General [TRK] Star Trek

[MilesOfficial]

Riptide is back! Star Trek spoilers continue!




Kira is one of the coolest characters in all of Star Trek, so I am delighted to see Kira Nerys, Firebrand is one of the coolest cards in the set. Unfortunately, this is a narrow enough design that it's really only sensible in EDH. It does work with more cards I run than I expected, notably Jacked Rabbit, Voice of Victory, Guardian Scalelord, Overlord of the Mistmoors, Royal Talon Fighter Jet, The Wandering Emperor, Occult Epiphany, Kiora, the Rising Tide, Stadium Headliner, Kavaron Harrier, Captain James T. Kirk, and Sneak Attack. That's a lot, sure, but at 720 cards, I don't think it's enough, but it is exciting. This feels more like classic Magic design than most of these EDH-centric builds, since it doesn't provide an outlet for its own payoff, and fills one with anticipation to read.




More BORG! I think these all have homes in various Cubes. I've always liked Court Homunculus as a Cube card but it now seems decidedly old-fashioned, though all these Borg do make it that much better. Antagonist Incorporator is my favorite of the bunch, and has already been slotted in my list. 2MV repeatable creature token generators are hard to come by and often ask you to work for them, as they should, but for a Cube like mine with 68 artifact creatures and 20 cards that make them or turn into one (ignore GftT and RiF), I think I'm just at the line where this makes sense. Doubling your robots every turn is great, and because it doesn't specify non-tokens, it lets you snowball if you put the mana into it. Seems very fun.

I'm not that interested in Command Subadjunct or Primary Unimatrix Adjunct for my main list, but I'm very glad they exist and think there are many Cube projects that they make sense for.




Georgiou, Terran Emperor is an excellent exploration of Magic design space. Suicide black has always been a favorite strategy, and the Terran Emperor is a novel twist on it for a more controlling strategy. I'm halfway tempted by her, but removal is just a little to prevalent in my list for such a feast-or-famine card.




Storied Veteran is fairly ideal in terms of black one-drop aggro creatures. Like with many, especially on the more Vintage/Legacy+ side of the Cube world, I've been culling a bit of both my Blaggro and aristocrats strategies in recent years, but I honestly prefer this one to most of the 2/xs for 1 in the color for its simplicity and low mana commitment. The lack of an option to continuously play it from the graveyard is a huge downside, but only Gravecrawler can do that with any real regularity, and its not in my Cube since I run fewer zombies than halflings, robots, turtles, or detectives. That said, I don't prefer this to Forsaken Miner or Cult Conscript, and don't feel the need for another right now, as much as I like Klingons.




Excalbian Gamemaster is a great army-in-a-can. But as novel as it is, with such a tantalizing upside on the ETB, having a 6/6 body just isn't enough to improve on Captain of the Watch, who was a Cube staple in 2015 but doesn't really cut it any longer alongside modern creatures. I'm happy with my Summon: Good King Mog XII in this "slot" in my Cube, and even the Good King himself is one of the lowest ELO cards from my list.




I think this is fine. I'm nearly OK paying 5mv for a restricted Zombify in these colors, but requiring both? It gives you the value for your mana and will work well enough with powerful cards, sure, but it's hard to imagine the deck that's stoked to play this other than a 4-5C goodstuff pile that benefits from this going very late in draft.




My favorite Star Trek character! I only have 29 modal cards in my list, so Elim Garak, Simple Tailor doesn't quite make sense for me, on top of being an otherwise do-nothing at 3mv, but I think the design works just fine for the character. What a menace indeed!




I'm a huge Lower Decks fan and even I can't stomach this art in my Cube, as much as I otherwise like this card. Even at a whole mana more, I'd probably prefer this to Does Machines if it looked like the other Lower Decks cards. They're about the same in terms of overall value for my Cube, I'd wager.





Data, New Life is the most efficient take on this kind of card we've seen. I was pretty tempted by Kid Loki earlier this year, and this just blows it out of the water in terms of its counter game, particularly if you fire off even a single Brainstorm or Portent.

With my increasing support for the Lyra, Tolarian Archangel/Proft's Eidetic Memory deck, this card could realistically work, especially if I do go the Kid Loki route. The artifact creature of it all is also helpful justification. Still, it's kind of boring, and just a big dude. Wake Thrasher and Scrounging Skyray have had a hard time making a splash in my Cube in such a competitive color, despite the impressive clock both end up having.

 

[MilesOfficial]

Sorry for the triple post, but it seems I posted just before the most interesting of the day's spoilers came out.



Scotty, Miracle Worker is a contender for my Cube. Lier, Disciple of the Drowned, Sphinx of Forgotten Lore, and Diviner of Mist have all had turns in my Cube, but Scotty benefits from his much lower casting cost. I think the "downside" of requiring a creature to return for the Beam Me Up part is manageable and often an upside, and I like the mechanic a lot. Speaking of...




There's Coffee in that Nebula is a card I've also already slotted into my Cube, though I'm less confident it will survive. I like card selection in every color, and this seems like the right way to do it for white, which is lacking compared to other colors for cards you're happy to have milled / discarded. It's actually one of the better Impulse variants white has ever gotten, even before the flashback variant. The name/art are a downside even for me, a lifelong Voyager/Janeway fan, but I am happy to have this effect all the same. Really like the novel plays that Beam Me Up can provide, as I did with web-slinging.






I may swap out Sharp-Eyed Rookie for Jake Sisko, War Correspondent for an easier-to-grok text box that will likely return the same number of clues over the course of the game. Both have wonky art, unfortunately. With a full suite of fetches, Landscapes, and things like Wrenn and Six and Nature's Lore, Jake should be pretty good at making trinkets, and the lifegain is a happy incidental value with a few of my recent additions.




Ravenous Cosmozoan is a neat, clean design that's worthy of many environments. I can't wait to play with it in retail draft.




Blastoneuron reminds me of an old favorite Crypt Champion, who would be in my Cube if not for the symmetrical reanimation. This jellyfish does much of what reasonable-two-color-card Carnage, Crimson Chaos does all by itself, and we've seen with cards like Gau, Feral Youth and Insidious Roots that the "leave your graveyard" ability is truly one you can build around. This should reasonably end up in many more Cubes than it actually will, I think.

 

[ravnic]

I run fewer zombies than halflings, robots, turtles, or detectives

That's rough, buddy

 

[StrionicAdventurer]

The ads are working, because now I want to watch Star Trek.

Also planning to reskin "There's Coffee in That Nebula" as "There's Coffee in That Hedron".

ALSO: reskinning "Beam Me Up" as "Crashback".

 

[KeithCubes]

Kira Nerys, Firebrand
Unfortunately, this is a narrow enough design that it's really only sensible in EDH.

I'm surprised you're so low on Kira! She's definitely my favorite card of the set spoiled thus far, and a very grateful addition to Boros which can be hard to seed support for novel, synergistic lines of play.

I love that she's a 4/3 Trample, which puts a lot of pressure on your opponent all on her own.

Then I view her like a mini Ardoz, Cobbler of War / Enduring Courage, buffing all your hasters by +1/+1 instead of +2/+0, which is sometimes worse but sometimes better if you want the attacking creature to actually survive.

Between the team wide haste enablers like Samut, Hazoret's Champion and even the new Hit It!, I think there's a lot of support for Naya hasty aggro, bolstered by the other Samut, Vizier of Naktamun, Deathleaper, Terror Weapon and the like.

Sneaking a creature in won't happen all that often, but I think you're missing some other synergies present in your cube already, like being able to create a 4/4 golem after blocks with Legion Extruder, or return Sephiroth, Fallen Hero / Ebondeath, Dracolich without the usual downside of doing nothing the turn they come back in.

I only have 29 modal cards in my list, so Elim Garak, Simple Tailor doesn't quite make sense for me

Ah but here I was hoping you'd be the one talking me into Elim!

You'll find a few more hits by seaching 'otag:modal', which will pull up things like Spree cards which count as dilemma's too. I'm at 41/720, so a little higher than your revised 32/720, which feels like just enough support for me.

With magic's design direction I can also see the number of good modal spells only increasing over time, and I'm sure I could bump my own number up already if there turns out to be enough other payoffs for Dilemmas to warrant the change.

Anyway despite not having an excess of enablers, is draining 2 for every creature entering via Lita, Little Orphan Amphibian or Gala Greeters not just kind of insane? The floor might be low, but I think the ceiling is actually quite high with the right few synergies.

Data, New Life is the most efficient take on this kind of card we've seen.

We did just get the same effect on The Astonishing Ant-Man, with the added benefit of being able to cash out his counters to go wide (attacking as unblockable 2/2's via Kira?!) or in response to a removal spell.

Overall though I do like Data's easier casting cost, simple textbox, and incidental artifact support. Likely I will just run both.

Scotty, Miracle Worker is a contender for my Cube.

I'm so torn on Scotty. I guess the crazy phrasing of this card does point to us not getting any 'Beam Me Up' cards at instant speed, though I would still love to be proven wrong on that. Limiting this to just your main, as opposed to your whole turn, does take away a lot of the more interesting reactive elements you could have done with this, but there might still be enough here.

I'm just worried that compared to Bilbo, Thief in the Night he feels a lot worse, unless you're abusing free creatures like Memnite or Ornithopter to have enough mana leftover to cast more than 1 spell every turn and ideally replay the guys you're returning to hand.

For those who don't need to engage with 'Beam me up' as a named mechanic, I also mocked up a less flavorful but less stroke inducing version of his rules text.

I may swap out Sharp-Eyed Rookie for

I have been eyeing Eumidian Terrabotanist for a while as a simple way to bridge lifegain and lands decks, but the added benefit of getting a clue as well in a fetch heavy environment pushes this into inclusion range for me.

I like how this is further glue into the simic / artifact token / landfall space now as well, but think he really really could have been a 2/3 at least.

---

Thanks for calling all these cards out!

 

[TrainmasterGT]

It is very clear that this set is about the worst thing possible to the Cube community by the lack of interest or excitement around it, but wow I love this set. Unlike Marvel Super Heroes, which the community seemed to still have lots to say about despite the complaints, Star Trek is actually a compelling collection of Magic cards, even with our limited spoilers, and I do believe the multiple WotC staff who have raved about its retail draft environment (as devastatingly sad as I am that we're moving on from Reality Fracture so soon).

I think a component of this is that a lot of the online Cube discourse is currently being dominated by voices that either dislike or are militantly against the idea of Universes Beyond, coupled with the fact that people who are neutral towards or like UB sets still usually have fairly major criticisms of one or more components of the set even if the actual game peices are well-designed (which is not always a guarentee, as Marvel showed us). The result is that conversations about the set usually devolve into a series of essays talking about aesthetics, a perceived decline of Magic, or just why people don't like crossovers/corporations/the actual decline of western civilization being caused by neoliberalism, consevatism, and overfinancialization of everything.

For me, it's fairly frustrating because I just want to talk about game design. I think the Universes Beyond primier sets have been above average as a whole (really Marvel and Spider-Man were the only two which fell super short in my opinion, and I think that has more to do with the fact that Spider Man was hastily redesigned near the end of the development process and MSH was essentially meant to act as a core-set, respectively), but it can be difficult to have a conversation about what worked and what didn't when a significant portion of the discussion is dominated by people who reject the premise of these sets outright. I think those voices deserve to be heard, but it's getting to the point where people feeling the need to post their complaints are drowing out conversations about the actual design. I have noticed that whenever people do earnestly try to engage with the cards from UB sets, there is almost always someone commenting a fairly reductive "this isn't Magic/I would never draft this if I saw it in a pack/UB slop" comment that serves no purpose other than to kill the discussion.

I don't think people should feel the need to play cards they aren't interested in. I certainly don't; you'll never see me putting Leonardo, Leader in Blue, Does Machines, or Wolverine, Claws Out in any of my main Cubes, the same way I'll never be shuffling up a Grave Titan or Huntmaster of the Fells if I can avoid it. Having said that, I think there should still space to talk about these sets without getting dogpiled by people who don't actually want to engage with the media they're being presented. I just feel like the Cube community is not in a place where people are mature enough to let that space exist.

 

[Mown]

Also planning to reskin "There's Coffee in That Nebula" as "There's Coffee in That Hedron".

that's not an improvement

ALSO: reskinning "Beam Me Up" as "Crashback".

I'll just make it flashback I think. TCiTN seems like a really cool card for durdly Sky Korfisher type decks. I think it's the only card so far that interests me, although looking through the spoilers is genuinely so demoralizing it's making it kind of hard to evaluate cards on a mechanical level.

edit: I might also play this one that was newly revealed, which makes for a fun blink target. I've already been considering Nimble Obstructionist.

 

[ravnic]

This set is weird. It has a lot of jarring looking cards, some of which are literally the worst we've had in permier sets, but then there are also quite a few that are honestly looking like magic cards. It's mostly the alien beasts and more fantastical appearing life forms, als well as some machines and landscapes.

 

[LadyMapi]

Having said that, I think there should still space to talk about these sets without getting dogpiled by people who don't actually want to engage with the media they're being presented.

The thing is that that space exists... just go talk to people about Standard, any eternal format, or EDH.

To be less flip, the reason why you might be seeing a disproportionate number of people trying to shut down conversation about UB cards probably has less to do with immaturity on the part of the people doing so and more to do with WotC's decision to stick UB in Standard. If you're an enfranchised Magic player and you don't like UB, your major choices are either a) become disenfranchised or b) build a cube.

In other words, you're trying to bring up a topic while speaking to a population that has a nontrivial number of people that are sick of that topic.

...

Also, I'm not sure I'd say that UB sets are generally above-average? Putting aside individual designs (because there's decent enough designs in most sets), I think the only UB set that stands out to me mechanically is specifically the Necron deck for 40k, and that's mostly because it happened to support an archetype that's within Black's color-pie but generally doesn't actually end up being a draft archetype.

Granted, they have a tendency to be Historic sets, and I actively dislike legendary-matters as a thing, so... I'm probably biased.

 

[LadyMapi]

That said, I like this guy as a "fair" reanimator target:

 

[Nemo]

I'm making a principal decision not to interfere with the development of this conversation.

 

[ravnic]

I think we need tags at cube cobra

- no UB
- only fantasy UB
- full UB

I know the lines are blurry, but it would help people avoid these cards at events and such, which I've seen people getting annoyed by a random spider man in their pack. One more way to avoid them might help reduce people's urge to shit on them, at least in our cube community.

 

[MilesOfficial]

I'm just worried that compared to Bilbo, Thief in the Night he feels a lot worse, unless you're abusing free creatures like Memnite or Ornithopter to have enough mana leftover to cast more than 1 spell every turn and ideally replay the guys you're returning to hand.

Yeah, Scotty is not as good as Bilbo in general, but helps with the blink-style decks enough that I think the difference will feel like a purposeful one and not a feelsbad. If you run a lot of Pacifism-style removal, he also has reasonable upside. I love replaying my cards in interesting ways, and found the Spider-Man web-slinging mechanic was hugely undervalued by the Cube community.

Then I view her like a mini Ardoz, Cobbler of War / Enduring Courage, buffing all your hasters by +1/+1 instead of +2/+0, which is sometimes worse but sometimes better if you want the attacking creature to actually survive.

Between the team wide haste enablers like Samut, Hazoret's Champion and even the new Hit It!, I think there's a lot of support for Naya hasty aggro, bolstered by the other Samut, Vizier of Naktamun, Deathleaper, Terror Weapon and the like.

You may be right. I love the card for Kira Nerys, Firebrand, the character, and the art, and I did really outline just enough cards to justify her, especially since I do now run both Samut, Hazoret's Champion and Enduring Courage. Maybe this is the push I need to get Ardoz back in as well, as I did really enjoy her design.

edit: I might also play this one that was newly revealed, which makes for a fun blink target. I've already been considering Nimble Obstructionist.

I find Stifle effects to be hugely underrated in most Cubes (other than Stifle, which is too often 1mv LD with fetch lands so I can't justify the namesake for the effect). I've really enjoyed Tale's End and Spider-Sense lately, and would be stoked to get another copy of this effect in.

Tishana's Tidebinder is a great card, but I've never liked the challenge with folks understanding what the card actually does on first read or the lack of tracking on her. Subcommander T'Pol feels like a nice mix of the Tidebender and Ty Lee, Chi Blocker, a card I like quite a bit but has just been on the cusp of making it in. T'Pol has good chances of joining the Cube, even in an incredibly competitive color.

That said, I like this guy as a "fair" reanimator target:

I've been seriously impressed with this category of card lately.



They're great ways to fill your graveyard with creatures, work around normal counter magic, triggers your Maurading Mako/Inti/etc. That said, I keep forgetting Ultimo, Civilization's End exists, and that card is better in many ways since it's more cashable and removes another creature from your opponent's board on ETB, which is stronger than making them discard two cards in most scenarios. That said, I like the Dark Deed effect significantly more than a Cruel Edict, so I am leaning more towards this guy.




Test of Priorities is a fine Curate-alike. I've been trying out Dreams of Laguna on and off for the last year and it's close, but the flexibility on Test of Priorities may give it a little more staying power. I just really like surveilling, and if sometimes you need to protect your dude by blinking it instead, that's a pretty good plan B.

Ah but here I was hoping you'd be the one talking me into Elim!

Even still, I only have about 32 cards that do it, and while using Lita/Gala Greeters each turn does sound enticing, I worry he's not viable enough of a one-card-build-around that he'd survive more than one draft with people. But I will keep an eye on him during retail draft and see if I can be convinced. I do like the card.



Jadzia Dax, Living Legacy is a tier 1.5 2mv mana dork that also gets big herself. I like her a lot, more than most of the other dorks, because she synergizes so well with so many strategies, and can be discarded off for profit if you draw her too late. Adding GG on her own as a 2-drop after just two turn cycles may seem fair, but it means she's helping you cast 6-drops on turn 4 all by herself. There's just a lot of upside here, and the play patterns are exactly what I'm looking foreign my Cube. Really neat card.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

The thing is that that space exists... just go talk to people about Standard, any eternal format, or EDH.

That's not really true though because if you go into any thread about a UB card, you'll find people commenting nothing other than they don't like UB sets or that they refuse to play with UB cards on principle.

To be less flip, the reason why you might be seeing a disproportionate number of people trying to shut down conversation about UB cards probably has less to do with immaturity on the part of the people doing so and more to do with WotC's decision to stick UB in Standard. If you're an enfranchised Magic player and you don't like UB, your major choices are either a) become disenfranchised or b) build a cube.

To me the issue is more that people who don't like UB cards for Cube choose to engage nonproductively with UB cards in the online Cube discourse. To your point, Cube designers don't need to play with UB cards if they don't want to (or any other kind of card, for that matter!), so I think it is kind of rude when people choose to voice displeasure about UB as a whole in single card discussion threads without actually contributing anything of value related to the card or archetype in question.

In other words, you're trying to bring up a topic while speaking to a population that has a nontrivial number of people that are sick of that topic.

To be blunt, I think if people are sick of the topic, they should talk about something else instead of something they know they don't like.

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

seems to me like ur the one derailing the conversation here innit

 

[LadyMapi]

I kinda doubt this is going to be a cycle, but I kinda like the idea of this being a cycle? I do wish the ability cost like Ramunap Ruins instead of like Blighted Step, but whatever.

This, on the other hand, is just kinda baffling to me. The impression I've gotten from the spoilers thus far is that making villain face a dilemma is a drawback in this limited, and my gut evaluation is that it's going to be a do-nothing cantrip most of the time. I'm not entirely sure what they were thinking here.



I love me a good Fleshbag Marauder variant, but they tend to be of limited utility if villain has a bunch of 1/1 tokens to throw away. Oh, how the turn tables!

I find Stifle effects to be hugely underrated in most Cubes (other than Stifle, which is too often 1mv LD with fetch lands so I can't justify the namesake for the effect). I've really enjoyed Tale's End and Spider-Sense lately, and would be stoked to get another copy of this effect in.

Tishana's Tidebinder is a great card, but I've never liked the challenge with folks understanding what the card actually does on first read or the lack of tracking on her. Subcommander T'Pol feels like a nice mix of the Tidebender and Ty Lee, Chi Blocker, a card I like quite a bit but has just been on the cusp of making it in. T'Pol has good chances of joining the Cube, even in an incredibly competitive color.

I've been staring at T'Pol for a bit, and I honestly still think I prefer Nimble Obstructionist in that slot? It's the flying that does it for me - if you give me a 3/1, I'm going to want to swing with it even if you only made it a 3/1 to better ambush villain for daring to attack me.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

seems to me like ur the one derailing the conversation here innit

I would hope not, since I was just responding to two comments other people left.

This, on the other hand, is just kinda baffling to me. The impression I've gotten from the spoilers thus far is that making villain face a dilemma is a drawback in this limited, and my gut evaluation is that it's going to be a do-nothing cantrip most of the time. I'm not entirely sure what they were thinking here.

So technically this isn’t making the opponent face a dilemma since they’re not picking a mode, only deciding whether or not you get to draw the card. For it to be a dilemma it has to have the “choose one/choose one or more” modal templating. That should result in this card just playing as a Disinformation Campaign for the dilemma deck, which is pretty cool!!

Also, that art is sick.

 

[StrionicAdventurer]

When a band sells out, it splits the fanbase. Unfortunately, Hasbro decided to permanently damage my favorite thing about this game: pretending to be a wizard. As an adult, our opportunities to play pretend are pretty limited, and I loved the feeling of walking into a bar or an LGS full of total strangers and engaging in a game where we were obliged to say things like "I cast Fireball" with a straight face.

That was all over the first time I had to watch a cool dinosaur get chump-blocked by some sweatervested idiot from Season 19 of Dr. Who. It's not a fantasy anymore. It's just ads for assorted millenial nostalgia properties.

I sympathize with the frustration you feel. It would be nice to just talk about the cards. But please remember to be annoyed with the right people: the corpo slobs who sold my game of pretend without even understanding it. Every single one of these Star Trek cards could have been themed around a knight's quest or a cursed tapestry instead, and then we would just be talking about the cards.

With all that in mind, I'm personally trying to be a lot less venomous about it. The cards have cool mechanics, and imagining fantasy reskins is the fun part for me.

I would never go into someone's cube blog and tell them to cut the 40k cards and Spiders-men. But in a spoiler thread, I'm going to grumble a little bit.