Star Trek Mechanics and Prerelease Guide for People Who Have Never Watched Star Trek

The Quick Facts

Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek is a Universes Beyond set that pulls from the whole franchise, not one show. It is Standard legal, it is the last set of 2026, and it has about 300 cards in the main set with 25 mythics and 80 rares. The prerelease runs November 6 to 12 and the full release is November 13.

Four Commander precons ship alongside the main set (Federation Fleet, Landing Party, Klingon Fury, and We Are the Borg), but they are not part of the prerelease. A few mechanics only exist in those decks, and I cover them near the end so nothing surprises you.

Star Trek Vocabulary for People Who Have Not Seen Star Trek

Before the mechanics, the words. Most of the cards in this set are named after characters, ships, and episodes, and the flavor does a lot of work once you know who is who. This is the short version I wish someone had handed me.

A few technology words also show up as cards, and they are all easy: the Tricorder is a scanner, the Combadge is the little communicator on the uniform, a Replicator makes food on demand, and the Holodeck is a room that simulates anything. That is why Emergency Medical Hologram is an Illusion and why Malfunctioning Holodeck does what it does. A Spacecraft is just a starship, and a Planet is a land named after a place like Vulcan, Bajor, or Qo'noS.

The cards come from every series, and the set loves a crossover. Here is the quick map of where the legends come from:

Spacecraft and Station: The Starships

Spacecraft and Station are back from Edge of Eternities, so if you played that set you already know the idea. If you did not: a Spacecraft is an artifact that starts as a harmless non-creature. You Station it by tapping another untapped creature you control. That puts charge counters on the Spacecraft equal to the tapped creature's power. Station is sorcery speed, it costs no mana, and the counters stay put. Once the Spacecraft has enough counters to reach its threshold (shown as a number with a plus, like 6+), it becomes an artifact creature with the stats printed at that level.

This is not Crew. Crewing a vehicle is a one-turn thing. Stationing is a slow build, so the cheap Spacecraft are the ones you want in limited and the huge ones are more of a late-game goal. The numbers vary a lot: Oberth-Class Starship turns into a 2/2 flyer at 6 counters, Enterprise NX-01 needs 6, and U.S.S. Excelsior needs 8 but kills a tapped creature the moment it enters.

Most Spacecraft do something useful before they become creatures. Suurok-Class Science Vessel draws a card on entry, Oberth-Class Starship fetches a Plains, and U.S.S. Enterprise-D exiles and lets you play cards off the top as counters land on it. Warp Core and Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge are the support pieces that put more counters on them faster. The one I would be nervous about is Borg Cube. It exiles a creature when it enters and assimilates one when it attacks, but it takes 12 counters to become a creature, so it is a long-game card.

Beam Me Up: Spells From the Graveyard

Beam me up is a flashback with a catch. It lets you cast an instant or sorcery from your graveyard for the cost printed after the keyword, but only if you also return a creature you control to its owner's hand. Then the spell is exiled. So it is a second use of the spell at the price of a creature bounce, which is great with enter-the-battlefield creatures and awkward if your board is thin.

Examples: Open Communications is a one-mana cantrip that you can recast later, Energize bounces a creature twice, and Transporter Malfunction deals 3 damage on the front end and can be beamed up for six mana in a pinch. Boarding Action and Pure Energy are the solid commons. The mythic Scotty gives every instant and sorcery in your graveyard beam me up for its normal mana cost during your main phase, which is a very good deal.

Face a Dilemma: Modal Spells Get Bonuses

You face a dilemma whenever you choose one or more modes for a spell or ability. Any card that says "choose one" or "choose two" counts, including triggered abilities. Wizards confirmed that the trigger happens even if the spell gets countered, because choosing modes is what counts, not resolving. Plenty of commons give you the setup, and then the payoffs come in a few flavors.

Common enablers: Command Decision, Federation Probe, Federation Field Medic, Set Phasers to . . ., Consider the Prime Directive, and Make It So. Payoffs: Melkotian Adjudicator grows a flyer every time, Obsidian Order Operative drains for 1, Jett Reno grows, and the rares and uncommons are scarier: Elim Garak drains for 2 and Seven of Nine draws a card, and Captain Benjamin Sisko turns dilemmas into 1/1 Officers at your end step.

Federation and the Borg: Count the Creature Types

Federation is an ability word. It does not do anything on its own. It tells you the card cares about the number of different creature types among your non-Borg creatures. Wizards clarified that if you control a Borg creature, its other creature types do not count unless a non-Borg creature has them too.

That makes Humans with stacked types your best friends. A creature like Dr. McCoy (Human Doctor) is two types by himself, and a legendary with three types is more. Cards that use it: Saavik deals damage to an attacker or blocker, Hoshi Sato digs for what you need, Captain Jonathan Archer pumps, and Sarek draws cards in a three-color deck. The big payoff is Infinite Diversity at nine mana, and Starfleet Academy is a land that turns it into mana. Changelings count as every creature type, and Dominion Infiltration makes temporary changeling copies of your opponents' creatures.

Assimilate is the Borg keyword action. It puts a card onto the battlefield under your control with a +1/+1 counter, and it becomes a Borg artifact creature and loses its other creature types. If the thing is already on the battlefield, you gain control of it first. It is a Commander-heavy mechanic: in the main set, only the mythics Borg Cube and Death Is Irrelevant assimilate. The Borg in the sealed pool are mostly about artifact creatures, which I get to in the archetypes.

Strange New Worlds, Planets, and Landfall

Strange new worlds is the second ability word. It counts the lands you control with different names, and each name counts once. Basics count because Plains and Island are different names, which means a plain two-color deck starts with 2 for free. The Planet lands (like Andoria, Risa, and Vulcan), the ten shocklands, the Anomaly lands, and the utility lands add more names. A "New Planet" token counts as one name no matter how many you make.

The top end is where it pays: Captain Pike has power and toughness equal to the count, The Traveler does the same for power, Deep Space Scan draws that many, and Excalbian Gamemaster makes that many Officers. Cheaper payoffs exist too, like Suus Mahna Practitioner and Astute Terraformer. You do not need a perfect mana base. You need to play the Planet lands your pool gives you instead of cutting them for a basic.

Landfall is back, and Planet tokens make it better. Stable Wormhole makes a tapped Planet every time you attack, which means a landfall trigger every combat. Other landfall cards: Planetary Patrol, Xindi Surveyors, Saurian Explorer, Syndicate Liquidators, and Captain Michael Burnham. Final Frontier and Genesis Device both fetch Planets, and the Anomaly lands like Subspace Anomaly turn into one when they are sacrificed.

The Smaller Stuff That Will Come Up at the Table

Total power 8 or greater. Several cards check whether the creatures you control have total power 8 or greater, usually as "whenever you attack while..." It is mostly red and white, and it rewards going wide. Tactical Officer, Cantankerous Captain, La'An Noonien-Singh, Una Chin-Riley, and Kirk all use it. Add the power on your whole board before you declare attackers.

Wording tip for Cantankerous Captain. It gives a creature +1/+0 at the beginning of combat, and then checks whether your creatures have total power 8 or greater to give that creature menace. The +1/+0 resolves first. So if you target one of your own creatures and your total power is 7, the pump pushes you to 8 and the menace turns on too. It read a little tricky to me at first glance. It worked well for me on Friday, though I only got menace some of the time.

Stun counters. If a permanent with a stun counter would untap, you remove one counter instead. It is basically a delayed tap-down. Set Phasers to . . ., Consider the Prime Directive, Constable Odo, and Type-2 Phaser all use them.

Mission enchantments. Five uncommons put quest counters on themselves and get better as the game goes on: Support Mission, Conquest Mission, Vengeance Mission, Anthropological Mission, and Exploratory Mission. They are slow, but they generate value in grindy games.

Episode Sagas. A lot of the Sagas are named after specific episodes and films: The Measure of a Man, Amok Time, The Naked Time, In the Pale Moonlight, The City on the Edge of Forever, The Inner Light, All Good Things..., Year of Hell, and The Wrath of Khan. If you are on the watch list near the end of this article, those are the first ones you will recognize.

Commander-only mechanics. Battlefront counts how many opponents you attacked this turn and Seek Out triggers when you draw your second card each turn. You will not see either in a prerelease pool, but they are worth knowing if someone sits down with a precon.

The Ten Sealed Archetypes

Wizards has not published archetype names for this set, so these are my read of the full card list. Every two-color pair has three or more gold cards or hybrid cards pointing in the same direction, and that is how I grouped them. Treat them as a starting guess, then let your pool have the final vote.

There are also two three-color legends, Dathon (Temur) and Sarek (Bant). Neither is a realistic sealed plan unless your pool hands you a lot of fixing.

Key Removal By Color

If you only have twenty minutes to study, spend them here. Knowing what removal looks like in each color tells you more than memorizing every rare.

Two details worth catching: Resistance Is Futile can't hit artifact creatures, and the Borg are full of them. Also, Eject the Warp Core gets much better if you can pay the kicker, so it wants sacrifice fodder like Borg tokens and Officers.

Bombs and Traps to Recognize

You do not need to memorize the rares and mythics, but know the ones that can end a game or lose you one.

• Crystalline Entity is an 8-mana 7/7 flyer that destroys all nonartifact creatures, but only if you cast it. Put it in your sideboard if you are a creature deck.
• Kobayashi Maru Scenario lets you choose a mode each upkeep that you haven't chosen yet. After three upkeeps the only option left is Abandon Ship, which makes you lose the game. Have a plan to remove or bounce it.
• Mr. Spock replaces each of your draws with two cards, including your draw step.
• U.S.S. Enterprise-A makes three Officers the turn it lands and becomes a lifelink flyer later. Borg Cube is the white-black bomb.
• Troubling Tribbles copies itself every upkeep and can't block. Kill it on sight, or race it.
• Excalbian Gamemaster and Gul Dukat are late-game finishers. Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Georgiou are the stranger ones, and you will want to read both twice.

Building Your 40

The same curve template I use for every set works here. It is a starting point rather than a rule, and slower decks lean higher.

Star Trek adds two wrinkles to the usual math. First, the common Planet lands enter tapped (and gain you 1 life), so a deck with three or four of them will stumble if it is also an aggro deck. Second, the cards with basic landcycling (Humpback Whales, Horta, Free Borg Revolutionaries, and a few more) are effectively a land and a spell in one card, which is why some builds can get away with 16 lands.

What to Watch Before the Prerelease

I have no plan to finish The Next Generation before November 6, and you do not need to. The set leans heavily on a handful of stories, so a short list covers a lot of the cards that will show up in your matches. I have not watched most of these yet. I built the list from the card names and the episodes they are based on, so treat it as a map rather than a review. I kept it spoiler-light, but the Borg two-parter is a spoiler for anyone still early in the show.

I bounced off the original series, so I will not pretend it is required. If you did too, the movies above cover the Kirk and Spock cards that matter, and the one original series episode I would still queue is The City on the Edge of Forever (S1E28), because the Saga The City on the Edge of Forever is a rare you could actually open.

The Pool Is Loaded: Practice Before Prerelease

Star Trek is loaded in the Prerelease Gauntlet. It is the practice tool I built for exactly this: pick Star Trek from the set list, open six packs, sort by rarity, and see which pair your pool is actually pointing at, with real rarity distribution and role tags on every card.

What to Take Away Right Now

• Prerelease is November 6 to 12, full release is November 13, and the kit is six Play Boosters, a foil promo, a deck box, and a spindown die.
• Station taps another creature you control to put charge counters on a Spacecraft equal to that creature's power. It is slow, permanent, and not Crew.
• Beam me up lets you recast an instant or sorcery from the graveyard by returning a creature you control to your hand.
• You face a dilemma whenever you choose modes, even if the spell gets countered. Count your modal spells in blue and black.
• Federation counts creature types among your non-Borg creatures. Strange new worlds counts differently named lands, and Planet lands help.
• Assimilate is mostly a Commander mechanic. In the main set, the Borg are about artifact creatures.
• The ten archetypes above are my read of the card list, not an official list. Let your pool decide.
• Weekend recap: 3-5 over two prerelease nights. Friday I benched my best cards and ran no evasion. Saturday I missed a pool with 13 artifact creatures. Count your types, evasion, and 4-5 drops before you commit to a deck.
• Cantankerous Captain: the +1/+0 resolves before the menace check, so 7 total power is enough if you target your own creature.
• Know your removal by color, and know the traps: Crystalline Entity and Kobayashi Maru Scenario both punish careless play.

My Friday Night: 1-3 and Everything I Did Wrong

Update from November 7: I played the Friday night prerelease and went 1-3. I am a non-Trekkie who read his own article, then built a deck that ignored half of it. You asked for honesty last time, so here is the full autopsy, including the parts that make me look bad. That is the whole point of writing these.

The deck was red-white with Kirk, two Cantankerous Captain, two Malfunctioning Holodeck, Command Decision, Planetary Bombardment, and Khaaaaaaaaaaaannn!. It had plenty of removal and it never ran out of gas. It was just slow. After the official rounds I swapped the white for black, and that version was equally slow, which told me the problem was the red core and the curve and not the second color.

Even so, it was a fun night. I am not a Trekkie, I did not know half the names across the table, and I still enjoyed every round. Losing three of four to a set I barely know did not sour that, and I think that says something good about the set.

What I Did Wrong

I lined the pool up against my own archetype notes afterward and the problems were not subtle. In rough order of how much they cost me:

• I benched both Kira Nerys. I skipped her because I could not trigger the ability that works while you are attacking. That ignores that she is a 4/3 trampler for three mana in my exact colors, and her other ability gives every creature that enters +1/+1 for the turn. She is in the red-white pair the article calls out. I left two of them in the sideboard.
• I had almost no evasion. A slow deck with removal needs a way to actually finish. Ghost of Illyria is a 3/3 flyer for four and it sat in the sideboard while my deck had very few ways to end the game in the air.
• The curve was lopsided. Ten two-mana cards, and the majority of them were not creatures. After that, the deck had three cards at four mana or more: Federation Field Medic, Free Borg Revolutionaries, and Horta. Meanwhile Miles O'Brien, La'An, Silicate Surveyor, and Constable Odo sat in the pile. That is how you build a deck that does a lot of small things and never a big one.
• Too many low-impact spells. Tea, Earl Grey, Hot, Shields Up!, Perils of the Past, Pure Energy, and Reckless Impulse are all fine cards. Together they made the deck feel like it was always setting up. I wanted a deck that was ahead on board.
• Encounter the Unknown fights my own plan. The damage mode deals 2 damage to each creature and each player. In a deck full of small creatures, that hurts me as much as them. It is better as a card draw spell here, and then it is just an expensive one.
• I swapped white for black and kept the same core. If the deck is slow because the cheap cards do not matter, changing the second color does not fix it.
• I never tried the build I wrote about. The article says white-black is the Borg artifact deck. My pool had artifact creatures, including two Organic Avulsion Unit, which gives artifact creatures menace for {2}. I never laid out that version and played it.

One note on the archetype table above. I called red-white the total power 8 deck, and in my hands it played slower than the table implies. The payoffs need a wide board, and my deck did not have enough bodies to reach 8 power on its own. Treat that pair as a deck that needs real creatures, not just good cards.

Saturday Night: 2-2 and a Pool Full of Artifacts

Saturday went better on paper and I still left thinking I missed the deck. I went 2-2, and I played three different builds without ever playing the one I now think was right.

The red-black deck was fine. It had The Wrath of Khan, Plasma Cascade, He's Dead, Jim, two Tal Shiar Analyst, La'An, Cantankerous Captain, and two Horta. It lacked evasion and had very little at the top of the curve. The white-blue deck had real flyers and V'Ger, but a clunkier curve.

Eleven Nonbasic Lands

The best part of the weekend was the mana. I opened 11 nonbasic lands in one pool, and I am pumped about it. That includes Steam Vents and Blood Crypt, the rare The Unicomplex, four Planet lands (Bajor, Cardassia Prime, Earth, Sector 001, and Romulus), Spatial Anomaly, Gaseous Anomaly, and two Unexplored Territory. Blood Crypt and The Unicomplex helped the black-red deck. Steam Vents sat in the sideboard because I never ended up in blue-red. And Cardassia Prime is a white-black land that I never got to play, which tells you where this is going.

What I Think I Should Have Built

Looking at the pool the next day, I should have built white-black artifacts. I wrote almost that exact deck into this article and then did not build it on either night. Here is what the pool actually had:

• 13 artifact creatures. White: Command Subadjunct x2, Emergency Medical Hologram, Vexing Drone, DOT-7 Repair Squad. Black: Relentless Drednok x2, Automated Warfare System. Colorless: Cybernetic Specialist. Hybrid: Zero (white or black) and Lore (blue or black). Blue: Interstellar Effigy and V'Ger.
• White-black could play 11 of them, with He's Dead, Jim, 70,000 Light-Years from Home, and Set Phasers to . . . as removal, the cheapest curve of any build, and a dual land (Cardassia Prime) sitting in my sideboard.
• White-blue could already play 9 of them, because Zero and Lore are hybrid. So my white-blue deck was already an artifact deck. It just had a slower curve and no black removal.
• I am not certain white-black would have won more. It had only two real flyers (Automated Warfare System and DOT-7 Repair Squad), the top end was thin again, and there were few artifact payoffs beyond Rutherford and the sacrifice on Automated Warfare System. White-blue had V'Ger and more evasion. I think white-black was the most consistent build, and I would want to play it before calling it better.

Two Cards I Am Taking Into Commander

Two cards from my Friday pool have already stopped being limited cards in my head.

Georgiou is a six-mana 4/6 in black. You do not lose the game for having 0 or less life. At the beginning of your end step, you lose 3 life and draw a card, and then if your life total is 0 or less, you create ten 1/1 red Officer tokens. In Commander you start at 40, so you get a lot of free cards before the Officers show up. I have not built it yet, but it looks insanely fun to me. A draw engine that eventually floods the board is exactly the kind of deck I want to sit down with.

It comes with real caveats. Commander damage and poison counters still kill you, so a table full of attackers is a problem. And if Georgiou leaves the battlefield while you are at 0 or less life, you lose. Keep that in mind before you point removal at her, and before an opponent points it at you.

Gwyndala is a rare two-drop in blue. When she enters, she creates a colorless Equipment token named Neuroflux Heirloom (equipped creature gets +1/+1, equip {2}) and attaches it to herself. Then her {2} ability makes each Equipment token you control become a copy of target Equipment you control until end of turn. That means the token can turn into Umezawa's Jitte or Shadowspear if you control one. She is going into my Captain America Voltron deck, where the whole plan is one creature carrying a lot of equipment. If you want to see that deck, I wrote about it here: Two Marvel Commander Decks: Nick Fury and Captain America.

Here is the full list as it stands today. Gwyndala is not in it yet, so something is coming out. The commander is Captain America, First Avenger, and the deck is white, blue and red with a lot of equipment.

Before You Go

This is a living document. Both nights of my prerelease are written up above, and I will keep updating the archetype notes as I learn what actually works. Next up is a Star Trek draft at Ancient Tomb on Saturday, November 14. I am hoping to end up in artifacts, but that depends on the cards that come to me, and I will follow the packs if they say otherwise. Artifact creatures are often colorless or hybrid, which keeps my colors open early, so I will count artifact creatures, evasion, and 4-5 drops as I pick instead of waiting until deck building. Win or lose, I will post how it went, including the picks I wish I had made. And if you are watching along with me, I would love to hear which episode got you. Captain Jean-Luc Picard is a mythic in this set, so if you open him at your prerelease, it is a good moment to remember the man who played him. Rest in peace, Sir Patrick.