Magic Star Trek Tribble Variants: Five Unannounced Borderless Cards Surface
Five borderless Tribble variants of Star Trek characters appeared on Gatherer with no preview, and players report pulling them from Play Boosters.
Five borderless Tribble variant cards from the Magic: The Gathering Star Trek set have appeared on Gatherer with no preview, and players say they are already pulling them from Play Boosters. If you are opening the set, there is a chase you were not told about.
The variants use unique borderless art showing characters with tribbles. Wizards of the Coast uploaded all five to Gatherer, which is its only acknowledgment so far.
Star Trek Tribble Variant Card List
The five cards with Tribble variants are:
- Nyota Uhura, Communications
- Scotty, Miracle Worker
- Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy
- Kirk, Commanding Officer
- Spock, Always Your Friend
By rarity, they split into one mythic, two rares, and two uncommons.
Artwork credits shown for the variants are Colin Searle (Risa) and Vlad Petruchik (Kirk, Commanding Officer, Tribble Variant).
Where Tribble Variants Were Not Announced
The variants were not spoiled, previewed, or leaked. They are also missing from the official Collecting Star Trek article, which normally lists treatments, art variants, and pull odds.
For a set whose release date and tokens and art cards were laid out in detail, a surprise treatment appearing first in a card database is unusual.
Tribble Variant Pull Reports and Rumors
The following comes from player reports and community theory, not from Wizards:
- Players say they pulled Tribble variants from Star Trek Play Boosters. No one has been seen claiming a pull from a TRK Collector Booster.
- The variants appear to always be foil.
- The popular theory is that they appear less than once per box of Play Boosters. One Reddit user claimed to have pulled all five from opening 8 cases for their local game store and called it "very hard".
- A Reddit commenter compared them to the Alchemy cards printed in paper in Mystery Booster Commander Edition, where traditional foil Alchemy cards appear less than 1% of the time, according to that set's Collecting article.
TCGKing's take: one user's 8 cases is an anecdote, not a pull rate, so treat the comparison to Alchemy cards as a guess until Wizards publishes odds.
What is still unknown
- Official pull rates for the Tribble variants.
- Whether they can appear in Collector Boosters, and whether they are foil-only.
- The purpose and distribution of the variants, which Wizards has not explained.
TCGKing updates this article as soon as Wizards of the Coast announces these details. Follow all Magic news or get it in our newsletter.
What it means for players and collectors
- Check Play Booster pulls for borderless art with tribbles, since the variants are not in the Collecting article.
- The set has Stardates bonus sheet pulls and Collector Pack pricing to weigh, but Tribble odds remain unknown.
Next to watch: whether Wizards updates its Collecting Star Trek article with the variants.
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