I'm Obsessed With This Perfect 'Star Trek' Troll For 'Magic: The Gathering'
At some point, you have to admire the troll.
The thing about modern Magic is that it's a game you can rarely ever talk about without some element of controversy. Whether it's game balance ideas, the secondary market, the sheer amount of product releases, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast being the Large Corporations they are, Universes Beyond versus Universes Within, there is always something that will have people up in arms.
So it's kind of fun when the game leans into it.
This week Wizard of the Coast streamed an hour-long preview of the new Star Trek crossover set that is coming to Magic later this year (this itself was already controversial, as Star Trek is coming after other sets that have yet to be previewed in this way, like the in-universe, Jace Beleren-themed, multiversal woopsie-doodle Reality Fracture). The controversy, of course, begins with a familiar one: the existence of "Universes Beyond" in the first place, the umbrella term used to describe Magic's increasingly common crossover series with other licensed properties.
The Star Trek set is coming at a time when ire over Universes Beyond has grown increasingly strong. Wizards of the Coast is releasing more Magic sets in 2026 than they ever have, and the majority of them are Universes Beyond sets. After Final Fantasy made a gabillion dollars for Magic last year and largely got away with the grumbling thanks to excellent theming, several Universes Beyond sets since have restoked the complaints beyond the sub-theme's prevalence.
Spider-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and, to a lesser extent, the barely-released Marvel Super Heroes set have all attracted complaints for weak flavor, limited card variety ("A Spider-Man/Ninja Turtle in every pack!" was a marketing push that did not go down well), and the mocking moniker of being part of the "New York Block," with all the bugbears having a contemporary real-world location being one of the most prominent planes in modern Magic's fantastical multiverse.
Star Trek, then, has a lot cut out for it. People will be opposed to it just from its existence regardless. But there's also the bugbear of it being a sci-fi franchise (leaning more heavily in that direction than it ever does dabble into sci-fantasy), and especially so as last year's in-universe set Edge of Eternties, as good as it was, largely felt like a set designed to ease people into the starship Enterprise becoming a Magic card.