How to build Locutus of Borg

Locutus gives every artifact creature you control the same combat damage trigger, and the 1/1 it creates is an artifact creature too, so each token that connects can make another. The build is about getting small artifacts past blockers and letting the count compound.

Each Borg token is born holding the trigger that made it

The second line on Locutus is a grant rather than an ability of his own. It hands the trigger to every artifact creature you control, and a 1/1 colorless Borg artifact creature token is an artifact creature, so it receives the trigger the moment it exists. That one fact is the whole deck. Four artifact creatures connect, four Borg arrive, and on the following turn eight bodies are carrying the trigger into combat. Most token commanders make tokens that are the payoff and stop there. These are the payoff and also the next round of the engine.

Two things slow the arithmetic down, and both matter before the first game. The tokens arrive in the combat damage step, after blockers have been declared, so a Borg never attacks on the turn it is made. And the trigger lives on Locutus, not on the tokens. If he leaves the battlefield every Borg keeps its body and its anthems and loses the trigger at once, which is why the protection in this list is pointed at one 3/3 rather than at the board.

The doublers turn doubling into tripling. With Anointed Procession or Mondrak, Glory Dominus on the battlefield, each connection makes two Borg instead of one, so four creatures that connect become twelve bodies by the next turn. Sharding Sphinx adds a flying Thopter for every connection on top of the Borg, the doubler doubles that too, and the Thopters are artifact creatures carrying the same trigger.

A blocked 1/1 makes nothing, so evasion comes before power

Every token that runs into a blocker is a token that did not copy itself, and a board of 1/1s is about the easiest thing in Commander to wall up. So the list buys evasion first and size second. Seven of the creatures fly on their own: Hope of Ghirapur, Federation Probe, Vault Skirge, Exocomp, Automated Warfare System, Angel of Invention and Sharding Sphinx. The Thopters from Whirler Rogue, Sai, Master Thopterist, Thopter Spy Network, Hangarback Walker and the Sphinx fly as well. The Borg themselves do not, and three cards fix that for every one of them at once.

Levitation is the plainest, flying for every creature you control at . Borg Cube does it from the Star Trek set and does more besides. It costs less for each artifact creature you control, so it is often a two- or three-mana card by the time you want it. It exiles a creature as it enters, and the first time it attacks it puts that creature onto the battlefield on your side as a Borg. With twelve charge counters on it, every artifact creature you control has flying. Stationing it taps creatures as a cost rather than using their own tap symbols, so the Borg that arrived in combat this turn can pay it in the second main phase, when they had nothing else to do. Organic Avulsion Unit is the cheapest of the three. For it gives your artifact creatures menace until end of turn, and against a table keeping two or three blockers each, menace on a dozen attackers lets most of them through.

Whirler Rogue's second ability is the one worth reading twice. Tapping two untapped artifacts makes one creature unblockable, the artifacts can be anything from a Talisman to Retrofitter Foundry, and because the cost taps them rather than using their tap symbols, a creature cast this main phase can help pay it. Two spare mana rocks become one Borg nobody can block. Gingerbrute costs , and once you pay another only a creature with haste can block it. Signal Pest is hard to block itself and gives every other attacker +1/+0 when it swings, and Rogue's Passage makes any one creature unblockable for .

Bident of Thassa draws a card each time a creature connects, and its second ability belongs on the turn of the player who sits just before you. Whatever that player is forced to attack with is still tapped when your own combat comes round.

Five creature cards are Borg, and by turn six most of the board is

Count the creature cards and this reads as an artifact goodstuff deck. Five of the 99 are Borg (Locutus, the One Who Speaks, Organic Avulsion Unit, Assault Drone, Hive Mind Coprocessor and Bio-Asset Allocator), six with the commander, and the rest are spread across more than a dozen other types, Constructs most of all. The battlefield tells a different story by the middle of the game, because almost everything on it is a token Locutus made and every one of those is a Borg. That is why each of the three cards here that asks you to choose a creature type should name Borg.

Roaming Throne is the strongest of them, and the reason is a ruling rather than a number. An ability that Locutus grants is still a triggered ability of the creature that has it, so with Borg named, every Borg that connects triggers twice and leaves two tokens. Locutus is a Borg, so his own hits double too, and so do the lines that Bio-Asset Allocator and Hive Mind Coprocessor hand out. The Throne only doubles other creatures, so its own hit still makes one.

Metallic Mimic puts a +1/+1 counter on each Borg as it enters, so the tokens arrive as 2/2s, and Adaptive Automaton gives every other Borg +1/+1. Coat of Arms is the late-game version of the same idea. Each creature gets +1/+1 for every other creature that shares a type with it, so with ten Borg on the battlefield each 1/1 token is a 10/10. It counts your opponents' creatures by the same rule, which is a real cost against a typal deck across the table. Naming Borg leaves the Thopters, Servos and Soldiers out, and that is the right group to miss, because the Thopters already fly and the other two are a handful of bodies.

Every Borg token has the same name, and Mechanized Production counts names

When an effect creates a token without naming it, the token takes its creature type followed by the word Token as its name, so every Borg that Locutus makes is called Borg Token, the same as every other. Mechanized Production is an Aura for that enchants an artifact you control. At the beginning of your upkeep it creates a copy of that artifact, then you win the game if you control eight or more artifacts with the same name as one another. Put it on a Borg and the board you were already building is a win condition.

Seven Borg tokens plus the copy make eight, and a token doubler turns the copy into two, so six are enough with Anointed Procession or Mondrak, Glory Dominus out. It needs no combat that turn, which makes it the line for the game where the table has finally put up enough fliers to stop the Borg in the air. It is also the card a pod most needs to hear about. One enchantment removal spell, or one kill spell on the enchanted token, answers it before your upkeep, and a table that has not read it rarely keeps that spell back.

Bio-Asset Allocator takes the life on the attack, before anything blocks

Bio-Asset Allocator gives every artifact creature you control a trigger on attacking: each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1. Those triggers resolve before blockers are declared, so a Borg that gets blocked has already paid out. That changes what an attack is for. Twelve artifact creatures swinging take 12 life from every opponent at once whether or not one of them connects, which is 36 points across a four-player pod from a single combat. With Borg named on Roaming Throne, each attacking Borg drains twice.

It is the plan for the turn when evasion runs out, and the reason the deck does not have to win every combat to win the game. It costs , one of only three black double-pip cards in the list, and black carries the lightest load on the mana base, since Zero, Incorporeal Sensate has a hybrid cost that white pays just as well.

Double strike is two combat damage events, so it is two tokens

A creature with double strike deals combat damage twice, once in the first-strike damage step and once in the regular one, and each is a separate occasion on which it dealt combat damage to a player. So the trigger fires twice. Akroma's Will lets you choose both of its modes while Locutus is on the battlefield: flying, vigilance and double strike, then lifelink, indestructible and protection from each colour. Every artifact creature flies past every coloured blocker, connects twice and leaves two Borg, before a doubler is counted. The Borg made in the first step are not attacking, so they sit out the second. For four mana at instant speed, it is the nearest thing in the list to a one-card finish.

Kill Locutus and the tokens stop copying, so the protection points at him

Because the trigger is granted, the whole engine sits on one 3/3. If he is exiled or bounced, the tokens stay, keep their anthems and keep attacking, but none of them make anything until he is back, and every return costs more in tax. Teferi's Protection, Flawless Maneuver and Clever Concealment are all aimed at that moment. Flawless Maneuver is free while he is out. Clever Concealment has convoke, so a wide board pays its generic half by tapping tokens, and it phases out exactly the permanents you choose. Teferi's Protection phases out everything you control until your next turn.

The sweepers worth fearing are the small ones. A 1/1 dies to anything that deals 1 damage to every creature or gives -1/-1, and a board like this one is exactly what those cards are printed for. That is why the anthems in the list add toughness as well as power. Tempered Steel makes every token a 3/3 as it enters, and Locutus, the One Who Speaks, Master of Etherium and Adaptive Automaton each add another point on top.

The deck's own sweeper only hits the other side. Organic Extinction destroys every creature that is not an artifact, and improvise lets you tap artifacts to pay its , so with eight artifacts out it costs . Locutus and every token survive it. Five creatures in the list do not: Myrel, Shield of Argive, Whirler Rogue, Angel of Invention, Mondrak, Glory Dominus and Sai, Master Thopterist. Count them before you cast it. Cyclonic Rift overloaded is the other way to clear a board of blockers while leaving yours untouched.

Twenty-five sources of each colour, and the double pips wait for turn three

Locutus needs one of each colour on turn four, which a three-colour land base handles comfortably: 25 sources of each, and each colour shows up by turn two 91.2% of the time. The double pips are where it strains. Tempered Steel and Mondrak, Glory Dominus want early, and the chance of two white sources by turn three is 71.8%. The blue ones are mostly engines that come down on turn four or later (Levitation, Reconnaissance Mission, Thopter Spy Network, Bident of Thassa, Mechanized Production, Whirler Rogue and Sharding Sphinx), and two blue sources are there by turn four 77.7% of the time. Both figures sit below the usual target, and that is the cost of three colours with real demands in each.

The fixing is chosen around that. Each of the three fetchlands can find any of the three shocklands, and the three fast lands and three slow lands split the early and late turns between them, one set entering untapped while you have few lands and the other once you have several. Raffine's Tower and Path of Ancestry are the two lands that always enter tapped, and both stay because each taps for all three colours. Rogue's Passage is the only land that makes no colour.

The anthems switch off three cards that look printed for 1/1 tokens

Welcoming Vampire draws a card when creatures with power 2 or less enter, Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive makes creatures with power or toughness 1 or less unblockable, and Skullclamp turns any 1/1 into two cards for , because +1/-1 kills it. All three read as if they were made for a deck of 1/1 Borg, and all three stop working once the anthems are down, because a creature's power and toughness are checked on the battlefield with every static bonus already applied. Under Tempered Steel a fresh token enters as a 3/3. That is too big for the Vampire and for Tetsuko, and a clamped 3/3 is a 4/2 that simply survives. This list takes the anthems, because they protect the tokens from the small sweepers as well as making them hit harder, and a deck that wanted these three would have to give up every one of them. The steady draw comes from Phyrexian Arena and the combat-damage cards instead.

Kindred Discovery and Divine Visitation each break the deck a different way

Kindred Discovery naming Borg draws a card whenever a Borg enters or attacks, and the draw is mandatory. Ten Borg attacking and ten more arriving is twenty cards in a single turn, and a deck that doubles its tokens can run out of library well before it runs out of opponents. Hive Mind Coprocessor, Reconnaissance Mission and Bident of Thassa all say you may, which is the whole reason they are the draw here instead.

Divine Visitation fails more quietly. It replaces each creature token you would make with a 4/4 flying Angel, and an Angel from that card is not an artifact, so the Borg that Locutus tries to make arrive as creatures that cannot carry his trigger. The Thopters, Servos and Soldiers get replaced the same way, and the engine stops the turn the enchantment lands.

Two Game Changers set the floor at 3, and neither of them wins

The core list runs Cyclonic Rift and Teferi's Protection, which puts its floor at bracket 3. Both are insurance. One clears away blockers or an opposing board, and the other saves yours from the turn you were going to lose it. The cards that actually end games, Bio-Asset Allocator, Akroma's Will and Mechanized Production, are on no list, so the deck plays at bracket 3 by what it does as well as by what it counts. Mechanized Production is the card to mention before the first game, since an Aura that wins on its own comes as a surprise to anyone who has not seen it. The floor is also a minimum that can only rise. Wizards has not redrawn the Game Changers list since these cards were shown, and the second pass after release will check whether any of them joined it.

The core list

Ninety-nine cards behind Locutus of Borg, built at bracket 3. Hover a card name to see it, and every price is the cheapest paper printing of that card.

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The budget rung keeps every way to connect and gives up the multiplying

The cheap list comes to at least $60 against the core list's $419, and it gets there by cutting what multiplies the tokens rather than what gets them through. Anointed Procession, Mondrak, Glory Dominus and Roaming Throne are close to $150 between them, and they are the three cards that turn one Borg per hit into two. They leave for Sram's Expertise, Master Splicer and Vanquisher's Banner, which add bodies and a Borg anthem but never double anything. The permanent evasion all stays: Levitation, Borg Cube, Organic Avulsion Unit, Whirler Rogue and the fliers are all in both lists, so the budget deck still connects as often. It simply grows by one Borg per hit where the core list grows by two.

The rest of the saving is mana and insurance. The fetchlands, shocklands and Raffine's Tower become gain lands, Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Arcane Sanctum and Exotic Orchard, which costs the deck tempo, since five lands now always enter tapped. Teferi's Protection, Flawless Maneuver and Akroma's Will become Unbreakable Formation, Dawn's Truce and Make a Stand, which still save the board from a destroy effect but no longer give the team flying or double strike. Cyclonic Rift becomes Sleep, a cheaper way to keep one opponent's blockers down for a turn. With no Game Changers left the rung sets no bracket floor at all, which is what a bracket 2 table expects to see.

The bracket 4 rung is the same engine built to come down sooner and to be harder to stop. Mana Vault and Ancient Tomb put Locutus on the table a turn or two early, and Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Enlightened Tutor find Mechanized Production, Roaming Throne or Akroma's Will on the turn they win. Urza, Lord High Artificer taps any artifact for , so the Borg made in combat pay for the second main phase. Urza's Saga makes Constructs that grow with your artifact count and fetches Sol Ring if it is still in the library. Opposition is the card in this rung that changes the table most, and it is not even a Game Changer. Each untapped creature you control can tap one of an opponent's lands, creatures or artifacts, so a board of ten Borg can tap a player's lands during their upkeep, before they get to use them. Bring that to a table that has agreed to that kind of game. The rung runs eleven Game Changers, which puts its floor at 4, and it costs at least $1,169.

FAQ

Do the Borg tokens from Locutus of Borg make more Borg tokens?

Yes. Locutus grants the trigger to every artifact creature you control, and each token is a 1/1 colorless Borg artifact creature, so it has the trigger from the moment it exists. Two limits apply. A token made in combat cannot attack until your next turn, and the tokens only hold the trigger while Locutus himself is on the battlefield.

Does double strike make two Borg tokens with Locutus of Borg?

Yes. A creature with double strike deals combat damage in two separate steps, first strike damage and then regular damage, and each step is its own event for the trigger. One double striker that connects leaves two Borg, before any token doubler is counted. The tokens from the first step are not attacking, so they deal no damage in the second.

Is Locutus of Borg good?

On a board of artifact creatures he is a serious token engine, because every token he makes carries the trigger that made it. On his own he is a four-mana 3/3 with lifelink that leaves one 1/1 behind when he connects, which is a modest rate. So the real question is whether the deck around him can put eight or ten artifact creatures on the table by turn five and get most of them past blockers, and this list is built around exactly that.

Does Mechanized Production win the game with Locutus of Borg's tokens?

Yes. When an effect creates a token without naming it, the token is named after its creature type plus the word Token, so every Borg is called Borg Token. Enchant one with Mechanized Production and at your upkeep it copies itself, then checks for eight or more artifacts sharing a name. Seven Borg tokens are enough, and six are enough with Anointed Procession or Mondrak, Glory Dominus out, because the copy is doubled as well.

How much does this Locutus of Borg deck cost?

The core list costs at least $419 at the cheapest paper printing of each card, with 87 of the 100 cards priced. The budget rung comes to at least $60 and the bracket 4 rung to at least $1,169. Treat all three as minimums. Nothing from Star Trek Commander or Star Trek is on sale yet, so the thirteen cards from those two sets, the commander among them, are missing from every total.

Should a Locutus of Borg deck run The Borg Queen?

She suits the theme better than the curve. The Borg Queen costs seven, and the part of her this deck would use, +2/+2 for artifact creatures, is Tempered Steel's exact effect for three mana. The creature she steals each time she enters or attacks is real value in a slower list. This one spends its expensive slot on Borg Cube, which costs less for every artifact creature you control and is usually far cheaper than its printed seven.

When can you play Locutus of Borg in Commander?

Release day for Star Trek Commander, 13 November 2026, is the first day he counts as a legal commander, and nothing about him changes after that. A card database checking before that date lists him as unavailable, because legality is stored on each card and his begins on release day. Older cards reprinted in the same product already pass that check, since their entries date from their first printing.