This week I'm going to dig into a Spider-Man legendary creature that gave me an excuse to run one of my favorite cards in the history of Magic. Most of us who have played the game for years have run into cards that appeal to them in ways that are lasting and hard to explain. Today's commander not only synergizes with one of my favorite old enchantments, it also gives me an excuse to lean into impulse draw, a way of gaining card advantage that I don't often use.

Let's meet today's Hero.

Gwen Stacy is a 2/1 Human Performer Hero with a low casting cost of one and a red, and some neat abilities. When she enters I'll exile the top card of my library and I can play it for as long as I control her. If she leaves play and comes in again, I'll lose access to that card but I'll get another to replace it. This isn't a flicker deck, but it's good to remember how it works. I can also pay five mana to transform her.

She transforms into Ghost-Spider, a 4/4 Spider Human Hero with flying, vigilance, haste, and some cool abilities. Whenever I play a land from exile or cast a spell from exile I'll put a +1/+1 counter on her. I can also remove two +1/+1 counters from Ghost-Spider to exile the top card of my library and I may pay it this turn.

The ability to exile a card from your library and being able to play it is a thing called "impulse draw" in Magic. This deck is going to be full of ways to play cards from exile, both through impulse draw and through other kinds of shenanigans. Keeping track of which impulse draw cards are available until the end of your next turn and which must be played on the current turn may end up being a challenge.

Gwen Stacy is what's known as an MDFC - a Modal Double-Faced Card. The legendary creatures in Spider Man that can transform differ from cards like Heliod, the Radiant Dawn, in that Gwen can be cast as her front or her back side, while Heliod only has a mana value and is castable on the front side.

The high cost of transforming Gwen Stacy into Ghost-Spider may also be a challenge, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This deck is going to be full of ways to cast spells from exile so we can put +1/+1 counters on Ghost-Spider, get some impulse draw, and do it again. I don't yet know if the juice is going to be worth the squeeze, as any commander with flying and vigilance might rather keep those counters.

Endless Possibilities

I started this column off talking about one of my favorite cards in all of Magic, so we might as well start there. I'm not running game changers, but I decided to throw in a few odd tutors to increase the chances of seeing it in a game.

With Possibility Storm in play, anyone casting a spell from their hand will exile that card and then exile cards from the top of their library until they exile another card with the same card type. They'll then cast that second exiled card from exile without paying its mana costs. For Ghost-Spider this means that not only will every spell you cast be a wild adventure, it will also put a +1/+1 counter on your commander. Possibility Storm is chaos at its finest, and I love how you have to abandon all sense of being able to control your fate when you play this weird old enchantment.

You'll want to see if you can get as much value as possible out of each casting. Casting a 1 mana creature and instead getting a 6, 7, or 8 mana creature is going to feel great. Of course, casting an instant and getting a counterspell with an empty stack (so you have nothing to counter) won't feel nearly as good.

You might not want to run budget tutors like Long-Term Plans and Wild Research, but these lists should be seen as starting points. Enlightened Tutor and Idyllic Tutor will set you back a few more bucks, but I wouldn't blame you for upgrading to adjust to a stronger meta.

It is worth noting that if you play Possibility Storm into a stax piece like Boromir, Warden of the Tower, you'll effectively shut everyone but the player controlling Boromir from being able to resolve spells. Any effect that prevents spells from being able to be cast for free will be a problem when you've got Possibility Storm out. You're in Jeskai so you could play Boromir along with Lavinia, Azorius Renegade or even Void Mirror. The former is like Boromir and will affect only your opponents, while the latter will shut out everyone from being able to play Magic.

I didn't include any of those three cards in today's deck. I don't think they're much fun, but you should know it's an option, if only to avoid playing Possibility Storm into a board that will shut people off from being able to resolve spells.

Playing From Exile

Ghost-Spider cares about both lands and spells played from exile, but the only reliable way I found to play lands from exile was through impulse draw. I started with Outpost Siege, an enchantment that lets me exile the top card of my library and I'll be able to play that card until end of turn. Play means lands and spells, which is great. I'm also running a few creatures that can help give me more impulse draw.

Urabrask will replace everyone else's draw step with impulse draw and will give me an impulse draw in addition to my regular draw. While they might not like it, Urabrask is among the tamest of the Praetors you'll find in Magic.

Bonehoard Dracosaur will have me exile two cards on your upkeep, and you might get a Treasure token and/or a 3/1 Red Dinosaur token for your trouble. Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest will exile cards when it enters or attacks and if you don't end up using them, it will push damage out to each opponent.

I'm also running Chaos Channeler, Tectonic Giant, Stolen Strategy, and Sword of Forge and Frontier as additional sources of repeatable impulse draw. I could have looked into instants and sorcery spells as well, but games of EDH can go long, and I always try to lean more on repeatable effects than single use effects.

I'm also leaning on a few familiar keywords to get more ways to cast spells from exile: Cascade, Foretell, and Suspend.

The biggest problem with the older flip commanders was that you often really want to be playing with the back side, but if it gets removed you've got to keep up with commander tax and you've got to pay the cost to flip it every time you're putting it back out there. Gwen Stacy lets you cast either side, which is great but which may get confusing for people (like me) used to the older double-faced transforming commanders.

Even with the ability to cast Gwen as Ghost-Spider, you will still want to run ways to protect your most valuable permanents. Today's list is a starting point and while I'm running Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, and a few counterspells, I could be doing more. I built this list to play in lower powered games so there are zero game changers and I've leaned away from combo or anything I felt was too oppressive.

Gwen Stacy | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Gwen Stacy

• Creatures (20)
• 1 Augury Raven
• 1 Bonehoard Dracosaur
• 1 Chaos Channeler
• 1 Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest
• 1 Esper Sentinel
• 1 Etherium-Horn Sorcerer
• 1 Ethersworn Sphinx
• 1 Faerie Mastermind
• 1 Heralds of Tzeentch
• 1 Monastery Mentor
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Noise Marine
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Plargg, Dean of Chaos
• 1 Sakashima's Protege
• 1 Skittering Surveyor
• 1 Tectonic Giant
• 1 Third Path Iconoclast
• 1 Urabrask, Heretic Praetor
• 1 Wild-Magic Sorcerer

• Instants (17)
• 1 Aetherize
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Behold the Multiverse
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Flawless Maneuver
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Holy Day
• 1 Long-Term Plans
• 1 New Way Forward
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Saw it Coming
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Aminatou's Augury
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Doomskar
• 1 Expressive Iteration
• 1 Inevitable Betrayal
• 1 Vanquish the Horde
• 1 Volcanic Torrent

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Outpost Siege
• 1 Possibility Storm
• 1 Stolen Strategy
• 1 Whirlwind of Thought
• 1 Wild Research

• Artifacts (13)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Chaos Wand
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Coveted Jewel
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Lotus Bloom
• 1 Mox Tantalite
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Sword of Forge and Frontier

• Lands (37)
• 7 Island
• 7 Mountain
• 7 Plains
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Arcane Lighthouse
• 1 Battlefield Forge
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Mystic Monastery
• 1 Path of Ancestry
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Sulfur Falls

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If you wanted to tune this list up you might lean into some of the meaner suggestions I shared earlier. Boromir and Linvala combine with Possibility Storm to shut your opponents out of casting spells from their hand. You could build a more staxy deck and try to win games through commander damage. Voltron isn't exactly a high powered solution but commander damage can still get you there. The manabase is also something you could easily upgrade, and I'm running zero game changers so you definitely have room to tune this list up.

To rework this deck for even lower-powered play, you might drop out Possibility Storm, but that would be a hard choice for me. I do love that old card and you'll see why it is so good for this list in a moment. You might rebuild the list with a focus around a creature type while keeping much of the impulse draw. I could suggest spiders, but if you're opening a box (or more) of this new Spider-Man set you may have already made that leap of logic. We may be seeing a lot of casual Spider Hero kindred lists with a slightly random subtheme that works with the commander over the next month or so.

Early Results

I was able to get this list into a game and it was quite a wild ride. I was up against Ragost, Deft Gastronaut, Infinite Guideline Station, and Toph, the First Metalbender. If that sounds like a tough table, it's worth remembering that this group does lean away from combo and high-powered play. We mostly succeed with that, but we occasionally have a player (myself included) come in with a new deck and find out that it's a bit much for the meta. I did that with Tifa Lockheart and others have had games where they just blew the doors off the table. It happens, but it didn't happen with Gwen Stacy.

I started the game with four lands and a Long-Term Plans in my starting hand, so I carried out my plan of tutoring for Possibility Storm as early as possible and just seeing where things went. I played Gwen on turn 2, Long Term Plans on turn 3, and Outpost Siege on Khans for some impulse draw on turn four.

Possibility Storm really warps a game so I won't be playing it again for a while on Thursday nights. It stayed out the whole game and was largely responsible for protecting my commander, for one player blowing up their board to the point where they might have threatened an alpha strike, and then for me winning the game.

I saw a very early Vanquish the Horde get exiled by Outpost Siege and while I had the mana to cast it, I decided nobody wanted a boardwipe that early and left it in exile. I wasn't ahead at the time, and I didn't ever have a huge army under my control. I was able to flip Gwen into Ghost-Spider and hit two of my opponents for 4 commander damage, spreading it around as I like to do in casual play.

The midgame saw the Ragost player do a bit, but not a lot. They never got their lifegain setup in place and never threatened to get out of control. The Toph player got a huge boost when the Infinite Guideline Station player played Urborg, letting their land artifacts tap for Black mana. They had a nice setup where any artifacts that got removed would just come back, but they weren't threatening a win or even an alpha strike on a single player. They just had a spooky level of synergy in the permanents on their board.

The Infinite Guideline Station had been kidding (half seriously) about how I was playing a stax piece in Possibility Storm. I had assumed it would be out for a bit, get me some +1/+1 counters on Ghost Spider, and then get removed as soon as possible. It ended up being him that got the most benefit from my "stax piece" as he had a turn where he just kept on playing card after card and lucking into some really great stuff. By the time he was done he had a good-sized army with a Jetmir, Nexus of Revels in play. We had a turn to find an answer before he'd see if he could knock someone out or even close out the game.

On my turn I exiled a Doomskar on my upkeep with Outpost Siege. I could wipe the board! The only problem was that Ghost Spider had something like 8 or 10 +1/+1 counters and I didn't want to lose all that work. I had three instants in my hand and I knew there was a Flawless Maneuver in my deck. All I had to do was cast Doomskar, hold priority, and start throwing instants into my Possibility Storm to see if I got lucky. Spells cast from exile would resolve normally but anything cast from my hand would get exiled and replaced with the next card with a matching type to the card I cast.

I cast Doomskar on the stack, held priority, and cast Holy Day.

I got lucky.

Flawless Maneuver flopped onto the table just like I had been hoping it would.

I protected my stuff, wiped the board, and over the next three turns I was able to knock everyone out, as I already had some commander damage on each of my tablemates.

It felt good but I wouldn't expect Gwen Stacy to regularly have games like that. It was a very lucky series of plays that led to that result and I nearly handed the game to the 5/c Infinite Guideline Station deck with my Possibility Storm shenanigans.

Final Thoughts

I've been on a heck of a lucky streak for the past few months, and any time I've been winning games at a high rate I worry that I'm pubstomping. I'm sure sometimes that's true, but looking at some of the crazy circumstances involved in some of those wins, I'm trying not to worry too much.

I think it's healthy to pay attention to your win rate even in casual play, and especially if you tend to be something of a spike. I don't love cEDH because you have a much more narrow range of cards and commanders that are good enough to play at that level. I am, however, very outcome oriented, and I do focus on winning more than I probably should. I think I've got to bring a few weaker decks to the LGS in the coming weeks, though variance will swing back eventually and I'll have another losing streak whether I like it or not.

I've seen my own interest in deckbuilding swing back into the positive over the past week. For a while I was feeling pretty down on Magic as I'm not into UB and we're going through both Spider-Man and soon, Avatar, the Last Airbender. I was on the edge of stopping writing about EDH, but I still love EDH and writing, so I'm glad I waited until my own inner pendulum swung back again. Last week's column was fun to write, and this week's also turned out to be a pretty good time. I would never have guessed that my "test game" could have turned into such a rollercoaster of a game!

Right now I'm leaning towards at least making it to 500 columns, though I may well keep going after that. It's a rare thing to have found such a fun hobby, and to have found a way to write about it on a great platform like CoolStuffInc.com has provided.

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