Gwen Stay / Ghost Spider – Marvel’s Spiderman
Date Reviewed: September 17, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.80
Casual: 4.25
Limited: 4.40
Multiplayer: 3.83
Commander [EDH]: 4.08
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
I always liked Gwen Stacy. As I noted in a previous Spider-Man related review, I was historically more of a Batman reader, and encountered her somewhat late. I don’t recall exactly where, but it probably involved reading a random Marvel compilation at a bookstore while sidetracked from what I’d actually come for. I did not realize at first that she was dead in the main Marvel universe. I was a little disappointed that Spider-Gwen was not part of the books that got the most focus and central positions on shelves, but going back and reading “The Night Gwen Stacy Died” reinforced what I had already come to know: that comic books are a medium capable of just as much emotional weight and mythic resonance as any other. And it’s hard to be too disappointed now that Spider-Gwen has become a big part of Marvel’s broader product – she even has a lot of appearances in Lego minifigure form.
Speaking of reading carefully, Gwen’s card here can be a little confusing if you’re not careful. She is indeed a modal double-faced card, but she also has an ability that lets you transform her, which is unprecedented among that class of card. Once you get your head around that ability, though, it becomes a big part of what makes her very good. If you want an early play or you need to save mana, you have a very effectively costed creature plus extra card (and it avoids the occasional awkwardness of Abbot of Keral Keep, to boot). If you need something to go big in the late game and/or start an engine, she does that very effectively too. It might be hard for decks to fit both of Gwen’s cards into their strategy, especially if they’re not all-in on +1/+1 counters for Ghost-Spider, but the payoff is well worth it. This card could very easily be going places.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 4
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
omg woman
As mentioned earlier, I’m not intimately familiar with the lore of the Spiderverse, but Gwen Stacy is a name I’ve seen before, and I sort of remember her death being a massively impactful storyline in the comics. That said, she’s quite interesting, so let’s talk about it.
Her front side isn’t too spectacular, but it’s a sort of “soft” cantrip, and two mana is quite a fair rate. Unlike a lot of the impulse draws, she does let you play it for a bit longer, though it is tied to her life, and that can be a bit perilous. Still, she’s a decent early tempo play, but that’s not all she has, able to transform or just come down as Ghost-Spider for five mana.
Ghost-Spider is a fun way to play into her first ability and weaponize ways to spread tokens, on top of being a pretty solid creature with good stats…and if you do transform Gwen from the front half, if the card is still exiled by her, you can play it. Notably, she can weaponize any counters, like stun or -1/-1 counters, and that feeds into the ability to play more cards. While that’s certainly a threat, she’s still quite potent as a 4/4 with evasion and haste, and that can maybe be enough to get you there.
Constructed: 3.75 (good early and late, though her front side’s 1 toughness might be a bit of an issue)
Casual: 4.75
Limited: 4.5 (her back side is a threatening enough creature to get you across the finish line)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.25 (Jeskai colors are good at playing things from exile, and you can build around Ghost-Spider to make a really dangerous deck)
Thijs
I guess not a lot of people know this – maybe because of the timelines of the early 2000’s Spider-Man movies – but Gwen Stacy was actually the first love interest of Peter Parker.
Together with the Batman story ‘A Death in the Family’, where the second Robin dies, and the death of Superman in the eponymous storyline from 1992, the death of Gwen Stacy ranks high among comic book fans as one of the saddest and most shocking events ever printed. The two issues telling the story of Gwen’s death by the hands of the Green Goblin caused a shockwave in the community, even resulting in angry letters and death threats to the main offices of Marvel. The story is shown on this card in the upcoming set.
And here she is, red with a touch of Jeskai. She has an updated version of red’s exile-and-play-until-we-say ability and a tiny statline of 2/1. However, when we gather enough mana to transform her, she becomes Ghost-Spider, a 4/4 hasty non-tapping flyer that can be buffed up. On top of that, she can use her own ability on herself, by removing some counters, exiling a card, playing that card and adding another counter. Now this, dear readers, is a card.
A powerful creature that becomes an immediate threat when it enters, that’s what we like to see. Yesterday I talked about the extremely underwhelming treatment of Mary Jane, but Gwen gets what she deserves. A powerhouse if there ever was one.
Constructed: 3,7
Casual: 4
Limited: 3,9
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
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