Now that Magic: The Gathering's Marvel's Spider-Man has been out for a full month and Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender is due to drop in another few weeks, the hype has died down a touch, and current prices reflect that decrescendo. The set's value is tied up in the alternate art cards and in the $75 The Soul Stone, leaving most of the base versions of the set's cards to plummet. That's "plummet" in the rarer positive sense - as someone who tries to play this game without going over budget, the post-hype/early results phase of a set's release is my favorite phase. The cards are still as exciting as they were when first revealed, but the price point is much more appealing - for example, a roleplayer like Anti-Venom has dropped from close to $50 to $11.49 right here on this site. If you've been patient, now is the time to snap up the cards you identified weeks ago as prime choices for your Commander decks and for competitive formats. Even if Marvel's Spider-Man is something of a dud in Constructed, as it appears to be in a Vivi-dominated format, it's worth stashing away some low-cost and high-potential cards for a post-banning Standard. I have numerous picks I personally have my eye on, from Spider-Sense ($3.49) to Strength of Will ($1.49) to Villainous Wrath ($.99), but the cards from the set with the greatest potential power (and yes, thus the greatest potential responsibility) for the least amount of money are these:

Agent Venom

Midnight Reaper is a great card, and the Symbiote switches the power and toughness in exchange for Menace and, very crucially, Flash. A nasty combat can suddenly turn from a rout (or a Rout) into an opportunity for massive card advantage, and Agent Venom lets you do so at a moment's notice for 3 mana and a single dollar.

Commanders that want Agent Venom include Aristocrats Commanders, from Teysa Karlov to Meren of Clan Nel Toth to Savra, Queen of the Golgari. Also note that the Agent isn't a Human, so is an excellent Mutate target for Brokkos, Apex of Forever or Nethroi, Apex of Death. Agent Venom does only trigger off of nontoken creatures, so self-sacrifice decks like The Necrobloom aren't interested, but decks that run sacrifice loops like Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver or Judith, the Scourge Diva will get fantastic use out of Agent Venom.

Electro, Assaulting Battery

At the time of writing, Electro, Assaulting Battery is $4.99, while Birgi, God of Storytelling // Harnfel, Horn of Bounty is $20 and Urabrask // The Great Work is $12. Urabrask is a mythic rare from a relatively recent, heavily-opened Standard set, and Birgi is a Rare from several years ago, yet they still command high prices. I don't expect Electro's trajectory to be much different (although do note that he's rare, rather than mythic rare), so now is the right time to pick up the shocking spellslinger.

Commanders that want Electro include Birgi and Urabrask, as well as Ashling, Flame Dancer and a whole host of Izzet spellslinger Commanders, from Ral, Monsoon Mage to Vivi Ornitier to Veyran, Voice of Duality. His headgear may be risible, but your opponents will stop laughing when you cast Crackle with Power or Bonfire of the Damned for 30.

Shadow of the Goblin

As a long time graveyard enthusiast, I believe the only thing better than drawing cards for cheap is discarding cards for cheap. Shadow of the Goblin isn't card advantage, but it is a way to sculpt your hand and your graveyard beginning on turn two. For under two dollars, you can churn through your deck and pass out pings to the entire table every time you Flashback a spell, cast a spell off Glimpse the Impossible, or steal a spell from an opponent's library.

Commanders that want Shadow of the Goblin obviously include Prosper, Tome-Bound, but anything that triggers from playing from exile, which is a space Wizards is committed to exploring, can exploit the cheap Enchantment, from Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin to Rocco, Street Chef to Loot, the Key to Everything. Commanders that exploit Madness or Mayhem also want the Shadow, from Anje Falkenrath to Norman Osborn. I run a Mishra, Claimed by Gix Reanimator deck at lower-power tables, and Shadow of the Goblin has overperformed in that shell.

Biorganic Carapace

Four mana is a lot to ask for something that only affects a single creature, but the Carapace snaps onto a creature and it is all but guaranteed to replace itself; if you're in Blue-White, you presumably have difficult to block creatures. Once you've landed a Biorganic Carapace, it Equips for only 2 mana, which is quite cheap for a +2/+2 boost and saboteur-based card advantage that scales based on the number of creatures you control with Auras, Equipment, or - most simply and critically - counters.

Commanders that want to go Biorganic include the newly-printed Wraith, Vicious Vigilante; Arna Kennerud, Skycaptain; Noctis, Heir Apparent; and Tidus, Yuna's Guardian. We're not quite to a "modified matters" deck in Azorius or Jeskai, as only have 44 cards that care about "modified" across all five colors, but we get closer with every set and so Biorganic Carapace's potential only grows. In the meantime, it's great in any Equipment-based deck that runs Blue and White.

Iron Spider, Stark Upgrade

Steel Overseer was, at one point, a highly desirable casual card whose price peaked at $18 back in 2019. Iron Spider may not be a stark upgrade to the little robot, but it's a great redundant effect for artifact decks. Note that Iron Spider, thanks to Vigilance, rumbles as a 3/4 and can surprise an opponent who didn't expect you to block their Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton. I honestly think Iron Spider has Standard potential - not while their turn three is casting Vivi Ornitier, of course, but I've seen various Dimir and Azorius artifact decks that are currently low-tier but can get out of hand quickly. For a couple of dollars, it seems worth the gamble.

Commanders that can exploit Iron Spider include artifact creatures like Marvin, Murderous Mimic, Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter, and The Seriema, as well as non-robots like the about-to-drop Aloy, Savior of Meridian; Alibou, Ancient Witness; and Urza, Chief Artificer.

Finally, it's worth paying attention to the Spider typal synergy in the set - with Lorwyn Eclipsed on the horizon, I expect creature types to matter more, and we've already seen one Changeling in Lorwyn in Mutable Explorer. Radioactive Spider becomes much more interesting once it has more to tutor up - might be worth sinking the price of a cup of coffee into a playset of the isotopic arachnid. The same is true of Mary Jane Watson - an easy-to-cast bear that can draw you cards as you cast further creatures is worth revisiting if we get a critical mass of playable Changelings - or any repeatable way to produce tokens with Changeling.

I don't have access to Wizards' market research, but we know Marvel's Spider-Man isn't exactly setting new records - Wizards would have advertised that fact already, were that the case. I'm not surprised - the set is a strange chimera, a Marvelesque mutant. It appears to be an onramp for comic book fans who are familiar with Magic but haven't taken the plunge, so for us veteran players, there's not much that's immediately appealing. But all that means is that this is the time to strike, if you're a frugal player: a set with lower sales and a mixed audience reception is a great chance to buy at pennies on the dollar and feel brilliant when a card starts seeing play and its price skyrockets. If you bought a playset of everything listed here - based on current prices here at Cool Stuff, Inc. - you'd pay $37.80, a fraction of what you would have paid back in September. Spider-Man can stick to saving New York City; you and I, at the ground level, can be content with saving money.