As an aperitif to MagicCon: Amsterdam later this week, today, Wizards went all out on Weekly MTG. Showing off the MTG Star Trek set officially for the first time, we’ve seen a ton of new cards today. As if new staples, signature cards, and insane reprints weren’t enough, however, Wizards also announced a bunch of mechanics.
MTG Assimilate
As they are in Star Trek, the Borg in MTG are all about assimilating your opponent’s creatures. Curiously, there’s basically no catch to this, outside of having to pull the chosen creature from your opponent’s graveyard. Even the stolen creature losing its other types to become a Borg is more of a blessing than a curse in most cases.
On high-cost cards, like Borg Queen, Perfection Manifest, you barely even need to build around Assimilate, too. While mill effects can help, just using removal before an Assimilate follow-up can be devastating if played right. That said, even if you just grab a 1/1 mana dork, it can be more than good enough.
To make Assimilate even better, the Borg have an extra trick up their sleeves in MTG Star Trek. Like slivers, each Borg will feature a passive buff that affects all artifact creatures that you control. Potentially, this should allow you to quickly create an absolutely stacked board, but it’s unclear how many Borg we’re getting.
MTG Face a Dilemma
While choice cards are nothing new in MTG at this point, they now finally have a name. When you’re choosing on a card like Set Phasers to… you will Face a Dilemma. This is then relevant for cards like Seven of Nine, which can draw cards surprisingly consistently when using these effects.
Notably, while Face a Dilemma was made to fit the flavor of Star Trek, Seven of Nine doesn’t just work with new cards. To date, there are over 650 Commander legal cards that make you choose between one or more options that have just gotten a little better. We can also expect Star Trek to add a bunch more of these cards, like Consider the Prime Directive.
MTG Federation
Playing into the Federation’s diversity in Star Trek, the Federation MTG mechanic rewards you for having a wide array of creature types. Currently, this mechanic looks rather meh, as Hoshi Sato, Exolinguist only offers a scaling topdeck tutor effect. While other yet-to-be-revealed cards may be hypothetically better, even then, this mechanic isn’t fantastic.
Even if every Commander deck isn’t a typal deck, many synergies tend to run in the same creature types anyway. As such, getting value out of Federation cards should be easy. Due to this, it feels like this mechanic will be largely contained to Star Trek Limited formats.
More Coming Not Very Soon
For better or worse, it appears this First Look is all we’re getting from MTG Star Trek for a while. According to Blake Rasmussen during the WeeklyMTG stream, this set won’t be back until late October. Thankfully, in the meantime, there will be plenty to enjoy, as MagicCon: Amsterdam is happening this week.
Not only is Wizards expected to debut three in-universe sets during the Preview Panel, but The Hobbit is there too. With MagicCon: Amsterdam kicking off this set’s spoiler season, in fact, we’ll have plenty to keep us busy.
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