Insane Number of Star Trek Creature Types Highlights Big MTG Problem

Last updated on October 26, 2026

Highly Illogical | Illustration by Joel Chaim Holtzman

If you’ve been paying attention to the Star Trek spoilers so far, you might have noticed something going on with some of the creatures: There’s a ton of new creature types. And why wouldn’t there be? Star Trek is a franchise full of different alien species, and so it makes sense that they would be represented in the type line of cards… except, don’t we already have the Alien creature type, and isn’t this a lot? And what kind of precedent does this set for Magic as a whole?

What We’ve Lost

The Traveler | Illustration by Ioannis Fiore

Creature types are a funny thing. Most of the time, they don’t mean much of anything in terms of gameplay. They’re really just flavor text, telling what this thing is rather than how it plays. However, sometimes the type does matter. You will have cards and decks that really care about certain creature types, especially in formats like Commander where you can have entire strategies built around a single, sometimes obscure, creature type.

Another odd thing about creature types is that they are one of the very few things that Wizards of the Coast really tinkers with retroactively. In the past, large swaths of cards have had their types changed forever, but if you had the original printing you wouldn’t have any way of knowing unless you saw the announcement that said so. Many cards have been reprinted with their new updated creature types, but many still have not. This makes the whole concept of updating creature types a bit contentious. But this hasn’t stopped Wizards of the Coast from continuing the practice.

For whatever reason, they recently changed the Homarid type to Lobster. They did this for two cards in Mystery Booster: Commander Edition, with Rikala, Homarid King and Homer, the Hermit each having or referencing the updated type, but with all the baggage and confusion that comes along with a change like this, it makes you wonder what makes such a change worth it. Was there really anything wrong with the Homarid creature type?

The same can be said for Cephalids which are now Octopuses, no doubt confusing for all the Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor players out there. Perhaps Wizards of the Coast just really cares about the accuracy of their sea creatures.

Viashino is now also gone as a creature type, being replaced by Lizard. Ultimately there is some reasoning for changes like these, as it increases the numbers of certain creatures for strategies that care about that type. If you have a Lizard deck, it’s nice to be able to play all the former Viashino creatures and get a bonus from that, although it does subtract from the flavor that Viashino once had, even if no cards really cared about the type.

Bloat & Cohesion

Resistance Is Futile | Illustration by Matt Stewart

I think a big problem that Magic will face in the coming years is how the creature types work in Universes Beyond sets. Normally, they will sow the seeds of certain creature types such that when we do get a set that cares about types, there are enough creatures to support it.

Take Bloomburrow for example. Before it even came out, we were getting Otters, Rabbits, Rats, Mice, and Raccoons in Wilds of Eldraine to support it on cards like Pollen-Shield Hare, Elusive Otter, Raging Battle Mouse, Lord Skitter, Sewer King, Bramble Familiar and more. All of this shows forethought in supporting certain types.

And in sets afterwards, these types were also seen more frequently. The same goes for Outlaws of Thunder Junction and all of the outlaw creature types (Warlock, Assassin, Rogue, Mercenary, and Pirate). This is cohesive design, something important to the game of Magic.

However, with the advent of Universes Beyond, this becomes far more difficult. Each set needs its own types specific to that world, often with very little wiggle room, and chances are no other sets will care about those types. We saw this with all the Spider cards in Spider-Man and Turtles and Mutants in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And now with Star Trek, there is a different concern: Bloat. With so many characters of so many different species, it seems as though every creature has its own creature type. Vulcans, Klingons, Betazoids, Trill, Bajoran, Na’Khul, Cardassian, Illyrian, etc. All of these also just look like humans. The end result is this feeling of bloat.

Additionally, the fact that we likely won’t be returning to the universe of Star Trek leaves the types that the set wants us to care about, like Klingon which has several cards that synergize with the type, feeling like they will never be supported outside of this set. If you wanted to build a Klingon Commander deck based around the type, your options would be severely limited.

Wrap Up

Highly Illogical | Illustration by Joel Chaim Holtzman

Magic is a game that will continue to evolve. It has evolved to get where it is today, and the current creature type system is a vast improvement over what we had previously. I just hope that there’s a way to better integrate it with Universes Beyond, as I don’t believe it’s built to handle it, although I doubt there’s a simple or easy solution to the problem.