This Marvel Villain was cut from two Magic: The Gathering sets in a row. Mephisto was in the list of potential villains for the MTG Spider-Man set and appears in the newest vision design document for Marvel Super Heroes. But when spoiler season came, the devilish comic-book character didn’t show up on a card in either set. It appears the character was cut both times.
Mephisto is a major villain for Spider-Man, so it would’ve made sense if he’d shown up in the 2025 release. That said, a villain who occasionally moonlights as literal Satan isn’t going to stick to thwarting one hero. He’s also a key antagonist for Ghost Rider, Silver Surfer, and Thor – two of whom appeared in Marvel Superheroes.
We don’t know how close Mephisto came to being in the Spider-Man set, and the answer, most likely, is ‘not very’. He’s included in WotC’s list of potential villains – a list that designer Eric Engelhard writes is “a very, very early version” – from exploratory design, the first step in a set’s design process before it goes to vision design.
But for Marvel Super Heroes, the character came closer to being unleashed upon the world. Mephisto made it through vision design, and appeared in the vision design handoff document as a black/red rare. For each character, head designer Mark Rosewater included a short blurb, trying to “hit the core thing we most cared about from a design perspective.” For Mephisto, that was: “a Devil-like character. He’s always meddling and tries to bring out people’s bad sides.”
Since the villain didn’t appear in the set, but was in the vision design handoff, he must have been cut during set design. In fact, it looks like he was replaced with Ares and the Ruinous Wrecking Crew, the Rakdos cards in the final product.
The fact Wotc is clearly considering this character but keeps bumping him to future sets is interesting though. It lends a little weight to speculation that Wizards is keeping certain characters on the sidelines for future sets. Assuming WotC includes one infinity stone per set, there could be as many as four future Marvel sets.
As well as an X-Men set, the most popular idea fans have landed on is a Midnight Suns or ‘arcane’ release, full of supernatural goodies and baddies like Scarlet Witch and Moon Knight. Mephisto would land squarely in that category.
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Source: Wargamer
