Last updated on September 23, 2025
School Daze | Illustration by Domenico Cava
Yonder golden sun has set upon another Magic: The Gathering prerelease, but reports are showing that Marvel's Spider-Man didn't exactly pull in the big numbers. The Universes Beyond crossover has been a point of controversy since it was officially announced, and it seems some section of the MTG community finally put their feet down on this one. Attendance was low across the board, but what did everyone's favorite Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man™ do to piss people off?
Post-Prerelease Report
Spider-Man Promotional Art | Illustrated by Javier Charro
Anecdotally, the Marvel's Spider-Man prerelease was one of the the skimpiest events I've been to in 10+ years of prereleasing. The total attendance across two events at two different stores was 28 players, which included a Two-Headed Giant event. That's… decidedly not good. Edge of Eternities pulled in a respectable crowd, and there was no way anyone was going to match Final Fantasy. But Spider-Man just sort of… flopped, like Tobey Maguire in that one Spider-Man 2 scene. You know the one.
“The worst turnout I've ever seen from a prerelease,” says Gierrtheviking on Reddit. “We have 5 people here.”
“77$ Entry fee, Average 1.5 prize packs per person. No thanks,” says bkydx.
Evidence seems to skew towards lower turn-outs for Spidey prereleases, and while some players were lucky enough to enter $35-40 events, others mention prices as high as $50-80.
“Prerelease tonight at my LGS was full, 40/40,” says LuchaViking, “and the three people I played against all had great decks that did fun things. Overall vibes were good!“
LengthinessKlutzy341 says: “I really enjoyed the gameplay and the synergies within the set as well as the matches that I had. It basically changed my whole opinion on the set…“
Credit where credit is due: The mechanics of Spider-Man (mayhem, web-slinging, etc.) are pretty fun and intuitive, so it's not surprising to see some thumbs-up reviews amid all the warcries.
What Went Wrong?
Steel Wrecking Ball | Illustration by Michele Giorgi
Marvel's Spider-Man hasn't really set itself up for success to begin with. The small set, rumored to be an Assassin's Creed-style set that was repurposed into something playable after the financial failure of that set, just didn't appeal to a large portion of the Magic community.
Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings are big names too, but they're at least magic-adjacent, and people who weren't super-fans of the IPs could relate to what they were seeing on most of the cards. Spider-Man… not so much. The anti-Universes Beyond crowd really rallied against this one, stating that Marvel, and Spider-Man in particular, doesn't feel like Magic.
People not flying out of their seats to come play with inspired card designs like Hot Dog Cart, News Helicopter, and Subway Train shouldn't be that much of a surprise.
Price is certainly a driving factor as well. Universes Beyond products have a higher entry fee by default, due to extra licensing costs for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. Players have proven that they'll still pay these higher prices for a product they're interested in, but it's not swaying anyone who was on the fence already.
$40-50 for a prerelease isn't a great look; that's the price they used to reserve for “premium” sets like Commander Masters and Modern Horizons 3. That's not the case with a typical Universes Beyond Standard release; they're just normal sets being sold at a higher price point because the company needs to make more money off of them. And that translates to more expensive prereleases, and less people interested in attending them.
There's the whole Through the Omenpaths snafu as well. People seemed generally supportive of the OM1 reveal (#TeamFleem), but a disconnect between the cards you'd open in a Spider-Man prerelease and the versions you'll see on MTG Arena or Magic Online isn't a great selling point. Having two different versions of the same set isn't attractive for people who almost exclusively play digital Magic.
The Spider-Man prereleases this weekend weren't a totally botched affair, and plenty of players had a great experience (90% of which were people who opened The Soul Stone in their Sealed pool), but the events misfired for many game stores.
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4 Comments
The prereleases suffered because we are/were boycotting Disney for their complicity in the gaza genocide and because they bowed to the orange king and set up the death knell of free speech. It was pretty easy to skip a mediocre set’s prerelease, especially with so many angry at the IP creep of UB in magic anyway
Regardless of reason, totally agree it’s easy to skip something when the excitement about it was already low to begin with.
I would care more if I was given more time to play current sets, I’m not even caught up with everything I want from both Final Fantasy and Edge of Eternities, but I’m expected to be excited over an IP I really don’t care about much?
I feel like making Sonic a full UB set instead of a second go of this would have been a better idea. That and waiting a bit longer between releases…
We’re well past the point of waiting any length of time between major set releases, unfortunately.
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