Best MTG Star Trek Commanders: Precons and Top Picks

One of the cheapest commanders in the whole Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek gallery costs {1}{W}, and it will not fit in a white deck. Captain Benjamin Sisko has a five-color activated ability, so his color identity is all five colors. That one card is the best argument for reading the whole gallery before you pick a captain, and Wizards' preview calendar set the complete gallery for October 30.

This is the commander-picking companion to our Star Trek set guide, which covered mechanics, boosters and dates while the Commander lists were still hidden. The four lists went up on October 29, so now we can say which card to lead each deck with. The set does not release until November 13, so everything below is reasoned from the printed card text, not from table results.

Sources: Wizards' Commander decklists, the Comprehensive Rules and card data from Scryfall.

The gallery in numbers

I searched Scryfall for cards in the main set (TRK) and the Commander set (TRC) that can be your commander, and the search returned 198: 100 from TRK and 98 from TRC. Scryfall's legality field reads "not legal" for 197 of them (the exception is a reprint, Loran of the Third Path) until release, so treat that as a pre-release snapshot.

Within the one-color group, blue has the most (38) and black the fewest (16). White has 33, red 20 and green 19. Twenty-two of the 198 are Spacecraft rather than creatures. They qualify under CR 903.3, which allows a legendary "Spacecraft card with one or more power/toughness boxes" as a commander.

Which commander to pilot in each precon

Every Commander deck has two commander options. The face commander is the traditional-foil card in the box. Each list also holds a second legend, which the deck blurbs on Wizards' page present as another way to lead. All four decks are $74.99 and hold 32 new cards, and the full lists are on Wizards' decklist page.

Federation Fleet: start with Picard. Whenever another historic permanent with mana value 3 or greater enters under your control, he draws you a card, and his seek out ability puts charge counters on a Spacecraft when you draw your second card each turn. That is a draw engine feeding the deck's Spacecraft. Janeway is the aggressive option: when Officers deal combat damage to a player she draws you a card and makes an Officer token, and for {2} and a tapped creature she cannot be blocked. She needs bodies attacking, so she suits a lower-curve build. Picard is the safer first pilot.

Landing Party: Spock, with a deckbuilding note. Commander Spock's strange new worlds trigger reveals the top card and lets you cast it free if its mana value is no more than the number of differently named lands you control. The printed list leans on that: it runs just eight basics (4 Forest, 2 Plains, 2 Island) beside a long run of nonbasic lands. Keep that ratio when you upgrade, or Spock's free spells shrink. Captain Kirk, Boldly Going gives Spacecraft creatures +3/+3 and fetches a basic land or a card named Starship Enterprise when he enters or attacks, so he is the one to run if you want the ship to be the star.

Klingon Fury: Worf for card flow, Kor for sacrifice. Worf makes a 2/1 haste Klingon Warrior when he enters, then battlefront exiles cards equal to the opponents you attacked each turn and lets you play them until the end of your next turn. Kor lets you sacrifice another creature whenever you attack to draw a card and give Klingons and Warriors +2/+2 until end of turn. Kor is the better card if you already run sacrifice fodder, and Worf asks less of the deck.

We Are the Borg: Queen on top, Locutus when you want to start early. The Borg Queen costs seven, gives artifact creatures +2/+2, and whenever she enters or attacks makes an opponent exile cards from their library until a creature card, which you assimilate. (Wizards' deck blurb says "graveyards"; the card text says the top of the library, which is what counts.) Locutus costs four, has lifelink and gives your artifact creatures a combat damage trigger that makes 1/1 Borg tokens. Locutus is the commander you can actually cast on turn four, three turns before the Queen, which is why I would pilot him first.

The color identity traps

Under CR 903.4, color identity counts the mana symbols in the cost and the rules text. A card can go in a Commander deck only if all of its colors appear in your commander's identity (CR 903.5c). Three things follow here.

• Captain Benjamin Sisko is a five-color commander. His {2}{W}{U}{B}{R}{G} activated ability exiles the top five cards, and you may cast spells from among them with mana value up to your Officer count. At your end step he makes an Officer for each dilemma you faced that turn, so he wants a deck that faces dilemmas on your own turn. A five-color deck for a two-drop that wants Officers is a real commitment, not a cheap one.
• Q, Your Illustrious Host is the other five-color card in the count. His {W}{U}{B}{R}{G} mana cost spells it out, and his ability needs three untapped Faeries.
• Colorless Spacecraft lock you out of color. U.S.S. Enterprise-D, Starship Enterprise and the other colorless commanders (13 in the gallery) produce a colorless deck, because every color in a card's identity must be in the commander's. Check that before you buy one for the art.

Single-color commanders worth building around

Most of the gallery is mono-colored, and cheap legends with a plain engine are where this group shines.

• Mr. Spock, Science Officer (blue, {2}{U}{U}, 2/4). "If you would draw a card, draw two cards instead." It applies to you only, so it is a plain doubler. It plays well with anything that rewards drawing, and it is a legend that needs no setup beyond casting it.
• Scotty, Miracle Worker (blue, {1}{U}{U}, 2/3). Every card in your graveyard has beam me up, with a cost equal to its mana cost. Beam me up means you can cast an instant or sorcery from the graveyard if you also return another creature you control to hand, and the spell is then exiled. A deck full of creatures with enter-the-battlefield effects gets to reuse them, and your removal and card draw come back from the dead.
• Georgiou, Terran Emperor (black, {4}{B}{B}, 4/6). You do not lose the game for having 0 or less life. At your end step you lose 3 life and draw a card, and if you are then at 0 or less life you create ten 1/1 red Officers. From 40 life her end-step cost alone takes 14 of your end steps to reach 0 or less, so she is a steady draw engine that pays out the Officers only once your life is gone. Decide whether you want that army early, and build for it, or she is just a cost.
• Khan, Vengeful Heart (black, {2}{B}{B}, 5/3). When he enters, you may sacrifice another creature or an artifact to draw two cards, and you may cast him from exile. He suits a sacrifice deck, and if he gets exiled you can cast him again from there.
• Jadzia Dax, Living Legacy (green, {1}{G}, 0/1). At the start of your first main phase she gets a +1/+1 counter and you add {G} for each counter on her. She grows each turn she survives, so the mana grows too. Her Transfer Symbiont ability lets you discard her instead for two +1/+1 counters on a creature, so a late draw still does something.
• Captain Kathryn Janeway (green, {3}{G}, 2/3). She lets you play an additional land each turn and makes her and every other creature you control explore on entering. It is a landfall-adjacent value engine for a green deck, and she also helps the green decks that care about +1/+1 counters.
• Dr. Beverly Crusher (white, {2}{W}, 2/2). If a life gain causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time. She also puts a +1/+1 counter on herself whenever you gain life. She asks for a lifegain shell, and she is cheap enough to cast early.

Multicolor picks outside the precons

• Sarek, Federation Ambassador (green-white-blue, {1}{G}{W}{U}, 0/5). At the beginning of combat on your turn he draws you a card for every five creature types among non-Borg creatures you control. At fifteen types or more (three cards) he also puts two +1/+1 counters on each creature you control. A deck that is mostly one tribe gets little from him, while a pile of mixed creature types does.
• Hugh, First of Many (white-blue-black, {1}{W}{U}{B}, 3/4). Artifact spells you cast have replicate {2}{U}, which copies each for every time you paid that cost. A deck full of cheap artifacts gets a lot out of this. It shares colors and a Borg theme with the We Are the Borg precon.
• Kor, Cause of Vengeance and Locutus of Borg are covered above as the precon alternatives.

The Spacecraft commanders

Spacecraft are the odd ones. They sit in the command zone as non-creatures until you tap creatures to put charge counters on them with station. The two worth knowing:

• Starship Enterprise ({5}, colorless). Whenever a land you control enters, it gets four charge counters, so four land drops reach the 16+ striation without tapping anything. At that point it is a 4/6 flier, and when it deals combat damage to a player you draw that many cards. That is a real commander for a colorless land-ramp shell. Colorless identity is the cost, since you play no colored cards.
• U.S.S. Enterprise-D, Galaxy-Class ({3}, colorless). Whenever charge counters are put on it for the first time each turn, you exile the top card of your library and may play it this turn. It becomes a 4/5 flier with vigilance at 7 counters. It is cheap, and it rewards a deck that has creatures with power to tap, which in a colorless deck means colorless creatures.

Other Spacecraft that can lead a deck and are not colorless include U.S.S. Enterprise-A, Free Spirit (white), U.S.S. Enterprise-E, Sovereign (white), U.S.S. Reliant, From Hell's Heart (black), and U.S.S. Discovery, at Black Alert (green). Deep Space 9 cannot, because its only striation has no power/toughness box.

Every pick at a glance

Quick Action Checklist

• Buying a precon? Federation Fleet leads with Picard, Landing Party with Spock, Klingon Fury with Worf, and We Are the Borg with Locutus if you want an early commander. Each box also holds the second legend, so you can swap with no extra purchase.
• Check color identity before buying a single. Captain Benjamin Sisko is a five-color deck. Colorless Spacecraft lock out every colored card.
• Wait on prices. The set is not released until November 13, so prices are pre-release figures. Look at them again after launch week.
• Nothing here is tested. These are reads of printed text. Revisit the picks once pods have played the cards.