Magic: The Gathering’s Star Trek Set Shakes Up Commander With Two Bold New Mechanics

Wizards of the Coast launched its annual preconstructed Commander decks in 2011, then retired the dedicated Commander line in 2019. Since then, new decks have arrived alongside certain major Magic: The Gathering releases. They have supplied plenty of strong cards, but they haven’t pushed the format forward with new keyword mechanics. Earlier examples include Lieutenant, introduced in Commander 2014, and Eminence, which debuted in Commander 2017. That changes this November, when the Star Trek Universes Beyond set brings two new Commander-specific mechanics.

Aggressive players will gravitate toward Battlefront, a new ability debuting in the Klingon Fury Commander deck. It scales with the number of opponents you’ve attacked this turn. Worf, Defiant Commander is the flagship example. When this 3/4 Klingon warrior officer attacks, Battlefront exiles the top X cards of your library, where X is the number of opponents you’ve attacked this turn. You may then play those cards until the end of your next turn. If you gain an extra combat step, Battlefront keeps track of the opponents you’ve already attacked and counts them again.

The second new ability is Seek Out, which triggers whenever you draw your second card in a turn. It essentially gives a keyword to an effect that has existed for years on cards such as Thopter Fabricator and Jace, Arcane Strategist. Jean-Luc Picard, Luminary uses Seek Out to place a +1/+1 counter on a creature and two charge counters on a spacecraft. Picard is also a history enthusiast. He draws a card whenever a historic permanent (an artifact, legendary permanent, or Saga) with mana value three or greater enters the battlefield.

The Starship Enterprise’s mission is famously “to seek out new life and new civilizations.” The Seek Out name is clearly a nod to that, but it’s generic enough to work in other sets. The same is true of Battlefront, which isn’t tied to the Klingons and is simply another effective tool for building a group slug deck. That makes it plausible that Magic will bring both abilities back in future sets. More obviously themed Star Trek mechanics like Beam Me Up and Strange New Worlds are far less likely to return.

What other cards will be in the Star Trek Commander decks?

Two more Commanders join Worf and Picard. The Borg Queen heads an Esper (white-blue-black) deck built around the new Assimilate mechanic. She gives every artifact creature you control +2/+2. Whenever she enters or attacks, an opponent exiles cards from the top of their library until they reveal a creature. She then assimilates that creature. It enters the battlefield under your control as an artifact Borg creature with a +1/+1 counter, and it loses its other creature types.

Locutus of Borg, the assimilated version of Picard, accompanies her. He’s a 3/3 with lifelink, and he lets your artifact creatures create a 1/1 Borg token whenever they deal combat damage to a player. The deck also includes a nasty new board wipe called Join the Collective. It destroys all creatures and creates a Borg token for each nonartifact creature that died.

The fourth deck is led by Commander Spock. Wizards clearly enjoyed turning Starfleet officers into Magic Commanders. Spock is a 3/5 Vulcan Human Scientist with his own take on Strange New Worlds. Whenever he enters or attacks, you reveal the top card of your library. You may cast it for free if its mana value is no greater than the number of differently named lands you control. If it’s a land, you can put it onto the battlefield tapped. If you can’t play it, you draw it instead.

All four new Commander decks arrive on Nov. 13. Keep checking Polygon for more updates, including exclusive card reveals.

Source: Polygon