This cube is my take on a "battler", a format inspired by the autobattler game genre first formed by Ryan Saxe q. v. Magic: the Battling.

It is designed for any even number of players (best with 2 and 4) and it takes approximately 2 hours to play.

The way the game works, like an autobattler, is a loop between drafting cards and using those cards to play a short game of Magic (a "battle"). After each short game, the loser gets poison counters. Then all players draft again. This loop continues until only one player remains as the winner.

Game Pieces

Generally required

Each player needs

Setup

• Place all cards from the cube shuffled on the table as the packpile.
• Place all basic lands sorted and visible on the table as the basic bank.

Each player starts the game with some initial resources:

• Give each player 5 random cards (a pack) from the packpile.
• Give each player a treasure token.
• Give each player 2 basic lands of their choice after they have familiarized themselves with their initial cards.

The players keep their resources in the stash as long as they are not on the battlefield.
In general, the game will have up to five STAGES, each consisting of three ROUNDS. Each round consists of a DRAFT and PLAY phase. In order to track everything easily:

• Place a STAGE counter in the middle of the table, set to 1.
• Place a ROUND counter in the middle of the table, set to 1.

Then, you may enter the PLAY phase of the first round.

Play

Each of the following happens in order:

1. Players are paired randomly for the mini-game. If it's the first it's the very first mini-game just play the person sitting across from you.
2. Each player places their basic lands and all of their treasures from their stash onto the battlefield.
3. Each player selects their starting hand from the cards in their stash. The number of cards in the starting hand is equal to the respective STAGE plus 2 (e.g. STAGE 1 = 3 cards in starting hand, STAGE 2 = 4 cards etc.). The other cards remain outside the game in their players stash (libraries are empty).
4. Start the mini-game. Magic mini-games are played just like a normal Bo1 game of Magic, but with a few rule modifications:
   4.1 Starting life = 10
   4.2 Players select their starting hand and begin the game with their basic lands and possibly treasures already on the battlefield (see above).
   4.3 Libraries are empty and players do not lose for being unable to draw a card from an empty library.
   4.4 The player with the most poison counters decides who goes first. If it is a tie OR there are only two players left, determine randomly.
5. At the end of a mini-game, do the following:
   5.1 Players put their cards and basic lands from any game zone back into their stash. They also put their remaining treasure tokens from their side of the battlefield into their stash, but only up to maximum of five treasure tokens total. (e.g.: If a player has 5 or less treasures tokens, they keep all; if they have 6 or more, they keep 5.)
   5.2 The loser of the mini-game gets a number of poison counters depending on the STAGE. A draw counts as a loss for both players.

Then, as long as at least two players have less than 10 poison, begin the DRAFT phase of the next round.

DRAFT

At the start of each draft phase, do the following:

• Increment the ROUND counter. Then, if it is greater than 3, reset it to 1 and increment the STAGE counter.
• Each player who did not concede in the preceding mini-game receives a treasure token. (Players do not need to win to get this treasure, just to play it out.)
• Each player gets a random card from the cube. If the players already have a card pool of 15 cards, each players gets an additional treasure token instead (This is at STAGE 4 - ROUND 3; from then on the players will have a static pool of 15 cards). Skip this if you do a carousel at the end of the draft.
• Deal a pack of 5 random cards to each player from the packpile.

During the draft, a player can take any of the following actions any number of times:

• [trade] Swap a card from the stash with a card in the pack.
• [re-roll] Sacrifice a treasure: dispose of the pack in the packyard and open a new pack of 5 random cards from the packpile.
• [shift basics] Sacrifice a treasure: swap any number of basic lands from the stash for the same amount of any other basic lands from the basic bank.
• [buy basic] Sacrifice a treasure plus one treasure for each basic land you already have: Acquire an additional basic land to play with in every mini-game (each subsequent basic land acquisition requires 1 more treasure: e.g. the 3rd basic lands requires 3 treasures, the 4th requires 4 treasures etc.).

When everybody is done with those actions, do the following:

• Dispose of the packs in the packyard.
• If you have decided to do a carousel, do it here.
• If a player has more than five treasures in their current stash, they lose any excess treasures. (Yes, this also happens at the end of the play phase. And yes, players should rather use their treasures for actions before they lose them at the end of the draft phase.)
• If it's the last round of a stage, shuffle all the cards from the packyard into the packpile (so that the packpile has all remaining cards in the first round of each new stage). This also applies if there would not be enough cards in the packpile to deal packs from in the next round.

When the draft is complete, players enter the PLAY phase of the same round.

The Round Loop

Repeat until one player is left as the winner!

Additional Rules Poison Counter Progression

The amount of poison counters a player gets when they lose depends on the STAGE. Currently we play with the following progression:

1: 1 poison
2: 1 poison
3: 2 poison
4: 3 poison
5: 5 poison

Yes, this is the Fibonacci sequence.

NOTE: You can also play where every loss just gives 2 poison counters. This leads to a slightly faster game with different pacing.

Resource Overview Visible information outside the mini-games

• Cards are hidden in the stash, but basic lands and treasure tokens are always face up and visible to other players.
• Cards from the dealt packs are hidden for every other player and so is the trading process, but as soon as cards are disposed of in the packyard they are face up and visible.

Pairing Players Randomly

It can be fun to let the opponent's visible basic lands affect the selection of starting hand cards, but it's also unfun to play against the same person a few times in a row.
Ryan Saxe recommends a quite elegant way of pairing with a single D20 die roll:

1. Any player can roll the D20. It doesn't matter which player.
2. Before they roll, they assign the two players they didn't just play Even and Odds, respectively.
3. If they roll a 1 or 20, they play their most recent opponent.

This yields 10% to replay your last opponent and 45% to replay each other player. It also doesn't have any randomness issues with using a spin down!

Lastly, if it's the first mini-game, just play the person sitting across from you.

Mini-Game Concessions

Mini-games determine access to treasures, and a player conceding can ruin their opponents economy. To discourage this, players who concede do not get an extra treasure in the subsequent draft phase. Play it out!

Determining a Draw via Zugzwang

Since there is a rule not to lose due to being unable to draw from an empty library, there is no inherent zugzwang in the mini-games. This causes some games to end in a stalemate because any player who takes an action would be at a disadvantage. To prevent this, there is the following rule:

• As soon as no one has taken an action in five consecutive turns, the game ends in a draw.

What Happens When a Player Dies

When the first player dies, they are now "The Ghost". They continue to play as normal until a second player dies. Once two players are dead, the game should be played just with the final two players.

Some extra rules with the purpose of guaranteeing there is a top2:

1. The Ghost cannot determine the end of a game. If two players die at the same time, and that would determine a winner of the entire game, the eliminated players face off against eachother to decide who plays the finals.
2. If a draw would eliminate two live players at the same time, those players must continue to play games (without drafting in between) until a winner is decided. If for some reason they cannot, set both to 9 poison.

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And That's The Whole Game!

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!
I reworked several of Ryan's ideas to my liking and I when I have the time I will try to list the most significant changes. Until then, this section is still mostly copied from Ryan's overview with some important notes, e.g.:

• Niche rules to solve a problem that I didn't want to complicate the description above with.
• Optional rules to add or ways to play.
• Some logistical notes like how to play with 8 players.

Join the Discord

If you like what this cube is about, and want to help us smooth out the rules or build your own, feel free to join the discord dedicated to this new form of magic!

Why are the Mini-Games not "auto"

There are a few reasons for this:

1. I asked a lot of Magic players. The general response was that, while it would be cool, it wouldn't create a game that people would be excited to play and build their own cubes for. People love magic. Creating a new way to play the game they love is preferred over an entire new game that just uses the pieces of cardboard.
2. Simplicity. Getting games to happen automatically would require adding a lot of rules, and introducing a lot of questions. It's a huge win that this game can be picked up by most magic players very quickly.

Excluded Cards

You can play with whatever cards you want. For me, I wanted to exclude all cards that had text that didn't really work with the game. So anything that has to do with drawing a card or mentions the library, I excluded.

Some cards like these would be incredible inclusions. For example Endurance would be fantastic since it would almost play as a mass-eternal-witness. Or Elixir of Immortality, Seasons Past or Nexus of Fate would infinitely loop. However, I excluded any card that would give a player a library to keep things simple and avoid games drawing on via non-deterministic-loops. But if you want to play with them, go for it! (You just might need to create rules for ending games that won’t end, such as by allowing concessions in certain circumstances or forcing draws.)

Additionally, we found that the following types of cards were problematic:

1. Good midrange cards that easily support OTK (e.g. broadside bombardiers
2. Thoughtseize effects, which are especially unfun because without a draw step their impact is massively exacerbated. Be mindful of what discard you include.

Logistics

Honestly, some of the hardest parts of this weren't figuring out game mechanics, but rather how to design a game like an autobattler that could logistically work in person.

Below are explanations of choices and how they solve certain issues we ran into.

Advice For Playing In Paper

1. Designate somebody as "the banker". This person is making sure that everybody gets their respective treasures, packs, extra cards, and basic lands.
2. Have some fitting tokens that can easily stand in.

How Many Players Does this Work For?

Technically, the game can work for any number of players, but the cleanest numbers are 4 players or 8 players.

The current recommendation is to divide players into groups of four. With more than 4 players, players have to change seats every mini-game to find their opponents if they aren't divided into groups. With just 4, everybody can stay at a small table and jam without moving.

If you have multiple groups of four, there are two ways for how you can choose to run the game:

1. Treat each group of four like a fully isolated game. Each game's winner will play off at a final table.
2. Re-seat players whenever the stage increases, which will be up to five times per game. Not much more than a normal cube draft + matches.

Where do undrafted cards go?

In an ideal world, cards that are not taken out of packs get shuffled back into the cube after every mini-game. If you can manage this, it would lead to the best gameplay, since if everybody tries to draft Green, then Green will start to feel dry.

However, shuffling sucks, and so I'd recommend doing this only as often as your group sees fit. Probably at least once per stage.

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Optional Modifications

On top of the game rules listed so far, some people have had awesome ideas for extra complexities and modifications. Here are a few that you could choose to play with.

Extra Economic Rewards

Many autobattlers have additional rewards to gain economic advantage. The two most common ones are interest and streaks. Below are possible ways of implementing those. However, it's important to note that this game really cannot have incentives to lose. This is because, unlike a true autobattler, players have agency in the games. So the games can just become very unfun if a player is trying to lose.

• Interest: After every mini-game, if you have X or more treasures, gain an extra treasure.
• Streaks: After every mini-game, if you are on a 3+ mini-game win-streak, gain an extra treasure.

Augments

Most autobattlers have an extra mechanic that makes individual boards powerful and unique. In TFT, these are called Augments. My proposed implementation of augments would be:

• The cube creator curates a list of augments from card types like conspiracies, vanguards, emblems, etc.
• The cube curator determines the power level of augments as "uncommon", "rare", or "mythic"
• At the beginning of the game, roll a D6. If the roll is 1, 2, or 3, the game will be played with "uncommon" augments. 4 or 5 -> "rare". 6 -> "mythic".
• Whenever a player gets more than 5 poison, that player is dealt a pack of 3 augments of the chosen rarity and selects one. The rest are discarded (other players will not be able to see select them).

Items

You can repurpose Aura's and Equipment in a way that binds them to permanents. Not sure the clean way of implementing this in terms of actual game mechanics, but the card types are ripe for it. Probably something like:

when drafting an Aura/Equipment, you may pay treasures equal to its mana value. If you do, that card becomes an "item" and is placed in the command zone.

items have the following text: "when a permanent enters the battlefield under your control, you may put this card onto the battlefield and attach it to that permanent".

Upgrades

You could design "upgrades" as a way to introduce duplicates in a singleton environment. On some condition that is unlikely (and you can strive for via rolling), you can generate a second copy of the card you upgrade. This way the game is still like magic.

If you build a version of this cube that is not singleton, you could create the following mechanic:

If you draft 3x of the same card, exile those cards and receive an upgraded version of the card. It's still up to debate what an "upgraded" version would look like.

Carousel

In order to make the game feel more like it has clear phases, there is the option to add a carousel draft at certain points. If you do this, you either should require players to put cards from their pool back into the carousel, or remove the "every player gets a random card from the packpile" at the beginning of a draft phase. This way pools do not change in size by adding a carousel.
I'd recommend to do this do this carousel either

• at the end of each round, or
• after three rounds at the end of each stage.

Then you have two further options of where to draft the cards from the carousel from:

• use "fresh" cards from the packpile: Place the number of cards to be drafted face up in the middle of the table. Or
• use the face up disposed of cards from the packyard.

If you do the carousel at the end of each round, every player drafts 1 card;
if you do the carousel at the end of each stage, every player drafts 3 cards.
The player with the least poison counters has the first pick; the one with the most picks last.
If each player drafts more than 1 card it's possible snake-draft the cards until each player has drafted their cards.

Fun Ways to Spend Money?

I am currently trying to keep complexity low, but I'm sure there are tons of other things you could let players do with their economy. One example could be "Pay 6 treasures to permanently add an additional basic land on the battlefield".

Anything Else?

If you have any other ideas, feel free to bring them up in the discord! I'd be happy to add them here.