Magic: The Gathering Star Trek Prerelease Guide

The Prerelease Package

When you register for a Prerelease event, you'll receive a Star Trek Prerelease Pack. Each Prerelease Pack contains the following:

6 Star Trek Play Boosters
1 Traditional foil promo card (which you can play in your deck)
1 Deck box
1 Spindown die

Booster Breakdown

To give you an idea what to expect, here is the Play Booster breakdown for Star Trek:

7 Commons, with one replaced by a Stardates card in 1 out of 25 boosters
3 Uncommon
1 Rare or mythic rare
1 Wildcard of any rarity
1 Traditional foil card of any rarity
1 Non-foil or traditional foil land. Either a basic or common dual land with 50% likelihood of each

That’s 14 playable cards and a token. In addition to the rare or mythic slot, you can also get a foil rare, another one in the wildcard slot and also a Stardates card, which is a non-standard legal bonus sheet featuring reprints from the past like Phyrexian Tower, Decree of Pain or Ertai Resurrected in a movie poster style. There are 30 different Stardates cards.

What does that mean in practice? Magic is a lot more about uncommons and rares these days, while commons make up only about half of each booster pack. Prioritize power over speed and curving out, especially in Sealed.

New Mechanics

Now let’s get you familiar with all the new mechanics and one returning one that plays a very prominent role in this set.

Beam Me Up

Beam me up is a new keyword which is very similar to Flashback. It's a cost for which you can play the card from the graveyard, except that you also have to return a creature you control into your hand as part of the process. Afterwards the spell gets exiled, so you can only do it once.

Returning the creature to your hand is part of the cost, so your opponent doesn’t get a chance to respond with a removal spell or anything of that sort. Despite the alternative Beam me up cost usually being higher, the mana value of the card on the stack is the same as the original cost in the top right corner of the card.

The most important part is that you can only use the Beam me up mechanic at any time when you can cast the actual card. To make things easier, all of the cards featuring this new keyword are sorceries, which means that you cannot use Beam me up as a way to return a creature you control in response to a removal spell or after declaring the creature as a blocker. 
 

Facing a Dilemma

You face a dilemma whenever you have to choose one or more modes from a modal spell or ability. Think of cards like Cryptic Command or Austere Command that have multiple modes.

On the other hand, choosing whether or not to pay 2 life to put a Hallowed Fountain into play untapped does not count as facing a dilemma because it is an optional payment, not a mode. Similarly, Sagas do not present you with a dilemma, you simply add counters on them and resolve the abilities.

You could argue that something like searching your library for a land, or choosing which creature to kill with your removal spell can be a hard choice and quite a dilemma as well, but unfortunately those also do not qualify as a way to trigger the ability.

Luckily, modal cards are a big theme in this set, so those cards are quite easy to come by.

All you need to do is choose one or more legal modes and it doesn't matter what happens to the card afterwards. It can get countered and it will still count as you having faced a dilemma. 
 

Spacecraft + Station

This is a returning mechanic from Edge of Eternities. Spacecraft is an artifact subtype, similar to a Vehicle.

Each Spacecraft starts as a non-creature artifact and has a Station ability, which you can activate only as a sorcery by tapping an untapped creature you control, including those that just came into play. As the station ability resolves, you put a number of charge counters on the Spacecraft, equal to the power of the creature that just Stationed it.

Once there are enough charge counters to meet the criteria in the bottom left corner, it becomes a creature with power, toughness and any additional abilities mentioned in that part of the text box.

Deep Space 9 is the only Station in this set without power and toughness indicated, which means that once you charge it for 9+, it grants your team the +3/+3 buff, but does not become a creature itself. 
 

Strange New Worlds

Strange New Worlds is arguably the most fun mechanic and also the easiest one to grasp. It refers to the number of differently named lands you control.

Each individual name only counts once. A board of 2 Islands, 2 Plains, Hallowed Fountain, Stomping Grounds, Watery Grave and Subspace Anomaly means you have a total of 6 differently named lands.

As you can imagine, cards and abilities with the Strange New World mechanic usually cost a lot of mana and get a discount or have a stronger effect for each differently named land you control.

While draft decks usually tend to be more straightforward and often feature just two colors, especially in Sealed, you can expect this mechanic to play a much larger role, so make sure you carefully consider all your mana base options to get the most value out of your cards.

Cards like Captain Pickard, Earth Warlord (Kenrith the Returned King) are great payoffs for running multi-color mana bases in this format. 
 

Federation

Federation is an ability that refers to the number of different creature types among non-Borg creatures you control.

Similarly to Strange New Worlds, the more the merrier.

If you control a Holo-Engineer and Captain James Kirk, your Federation number is 3 because Human only counts once.

If you control a Borg creature, none of its creature types count.
 

Assimilate

Assimilate is a new keyword which is actually only featured on two cards in this limited format - Borg Cube and Death is Irrelevant.

To assimilate a card, you put it onto the battlefield under your control with a +1/+1 counter. It becomes a Bog artifact creature and loses any other creature types.

Limited Archetypes

Below you can find the limited archetypes in this set. Once again we have the full 10 supported color-pairs, which is great news. Each color pair has its own theme.

Knowing what kind of theme and synergies each archetype is built around really pays off in helping you understand what cards to look for and how to evaluate them in the context of the format.

White/Blue is based around Spacecrafts, Artífacts and “facing a dilemma”, which is a new concept introduced in this set. You face a dilemma whenever you have to choose one or more modes from a modal spell or ability. Think of cards like Cryptic Command or Austere Command that have multiple modes. On the other hand, choosing whether or not to pay 2 life to put a Hallowed Fountain into play untapped does not count as facing a dilemma because it is an optional payment, not a mode. Getting enough cards of this type is fairly trivial. 

White/Black is based around artifact creatures, many of which have a way to improve your entire team. Look for cards like Assembly Specialist and Tenacious Drone in combination with powerful payoff cards like Locutus the One Who Speaks and Primary Unimatrix Adjunct. 

White/Red is an archetype based on getting paid off for assembling a board of creatures with 8+ total power between them. This is a great strategy because your goal is, well, to add creatures to the battlefield, which is what you want to be doing every game anyway.

White/Green is based around +1/+1 counters. This should be a pretty straightforward archetype that wants to curve out, make its creature bigger to get in for profitable attacks and use cards like Phlox, Unorthodox Doctor to get value.

The Blue/Black combination rewards you for facing dilemmas. Look for flexible cards like Consider the Prime Detective and payoff creatures like Seven of Nine, which turn these decisions into extra cards. 

As usual, Blue/Red is centered around non-creature spells. This is typically one of the most fun archetypes because you get to draw a lot of cards and do all the things. This format should be slow enough where I expect this color combination to be one of the stronger ones. There seem to be more than enough burn spells like Planetary Bombardement, Temporary Malfunction, Plasma Cascade or Khaaaan! to buy you time.

Blue/Green is based around Strange New Worlds, which means ramping up, playing multiple colors, fixing your mana and splashing for whatever bombs you draft or open in your pool. Don’t be afraid to be a bit greedy during deck construction and go for maximum power. This will very likely be the most popular archetype at the prerelease. 

Black/Red is based around Klingons, sacrificing creatures and getting rewarded when they die. Look for token producers, creatures like Starfleet Security or Tenacious Drone that leave something behind and use payoffs like Gowron, Eager for Battle. This archetype can be quite fast. 

As usual, Black/Green is based around graveyard synergies, recursion and getting more value from your creatures. Look for self-mill and surveil effects and cards like Hologram Stalker or Death is Irrelevant to take advantage of a full graveyard. 

Red/Green is based around landfall and getting extra value from your land drops. Look for ways to put additional lands on the battlefield, including cards that create Planet tokens. Cleveland, Booker Empath is a great way to turn lands into creatures and my dark horse for a great card that looks very unassuming is Exploratory Mission. This strategy is going to have a significant overlap with Blue/Green by also looking to ramp and splash for bombs from multiple colors, so I also expect to see a lot of it at the prerelease. Blue/Green/Red might be the first color combination to look at when laying out your pool.

Tips and tricks

For general tips and tricks, I recommend reading this article

While there might be some aggressive color combinations to pursue in the Draft environment, I’m fully expecting Sealed to be very slow. With Spacecraft, Strange New Worlds and Federation playing such a prominent role in Star Trek, it would make sense to design the set in such a way where you actually have enough time to develop your board, fix your mana, get the Spacecrafts online and enjoy all the new mechanics.

Be careful with how many Spacecrafts you put into your deck, you should not think of them as equal replacement of creatures on the mana curve. If you run too many Spacecrafts, you will run into the problem of not having enough creatures to station, attack and block with. Getting an expensive Spacecraft that requires a lot of charge counters to get online can take too long and one timely removal or bounce spell from your opponent can give them a massive tempo advantage.

Between all the artifact creatures and Spacecrafts, artifact removal is going to be much better than usual. Cards like Perils of the Past and Test of Courage are reasonable main deck inclusions.

Some cards in this format ask you to add or remove counters from permanents. Keep in mind that this isn’t limited to +1/+1 counters. Spacecrafts use charge counters and creatures can also have stun counters preventing them from untapping. For example, you can use Lieutenant Commander Data to remove stun counters your opponent put on your creatures with cards like Consider the Prime Directive.

Tactical Officer can station twice in one turn. Tap it to station before combat and attack with another creature while you control 8+ power worth of creatures. Officer gets a +1/+1 counter, untaps and can station something again in your second main phase.

The Beam me up mechanic can not only result in card advantage by returning creatures with powerful “enters” effects, it can also reset a finality counter from something like Storied Veteran or Overflow Submatrix.

There is a neat little trick you can do with Kira Nerys Firebrand in combination with cards like Academy Instructor or Subspace Anomaly. If you cast an instant after your opponent declares blockers, Academy Instructor will create a 1/1 Officer token. Kira gives it +1/+1 and turns it into an attacking creature. Since blockers were already declared, your opponent does not have a way to block the creature(s) anymore and has to take the damage.

Emergency Medical Hologram can target your opponent's creature to enable destroying it with Command Desicion.

Mana Curve

1 Mana: 1 - 2 cards
2 Mana: 6 - 7 cards
3 Mana: 6 - 7 cards
4 Mana: 4 - 5 cards
5 Mana: 2 - 3 cards
6+ Mana: 1 - 2 cards
17 lands

The most important part of deck building is making sure you have a functional mana curve. You might have the biggest bombs in a certain color combination, but if your curve starts on 4 and you don’t have any cheap cards to play in the early turns, you will get overrun before you can use all your powerful cards.

Above you can find an approximate illustration of a solid mana curve. It is fine to make concessions here and there, but as a general approach try to make sure you have enough creatures and interaction to do something in the early turns.

As already mentioned above, make sure you don't count Spacecrafts as creatures because they take a while to actually get online.

Each deck will be different, but I typically like to make sure my decks feature at least 14-15 creatures.

That’s it for today, best of luck at the prerelease and make sure to check out our new official Star Trek product line featuring the iconic card arts on Sindewinders 100+ and 133+, Art Sleeves, Zipfolio Binders, Playmats, Boulders, Arkhive and Omnihives!