try to replicate that success, as Marvel Super Heroes will launch on June 26. According to Wizards of the Coast, Marvel Super Heroes will feature over 600 mechanically unique cards across the main set, the Commander decks, and the Jumpstart…