Reveals for Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming Spider-Man crossover set are in full swing, and we’ve got an exclusive first look at three new cards themed around the villainous Green Goblin. While four different versions of the Goblin himself have already been revealed (one of them by us back in March), today we have a first look at cards depicting his signature weapon, glider, and home base.
Here are all three of those new cards:
For me, the standout card here is easily Oscorp Industries, a Rare land with Mayhem, which means it can be played from your graveyard if you discarded it that turn. Mayhem is the featured mechanic of the black-red color pair that Green Goblin lives in for this set, and is a bit of a twist on an existing mechanic called Madness. This lets you wring out some extra value by essentially negating the downside of other cards that have you discard as an additional cost.
But what makes Oscorp Industries especially notable is that it’s the first real land with either Mayhem or Madness on it. There was one before this, but it was a non-legal “playtest” card called Madlands from last year’s Mystery Booster 2 set, which now makes what seemed like a goof at the time actually a bit of a tease for what was to come. (Speaking of playtest cards, I recently wrote all about the Unknown events that put them directly in the hands of its players.)
Given the discard theme, the other two Green Goblin cards we are revealing today make a whole lot of sense. Pumpkin Bombardment is a simple Common removal spell that costs a single red or black mana to cast, but comes with the additional cost of either paying two more mana of any color or discarding a card – an effect that could actually be beneficial with the right Mayhem cards in your hand.
For example, Rocket-Powered Goblin Glider, which is a Rare equipment that automatically equips itself to a creature if you use its Mayhem ability to cast it. This isn’t the most exciting equipment in the world if you have to pay the full three mana to cast it and then two more to equip, but doing both for just two mana and cheating the otherwise detrimental discard effect of another card sounds pretty appealing to me in the right deck.
Of note, if you only play Magic: The Gathering on the digital MTG Arena client, you won’t see these exact cards show up there. Wizards of the Coast previously revealed that Spider-Man would be entirely reskinned as part of an initiative called “Through the Omenpaths” for its online releases. We don’t have the alternate looks for these three to share today, but the full card image gallery for that version of the set will be going live on September 8.
The Spider-Man set is already available for pre-order ahead of its September 26 paper release, though be warned that things like the fancier Collector Boosters have started spiking to ridiculous prices. And if you are just learning Magic (or superheroes aren’t your speed), we recently did a hands-on preview of the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender Beginner Box that will arrive alongside that crossover set later this year.
Tom Marks is IGN’s Executive Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, and puzzle-platformers.
