Starport
This location summons a vanilla 2/1 minion that adds a special effect when it is launched in the context of a starship. These effects are worth about 2 mana if you try to budget them, so Starport adds 4 mana’s worth of effects into a starship, on top of the stats of the minions.
That doesn’t sound bad considering it’s a 2 mana location. It very much pays for itself with interest once we launch the starship. Key caveat is that we get to launch a starship with meaningful impact at a good enough timing. Starport initially sets us behind for a later payoff, as 2/1 minions are weak.
This should be a foundational card for the new Terran starship decks. It might be stronger than all the class specific starship pieces.
Score: 3
Lift Off
Terran gets the weakest draw effect out of the three factions. An Arcane Intellect with a single Starship Piece, the same ones summoned by Starport. This is not a terrible card, but it looks inferior to the tutors available in Protoss and Zerg, which can help you fight for board better. If a Terran deck values the tutoring effect, it will run Lift Off. Otherwise, it might prefer class-specific draw engines that are more efficient. We don’t think the value generated by this card is a deal breaker for starship decks.
Score: 2
Ghost
We wouldn’t ever run this minion in a deck without its battlecry. A 4 mana 6/2 is a bigger Jungle Panther and is nowhere near good enough to see constructed play, but its disruptive effect could be an interesting thing to build around. Destroying a card in the opponent’s hand is much more powerful than deck disruption, as it has immediate impact on their available resources. The effect is also not random.
While it doesn’t target high cost win conditions, it still generates card advantage. In Shaman, Ghost could become the main win condition for a Starship Shaman thanks to its synergy with Shudderblock. Triple the battlecry and you suddenly have a devastating and immediate Boomboss type play.
In fact, Shaman might ignore its class set and strictly build around Ghost, as it is very easy to activate with a single starship piece that can just sit there the whole game. Lift Off alone takes care of the activation and the consistency in finding Ghosts.
Score: 3
SCV
This minion is mandatory in every starship deck that has ambitions to launch multiple starships in a game. A 1 mana 1/3 offers decent minimum stats for a 1-drop, and it more than pays for itself with the discount on a future starship launch. Considering that some of the class discount cards are not even particularly good, it’s hard to give up on this one.
Score: 3
Jim Raynor
The weakest hero card out of the three, mostly because it requires a significant amount of time to ramp up. Artanis and Kerrigan are both slapped down on curve without a second thought, while Jimmy requires us to assemble and launch starships to make his cost a worthwhile investment.
The good news is that it shouldn’t be too hard to make his cost worthwhile, considering what we know about the worth of 2/1 starship pieces when they are launched, as well as the core neutral piece in Arkonite Defense Crystal. Where the tension could be is the cost of launching the starships themselves.
The hero power is strong, summoning a 4/2 taunt for 2 mana (the buff applies after the Marine is summoned), as well as making all your Terran units harder to ignore. This establishes Jimmy as a strong late game card, but one that requires the most investment to make work.
Score: 3
