Of all the Magic: The Gathering sets released this year, I had the least amount of interest in Star Trek, but after playing a few hours as part of a Magic Arena preview this week, I’ve completely changed my tune. I bear no ill will toward the United Federation of Planets, and I recognize the profound impact Trek has had on pop culture over the last 60 years. I’ve just never become a fan.
More importantly, most of my skepticism towards it as a Magic set stems from its incongruous nature as hard sci-fi crossing over with a high-fantasy trading card game that I adore. If there’s one thing I do know about Star Trek, however, it’s that its vision of the future is brimming with optimism and curiosity. In tandem with that is an emphasis on the importance of diversity.
I remember my dad watching Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was very young, and the “Wookiee guy” kind of scared me. These days, Worf (who is actually a Klingon) would probably be my favorite character. So it makes sense that what finally won me over about Magic's Trek connects directly to the franchise's idealistic core message.
I had a predictably frustrating experience playing Draft and Sealed on Arena while trying out a few different color combos. Nothing seemed to click. (I tried and failed a mostly green ramp and counters strategy.) Then I got Sarek, Federation Ambassador (even I know that’s Spock’s dad!) in a new pool of cards and immediately recognized that he has strong Commander vibes thanks to a new Magic mechanic designed specifically for the Star Trek set. Sarek’s "Federation" ability lets you draw one card for every five creature types among non-Borg creatures you control at the start of combat on your turn.
If you draw three or more (you have 15+ creature types), he puts two +1/+1 counters on all of your creatures as well. He feels like one of those Commanders with a powerful ability that’s challenging to execute fully on, but if you like a convoluted deck-building challenge, he’s probably one of the more immensely satisfying Commanders from the set. Since Sarek is Bant (white-blue-green), that gave me access to a large number of cards in my pool, and I quickly realized I had a few more Federation abilities there.
Captain Jonathan Archer immediately reminded me of cards like Rinoa Heartilly or Rufus Shinra that generate their own animal companion. For Captain Archer, that’s his trusty beagle Porthos. With two copies of the captain in my deck, his Federation ability became the glue that held it all together: For a cost of one green mana, he taps to give one target creature +X/+X where X is the number of creature types among non-Borg creatures you control.
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