Marvel's characters have conquered the box office, streaming, and the comic racks. Now they look to be rewriting the economy of Magic: The Gathering.
A single card from Marvel's crossover set has jumped close to 400% in a matter of days, and the villain driving the run is the exact same one about to headline the entire MCU: Doctor Doom.
The card is "Doctor Octopus, Master Planner", printed in last year's Marvel's Spider-Man set. It sat around $1.80 for months, then rocketed to roughly $8.80 in a matter of days, nearly five times that price. And the funny part for anyone who knows their rogues galleries: a card from Spider-Man's own set is suddenly on fire, and Spider-Man has almost nothing to do with it.
It all boils down to the deck that everyone is building. Magic's brand-new Marvel Super Heroes set hit shelves on June 26th, and by a wide margin the most popular card of its Commander precons is "Doom Prevails", fronted by "Doctor Doom, King of Latveria". Doom's whole game plan runs on discarding and looting his own cards to fuel his schemes, which means you burn through your hand on purpose turn after turn.
It turns out that "Doctor Octopus" is the perfect safety net: for seven mana he hands your other villains a buff, bumps your maximum hand size to eight, and refills you back up to eight cards at the end of every turn, all while sitting behind a tanky 4/8 body.
Players figured out their synergistic effect pretty fast. Card database EDHREC now lists Doctor Octopus in 46% of logged Doctor Doom decks, a massive adoption rate for a seven-drop that isn't even the commander.
When nearly half the builds of the format's hottest deck all chase the same $2 card, it doesn't stay a $2 card for long. Our sister site GameFragger broke down the full price run, tracing the spike back to MTGGoldfish data.
The timing is the part that should make superhero fans happy. Robert Downey Jr. is trading Iron Man's armor for Doom's mask in Avengers: Doomsday, set to land in theaters later this year (December 18th), and Marvel has bet its entire Multiverse Saga on the character carrying the next two Avengers films. Doom is arguably the most talked-about villain in comic-book movies in a decade, and the heat he's generating is spreading.
It's a good time to be Marvel right now. Marvel Super Heroes is one of the biggest releases in Magic's history, a roughly 270-card set that went Standard-legal and drew a ban inside its first week, with a $500,000 Pro Tour kicking off in Amsterdam this weekend, July 17th to 19th. Doc Ock is simply the latest single to catch fire in a set that has had the whole hobby's attention since it launched.
In case you're not familiar with the game, these Marvel cards live in Magic's "Universes Beyond" line, its home for licensed crossovers. Those sets keep pulling in buyers who don't normally play, the same way the Lord of the Rings set did back in 2023. When a franchise this size shows up, the cards new fans want most can climb on demand alone, well ahead of anything the competitive scene is doing.
One note of caution before anyone raids their wallet chasing the good doctor's payday: spikes powered by a single deck can retrace. Fast. Especially if the card gets reprinted down the line. A 46% adoption rate tells you Doctor Octopus is hot right now, but it doesn't mean he'll hold $8.80 six months from now.
I don't think my 19-year-old self, who was VERY into collecting and playing Magic, could have ever envisioned what Wizards of the Coast has done in the 30 years since I began collecting and playing. I now have my OG 4th edition cards that I collected in the 90s, a few boxes of booster packs that I've picked up over the years, several boxes of the Dungeons & Dragons, and now there are Marvel cards! I would have thought I was in heaven getting to indulge my fantasy nerd and comic-reading nerd at the same time, if it wasn't for the price! I remember being able to visit the local game store and pick up a box of boosters for a decent price, but that was before all of the "Collector" editions and premium cards for people that DON'T play. As things sit now, I need to find one of my original Black Lotus cards (I could swear I have at least two of them…) to even be able to afford the cool collectible cards.
So is there anywhere Doctor Doom isn't taking over these days? Are you picking up any of Marvel's Magic cards ahead of Doomsday, or leaving the mana to the Commander crowd?
Sound off in the comments below.
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