While we’re still six months away from its release, it’s safe to say plenty of MTG players are already excited about the upcoming Star Trek set. Not only will this bring a pop culture titan into the Magic mix, but it’ll also let Wizards flex the sci-fi muscles it built up in Edge of Eternities. Fortunately for everyone on the Star Trek hype train, Mark Rosewater seems to have just revealed that it’ll be a full-on, large set, allowing plenty of room to chart the final frontier.
To Boldly Go
“Only the “medium-sized” sets only had five archetypes. Lorwyn and Secrets of Strixhaven both had ten draft archetypes, albeit five of which got more focus. The rest of the sets this year (minus The Hobbit) have the normal ten two-color draft archetypes.”
Mark Rosewater, via Blogatog
Based on this Blogatog exchange, we know MTG Star Trek will have 10 distinct Draft archetypes, which means it’ll almost certainly be a large set like its late-2026 peers. For the many MTG players who are tired of five-archetype Draft environments, this is fantastic news. After all, the smaller sets with only five Draft archetypes this year have hardly created fond memories.
That said, while this sounds like good news, Mark Rosewater has proven himself as a bit of an unreliable narrator when describing Limited environments lately. We saw this clearly with Secrets of Strixhaven, which Rosewater claimed featured 10 Draft archetypes. Most players online, however, seem to view it as having six: one for each school, and a five-color Converge archetype.
To make matters worse, many of the archetypes in Secrets of Strixhaven weren’t competitive, making things even more wonky. In theory, having more distinct archetypes should improve balancing and variance, but that’s hardly guaranteed. Even waiting to see how Marvel Super Heroes and Reality Fracture play out won’t provide much insight, as balancing isn’t based on trends.
Don’t Wait Up
Ultimately, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens when the MTG Star Trek set gets released on November 20th. The good news, at least, is that Star Trek fans shouldn’t be disappointed when this time rolls around, as a large set should mean there’s room for everything. Just don’t hold your breath for any spoilers, as we likely won’t be seeing any for a few months, at least.
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