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Here Are The Mechanics and Dozens Of New Cards From Magic: The Gathering’s Star Trek Set
After a year that featured alternate realities, ninja turtles, superheroes, and hobbits, the final Magic: The Gathering expansion of 2026 is going where no Universes Beyond set has gone before, as Star Trek is scheduled to launch in November.
Today, Wizards of the Coast revealed the mechanics players can expect in the set, along with dozens of new cards from both the main set and the preconstructed Commander decks. We also got a glimpse at some of the set's special treatments, including the seven cards that will come signed by the people depicted on the artwork.
Here's everything revealed during today's Magic: The Gathering Star Trek debut.
Seven new mechanics--two of them found only in the Commander cards--highlight the set, along with a eighth mechanic returning from 2024's Edge of Eternities.
First is Beam Me Up, which allows you to cast certain spells from your graveyard by returning a creature you control to its owner's hand and paying a separate cost. The example card provided is Open Communications, which normally costs a single blue mana, but you can cast it again from your graveyard by returning a creature to its owner's hand and paying two generic and one blue mana.
Next is Face A Dilemma, which adds an additional wrinkle to a mechanic Magic fans are very familiar with. Basically, any time you have to choose a mode in a spell, you are "facing a dilemma," and there are cards in Star Trek that will give extra benefits simply because you made a choice. Seven of Nine, for example, lets you draw a card any time you have to make a choice on a modal spell.
Star Trek also introduces new modal spells, like the enchantment Kobayashi Maru Scenario. Every turn after casting this card, you must choose one of the four effects listed on the card, and you can't choose the same one twice--which means if you can't remove the enchantment after four turns, it's game over.
The next mechanic is Federation, which cares about the number of creature types among creatures you control that aren't the Borg (which makes sense, because the Federation and the Borg are like oil and water).
With Captain Jonathan Archer, by paying one green mana and tapping Archer, you can give another creature +X/+X until end of turn. As Archer is a Human Officer, and he creates a Dog token, that's at minimum +3/+3 on the first activation.
Starfleet Academy, meanwhile, allows you to pay five generic mana, tap it, and choose a color to add one mana of that color for every creature type among creatures you control. If you have a wide board of varied tokens, that could be a massive mana source.
Strange New Worlds is the next new mechanic, which cares about the lands you control. The more lands with different names you have on the board, the more effective these cards will be.
Deep Space Scan, for example, will let you draw a card for each differently named land on your side of the table. If you're playing a three-color deck, and you have an Island, a Mountain, and a Forest on the board, that's three cards coming to your hand.
Captain Pike, Fullness of Time, meanwhile, has his power and toughness determined by the number of differently named lands you control. If you're the type of person who likes to play different non-basic lands in your Commander deck, casting Captain Pike late in the game could result in a massive creature on the spot.
So far, we've focused on the good guy mechanics, now here's one for the baddies. Assimilate allows you to take any creature from a certain zone and add it to your battlefield, though it will become a Borg artifact creature instead of its other types.
Borg Cube lets you exile any creature on the board when it enters, and then when it attacks for the first time, you can add that exiled creature to your board as a Borg. Then, for every subsequent attack, you can repeat the process.
Borg Cube also shows off the major returning mechanic, Edge of Eternities' Spacecraft and Station mechanic. Multiple iconic spaceships from Sta