For the first time in 15 years, Magic: the gathering introduced a new type of cards called battles to the game. With the addition of the 36 new battle cards in Magicthe last set, Machine gearThis update to the game’s ever-evolving rules landscape will redefine kitchen tables, tournament play, and the math of combat for years to come.
According to the official Wizards of the Coast set release notes, the battles serve as a thematic link to the overarching story behind it Machine gear, where the Phyrexian cultist army has launched its invasion of the entire multiverse. As players, we see this war unfold across 36 sieges, the first battle subtype, and a permanent (like a land or creature card) that is on the battlefield for players to attack. Similarly, Wizards of the Coast has indicated that more battle sub-types are in the works for future sets.
Siege battles are turning double-faced cards, with a front face that is always played first on the table and provides a certain effect upon entry into play. Subsequently, siege cards can flip to their alternate side a completely different card with different effects when a certain condition is met.
The siege flip condition removes defense markers via combat spells or direct damage. Also, some new cards, like Etched Host Doombringer and Render Inert, help explicitly remove defense counters.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
Image: Wizards of the Coast
Obviously, Magic adds new gameplay mechanics to virtually every release. Typically, these are keyword abilities like hexproof or cavalier, and keyword mechanics like morph and mutation that are essentially tweaks that reinvent how existing card types interact with the game’s rules. But a new permanent type is a far more significant addition, potentially redefining the entire storyline of the games by giving players a new outlet to spend resources, direct damage, and rethink how their decks work.
Among the 36 battles, there are four or five in each MagicThere are five primary colors, one or two in each of the 10 color pairs, plus one battle colorless and another with all five colors. Not only does this offer all kinds of Magic player new toys to experiment with, but the sheer number and variety of battles means they can potentially support or break many of the game’s more familiar and recurring strategies.
Without any pre-existing method to evaluate battles and their role Magic decks, the coming weeks will see an exciting race to discover the most powerful battles with old-fashioned trial and error from deck designers and competitors. But how do we actually begin to evaluate these new game pieces, and what are our criteria for recognizing which ones are worth keeping an eye on?
We begin by acknowledging the range of battles, including their in-game cost to play, aka mana value, and the effects that provide for that cost potentially the most critical threshold to establish, since much of the actual building of the deck is maximizing the return on your mana investment at various points in the early and late stages of a game.
Most battles cost between two and six mana. The cheapest battles, of which there are nine, touch all five Magic colors alone or as part of a color pair. And thanks to their range of colors, these nine battles also provide a variety of effects for their cost.
For example, invasions of Azgol and Tarkir are removal spells that can kill opposing creatures on sight, while invasions of Ixalan and Pyrulea let you look at the top cards of your library and draw one. Invasion of Kaladesh even creates a creature when it comes into play, while Invasion of Gobakhan lets you look at an opponent’s hand and make one of their cards more expensive to play.
For the most part, these sieges basically replace each other when they enter the battlefield, either by putting a new card into the player’s hand or creating an extra permanent in play. Decent effects for two mana, but not particularly successful at first glance.
But that reveals two more challenges to battle rating: how easy are they to flip and is it worth flipping the card back? Since flipping battles requires some sort of damage, players now have to decide if their time is better spent directly attacking opponents or if the game could potentially be won faster by focusing on the battle instead.
The easiest battles to flip, Invasion of Gobakhan and Invasion of Zendikar, each come into play with three defense counters. On the other hand, more demanding sieges, such as Invasion of Arcavios and Invasion of Alara, enter with seven counters. You might expect sieges with seven defenses to always be the best battles to turn around, but that’s not necessarily true.
Both Gobakhan and Arcavios transform into enchantments that slowly generate value as you take additional game actions by attacking with other creatures or casting more enchantments, respectively. But if time is the limited resource that is spent turning sieges around, players will likely prefer a more significant threat to reward them for that effort and hopefully end the game sooner.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
Image: Wizards of the Coast
Consider the other three and seven defense battles, Invasion of Zendikar and Invasion of Alara. Zendikar transforms into the Awakened Skyclave, a large creature that can block well and even draw mana. Alara transforms into Awaken the Maelstrom, a powerful sorcery, which draws you more cards, lets you play artifacts from your hand for free, destroys an opposing permanent, and even makes your own creatures bigger. That’s a lot of text, but it seems appropriate for how long it took to remove all those counters.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
Image: Wizards of the Coast
My favorite battle, Invasion of Ikoria, offers a flexible ability up front that scales to different points in the game, and then builds an outright win out back with a giant creature that features a unique ability to pass massive damage against your opponent.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
Unlike most other battles, Invasion of Ikoria costs two green mana plus X, where X is so much additional mana that you want to sink into the casting cost of cards. You may then search your deck for a creature whose mana value is X or less and put it directly onto the battlefield. In other words, for two more mana, you can play any creature you want, depending on the state of the game and the mana you have access to.
Then, if the six battle defense counters are removed, it transforms into Zilortha, Apex of Ikoria, a huge dinosaur legend that links creature combat with opponents even if the attacking creatures are blocked. In the right deck, where an adequate battlefield of creatures is established, transforming into Zilortha will instantly win many games.
Image: Wizards of the Coast
It helps that Invasion of Ikoria is a green spell, the color of the ramp MagicIt’s the term for speeding up mana production beyond the typical one land per turn rule. So while some decks might struggle to produce a large payoff from an X spell, green strategies are often suited to producing a lot of mana in a short amount of time, allowing cards like Invasion of Ikoria to suddenly pressure whatever creature they’re to do. be the best solution for a given situation.
What’s most exciting to me is the versatility of invasions across different game states. If you have enough mana to find any creature in your deck, both sides of this card can change the course of the game on their own, whether you’re winning, losing, or even getting into a stalemate.
When you’re ahead, this is the kind of card that can create an even faster win by finding a creature that prevents your opponents from recovering. If you’re losing, you can find a creature to help turn the tide or engineer a move to bring Zilortha onto the battlefield and stabilize you with the legendary power of the dinosaurs. And even in a stalemate, it can also produce a creature that breaks through an opponent’s defenses by directly attacking a player or transforming into Zilortha and negating any blockers it may have.
As Wizards said in Machine gears release notes, the 36 sieges are just the first version of the battle cards. While time will tell how future battles fare compared to this first batch, the outlook is bright for this brand new card type to inject some novelty into a game that hasn’t seen this level of iteration since the introduction of planeswalkers in 2008.
Magic: The Gathering March of the Machine arrives as a set of physical cards on April 21 and is currently available to play online Magic: The Gathering Arena.
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