The Final Frontier: Star Trek Previews
Reality Fracture feels like it came out just a couple of weeks ago, but we're already moving onto the next thing: Star Trek.
I won't lie, the set looks aesthetically bizarre to me. The style of art and visuals of the card just isn't for me. It feels like I'm looking at a completely different card game, almost reminds me of the Star Wars card game from the 90s.
Regardless, I'm sure I'll get used to it, and Magic is like pizza: Even if it's not the best I've ever had, it's almost always pretty good.
This is an interesting design, while it's not the most powerful of cards it's an engine that requires very little to keep going. My first thought as a boomer is how it would play with a card like Witch's Cauldron where we can put food into play as fodder to turn into extra cards while also getting Khan into the graveyard to be exiled by another effect. That's a far more non-competitive angle it would seem, but there's other ways to go about it as well.
The coolest part about Khan is how it's a creature that fades exile based removal, punishing players for exiling it and allowing you to cast it again to draw more cards.
Khan likely has some fringe use cases, but also seems a bit underpowered for today's Standard and beyond.
I like the design, but don't think this is a highly competitive mythic rare.
I know very little about the Star Trek lore despite my mom being a Trekkie my entire life. However, I do know the famous catch phrase "Beam me up Scotty!"
Scotty, Miracle Worker is definitely a bit of a build-around meme card that looks custom designed to use as a Commander.
Scotty can't beam up himself to "beam up" a spell from the graveyard meaning you'd really want to build around a lot of cheap value creatures that have enters the battlefield effects and use efficient removal or can trips to use Scotty as a value engine.
When things are working this looks pretty powerful, but it's susceptible to removal of all kinds. You likely to want to play this and a spell from your graveyard in the same turn to get some sort of value before it dies. That means this card requires a lot more set up, and I do not think the juice is worth the squeeze.
Captain Kirk wants you to dump your hand as fast as possible so you can get multiple modes when he enters or attacks. He isn't able to pump out continous triggers without attacking itself like a Goblin Rabblemaster, so you need to jump through the hoops of having Kirk live and being able to successfully attack in combat, all while your hand is empty if you want the most value.
I do think Captain James Kirk has a little potential in an aggressive red deck as it's able to punish opponents unable to answer him immediately, and combined with a lot of cheap removal it can push through in combat and also empty your hand to draw more cards if the game state calls for that instead of pumping your creatures.
Ideally this would be the top end creature in a prowess style burn deck, and in that situation maybe Kirk has what it takes to see some play.
Kirk so far does seem like one of the stronger cards in the set to me, however, that says more about the set than I think it does about the card itself.
Captain James T. Kirk is a solid card, but nothing super exciting, powerful, or even all that unique to build around.
Another iconic part of the Star Trek lore is the Starship Enterprise. The ship we're all used to seeing in the shows and movies, and in Magic Form it looks fairly solid.
I personally love the Spacecraft mechanic. I think it's a very neat spin on Vehicles, and the Enterprise looks to be a decent creature with extra value attatched, but you have to jump through a couple of hoops to get there. We're gifted three Officers right off the bat to help Station the ship, so we just need a little extra to finish the job, or a second turn with the Officers before the enterprise is fully operational.
When we finish stationing it we get our very own Baneslayer Angel to stabilize and help close out the game. I think the Enterprise has some chance to see a little play in Standard, but it really depends on the metagame itself. This is an excellent stabilization tool against aggressive decks, but a fairly poor card in the context of midrange mirrors.
I do think this card is a bit underpowered for modern-day Standard when decks like Landfall dominate the metagame, however, after rotation when things calm down a bit the Enterprise has a shot at becoming the top end to combat aggressive strategies out of midrange decks or perhaps some token type strategy.
I'm fairly pessimistic about the Enterprise's chances but we've had quite a lot of underpowered sets lately, and with rotation coming soon some of the cards we think may have gotten power crept out of playability will have their chances to shine when Standard shrinks a little bit.
Cool spin on a Baneslayer type card, but I remain skeptical.
Captain Pike is an interesting spin on Courser of Kruphix. We can play lands from the top of our library, and the more variety of lands we have the larger Captain Pike becomes.
Courser was a defining card of 2015 Standard, but times have changed. Captain Pike sizing up along with those land drops is not enough of a power creep to keep even Courser relevant, so I suspect Captain Pike will see very little play outside of Commander.
If we talk about Captain Pike in its ideal situation, that it's drawing a land from the top of your deck on turn 4 or 5 and he's a three mana 4/4 or 5/5, then it sounds a lot more appealing. The downside is we won't always have differently-name lands, and we won't always have a land on top. In these instances it trades down on mana for removal and generates no value.
Captain Pike is a threat in and of itself but three-mana cards need to provide value or have a good bit of resilience to them to see play these days. While Captain Pike can provide value in the form of a land off the top of your deck, I still think it's potentially too weak to be a dominant player in Standard. There is a shot it sees play in a format where a lot of the removal is burn as it can easily get out of reach of red-based removal.
So in a completely open environment I'd argue Pike is too weak, but if we see a lot of Izzet style decks post rotation then Captain Pike has a shot at seeing play as a cheaper creature with a potentially higher power and toughness than the removal would handle.
I'm still very skeptical of Captain Pike breaking into Standard or beyond as a playable card, however I do recognize there are conditions it may have its place. We'll just have to see.
Overall, Star Trek looks pretty weak to me both as far as the power level of the cards, and being visually unappealing to me. I know not every set is for everyone these days, and I usually see some people raising their hands saying "I love this actually". I've yet to see that for Star Trek. I'm excited to actually get to play with the cards, and hopefully change my mind.
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