Each new Universes Beyond set enters the world of Magic with its own fans, and those fans, in turn, bring their enthusiasm, favorite moments, characters, movies, episodes, and more to the table. From the moment they first scroll through card previews to when they pilot their new favorite Commander or sit down for another in a long line of drafts, their experience is informed by the cards in front of them and their personal connection and history to what those cards represent.
Live Long and Prosper
Spock, Always Your Friend
This personal connection to and passion for each Universes Beyond release means that the teams who bring those sets to life in Magic face a unique set of challenges. Limited designers, in particular, must navigate creating an environment that is welcoming to new players, expressive of what is being adapted, and an enjoyable, repeatable experience for enthusiastic Limited players who might sit down to draft the set dozens of times. Magic: The Gathering® | Star Trek™ is no different.
"Like most of our Universes Beyond sets, we're trying to make parts of it approachable or linear for people who are familiar with the franchise but not as familiar with playing Limited Magic," said Set Designer Michael Hinderaker.
Hinderaker is a senior member of the Play Design team who, in a 2023 article about The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™, Mark Rosewater called the primary Limited lead for Universes Beyond sets.
Locutus, the One Who Speaks
"You can see this in Magic: The Gathering® | Avatar: The Last Airbender™ with Allies being some of the color pairs," Hinderaker said. "Here, I think you see it with the Borg in black-white and Klingons in black-red. Both of those, the Borg especially, have some really heavy typal elements. That's one of the things we think about. Beyond that, we're just trying to make sure that it has enough depth for people who want to draft the set 20, 30, 40, 50 times, and ensure that there's enough for them to really dig in and find some weird stuff going on."
Striking that balance means that it's best not to be too prescriptive with the design process right from the start.
"I don't think being too static or locked in ever really works. It's nice to have some ideas about how you imagine things working at the beginning, but you always have to pivot and be flexible and go with what's working as you go on. We were trying to find the right amount to lean into beam me up, trying to make sure there's enough weirdness and content, but also that we haven't made the set too baffling and unapproachable, trying to find that middle ground."
Cold-Blooded Crew
Star Trek: The Original Series first aired 60 years ago, in the fall of 1966. Since then, numerous series, captains, crews, starships, and planets have become favorites of viewers. Star Trek's expansiveness, paired with fans' deep love for the franchise, created a lot of opportunities, and potentially daunting expectations.
"There's a lot of exploration and open-endedness in Star Trek," Hinderaker said. "Even the non-human characters are often a little more human in their representations compared to something like a video game. I think there's more character complexity, and I think you can see some of that in the face a dilemma archetype, where we're trying to present some of the thought process of the characters in the show through gameplay. There are a lot of different notes we're trying to hit in different ways and pull together into a cohesive set as we go along."
A year before Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek's release, Wizards released Edge of Eternities, their first set to explore a Magic setting in the cosmic expanse of space. While Edge of Eternities wasn't released yet when Hinderaker and the Play Design team were doing the bulk of their work, working on it gave them the opportunity to refine elements like Spacecraft.
Survey Mechan
"In terms of their similarities, Edge of Eternities also has a small number of cards themed around differently named lands and some of the same exploratory vibes. Seeing what cards we felt successfully worked there and trying to learn from those was part of it. One of the big differences here is that there are a lot more fleshed-out backstories to go on. We knew from very early on that we wanted Borg to be artifact Slivers, so we were working within that framework for a long time. Similarly, we wanted the Klingons to care about death triggers, so we had these basic frameworks and tried to expand from there."
Those strong typal elements, tying creatures like Borg and Klingons to a core design element, provided an opportunity to create a more welcoming environment for new players.
Assault Drone
Hive Mind Coprocessor
"I really like the Borg stuff. I really like when we can get creative elements to line up neatly with gameplay elements, and having some linear strategies available to players is a really valuable on-ramp. If I take all the Borg cards without a lot of nuance, that's not going to be the strongest way to draft, but this is something that is totally reasonable to do if you don't know a lot about Magic. We do this type of stuff in a lot of sets, but I like it here when we can marry it with Universes Beyond in a satisfying way, and I think the Sliver expression is kind of fun and fresh."
While some elements of Edge of Eternities's setting and Star Trek complement each other, Hinderaker saw Star Trek's vision of space and exploration as different from the one presented in Edge of Eternities. The theme of exploration came up again and again, informing the Play Design process and helping guide them in a franchise where combat is often a last resort.
"I think that Star Trek is ultimately about the characters' humanity and experiences," said Hinderaker. "Not all the characters are humans, but their inner character, how they experience things, and the lessons that they learn feel 'human.' So, while there's a lot of 'Oh, it's a cool big monster' and 'This is something you saw in an episode,' there's also a lot of 'This is an experience that's familiar to someone who has viewed a lot of Star Trek.' The moral dilemmas of the set and things like that give it a different tint, even if it shares a lot of its DNA with Edge of Eternities."
Astute Terraformer
The Traveler
"It's interesting trying to transpose a franchise that isn't fundamentally about fighting into Magic, and we did that in a number of ways. There's a higher number of quest-like cards in the set, and the strange new worlds mechanic does a good job of making you feel like part of the game is almost playing against yourself. At one point, we had more cards that won the game in alternate ways, but they got scrapped." Hinderaker was struck by "the non-combat nature of [Star Trek], and I think about how poignant some of the lessons are and how relevant they are today. A lot of Star Trek is the beginning of a trope space that I didn't know originated from Star Trek before I learned more about it."
While some challenges originated in the core themes and ethos of Star Trek, others were more practical. In the end, though, the confluence of staying true to Star Trek's storytelling and great Magic gameplay prevailed at each juncture.
Exploratory Mission
"There were a lot of challenges that I wouldn't say were super related to the final balance of the set, but trying to decide on what should get a creature type and what shouldn't, for example, was really interesting, as was trying to figure out how to capture the feeling of exploration and express that in a number of different ways. I like strange new worlds as a way of capturing some of that. We also have a cycle of uncommon Mission cards that are trying to do some of the same kind of storytelling.
"We really tried to give people some mechanics that they've never quite seen before. Take strange new worlds. We've really blown that out compared to when we've done similar things in other sets on just a card or two. Beam me up created a large number of constraints in the set, but I'm hopeful that it will create some really novel gameplay and let you do things you didn't know you were going to be able to do."
Amok Time
While individual episodes of Star Trek tell stories (and we can see some of those stories on the set's Sagas), a Magic set that encompasses all of Star Trek's rich decades of worldbuilding is about more than one moment, one character, or one story. It's about seeking out new life and new civilizations. It's about boldly going where no one has gone before. And knowing that the Play Design team kept these elements in mind all the way through Limited development makes this particular Star Trek fan really happy.
"I'm glad that for you, it's hitting those notes," he replied when I told him that, as a big Star Trek fan, the set has surpassed even my highest expectations. "I hope that for the people who just want to play as much Limited as they can, it hits for them as well. Trying to bring good gameplay to Universes Beyond is something I really care about."