The first Star Trek Magic: The Gathering cards were revealed in a WeeklyMTG stream today, and we got to see some of the most exciting cards from the upcoming set. Those include the captains from the Original series and Voyager, with both Kirk and Janeway receiving powerful mythic rares, some of which even come hand-signed! We also viewed the first of several USS Enterprise cards.
There are a bunch of different treatments for the Star Trek captains, but the most exciting has to be the autograph cards. These are textless, collector-booster exclusives that were actually physically signed by the actors – they didn’t just print the signatures on top. There are seven of these in the set, for seven iconic characters, and they’re not all captains, so let the guessing games begin. Personally, I’m hoping for a signed Chief O’Brien for my next blink deck.
There are 200 of each of these autograph cards for a total of 1,400, and of course they’re collector booster exclusive, making them the ultimate chase cards for Star Trek’s MTG set – like a serialized card, only much cooler.
As for the new cards’ effects, it only makes sense for us to start with Kirk, who gets a surprisingly aggressive red creature card. Captain Kirk is always getting his uniform ripped in fights, as the TOS creators took any opportunity to show William Shatner shirtless, and this Captain Kirk card likewise portrays the character with his back against the wall.
Reflecting this, the card has a version of hellbent – it gets stronger when you’ve got no cards left in your hand. Magic’s Star Trek set has a modal spells theme, and Kirk has three different effects. He can rummage. He can make a 1/1. And he can give everything on your board a +1 boost to power. However, if you’re stuck top-decking, you get to pick all three options.
Then we have Captain Janeway, and while some of the Star Trek crews seemed to spend more time on shore leave or shuffling ambassadors and badmirals around than actually exploring, Voyager fixed that issue by flinging its crew 70,000 light years into uncharted space. It’s fitting, then, that Kathryn Janeway gets an explore card, and surprisingly it seems to be the only place this ‘cameo’ keyword shows up in the whole set! Verhey reveals the design team did try and make it work as a main set mechanic, but ultimately scrapped it.
Moving onto the spaceship and guess what, everyone? Wizards brought the spacecraft mechanic back for the Star Trek set. Gasp! The U.S.S. Enterprise-D, Galaxy Class, which unless I’ve gotten muddled, represents the huge Federation flagship under Picard’s command – is a pretty neat, pretty cheap spacecraft, with an effect that looks awesome, but actually has some frustrating limitations.
The Enterprise’s ability lets you exile cards and play them that turn whenever charge counters are put onto it. That’s some powerful sub-light (impulse) draw there, but since it only applies the first time one or more counters is put on the artifact each turn, and since ‘stationing’ can only be done at sorcery speed, that basically means you’re limited to one extra card each turn cycle.
It definitely feels like some guard rails were put up to stop this card from being completely cracked at some point during design. You could make it pretty damn sweet in a proliferate deck, though!
I’m kind of surprised to see the Enterprise only has a 4/5 statblock, but in the WeeklyMTG stream, designer Gavin Verhey assured that there’d be an uncommon and a mythic rare Enterprise in the main set, too.
Technically, we did see a few more captains in this stream. There’s a Picard, another Kirk, and a Sisko. However, as these cards hail from the set’s welcome decks, they’re a bit underwhelming. We’ll wait to see their ‘proper’ cards in the main set and commander decks.
Source: Wargamer
