Magic: The Gathering’s Star Trek set introduces a particularly fitting failure condition: one card can eventually make its controller lose the game outright. The design draws on the Kobayashi Maru, the famous no-win exercise from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Most Magic games end when a player reaches zero life, but alternative victory conditions have long supported unusual deck strategies. Players can empty an opponent’s library, deal poison counters or complete effects such as Simic Ascendancy and Doctor Doom, Unrivaled. The upcoming Star Trek Universes Beyond release adds an equally unconventional route to defeat.
The Kobayashi Maru becomes a Magic card
Nicholas Meyer’s 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan opens with Admiral James T. Kirk supervising a Starfleet exercise involving the USS Enterprise and the stricken Kobayashi Maru. Klingon attackers make the rescue impossible, leaving cadets to confront a situation where every apparent choice ends badly. The exercise is intended to test how they respond to a “no-win scenario”.
The mythic rare blue enchantment Kobayashi Maru Scenario turns that premise into a three-turn decision. At the beginning of each upkeep, its controller chooses one of three benefits:
- Draw two cards.
- Return an opposing creature with mana value 3 or less to its owner’s hand.
- Create two 1/1 red Officer creature tokens.
After three turns, the enchantment offers only one remaining option: abandon ship and lose the game. Its modal structure also reflects the set’s wider use of cards built around “Dilemmas”.
Can players rewrite the no-win scenario?
The enchantment’s escalating rewards resemble Demonic Pact, which provides powerful effects before forcing a decision on its fourth turn. A player could use the Kobayashi Maru’s advantages to finish the game quickly, remove the enchantment before the deadline or find another way around its final instruction.
That last approach echoes Kirk’s own solution. Later in The Wrath of Khan, he explains that he does not accept the idea of a no-win scenario and reveals that he reprogrammed the simulation as a cadet. The same event appears near the beginning of J. J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek film, where it angers Spock. In Magic, Donate could allow a player to give the enchantment to an opponent shortly before the loss condition arrives.
What other mechanics are in the Star Trek Magic set?
The set brings back the Spacecraft and Station mechanics first introduced in Edge of Eternities. They allow players to crew famous vessels, including the USS Enterprise-A and a Borg Cube.
The Borg use Assimilate to take creatures and turn them into Borg artifact creatures. Those creatures receive a +1/+1 counter and lose all their previous creature types. In most cases, the mechanic will target creatures in an opponent’s graveyard.
The United Federation of Planets is represented by Federation, a mechanic based on cooperation between different worlds. Captain Jonathan Archer, for example, can be tapped to Federation for one green mana, giving a creature +X/+X, where X equals the number of creature types among the non-Borg creatures you control.
Borg creatures do not count towards that total because they do not cooperate with the Federation. Changelings are also excluded from the calculation.
Exploration appears through Strange New Worlds. Its rewards depend on the number of differently named lands a player controls. Deep Space Scan lets its controller draw cards equal to that number, while the same value determines the power and toughness of Captain Pike, Fullness of Time. The mechanic could be particularly effective in Commander, especially alongside Field of the Dead.
Finally, Beam Me Up reflects the transporter technology used by Star Trek crews. The ability returns a creature to its owner’s hand so its controller can cast an instant or sorcery from the graveyard. Because returning the creature is part of the casting cost, an opponent cannot stop the ability by removing its target, although the resulting spell can still be countered normally.
Magic: The Gathering Star Trek releases on November 13. For more gaming news, visit the RETROCADE Arcade Blog, watch the latest arcade videos or browse arcade machines.
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