After the insane excellence of Final Fantasy and Avatar and the mixed successes of UB sets since, I was a little apprehensive about Star Trek. Not being a big Trekky meant I was going into this set a bit blind about how well the cards represented the IP, and with the warm feeling around the set from a lot of Trekky’s, I was a touch nervous. Well, it turns out there was no reason to be apprehensive, as I am having far too much fun with this set.
Trekking?
As I mentioned, this isn’t an IP I am overly familiar with. I watched some of the movies and the odd episode here and there. It’s not that I didn’t like the series; I never got around to it. So going into this set, my knowledge was from the above and things I have picked up from pop culture over the years. So when I saw a card called “Khaaaaaaaaaaaannn!” I understand that reference, but not too much when it comes to the subtle nods and whatnot.
This isn’t totally a bad thing, because it means I can only assess the set on its merits since there is no nostalgia to carry me through. After a few days of playing, cracking packs, and some prerelease, having loved Edge of Eternities, I am enjoying this set on its own merits.
What’s it like to play?
There are a bunch of new and returning mechanics here. Beam me up is a mechanic that lets you cast a card from your graveyard by paying a specific mana cost, returning a creature to your hand. So it is a slightly more expensive version of flashback, but the additional cost of returning creatures to your hand can be to your benefit if you want to hit an ETB again.
Facing a dilemma is a cool new payoff for an old mechanic. You face a dilemma whenever you choose an option on a spell where you have multiple choices. Then facing a dilemma card gives you some kind of a payoff, like drawing a card on Seven of Nine. This is a great mechanic that integrates well with cars that have been around for a long time. Since some creatures have choices on them, using Beam Me Up to return a card to hand, to play it again for facing a dilemma, is a great little mix of mechanics.
Federation is a new ability that nets you more benefits for the creature types you have that aren’t borgs, and Strange New Worlds is a mechanic that pays off when you have more land names. These are both thematically good mechanics that aren’t overpowered but can give you an edge in a game. With a full release of shocklands and gain lands, there are a lot of ways to kick off Strange New Worlds benefits.
Of course, being a space-based set, we have Spacecrafts with Station again. Spacecrafts are artifacts that usually have some kind of benefit when they enter. Then they have a number, where if you tap creatures with its power, then the Spacecraft becomes an artifact creature while it is still on the battlefield. It was a banger of a mechanic in EoE, and it is still a banger now.
With the above mechanics, and it being a full 10 archetype set, I wasn’t totally sold before prerelease. But after jamming them, I had A LOT more fun at the pre-release than I expected. The set is fun, the mechanics are fun, and the cards are fun. There aren’t many mechanics here I would see making a huge splash in standard yet, but as far as limited sets go, I suspect I will have fun drafting this for a long time.
The Commander Decks!
The set comes with four Commander Decks, with one based on the original series heroes, one based on The Next Generation heroes, one themed around the Borg, and one around the Klingon. From a thematic perspective these are four great choices: two antagonist decks and two of the more famous protagonist sets help it hit the fans of the series, and make outsiders with causal interests like me interested.
I have been playing with the Landing Party deck, which is based on the Original Series, with the face commander being Commander Spock and having Captain Kirk boldly go as the backup commander. The deck revolves around Landfall, fetching lands, and spaceships. Thematically, this feels like a great fit for the team, with the original series exploring and finding new lands in their spacecraft. For a new person picking this up, Landfall is a great initial mechanic as it pays you off for playing lands, but also you should quickly accumulate resources letting you play lots of cards and have fun.
The deck itself is reasonably powerful, with a couple of large landfall payoffs like Scute Swarm, but for the most part it doesn’t feel overpowered. Don’t get me wrong, you will do a lot and can win plenty of games, but it feels like they got the power level right here. When it comes to card value, there is some bonkers value here. Exploration is a $50 card that lets you play additional lands each turn. With a reprint in a commander deck, this means that the card is more accessible, which is good for the wider MTG community, but also means this deck is fantastic value. The land base is pretty decent, but some of the tap lands can be swapped out with shocklands from the main set to make it that little bit better.
On the whole, I love this deck. Looking at the other decks, I will be looking at either nabbing the Klingon or Borg deck to have some Star Trek battling in my house. One little minor thing with the decks is they don’t have the two commanders as alternate arts. The face commander is, but the backup commander is normally bordered. You can pick up alt art versions as they appear in Collector Boosters, but I always like the two as alt arts in Commander Precons, so I hope they go back to that.
The art!
This is an area that Trekky fans may have more to say about than me. As a non-trekky fan, one of the best things is how perfectly fine the art is. I was worried that the cards, with all of the images of real people, would be far too much Leonard Nimoy and Patrick Stewart. Yes, heaps of art is a clear representation of these people in character, but for the most part it wasn’t as jarring as expected. Instead, again, it could have been a bunch of cards from Edge of Eternities. There is the odd card like Erica Ortega’s, Plucky Pilot, that looks too photorealistic, but these are the exceptions.
There are HEAPS of alternate art cards here too. One of the common ones is the LCARS framed cards. According to Google, that stands for Library Computer Access and Retrieval System. I mentioned I am not a Trekky, right? These ones are kind of cool and have a Star Trek vibe, but even though the font looks clean, they are surprisingly hard to read. There are also classic Enterprise-bordered cards, which look like a cool old-school painting style to them. These can all be found in Play Boosters and Collector Boosters.
One of my favorite alt arts is the Klingon frame, which has a more hexagonal style. They look more alien, and I loved every one I opened. These can be nabbed in Play Boosters: but you can also get ones in Collector Boosters with all the text in Klingon which is a great touch.
Then like many other UB sets, there are some epic looking scenes you can collect and compile. Collector Boosters Then there are a heap of standalone alt art cards in collector boosters, including some of the commander cards to beef out your precon.
Then there are the source material cards, this time called Stardates cards. These are the reprint cards, given a new name, and generally with some pretty terrible art. This is pretty common for these treatments to look pretty bad, and this is no exception. And yet, in some ways, I kind of love them. Best of all, these ones tend to tank in price, so you can jam a cheaper Sheoldred in your deck if you don’t mind looking at Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan.
In short, I feel sorry for the trekkies who may want to collect this set, as there are so many awesome alternate arts to collect, and they are all great.
How can you buy Magic: The Gathering – Star Trek?
As always, there are Play Boosters and Collector Boosters. Then there is the usual bundle, which comes with a promo card and nine boosters housed in a storage box. Of course, there are the above four Commander decks.
If you are getting into Magic with the set, the above options are a great way to crack packs for the fun of it, and the Commander decks can get you playing. The best way to experience a set is to play limited, like Draft. This set, like the others, comes with a Draft Night option, which has 12 play boosters so you can do a four-person draft, the land cards you need to play, and a Collector Booster, which you can use for a prize or to crack yourself if you’re buying the box for your friends.
There is a new special bundle called the Beam Me Up Bundle. This one will have eight Play Boosters, one Collector Booster, and a pack with two of eight promo cards. These ones are ships, and the art is a schematic design, which looks ridiculously cool.
There are a couple of scene boxes as well. Each box comes with 6 cards that when put together they make a bridge crew image. Some of the cards look like they could be spicy in a commander deck, but I’m not a total fan of the art. If you are after one of them, they also come with 3 Play boosters, so that helps make them pretty good value.
Should you check out the Magic: The Gathering – Star Trek set?
Star Trek fans should check out this glorious game, as it’s fun as hell. Longtime Magic fans should take their cynic hats off for a moment. It’s not going to be my favourite set of the year, but it’s a hell of a lot better than I was expecting, and I am actually going to enjoy drafting it for a while! Now beam me up to my local LGS to play this glorious game.
