Insane New MTG Star Trek Legend Turns Faeries Into Free Spells

As with all Universes Beyond sets, MTG Star Trek is absolutely stuffed with legendary creatures. While many of these feel like fairly generic creatures with famous faces painted on, there are some genuine highlights as well.

Revealed in yesterday’s Scene Box dump, Q, Your Illustrious Host is one such legend. With a unique ability and all five colors to work with, this is one you’ll likely be seeing in your pod before long.

Q, Your Illustrious Host MTG

Q, Your Illustrious Host is a deceptively simple card, packing just a single activated ability and a 5/5 body for its WUBRG cost. By tapping down three Faeries, you essentially get an Etali, Primal ConquerorEtali, Primal ConquerorTrample
When Etali enters, each player exiles cards from the top of their library until they exile a nonland card. You may cast any number of spells from among the nonland cards exiled this way without paying their mana costs.
{9}{G/P}: Transform Etali. Activate only as a sorcery. trigger for your own deck, letting you cast your next spell for free.

Naturally, this makes Q, Your Illustrious Host an excellent choice for a Faerie Typal Commander. With tons of token generators and go-wide synergies available for the creature type, enabling Q is surprisingly easy.

Your best bets are cards that create Faerie tokens over time, like Bitterblossom and Bitterbloom Bearer. Pestered Wellguard is particularly nice, since it gives you extra Faeries when you tap it for Q’s effect, creating a spicy snowball effect.

Going bigger, cards like Ancient Gold Dragon and ElminsterElminsterWhenever you scry, the next instant or sorcery spell you cast this turn costs {X} less to cast, where X is the number of cards looked at while scrying this way.
+2: Draw a card, then scry 2.
−3: Exile the top card of your library. Create a number of 1/1 blue Faerie Dragon creature tokens with flying equal to that card's mana value.
Elminster can be your commander. are great for setting up multiple Q activations at once, if luck is on your side. These double as strong payoffs for Q’s ability snowballing into even more activations.

Since Q is a five-color Commander, you can also tap into token synergies that Faerie decks typically don’t have access to. Doublers like Anointed ProcessionAnointed ProcessionIf an effect would create one or more tokens under your control, it creates twice that many of those tokens instead. and Parallel LivesParallel LivesIf an effect would create one or more tokens under your control, it creates twice that many of those tokens instead. will let you rapidly take over the board and get Q activations going as soon as possible.

While you’re on the tokens train, cards like Cryptolith RiteCryptolith RiteCreatures you control have "{T}: Add one mana of any color." and Enduring Vitality are fantastic as well. These can help cheat out the haymakers that you accidentally draw, generating tons of mana.

Controlled Chaos

Speaking of draws, you’ll definitely want to invest in topdeck manipulation with Q to control what you cheat out each time. Cards like Scroll Rack and Sensei’s Divining Top are classics in this department, and green gives you access to Sylvan Library and Mirri’s Guile, too.

At higher-bracket tables, topdeck tutors like Vampiric Tutor and Worldly Tutor can also set up exactly what you need on demand.

This kind of selection is valuable for Q in general, but especially if you want to use his ability on opponents’ turns. Mass untappers like Seedborn Muse will let you do this, and the ability itself will let you ignore timing restrictions.

That said, things can get awkward if you end up flipping over removal or countermagic with Q, especially on an opponent’s turn. For this reason, check your next card in advance when possible; cards like Future Sight can help.

Since Q casts all of his spells from exile, you can tap into plenty of synergies there for extra value. Cards like Passionate Archaeologist give you extra damage, Vega, the Watcher gives you bonus draw, and Spider-Verse straight-up copies your spells.

With so many cards going into exile over time thanks to Q’s ability, you can also leverage payoffs like Laelia, the Blade Reforged as full-on win conditions.

Cast One, Cast All!

Speaking of win conditions, Q, Your Illustrious Host also enables a suite of infinite combos that can easily close out many games on the spot.

Intruder Alarm is the key to most of these, as it untaps your entire board whenever a creature enters play, setting up all your Faeries to tap again. If you can consistently create a creature each time you cast a spell, this essentially lets you cast every nonland card in your deck with Q and three Faeries out.

There are multiple ways to achieve this, the easiest of which is with token generators like Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival and Iraxxa, Empress of Mars. Both make a token when you cast a spell from exile, so both will untap your whole board after each Q activation.

Alternatively, you can combine multiple cards to make tokens when you cast different card types, like Oltec Matterweaver for creatures and Third Path Iconoclast for noncreatures. Either way, the end result is the same.

While most Q builds can win by dumping a ton of spells and threats this way, his five-color identity also lets you run any combo win you want. Whether you want to keep it simple with Thassa’s OracleThassa’s OracleWhen this creature enters, look at the top X cards of your library, where X is your devotion to blue. Put up to one of them on top of your library and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. If X is greater than or equal to the number of cards in your library, you win the game. (Each {U} in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to blue.) and Demonic Consultation, or set up a Gravecrawler and Warren Soultrader loop, there are tons of options.

Heck, you could even leverage the token generation this line provides and run Craterhoof BehemothCraterhoof BehemothHaste
When this creature enters, creatures you control gain trample and get +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of creatures you control. and friends here, winning through a huge creature horde generated in a single turn.

Overall, while most of the five-color Commanders we’ve seen recently have felt a bit samey and boring, Q is anything but. It pushes you toward Faeries, yes, but beyond that, how you build the rest of the list is up to you.

Much like Smaug the Impenetrable from The Hobbit Scene Boxes, I predict Q will be a sought-after, and potentially pricey, Commander before long, especially given the supplemental product delays we’re seeing.

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