How to build Seven of Nine

Seven of Nine draws a card each time you choose a mode, and three modes chosen at once still count as one choice, so the cards worth most to her are the permanents that make you choose again every turn.

She counts the choosing, not the modes

Mystic Confluence lets you choose three modes and Cryptic Command lets you choose two. Each draws exactly one card off Seven of Nine. Her reminder text says you face a dilemma as you choose one or more modes, and the choosing is a single act however many modes come out of it. Card for card, then, cheap modal spells beat expensive ones here. Dimir Charm at two mana and Mystic Confluence at five buy the same draw from her, and the Confluence has to justify its other three mana with what its modes do.

Spree cards reach the same answer by a different road. Three Steps Ahead, Insatiable Avarice and Unfortunate Accident charge an extra cost for every mode you add, and Seven of Nine pays out once whichever you take, so buy the modes the turn needs and stop there.

The card arrives before the spell does. You choose modes while you cast, so her trigger lands on the stack above the spell and resolves first. You draw even when the spell gets countered, and you see the new card while the old one is still waiting to resolve, which matters most when the new card is another counterspell.

What does not count as a dilemma

Copies are the first thing this deck gives up. A copy of a modal spell keeps the modes the original chose, so nobody chooses anything and nothing triggers. The copy effects a Dimir spells deck normally runs are missing from this list for that reason.

Choosing nothing does not count either. Hullbreaker Horror, Dreamshackle Geist and Ertai Resurrected all say up to one, and taking zero is not choosing a mode. Take one every time, even a weak one. Hullbreaker Horror can always return your own Treasure, and Dreamshackle Geist can tap something even when nothing is threatening to attack.

The trigger reads you face a dilemma, so a mode somebody else picks belongs to them. Library of Lat-Nam and Fatal Lore have an opponent make the choice, and Seven of Nine stays quiet for both. Council's dilemma misses for another reason. It is an ability word on a handful of cards whose players vote, and a vote is not a mode, so on the reminder text as printed it does not trigger her. The full Star Trek rules update is what settles that for good, and nothing in this list depends on the answer.

The permanents that make you choose every turn

Black Market Connections is the best card in the deck for her, and she changes how you play it. In every first main phase it makes you choose one or more modes, and she draws a card for the choosing. So take the Treasure on its own, lose one life, and draw anyway. The draw mode costs two life and becomes something you add only when you want a second card that turn.

Energy Chamber asks at every upkeep, and Seven of Nine is always a legal answer because she is an artifact creature. Put the +1/+1 counter on her and she grows while you draw. Or put the charge counter on Umezawa's Jitte, because every counter Jitte spends is a separate choice and a separate card. A Jitte that connects once holds two counters, which is two more cards whenever you want them, at instant speed, on top of whatever the modes do.

The Vision asks up to three times a turn, once for each noncreature spell you cast, and one of its answers is to draw a card. A modal spell cast with The Vision out can therefore be three cards: one from its own modes, one from the trigger of The Vision, and one from that draw mode.

Hullbreaker Horror is the card that takes the deck from strong to unfair. It asks on every spell you cast, modal or not, so with both of them on the battlefield every spell is a card. Its modes are bounce, and the target can be your own permanent. Send back a Treasure just to make the choice, or an Aether Channeler so you can cast it again and choose again.

The rest ask in combat. Dreamshackle Geist asks at the start of combat on your turn, Silent Hallcreeper and Rankle, Master of Pranks ask when they connect, and Pip-Boy 3000 asks when the creature wearing it attacks. Silent Hallcreeper and Federation Probe are the cheap bodies that carry the equipment, one because it cannot be blocked and the other because it flies.

Every land drop is a card

Retreat to Coralhelm and Retreat to Hagra each ask whenever a land enters under your control, and Dread Presence asks whenever a Swamp does. With all three out, a basic Swamp is three choices and three cards, before you count the card Dread Presence can draw by itself.

That is why the mana base looks the way it does. Nine of the seventeen basics are Swamps, and Watery Grave, Sunken Hollow, Fetid Pools and Undercity Sewers are Swamps as well, so Dread Presence has thirteen lands to see. Polluted Delta, Prismatic Vista and Fabled Passage are each two land drops for the Retreats, once for the fetch and once for what it finds. Myriad Landscape is the extreme case. It enters as one land drop and later puts two basics that share a type onto the battlefield, so over its life it is three triggers off each Retreat, and cracking it for two Swamps adds two more off Dread Presence.

The Unicomplex asks on its own. It is a Star Trek land that taps for black, and when it enters untapped it makes you choose between surveil 1 and putting a creature card from your graveyard on top of your library. Here that is a land that draws a card.

The colors come out at 29 blue sources and 30 black, which covers one pip of either color on turn two about 95% of the time and falls short of two pips on turn three, at 80.4% for blue and 82.2% for black against a 90% target. The shortfall bites in fewer places than those numbers suggest. The three-mana cards asking for a doubled color are Dreamshackle Geist, Gruesome Realization and Lore, Positronic Provocateur, and the pips on Lore, Positronic Provocateur are hybrid, so either color pays for them. Archmage's Charm and Archenemy's Charm want three of a color, but they are instants you hold for the right moment rather than turn three plays. Everything else with double pips costs four or more, and a deck drawing this many cards has usually found the second source by then.

Six mana rocks is light for a four-mana commander, and that is on purpose. Most of the mana in this deck goes into instants on other players' turns, and once Seven of Nine is out, a missed land drop is rarely the problem.

Where the extra cards go

A Seven of Nine game that is going well ends your turn with too many cards in hand, and three cards in the list are there to cash them in. Monument to Endurance asks whenever you discard, including the discard down to hand size at the end of your turn, and each of its three answers can be taken once a turn. Take three life from every opponent on the first discard, a Treasure on the second and a card on the third. Its trigger and her draw both happen during cleanup, which the rules answer by giving you another cleanup step, so if the new cards put you back over the limit you discard again and Monument to Endurance asks again. Once all three answers are used, the next discard gets nothing from it, and the loop ends there.

Psychosis Crawler charges each opponent one life for every card you draw and is as big as your hand. Mr. Spock, Science Officer doubles every draw, hers included, which makes each dilemma two cards and two points off every opponent. He is also the card in this list that can lose you the game, because a library does not last long at that rate and nothing in the 99 wins off an empty one. Cast him when the library is deep and you are already ahead, not as the play that gets you ahead.

Seven of Nine, Unassimilated is in the 99, and the legend rule leaves the two of them alone because their names are different. Once five differently named lands are out it is a two-mana creature that draws a card in every first main phase. This list runs twenty different land names, counting Island and Swamp as one each, so the discard clause goes away quickly, and before it does the loot is one more discard for Monument to Endurance.

Three board wipes and the one she survives

Crux of Fate, Gix's Command and Final Act are all modal, so each draws a card on the way, and they treat Seven of Nine very differently. Gix's Command is the one to plan around. A modal spell carries out its modes in the order they are printed, and Gix's Command prints two +1/+1 counters on up to one creature ahead of destroying every creature with power 2 or less. Put the counters on Seven of Nine and she is a 4/6 by the time the destruction happens, so she survives her own sweeper while the small creatures across the table do not. Your own small creatures go with them, Mr. Spock, Science Officer and The Vision included, so cast it after they have done their job.

Crux of Fate kills her, but it spares Dragons, and Junji, the Midnight Sky and Kairi, the Swirling Sky are both Dragon Spirits. Cast the non-Dragon mode with either one out and your biggest flier is the only creature left standing. Final Act kills everything only if you ask it to. Destroying every planeswalker and exiling every graveyard is a fine answer on its own, and it leaves your board exactly as it was.

Kobayashi Maru Scenario is in the set and not in the list

This is the Star Trek card people will reach for first. It asks at every upkeep, no mode can be picked twice, and the four modes are a bounce, two cards, two tokens and you lose the game. Under Seven of Nine that is three upkeeps of value with an extra card each, then a fourth upkeep where the only mode left ends the game for you. Returning it to your hand resets it, since it comes back as a new object with nothing used. The list has the outs. Ertai Resurrected can counter the fourth trigger outright, and Cryptic Command, Silumgar's Command, Aether Channeler and Hullbreaker Horror can all bounce the enchantment before that upkeep comes. I left it out anyway, because each of those is a card you want pointed at an opponent, and a three-mana enchantment that makes you keep one in reserve is worse than it looks. Demonic Pact fails the same test for the same reason.

Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge sounds like a Jitte card, since he doubles charge counters. Only Umezawa's Jitte and the second mode of Energy Chamber ever put one down in this deck, so he would be a three-mana 3/2 waiting on two particular artifacts.

Two Game Changers, and both of them pick cards

The core list sits at a bracket 3 floor because it runs two Game Changers, Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor, and they are the two this deck actually wants. Drawing is the one job it needs no help with. What Seven of Nine cannot do is choose which card she draws, and the list is a different deck with Black Market Connections or Umezawa's Jitte on the battlefield than with a fourth counterspell in hand. Vampiric Tutor suits her especially well. It puts the card on top of your library, and the next mode you choose draws it.

Bracket 3 allows three Game Changers, so the core has room for one more mark before the floor moves. If Mr. Spock, Science Officer or any other card in the list picks one up at the next bracket update, the floor stays at 3, and a second new mark would take it to 4.

The core list

Hovering any card name on this page shows the card, and the printing it shows is the one each price was taken from.

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Both rungs leave the engine alone

Moving down the ladder costs speed and selection, not the engine. The budget rung takes the list from at least $351 to at least $115, and two tutors and five lands are most of the saving. Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor become Mastermind's Acquisition and Scour for Scrap, which are slower, and in the second case narrower, but modal, so the replacements draw a card off her where the originals never did. Black Market Connections, Monument to Endurance and Umezawa's Jitte all stay, because they are the deck.

The lands are where you feel it. Polluted Delta and Prismatic Vista become Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse, which still count twice for the Retreats but put the land in tapped. Watery Grave, Morphic Pool and Undercity Sewers become Darkwater Catacombs, Dimir Aqueduct and Temple of Deceit. Dimir Aqueduct is the one swap that gains something, since it returns a land to your hand and replaying that land is another trigger for each Retreat. Conjurer's Closet takes over the end step blink from Thassa, Deep-Dwelling for five mana instead of four, and Archaeomancer takes the slot of Snapcaster Mage by returning a spell to your hand rather than letting you cast it from the graveyard, which is slower and blinks better.

That rung carries no Game Changers, so it sets no bracket floor at all. The number is honest and it undersells what the deck does to a table. A bracket 2 game will not miss the tutors. It will notice a dozen spells that can counter something, so say so before the first one resolves.

The bracket 4 rung comes to at least $1,074 and adds seven Game Changers, nine in total. Ancient Tomb, Mana Vault and Chrome Mox put Seven of Nine down a turn or two early. Force of Will and Fierce Guardianship protect her once she lands, and Fierce Guardianship costs nothing while you control your commander. Mystical Tutor and Cyclonic Rift are the last two.

Scalding Tarn, Misty Rainforest and Marsh Flats replace Fetid Pools, Castle Vantress and Choked Estuary, and they are the one purchase on this rung that buys more of the engine rather than more speed. Underground Sea is the obvious bracket 4 land, and here it is worse than Marsh Flats at a small fraction of the price, because a fetch is two land drops for each Retreat and an untapped dual is one.

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is the add that pays for the others. You gain two life for each card you draw, which covers what Black Market Connections, Ancient Tomb and Mana Vault take from you, and opponents lose two for each card they draw. Kozilek's Command is the only new modal card on the rung, and it waits for this rung because it needs two colorless mana, which Sol Ring, Mana Vault and Ancient Tomb each make in one tap. This is the list for a table where everyone brought fast mana, and it is no longer the list for a table that agreed on bracket 3.

FAQ

Which Seven of Nine card is this deck built around?

The uncommon from Star Trek, collector number 252. She costs , she is a 2/4 Human Scientist artifact creature, and she draws a card whenever you face a dilemma. Seven of Nine, Unassimilated is a different card, a mono-blue mythic at number 80 that cares about differently named lands. It can lead a mono-blue deck of its own, and here it sits in the 99, which the legend rule allows because the names differ.

Does Mystic Confluence draw three cards with Seven of Nine?

No, it draws one. Facing a dilemma is the act of choosing modes, and choosing three of them is still one choice. Cryptic Command, Gix's Command and every other choose two card draw one as well. The way to get more cards out of her is to choose more often, which is why the list leans on permanents that ask every turn.

Does Seven of Nine still draw if the spell gets countered?

Yes. You choose modes while casting the spell, so her trigger goes on the stack above it and resolves first. Countering the spell afterwards does nothing to the card you already drew.

Does Council's dilemma trigger Seven of Nine?

Not on her reminder text as printed. Facing a dilemma means choosing one or more modes, and a Council's dilemma card has the players vote instead, with no modes to pick. Cards where an opponent chooses the mode, such as Library of Lat-Nam, miss for a different reason, since the dilemma belongs to whoever chooses. The full Star Trek rules update is the final word on both.

When is Seven of Nine legal in Commander?

From 13 November 2026, the day the Star Trek set releases. The other seven Star Trek cards in this deck join the format on that same date, so the whole list is playable from release day.

How much does this Seven of Nine deck cost?

At least $351 for the core list, buying the cheapest paper printing of every card, and that is a floor, since six of the Star Trek cards have no price yet. The budget rung keeps the engine for at least $115, and the bracket 4 rung comes to at least $1,074. Expect the Star Trek cards to cost less a few weeks after release than they do in preorder.