The Final Frontier: Landing Party Precon Upgrade Guide

Another day, another busted lands-focused precon. Landing Party is the green, white, and blue preconstructed deck from Star Trek Commander that aims to assemble a board with as many differently-named lands as possible, also known as the new ability word: strange new worlds. Some may insist that lands decks require minimal skill and steamroll the table, and I largely agree with them. With that being said, there's still plenty to learn, so today we’re going to look at this deck critically and assess how it wants to win and how to upgrade it effectively.

Landing Party

This deck comes prepackaged with the following:

• 1 Ready-to-play 100-card Commander deck
  • 1 Traditional foil face commander with borderless art
  • 99 Non-foil cards, including 32 new-to-Magic cards
• 10 Non-foil double-sided tokens
• 1 Reference card
• 1 Deck box

The default face commander for Landing Party is the illustrious Commander Spock.

The backup commander for this deck is the intrepid James Tiberius Kirk, also known as Captain Kirk, Boldly Going.

As a man who is fiercely in love with the Spacecraft card type, I am strongly tempted to let Kirk take the conn and trick this deck out with some awesome Starfleet ships. This deck was built for Commander Spock, however, and given the strength of his triggered ability, it makes more sense to let him call the shots.

If you remember the good old days of Theros Beyond Death, then you, like me, likely have Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath PTSD. Your back also probably hurts. Spock is like a supercharged Uro, except he can potentially cast a spell for free if you hit something other than a land when he enters or attacks. If you don't control enough uniquely-named lands, you won't be able to cast a spell this way for free, but you can still draw it. By relying on this triggered ability, Spock can churn out value advantage and ramp, turn after turn, making it harder and harder for your opponents to out-grind you.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Enterprise crew helps advance your gameplan either by churning through additional cards from your library, triggering abilities that care about lands, or providing extra ways to trigger Spock himself. Chief Kyle, Transporter Tech and Temporal Tribulation allow you to blink Spock to net more enters triggers, while cards like Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu and Augur of Autumn provide scouting about your top card so that you know what to expect.

Once you’ve accumulated a board full of uniquely-named lands, Spock will consistently beam down huge threats that pressure your opponents with impactful enters triggers or impressive statlines. This deck has several ways to turn the tides of a game that looks bad, so never count yourself out. Planet Killer and Colossal Clone Master are examples of potentially game-warping threats. Always remember that a single trigger from Spock could find the card you need to turn a dire situation around.

The Final Frontier

The main problem I encountered while testing this deck was a lack of focus. There are plenty of ways to ramp, a few cards that synergize well with land ramp, and some top end bombs, but there’s not as much glue as I would like to stick everything together. The goals of the upgrades for this deck are to provide that glue by increasing redundancy and consistency so that the deck can focus on maximizing the value of Spock's trigger reliably.

New Recruits

The first set of upgrades addresses the deck’s struggle to consistently manipulate the top card of the library. As I mentioned earlier, creatures like Augur of Autumn and Pavel Chekov, First Posting allow you to view the top card of your library or filter your draws, but there isn’t as much flat-out top deck manipulation as I would like.

To remedy that, Brainstorm’s older brother Brainsurge is a one-off, instant speed way to stack your deck that can be used at several different times and in conjunction with other triggered abilities in the deck. Cast it before your turn begins or in response to a Janice Rand, Essential Aide trigger to guarantee a one-two knockout punch.

Noxious Revival is less proactive in stacking your deck, since it requires you to have cards in your graveyard that you want to put back on top of your library. The tradeoff for that requirement is that this spell is so versatile and comes in clutch. Its Phyrexian mana cost means you can cast it for just two life instead of mana, leaving your actual mana free to be used for responses and answers. On top of that, in a deck that can grind the turn count into the double digits with no issue, graveyard recursion is king, especially when you’re recurring a huge spell your opponents already had to suffer once.

Retreat to Coralhelm is a great way to abuse the deck’s theme. Play lands before combat to scry the top card of your library, which allows you to determine what Spock's trigger will do. If you know you’re going to hit another land, you can use Coralhelm’s ability to tap down a creature preventing you from swinging safely, or even untap Spock to keep a blocker up to defend you. If it's a nasty threat, then you can play more conservatively and hold up countermagic and responses to protect that threat.

The next set of upgrades helps reinforce the blink-based shenanigans that can make this deck feel oppressive. As one of the most quintessential blink spells of all time, Ephemerate speaks for itself. One mana for two blinks and two Spock triggers is a fantastic rate, with the only downside being that you won’t be able to swing immediately without a haste enabler.

Soulherder is another blink staple, providing another consistent way to trigger Spock via entering from a blink. It also doubles as a secondary threat — it grows itself over time as you blink your creatures, giving you another cheap-but-large creature to wave menacingly at your opponents.

Silver Surfer, Cosmic Voyager is one of the highest-ceiling blink cards for this deck. Since it can exile any type of permanent, you have an extreme degree of control over how you want to blink your board. Though it’ll put them in tapped, Surfer’s ability to blink lands can wring a ton of juice out of the landfall triggers in the deck, and you can even sneakily gain a little bit of life with the Planet lands or scry with the Temple lands. Used in conjunction with Chief Kyle, Transporter Tech or other sources of blink, your opponents will have a lot to groan about as you blink a million things twice or three times a table rotation.

As a deck with a commander that triggers from entering or attacking, Landing Party needs a little extra oomph in the combat phase to be effective at both. Swiftfoot Boots is a no-brainer, adding an extra layer of protection with hexproof and allowing you to swing with Spock for cheap even if he’s just entered the battlefield from a blink effect.

Aqueous Form not only guarantees that Spock can attack without fear of being lethally blocked, but it also aids in fixing the top of your library. The attack trigger may not be huge by itself, but in conjunction with the other ways to monitor and change the top card of your library, you'll have plenty of flexibility in influencing Spock's trigger.

Avenger of Zendikar doesn’t directly benefit Spock in his efforts to swing, but it’s a huge swing in your favor in the combat phase. An army of Plant tokens that grows rapidly on account of the numerous lands you sling into play will overwhelm your opponents. Avenger also doubles as another great target for your blink-based shenanigans, generating a veritable infestation of weeds as Plants to choke out the board.

This spell isn’t here strictly to add redundancy or focus. In fact, Multiversal Incursion’s generalist approach of cloning all of your creatures, even the legendary ones with its non-legendary clause, is the opposite of focus. An extra copy of Spock, however, is an extremely welcome addition to this deck, not to mention the menagerie of value creatures that either have splashy enters triggers themselves or provide other benefits when cloned. You want to make sure to keep some amount of big, splashy spells in your list, since Spock hits hardest when his trigger nets you a free haymaker.

Wartime Funds

These ten cards are worth just $17.74 in total, giving you a cheap but effective upgrade path. This is in consideration for the increased MSRP of these Universes Beyond precons; but if you’ve received a big budget from Starfleet, there are plenty of cards with a higher price tag to consider adding to your arsenal.

I had to get this one out of the way. Displacer Kitten combos with a ham sandwich, that paperclip you found in your sock, or that light coating of dust I know is on your monitor stand. Your deck has noncreature spells and nonland permanents that you want to blink, so the green-eyed kitty cat is a no-brainer.

You could Brainstorm to try and line up the top card of your library for the most impactful Spock trigger possible, or you could just cheat and stack it with a tutor. Worldly Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, and Mystical Tutor each tutor different card types to the top of your library, letting you curate your next Spock trigger to be a guaranteed knockout punch.

Another blink staple, Thassa, Deep-Dwelling nets you more Spock triggers and has the flexibility to tap down pesky blockers getting in the Commander’s way. As a Theros goddess, she's also resistant to removal and a great value piece to stick on board.

Though regular clones can still work with Spock because of his enters trigger, clones with a nonlegendary clause work best. Spark Double is one of the most famous of these, and is a great addition to the deck. It even comes with an extra counter to make its attacks even safer.

Speaking of regular clones, Springheart Nantuko is one of the most efficient ways to repeatedly generate token copies of a creature. Even though the token copies will have to die instantly to the legend rule, their enters trigger still occurs, meaning that you only have to pay two mana per instance to get extra Spock triggers. With Lotus Cobra (which is in the deck), that’s only one mana. Or, you can just slap Nantuko onto the Snake to make infinite mana and infinite tokens, dealer’s choice. Just bear in mind that this will technically bump your deck up to Bracket 3 by some interpretations, even though you don't really have a great way to use infinite mana.

Redshirts

Here’s a quick rundown of the cards I cut from this deck:

• Cold-Blooded Crew and Harmonize are wasteful, expensive ways to generate value in a deck that makes advantage every time you sneeze.
• Who is Jeffery, and why is his tube a card? Jefferies Tube is a cool, flexible artifact, but it's expensive for the value it provides, and its activated abilities are done better elsewhere in the deck.
• Lieutenant Nyota Uhura might be one of the most essential and beloved crewmates on the Enterprise, but her activated ability is far too much of a gamble to stay on the ship.
• Starfleet Communicator and The Guardian of Forever are helpful abilities packaged into abilities that are too expensive or too specific to be effective.
• Christine Chapel, Combat Medic is here to validate McCoy, Not a Bricklayer’s interest in seeing other Doctors entering the battlefield, and is otherwise useless by herself.
• Giant Space Amoeba is … cute, but I can’t really figure out what it’s doing here.
• M’Ress, Crew Coordinator and U.S.S. Farragut, Bold Explorer are neat landfall payoffs that just don't have the juice needed to be competitive with the other options available.

Captain’s Log

That’s my ten in and ten out for Landing Party. Did I cut one of your favorite spells from the deck, or do you agree with all of my upgrades? Let me know on the EDHLAB Discord or down in the comments. Now boldly go and ramp people’s faces off!

The Best Way to Play Commander Online

For the easiest way to play Commander online with your friends or meet new opponents on the field of battle, use EDHLAB.gg's Play Online feature!

EDHLAB maintains a strict policy against the use of generative AI in the production of creative media. All blog articles and images hosted by EDHLAB are made without the use of generative AI.