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The Week That Was: Inside Draft Design with Chris Kvartek

July 15, 2026
Corbin Hosler

Rarely does one video capture something so perfectly.

But here we are. We are just a few days out from Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes, and already many hundreds of drafts deep into the latest set that will be featured on Day One and Day Two of the Pro Tour, but also the entire Top 8. Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes has a well-received draft environment, and while combining all the cards above is obviously a bit of a pipe dream, it's also surprisingly possible. All four named Heroes are printed at uncommon, and each functions well on its own (as anyone who stared down an opposing The Thing, Ben Grimm without a removal spell knows).

With ten different draft archetypes among the two-color pairs and multiple sub-strategies in between them, including four- or five-color piles, this set's Limited environment was designed as a deep experience that could hook new players on Magic, specifically Limited Magic. The team made sure that each member of the Fantastic Four felt strong enough to draft alone—but when looking at how good they are when drafted together, you see the marriage between flavor and mechanics that went into the set. When the flavor feeds the mechanics and the mechanics feed the flavor, things just click. The result in this case has been a draft experience that rewards exploration and repeated tries as much as it does memorizing a tier list of the best blue-black Villain cards.

That brings us back to the Fantastic Four.

Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards [6pVkfPRkKo8HUEKT9o6nRJ]
The Thing, Ben Grimm
Invisible Woman, Sue Storm
Human Torch, Johnny Storm

When a token you control enters, Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards lets you draw a card. When you draw a card, Human Torch, Johnny Storm deals 1 damage to an opponent. When he deals damage to an opponent, The Thing, Ben Grimm triggers (off of any damage, not just combat damage) and gets two +1/+1 counters. When The Thing, Ben Grimm gets counters, that triggers Invisible Woman, Sue Storm to create a token. A token enters, and Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards lets you draw a card, and we are back to the first step. Repeat as much as your heart desires, then stop the chain by choosing not to draw with Reed Richards.

"We wanted the creatures to be the focus," explained Chris Kvartek, one of the set's developers and a two-time Pro Tour Top Finisher. "We want to have differentiation between sets, and having creatures shine is really important for Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes. We wanted to capture these super-impactful combos that you can set up, and we designed the synergy at common around those. In Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes, the ten color pairs are a little more muted than normal and the characters are supposed to shine, as they do in the comics."

One of the ways that the design philosophy shines through is by how you can link up characters and cards to tell a story beyond a single top-down card design. While the Fantastic Four are a premium example of the high end, Kvartek said that the team worked to imbue several powerful two- or three-card engines into the format from the very beginning. Those came in the earliest stages of Set Design—long before any individual cards were locked in—which is where the high-level decisions are made, such as assigning desired draft archetypes to color pairs.

"Set Design is where the foundation of everything comes from, from the black-white attack alone archetype to where most of the Villains fit," Kvartek elaborated. "From there, the set is passed off to Play Design. Ideally, we want to keep things as they are, and we're trying to find things we think are fun to build around in those spaces."

But—and this is key to those of us who have spent decades drafting—it's not just those spaces where Play Design comes in. In fact, Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes was designed from the ground up on the idea that clusters of synergies would power the set's drafts.

Hawkeye, Master Marksman
Hawkeye's Bow

"The job of a set's Limited lead is to find sideways things that are fun to explore and make them work just a little better to add replayability to the set," Kvartek explained. "For this set we also focused on two-card combos. For instance, Hawkeye has to play well with Hawkeye's Bow."

Red Hulk
Photon Blast Barrage

Another two-card package that was seeded into the set is Red Hulk and Photon Blast Barrage. The former is the perfect place to point all those small bursts of damage. He redirects them at your opponent while growing massive in size. Or, look at Iron Fist, Living Weapon and Panther Pounce, which works to untap Iron Fist and give him an extra activation. The list goes on, and in just a few days it will all play out under the bright lights of the Pro Tour.

While Kvartek is holding out hope that someone a the Pro Tour will assemble all members of the Fantastic Four or fulfill several other "aspirational" goals (like getting a Mindslaver activation off Construct a Cosmic Cube), players are busy prepping for the Pro Tour, or those grinding on MTG Arena have already gone very deep into the set's trenches. Recent tabletop events like Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes in Las Vegas gave hundreds of players a Pro Tour warmup, and the always popular Arena Directs have featured the set, driving impressions heading into Amsterdam. (One early impression that won't likely be challenged: The Super Hero Civil War is one of the very best bombs in the entire set.)

One of those players is Pro Tour Champion Jacob Van Lunen, known as one of the two "Sliver Kids" along with Chris Lachmann who completely broke open Time Spiral Two-Headed Giant Draft in 2007. Van Lunen has been dipping his toes into competitive play recently and has been very deep in the Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes queues.

"I've prioritized two-drops because they seem to go fast, and I don't want to be playing a deck that doesn't get on the board quickly. I've tried to have fifteen to eighteen creatures," he explained. "Removal seems bad for the most part. It seems like the games where one person is playing threats and the other person is providing answers are won by the person presenting threats more than in most other sets."

We got a preview of what competitive Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes Limited decks will look like at Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes in Las Vegas two weeks ago. The games that played out over the weekend in America were the first of many Limited games that those who are headed to Amsterdam this week have put in. They're all hoping to replicate the trick that Van Lunen pulled off nearly two decades ago: break the draft, win the Pro Tour.

For the set's designers, this is the culmination of years of work done in the background. From Las Vegas to Amsterdam and the second Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes in Brussels on July 24–26, Kvartek and the rest of the design team will see their creation come to life—and he can't wait to see what players find that the design team didn't.

"I appreciate that it's a set full of unique charming cards and everyone has a favorite character. A lot of love and care went into building the set," he explained. "I hope that comes up organically and that you feel the passion and love when you're drafting."

The Spotlight Series brought hundreds of players like Tom Martell and Sam Black back to the competitive circuit and gave us a preview of how players will build at the Pro Tour!


It all comes together in Amsterdam. Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes kicks off Friday with three rounds of draft followed by three more on Saturday and one final winner-takes-all draft on the Sunday stage!

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