So. Many. Options.
The Fantastic Four precon offers not two, not four, but six options for our commander.
The Thing enables planeswalker ultimates for a four-color super friends build.
Human Torch Voltrons the entire table in one fiery swoop.
Invisible Woman builds a pillow fort while buffing late-game, monstrous attackers.
Mister Fantastic draws cards every turn to keep pace with the game.
Or still yet…
Power Pack cheats out Magma Opus and ultimatums.
And Crystal may secretly be the best storm machine gunner we’ve ever seen. Manamorphose, anyone?
But, how to upgrade?
Ponder – Dan Scott
Should we stick to mechanical themes? Stick to flavor? Just add good cards?
Today, we will do a little of it all without committing too hard to changing the way the precon functions out of the box.
No super friends, Voltron, pillow fort, Magma Opus, or machine gun storm.
Just plain, old draw cards, sling spells, and keep pace with Mister Fantastic.
A light, flavorful touch.
For today.
Fantastic Four #1
Convoke
Out of the box, The Fantastic Four is a hero typal deck that rewards us for casting noncreature spells.
With five sweepers and a suite of cards that trigger once per turn, we are looking to grind out our opponents’ resources into the late game.
Some may say that five sweepers are too many. Sometimes, if something seems too much, pushing further can be fruitful.
Are five sweepers too many? With Reed Richards at the helm drawing cards every turn, let’s up that number to seven by adding Calamity of Cinders and Winnowing.
As unique convoke sweepers, these two allow us to wipe out our opponent’s boards while retaining our own presence.
Although convoke is not the most natural fit for a creature-light deck looking to cast one noncreature spell a turn—retrace, rebound, flashback, paradigm, and buyback all fit more intuitively—the presence of a light token generation theme in the main deck coupled with typal theme makes Lorwyn Eclipsed convoke cards a good fit here.
Collective Inferno and Harmonized Crescendo can each be our one noncreature spell to enable our super heroes. The Inferno is particularly nasty alongside The Thing as he barrels in for eighteen damage after the first round of +1/+1 counters are applied, even without counter doubling. Or, if the table is still full, an uncontested Human Torch (the ultimate flavor win for Collective Inferno) deals thirty-six damage divided among your opponents.
Cover Detail from Fantastic Four #1
Heroes of Convoke
To support our convoke hero typal build, the Fantastic Four call on Falcon and Redwing, Black Panther, Vanguard, The Astonishing Ant-Man, and Captain America, Living Legend.
Falcon and Redwing, Black Panther, Vanguard, and The Astonishing Ant-Man all provide team-in-a-can synergies to give us a nice, wide board after we cast our sweepers.
Ant Man joins in Fantastic Four #384
Captain America, Living Legend allows us to cast our convoke spells, untap, and still attack. Or, if we are looking to cast our Calamity of Cinders, attack, untap, then convoke out our one-sided sweeper.
Black Panther joins in Fantastic Four #544
A Little More for Synergy and Flavor
A small, sticking problem remains. Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards is still on the chopping block for this build. Cutting Mister Fantastic from a deck with Mister Fantastic as the commander would be an outrageous flavor fail.
Out of the box, we are given eight token makers to synergize with Mister Fantastic. With our convoke-enabling heroes, we up that number to eleven. Let’s add two more token/convoke synergy pieces that lean into Fantastic Four flavor.
Doom’s first appearance features his shark helicopter in Fantastic Four #5
While yes, Doom is the bad guy, we need this mechanically. Shark Typhoon will support our noncreature synergies, help us rebuild post sweeper, and enable Mister Fantastic.
We will also print ten copies of the comic panel to use as our new shark tokens.
And find a printer and glue stick to alter Shark Typhoon…
One more addition for Mister Fantastic, hero-typal convoke, and Fantastic Four lore.
The team is exposed to cosmic radiation in Fantastic Four #1
While racing to be the first in space, the soon-to-become Fantastic Four’s spacecraft was bombarded by cosmic rays, forever altering their lives. It’s a stretch, but we could call them “Champions from Beyond”.
The MTG card does a little of everything we want. We scale Hero tokens to match any point in the game and attack with four creatures for a benefit. For the full party of eight, we can imagine the Fantastic Four receiving help from Wolverine, Spiderman, Hulk, and Ghost Rider.
The team expands in Fantastic Four #347
Printer. Glue stick.
Cuts
Cuts are rarely easy. Luckily, we only have ten cards to remove here.
Silver Surfer, Galactus’s Herald
Mirage Mirror
Galactus, Devourer of Worlds
Into the Time Vortex
Dragon Man, Reformed Robot
Terramorph
Negative Zone Portal
Genesis Ultimatum
Path of Discovery
Bovine Intervention
Dragon Man, Negative Zone Portal, Genesis Ultimatum, and Mirage Mirror are just weird mechanical choices for this deck, and I can’t seem to work out why we would want them.
Without any mechanical synergies, Silver Surfer and Galactus are underwhelming on power level for this build.
And finally, to make room for our four convoke spells, Path of Discovery, Into the Time Vortex, Terramorph, and Bovine Intervention have to go.
Honorable Mentions
If we want to downgrade the deck, we could include this janky, dream-of-all-drafters combo. With all four heroes in play, a single trigger sets the combo in motion, allowing us to win only if the combined life total of all opponents is less than or equal to the number of cards in our library. If not, Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards’ ability says “may,” allowing us to stop the combo as needed. Fifty walls, a 57/57 The Thing, Ben Grimm, and a fifty-card hand against one opponent will (hopefully) get there if we can assemble a four-card combo without tutors.
The postgame conversation every time we try for the combo – Fantastic Four #1
Definitely a downgrade.
Cleanup Step
With the goals of preserving flavor and mechanical synergies, we took a very light touch with this upgrade.
And, across a wide bevy of options, we went with the safe plan, Mister Fantastic.
Before finishing up with Marvel, we will return to explore Crystal, Inhuman Princess in the comics and as our commander.
As always, Table for (Fantastic) Four believes in fun, kitchen table Magic.
Fantastic Four #22
