09/08/2025 VINDICATION! This shit rocks.
It's started! The Magic: The Gathering event I am most excited about for this year. I'm talking, of course, about spoiler season for the Arena-exclusive MTG Spider-Man cards.
Ever since I saw how many creatures in this Universes Beyond MTG set had the typeline 'Spider Human Hero' I've been nearly giddy with anticipation for this moment.
In case you need a recap, Wizards of the Coast was not given the green light to put its Marvel cards on its digital platforms. The set is Standard-legal and nowadays most Standard games are played on MTG Arena. So in order to avoid a total clusterfuck, Wizards had to create Universes Within versions of the Spider-Man cards.
If WotC had needed to do this for Lord of the Rings, Fallout or Warhammer 40k, it would've been a doddle, but that typeline 'Spider Human Hero' appears in the Spider-Man set on dozens of different legendary creatures, so making this fit was going to be tough.
I find the situation hilarious, and I've been really curious to meet all these new heroic named characters that are both spiders and also humans. It's such a funny mess for Wizards to find itself in, and I've been buzzing to see how it'll be handled.
I think there are actually lots of different ways Wizards could've approached this problem. My bets were hedged between a group of spider-riding cowboys from Thunder Junction, or a new faction of spider lycanthropes from Duskmourn, but it's not at all clear what world the first 'Through the Omenpaths' card Kraza, The Swarm as One actually hails from.
For this character, the in-universe take on Spider-Punk, Wizards of the Coast went with the 'Spiders-Man' method, creating a caped human hero that controls a vast swarm of spiders. Will other characters follow suit, or will Wizards find a bunch of different ways to smash spiders and humans together?
I'll be pretty happy with either option. If Wizards uses this challenge as a creative exercise in combining creature types and invents as many interpretations as possible, then that sounds rad. I want to see humanoid spiders, humans with spider features, humans teaming up with spiders, and humans made out of vast clumps of spiders - utilizing every plane in the multiverse.
If it creates a new plane specifically for its new spider characters, one that might even one day get its very own set, I'd love that too.
The only solution I won't be satisfied with is unfortunately the most likely outcome: we just get a bunch of generic art with no lore and no connection to any particular MTG plane.
In the Arena update that revealed Kraza, we also got to see the Through the Omenpaths take on the Soul Stone. It's kind of neat that Wizards has changed the card type, I guess, but personally I find this much more boring. Show me the human spiders baby!
How do you feel about the in-universe Spiderman cards? Are you planning to proxy the lot or does the very idea make you shudder? Tell us on the Wargamer Discord. Then go and read our MTG release schedule guide to make sure you're up to date on the latest news.