Magic: the Battling
Magic: the Battling
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Art by YW TangArt by YW Tang
272 Card Unpowered Legacy+ Cube196 followersDesigned by RyanSaxeRSSQR CodeView in Cube Map
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Magic: the Battling — an MtG format inspired by the autobattler genre

This is a cube to showcase Magic: the Battling. Cubes like this are called "battlers". They work for any even number of players (best with 2 or 4) and one game takes about 1-2 hours.

The way the format works, like an autobattler, is players alternate between drafting cards and playing a short game of magic (called a battle). After each battle, the loser gets poison counter(s). Then all players draft again. This loop continues until only one player remains as the winner.


Game Pieces
Required
  • A copy of the cube list (the "battler")
  • 3 Round cards
     
each player needs
  • At least one Treasure token
  • 3 copies of each basic land
  • 4 copies of each upgrade
  • A way to track their lifetotal
Optional, but recommended per player
  • 1 poison counter — you can also just track with pen and paper.
  • 2+ Infini-tokens — since decks change frequently, finding the right tokens takes a lot of time.
  • 1 The VanquisherRound Three hands out this card to communicate hand size increase. Alternatively, you can track hand size with just one The Vanquisher card with counters/dice on it.

Please refer to Logistics for advice on how to make the representation of the game go smoothly in paper.


Setup
  1. Shuffle the battler.
  2. Give each player 7 random cards from the battler face down. These form the players' starting pools.
  3. Give each player a Treasure token. Treasure can be used in a battle or to open a new pack while drafting.
  4. Put the Round cards in order in a face-up pile in the center of the table. Round One starts on top.

Playing the Game

The game consists of a series of rounds. Each round has three phases: Draft -> Build -> Battle. When a round is over, players gain the resources specified on the current Round card and put that card on the bottom of the pile.

The first draft phase of the game is skipped so players can get right into building with their starting pool.


Build

Before battling, players privately prepare a starting hand from their pool and select 3 basic lands of their choice which will start in play in the upcoming battle. The starting hand size for the battle starts at 3 and increases by 1 after every third round.

Once all players are ready, pair players to battle. If it's the first battle, play the person sitting across from you.

Pairing algorithm

Any player grabs a D20. They assign the two players they didn't just play Even and Odds. Then they roll d20. If they roll a 1 or 20, they play their most recent opponent.


Battle

Battles are best-of-1, 1v1 matches of Magic with some modifications.

First and foremost, some game objects are persistent: they carry over from battle to battle. However, any effects on persistent objects will end when a battle does (see the FAQ for an example).

Persistent Objects

In order to keep the full game quick, battles are played with the following modified rules

Battle Rules
  1. Starting hand size and maximum hand size is 3.
  2. Starting life total is 10.
  3. Players' start with 3 basic lands of their choice on the battlefield.
  4. Neither player has a library, and hence do not lose as a result of being unable to draw a card.
  5. The player with the most poison counters chooses play/draw. If players are tied, choose randomly.
  6. Conceding is not allowed because Treasure tokens created during a battle persist afterwards.
  7. A draw is treated as a loss for both players.
  8. The losing player(s) gets poison counters equal to 1 + the number of revealed Upgrades their opponent has.

When all players have finished battling, that is the end of a "round". At the end of the first round, each player is given a Treasure token and a random card from the cube. Please refer to the Round cards section to see exactly what happens at the end of each "round".


Draft

Deal a "pack" of 5 cards to each player.

Then, each player can take any of the following actions any number of times:

Draft Actions
  • [buy] Swap a card in their pool with a card in the pack.
  • [re-roll] Pay a treasure to shuffle their pack back into the battler and open a new pack of 5 cards.

When a player is done drafting, they move to the build phase.


Round Cards

At this point, we have covered the entire game loop that a "round" refers to: Draft -> Build -> Battle.

At the end of a round, all players with more than 5 treasures exile their excess. Then, each player gets additional resources. This is how pool size and hand size increases. The following Round cards describe the resources given after each round.

round1-final.jpg


Upgrades

After finishing the third round (and every third round thereafter), each player secretly chooses an upgrade from the options below and places the card face-down in their Command Zone.

Players do not have to name a card for an upgrade until they choose to reveal it, which they can do any time they have priority during a battle. Once an upgrade is revealed, it can't be changed for the rest of the game.

Because upgrades and The Vanquisher are given out at the same time, your starting hand size will always be equal to 3 + the number of upgrades you have. Makes it easy to remember.


Determining a Winner

Players are eliminated whenever they have 10 or more poison counters. When there is only 1 non-eliminated player, they are the winner.

What Happens When A Player is Eliminated

When the first player is eliminated, they become The Ghost and lose all their poison counters. They continue to play as normal until a second player is eliminated. Once a second player is eliminated, the remaining two players will continue playing rounds as normal but always battling each other until there is a winner.

The game cannot end with two players getting eliminated at the same time. If that were to happen, those players are both set to 9 poison, and go into a sudden death loop.

Sudden Death

The game pauses until sudden death is over. Players in sudden death alternate between building and battling until a player is eliminated. If for some reason neither player can beat the other with their pools, all players continue to the next round.


And That's the Game!

If you like what this is about and/or want to help us continue to develop this, play online, or build your own battler, feel free to join the discord dedicated to this new Magic format!


Rules FAQ
If I put counters on a treasure, do those counters persist?

No, those counters are not persistent. However, you could choose to play this way if you really wanted to.

If I animate a treasure, will that treasure be a creature in my next battle?

No. This is why there is a rule that states "... any effects on persistent objects will end when a battle does."

If I have 5 treasures when a battle ends, do I still get a Treasure at the end of round?

Yes. You will then have 6 Treasure for the round. However, this does mean you must spend that treasure before the next round, otherwise it will be exiled.

What happens if more than 2 players are eliminated simultaneously?

This can only happen if there are one or more draws. In this case, only players who drew enter sudden death and players that lost are eliminated.

Are any cards banned?
  1. All cards that can give extra poison counters to player (e.g. proliferate, toxic) are banned. It just opens the door for unfun things to happen.
  2. Since there are no libraries, cards like Thassa's Oracle are banned.
  3. All cards that place cards in the library (e.g. subtlety) are banned. Technically, you could choose to play with them, but many can cause problems (e.g. shuffling cards into the library can create non-deterministic loops).

Extra Terminology
Stage

We use the term "Stage N" to refer to the part of the game played with starting hand size N. Because of this, we can refer to "the first round played with 4 card hands" as "4-1". As an example, the game starts in the build phase of 3-1 and will generally end at some point between 5-3 and 7-1.

Sideboard

The cards in a players pool that are not submitted for the next battle. This term lets cards like Living Wish work.


Logistics
Do I really need all the game pieces?

No. You can represent the game state with whatever you see fit. Take the hidden agenda conspiracies as an example. Instead of buying multiple of each per player, you can just choose to represent these via Infini-tokens. Write the ability the upgrade provides (e.g. "Upgrade: has haste") on the token, and then after you reveal the card to upgrade, you can write the name of the card on the token!

How often should you shuffle cards back in?

Shuffling sucks and takes time. Even though it would be ideal to always shuffle cards back in when you roll, that is not a positive experience in paper. At the end of the day, shuffle cards back in as often as you'd like, but I recommend shuffling after each stage.

How do you play with more than 4 players?

Split into pods of even numbers (2 or 4) and reseat randomly after every stage. If there are multiple ghosts, only reseat the minimum number (either 0 or 1) to guarantee no byes.

For elimination rules, these are done by pod. So if 2 people die simultaneously in a pod, they enter sudden death.

Additionally, if a pod gets down to one player in the middle of a stage, they replace the ghost in another pod. If there are no other ghosts, then they continue to play in their pod against the most recently killed player as the ghost.


Optional Mods
Vanguards

Vanguards are Magic cards that start in the command zone, modify starting hand size and starting life total, and give a player some ability. While ones that make large modifications to hand size are not balanced for this format, many are very interesting, such as

Vanguards can be introduced by giving players a pack of 3 Vanguards at the beginning of the game. They get to select one, and play out the entire game with it!

Adding More Upgrades

There is nothing stopping you from designing your own upgrades, adding more hidden agendas, or even using other types of cards like stickers. However, if you do, it will become too complex to let players choose from a large number of options. To handle this I would recommend randomly selecting 4 upgrades at the beginning of the game, and those are the cards players are allowed to select from.

Faster Pace and Larger Hands

Remove the "Round Two" card from the round pile. This makes starting hand size increase every 2 rounds instead of every 3 rounds. You will get to 7 card hands this way. Additionally, since pool size increases slowly this way, I would recommend starting with 10 card pools instead of 7 card pools.

High Skill & Minimal Shuffling

During setup, after dealing each player 7 cards from the battler as their starting pool, divide the cube into N equal piles, where N is the number of players. Give each player a pile, which they will treat as the battler for the next round.
 

Additional Rules
  1. All cards players get (e.g. packs from the draft) will be dealt from their battler.
  2. Before each battle, players put all cards they saw during the draft at the bottom of their battler.
  3. After each round, players pass their battler to the player to their left.
  4. After each stage, shuffle the battlers to ensure players don't get exact repeat packs.

This modification massively increases the skill-cap because it becomes possible to roll through significant percentages of your battler. If you track what cards you know are in what decks, over time you can have extremely potent "roll downs". However, it is not part of the base game because of how spike-y it is.

Note that, for this modification, the minimum recommended battler size is 67 * N for N players. This way the initial battlers each player starts with is 60 cards.

Play it Like Commander

Remember, this is a format, not a cube. The cube is just to showcase it. If your group wants, this game would actually work fully with constructed decks, so you can play commander with it!
 

Additional Rules
  1. Each player brings a 99 card singleton battler and a legendary creature that is put in the command zone.
  2. Each player drafts from their commander deck only
  3. You can only select basic lands that have the same color identity as your commander
  4. Because your "deck" references what you play in the battles, companions, partners, and backgrounds must be in your battler and cannot start in your command zone.

given how much smaller the pool size is here, make sure players shuffle after each battle to avoid always being able to find exactly what you want.

Note that it is possible that commanders create too much lack of variance in battles. So this may require some iteration. Additionally, you could play this exact same way (would still recommend 100 card singleton) without any commanders. Maybe instead of commanders you could use vanguards? There's a ton of design space here!

Add a Library (best for playing with your existing cube)

Because the format has no library, a large portion of magic cards (e.g. card draw) are useless and hence you can't easily shuffle up and play with an existing cube. To help people get into the format, you can play with the following rule modifications:
 

Additional Rules
  1. There is no draw step, but you can draw cards.
  2. Treat the cards in your pool that are not in your hand as your Library instead of your Sideboard.

This changes a lot of what is feasible. Cards like Narcomeba and Stitcher's Supplier become interesting. Managing your pool is more about deck velocity than it is about pivoting, but that will still exist. Effectively, the game gets longer, but now most existing Magic cards are viable.


Advice for Building Your Own
Cards to be careful of

The main types of cards that you need to be really careful about including are those that fit into the following descriptions:
 

  1. Let you look at your opponent's hand (e.g. Thoughtseize) — without a draw step, these cards are crazy better than usual.
  2. Deal 4+ damage at instant speed for 2 mana or less (e.g. Fireblast) — Winning on the first upkeep of the game is not fun.
  3. Cards that are fantastic at all stages of the game without much work (e.g. Oko, Thief of Crowns) — This can lead to boring games where a player gets a card early and never changes what they are doing.
How big should my battler be?

Size should range from 180-360 depending on how many people you expect to play with. I think the 240-270 range is ideal for 4 players.

How to think about archetypes?

When designing a battler, build 6 card hands as "archetypes". These are your final "decks", so you can be very intentional about pathways to end up with specific types of hands.

Furthermore, try and make these synergistic when possible. A classic formula for 6 card hands, beyond a specific synergy, is 1-3 cards for win condition, 1-2 cards for interaction, 1-2 cards for protection. Beware that, if these hands are often just piles of good cards, using treasures to roll becomes much worse than using them for mana in a battle. This is because, if endgames are piles of good cards, then many cards are replaceable and mana advantage will matter a lot more than final hand quality.

Lastly, Don't be afraid to add combos and cards that have narrow synergies. Because you get to select your starting hand, the thing that makes those types of cards bad in normal cube is less of an issue here.

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