Magic: The Gathering is officially introducing a powerful mana rock card in its newest set, and many fans will want to pick one up when they can. Wizards of the Coast’s trading card game is about to launch its seventh Standard-legal set of the year with Star Trek, a Universes Beyond set dedicated to the extremely popular sci-fi series. Mana rocks (artifacts that tap for mana) and mana dorks (creatures that produce mana) are key parts of Magic: The Gathering, and they are often used to cast some spells earlier in the game.
While cards that tap for mana are very common in all formats, some of these cards and effects can go on to define many decks and the entire meta itself. They can help some strategies ramp up faster, they can be used for infinite combos, and they can enable other varied combos on their own, so it’s no surprise when cards like MTG‘s Spider-Man Soul Stone become popular even before release. Such is the case for a new Star Trek card that is not yet officially available, but is likely to become quite prominent in multiple decks.
Magic: The Gathering’s Star Trek Set Introduces Powerful Mana Rock
Among the new Magic: The Gathering rare cards from Star Trek is Queen’s Diamond, a 4-mana legendary artifact that makes players choose one color when tapped, and then provides one mana of that color for each counter on the card. Players put counters on Queen’s Diamond via the station ability from Edge of Eternities, and with eight or more counters, it becomes a 5/5 creature with flying, vigilance, and haste. While it’s relatively beefy as a creature, it’s most likely going to be played with up to seven counters on it at a time because artifacts are harder to remove than creatures, and a mana rock providing up to seven mana of one color is nothing to scoff at. This card can be used to cast expensive spells, to contribute to ramping mana, to help cast spells with X in their mana cost, and much more.
Queen’s Diamond could be used in MTG Commander decks to make it much easier to cast or recast a commander after it has been removed once or more, and it can be a huge combo enabler. In fact, it can be used in combo with a mono-color commander to cast it infinite times through some sacrifice creature outlet, then tap it to add counters to Queen’s Diamond via station, then sacrifice it again and obtain ever more mana, ETB procs, LTB procs, and so on. Good examples are Ashnod’s Altar or Phyrexian Altar, and cards like Dross Scorpion allow it to be untapped at will if paired with an artifact commander.
While this doesn’t happen with every single new set, sometimes Magic: The Gathering cards massively spike in value due to new releases. The same may happen with Queen’s Diamond or other cards from the Star Trek set, which could unlock powerful combos with past cards or existing strategies.
The new Star Trek set may not be the most hyped of the year, but it does include some very strong and/or rare cards to collect. An example is that the first official signed card in Magic: The Gathering has been pulled, and it’s a Captain Picard card with the real signature of the late Sir Patrick Stewart.
