Landing Party Upgrade Guide: 19 Easy Changes You Can Make

Commander Spock | Background Illustration by Sam Kennedy

Upgrading precons looks like many things. Sometimes it’s just increasing the card quality, other times it’s a full-on surgical operation where you shave poorly supported themes in favor of something more cohesive. It all depends on the quality of the precon itself.

Of the Star Trek precons, I am… less than pleased with Landing Party, the Bant precon helmed by Commander Spock. It’s a little messy, so today, I’m cleaning it up!

Landing Party Deck Overview

Landing Party is a Bant () deck ostensibly themed around landfall and the new strange new worlds mechanic. It also has a bit of a flicker theme, plus a smattering of spacecraft support to respect the backup commander, Captain Kirk, Boldly Going.

In short, it’s a mess. Have you ever seen a landfall deck with seven ramp spells? Yeah. It also shares a pitfall unique to Universes Beyond precons: In an effort to adapt as much of the source material as possible, several cards don’t interact with the rest of the deck. They just happen to fall under its color identity (consider Tribble Cluster, a sacrifice-counter-token card with little intersection with the rest of the deck).

That said, there’s still some power and reprint value—look at Exploration, Ancient Greenwarden, and so on.

Sale

Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek Commander Deck - Landing Party

• DISCOVER STRANGE NEW WORLDS—Outwit and outmaneuver your friends in Star Trek’s final frontier with Commander, Magic’s most popular multiplayer format
• A MOST FASCINATING DISCOVERY—Beam down with a landing party led by Commander Spock and gather bonuses for having a variety of differently named lands. Give even more power to your mana engine with landfall effects—it’s only logical
• 33 NEW COMMANDER CARDS—Each ready-to-play deck includes 33 Star Trek-themed Commander cards entirely new to Magic: The Gathering
• FOIL BORDERLESS COMMANDER—Command your deck in style with 1 Mythic Rare Legendary card featuring Borderless art and a shiny Traditional Foil treatment
• EPIC MULTIPLAYER GAMES—Best with 3–5 players, Commander is an action-packed, free-for-all battle full of strategic plays and social intrigue

$69.00

Buy on Amazon

Upgrade Plan

My primary goal in this upgrade is to focus the deck by picking a lane and sticking to it, and replacing cards that are either weak or part of an unsupported theme with cards that fit that renewed focus.

I’ve chosen the flicker theme. I don’t want to lean into spacecraft because I frankly think Captain Kirk is a bottom-tier commander, and as nice as the landfall stuff is, that package is solid on its own. Most of the cards I’m bringing in are flicker spells and good flicker targets to go with Spock.

I’m also supporting Spock and the landfall cards with better ramp options. I consider that more of a side effect of upping the deck’s consistency and card quality.

None of the cards I’m adding cost more than $10, and they often cost less.

Animist’s Awakening

Suggested Cut:

Planet Killer is a neat card if you’re cheating artifacts into play, but this deck isn’t doing that. I’d rather have Animist's Awakening as top-end to super charge those landfall payoffs or act as your bridge between the mid and late game.

Clifftop Lookout

Suggested Cut:

Tribble Cluster doesn’t really work in this deck. There’s a sideways sort of synergy with landfall cards that put counters on creatures, but I’m cutting them, so this is unplayable.

Clifftop Lookout fits the deck perfectly as a ramp spell tied to an enters ability. The random reach comes up from time to time, too.

Daydream

Suggested Cut:

Wizards loves to slip Draft chaff in their precons; while I wouldn’t be surprised to see Cold-Blooded Crew matter in Limited, it’s much too slow and low-impact for even casual Commander.

Daydream supports the flicker strategy well: It’s a cheap flicker spell that comes back for more. It does much more for the deck, and casting this regularly and with flashback still costs less than playing the card it’s replacing.

Airbender Ascension

Suggested Cut:

Jefferies Tube would be fine if this deck did anything meaningful with charge counters, but it doesn’t; it’s just an awkward support piece for like, five cards. Airbender Ascension is a cheap flicker engine that the deck enables easily between the cards already in the deck and the ones I’m adding.

Dour Port-Mage

Suggested Cut:

We can do better than Harmonize in 2026. Dour Port-Mage is a great little draw engine that benefits from all the flickering we can do, and it even acts as a protection spell in a pinch—better to recast Spock from your hand then let it eat Swords to Plowshares.

Eternal Witness

Suggested Cut:

I’m not a fan of wheels without a meaningful way to break the symmetry on them, so I’m letting Echo of Eons go in favor of Eternal Witness, a fantastic recursion spell that works well with all the flicker stuff going in.

Essence Flux

Suggested Cut:

As strong as Ponder is in 60-card formats, I find it lackluster in Commander without spellslinger synergies to make casting it a meaningful event. Essence Flux is a flicker staple because it’s so cheap, and it doubles as protection against targeted removal.

Exploration Broodship

Suggested Cut:

My issue with Brainstorm is the same as Ponder, though this could be justified if the deck had more fetch lands. But as is, I like Exploration Broodship as a cheap draw engine that works well with landfall.

Hide on the Ceiling

Suggested Cut:

This deck just doesn’t have the top-end to support an Elvish Piper, especially not one as costly as Chief Montgomery Scott. Hide on the Ceiling fits the new style of the deck much better; I quite like it as a mass flicker spell since it doubles as protection from board wipes.

Highcliff Felidar

Suggested Cut:

Giant Space Amoeba has a great design, but it doesn’t really mesh with the deck as a whole. Highcliff Felidar fits in much better as top-end that kills three threats… and often many more thanks to all the flicker spells in the deck.

Kamahl’s Druidic Vow

Suggested Cut:

Yeah, Captain Kirk, Boldly Going just isn’t it in this deck. Giving your spacecraft +3/+3 is cute and all, but what about helping make them creatures? It’s just very underwhelming.

Kamahl's Druidic Vow is a good payoff for all that ramp I’m adding. Since I’m leaning into flicker spells, many of the best cards are permanents, and the design ethos of Universes Beyond means the deck has plenty of legendary creatures to cast a legendary sorcery.

Kogla, the Titan Ape

Suggested Cut:

Sam Kirk, Xenoanthropologist looks very strong in the right deck, but this isn’t it: We don’t interact with artifacts or tokens or Clues in any way meaningful enough to run this. But we do care about Kogla, the Titan Ape, a great ramp target with an enters ability that kills things.

Open the Way

Suggested Cut:

Command Chair is cool in concept, and I’m sure there are great decks for it. But this deck doesn’t really put the mana into anything, plus I’d rather my ramp be land-based due to strange new worlds and landfall.

Open the Way, in my opinion, is a heavily underrated ramp spell. The land ramp is super reliable, and you ramp three lands for 5 mana, which is a killer rate. It also works particularly well with Spock: Since it flips lands off the top of your library instead of finding basics, you can hit nonbasic lands and up the number of unique names.

Riptide Gearhulk

Suggested Cut:

Amanda Grayson, Logic's Link is more prepared for Commander than the other versions of this effect, but I still just don’t care for it. I just think we can do more with our cards.

Riptide Gearhulk is yet another removal creature that’s perfect to flicker. Answering threats from each opponent is a huge deal, especially when it’s this repeatable.

Soulherder

Suggested Cut:

Fleet Captain Christopher Pike joins the crowd of “good, but underserved” cards: This would be killer in a deck that wanted to ramp with mana dorks, or maybe that has a commander that needs to tap itself, but this deck is neither. It is, however, extremely interested in Soulherder flickering a creature every end step for a very low mana cost.

Three Visits

Suggested Cut:

I could get behind Satyr Wayfinder if this deck wanted cards in the graveyard, but that’s a zone Spock is uninterested in exploring. I’d rather play Three Visits to smooth the early turns and enable landfall later.

Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing

Suggested Cut:

Syndicate Liquidators is basically in the same boat as Cold-Blooded Crew: Limited fodder that made the deck because, uh… it says landfall?

Wan Shi Tong, All-Knowing has a good removal trigger attached to an enters ability, so we can flicker it at a profit. Don’t need much more than that.

Waterbender’s Restoration

Suggested Cut:

S.S. Botany Bay is weird. It’s extremely expensive graveyard hate and an extremely slow value engine. Since neither of those “extremely”s stress good qualities, I want it gone, though I could see this working in an actual spacecraft deck.

Waterbender's Restoration is similar to Hide on the Ceiling, except it can flicker your entire board for a mere with untapped creatures. It doubles as a protection spell since your creatures don’t come back until after the board wipe has resolved or just triggers three or four creatures to push you over the finish line.

Wood Elves

Suggested Cut:

In a deck with no consistent source of lifegain, Christine Chapel, Combat Medic is unplayable fluff. Wood Elves has a relevant enters ability and makes the game plan more consistent; what’s not to love there?

Final Decklist and New Cards

Here’s the upgraded decklist, plus a list of just the cards below. If you want to purchase either, use the shopping cart button in the corner.

Commanding Conclusion

Guardian Project | Illustration by Gal Or

Landing Party needed some work to handle its conflicting themes, but I’m pleased with where it ended up. It’s a great Bant value deck that makes the most of Commander Spock by loading the deck with ramp for strange new worlds and flicker effects to retrigger it, or a handful of new, more synergistic threats.

Sale

Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek Commander Deck - Landing Party

• DISCOVER STRANGE NEW WORLDS—Outwit and outmaneuver your friends in Star Trek’s final frontier with Commander, Magic’s most popular multiplayer format
• A MOST FASCINATING DISCOVERY—Beam down with a landing party led by Commander Spock and gather bonuses for having a variety of differently named lands. Give even more power to your mana engine with landfall effects—it’s only logical
• 33 NEW COMMANDER CARDS—Each ready-to-play deck includes 33 Star Trek-themed Commander cards entirely new to Magic: The Gathering
• FOIL BORDERLESS COMMANDER—Command your deck in style with 1 Mythic Rare Legendary card featuring Borderless art and a shiny Traditional Foil treatment
• EPIC MULTIPLAYER GAMES—Best with 3–5 players, Commander is an action-packed, free-for-all battle full of strategic plays and social intrigue

$69.00

Buy on Amazon

How would you upgrade Landing Party? Would you have picked another theme? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! If you want more Trek coverage, check out Draftsim’s YouTube Channel and newsletter, both called The Daily Upkeep!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!

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