Captain Picard's tea now has a mana cost

Star Trek preview week, decoded, plus sealed prices, three spikes and Magic's $616M quarter.

Oct 25, 2026 · by Tim Johnson

1. Star Trek preview week: the bridge crew reports for duty

Previews for Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek opened Oct 20. Wizards updates its official gallery every weekday morning, and the full gallery lands Oct 30. Five that stood out this week:

Image: Wizards of the Coast via Polygon

The Inner Light (rare Saga, {3}{G}{W}). The Next Generation episode where Picard lives an entire second life, now in three chapters: bring back a green or white creature, draw cards off combat damage, then gain life equal to your biggest creature's power and make a Treasure. A lifetime, compressed into three turns. Very on brand. (Polygon, Oct 22)

Image: Wizards of the Coast via Polygon

All Good Things . . . (rare Saga, {3}{G}{U}). The series finale's three timelines become three rounds of "draw two, exile one," and a fourth chapter worth 10 life if the exiled cards share a type. Wizards' gallery spells it with spaced periods, which feels correct for a show that ended three times at once. (Polygon, Oct 22)

Image: Wizards of the Coast via IGN

Tea, Earl Grey, Hot (common Food artifact, {2}). It draws a card when it arrives, and later you can sacrifice it to deal 2 damage to an opponent or gain 3 life. Television's most famous drink order finally has a mana cost. (IGN, Oct 21)

Image: Wizards of the Coast via TCGplayer

Scotty, Miracle Worker (mythic, {1}{U}{U}, 2/3). During your main phase, your graveyard's instants and sorceries can be beamed up for their normal mana cost. You recast one by returning another creature you control to your hand, and then the spell is exiled. The man always could get something back from nowhere. Now it's printed on the card. (TCGplayer exclusive preview, Oct 23)

Kira Nerys, Firebrand (rare, {1}{R}{W}, trample). While you control an attacking creature, your new creatures enter tapped and attacking, and every other creature you control that enters gets +1/+1 until end of turn. Wizards says the design started from a line by an MTG Arena team member, Paul Kulander. (Wizards, "Trekking Through Design," Oct 23. No official image we could download, so text only.)

Commander previews run Oct 26–29, one deck a day: We Are the Borg, Federation Fleet, Klingon Fury, Landing Party. Previews end Oct 29.

2. Star Trek Sealed & Chase-Card Watch

The set isn't out until Nov 13, and preorder prices have spent the week drifting down. TCGplayer market prices, checked Oct 24, 2026, 4:09 PM PT, next to TCGplayer's own Oct 17 reading:

Every product on that list fell week over week. Scene Boxes dropped hardest, about 37%, and the Bundle now sits below its own MSRP. The Collector's Edition Commander decks have only 4 to 17 sales apiece this week, so read those prices as rough.

The first sales are trickling in: Death Is Irrelevant sold once at about $70, Deep Space 9 at about $59, and Georgiou, Terran Emperor at about $50. One sale apiece isn't a price, it's a rumor. The LCARS-frame Blood Crypt is listed around $50. TCGplayer has pages for seven signed headliner cards, Kirk, Picard, Janeway and Spock among them, and none has a listing yet. Wizards says each signed card is limited to fewer than 250 copies.

3. Why It Spiked

TCGplayer market prices, Oct 17 → Oct 24:

• Dark Matter Manipulator (Reality Fracture): $1.69 → $7.39. The cause is on the record. Official MTGO results show four to seven copies of Rakdos graveyard decks (Nethergoyf, Detective's Phoenix) in the top 32 of each Modern Challenge from Oct 13 to Oct 23, each running four copies, with second-place finishes on Oct 13 and Oct 18.
• Divergent Transformations (Commander Masters): $1.57 → $5.90. It shows up in 2,505 of 12,913 logged Jace, Multiverse Architect decks, and Jace's −3 does the same reveal-until-a-creature trick. That's the best explanation we found, but we couldn't confirm what started the jump.
• Knacksaw Clique (Shadowmoor): $6.31 → $13.74. No clear reason found. A 2008 card with a short supply chart doing 2008-card things.

4. The new mechanics, in plain English

Here's the short version of Wizards' mechanics article.
Beam me up: cast certain instants and sorceries from your graveyard by returning one of your creatures to your hand and paying the listed cost.
Face a dilemma: the new term for choosing modes on a modal spell. You've been doing it for years without the name.
Federation: an ability word that rewards having a crew with lots of different creature types.
Strange new worlds: counts how many differently named lands you control.
Assimilate: puts an opponent's card onto the battlefield under your control as a Borg artifact creature with a +1/+1 counter. Resistance, per the article, is futile.
Battlefront and
seek out appear only in the Commander decks.

5. How the set was built

Gavin Verhey's design article covers the Starfleet-sized puzzle. There are ten two-color draft archetypes and no generic "Alien" creature type. Federation was added late in design. The set also includes Peace in Our Time, a white enchantment that offers each player a card at the start of combat. Anyone who takes the card can't attack that turn, and you get a peace counter. At 12 counters, you win. In other words, it wins by bribing everyone to stop fighting.

6. Magic's record quarter

Hasbro reported Q3 Magic revenue of $616.1 million on Oct 20, up 34% from $459.4 million a year ago and its first quarter above $600 million. Hasbro credited The Hobbit and Reality Fracture, and Magic's revenue for the first nine months is $1.63 billion. The company also raised its full-year outlook.

7. Arena Championship 13, mid-warp

AC13 runs this weekend with 176 players, a $250,000 prize pool, and Standard every round. Per Wizards' metagame breakdown, Mono-Green Landfall is the most-played deck at 29 players (16.5%), followed by Dimir Uldaros (25) and Orzhov Life Gain (21). The field had 32 archetypes, and 16 had a single pilot. The spiciest of those is Boros Dwarves, where Kíli the Resourceful equips Leyline Axe for free. Day 2 is today. First place pays $10,000, and the Top 16 earn Pro Tour invitations. We'll report the winner next week.

Day 1 update: Arne Huschenbeth (Mono-Green Landfall) took the top seed into today's Top 16, and Jund Sacrifice and Mono-Green Landfall tied for the most Day 2 players with four each.

8. Dates to know

• Oct 26–29: Commander deck previews
• Oct 30: Complete Star Trek card gallery posted (Wizards)
• Nov 6–12: Prerelease events
• Nov 10: Star Trek on MTG Arena
• Nov 13: Tabletop release, plus MagicCon: Atlanta (Nov 13–15)

See you next week. Bring tea.