WotC Leaks Iconic Spider-Man Villain, and It’s Absolute Carnage

Last updated on August 1, 2025

Kapow! | Illustration by Jessica Fong

Is it even a leak if the card came directly from Wizards of the Coast? Is this another Pinkertons situation?

Reddit user LRDKNgai posted a picture of an upcoming Marvel's Spider-Man card, which was apparently mistakenly sent to them in place of a different Edge of Eternities promo. Honestly, this would've been a sick promotional way to show off the symbiotes from Spider-Man, given their whole “fallen from space” background. Dropping a few of those in products of the space-themed set as teasers for the next set would've been S-tier marketing.

There Will Be Carnage

Source: Reddit

There was no doubt there would be a Carnage card in the set. In fact, there's a chance this isn't the only one. But the version that got leaked is Carnage, Crimson Chaos, a 4/3 for 4 with trample and some gnarly extra abilities.

First, when it enters, you return a mana value 3 or greater creature from your graveyard to play. It must attack each turn if possible, and you sacrifice it when it deals combat damage.

Carnage also has “Mayhem ”. Thanks to some official previews, we already know how mayhem works: If you discard a card with mayhem, you may cast it from your graveyard for the remainder of that turn. It's a variation of madness that's mostly worse (you can't “cheat” timing restrictions like you can when you madness out a creature at instant speed), but has some small advantages. You have the remainder of that turn to decide whether you're playing a mayhem card, so you can take other actions first (like dig for lands), then play a mayhem card after. Madness is locked to the moment you exile the card.

So yeah, solid little midrange beater, especially if you can cast it from the graveyard for just 2 mana! That's 7 mana's worth of dudes popping out for just , and the “symbiote villain” typeline's a total flex too.

Who Is Carnage?

The Amazing Spider-Man #361 | Illustration by Mark Bagley

Carnage is an iconic villain from the Spider-Man universe, and specifically a direct antagonist to Venom. Carnage itself is a symbiote (read: space-goo) that takes control of a vessel, most infamously the murderous Kletus Cassady (you might remember a red-haired Woody Harrelson playing the character in the Venom trilogy). There have been plenty of other hosts throughout the various Spider-Man timelines, but serial killer Kletus is their most recognizable combination.

The presence of Carnage as a destructive, bloodthirsty force in the comics often leads to team-ups between Spider-Man and Venom, who are normally at odds with one another.

Will Carnage Be Any Good?

Fear of Missing Out | Illustration by John Stanko

First thing's first, it's not 100% clear that this card's Standard-playable. The leaked image is a promo, and it's not clear what product this would be from. Chances are it will be a Standard-legal card, but no guarantees right now.

Carnage probably lives or dies by the discard enablers in Standard when this officially releases in September. It's not actually all that bad to run this out for 4 mana, but it looks like it wants to be at the heart of a turbo-discard deck.

Discard/Mayhem is clearly the theme for Rakdos in Spider-Man, but with the set being truncated in size compared to most Magic releases, it's unclear how much support the different archetypes are going to get. Maybe with fewer total archetypes there will be enough tools to make everything tick.

Masked Meower looks like exactly the type of support you'd hope for. An aggressive creature for turn 1 that curves perfectly into a mayhemed Carnage on turn 2, and even puts the body back in play with Carnage's ETB ability. If there's enough of these synergies slinging around, there might be a real deck in the works.

And there's no shortage of 2-mana discard in Standard from other sets. Fear of Missing Out and Charming Scoundrel pair with Carnage well as both discard outlets and bodies to bring back, and Collector's Vault is always available for desperation looting.

There probably needs to be another strong mayhem card or two to make it worth building an entire deck around that aspect of Carnage, but there should be a shell for this card somewhere. Carnage is pretty good at finding hosts, after all.