Battles in Magic: the Gathering - a Retrospective

Hello readers! Today on Modern Times, we take a trip back in time… to April of 2023. What’s so special about last April? Well, March of the Machine was released, and with it came the newest innovation to paper Magic in years: battles. That’s right! This article is a retrospective on battles and the potential of battles as a card design going forward. Let’s dive in!

A Brief History of Card Design

Magic: the Gathering is a game marked by careful innovation. New card types and significant experimentation with how the game is played is neither a widespread practice nor pattern in Magic R&D. For a time the game was simple, with only a handful of card types: creatures, lands, instants, sorceries, enchantments, and artifacts. Among these card types were various innovations of sorts, stretching the limits of what these types could do. Creatures went from mono-color to multi-color in Legends (alongside the introduction of legendary creatures), enchantments eventually evolved to Sagas, artifacts gained colors, creatures became Devoid of color. And let’s not forget the mess that is Dryad Arbor. The list goes on, and on, and on.  

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This pattern of slowly stretching card types to their natural extreme is what I call innovation on the intensive margin. As in, WOTC is taking existing card types and simply innovating within a known set of constraints (think of this as asking the question: what is the most a creature can be while still being fundamentally a creature?) When Lorwyn rolled around, however, WOTC dropped a bomb on the Magic community with the introduction of planeswalkers. This represents innovation on the extensive margin, which simply describes innovation by extending the constraints of the game itself to accommodate designs and mechanics that can no longer fit within the existing game’s framework. Innovations on the extensive margin tend to be the riskiest; in a sense, these R&D decisions mark new territory where no player, nor Mark Rosewater, has gone before. 

Despite this risk, WOTC nailed the initial design of the five Lorwyn planeswalkers. They were fun, innovative, exciting to play, but not warping. In many ways planeswalkers elevated the game past its creative ceiling and created a plethora of new opportunities for innovation on the intensive margin - planeswalkers with static abilities, MDFC planeswalkers/creatures, and so on. 

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After years without innovation on the extensive margin, we finally arrive to last April. The last grand spectacle of the New Phyrexia story arc came to an end, bringing many planes, planeswalkers, and mechanics together under one roof…a roof that was perhaps too small for such a grandiose concept. So much so that they had to make a carriage home of sorts for all the spillover: March of the Machine: The Aftermath (see my article on the Aftermath of Aftermath for some analysis on this). 

What Went Wrong

In reality, the concept of battles isn’t without innovation. The idea of getting a sorcery speed ETB effect that can be flipped into a second (ideally better) “card” is a neat concept, right? Well, this is complicated. In order for a battle to be “balanced,” neither side can be so good that every deck in every format wants to play and attack it instead of an opposing player’s life total, but neither side can be so bad that there’s no incentive to ever play it or flip it at all. In essence, when one designs a battle card, one is designing two cards in one, but oftentimes players only end up using one side and forgetting the other.  

The end result of this design challenge? A lot of mediocre battles with sides that are neither impressive nor interesting - at least no more interesting than non-battle substitutes for the same effects. 

Another interesting design decision was the choice to absolutely saturate March of the Machine with battles: 36 of them!!! That’s almost 30% of the base 181 cards in the set! By comparison, Lorwyn had only five planeswalkers out of 301 cards (just over 1.5% of the entire set). These drawbacks are further compounded by the fact that even once a battle is played, you need to invest resources or divert damage to flip it to its (hopefully) more desirable back side. Unlike planeswalkers whose loyalty abilities you can activate right away, battles require more investment and resources to capitalize on. As such, the best battles straddle the line between having an appealing ETB ability and a back side worth the investment costs.  

Of these 36 battles, only a handful strike this balance and are worth a second look: Invasion of Ikoria, Invasion of Fiora, Invasion of Shandalar, Invasion of Innistrad, Invasion of Segovia, and Invasion of New Phyrexia. 

Let’s talk about a few of these, and why they’re objectively good designs - and perhaps worth a penny or two in speculatory value.

Invasion of Ikoria & Invasion of Fiora

Why are these two in the same general design group? Simple, their front sides are affordable (from a mana cost standpoint) and offer terrific effects upon ETB. If they’re defeated, they flip to very potent creatures that offer an immediate threat to opponents. This is a good design. Strong sorcery-speed effects that turn into big creatures with some bonus stats. 

I originally thought, many articles ago, that Invasion of Ikoria was the best of the battles (battle of the battles?) But now I find myself building decks (in Commander, admittedly) that use Invasion of Fiora for mass removal, then politicking my way into opponents defeating the battle to get Marchesa, Resolute Monarch, which removes all counters from some planeswalker that’s about to “ult” and ruin the fun. You could play these cards entirely for their front side alone, but the investment to flip them is just as rewarding.

Invasion of Segovia & Invasion of New Phyrexia

These battles have a similar design framework: make tokens that can be used to defeat the battle (in theory) and net you an incredibly strong back side. Segovia flips into Caetus, Sea Tyrant of Segovia, which gives all your best non-creature cards Convoke and untaps four of your best (or most disposable, you choose) creatures at the end of your turn (making them easy Convoke fodder). Why are these designs terrific? The front side of the battle that you cast gives you ammunition to flip it. Rather than getting a one-time sorcery-speed effect, you get creatures, bodies, and minions that can be used to defeat the battle itself - a really smart design that incentivizes you to actually fight and try to defeat the battle. Again, a design flaw is that most battles simply aren’t worth flipping, which makes them less fun. Segovia and New Phyrexia come with built-in incentives to flip ‘em over and are screaming for you to attack them. 

 

Invasion of Shandalar & Invasion of Innistrad

My final set of battles. What makes these battles “good” designs? A solid sorcery-speed effect that people might play even if the back side of the battle weren’t there. Returning three permanents to your hand using Shandalar is a solid effect in Commander, particularly in the green part of the color pie that tends to be creature-heavy. On the flipside, it turns into an enchantment that enables you to circumvent the stack and put your biggest threat into play for free - an immense effect in enchantment form. Innistrad on the other hand is a four-mana kill spell that gets around most indestructible creatures, including, most notably, Blightsteel Colossus and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. What does it flip to? Deluge of the Dead, which gives you Zombies and graveyard removal on a stick that also nets you more, you guessed it, Zombies.   

Properties of a Good battle

From our case studies, we can see elements of what “good” battle design looks like. Strong sorcery-speed effects that are worth playing on their own, and flipsides that are permanents you would also gladly play on their own. Neither side is oppressive, and they encapsulate what would otherwise be playable standalone cards. That’s the keyword. Both sides of battles need to be at the very least playable to be worth including in a deck.  

WIth this in mind, what should WOTC have done differently? Without sounding like a constant critic, it’s worth acknowledging that introducing battles to Magic is fundamentally a good thing. Magic risks growing stale without innovations on the extensive margin, but WOTC simply didn’t strike the balance of playability with power level that they did with planeswalkers 16 years ago. My hope is that we see more battles in the future, but I’d rather see fewer battles per set (four or five, rather than 36…) which have more time and effort put into their designs. Opening battles should feel like opening planeswalkers before War of the Spark, and my hope is that WOTC gets there for these cards.

Financial Implications and Final Remarks

Quite simply, the majority of battles are never going to increase in value. They’re simply too weak, overprinted, and uninteresting. Some, however, are fun, and definitely worth toying around with in Commander (and maybe even Modern if it continues to slow down). Even at foil, the most expensive battle, Invasion of Ikoria, sits at around $15. Speculating on the foils or prerelease stamped foils of “good” battles is a worthy and fairly low-risk investment. Invasion of Segovia, if only for its back side, seems like a really fun and high-potential spec given that its pre-release foil is only $2. 

Overall, while battles didn’t come out of the gate with nearly as much fervor as planeswalkers or even Sagas, their upward potential is as high as the sky. My hope is that we see new battles soon that incorporate the lessons learned from March of the Machine. 

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