If you like to spin deadly webs and trap your pray letting it paralyzed to be consumed by your spider swarm, then Spider tribal is the right deck for you. Let’s see how we can lure our opponents to our deadly web.
I love tribal decks because they combine synergy and flavor and of course power. On top of that you can find many unique cards that support a tribe and can be great budget options as those cards work only on a specific tribal deck and are bad to unplayable to any other deck. That’s why I will try building and presenting a series of decks for all those who share the love for tribal decks.
Spiders is an old tribe that firstly appeared in Magic in Alpha with Ironclaw Orcs and Orcish Artillery. Although there are only a few spiders that are known for tribal support, there are some spider tribal decks that focus on high toughness and spider tokens. Ishkanah, Grafwidow, was the first spider tribal commander that supported the tribe, but with the release of The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth , in the face of Shelob, Child of Ungoliant spiders found their true leader.
Shelob, Child of Ungoliant is a Legendary Spider Demon that has a golgari (
) color identity, gives other spiders deathtouch and ward
and has a special ability “Whenever another creature dealt damage this turn by a Spider you controlled dies, create a token that’s a copy of that creature, except it’s a Food artifact with “,
, Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life,” and it loses all other card types.” There is a lot going on here with great combo potential. On top of that, Shelob has herself deathtouch and ward and a huge 8/8 body, making her a big deadly threat that’s hard to remove.
Deathouch on all our spiders, opens up different builds that help us exploit that strong ability, while synergizes greatly with creature-heavy tribal strategy and spider token builds. All of them amplify our food token strategy that need many spiders to do lethal damage. In addition, we can add to that a bit of high toughness support and make our build more deep and flexible.
Synergy Diagram
I always like to make a simple synergy diagram in order to deeply comprehend the potential and the strategy areas that are supported by the commander when I choose top-down building.
Let’s analyze the main goals of the deck:
- Add the best Spiders. Our priority is to add the ones with deathtouch, spider token creation and high toughness.
- Add deathtouch synergy support. Since with Shelob, Child of Ungoliant, all our spiders have deathtouch, we can use that to our advantage by casting low mana cost spells that make our spiders deal non-combat damage since it will always be lethal and on top of that we will get food tokens. Even spells that give deathouch to our spiders can be a great backup plan in a possible absence of our commander.
- Add food token support. Since we can expect to create many tokens with the ability of our commander combined with the deathtouch spider swarm, we can use some cards that have great synergy with food tokens to take advantage of them.
- Add cards that synergize with our strategies. To make the best out of our strategies, we can further amplify them by adding cards with lure effects that combined with deathtouch can lead to a one-sided mass removal and mass token production.
For the sake of flavor some of the choices are not optimal, but are (usually budget friendly) alternatives that fit greatly the Spider tribal theme.
The deck:
Spider Tribal
Comparative Analysis
Let’s see how the deck compares to the general ratios of my deckbuilding guide.
34 Lands
10 Ramp: Golgari Signet , Twitching Doll, Arcane Signet , Sol Ring , Rhonas’s Monument , Binding the Old Gods , Heaped Harvest , Night of the Sweets’ Revenge , Devoted Druid , Rampant Growth
10 Target Removal: Arachnus Web , Binding the Old Gods , Chainweb Aracnir , Skyfisher Spider , Viridian Longbow , Cosmic Hunger , Infectious Bite , Masked Vandal , Khalni Ambush , Bridgeworks Battle
3 Board Wipes: Crippling Fear , Silklash Spider , Swarmyard Massacre
6 Graveyard Recursion: Nyx Weaver , Mortuary Mire , Creeping Renaissance , Patriarch’s Bidding , Hoarding Recluse , Llanowar Greenwidow (self-recursion)
3 Graveyard Hate: Hoarding Recluse (kinda), Shelob, Dread Weaver (kinda), Curse of Clinging Webs (kinda)
2 Tutors: Hatchery Spider , Trail of Crumbs
5 Protection: Shelob, Child of Ungoliant , Gyome, Master Chef , Arachnogenesis , Bedrock Tortoise, Swarmyard
11 Card Draw: Lifecrafter’s Bestiary , Lolth, Spider Queen , Doom Weaver , Deathreap Ritual , Greta, Sweettooth Scourge , Izoni, Center of the Web , Savvy Hunter , Moldervine Reclamation , Infectious Inquiry , Shelob, Dread Weaver , Peregrin Took
4 Finishers/ Surprise /Alternate win conditions: Ishkanah, Grafwidow , Rotwidow Pack , Fynn, the Fangbearer , Night of the Sweets’ Revenge
As we see form the comparative analysis, the rates per category are good. There is no score below the optimal low average and we see 5 categories that are above the optimal max average. We see Graveyard recursion at 6 to be a strong part of our deck.
Deck Highlights, synergy and flavor options:
Ramp
Spiders mainly appear in green, so Rhonas’s Monument is better in our deck than most multicolored decks. It’s great for its mana reduction but also the buff with +2/+2 and trample works very well with deathtouch, since creatures have only to assign one damage to each blocker and the rest of the damage passes to the player. Quite deadly with Shelob, Child of Ungoliant!
Night of the Sweets’ Revenge works wonders with our Food token strategy since Food tokens become mana rocks providing us with extreme ramp. It even creates a Food token on EtB so we can get instant value. Moreover, by paying 
and sacrificing it, creatures we control get +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of Foods we control. With our Food strategy it can become a great finisher.
Devoted Druid, is a piece of an infinite combo in our deck along with Shelob, Child of Ungoliant and Viridian Longbow that results in infinite green mana. The combo can be explained in detail here (EDHREC). In worse case scenario, Devoted Druid is alone a nice mana ramp with limited uses.
Heaped Harvest feels like a balanced ramp card with high Food synergy. Being a Food artifact itself makes it optimal for our Spider Tribal as we can sacrifice it at instant speed with cards with Food sacrifice synergy and get quick ramp consistently (among other benefits).
Twitching Doll has great synergy with our deck as it works both as a mana dork and as a spider token creator. The more we use it for mana, the more nest counters it gets and by and sacrificing it, it produces a 2/2 Green Spider with Reach for each counter on it. An amazing inclusion for our Spider Tribal!
Target Removal
Arachnus Web is one of the most iconic spells played in Spider tribal, since it greatly fits the flavor of the theme and can be repeatably fetched by Arachnus Spinner.
Binding the Old Gods is a powerful saga that destroys target nonland permanent on EtB, and can help with ramp in II. On III it gives mass deathtouch to our creatures until end of turn, that can prove extra useful for our build as it can work as a backup plan in case of absence of our commander, giving our deck more consistency.
Chainweb Aracnir has Reach and deals damage equal to its power to target creature with flying an opponent controls on EtB, something that synergizes greatly with deathtouch. In addition, it can be cast again from our graveyard for its Escape cost (
, Exile four other cards from our graveyard) and it escapes with three +1/+1 counters in it.
Skyfisher Spider has Reach and on EtB it can destroy target nonland permanent as long as we sacrifice another creature, which shouldn’t be a problem with our spider token strategy. On death trigger it can gives us 1 life for each creature card in our graveyard, but we have to exile it.
Viridian Longbow offers us ping damage that combined with deathtouch becomes lethal. It is also a piece of our infinite combo with Devoted Druid and Shelob, Child of Ungoliant mentioned above.
Cosmic Hunger and Infectious Bite are instant spells that synegize greatly with deathtouch since they become great target removals and they are better than fight effect variants since our creature does not take any damage. Infectious Bite has also poison counter synergy while Cosmic Hunger can target creatures, planeswalkers and battles and even our own creatures, becoming a possible replacement of Viridian Longbow in our infinite combo described above.
Khalni Ambush // Khalni Territory are fight variants, but have extra synergy in our deck since they also synergize with deathtouch and become strong removal.
Masked Vandal is a staple for green creature tribal decks, but in our deck it has even better synergy than usual since it fits our Spider and high toughness strategy.
Board Wipes
Crippling Fear is a great budget mass removal for tribal decks as it can clear the board of our opponents while leaving ours intact.
Silklash Spider can be a repeatable board wipe for flying creatures, as by paying 
it deals X damage to each creature with flying.
Swarmyard Massacre has great synergy with our deck as it works as an amazing one sided board wipe card for Insect, Rat, Spider and Squirrel Tribal decks and can start as low as -2/-2 and grow further as long as we have more Spiders on board. A great wipe for our Spider Tribal!
Graveyard Recursion
Nyx Weaver slowly fills our graveyard and by paying 
and exiling it, we return target card from our graveyard to our hand. I like that it has synergy with itself.
Creeping Renaissance is a great mass grave recusrion spell that works very well in tribal decks since many cards share a permanent type.
Patriarch’s Bidding is one of the best graveyard recursion spells for tribal decks.
Hoarding Recluse has reach and deathtouch and on death trigger it let us put target card from a graveyard on the bottom of its owner’s library. We can use either to return an important card from our grave to our library, or to disrupt an opponent graveyard strategy.
Llanowar Greenwidow has reach and trample ans has a Domain self-recursion ability: By paying 
we return Llanowar Greenwidow from our graveyard to the battlefield tapped. It gains “If this permanent would leave the battlefield, exile it instead of putting it anywhere else.” This ability costs less to activate for each basic land type among lands we control.
Graveyard Hate
Shelob, Dread Weaver exiles opponent creatures on death, but it does much more that that. By paying and returing an exiled card to its owner graveyard, it gets two +1/+1 counters and let us draw a card. Moreover, by paying , we can put an exiled card with mana value X onto the battlefield under our control. Great utility card!
Curse of Clinging Webs also exiles opponent creatures on death and creates for us a 1/2 green Spider creature token with reach. Amazing utility too!
Tutors
Hatchery Spider costs a lot of mana, but has the potential to tutor a creature onto the battlefield with its Undergrowth ability. Because of our creature-heavy deck, the odds are in our favor.
Trail of Crumbs works like wonders with Food tokens and becomes a repeatable mini tutor by paying whenever we sacrifice a Food. It let as look at the top two cards of our library and put a permanent among them into our hand. With our deathouch swarm and Shelob, Child of Ungoliant we can easily create many Food tokens so it can almost become a kind of card draw.
Protection
Shelob, Child of Ungoliant has ward itself and provides other spiders ward which is very strong against target removal.
Gyome, Master Chef is a great free Food token creator (master chef indeed) but also with paying and sacrificing a Food, it gives indestructible until end of turn on target creature. Great utility card for our Food token strategy!
Arachnogenesis is by far the best spider fog effect since it works as a one-sided board protection for our spiders and in the same time it creates X 1/2 green Spider creature tokens with Reach, where X is the number of creatures attacking us. Combined with Shelob, Child of Ungoliant, it becomes a one-sided board wipe since those spiders get deathtouch. Amazing card that sets the perfect trap to turn the table.
Bedrock Tortoise gives Hexproof to all our creatures on our turn, which is great for protection. It is also a Toughness Combat Damage enabler which has great synergy with our Spider Tribal build since many of our spiders have high toughness. Essentially a 4 mana 6/6 that forces our opponents to play removal at sorcery speed.
Swarmyard is another card with high synergy with our deck as it works as a protection card for Insect, Rat, Spider and Squirrel Tribal decks, regenerating target Insect, Rat, Spider or Squirrel with . A great utility Land for our Spider Tribal!
Card Draw
Lolth, Spider Queen greatly fits both the deck flavor and its core strategies. It offers card draw on 0, two 2/1 black Spider creature tokens with menace and reach on -3 and on -8 it offers us a weird way to pass minimum 8 damage per turn to enemy as long as we hit with at least one creature. As a DnD fan, I’m thrilled to have the Spider Queen to our side!
Lifecrafter’s Bestiary is a great source of card draw for creature-heavy decks and its scry 1 is very important too.
Doom Weaver is a spider horror with Soulbond that provides each paired creature the ability “When this creature dies, draw cards equal to its power.” It can potentially give us extraordinary draw (for example when paired with our commander) and its high toughness also synergize well with our strategy. It’s low power isn’t a problem, since with deathtouch even 1 damage is lethal.
Deathreap Ritual can easily trigger with all our deathtouch spiders, thus becoming a great repeatable card draw source.
Izoni, Center of the Web has great synergy with our deck since on ETB or attack trigger, we may collect evidence 4 to create two 2/1 black and green Spider creature tokens with Menace and Reach. In addition by sacrificing four tokens we Surveil 2, then draw two cards and gain 2 life. Although that sacrifice cost is high, she does not specify creature tokens, so she has Food token synergy and combined with the Spider token synergy that make her a repeatable and consistent card draw source for our Spider Tribal.
Peregrin Took, Greta, Sweettooth Scourge and Savvy Hunter are sac outlets that can turn our Foods into card draw. Peregrin Took provides us a free Food token whenever we create any token and by sacrificing three Foods we draw a card, while Savvy Hunter create a Food token whenever it attacks or blocks and by sacrificing two Foods we draw a card. They are also great Food token producers so they refill our Food supply and refuel themselves. Greta, is a great flexible card that creates a Food token on EtB, it offers cards draw by paying and sacrificing a Food, while by paying and sacrificing a Food it let us put a +1/+1 counter on target creature at sorcery speed. Its flexibility and Food synergy make it a great inclusion for our Spider Tribal.
Moldervine Reclamation is a card draw engine on token decks and we have many small spider tokens on our build.
Finishers/ Surprise /Alternate win conditions
Fynn, the Fangbearer works wonders in a deck full of deathtouch creatures since every creature with deathtouch that deal damage to a player forces that player to get 2 poison counters. With him, our spider swarm becomes a huge threat.
Ishkanah, Grafwidow with its Delirium ability can potentially provides us with three 1/2 green Spider tokens with reach and by paying 
target opponent loses 1 life for each Spider you control. It synergizes well with our token strategy and our deathtouch strategy and its last ability can be a repeatable finisher if we have many spiders on the battlefield.
Rotwidow Pack has a similar utility and ability with Ishkanah, Grafwidow, as by paying and exiling a creature card from our graveyard, we create a 1/2 green Spider creature token with reach and then each opponent loses 1 life for each Spider we control. Another potential finisher if we have many spiders on the battlefield.
Other synergy pieces
Great Spiders
Sporeweb Weaver has reach and hexproof from blue and whenever it is dealt damage, we gain 1 life and create a 1/1 green Saproling token. Unfortunately, the token created are not spiders so they can’t get deathtouch, but Sporeweb Weaver is still giving us enough value.
Graverobber Spider has reach and by paying , it gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of creature cards in our graveyard. It can get huge in late game even if we can activate this ability only once each turn.
Watcher in the Web has reach and can block an additional seven creatures each combat. It has great synergy with Shelob, Child of Ungoliant since with deathtouch it can be a real pain for attackers.
Sweet-Gum Recluse has Flash, Cascade and Reach and “When Sweet-Gum Recluse enters the battlefield, put three +1/+1 counters on each of any number of target creatures that entered the battlefield this turn.” It can enable some nice combos.
Arachnus Spinner costs which is a lot, but by tapping an untapped spider we control it can tutor Arachnus Web either from library or from graveyard so it has some cool utility. Nothing too powerful, but flavor and synergy are on target.
Other
Aveline de Grandpré has great synergy with our deck as it is a great utility/support card for Deathtouch builds and can quickly grow our Spiders into huge threats. A nice inclusion for our Spider Tribal build!
Spiders with Deathtouch
Spiders with deathtouch greatly help with the consistency of the deck. Mirkwood Spider also provides target legendary creature we control with deathtouch until end of turn whenever it attacks.
Spiders Token Creators
We see Spider token creators are a strong part of our strategy. Moreover, they work great with deathtouch as we can make some favorable trades.
Food Token Synergy
We have already analized the cards that work with our Food token strategy and they play an imoprtant role on our build.
Lure Synergy
Lure cards are special in our deck since they greatly synergize with deathtouch and they are potential one-sided board wipes that are hidden from the statistics. Our spiders can surely lure our pray into our deadly web trap.
Toughness Combat Damage Enablers
Toughness Combat Damage is not a core part of our deck, but a nice secret alternative to finish games since many of our spiders have high toughness.
Let’s see some more statistics about our deck. Some important info to care about is the mana curve and the card type distribution, as it can help us understand better our deck and may indicate where there is space for improving it.
Mana Curve
The mana curve seems a bit more middle-range centered that usual, with many drops on 3-6 drop positions and an absence of 8+ drops. That reflects the fact that there are many Spiders at 3-6 drops but at least the curve is not too far from average.
Card Type Distribution
The Spider Tribal Card Type Distribution shows the dominant tribal creature-heavy theme with 37 creatures. Sorceries follow at 10, Enchantments at 9, Artifacts at 7, Instants at 4 and Planeswalkers at 1. No Battles are present for the time.
Of course statistics and comparative analysis are great tools but they don’t always tell the whole truth, since many factors like synergy and combo pieces are hard to be measured numerically. For example in this deck, with all the deck build around Shelob, Child of Ungoliant that gives all other spiders deathtouch, the true removal potential of the deck is not reflected in statistics and the Food token creation and synergy is much more dominant too.
Update v1 (Commander Masters)
Update v2 (Wilds of Eldraine)
Update v3 (Murders at Karlov Manor)
Update v4 (Assassin’s Creed)
Update v5 (Bloomburrow)
Update v6 (Duskmourn)
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If you like my tribal series, you can check my other tribal decks.
The matchless phrase, very much is pleasant to me 🙂