Have you ever wanted to replicate the feeling of casual, kitchen table magic from the good-old-days, or have a game of commander without anyone complaining about power level? You can do both of those things with this Premodern Commander Battlebox. Battlebox is a shared-deck format, and the gameplay for this version is explained below.

Before the game starts, each player chooses one of the three-colored, legendary dragons from Invasion to be a commander. Players start with the dragon they chose, that dragon's lair land, and that dragon's charm all in the command zone. The dragons can be re-cast with normal commander tax rules. The other two cards can be played from the command zone one time each. Regardless of commander color identity, all players can use all five colors, but the lair lands do guarantee that each player has access to their commander's colors.

There are two shared decks. One is a library of twelve of each basic land and the other is a library of the nonland cards. Players can choose whether to draw a land or a nonland. Graveyards are separate.

Optional rules I use:

NO MULLIGANS - Instead of having mulligans, I usually have each player draw seven non-lands, and then choose how many cards they want to exchange for basic lands. The exchanged cards go on the bottom of the non-land library.

VISIBLE DRAWS - Make a row of four face-up non-lands next to the nonland library and a row of four face-up lands next to the land library. Whenever a player would draw a card, that player can choose whether to draw one of the face-up cards or draw blindly from the top of either library. This leads to more choices and better mana. It also makes orcish spy useful!

FASTER 5-PLAYER GAMES - When there are five players in the pod, I prefer the star format. Imagine that each player is sitting at a different point of a five-pointed star. Each player will then have two opponents across from them who are their enemies. The first player to have both of their enemies lose the game is the winner and the game ends. It is possible for two players who are next to each other to tie. This setup simplifies decision-making, politicking, and winning, which leads to faster games.