Magic Is Reprinting a $20 Commander Powerhouse as a Star Trek Fan Favorite

Magic: The Gathering’s Star Trek crossover set is only weeks away, and on Tuesday, Wizards of the Coast revealed five new Star Trek Secret Lair Drops featuring reprints inspired by everything from The Wrath of Khan to run-of-the-mill Klingon warriors. A sixth Drop will be revealed later.

The standout, at least for Commander players, is a new Thrasios, Triton Hero, which costs around $20 in its other printings. For the Lower Decks Drop, Thrasios has been reimagined as “Tendi, Exploring the Future,” with art of the enthusiastic Starfleet officer hugging her genetically engineered pet, The Dog. Tendi biologically engineered The Dog in Lower Decks season 1. Though it looks like a normal canine, The Dog can shapeshift, spit lightning, talk, and walk on walls. The flavor text reads, “I did it! I updated the dog!” which is a direct line from Lower Decks.

A green-blue (Simic) legendary merfolk wizard, Thrasios costs one green and one blue mana for a 1/3 creature. Thrasios has a four-cost ability that lets you scry 1, reveal the top card of your library, and then play that card if it’s a land or draw it if it’s not. That makes for a cheap ramp engine that can be fairly explosive in landfall decks, but because it’s not a tap ability, that means you can use the ability as many times as you want as long as you have mana available in multiples of four.

The most useful and flexible thing about Thrasios is the Partner ability that lets you have two Commanders — as long as they both have Partner. That opens up a huge swath of options that allow a deck with Thrasios as the co-Commander to dip into other colors. Tymna the Weaver is a popular option, for example, since that makes the deck the unique white-black-blue-green color scheme commonly referred to as “Witch.” But it really depends upon what sort of deck a player wants to build. Regardless, starting with Thrasios as a solid draw engine is a great baseline, and Partner gives you the flexibility to lean in a wide variety of directions.

In the Lower Decks Drop, Tendi is joined by Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford, and the U.S.S. Cerritos. Rutherford is a new version of Silas Renn, Seeker Adept, another card with Partner — which means that diehard Lower Decks fans can build an entire deck with these two friends in the Command Zone.

Here’s a closer look at what’s in each Drop, along with the estimated reprint value of each card pulled from sites like Scryfall based on the cheapest printing.

Secret Lair x Star Trek: Lower Decks

Image: Wizards of the Coast

Contents:

The Lower Decks Secret Lair is part of the Set Phasers to Superdrop, which goes on sale Nov. 9 at 12 p.m. ET while supplies last. Here’s what else Wizards has revealed so far.

Secret Lair x Star Trek: Beam Me Up

This Drop is a fun fit for blink decks, which focus on effects that temporarily exile creatures and return them to the battlefield, retriggering Enter the Battlefield (ETB) effects. All four cards have reversible art: One side shows a character in danger, and the other shows them safely back in the transporter bay.

Contents:

Secret Lair x Star Trek: tlhIngan maH

The Klingon-themed Drop features five red cards, including the extra-combat spell Relentless Assault and the mana-generating Seething Song (which is banned in both Historic and Modern). Each card is reversible, with Klingon text on one side and an English translation on the other. War’s Toll is a standout here as one of the meanest red cards ever printed. It’s an enchantment that taps all lands an opponent controls whenever they tap a land for mana, and it forces all of their creatures to attack if even a single creature attacks.

Contents:

Secret Lair x Star Trek: KHAAAAAAAAN

This six-card Drop draws from Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, including a new version of Wrath of the Skies called “Best Served Cold.” (Yes, the extra A’s are part of the official title.) This Drop leans heavily into the flavor of Khan while offering very little in terms of raw card value. That said, this batch of cards is full of neat combat tricks that can find a place in some more niche deck strategies.

Contents:

Secret Lair x Star Trek: New Worlds

Finally, New Worlds turns five basic lands into planets from across the Star Trek universe. The Drop includes two copies of each land, for a total of 10 cards. Fittingly, they’re some of the most gorgeous lands that have been printed in quite some time.

Contents:

• 2x Plains
• 2x Island
• 2x Swamp
• 2x Mountain
• 2x Forest

Wizards also says shoppers will receive one foil copy of Return of the Wildspeaker as “Transporter Boondoggle” for every $199 spent, while supplies last. Orders over $99 ship free.