Wizards of the Coast has canceled the Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek Beginner Box in all regions, citing delays involving production, logistics, and shipping.
That is the official explanation.
However, there is reason to believe the real explanation is that the entire first shipment was assimilated by the Borg.
According to a Starfleet incident report, a cargo vessel carrying the Beginner Boxes disappeared shortly after leaving the production facility. The ship dropped out of contact for several hours before returning with extensive cybernetic modifications and a much less friendly customer-service policy.
Its first transmission was brief:
“We are the Borg. Your cards will be added to our collection. Your deck-building strategies will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
Apparently, the Borg took a particular interest in the Beginner Box because it was designed to teach new players how to play Magic. Within minutes, the Collective had learned the turn structure, memorized the Comprehensive Rules, and developed a Commander deck that takes twenty-seven minutes to finish a single turn.
Starfleet attempted to recover the shipment, but the Borg had already incorporated the cards into the cube itself. Booster packs were being used to reinforce bulkheads, deck boxes had been added to regeneration alcoves, and the rulebooks had been uploaded directly into the Collective.
The situation became considerably worse when the Borg began adapting to gameplay.
The first removal spell worked. The second was ineffective. By the third game, every drone had protection from the last card type used against it. One Starfleet officer described the experience as “technically impressive, but absolutely miserable to play against.”
There was a brief plan to transport the Beginner Boxes off the cube. That idea was abandoned after the transporter chief discovered that every box now shared a single consciousness. Separating one from the shipment caused the remaining boxes to announce that its distinctiveness had been added to their own.
With retrieval no longer considered practical, Starfleet recommended canceling the product altogether. The Federation also rejected a proposal to destroy the shipment, citing both the Prime Directive and the likelihood that someone would respond by launching it into the Genesis Device.
Plans for events that expected to use the Beginner Box, including MagicCon: Atlanta, are now being revised. A replacement tutorial is reportedly being tested on the holodeck, although the program currently traps players in an endless rules discussion whenever someone asks how layers work.
The good news is that no other Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek products were affected. Those shipments avoided Borg space, temporal anomalies, transporter accidents, the Mirror Universe, and any cargo vessel staffed entirely by redshirts.
If you preordered a Beginner Box, Wizards recommends contacting your local game store or retailer for more information.
Please be patient with the store employees. They didn’t cancel the product, they can’t retrieve it from the Collective, and they have already heard the “resistance is futile” joke several times today.
