Magic: the Gathering has seen many ups and downs over the years. There have been weird sets. There have been great sets. Over the past few years there have been Spongebob, Fortnite, and even Doctor Who cards released. This coming month we're about to see our first Spider-Man set, but it's not our first look at Super Heroes in Magic. In 2024 we saw the Marvel Superdrop, a Secret Lair set with cards for Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Wolverine, and Storm. This year we even saw a card for Deadpool.

In 2022 Magic announced that the Universes Beyond cards printed in The Walking Dead would get in-universe versions. 2022 feels like a very long time ago, and I don't think anyone is expecting anything similar for any other UB sets. Universes Within may show up again, but Warhammer 40k, Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings didn't get in-universe versions of any of their cards. That's not surprising, given the size of those sets and the amount of extra work that would have been involved.

Marvel's Spider-Man is about to hit the shelves at the end of September and not for the first time I've found myself wondering what I'm even doing here. I love Magic, but Spider-Man doesn't feel like Magic.

I'm going to risk coming across as the proverbial old man shaking his first at the clouds, but when I got into Magic one of the draws was the medieval fantasy feel of the game. I learned that there were sets that were more focused on technology, but at the time they still weren't typing creatures as robots and androids. Even with planeswalking and a multiverse, it felt like Wizards of the Coast cared about lore and crafting a good story - or at least as good a story as a trading card publisher can throw together.

I don't want to "yuck your yum." If you love seeing Magic become more and more like Super Smash Brothers or Fortnite, I think you're going to love the direction Wizards of the Coast is taking this game. I've been struggling to get excited about writing about cards I'm either not interested in, or that feel like shameless, poorly designed cash grabs (I'm looking at you, Jumbo Cactuar).

In 2026 we're going to see even more Marvel cards. If the money is right I can't imagine WotC wouldn't consider making a D.C. set as well. We may eventually see a year with only sets for external IPs and zero Magic lore sets. If that sounds crazy, just look at how quickly UB has grown over the past few years.

Whether you look at all of these non-Magic-lore cards, see lemons, and start getting salty, or if it's your secret sugar break, there's no reason why we can't both come together and make a batch of lemonade!

Heroes and Villains

I don't expect to ever see the greater EDH community move on from the current format to adapt a version of the game that is both controlled by the players and that focuses on the magical medieval fantasy feel that drew me to the game. I can't write a column and banish all of the heroes and villains to some different format. I could find a "pre-EDH" playgroup and start playing exclusively with old cards, but I'm not there yet.

I also can't stop thinking about how a format designed around superheroes would look.

If I were designing Commander: Heroes and Villains, it would be a multiplayer format with a lot in common with Commander. It would be a singleton format with 100 card decks and would be played as a multiplayer game. Those are things I love about Commander and it's a familiar starting point for most of us.

Superhero stories are rife with teams of heroes and villains.

Marvel's Avengers in the MCU was made up of Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye. That team actually made its debut in the comics in 1963 with Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor, and Wasp. DC's Justice League first appeared in 1960 and was composed of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and Martian Manhunter.

There have been plenty more teams of heroes, from the Doom Patrol and the X-Men to the Suicide Squad, and many others. There have also been teams of villains with colorful names like the Sinister Six, the Masters of Evil, and the Frightful Four. In the DC world we've seen the Legion of Doom, the Secret Society of Super-Villains, the Injustice League and more.

I'm not an expert on Marvel or DC, so forgive me if any of the above is inaccurate. My point is simple - any multiplayer commander variant should let you build a team. Folks have been using "rule zero" to pair up non-partner legendary creatures for years in their commander decks, so it's clearly something folks would like to see.

There should be some sort of cap, and just for the sake of sanity I think I'd limit it to five potential legendary heroes (or villains) on your team.

Would this be your team?

Would you just take advantage of the ability to play Deadpool and Wolverine, Best There Is in the command zone, or would you go crazy and build a 5 color, 5 hero team. My hope is that folks would build their team based upon the characters more than the mechanics of the cards, but there will always be spikes trying to break things and win 100% of their matches.

Spider-man will have an outsized presence but a lot of these characters aren't overpowered. They're fine, but most teams of heroes or villains will pull from this set because of how many legends are in it. A possible X-Men or Avengers set will have a lot of legends but it won't be quite as focused on one theme as this set unless we eventually get a Deadpool set with a zillion variations of Deadpool.

There should be a trade-off for having too many legends in your command zone. I think I'd do this by having a starting life total of 50 minus 5 for each card you begin the game with in the command zone. If you have two heroes you'd start at 40 life. If you got greedy and wanted to start with a full team of 5, you'd start at 25 life.

It's worth asking if you can mix heroes and villains into the same team, or if you can mix other legendary creatures into your team. Folks already "rule zero" all kinds of nonsense in Commander, so it's likely no format rules would get adopted by all players, but my gut tells me the right answer is no. You either have a team of up to 5 heroes, or a team of up to 5 villains, with no mixing of heroes and villains.

When I say "hero" or "villain" I'm specifically referencing the creature subtype. This is a format of heroes and villains. You can't just take your Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain and add her to your team.

Your deck's color identity would be all of the colors in all of the cards in your command zone, much like it works in commander.

The format could have Command Tower be your team's headquarters and have a place either in the command zone, or even better - starting in play like Gemstone Caverns. It's fun to have a few differences to make this stand apart from Commander and making it easier on multicolored decks could make sense. We'll be seeing a lot of 3-5 colored decks in this format.

Deck construction would be singleton and should probably start with the commander banlist.

I still don't love the idea of Captain America attacking alongside Vivi Ornitier and Gandalf the White, wielding Excalibur in one hand and Lucille in the other. This idea of a new format doesn't solve that for traditional Commander or for whatever this would be called. Superhero Elder Dragon Highlander, or "shEDH" (pronounced SHE-dee-aitch) might work. Some really folks do love that kind of silliness so it's probably best to not get too strict about what cards you can play.

The format would be casual. Obviously.

If you're abusing rules to win as fast as possible without any concern for the game experience or other players' fun, you should be playing in a group with other players with that same mindset.

Any format can be broken. There might be obvious combos that would have to immediately be addressed if this format were to become a real thing. Ultimately it's up to you and your friends to figure out how much to break any format you choose to play before it stops being fun. Any banlist outside of the commander banlist would need to be managed by someone, but that someone isn't going to be me. This is a thought experiment - nothing more, nothing less.

Final Thoughts

This idea is well ahead of the cards we'd need to really make it happen. Spider-Man will give us a bunch of new heroes and villains, but I don't think we have enough to really make Commander: Heroes and Villains work. In the coming year or two I bet we will see the card pool catch up.

Years ago I saw how The Commander's Quarters tried to make a new format called Captain happen in response to the The Walking Dead secret lair kerfuffle. It didn't work. I don't think Mitch was wrong in wanting something that was in players' hands and would have some independence from WotC.

Could Commander: Heroes and Villains work as a new variant of Commander?

I think so and I bet it'd be fun.

Will Wizards of the Coast ever pull back from the Fortnite-ification of Commander?

Absolutely not. There is money to be made pushing out cards that draw interest (and money) from fans of other games and intellectual properties, whether that IP is a good match for Magic: the Gathering or not. This year it's Marvel and Avatar. Next year it might be From Software's "Dark Souls", Full Metal Alchemist, or the Studio Ghibli Cinematic Universe.

How would you set up a new format of Commander to give our new superhero cards a place to shine?

Would you allow for other cards to be run in the command zone, like Wonder Woman's lasso, or Batman's utility belt, or would those essential trinkets have to be dug out of your library in order to see play?

Most of my columns over the past 7 or so years have been "deck techs" but I love to occasionally go on a side quest and explore an idea related to Commander. This ended up being a pretty fun thought experiment.

While I'm not likely to build a deck for it, I could see players trying it out and even having fun with it. The fact that you could choose to build the deck so it could convert into a regular commander deck for a normal game of EDH is also pretty nice. You'd simply need to have at least one hero or villain in your team that covered all of the team's colors by itself.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!