⚡ SparkMTG: Engineered Explosives is Standard legal again
Week of October 19 to 25, 2026
THIS WEEK IN 5 MINUTES
The short version
Star Trek reprints Engineered Explosives, and it is Standard legal for the first time in 22 years. Copies are $3.68 today. Wait for the reprint.
Star Trek's four Commander decklists post October 26 to 29. Wait for the lists before you preorder a deck.
Mystery Booster: Commander Edition sold out in 20 minutes, and the bonus card is a retro Notion Thief. Skip the chase. The regular one is $1.70.
🎁 Win a Star Trek precon. You pick the deck.
Subscribers are entered automatically. Entries close November 13 at 11:59 PM ET, and the winner is drawn November 14.
Refer your pod for up to 3 bonus entries: {{rp_refer_url}}
One more entry for the reader survey, How do you play Magic? (about 3 minutes).
Giveaway details → | Official rules. US 18+, no purchase necessary.
🗞️ Top Stories
Star Trek reprints Engineered Explosives, and it's Standard legal for the first time in 22 years
MTG Rocks reports the Star Trek set reprints Engineered Explosives, putting it in Standard for the first time in 22 years. Sunburst gives it a charge counter for each color of mana spent, and it destroys every nonland permanent with that mana value. MTG Rocks expects it to punish go-wide token boards and decks crowded at one point on the curve.
Why it matters: A new printing usually pulls the old copies' price down, and Commander decks run this card too.
My take: The cheapest copy is $3.68 today. If you want one for Commander, let the Star Trek copies hit the market first. Wait.
Star Trek previews are open, and the four Commander decklists post October 26 to 29
Wizards' debut stream on October 20 showed the set's mechanics, Booster Fun treatments and ten draft archetypes, Star City Games reports. Strange New Worlds counts differently named lands, so the set adds ten tapped common Planet lands that gain you a life. Prerelease is November 6 and release is November 13. Every Star Trek mechanic, explained.
Why it matters: Right now each Commander deck is one known card and 99 unknowns.
My take: The lists land this week. Hold off on a preorder until you've seen yours, especially if your store charges to cancel. Wait.
Mystery Booster: Commander Edition sold out in 20 minutes
The first boxes went on sale Monday through Festival in a Box Atlanta and sold out in 20 minutes, MTG Rocks reports. Buyers revealed the bonus card, a retro frame Notion Thief, which joined the Commander Game Changers list in its first update. MTG Rocks expects it to be the most expensive Bonus Card yet. What is inside the Atlanta box.
Why it matters: A Commander hate piece is now locked behind a 20-minute window and resale markups.
My take: The regular Notion Thief does the same thing for about $1.70. Skip.
🧙 Precon Desk
Precon news: Wizards' Star Trek decklists page names the four decks and one card in each: Commander Spock, Jean-Luc Picard, Luminary, Worf, Defiant Commander and The Borg Queen. The other 99 cards in each deck are revealed October 26 to 29. If you signed up for our Star Trek upgrade picks, they come in a separate email once the lists are public.
Deck spotlight: Multiverse Reforged (white, blue, black and red, Jace, Multiverse Architect, MSRP $49.99). It swaps tokens and creatures for whatever is next in your library, and it's the deck behind this month's Polymorph spikes.
Lands to fix first: cut Turbulent Shore and Turbulent Wetlands (both enter tapped until opponents control eight lands), add Adarkar Wastes (about $0.35) and Shipwreck Marsh (about $1.70).
Cheap swap: cut Dreadhorde Invasion, add Polymorph (about $1.47). Four mana turns a token into the next creature in your library.
Verdict: Buy at MSRP. The 89 nonbasic cards added up to about $87 at Scryfall's cheapest prices on October 7.
All the swaps, cuts and the $10 plan: Multiverse Reforged upgrade guide →
🙈 Skip it
Hasbro's $616 million Magic quarter: It measures product shipped into stores, so it says nothing yet about whether Reality Fracture sold. Nothing to buy or sell.
The Reality Fracture Secret Lair Bundle delay: Wizards moved it off October 23 to "shortly after." If you ordered one, there's nothing to do but wait.
Post Malone's Demonic Tutor guitar: Douglas Shuler hand-painted his Alpha art on a one-of-a-kind acoustic. Fun to look at, and there's nothing to buy.
💰 Cards that moved
Dark Matter Manipulator: about $1.50 to $6.77, about +350%. A Reality Fracture self-mill creature that became a Modern staple, so its price rides tournament results. Skip unless you play Modern.
Knacksaw Clique: $2.80 in August to $13.74, about +390%. cEDH Kinnan decks found the 18-year-old faerie, and Wargamer saw sales above $18 this week. Hold if you own one, Skip if you don't.
Divergent Transformations: now about $2.74, +1,080% per MTG Rocks. Jace and Multiverse Reforged made mass Polymorph a real plan. Still cheap for a Jace deck. Buy if you're building one.
Prices: cheapest nonfoil printing on Scryfall (TCGplayer market), checked October 25, 2026. Starting prices from Draftsim, Wargamer and MTG Rocks.
👍 This week's pick
Not sponsored.
Indomitable Creativity, about $0.54. Destroy X of your own tokens and put that many creatures from your library onto the battlefield. It's the Jace trick in a red card, and it fits any token deck that runs big creatures.
📅 Release dates ahead
Oct 26 to 29: Star Trek Commander decklists. All four go public.
Nov 6 to 12: Star Trek prereleases at your local store.
Nov 13: Star Trek release day, and the last day to enter the giveaway.
📚 Extra reading
Got more than 5 minutes? Here's the rest of the week, from the business side to the lore.
🏢 Industry
Magic cleared $600 million in a quarter for the first time. Magic revenue rose 34% to $616.1 million in Hasbro's third quarter, EDHREC reports. Every quarter of 2026 has come in higher than the last, at roughly $470 million in Q1, $545 million in Q2 and $616 million in Q3, and Magic alone drove about three quarters of Hasbro's revenue growth for the quarter. Hasbro credited The Hobbit and Reality Fracture. Two caveats from EDHREC: the figure counts product shipped into stores, so Reality Fracture's sell-through is next quarter's question, and Hasbro's own raised guidance points to a fourth quarter below last year's.
Every 2026 set has now been delayed in some form. Wizards moved the Reality Fracture Secret Lair Bundle off its October 23 date to "shortly after," with timing varying by region, Star City Games reports. Bundles bought in a Chaos Vault order still follow normal Secret Lair fulfillment. With last week's Star Trek notice, all seven 2026 sets have now slipped. The earlier Reality Fracture delays.
🧙 Commander Corner
Hemmer is a two-mana uncommon commander for Spacecraft decks. MTG Rocks picks out Hemmer, Fixing What Is Broken, a 2/3 for two in the uncommon slot. It protects your Spacecraft on your turn, which matters because ships take several turns to Station and are easy to remove the moment they come online. MTG Rocks calls the loot on tapping the real star, and Hemmer can fire it every turn by attacking. In Azorius, Uthros Research Craft and The Seriema are worth charging.
Georgiou, Terran Emperor keeps you alive at zero life. Draftsim reads Georgiou, Terran Emperor as a low-bracket build-around with a real payoff. The headline interaction is Ad Nauseam, which Georgiou turns from a gamble into a draw engine. By the letter of the Bracket rules, Ad Nauseam is a Game Changer and pushes the deck out of Bracket 2. Draftsim argues it belongs there anyway, since the combo costs 11 mana and falls apart if someone removes your commander, which also kills you.
🎙️ Lore & Culture
Post Malone got a Demonic Tutor guitar painted by the card's original artist. Douglas Shuler hand-painted his Alpha Demonic Tutor art on a one-of-a-kind acoustic, Star City Games reports. Mark Aronowitz of Mark's Artist Signing Service says Malone's team set up the commission months ago, and Shuler posted a time-lapse of the painting on Instagram. It joins Malone's one-of-one serialized The One Ring.
Gavin Verhey on how Star Trek became Magic cards. Trekking Through Design walks through the mechanics, cards and themes behind the crossover, with a new card previewed in the article. If a daily spoiler feed is more than you want, this is the better single read.
Which Star Trek deck are you leaning toward before the lists drop? Hit reply, I read every one.
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See you next Sunday,
ShinyManaGank
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