We've just finished five drafts in the Magic: The Gathering Star Trek early access window on MTG Arena, and we have some initial thoughts on how the set drafts via the Premier Draft and Early Access Sealed game modes.
In short, it's a poor experience compared to Reality Fracture, but that also feels like a very high bar to measure against, and if we were instead to look only at other Universes Beyond drafts we've done this year, it's probably just behind The Hobbit and TNMT, while being better than Marvel Super Heroes.
Draft One - Black-White-Blue Borg Artifact Creatures (Premier Draft)
3 Wins, 3 Losses
Well, we can't say this was entirely unexpected, but drafting Borg Artifact decks in Star Trek will be quite the challenge in pick-one and pick-two situations. Throughout our early-access Star Trek drafts, it became clear everyone was fighting over the Borg and artifact cards, with our only real free picks coming in the first two or three slots.
This despite picking up Locutus, the One Who Speaks in pack one, pick one, the rest of our choices were too scattered and sporadic, leading to a mismatched deck that really struggled to stay on theme. Still, we drafted enough Borg and artifact creature cards to assemble a competent deck; we just ran into three straight Borg mirror matches after an early run of wins against red-green Landfall and green-white doctor decks, and that ended the first draft on a sour note.
Draft Two - Black-Blue-Red Dilemma (Premier Draft)
4 Wins, 3 Losses
We felt infinitely more optimistic about this deck, given that it didn't feel like we were competing with anyone else in the draft class for the cards that worked best in this archetype, but after the first few picks, all dilemma cards appeared to dry up, or came in mana colors we simply didn't want to stretch to.
The downfall of our first deck came because we felt forced to go with three colors rather than two, and the same ultimately happened here, and we had to force a few red dilemma cards into the deck, then hope that we had done enough to still try and grab a few wins against the inevitable Borg wave coming my way.
Luckily, we had done enough to actually pick up a few wins with this deck, and while it's awfully reliant on you drawing your dilemma-reactive cards like The Caretaker, Melkotian Adjudicator, Obsidian Order Operative, and Elim Garak, Simple Tailor early, we packed in enough card draw to ensure that we always had a hand full of cards and were able to also play creatures or spells to stave off any early aggression.
That said, because of the nature of draft and having only a 40-card deck, by the time we had our big threats in hand, we often had little protection, so we had to hope our opponent had no answers to our creatures and spells.
Draft Three - White-Black Borg Artifacts (Sealed)
7 Wins, 2 Losses
Frustrated with how the Premier Drafts were playing out, we switched to sealed events, which, instead of drafting as a group, give you six Play Boosters to use to assemble your deck. We returned to the Borg archetype, having come up against it in more than half our previous matches across two drafts, and it became clear why it's proving so popular.
You can draft cards to build a really effective mana curve, so you can play from turn one and increase your power on the battlefield every turn. As much as we love the idea of strong archetypes standing out above the crowd, when one in particular is being so heavily played, it can suck the fun out of the draft modes in general as it all becomes too repetitive.
Draft Four - Red-White Aggro (Sealed)
6 Wins, 3 Losses
While not officially an archetype, the second round of sealed play gave us the cards we needed to build an aggressive red-white deck that used cheap but effective instant and sorcery spells and creatures that could snowball quickly. We still had some of the power 8+ cards, but not enough to say the deck was built around them.
The key, however, was finding a Flare of Fortitude in the packs, which let us protect all cards on the battlefield and our life total, and we didn't even have to pay the mana cost as long as we could sacrifice a white creature. This card was key to every victory, as it often caught opponents out when we were fully tapped and passing the turn.
Ultimately, the red-white build surprised us with how effective it can be, and while it's not as aggressive as some of the red-black Klingon decks we faced, it still managed to reach six wins under our control.
Draft Five - Red-Black Klingon Aggro (Premier)
7 Wins, 2 Losses
We returned to Premier Draft for the final run of the session, and it was a lot more fruitful than the previous two. Going into this draft knowing we wanted to avoid Borgs at all costs led to much more success in drafting an archetypewe were happy with.
Having played against a few Klingon decks before drafting one, it was a little easier to scope out the must-haves, and we also knew being ultra-aggressive was the best way forward. We wanted our opponents on the ropes or potentially beaten by turn four or five, and that's how most of the wins played out. The losses, as you might expect, came from games that went much longer; we simply ran out of steam, and our opponents eventually found answers to our bigger threats and controlled the game from then on.
Klingons were ultimately the archetype we had the most fun with, and that goes a long way toward making the draft experience feel much better overall.
Early Draft Archetype Rankings
We're basing this off the decks that we built and the decks that we played against. It's not a fully committed ranking, but just our snapshot impressions after 40 games played across these five drafts (and a few more unrecorded since).
- White-Black Borg Artifacts
- Red-Black Klingon Aggro
- Blue-White Spacecrafts & Artificers
- Red-White Power 8+
- Black-Blue Dilemma/Control
- Blue-Green Strange New Worlds
- Red-Green Landfall
- Blue-Red Scientists
- Black-Green Graveyard
- Green-White Doctors & Counters
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