Best Star Trek Precon: All 4 Commander Decks Compared

The short answer

The four Star Trek Commander precons are close in power, so the best one is the one whose plan you want to play. TurnZero HQ rates Landing Party 4 out of 5 for power and the other three 3. They differ more in how hard they are to play and in what you do each turn.

• Your first Commander deck: Klingon Fury. Attack as many opponents as you can and Worf, Defiant Commander gives you a card to play for each one.
• You want to attack: Klingon Fury, with eight battlefront cards that get better with every opponent you attack, plus two extra-combat spells.
• You want card draw and value engines: Federation Fleet. Twelve cards trigger on your second draw each turn, and Jean-Luc Picard, Luminary draws you that second card.
• You want to steal your opponents' stuff: We Are the Borg. Five cards assimilate an opponent's creature, and every one you take gets the deck's artifact creature bonuses.
• You want to ramp, or to upgrade the deck later: Landing Party. Every new land you add with a name the deck doesn't have makes Commander Spock better.

Ratings are TurnZero HQ's own read of the decklists, not an official one, and we'll revisit them once the decks are out and played. Card and deck buy links go through our TCGplayer affiliate link; see our affiliate disclosure.

The four Star Trek precons, side by side

Power and difficulty are each scored from 1 to 5 in the TurnZero HQ precon directory. Every deck comes with 100 cards, a foil borderless face commander and ten double-sided tokens, and Wizards counts 32 new-to-Magic cards in each. The decks below run from easiest to hardest to play.

Klingon Fury: attack everyone

Mardu · Power 3/5 · Difficulty 2/5 · Best for a first deck, or attacking

Commander Spotlight

Worf, Defiant Commander ↗

Five mana. When Worf enters, you create a 2/1 red Klingon Warrior with haste. Battlefront: whenever you attack, exile the top X cards of your library, where X is the number of opponents you attacked this turn, and you may play them until the end of your next turn.

Klingon Fury is built around battlefront, an ability word that counts the opponents you attacked this turn. Eight cards carry it, Worf included. At a four-player table, attacking all three opponents makes each of them count three, so Worf exiles three cards for you to play, Rite of Ascension makes three attacking 2/1 Warriors, and Own the Day costs three less and gives you another combat.

23 of the deck's 24 creatures are Klingons or Warriors, so the type payoffs reach nearly the whole board. Shared Animosity pumps each attacker for every other attacker that shares a type with it, Glory to the Empire! gives your creatures melee, and World at War adds a second combat that comes back the next turn with rebound.

The cost of attacking everyone is that everyone has a reason to hit you back. The deck answers that with goad: Kang, Suspicious Captain, Galvanizing Tenor and Disrupt Decorum force other players' creatures to attack someone other than you. The second commander in the box, Kor, Cause of Vengeance, lets you sacrifice a creature when you attack to draw a card and give your Klingons and Warriors +2/+2.

Rite of Ascension ↗

Battlefront: a tapped and attacking 2/1 Warrior with haste per opponent you attacked.

Kurn, Son of Mogh ↗

Three-mana deathtouch. When he attacks, draw a card and lose 1 life per opponent attacked.

The Sword of Kahless ↗

+2/+2, and each attack looks at five cards for a Klingon or Warrior to put onto the battlefield.

The reprints worth knowing are Vindicate, Sword of Light and Shadow, Path to Exile, Ruinous Ultimatum and World at War. See the full Klingon Fury decklist →

Picking this precon up?

Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.

Buy Klingon Fury on TCGplayer →

Landing Party: lands and free spells

Bant · Power 4/5 · Difficulty 3/5 · Best for ramp, and upgrading

Commander Spotlight

Commander Spock ↗

Five mana. Strange new worlds: whenever Spock enters or attacks, reveal the top card of your library. You may cast it free if its mana value is no more than the number of differently named lands you control, a land can go onto the battlefield tapped, and if the card is still on top, you draw it.

Landing Party's mana is built for Spock. The deck runs 40 lands under 35 different names: 32 nonbasic lands, each a different card, and eight basics. With six differently named lands, Spock can cast every nonland card in the deck for free except Lt. Arex, Ever-Adapting and Planet Killer, and Cultivate, Farseek, Nature's Lore, Rampant Growth, Growth Spiral, Exploration and Augur of Autumn get the lands out early.

Every land drop then pays you again. M'Ress, Crew Coordinator makes two 1/1 Officers, Chief Kyle, Transporter Tech blinks one of your creatures, and the reprints Lotus Cobra and Tireless Tracker add mana and Clues. Ancient Greenwarden makes each of those landfall triggers happen twice.

Each turn, make your land drop with a name you don't have yet, and attack with Spock when he can survive it, since each attack reveals another card. The second commander, Captain Kirk, Boldly Going, is a different plan. He gives your Spacecraft creatures +3/+3 and fetches Starship Enterprise, which takes four charge counters on every landfall and draws a card for each point of combat damage it deals to a player.

Starship Enterprise ↗

Four charge counters per land. At 16 it flies, and its combat damage to a player draws that many cards.

Lt. Arex, Ever-Adapting ↗

Draws three on entry and puts up to three lands into play. Its size is your differently named lands.

Chief Kyle, Transporter Tech ↗

Landfall: exile another creature you control and bring it back at the next end step.

Among the reprints are Sun Titan, Austere Command, Mutavault and Exploration. See the full Landing Party decklist →

Picking this precon up?

Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.

Buy Landing Party on TCGplayer →

We Are the Borg: assimilate the table

Esper · Power 3/5 · Difficulty 3/5 · Best for stealing creatures

Commander Spotlight

The Borg Queen ↗

Seven mana. Artifact creatures you control get +2/+2. Whenever she enters or attacks, an opponent exiles cards from the top of their library until they exile a creature card, and you assimilate it: it enters under your control with a +1/+1 counter as a Borg artifact creature.

Every creature card in We Are the Borg is an artifact creature, 20 of them, so The Borg Queen's +2/+2 reaches the whole board, and so do Tempered Steel and Locutus of Borg's token trigger. Assimilate is how the deck grows: the Queen, Gift of Perfection, Assimilation Assessor, Assimilate the Wounded and The Best of Both Worlds each put an opponent's creature onto your battlefield as a Borg artifact creature, so the creature you take gets every bonus your own creatures have.

Its board wipes favor you. Battle of Wolf 359 gives only nonartifact creatures -X/-X, where X is your artifact creature count, so your Borg survive it. Join the Collective destroys every creature, then gives you a 1/1 Borg for each nonartifact creature it destroyed.

The catch is the commander's cost. The Borg Queen is seven mana, the most of the four face commanders, and what she steals is whatever creature card sits nearest the top of the opponent's library you pick. Locutus of Borg and Hugh, First of Many cost four and carry the early turns. We rate it 3 out of 5 for difficulty for that reason.

Locutus of Borg ↗

Lifelink, and each of your artifact creatures makes a 1/1 Borg when it connects with a player.

One, Borg Evolved ↗

Seven mana. Your artifact creatures gain flying, double strike, vigilance, menace, lifelink and ward 2.

Battle of Wolf 359 ↗

Nonartifact creatures get -X/-X, X being your artifact creatures. Your Borg survive it.

The reprints include Toxic Deluge, Anguished Unmaking, The Immortal Sun and Door of Destinies. See the full We Are the Borg decklist →

Picking this precon up?

Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.

Buy We Are the Borg on TCGplayer →

Federation Fleet: draw two, power up the ships

Jeskai · Power 3/5 · Difficulty 4/5 · Best for card draw and value

Commander Spotlight

Jean-Luc Picard, Luminary ↗

Four mana. Whenever another historic permanent you control with mana value 3 or greater enters, draw a card. Seek out: whenever you draw your second card each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on up to one other creature and two charge counters on up to one Spacecraft.

Every creature in Federation Fleet is legendary, 26 of them, so each one with mana value 3 or more draws a card off Picard. On your own turn that card is usually your second draw, which turns on seek out, the deck's ability word. Twelve cards carry it: Data, Exploring Humanity can cast a spell for free, and Tom Paris, Risk-Taker gives your team flying, double strike, vigilance and haste.

The deck also has five legendary starships, and Picard's seek out puts two charge counters on one each time. U.S.S. Prometheus, Prototype at 8 counters deals its combat damage to every other opponent as well. Reprints like Howling Mine, Fevered Visions and Alhammarret's Archive (printed here as Orb of the Emissary) add draws, though the first two give your opponents cards too.

We rate it 4 out of 5 for difficulty, the hardest of the four, because you count draws every turn, track charge counters on several ships, and decide when Howling Mine's extra cards for everyone are worth it. The second commander, Captain Janeway, Endgame, draws a card and makes an Officer whenever your Officers connect, though the deck has more legends than Officers.

Data, Exploring Humanity ↗

Seek out: discover 4, so your second draw each turn can cast a spell of mana value 4 or less for free.

Tom Paris, Risk-Taker ↗

Seek out: your creatures gain flying, double strike, vigilance and haste.

U.S.S. Prometheus, Prototype ↗

A Spacecraft. At 8 counters, its combat damage to one opponent hits each other opponent too.

The reprints include Cryptic Command, Fractured Identity, Supreme Verdict and Swords to Plowshares. See the full Federation Fleet decklist →

Picking this precon up?

Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.

Buy Federation Fleet on TCGplayer →

Buying more than one

Apart from mana rocks and lands, the four decks share only a handful of cards (the FAQ below lists the new ones), so any two give you two different games. If you're buying a pair for a friend and yourself, Klingon Fury against Landing Party is the matchup to learn on: Klingon Fury is the easiest of the four to play, and one plays fast while the other builds up. If your group already plays Commander, the full set of four makes a game night where no deck is more than a point apart on power. The Star Trek set guide covers the main set's mechanics, which the decks share.

Frequently Asked Questions