This weekend marks the unveiling of a brand new Magic the Gathering set that will send players on a voyage to strange new worlds. Despite it feeling like just yesterday when we all sat down at our FLGS to witness reality fracturing, it’s time for another MTG Prerelease event. This time we’re going back to Universes Beyond and taking to the stars with Star Trek.

Even if you aren’t a Trekkie, there’s plenty of cards to look forward to in this new set. If you are planning on playing at Prerelease on the weekend of November 6th or just swinging by to pick up a few packs, here’s what’s truly fascinating about each of the five colors.

Please note that this article focuses on mono-colored cards; there’s plenty of multicolored options to consider when drafting a new deck.

White

Fans of artifact creatures are going to love what this set has to offer. Counting a few multicolored cards, there’s 12 white non-spacecraft artifact creatures at your disposal, many of which have been assimilated by the Borg.

For a single white mana, you can give all of your artifact creatures vigilance with Command Subadjunct. Similarly, Primary Unimatrix Adjunct grants them the very powerful double strike ability.

And to build an army of untapping quick strikers, summon Antagonistic Incorporator, which creates 1/1 Borg artifact creatures whenever one among your mechanical army damages an opponent. You should also consider the enchantment Conquest Mission, which creates more 1/1 Borgs when nontoken artifacts enter the battlefield, eventually doubling that number after enough triggers.

One more unique card worth mentioning is Peace in Our Time. This enchantment leverages allowing your opponents to draw cards with the benefit of keeping you safe from their attacks for the turn and netting you a peace counter. Gather 12 peace counters, and you win the game. Create an Azorius (blue/white) deck with proliferate cards to sneak in a quick win, or simply run a Metastatic Evangel to trigger off of all those newly-created Borg. Mixing the Borg and Phyrexians seems like the perfect match.

Blue

If you are looking for more ways to accelerate card draw, you have some great options in this new set.

The most straightforward option here is Mr. Spock, Science Officer. This 2/4 legendary creature states, “If you would draw a card, draw two cards instead.” That’s it, and that’s all it needs. This creature turns looting cards like Cloistered Telepath or Seven of Nine, Unassimilated into card advantage, provides added value to cheap draw cards like Open Communications, and turns the already problematic Anthropological Mission into a constant stream of new spells.

This ramp in card draw works well with Data, New Life, which gains a +1/+1 counter for every card drawn. This frail 0/1 legendary creature can quickly take over the board if left unchecked. Or you can use Data as a quick way to crew one of the four blue spacecraft and win the game with massive bursts of flying damage.

Black

If you are looking to boost the white Borg strategy, consider adding black to your deck. You can boost those double striking artifact creatures with Assault Drone, which buffs their attack by one. Organic Avulsion Unit grants your Borg army menace for only two mana. You can also summon Hive Mind Coprocessor and get some needed card draw in black by sacrificing a single life for each of those menacing creatures dealing combat damage to a player.

Perhaps the best new card to add to your artifact creature deck is the enchantment Death is Irrelevant. Although pricey, it grants all of your artifact creatures indestructible. That’s not all, though. It also returns any creature from any graveyard and puts it onto your battlefield, turning it into an artifact creature and giving it a +1/+1 counter. Every turn you build up your Borg Collective to defeat your opponents with their own creatures.

There are a number of other interesting cards that may find use in decks you’ve already built.

Need an addition to a treasure deck? Try Grand Negus Zek, who creates treasure tokens when creatures die and gets stronger for each of your treasures.

How about a beefy creature for your discard deck? Armus, Skin of Evil deals heavy damage with menace and causes an opponent to discard two cards at each of your end steps.

Looking for another good board wipe for your Commander deck? The Destruction of Praxis gives all creatures -X/-X for each different named land you control. If X is at least six, you end up with two 2/1 creatures with haste to swing in and get free damage.

Red

I’m not going to bury the lead here: red has a counterspell. Get revenge on those blue players by casting Brazen Bluff, which targets any noncreature spell and forces the player to exile it. The player may choose not to, but then you get to play your own noncreature spell from your hand for free.

There’s plenty of noncreature spells to choose from, too. You could copy an instant or sorcery from your graveyard a number of times equal to your non-Borg creatures in play with Infinite Diversity. You could cast Exploratory Mission and play even more cards from your library every time you play a land. Or you could drop a huge artifact spacecraft like Deep Space 9 or really make the game chaotic by casting The Holodeck for free. This card lets you cast cards each turn from your graveyard or even from outside the game. Get those sideboards ready!

Red also has many creatures with classic keywords, such as haste and trample, to create an all-out offensive assault. Khan, Despot by Design is a beefy 5/4 with trample that deals one damage to each opponent and their creatures when they enter. Throw an army of hasted red shirts at your opponents with Starfleet Security to either deal quick damage or gain clue tokens for card draw. Bring the game to an end with Pah-Wraith, an expensive 4/4 with haste and first strike that when it attacks, it buffs your creatures’ power by the amount of different named lands you control.

Green

With only 44 unique cards, green offers the least new mono-colored options for your deck. Despite this, there’s still a lot you can do to build around this color.

You can build up your manabase in a number of ways. A staple card for any green Star Trek deck is Final Frontier, which allows you to search for a basic land or Planet card and put them into play tapped. Genesis Device also nets a basic land or Planet on entry, and it also allows for a one-time sacrifice of lands for new ones. The enchantment Stable Wormhole creates land tokens that add a mana of any color whenever you attack.

There are a number of creatures with Landfall that take advantage of all those new lands. Put together a few Xindi Surveyors or Syndicate Liquidators to boost the power of your creatures with +1/+1 counters. You can then give those creatures trample with Dominion Supervisor or double those counters with the legendary creature Dr. Joseph M’Benga.

You can accelerate both your land output and the power of your creatures with the amazing Captain Kathryn Janeway. Play this card and set a course toward victory.

In Conclusion

Whether you’ve seen every episode of The Next Generation or are just excited to participate in another Prerelease event, make it so and try out the newest Universes Beyond set. When you crack your own packs at Prerelease, let me know what cards you snagged in the comments!