Hey everyone! It’s been a long journey through Star Trek preview season, but we’ve finally reached the final frontier. Or, you know, the last preview article if you insist on being all normal about it.
Today, we’re breaking down all ten Star Trek Limited archetypes and putting together archetype skeletons for each one. Think of these as road maps to help you navigate your drafts, figure out what each color pair is trying to accomplish, and hopefully avoid boldly going straight into a 0-3.
If you’re unfamiliar with archetype skeletons, think of them as realistic examples of what a successful draft deck might look like under normal conditions. These aren’t magical Christmasland decks where you opened three bombs, got passed every premium uncommon, and the person to your right apparently decided they had no interest in your colors whatsoever. These are decks you can reasonably expect to put together while still giving yourself an excellent chance to succeed.
To keep everything consistent, every skeleton follows the same rules:
No mythic rares
A maximum of two rares
Five uncommons with no duplicates
No more than two copies of any common
Basically, we’re trying to build actual draft decks here, not the kind of absurd 7-0 pile you screenshot and then conveniently pretend is representative of every draft you’ve ever done.
For simplicity’s sake, each deck also uses a static mana base consisting of the appropriate common dual land and eight of each basic land. Some archetypes would obviously want to tweak those numbers in a real draft, but the goal here is to examine the structure of each deck rather than spend half the article arguing over whether the correct mana split is 9-7 or 8-8.
There are two exceptions. Simic needs a wider variety of lands to take advantage of Strange New Worlds, while Gruul would much rather have Unexplored Territory than a traditional dual land to squeeze out additional landfall triggers. Sometimes even the simplest rules need a little flexibility.
Before we get into it, here are all the links to my preview articles.
This archetype focuses on using creatures to station your Spacecraft and turn them into powerful threats.
You’re looking for creatures that generate value when they enter the battlefield, efficient ways to station your ships, and enough interaction to survive while you’re getting everything operational.
Resistance is futile, especially when your opponent is assembling an entire army of Borg.
This archetype revolves around artifact creatures and the various effects that reward you for having them on the battlefield. You’ll want to establish an early board presence, strengthen your Collective with artifact synergies, and potentially sacrifice some of your less useful pieces for additional value.
Boros has a pretty straightforward mission: assemble a crew with at least eight total power and start smashing the face. Many of the cards in this archetype reward you for reaching that threshold which makes cheap creatures, token generators, and ways to increase your team’s power particularly valuable.
In other words, Boros is gonna Boros. Some things apparently never change, even in the 24th century.
Apparently, the best medicine in the future is just making everybody bigger. I’m starting to suspect Dr. McCoy has been handing out HGH on the Enterprise.
Selesnya focuses on spreading +1/+1 counters across your creatures and taking advantage of cards that reward you for having them. Then it does what every respectable green creature deck does: turn dudes sideways and make blocking your opponent’s problem.
Even though I didn’t include them here, there are also some interesting interactions with Spacecraft and their charge counters, giving the archetype a little more flexibility than your typical green-white counters deck.
Dimir is all about making difficult decisions, preferably ones that leave your opponent miserable regardless of what you choose.
This control-oriented archetype takes advantage of modal spells and abilities to trigger cards that reward you for facing dilemmas. The flexibility of these spells allows you to adapt to different situations while generating additional value from your payoffs.
One of the biggest things I harped on during preview season is that you shouldn’t play modal spells just because they’re modal and you happen to have some payoffs. The card needs to be worth playing on its own, with the modal synergy being an added bonus. Playing a bad card because it triggers your other cards doesn’t magically make it a good card. It just means you’ve found a more complicated way to put a bad card in your deck.
Izzet a spells deck again? Do I really need to answer that? Of course it is. At this point, I think Wizards would have an existential crisis if they made an Izzet archetype that didn’t care about casting spells.
Izzet is doing what Izzet usually does: rewarding you for casting spells instead of just playing creatures and turning them sideways. The scientists in this archetype provide bonuses whenever you cast noncreature spells, but there’s an important distinction here. Unlike traditional spellslinger decks, your Spacecraft and other noncreature artifacts also trigger these abilities, opening up some interesting deckbuilding possibilities.
Simic is boldly going where no mana base has gone before. This archetype rewards you for controlling lands with different names, meaning the various nonbasic lands in the set become significantly more valuable. You’ll want mana acceleration, ways to find additional lands, and payoffs that scale with your collection of strange new worlds.
Don’t be surprised if you’re drafting off-color lands without any intention of actually casting spells of those colors. Just make sure they at least touch on one of your colors.
Today is a good day to die! Apparently, that’s also true for your creatures. Rakdos combines aggressive Klingon Warriors with sacrifice effects and death triggers to squeeze every last bit of value out of your creatures. The goal is to keep applying pressure while making sure that even your fallen warriors contribute something to the cause.
Who needs to save money in a bank when you can just dig through your graveyard for value instead?
Golgari wants to fill the graveyard with useful creatures and artifacts before bringing them back or otherwise putting them to work. Cards that reward you for moving things out of your graveyard are particularly important, making self-mill, recursion, and even some Beam Me Up effects valuable pieces of the puzzle.
Sometimes the simplest plans are the best ones. And you won’t be facing many dilemmas here because Gruul has never been particularly interested in making complicated decisions. Why bother thinking when you can just punch things in the face?
Play lands, trigger landfall abilities, and beat your opponent into submission with increasingly large threats. This archetype wants ways to put additional lands onto the battlefield, creatures that reward you for doing so, and enough pressure to make sure your opponent doesn’t have time to establish their own game plan.
It’s not exactly rocket science, which is probably for the best since I wouldn’t trust most Gruul creatures anywhere near the controls of a starship.
And with that, we’ve officially reached the end of our journey through Star Trek preview season. We’ve covered the mechanics, reviewed every card, and now broken down all ten Limited archetypes.
As always, remember that these archetype skeletons are starting points, not rigid decklists. Every draft is different, and sometimes the best deck isn’t the one that perfectly follows the intended strategy. Stay open, pay attention to what’s being passed, and don’t force an archetype just because you opened a shiny rare. The goal is to build the best deck available, not to fulfill Starfleet’s latest mission briefing. (For the less nerdy amongst you, that basically means drafting is not a checklist that you follow blindly)
Of course, all of this is still theory until we actually get our hands on the cards. I’ll be back with the Limited Weekend Update once we’ve had a chance to see how the format actually plays out. We’ll find out which archetypes live up to the hype, which ones surprise us, and which ones deserve to be launched out of an airlock. (Wait, did I just cross over into Alien territory? Man, the pop culture police are going to have a field day with this one. Although now I’m wondering whether the Vulcan nerve pinch would even work on a Xenomorph. Somehow, I don’t think Spock would appreciate being the one to test that theory.)
Thanks for following along throughout preview season! Back to my normal writing schedule. Until then, stay classy people.
I’m always open to feedback, let me know what you loved, what you hated, or just send dog pics. You can contact me at:
Josh is a member of the elite limited team The Draft Lab as well as the host of The Draft Lab Podcast. He was qualifying for Pro Tours, Nationals, and Worlds literally before some of you were born. After a Magic hiatus to play poker and go to medical school, he has been dominating Arena with over an 80% win percentage in Bo3 as well as making #1 rank in Mythic.
