Today, we got our first glimpse at the four MTG Commander decks coming out with the Star Trek set, and while none of the face commander cards were shown off, we know now what the deck’s themes and colors will be – and we can make some decent guesses about how they’ll play.
First up there’s a Jeskai (red/white/blue) Federation Fleet deck. Designer Gavin Verhey said in the reveal vid that this covered the Next Generation/Voyager era, which I’m assuming means it’ll also have cards from Deep Space Nine.
Jean-Luc Picard appears to be commander for this deck, and with the tagline ‘seek out card draw, charge your starships’ we can assume it’ll be filled with Spacecraft.
Then there’s a Bant (green/white/blue) deck called Landing Party. This one’s themed around the original series, with Spock as the commander and a landfall theme.
The Klingons get their own furious deck, which I think is led by Worf – though I remember him with longer hair. This Mardu (black/red/white) deck apparently can ‘hit the whole battlefield’. It would be pretty ballsy if ‘board wipe’ was the deck’s theme, but I’m guessing instead it refers to firing damage at everything at once.
Lastly, the UB villain deck is for once not Grixis. It’s an Esper (blue/white/black) Borg deck, ‘We Are The Borg’. Led by the Borg Queen, this deck focuses on artifact creature synergies, but we’d be stunned if there wasn’t some way to steal or copy your opponent’s creatures as well.
Unusually for a Magic First Look, this preview also delved deep into the Star Trek set’s mechanics. Magic fans have long been wondering how a show that’s primarily about morality and peaceful problem-solving would translate to a combat-heavy game like Magic, and now we have our answer.
The most interesting mechanic in this set looks to be Dilemma. This takes something that’s appeared plenty of times in Magic, modal spells, and crafts it into a codified mechanic. Just like Thunder Junction turned targeting stuff into committing crimes, Star Trek makes choosing modes into facing a dilemma, and has cards to synergize like Seven of Nine.
This theme is drawn out more clearly in the set’s own modal spells. Will you set your phasers to kill or stun? Are you going to obey the prime directive? While I can’t imagine anyone making a strategically weaker play for moral reasons, it does create some great flavor/storytelling. It also seems good for gameplay. Who doesn’t like flexible cards?
Along with dilemmas, Star Trek also has a Federation mechanic that, like the Federation itself, celebrates species diversity. Specifically, it provides a stronger effect for each different creature type you have on the battlefield… among non-Borg creatures, that is – one alien race doesn’t get to play.
That’s not just a thematic exclusion. It also prevents Changelings (with every creature type) from breaking the mechanic wide open.
Source: Wargamer
