The super-heroics are spectacular in MTG Spider-Man, but I think it's missing a special something

From dragons to dragoons, race cars to space ships, 2025 has been a bit of a wild ride for Magic: The Gathering, and Wizards of the Coast is closing out the year with a massive crossover in the form of MTG Spider-Man. This is the first big collaboration between the comic book juggernaut Marvel with one of the best card games, and with its release now upon us, anticipation is at an all-time high.

With the full set of 190+ cards now out in the wild, we know there are plenty of Spider-folk to pick from and almost as many of the hero’s rogue gallery. However, there are also some strange absences (not to mention odd inclusions) in MTG Spider-Man. I had a chance to sit down with the set's lead designer, Corey Bowen, to get to the bottom of this. More specifically, to answer my biggest question about the set: to find out why we got "Hot Dog Cart" and "Bagel and Shmere" cards but no Uncle Ben or Kingpin.

During the initial planning for the set, many of these elements weren’t actually present, Bowen revealed.

"Early on, when those elements weren't in there and it was just a bunch of characters attacking, it just kind of felt like you were in a nameless place where the action figures [are] fighting against each other," he says. It wasn’t until Aaron Forsythe, vice president of design at Wizards of the Coast, brought up the idea of incorporating elements and personality of the New York that Spidey calls home that things came together. That personality, it turns out, is hot dog carts, passenger ferries, and pigeons.

There’s no doubt that New York City is almost as much of a character in the comics as Peter Parker himself; he is the "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man," after all, and representing NYC is a smart call.

"We really wanted to create a sense of environment. We also wanted to create a sense of environment that we thought would look different from future Marvel sets, as Spider-Man is very street-level," Bowen explains. Other Marvel characters ascend, with different scopes. We wanted to make sure that this set, you know, felt like Marvel, felt like the comics, but also felt like Spider-Man. We wanted to make sure that that sense of New York and a little street-level stuff, a little light-heartedness, would contrast with whatever is to come."

Building cards that highlight and focus on the environment from which these heroes and villains come is intriguing, and the premise of using it to help differentiate the various Marvel sets and their scopes leads me to imagine that I can’t wait to see the payoff.

With all that said, with this debut Marvel offering being on the smaller side (shockingly, it was supposed to be even smaller), I wish that some of these New York staples would have been offered either as a Secret Lair or even just as tokens, and instead reserved their slots for other missing Spider-Man staples. I would have gotten a good chuckle out of a food token featuring a bagel and cream cheese, a bird token being a city pigeon, or the news copter being an ornithopter token. As it stands, would I trade cards representing more symbiotes, team-ups with other street-level heroes like Daredevil, or dear old Uncle Ben instead? In a spider’s heartbeat. What’s wrong with bashing action figures together, anyway?

Universes Beyond has been a gold mine for Magic: The Gathering, with its crossovers pulling new players into the game like never before, but at the heart of the game, it’s still about the fantastical and magical, and I think it’s this fact where these cards fall flat for me. There isn’t anything magical about a hot dog cart or rent being due. When I play Magic, I want to be slinging spells and placing down menacing creatures. There just isn’t that same spark summoning "Supportive Parents" instead of a goblin or dragon, and these cards feel very mundane in my opinion.

Luckily, a vast majority of Marvel’s Spider-Man set features awesome versions of Spider-Man, the various villains he has contended with over the years, and some wonderful deep cuts and Easter eggs for die-hard fans to find. Characters like Ezekiel Sims, Spider Totem (who MTG head designer Mark Rosewater made sure got included), and Molten Man, along with popular Spider-folk from the recent Spider-Verse movies like Spider-Man India.

This set still looks to be a good time with cards that I’m excited to play with, and the idea of incorporating and using the environment to add flavor and set it apart from future ones is commendable... even if I’m not sure it has been done in the best way. Still, this is the first set of many, so we will just have to wait and see how it all pans out.

Do you agree? Let us know in the comments! And if you want more tabletop goodness, head on over to our guide on the best board games.