Greetings from Japan!

“What the heck are you doing in Japan?” you might ask.

“I can’t tell you. It’s top-secret, hush-hush, cloak-and-dagger type stuff,” I might answer. Information will be given on a strictly need-to-know basis.

Speaking of Cloak and Dagger, here’s what you need to know.

Stat-wise, Cloak is similar to Bart Allen ◊ Kid Flash and Vic Stone ◊ Cyborg from DC Origins. His defensive proficiency also reminds me of Bart. His ability to return a stunned attacker to its owner’s hand means your opponent will face some unpleasant decisions. On turn 4, if your opponent sends his or her 4-drop character into the mysterious folds of Tyrone’s eponymous garment, he or she had better have a trick, have a power-up, or just hope you have nothing lurking on your side of the table.

Assuming your opponent guessed wrong and you manage to stun his or her character with Cloak, then his or her whole turn is going to be wasted. Your opponent will not be able to recover his or her best character, since it was returned to hand, and he or she won’t be able to recruit that character again. If your opponent wants to keep up, he or she needs to advance to the fifth spot on the curve and can’t use his or her fifth turn to make up for the previous turn’s mistake.

When I first read Cloak, I thought he returned characters to hand whenever Cloak stunned any character. I quickly realized that I must have not read the card correctly, because that seemed insane. I was correct in that assessment, but don’t underestimate Cloak’s potential to slow down your opponent and allow you to control the pace of the game.

Cloak is a common, and that means you are going to have to learn how to play both with and against him in Sealed Pack formats. Power-ups and defensive plot twists that boost ATK are going to be essential to getting the most out of this character, and Spider-Friends are also necessary since he has loyalty. Cloak’s loyalty means that you will have the opportunity to have him passed to you very late by non-Spider-Friends players in Booster Draft, and you will rarely have to worry about playing against him in those same players’ decks.

It also means that you will need to have enough other Spider-Friends in the first three levels of your curve in order to reliably recruit him on turn 4. If you are playing a team-up deck, you will need to make sure that the lower portion of your curve has enough Spider-Friends to justify recruiting a character with loyalty on the fourth turn.

Cloak’s boost will also occasionally be relevant. If your opponent does not have an 8-drop character, he or she will often play two 4-drop characters or some other combination of cheaper characters. The latter outcome is actually more likely with Cloak on your side of the table. Your opponent will have had to deal with him, meaning he or she has returned a 4-drop character or two to his or her hand along the way. A boosted Cloak will send all those characters back to his or her hand. Of course, all you have to show for that trick is a 6 ATK/6 DEF character, but I’m sure you can work with it. We’ll have to wait until Web of Spider-Man hits the shelves in order to fully explore the strategies behind drafting the various teams and learning how to maximize tricky characters like Cloak . . .

. . . or do we?

Between the tantalizing preview cards on this site and the time the cards hit your local gaming store of comic shop, there is an exciting intermediate step that will allow you to play Web of Spider-Man Sealed Pack and drafts before the rest of the world.

Saturday, September 11 and Sunday, September 12 will be the Web of Spider-Man Sneak Preview Weekend all over North America. The same tournament organizers who have been bringing you Vs. System PCQs will be expanding their schedules to host Sealed Pack tournaments during the second weekend in September—almost two weeks before Web of Spider-Man goes on sale!

Players attending the event will have the opportunity to play Sealed Pack with five Web of Spider-Man packs. There will be booster pack prizes given away to the top finishers. The first 64 players attending each event will also receive an exciting and tournament-playable extended art promotional card from Web of Spider-Man.

Players in the Sealed Pack event will use the cards they receive to build a deck with a minimum of 30 cards that they will wield in a number of Swiss rounds. Tournament organizers may also give prizes to every player who has achieved a specific record. For example, at the Sneak Preview events at Neutral Ground that weekend, all players without a match loss in the main event after the Swiss rounds will win 24 packs, and all the players with one loss will win 8 packs. That means a box of the new set for the undefeated player and a third of a box for everyone with one loss.

There will also be opportunities to draft Web of Spider-Man in eight-person events. These drafts will occur as long as supplies last. Drafts are usually single elimination, with the winner and the finalist both winning packs. At NG, six packs will be awarded to the winner of each draft, and three to the other finalist. You will not be able to buy Web of Spider-Man packs at these events. The only way you can get the cards is by signing up and playing in these exciting tournaments. Sneak Preview weekend will be a great opportunity to play with new cards, trade with other players in your area, and prepare for upcoming PCQs that will soon switch to Web of Spider-Man Sealed Pack for the Limited portion of the event. Organizers will be running events on Saturday, Sunday, or both. Some are even running midnight tournaments on Friday.


Next week, I will be back with another preview card that should make the rest of the set green with envy.