Commander Deck Tech: Cosmic Spider-Man

One of the most fun commanders in Marvel's Spider-Man, the most recent Universes Beyond set, is Cosmic Spider-Man.

This five-color creature is perfect for Spider decks as well as your best option if you want to play a deck made up entirely of all the new Spider-Mans.

In this article, you'll find two Cosmic Spider-Man lists: the first and main one focuses on legendary Spiders so you can enjoy the best this set can offer, and the second includes creatures outside this set and focuses on creating creature tokens. Let's see them!

Cosmic Spider-Man has a unique ability. It reminds me of my beloved Odric, Lunarch Marshal's ability, but it only works on Spiders.

This five-color 5/5 commander has an absurd list of desirable keywords, like flying, first strike, trample, lifelink, and haste.

Besides that, Cosmic Spider-Man is also very generous and shares all these wonderful keywords with other Spiders you control.

The idea behind this list was to enjoy the best this Universes Beyond set can offer.

If you're a fan of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, you'll find many comic book references in all the cards we picked. Here's our list:

Ramp, Mana Reducers, and Ways to Create Mana

One of the most difficult challenges when building five-color decks is getting the mana base right.

That's why we added several spells that create and fix mana and even discount the cost of our spells, as well as a few classic options that let us look for lands in our deck and put them in play.

Let's start with our beloved Spider-Man, Brooklyn Visionary. His ETB lets us look for a basic land and put it in play.

Like other creatures in this list, Spider-Man, Brooklyn Visionary has web-slinging, which means we can cast it for less if we return one of our tapped creatures to our hand. This ability is important because, as we mentioned, we play other Spiders that have it, and they also have some ETB abilities that we'll want to use more than once.

We must also highlight Leyline of the Guildpact, which states, "Lands you control are every basic land type in addition to their other types." and "Each nonland permanent you control is all colors."

As usual, we'll play Morophon, the Boundless to discount the cost of our Spider spells by one of each mana color less (after all, this is a Spider deck). It also gives them +1/+1 as a static buff.

Please note that its effect lets us cast Cosmic Spider-Man for free because it discounts his cost by one of each mana color. This effect doesn't apply to the commander tax, though.

Other cards that discount the cost of a certain type of creature are Urza's Incubator and Herald's Horn.

Card Draw

To make all the cards above truly shine, we need to cast spells. So, let's discuss the cards that will bring us more cards, either by drawing them straight from the deck or letting us cast cards from the top.

As this list plays many legendary Spiders, it also plays Vraska Joins Up. This card will give them deathtouch, which Cosmic Spider-Man unfortunately doesn't have to share.

Besides this card, other cards that put resources in your hand and interact with buffs are Spinneret and Spiderling, Tribute to the World Tree, Araña, Heart of the Spider, Heroes' Podium, Shelob, Dread Weaver, Tribute to the World Tree, and Vanquisher's Banner.

Mary Jane Watson was a must, as well as Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O'Hara, and Kindred Discovery.

The scary Gwenom, Remorseless will help us control and cast spells from the top of our deck for life points instead of mana.

Putting More Creatures in Play

Who doesn't like putting more creatures in play for free or for a very discounted cost?

Kindred Summons costs a lot of mana, but it has a lot of potential.

If 5 Spiders are on our side of the board, for instance, we can cast it and reveal the top cards in our deck until we reveal another 5 Spiders, which will then go straight into play.

This set brought us many double-faced cards, like Peter Parker. If we get it through Kindred Summons, though, all we have to do is pick one side, cast it, and pay for it.

To quote our house judge, Antonio, in his recent article:

And it's precisely the actual masked hero we want in this list! Amazing Spider-Man gives all our legendary spells web-slinging, so he lets us cast them for an alternative cost.

As such, we'll be able to fill our board for less resources or even cast noncreatures this way, as long as they have one or more colors, like Avacyn's Memorial.

Buffs

With mana, card draw, and even some cards that discount costs, it's time to go over our main stars: our buffs! At the beginning of combat, Cosmic Spider-Man shares his keywords with other Spiders. Now, let's buff them to make sure their attacks are always lethal.

Akroma's Will is a classic way to end the game in aggro strategies and was a must in this list. As this is a "hero" list, we also had to add Heroes' Podium. It should make all our creatures quite threatening.

We can get value from both Miles Morales//Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man, Miles Morales when we attack.

Thantis, the Warweaver might not be a part of the Marvel universe, but she should still be a terrifying villain on our side of the board. Her static ability forces all creatures to attack in each combat if they're able.

As Cosmic Spider-Man shares several keywords with other creatures, our opponents will most likely not be able to block, but we'll get to keep our board to block them and attack when it's our turn again.

Protection

Finally, another critical part of this deck is protection. Once again, Cosmic Spider-Man buffs our Spiders, but he doesn't make our permanents indestructible or help us protect them from removals and board wipes.

So, we added the following cards:

Shelob, Child of Ungoliant adds a layer of protection on our other Spiders, as it gives them Ward 2. Spectacular Spider-Man has flash and an ability that lets us sacrifice him to make all our creatures indestructible and hexproof until the end of the turn.

In total, we'll just have to pay three mana to protect all our creatures in play!

Finally, Rhythm of the Wild protects us from Counterspell and gives riot to our board.

Our alternative list plays less cards from Marvel's Spider-Man. Instead, it includes a few classic MTG cards for Spiders and Spider creature tokens.

It leans on fun token interactions and even ways to copy creatures that, in turn, create Spider tokens. Like so, we'll have an army with powerful keywords that should terrorize even the opponents that don't suffer from arachnophobia.

Cosmic Spider-Man is the perfect way to get all the flavor from this set in one deck. Because he is a five-color legendary, we can use all the legendary Spiders in this set in this list and take advantage of the synergy between them to trigger ETBs and combat buffs.

This commander is pretty straightforward. Summon your Spider army and win!

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!