Yesterday, we were treated to our First Look at MTG Star Trek, with a bunch of exciting new cards revealed. While it’s early days, there’s a lot of promise in these initial spoilers, with the special treatments being particularly tasty this time around. MTG Star Trek is also looking stacked when it comes to supplemental products, packing a full suite of Commander precons, Welcome decks, and much more besides.
MTG Star Trek Commander Precons
While the lack of Commander precons for The Hobbit had some players worried, it seems that was an anomaly. Star Trek, like Marvel Super Heroes just past, will come packing four precons, each representing a different three-color combination.
Landing Party kicks things off here, as a Bant Landfall deck that also promises “Strange new worlds.” As Gavin Verhey noted during yesterday’s WeeklyMTG stream, this deck is built to represent the original Star Trek series and will feature iconic characters like Mister Spock.
Carrying on the protagonist theme, Federation Fleet is a Jeskai deck built around Starships and card draw. Verhey mentioned on-stream that this deck will draw from the Captain Picard and Captain Janeway eras of the show, so expect content from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.
A couple of Star Trek’s non-humanoid species get representation here too, with the Mardu Klingon Fury deck highlighting the titular warrior race. This appears to be a Mardu Aggro deck, though the promise that it will let you “Hit the whole battlefield” could imply a Group Slug element as well.
Last but not least, the villainous Borg get a dedicated Commander deck aptly titled We Are the Borg. This is an Esper list built around the spicy new Assimilate mechanic, with artifact creature synergies as a wider sub-theme. We Are the Borg, and the rest of the decks here, will also be available in all Surge Foil Collector’s Edition versions.
Welcome Aboard
As is now MTG tradition, the Star Trek products lineup will also include a suite of five Welcome Decks, one for each color. These are primarily intended as tools for game stores to introduce new players to the game, rather than products with any kind of real value. As with the Spider-Man and Marvel Super Heroes Welcome decks, however, there are exclusive cards here that could disrupt that intent.
Yesterday’s stream revealed that each Star Trek Welcome Deck will include two unique, non-main set cards, one rare and one mythic. All 10 of these cards were shown off on stream, and as expected they’re not the most exciting overall. Borg Queen, Perfection Manifest is a potentially powerful addition to Mill or Artifact decks, and Benjamin Sisko, Besieged is a decent Landfall card, but other than that, these exclusives are duds.
That said, past precedent has shown us that Welcome Deck cards can be worth a lot regardless of their playability. Since they’re not distributed through normal channels, these cards are relatively scarce, leading to mediocre legends like Venom, Eddie Brock being $13 cards.
Fortunately, it appears Wizards has addressed the supply problem in this case, at least a little bit. Both Borg Queen, Perfection Manifest and Kirk, Enterprising Captain are also promo cards for the set, so they’ll have additional supply outside of the decks themselves. Hopefully, we’ll see alternate printings of the eight others, too, as high-priced Welcome Deck exclusives skew the intent of this product in an unfortunate way.
More To Explore
Beyond its Commander and Welcome Decks, MTG Star Trek has plenty of other products to offer, too. The Beginner Box returns as a great entry point for new players, teaching the game through themed tutorial decks. We’re also getting a Draft Night box, providing all the packs you need to host a Star Trek Draft at home with prize support.
Star Trek also features both a regular Bundle and a ‘Beam Me Up Bundle,’ with the former including nine Play Boosters and the latter including eight and one Collector Booster. The Beam Me Up Bundle also comes with two of eight possible promo cards, which portray Starships from the set in a unique schematic style. So far, only U.S.S. Enterprise-D, Galaxy-Class has been confirmed for this lineup.
Finally, Star Trek will be getting two scene boxes, titled Eneterprise-Q and Divergent Timeline. The latter is notable for portraying characters and events from the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films, which Verhey revealed don’t appear in the main set at all.
Overall, whatever your thoughts on the IP coming to Magic, Star Trek is looking like a fully-featured set with plenty to offer. With a release date of November 13th, however, we’ll have to wait a while before we can enjoy it.
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