Spider Umbra MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 3 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost1
RarityCommon
TypeEnchantment — Aura
Abilities Enchant,Totem armor

Key Takeaways

  1. Spider Umbra offers strategic creature protection with its totem armor, boosting survivability.
  2. The card enables creatures to block flying threats, important for deck defense.
  3. Despite its advantages, Spider Umbra faces challenges from certain removal tactics.

Text of card

Enchant creature Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and has reach. (It can block creatures with flying.) Totem armor (If enchanted creature would be destroyed, instead remove all damage from it and destroy this Aura.)


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Spider Umbra’s totem armor ability offers a significant edge by effectively allowing a creature to avoid destruction once, saving the card from the graveyard and maintaining your board presence without losing card advantage.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly providing mana or tokens, Spider Umbra helps in resource acceleration by protecting key creatures that generate resources or have tap abilities, ensuring your engines stay online and productive.

Instant Speed: Although Spider Umbra is an Aura with enchant creature and not an instant, it can be played at sorcery speed, which encourages proactive planning. Its ability to grant reach in addition to totem armor can unexpectedly enhance your creature’s defensive capabilities, often leading to advantageous blocks during your opponent’s attack phase.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: With Spider Umbra, players can’t ignore the cost of hanging onto it for the perfect moment. While there’s no actual discard cost involved, keeping mana open or saving a spot in your hand can be as taxing as an upfront discard, especially in fast-paced games where every card and mana counts.

Specific Mana Cost: Spider Umbra’s casting cost needs one green mana. This can be restrictive for multi-color decks that might struggle with mana fixing or decks that prefer to invest their green mana in ramping up or other crucial plays earlier in the game.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: While one mana might not seem steep, in the vast universe of MTG, every mana point matters. In a competitive environment, there may be alternatives for enchantment buffs or creature protection that provide multiple benefits or come with a lower overall cost, making Spider Umbra potentially less optimal in certain deck strategies.


Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Spider Umbra offers key defensive boosts with its totem armor ability, making it a strong choice for decks that need protection for valuable creatures against removal or damage-based board wipes.

Combo Potential: With its aura nature, Spider Umbra can be essential in strategies revolving around enchantments or voltron-style decks, allowing for synergistic plays that can quickly escalate the threat level of a single creature.

Meta-Relevance: In a meta where combat-oriented decks are prevalent, Spider Umbra’s ability to grant reach can turn any creature into a formidable blocker against flying threats, maintaining board stability and increasing the card’s utility.


How to beat

Spider Umbra is an aura that provides a creature with a toughness boost and the reach ability, allowing it to block flying creatures—an attribute that can be pivotal in defending against aerial attacks. Furthermore, the Totem Armor mechanic presents an advantageous shield, protecting the enchanted creature from being destroyed once by essentially absorbing the hit that would ordinarily doom it.

To surpass the defenses that Spider Umbra offers, removal spells that circumvent totem armor become key. Consider enchantment removal options such as Disenchant or enchantment-specific exile cards like Erase. Another strategy is to use board wipes like Wrath of God, which can effectively remove the protected creature despite the Umbra’s safeguard due to the fact that Wrath of God doesn’t destroy but rather changes the state of all creatures to dead, rendering Totem Armor ineffective. Additionally, forcing your opponent to sacrifice creatures can also work around totem armor, as it does not trigger the protective effect of Spider Umbra. Cards like Liliana of the Veil or Diabolic Edict are excellent for initiating these sacrifice conditions.

Recognizing the broader structure of your opponent’s strategy and preparing your deck with diverse removal tools ensures that a single Spider Umbra won’t spell defeat. Mastery in MTG comes from anticipating challenges and smartly constructing your deck to address them.


BurnMana Recommendations

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of Spider Umbra can refine your MTG gameplay, offering protection and strategic advantages on the battlefield. When considering adding Spider Umbra to your collection, contemplate its synergy with your deck’s strategy, ensuring it complements your overarching game plan. If aerial defense or creature survivability is crucial to your winning formula, Spider Umbra is a must-have. Dive deeper into enchantment dynamics, explore innovative deck builds, and adapt to changing metas. Stay ahead of the competition and optimize your deck’s performance. For insights and strategic advice tailored to your MTG journey, join us and enhance your deck-building prowess.


Cards like Spider Umbra

Spider Umbra is a unique Aura enchantment in MTG that adds toughness to creatures and douses them with the ever-important totem armor ability. In parallel, there’s Hyena Umbra, which not only buffs a creature’s power and toughness but also clothes it with totem armor. While Spider Umbra specifically lends itself to boosting defense, Hyena Umbra offers a more balanced enhancement.

Another card that mirrors the protective nature of Spider Umbra is Snake Umbra. This Aura provides a creature with the capability to draw a card upon dealing damage, on top of totem armor. It takes the protective aspect and attaches an additional draw engine, albeit for a higher mana investment. There’s also the card Eel Umbra, embodying a similar essence by offering totem armor but it stands out with the flash mechanic, allowing for surprise plays and strategic defenses.

In essence, while each Umbra spell envelopes creatures in a protective layer, Spider Umbra is distinguished by its low cost and its single-minded purpose to bolster creature defense, making it a solid choice for players focusing on building an impenetrable board state.

Hyena Umbra - MTG Card versions
Snake Umbra - MTG Card versions
Eel Umbra - MTG Card versions
Hyena Umbra - Rise of the Eldrazi (ROE)
Snake Umbra - Rise of the Eldrazi (ROE)
Eel Umbra - Rise of the Eldrazi (ROE)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Spider Umbra MTG card by a specific set like Rise of the Eldrazi and Archenemy, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Spider Umbra and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Spider Umbra Magic the Gathering card was released in 3 different sets between 2010-04-23 and 2018-12-07. Illustrated by Christopher Moeller.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12010-04-23Rise of the EldraziROE 2082003normalblackChristopher Moeller
22010-06-18ArchenemyARC 702003normalblackChristopher Moeller
32018-12-07Ultimate MastersUMA 1842015normalblackChristopher Moeller

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Spider Umbra has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
PaupercommanderLegal
ModernLegal
OathbreakerLegal
PauperLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
PredhLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Spider Umbra card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

DateText
2010-06-15 If a creature enchanted with an Aura that has totem armor would be destroyed by multiple state-based actions at the same time the totem armor’s effect will replace all of them and save the creature.
2010-06-15 If a permanent you control is enchanted with multiple Auras that have totem armor, and the enchanted permanent would be destroyed, one of those Auras is destroyed instead — but only one of them. You choose which one because you control the enchanted permanent.
2010-06-15 If a spell or ability (such as Planar Cleansing) would destroy both an Aura with totem armor and the permanent it’s enchanting at the same time, totem armor’s effect will save the enchanted permanent from being destroyed. Instead, the spell or ability will destroy the Aura in two different ways at the same time, but the result is the same as destroying it once.
2010-06-15 If a spell or ability says that it would “destroy” a permanent enchanted with an Aura that has totem armor, that spell or ability causes the Aura to be destroyed instead. (This matters for cards such as Karmic Justice.) Totem armor doesn’t destroy the Aura; rather, it changes the effects of the spell or ability. On the other hand, if a spell or ability deals lethal damage to a creature enchanted with an Aura that has totem armor, the game rules regarding lethal damage cause the Aura to be destroyed, not that spell or ability.
2010-06-15 Say you control a permanent enchanted with an Aura that has totem armor, and the enchanted permanent has gained a regeneration shield. The next time it would be destroyed, you choose whether to apply the regeneration effect or the totem armor effect. The other effect is unused and remains, in case the permanent would be destroyed again.
2010-06-15 Totem armor’s effect is applied no matter why the enchanted permanent would be destroyed: because it’s been dealt lethal damage, or because it’s being affected by an effect that says to “destroy” it (such as Doom Blade). In either case, all damage is removed from the permanent and the Aura is destroyed instead.
2010-06-15 Totem armor’s effect is mandatory. If the enchanted permanent would be destroyed, you must remove all damage from it and destroy the Aura that has totem armor instead.
2010-06-15 Totem armor’s effect is not regeneration. Specifically, if totem armor’s effect is applied, the enchanted permanent does not become tapped and is not removed from combat as a result. Effects that say the enchanted permanent can’t be regenerated (as Vendetta does) won’t prevent totem armor’s effect from being applied.
2013-07-01 If a creature enchanted with an Aura that has totem armor has indestructible, lethal damage and effects that try to destroy it simply have no effect. Totem armor won’t do anything because it won’t have to.
2013-07-01 Say you control a permanent enchanted with an Aura that has totem armor, and that Aura has gained a regeneration shield. The next time the enchanted permanent would be destroyed, the Aura would be destroyed instead — but it regenerates, so nothing is destroyed at all. Alternately, if that Aura somehow gains indestructible, the enchanted permanent is effectively indestructible as well.
2013-07-01 Totem armor has no effect if the enchanted permanent is put into a graveyard for any other reason, such as if it’s sacrificed, if it’s legendary and another legendary permanent with the same name is controlled by the same player, or if its toughness is 0 or less.

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