Today marked the Magic: The Gathering Star Trek debut stream, and we were shown the mechanics of the quickly upcoming set, the various special card treatments, and a number of cards from the set.

Assimilate

The Borg Queen here is the face card of the Borg Commander deck, while the Borg Cube is in the main set

The first mechanic alphabetically is used by Picard and Janeway's nemesis - the Borg. With assimilate, resistance is futile as there are two ways it is used in the set, although we only saw one on a card today. The first way is that you exile a creature card in some way, and then with assimilate it enters the battlefield, and becomes a Borg artifact creature (losing other creature types), and a +1/+1 counter. If you assimilate a creature that's already on the board, such as an opponent's Captain Picard, you gain control of that creature, and then continue as before - it loses other creature types, becomes an artifact creature Borg, and gets a +1/+1 counter.

Beam Me Up

Capturing the idea of the transporter being used for a variety of things, Beam Me Up is a new ability that is in many ways a variant of flashback. Essentially, it is Flashback, but you also return a creature to your hand, making it typically a worse flashback, unless you are using it to save creatures or reset enters the battlefield abilities. The one card we've seen, Open Communications is a simple card, and is notably a sorcery to avoid things like responding to removal spells with it.

Face a Dilemma

As predicted the teased 'you lose the game' text was on the Kobayashi Maru Scenario - which causes you to face a dilemma each turn.

In Star Trek characters are often forced to make tough choices, even if they often find creative ways out of them. Face a Dilemma captures that as an ability word that triggers whenever a card asks you to make a choice between multiple options. We've seen a distinct rise in these modal cards over the years, and Magic: The Gathering Star Trek seems positively packed with them.

Federation

Having Archer have 'Federation' is a bit weird given the Federation didn't exist when he was captain.

One can't really talk about Star Trek without talking about the Federation, so it's appropriate that there's an ability word named after the Federation of Planets that captures the optimism and spirit of unity that Star Trek is known for. Federation is for scaling effects based on the number of creature types among non-borg creatures you control as the Borg are their foes as they force conformity to one hivemind, while the Federation of Planets celebrates the differences in the many peoples who make up its membership.

Strange New Worlds

As the Captain of the Enterprise on Strange New Worlds, it's fitting that Pike has that ability.

A hallmark of many Star Trek works is exploring new worlds, and new civilizations. Strange New Worlds is a counting ability word like Federation, but this one instead counts the number of differently named lands you control - essentially rewarding you for 'going' to many different places.

Battlefront (Commander set only)

Tied to Klingons, Battlefront is an ability word that rewards you for each opponent you attacked this turn. It encourages you to be aggressive and take on all foes. In a typical pod of Commander, there will be up to three foes you can attack, but one imagines that in larger games this ability could get quite crazy.

Seek Out (Commander set only)

This version of Worf is after he has left the Enterprise for Deep Space Nine and has command of the USS Defiant which is based on the space station.

Exploration is a theme of a lot of Star Trek media, so it makes sense that we get a second ability celebrating it here, as Seek Out joins Strange New Worlds in that flavor. While Strange New Worlds cares about lands, Seek Out is more about rewarding you for exploring your deck. Seek Out triggers whenever you draw your second card on a turn.

Magic: The Gathering Star Trek Special Card Treatments

Like all modern Magic: The Gathering sets there are a number of booster fun card treatments available in Magic: The Gathering Star Trek, including something that the game has never done.

Signed Star Trek Cards

It is a shame there's no Deep Space Nine representative in this set.

The headliners for the set are seven cards of famous Star Trek characters and feature signatures by the actors who played them. They are without rules text, and the cards are Captain James T. Kirk (Portrayed in different roles by William Shatner, Chris Pine, and Paul Wesley in Strange New Worlds), Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), Mr Spock, Science Officer (Leonard Nemoy, Zachary Quinto, and Ethan Peck in Star Trek Discovery and Strange New Worlds), Lieutenant Commander Data (Brent Spiner), Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulligrew), Seven of Nine, Unassimilated (Jeri Ryan), and Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge ( LeVar Burton).

It is going to be signed by the actor who's likeness is drawn on the card, so for Spock I believe we will be getting Zachary Quinto's signature. These cards are each limited to 250 cards in total, and can only be found in collector booster packs. They can appear in any language of booster pack but all of the copies are in English.

Star Trek 'LCARs' or Computer Interface Cards

One of the booster fun designs of the set is the 'LCARS' frame which depicts the card like its on a Star Trek computer. The set has 39 cards in LCARs frames, including all 10 shock lands (originally from Ravnica), 14 other rares, and 8 mythic rares. Special surge foil versions of these cards can be found in collector boosters, but otherwise they are available in normal booster packs.

Classic Enterprise Cards

Paying homage to 80s movie posters of Star Trek, these cards call to mind Star Trek: The Original Series, and depict cards featuring that crew. There are 24 of these cards in the set, with 13 of them rare and 6 mythic rares. There is, again, a surge foil variant exclusive to collector booster packs, but normal and 'traditional foil' versions are available in all boosters.

Scene Cards

There are 4 different scene panoramas in the Magic: The Gathering Star Trek's main set. These are made up of borderless scene cards, with each of them made up of a variable number of cards. While there weren't any previews of them in what we were sent here's a brief breakdown of what there is:

• Showdown of Sector 001 is a 4 card scene showing a confrontation between Data and Locutus of Borg (Picard assimilated by the Borg), as was shown in the two part episode Best of Both Worlds in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Mirror, Mirror is a 6 card scene that depicts the original mirror universe episode with goatee'd Spock as was seen in Star Trek: The Original Series episode Mirror Mirror.
• Unimatrix Zero is another 6 card scene and features Captain Janeway against the Borg with an appearance by Seven of Nine.
• Deep Space Find is a 9 card scene featuring much or all of the ensemble cast of the best Star Trek show, Deep Space Nine.

There are also two scene boxes releasing along with the set as well with 6 cards that are exclusive to them and collector boosters. The first of these is called Enterprise-Q and features Q making trouble on the bridge of the Enterprise, while the second is Divergent Timeline and features depictions of the original Enterprise crew from the Kelvin verse as seen in the films Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond.

Klingon Frame and Klingon Script Cards

This version of Worf is in the 'current' time frame of The Next Generation shows with Star Trek: Picard

There are 10 Klingon frame cards in the set, and they are a special type of frame for Klingon aligned characters or cards, such as Worf. In collector booster packs these cards can get even more special with being translated into Klingon (which is a fully fleshed out language these days) and are only in foil treatment.

Stardates Cards

General Picard is an alternate reality version of Picard seen in Star Trek Picard

Magic: The Gathering features a bonus list in it called Stardates cards which features versions of classic Magic: The Gathering cards reskinned into Star Trek cards using 'overlay' technology. These cards will appear in one out of 25 play boosters (the last time that terminology will be used before Nauctis changes them to being called just booster packs), and about 28% of collector booster packs (5% foil, 23.1% non-foil). There are 30 cards that make up the Stardates bonus sheet, and they have their own set symbol of the Enterprise as well. They are not legal in Standard unless they already were.