The upcoming MTG Star Trek set will feature a board wipe unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, and a new control win condition which is, coincidentally, also a board wipe. The City on the Edge of Forever is a five mana Orzhov enchantment which phases out the entire board and stops it phasing back in, while the Crystaline Entity is an eight mana colorless artifact creature that destroys all non-artifacts when it enters. They’re both incredible flavor wins.
I’ll describe The City on the Edge of Forever as a Magic card first. This Saga costs one white, one black, and three generic mana, and has three verses. The first verse is the board wipe: all creatures Phase out, and you create a 0/1 white Human creature token with the ability ‘Permanents can’t phase in’, so as long as this little token is in play, all those creatures are treated as they don’t exist. The second verse lets you draw two cards and causes each player to lose two life, while the third and final forces you to sacrifice a creature token, rewarding you with five life if you do.
Now if you have to sacrifice the human token you made in verse one, all those phased-out creatures will come back into play on their controller’s next upkeep, so this is only guaranteed to clear the board for two turns. And remember that creatures that phase out don’t change zones, so effects that trigger on creatures entering or exiting don’t fire off, and tokens will survive being phased out.
Experienced Trekkies will be wiping away a tear at how elegant that is. The City on the Edge of Forever – the penultimate episode of the very first season of Star Trek – involved Kirk, Spock, and McCoy stuck in the 1930s after a time travel accident that altered the timeline, preventing the Federation from ever existing. The crux for this altered timeline is Edith Keeler, a charity worker who is supposed to die in a car crash, and whose survival results in her founding a pacifist movement that keeps America out of WW2 for so long that Nazi Germany wins the war. Unluckily for her and luckily for the timeline Kirk falls in love with her, so of course she dies by the end of the episode, and history is restored.
The Crystalline Entity is altogether simpler. It’s a 7/7 Elemental with flying for eight generic mana, and when it enters it destroys all non-artifact creatures. Simple it may be, but it’s also a really good representation of a menace that twice in Star Trek The Next Generation: Crystalline Entities are enigmatic space-faring beings that arrive and then depopulate all organic matter from planets. Hence the conditional board wipe – inorganic life forms get off safely, and the shields of a Galaxy Class starship like the Enterprise D protect the squishy crew from its effects.
Neither of these feel like cards for 60 card constructed, but my big dumb Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaught deck will be happy to take a Crystalline Entity. While there are faster and less conditional board wipes than City on the Edge of Forever, it is one way to completely ignore Teferi’s Protection. My main takeaway is that this MTG set is shaping up to be truly faithful to its source material – now give us a decent draft environment and we could have another killer Universes beyond set..
Do you think WotC has hit the nail on the head with these cards, or can you see a better way to represent these stories? And have I completely overlooked some busted synergies? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
