I'm a fan of Spider-Man. It's a nice change, because I feel like the recent Universes Beyond sets have mostly been things I know nearly nothing about - Doctor Who? Never watched it. (I know, I know.) Final Fantasy? Only ever played one, and it was FFII and all I actually remember is I got a boat that went to the moon somehow. But Spider-Man? I like it.

I've generally liked all the movies (I've never read any of the comics). I liked Tobey McGuire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland. But I have to say, my favorites have really been the Into the Spider-Verse movies and their hero, Miles Morales in the role of Spidey.

So, when we started seeing cards for Spider-Man, I knew I wanted to do a deck around Miles, kind of no matter what. It was just my luck he's in Naya (), which is among my favorite color combinations. Let's check him out.

Okay, not bad. We have a two-mana Commander with an Enters ability that matters a little; he's a 2/3 himself if he gives himself a counter, and he makes something else bigger. Then for 6 mana in three colors, we can transform him into Ultimate Spider-Man, a 4/3 with First Strike, Haste, and activated ability to make him bigger and protect him from point removal, and a triggered ability which doubles up counters on other Spiders and Legendary Creatures.

It would be easy to go Kindred here. Spiders or Legendaries would work. Spit out a couple of counters and go to town letting them double each time. Probably would be strong, too. But you know what I thought?

We can have fun with this.

Miles Morales | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Miles Morales // Ultimate Spider-Man

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Abzan Falconer
• 1 Aragorn, Hornburg Hero
• 1 Arasta of the Endless Web
• 1 Arwen, Weaver of Hope
• 1 Bright-Palm, Soul Awakener
• 1 Byrke, Long Ear of the Law
• 1 Duskshell Crawler
• 1 Forgotten Ancient
• 1 Ghost-Spider, Gwen Stacy
• 1 Halana and Alena, Partners
• 1 Hamza, Guardian of Arashin
• 1 Katilda, Dawnhart Prime
• 1 Kodama of the West Tree
• 1 Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar
• 1 Maester Seymour
• 1 Mikaeus, the Lunarch
• 1 Red XIII, Proud Warrior
• 1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Shalai and Hallar
• 1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty
• 1 Thundering Raiju
• 1 Toski, Bearer of Secrets
• 1 Twisted Spider-Clone
• 1 Twitching Doll
• 1 Web-Warriors

• Instants (12)
• 1 Arachnogenesis
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Flawless Maneuver
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Hunter's Insight
• 1 Inspiring Call
• 1 Momentous Fall
• 1 Prishe's Wanderings
• 1 Return of the Wildspeaker
• 1 Silkguard
• 1 Spectacular Tactics
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Damning Verdict
• 1 Hunter's Prowess
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Map the Wastes
• 1 Requisition Raid
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Season of Gathering
• 1 Vastwood Surge

• Enchantments (9)
• 1 Annie Joins Up
• 1 Bioengineered Future
• 1 Branching Evolution
• 1 Elemental Bond
• 1 Garruk's Uprising
• 1 Hardened Scales
• 1 Master Chef
• 1 Ordeal of Nylea
• 1 Terrasymbiosis

• Artifacts (3)
• 1 Heaped Harvest
• 1 Lumbering Worldwagon
• 1 The Earth Crystal

• Lands (40)
• 9 Forest
• 4 Plains
• 2 Mountain
• 1 Blighted Woodland
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Gavony Township
• 1 Guildmages' Forum
• 1 Jetmir's Garden
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Karn's Bastion
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Llanowar Reborn
• 1 Minas Tirith
• 1 Nesting Grounds
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Overgrown Farmland
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rockfall Vale
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Swarmyard
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse

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The gist here is this: we're going to stick counters on stuff, and those counters are going to matter. Whenever possible, we're going to use Legendary and Spider Creatures so we can double those counters too, but we're going to focus on getting counters on pretty much everything and, when we do, having it be a serious problem for the rest of the table.

Miles is funny when it comes to figuring out how much mana to run, because he's so cheap. Two mana is nothing; in fact, there's probably a deck that's super low to the ground with him where you cast him on turn two after a 1-drop and swing early and often, using his transform ability only at the very end as a finisher. But that's not what we're doing.

We don't actually want to cast him on turn two most of the time; we'd much rather wait until we have something else out to spread the counters around. Then we want to transform him as soon as possible so we can start doubling those counters before our opponents can react.

As such, I think it's worth it to think of Miles as a six-mana Commander, rather than a two-mana one. That means we need a bunch more mana than if we thought of him as the smaller version.

Forty Lands should get us to 5 mana on turn five. That's pretty good, but we've got three colors to fix so a number of our Lands come in tapped. They also help us a little; Karn's Bastion is my favorite here, Proliferating all over the place, but I'm also a fan of Llanowar Reborn and its Graft ability. Minas Tirith will be active most of the time. Oran-Rief, the Vastwood won't always work, but it's great when it does, and Kessig Wolf Run is a fun use of excess mana should we have it.

But ideally we're able to flip Miles by turn five, and to do that, we need to ramp, so ramp we shall. They're all the normal ones - I tend to focus on ones which get us two Lands rather than just one - but my favorite here is Prishe's Wanderings. It's a little pricey, but it's an Instant and not only do we get to grab a Basic, we get to put a +1/+1 counter on something. Double duty!

Thanks to Green being better at drawing cards than people think, we have plenty of draw. Hunter's Insight and Momentous Fall are classic favorites of mine; Hunter's Prowess has won me a bunch of games. Elemental Bond and Garruk's Uprising are both kind of obvious too. But the coolest ones are Inspiring Call (3 mana to draw cards equal to the number of Creatures we control with counters and they all get Indestructible? Deal!) and Terrasymbiosis (which will very often draw more than Elemental Bond). I also like Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar here. She's a Legendary so counters on her will double, she limits what our Opponents can do (no casting on our turn), and we'll almost always meet the requirement she has to draw a card.

Our threats are everywhere. Any Creature we control can become a serious threat in barely a turn as long as it's Legendary or a Spider. (We can do it without that, but it's more fun when the counters double.) That said, Ghost-Spider, Gwen Stacy is really only here to beat up the other players; most of our other Creatures have a purpose beyond just attacking, but she's kind of our haymaker. I love the idea of Rishkar, Peema Renegade being a 26/26 with Trample and Flying or something and absolutely demolishing an opponent in a single attack.

We are pretty focused, but we have a few ways to deal with problems. Annie Joins Up is a fun one, hurting something when she comes in and then letting us double twice (quadruple!) later. Beast Within and Generous Gift both destroy just about anything, Silkguard will protect our whole team, and Spectacular Tactics is great in either mode, as is Requisition Raid. Flawless Maneuver does good work, and Swords to Plowshares is just too good to not run. Damning Verdict is perfect for us. And can we please mention how cool Arachnogenesis will be if we pull it off when the Goblin player attacks us with 64,000 1/1 Goblins?

The really fun part is how it all comes together, and that's with Hardened Scales. If you don't know, Hardened Scales says this:

You get counters, you get an extra one. For brevity, we're going to refer not just to this effect but others like it - doubling the counters (or otherwise adding counters) on the thing or adding counters when it Enters or does something specific.

By my (rough) count, we have 21 spells which do one of the previous things. There are an additional five or six spells which put a +1/+1 counter on everything we've got. All told, we have a lot of ways of putting counters on things and then increasing the number of counters on them. But our real inspiration comes from the Abzan () Houses from Tarkir. Their ability, Outlast, put counters on stuff, so they had all these cool abilities which cared about the counters. Abzan Falconer put most of your Creatures in the air, as you saw at the beginning. But Duskshell Crawler and Red XIII, Proud Warrior, both give Trample, which is also excellent, and a whole bunch of them fall into the Hardened Scales category of doubling or otherwise adding counters when they do damage or whatever.

And really, what else do we need? A couple of really big Creatures that keep doubling in size will wipe out a table pretty quickly if they aren't kept in check, and we have enough Creatures and synergy to play conservatively. Miles is cheap to recast and always the same to Transform, and any of our Creatures can pop off thanks to the way almost every card puts counters on things.

Thanks for reading.