Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Cosmic Spider-Man!

Cosmic Spider-Man is a five mana 5/5 with flying, first strike, trample, lifelink, and haste and at the beginning of combat on your turn, other Spiders you control gain flying, first strike, trample, lifelink, and haste until the end of turn.

To end things off from talking about Spider-Man for a bit, I figured I should talk about what will now become the ultimate Spider typal Commander in Cosmic Spider-Man. Fairly generic as a typal Commander, has all five colors to accommodate the various Spider-Folk from the set and let’s them print Spiders in other colors in the future and deals with the odd Spiders not printed in the standard Spider colors from the past.

So it should not come to anyone’s surprise that I am not going to be putting many actual Spiders in this deck. Nope, what Cosmic Spider-Man is excellent for is being a really solid super typal Commander, a Typal Typal Commander if you will.

The first thing we need is to make sure that all creatures we control become “Spiders” and there are a variety of ways we can make that happen. While a variety of our creatures will have Changeling, some extra help for the creatures that don’t have it will be a boon.

Maskwood Nexus is one of the best and most well known cards for this because creatures we control are every creature type, which also includes creature spells we control and creature cards we own that aren’t on the battlefield. This means that we can turn our creatures not just into Spiders, but to other creature types as well. It also helps that we can make a Shapeshifter with Changeling.

Leyline of Transformation is also a way to turn our creatures into a singular creature type, Spider in our case, because like Maskwood Nexus it affects creatures we control, creature spells we cast, and creatures in places not on the battlefield, and also happens to have the benefit of having the Leyline ability of entering the battlefield if it is our opening hand.

Arcane Adaptation is the slowest of the options since it can’t cheat itself onto the battlefield and functions like Leyline of Transformation, but what it has over the Leyline is that it is the cheapest to cast of the options, costing three mana instead of four like the other two options.

Of the universal type change cards, the one that is most expensive to cast in terms of mana value is Conspiracy, which does turn our creatures from anywhere into another creature type, with the biggest downside of the card being that it is five mana to cast, but any bit of redundancy does help.

If we want to be a bit sneaky and start introducing some other specific creature types, then we can also include Hivestone, which turns all creatures we control into Slivers, which if we want a massive typal support, Slivers have us covered.

The next thing we need are ways we can give our “Spiders” various benefits as well as gain benefits for playing “Spiders”.

Bloodline Pretender is great because as it enters we choose a creature type and whenever another creature of the chosen type enters, it puts a +1/+1 counter on Bloodline Pretender. In a similar vein, Metallic Mimic let’s us put a +1/+1 counter on the creature type we choose as they enter.

Having mentioned Slivers earlier, we can also put in a few Slivers to help give additional abilities to our “Spiders”. Since Cosmic Spider-Man gives our “Spiders” so many abilities, we can choose some other niche abilities to add some variety.

First Sliver’s Chosen to give them exalted, Shifting Sliver to make them unblockable except by Slivers, Leeching Sliver to drain an opponent by 1 whenever a “Sliver” we control attacks them, Belligerent Sliver to give them menace, Might Sliver to give them +2/+2, and Sliver Hivelord to give them indestructible.

We have a wide variety of typal effects we can choose from like Drogskol Captain to give “Spirits” we control +1/+1 and hexproof, Risen Reef to get lands onto the battlefield or in our hand when it or an “Elemental” we control enters, and Giada, Font of hope to be a mana dork for “Angels” while giving our “Angels” a +1/+1 counter for each other “Angel” we control when they enter.

Of course one of the best ways we can take advantage of being a Typal Typal deck is we can also make use of Morophon, the Boundless in making creature spells of a creature type we control cost white, blue, black, red, and green less to cast, which when combined with something like Leyline of Mutation which has spells we control cost all five colors instead, means we can cast our spells for free.

While the deck is primarily going to have a lot of Changelings and typal lords, we can still have a couple of actual Spiders to help us out.

Spider-Punk is great because not only does he have Riot, but he gives other Spiders we control Riot, makes it so that spells and abilities can’t be countered, and has it so that damage cannot be prevented, which is really helpful against a control type match up in making sure we getting a lot more of our damage through.

Silk, Web Weaver to make a 1/1 Human Citizen token whenever we cast a creature spell and to give creatures we control +2/+2 and vigilance until end of turn, Shelob, Child of Ungoliant to give other Spiders we control deathtouch and ward 2 while also turning our opponents creatures into Food tokens when they die by a Spider, and Spinneret and Spiderling to get a +1/+1 counter whenever we attack with two or more Spiders and get some card advantage when they deal 4 or more damage.

We gain access to some other specific Spider support with something like Swarmyard Massacre which makes two 1/1 Squirrel tokens and then each creature that isn’t an Insect, Rat, Spider, or Squirrel gets -1/-1 for each of those creature types we control.

Wall Crawl can also be helpful in niche situations since it makes a 2/1 Spider with reach and then we gain 1 life for each Spider we control and then Spiders we control gain +1/+1 and makes it so that creatures with defender can’t block our Spiders.

Cosmic Spider-Man is very much a boiler plate Spider typal Commander in that it gives Spiders a massive benefit, meaning that we can play an all Spiders deck and function well or be a bit more flexible in being a Typal Typal Commander in adding some Changelings to the mix to get an even bigger benefit.

The issue that does come with these sort of typal decks is making sure you have the right cards at the right time, because while we can gain a ton of benefit from having so many “Spiders” in play, if all we have are our payoffs and lord effects.

It also has the danger in leading into repeated play patterns, which can be mitigated in switching out the payoffs and typal bonuses, but if you focus on either or it can lead the deck into being a bit boring to play if all you do is play typal good stuff.

While the ideal way to play this deck is to go all in on Spiders, there is still some flexibility and benefits if you do decide to go into just one other typal strategy. I personally am planning on building a Spider and Sliver double typal deck, which is looking to be pretty sweet and easy to switch to another creature type if I get bored of playing it.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual