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A pig wearing red-and-blue pajamas may seem like a fever dream, but it’s just another day in Marvel’s Earth-8311. And it’s barely a stretch inMagic: The Gathering, where angelic cows and demonic bunnies clash with friendly ponies and eldritch abominations.
Earth-8311 is Marvel’s cartoon parody setting, filled with anthropomorphic parodies of all your favorite Marvel characters, from Captain Americat to Goose Rider, and that setting’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Ham wants nothing more than to bring the whole menagerie to your next Commander game night. Grab a slice and shuffle up, it’s time to go hog-wild!
Surrak and Goreclaw
Return of the Wildspeaker
Desert of the Indomitable
The Shire
Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
This deck is firmly inBracket 2: Core, but it’s a fun way to play ‘everything typal.’
The Commander
Just like Spider-Man was a nerdy human who was bitten by a radioactive spider,Spider-Ham was an ordinary spider who was bitten by a nerdy radioactive pig. This lab accident gave him all the limitations of a pig, as well as the brilliant mind of a nerd. All because Aunt May Porker wanted to make a nuclear-powered hair dryer. Yes, that’s his actual origin story.
Long a niche character, Spider-Ham entered the mainstream with 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and that version is the one we find in Magic.Spider-Ham, Peter Porker is a 2/2 Spider Boar Herothat costs one green and one generic mana to cast, and enters with a Food token.
Spider-Ham is a team-player, but he comes from a version of the Marvel Universe where Captain America is a house cat, Thor is a Dog, and Ant-Man is just an ant. SoSpider-Ham gives a passive +1/+1 bonus to 18 different creature typesyou’d expect to find in a forest, including Spiders, Boars, Wolves, Rabbits, and Lizards.
Some of the creature types Spider-Ham buffs have no mono-green representation, like Bats and Rats.
Notably, Spider-Ham doesn’t buff himself, and doesn’t have any ability to represent web-slinging to bypass blockers. So you won’t win many games by slapping your opponent with this wise-cracking pig, buthe’ll buff all of your other creatures to make the whole battlefield a threat.
How To Build Spider-Man’s Spider-Ham, Peter Porker Commander Deck
Spider-Ham, Peter Porker is mechanically simple, but broad enough to build a variety of decks around. He fits well enough in a Food-based deck, but doesn’t have any interaction with the tokens after creating one, and gives a small buff to 18 different creature types.
If you were to focus on any of the specific creature types Spider-Ham covers (assuming you could find enough in mono-green), you could assemble a functional deck. But in this build, you’reusing the creature type list as a card pool to build a solid deck that will feel like a breakout from the local pet store.
None of the creatures in the deck are included just for their creature type: Spider-Ham’s creature type list is loaded with mana dorks and minor lords that buff themselves and each other, leading toa snowball effect that your opponents will never see coming. It almost feels like playing Slivers, disguised as a pig and his farmyard friends.
One inclusion that may raise eyebrows is Maskwood Nexus. Every creature in the deck already matches one of Spider-Ham, Peter Porker’s supported creature types, so it may seem unnecessary. However, it allows you totreat all of your creatures as all creature types, allowing you to make more effective use of some abilities like Thornvault Forager’s abilityto search your library for any Squirrel card.
Maskwood Nexus also has another important function featured prominently in the deck: It makes tokens that benefit from Spider-Ham’s ability. Several cards feature token creature creation, allowing you tobuild up a board without relying on the cards in your hand.
Ramp
Since this deck is mono-green,you can use some of the standard land tutorsto reliably ramp up your mana base instead of relying on mana rocks. But there are also several useful mana dorks you can use that also fit into the theme and benefit from Spider-Ham’s ability.
The most fundamental mana dork is Birds of Paradise, which only costs one green mana and taps for one mana of any color. Llanowar Elves might be slightly cheaper to add to the deck, but Spider-Ham’s buff applies to Birds of Paradise, not to the Elves.A few other inexpensive creatures like Trailtracker Scout also tap for one manaand get the buff, usually with some other ability that can be situationally useful.
One such ability is the one onTwitching Doll, which accumulates nest counters whenever you tap it for mana. Later, you’re able to sacrifice it to get a 2/2 Spider with reach for every counter on Twitching Doll, allowing you to turn an early-game mana source into a late-game Spider swarm.
Twitching Doll’s second ability checks for any type of counter, which makes it a good target for +1/+1 counters.
While the deck doesn’t have a ton of Food synergies, it does havea few ways to make Food tokens, so you might as well use them.Gilded Gooseallows you to turn Food tokens into mana, but it alsoallows you to store mana, using two mana to create a Food token you can use later for mana, life, or for Rhino Warrior tokens off of Killer Service.
Cemetery Prowlerdoesn’t actually generate any mana, but itcan reduce the cost of practically every spell in your deckwhile targeting graveyard-based strategies. It exiles a card from a graveyard each time it enters or attacks, and reduces the cost of your spells by one generic mana for each type they share with those spells.
For Cemetery Prowler’s effect, the types in question aren’t subtypes like Squirrel or Wolf, or supertypes like Legendary. But ifit exiles a creature card, all of your creatures will cost less, and if it exiles an enchantment, all of your enchantments will be less expensive, too.
The only cards in the sample decklist with multiple types are Twitching Doll, an artifact creature, and Arasta of the Endless Web, an enchantment creature. Of these two,only Arasta of the Endless Web can have its mana cost reduced twice, since Cemetery Prowler’s effect only applies to colorless mana.
Gaea’s Cradle would be a great inclusion in this deck, but it’s a Game Changer, which would require the deck to be upgraded to a higher tier. It’s also on the Reserved List and has a retail price higher than some people’s rent, soEvendo, Waking Haven is used as a substitute.
Evendo, Waking Havenis a Planet that comes into play tapped and taps for one green mana. Once you tap creatures with a total power of 12 or higher, though,you can pay one green mana and tap it to get one mana for each creature you control.
Draw
Green has never been associated with strong draw effects, but there are plenty of ways to leverage your zoo into a draw engine.
Toski, Bearer of Secrets(or Sandy Cheeks, Martial Astronaut if you want to lean into the cartoon vibe of Spider-Ham) is a simple 1/1 Squirrel, but it’s indestructible, and as long as it’s in play, you’ll get todraw a card whenever one of your creatures deals combat damage to a player. Swing when it’s safe, go wide with tokens, or trample over their defenses, and you’ll have more cards than you can handle.
Guardian Project might as well say “whenever a nontoken creature enters under your control, draw a card”in Commander, since the only limiting factor is that the creature needs to be the only one with the name printed on the top. Sincemore than a third of your deck is creatures, Guardian Project will reliably replace creature spells in your hand as you cast them.
Garruk’s Uprisingis slightly more limiting: Itallows you to draw a card whenever a creature with power four or higher enters under your control. Almost half of the creatures in the deck meet that criteria by themselves, and that number jumps with Spider-Ham in play. This enchantment also gives your creatures trample, so it pairs well with Toski.
Sylvan Library allows you to draw two extra cards during your draw phase, then choose which of the three cards you drew you want to keep. The other two go back on top of the library, but you can pay four life to keep any that you want. If you find exactly the card you need, or have plenty of life, this can put you at a big advantage.
Spinner of Soulsdoesn’t exactly draw you cards, but as your creatures die, you’ll get to replace them with a fresh one in your hand. Thiskeeps your board threatening, even as your opponents remove your most important creatures.It also gives you some resilience against boardwipes, allowing you to drop more creatures on the board after your opponent blows them all up.
Token Effort
Spider-Ham, Peter-Porker only gives a small buff, but since he gives it to just about all of your creatures,you should cast or make as many creatures as possiblein order to get the biggest benefit.
The deck only contains two Wolves, soHollowhenge Overlordmay not seem like a great addition, but itdoubles the number of Wolves you control on each of your upkeeps. Since it has flash, you can cast it at the end of an opponent’s turn and reap the rewards immediately!
Another way to get token creatures fast is withArachnogenesis, which, for three mana,makes a 1/2 Spider with reach for every creature attacking you and prevents all damage from non-spiders. Spider-Ham pumps them up to 2/3, so if an opponent swings really wide with dozens of Goblins or Slivers, you can turn the game around and get a revenge kill on your next turn.
