Spider-Man Brand New Day is good. While Mary Jane is good, she asks for a far more deliberate shell. For Aunt May, I land hard on the other side. After testing all three, I found a new Spider-Man card that fits into plenty of plans, a Mary Jane card with meaningful upside, and Aunt May whose payoff arrives too late.
My first 24 hours with it did not make me think it was as busted as some players expected, but I do think it is easily a four-star card. Timing matters, and better situations exist for it than others. Still, it is plug-and-play enough that I expect it to find homes beyond straightforward Move. I think it is a card worth investing in.
I was testing all three cards early, so I am not claiming to know which cards will become meta.
Spider-Man Brand New Day Has More Than One Home
The right question is not whether Spider-Man Brand New Day has a single perfect partner. I see the card more like Nightcrawler: finding the optimal use matters, but the flexibility already has value.
Across eight deck tests over two days, the split felt obvious. A generic list packed with movable cards was clunky and did not have a linear game plan. A build with Professor X, Luna Snow, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead felt really good. I may optimize that build further and could cut Jeff for another tech card.
Move Bounce deserves attention too. I am not the right pilot to declare the finished version, and I broke even during my own testing. Even so, I think a strong Move Bounce player can do serious work with Spider-Man Brand New Day and Web Sling. If you already know how to pilot that style at a high level, start testing it.
Another strong direction used Mother Askani, Captain Carter, and Stick together. That list was not completely optimized, but I really liked the flexibility of using Spider-Man Brand New Day as a Nightcrawler while Web Sling moved around. The one-drops freed board space. I might test the list again without Storm, because it was really good.
Mary Jane Takes More Deckbuilding Than Spider-Man Brand New Day
At three cost and three power, Mary Jane rewards movement.
I felt like Mary Jane needed Venus to work. I tried a small-ball approach with Mary Jane, Venus, and Elsa, and the trio looked appealing on paper. In practice, it was clunky. My advice from those games is to choose two of those three cards and let that choice determine the rest of the build. Playing all three asked too much from the deck.
Putting Mary Jane, Aunt May, and Spider-Man Brand New Day together left me with too little payoff too late in the game. The play lines did not make sense, and the cards felt like they did not belong together. The major hindrance in that group was Aunt May. Mary Jane was not, though she demanded more construction around her than Spider-Man Brand New Day.
The early shell I would focus on most mixed end-of-turn movement with Spider-Man Brand New Day and Mary Jane, without Aunt May. I treated it as an Invisible Woman First Steps deck first and foremost. Drax, Nightcrawler, and Spider-Man Brand New Day each supplied unknown power, while Spider-Man Brand New Day also presented extra power. My testing results were average, yet it was hands down the closest build to a meta-style deck that almost anyone could pilot. I still thought it needed one more lane winner.
I wanted to replace Hydra Bob with Web Sling. I did not think Marvel Boy really needed three targets in the Invisible Woman First Steps build, since I wanted cards moving for Mary Jane. Drax felt useful as a protection piece, but Prodigy would probably be better.
I was still debating Hydra Bob, but I had already decided Fantasticar had to be cut.
Triggers Outnumber Targets for Aunt May
Aunt May has an end-of-turn effect: if you used a movable ability, it gives a movable card in your hand minus one cost and plus two power. The wording creates a distinction that matters a great deal.
A card moving from one location to another is not automatically a movable ability. A card that gains a movable ability from another effect counts when you use that ability. Yet the hand reduction applies to a much smaller group, including Vision and Nightcrawler.
That gap is the problem. The end-of-turn effect has more possible triggers than worthwhile targets. For the effect to matter repeatedly, you need the target in hand, need the reduction to happen, then need to play that card and still make use of its movement. The card asks for a sequence that feels too slow.
Testing Spider-Man Brand New Day alongside Aunt May made the issue even clearer. Even with higher-cost movable cards available, I found the result clunky and awful to play.
I think Aunt May is a one-cost card in the future. At its current cost, I do not think the reward is worth the work. I am calling it garbage.
Tech Cards May Matter as the Season Settles
I think every deck in this unknown meta is fragile. I also expect plenty of Shadow King and Rogue by the end of the week.
Rogue probably accounted for three of the four games I won.
I expect her popularity to shoot up this season.
My final verdict is clear: Spider-Man Brand New Day is good and worth investing in. Aunt May is garbage. Mary Jane is good, even if niche.
Watch the source discussion in the original episode.
