Last year, Final Fantasy became the highest-selling expansion in Magic: The Gathering history in a single day, smashing all expectations for the first Universes Beyond set to be eligible in all competitive formats. This year, Wizards of the Coast is turning to Marvel Comics to try to replicate that success, as Marvel Super Heroes will launch on June 26.
According to Wizards of the Coast, Marvel Super Heroes will feature over 600 mechanically unique cards across the main set, the Commander decks, and the Jumpstart offerings. Naturally, these cards will come a whole menu of new and returning mechanics. This will serve as your guide to those mechanics, including Teamwork, Power-Up, Connive, and more, along with example cards that show off these new abilities.
Now that the WeeklyMTG livestream has concluded, we are officially in preview season. Keep an eye out for more new Marvel Super Heroes cards leading up to launch, including a special preview card here at GameSpot on June 4.
Teamwork
The Teamwork mechanic falls into the category of things like Convoke or Improvise, in which you can tap permanents you control as an additional cost to casting the spell in order to enhance it. If you see Teamwork X, you’ll have to tap any amount of creatures with combined power X or more to gain the extra effect.
If you look at HULK SMASH! above, the Instant spell costs one generic and one red mana, and you can choose to either destroy a noncreature artifact or have one of your creatures deal damage equal to its power to a creature your opponent controls. However, if you tap creatures with power equal to 4 or more, you can do both.
Power-Up
There’s an old joke among Magic players that “everything is Kicker,” or when you boil a mechanic down to its essence, it’s just a variant of the Kicker mechanic from Magic’s early years, in which you can pay an extra amount of mana to gain an extra effect.
Power-Up is a, well, powered-up version of Kicker, where an incoming creature can gain powerful extra effects for an extra cost. However, here there’s a twist: that cost can be discounted by the creature’s casting cost if the Power-Up effect is activated on the same turn the creature is cast.
Take Thanos, The Mad Titan above. He costs one red, one white, and one black mana to cast, while his Power-Up cost is one of every color of mana including colorless (six stones, six mana pips, very thematic). If you choose to power-up Thanos right after casting him, however, the Power-Up cost becomes one blue, one green, and one colorless, or half of what it would normally cost.
