Welcome to the biggest Danger Room Cube update of ALL TIME featuring new additions from Commander Legends: Baldur’s Gate & Dominaria United! Both offer fantastic staples for Battle Boxes (and combination Battle Box / Cube stacks – such as mine, shown below).

To any fan of Battle Boxing, the awesomeness of this image speaks for itself, but like a Transformer there’s still: “♫ more than meets the eye ♫.” Followers of my stack know I “transformed” it and introduced the first Battle Box / Cube, last February: https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/introducing-the-brian-demars-danger-cube/

Additionally, I’ve further innovated in the genre I created more than a decade ago by “compleat-ing” my stack so it can be drafted (not only as an 8-player pod, but also) as a 4 & 8 multiplayer Commander Cube. You heard it right, Danger Room Cube now supports 4 & 8 multiplayer Commander draft action!

So, Danger Room Cube is now a 4-in-1 MTG Game experience:

With all formats and games predicated on the Danger Room Cube power-level readers and players have come to expect, appreciate and love over the past decade: I generally define Danger Room Cube’s power level as: “Uncommons you’d be happy to first pick,” and/or “rares you don’t feel too guilty about first picking…” .

Enough preview trailer, queue the title scroll (aka table of contents) and let’s begin.…

DANGER

ROOM CUBE

EPISODE ~XXXVII

THE COMMANDER DRAFT AWAKENS

1. WHAT’S A BATTLE BOX?

2. NEW TOYS FROM BALDUR’S GATE & DOMINARIA UNITED

I. Baldur’s Gate

II. Dominaria United

3. THE DRAFT MANA PACK

4. COMMANDER DRAFT

I. 4-Player Shard / Wedge Mode

II. 8-Player Guild Wars Mode (2 pods of 4)

5. THE DANGER ROOM CUBE

1. WHAT IS A BATTLE BOX?

Battle Box is a format and mana system I came up with, whereby two players can essentially sit down and play an infinitesimal number of unique games without needing individual decks. It seeks to eliminate mana screw and flood by starting 10 lands (1 of each basic and allied ETB tapped dual) in exile:

Players draw hands and cards from a big, shared stack of spells and can play one land from Exile per turn as though it were in their hand. Each player hits 10 consecutive land drops and always draws a spell.

Also of note, Dominaria United includes a new cycle of ‘enters the battlefield tapped tapped’ dual lands (all 10 combinations) to help build Battle Boxes. These ETB tapped duals are unique as each has both land typings, eg. Wooded Ridgeline is a Forest Mountain, which helps turn on Kird Ape, landwalk and Domain qualifications.

Another thing to keep in mind is a Battle Box is very much a personalized experience and expression of playing Magic. It should be full of cards you and your friends enjoy and fun memories of games and matches you’ve played over the years. Many of the foils pictured in my stack are the original cards that went into the very first Battle Box prototype. They’re just cards I had laying around, enjoyed playing with and have become the cornerstones of my stack over the past 12+ years.

I advise starting with a pile of cards you like (with relatively even distribution of color and casting costs) and simply cutting cards that feel too weak or too powerful when cast.

2. NEW TOYS FROM BALDUR’S GATE & DOMINARIA UNITED

I. COMMANDER LEGENDS: BALDUR’S GATE

I’m excited about the new crop of Danger Room Cube staples, as well as the direction I’ve taken my stack. It turns out, as previously identified, Treasure is a solid and fair mana mechanic in Battle Box that helps smooth draws in Cube games.

Since Baldur’s Gate is a Commander Legends Multiplayer set, Mana plays a pivotal role and those were types of cards I was most interested in focusing on from the set; since they’re so unique and I wanted to continue to flush out the multiplayer Commander draft aspect of my stack.

I believe a Signet is too powerful in a Danger Room game when played on turn two, but I think all of these have interesting play and counterplay patterns. Each is also useful in various draft archetypes. Reckless Barbarian also has sneaky Dragon creature-typing and it’s on flavor to add a dragon from a D&D set.

Mahadi is power pushed but I wasn’t going to pass on adding a “Cat Devil” to my stack. It’s also Legendary, which means it’s a potential Commander in multiplayer draft and a particularly synergistic one, at that.

Speaking of synergistic Commanders that also work at Danger Room power level in Battle Box, Oji’s “blink” ability is quite nice with ETB creatures.

A 187 creature that hits fliers and has good stats for CMC = 3. A lovely Battle Box card.

Likely two of the more powerful Rares in my stack at the moment and the characteristic that led me to put them in despite possibly tipping over the edge are both are super cool cards. I also think drafting multiplayer adds a new dynamic where powerful cards are interesting in a new way, which is worth trying out.

If something has to be “the best” (and something does) I don’t mind it being Wrathful Red Dragon as an homage to mighty Shivan Dragon.

II. DOMINARIA UNITED

Dominaria United is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting MTG sets of all time. I love the throwback flavor, return of classic mechanics and multicolor on Dominaria!

I want every single card in my stack to come close to the Danger Room Cube power level line without ever going too far over or under. Essentially, I want my stack to be full of the most fun limited cards without any individual cards feeling jarring for being too weak or too broken.

Dominaria has a ton of cards that hit my sweet spot for power level.

I almost felt like I was adding too many green spells to the stack… but, the thing is, they are all perfectly powered and speak to me as cards. I couldn’t say which is my most or least favorite, because I like them all a bunch.

Both of these are very quality beatdown creatures. Kyle Boggemes said:

If this card came out in Invasion it would be a rare worth $40. https://t.co/LHXA3aVTzK

— Kyle Boggemes (@Boggememes) August 26, 2022

I love the powerful old cards from sets like Invasion (and many are staples of my stack) so a new card that feels like an awesome old card resonates with me. I also like to include as many aggressive creatures as possible because it helps ensure combat plays a key role in games.

Many of the spells in Dominaria United have Kicker costs that are not the same color as the spell’s casting cost. Many of these spells are sweet and I want them in my Battle Box stack: Urborg Lhurgoyf, Archangel of Wrath, Phyrexian Missionary, and Vodalian Mindsinger, but I’m unsure how it’ll impact the balance of my Commander Cube. Only testing and time will tell. They are all Brainstorm to the top worthy (and don’t fetch quality) Battle Box cards, for sure. It makes sense to try them out before figuring out how to best balance them in a new draft format.

With that said, Archangel of Wrath may be on the fringe of being too powerful in its own rite. I just think it’s sweet. If Wrathful Red Dragon is my Shivan, Archangel can be my Serra. 😉

I’m a big fan of the uncommon cycle of legendary multicolor creatures (wow, that’s a mouthful) because they all hit the sweet spot of first pick uncommons that kinda feel like good rares, which is the exact power level I aim for in Danger Room Cube.

As much as it hurts to cut Man-o’-War and Mindflayer from the stack, these are both razzamatazz rares.

3. THE DRAFT MANA PACK

The “Draft Mana Pack” is what allows me to transform my Battle Box into a Cube with traditional-style draft decks that include land. We obviously need, and want, mana fixing similar to what we’d expect to find in a great limited format and that is what I’ve included.

When I transform my stack into a Cube, I shuffle these 50 mana sources into the Battle Box stack before piling into 14 card repacks to be drafted. I have an equal number of two-color combination sources (meaning all combinations have equal access to mana fixing) and all mana fixing land enters the battlefield tapped.

I’m a big fan of the Thriving and Baldur’s “Gate” cycles since they are less inflexible in terms of color identity with Commanders.

4. COMMANDER CUBE

I. 4-PLAYER MODE

I’m excited to unveil how I’ve baked a multiplayer Commander draft variant into my Danger Room Cube. Essentially, a Commander draft would consist of four drafters, building Commander decks for a melee game.

One thing I really like about Commander with the Danger Room Cube is that players end up playing multiplayer without decks that are explicitly built to “game” a multiplayer setting. It gives the games a very back-in-the-day multiplayer feel when people would melee battle with their 1v1 decks in the schoolyard or at the comic shop.

There’s a ton of discourse on social media about what is or isn’t fun or casual in Commander… I’ve constructed parameters where everybody will agree the deck is fun and casual every time, since nobody can field a deck that is filled with mana denial or broken combo cards.

At the start of 4-player draft, when you’re building the packs pull out all 20 of the 3-color Gold Cards and set them aside together.

After players have rolled off for seating, but before any packs are drafted, set out the pairs of 3-color, Shard and Wedge multicolor cards face up, together and draft them off. Each player will end up with two possible combinations they can draft a Commander deck around (and two combinations will be left over and scrubbed for that draft).

A fun variant, which eliminates hate drafting to some degree, is that after all packs are drafted each player repacks all of the cards they can’t play due to color identity and sends them around the table again!

Players can add Basic Lands to their deck and should field an 80-100 card deck (depending upon if the table chooses to repack).

I’m also working on an 8-player Commander draft variant which would be divided into two 4-player games. Odd # and even # seats would divide into separate pods, so a player wouldn’t be playing against anybody seated directly next to them.

At the start of the draft we’d remove all of the multicolor cards. 3-Color Spells would not be used at all and players would begin the draft by picking which Guild they want to play and taking all of the multicolor spells and lands for that guild. I have a Legendary for each Guild, but I’m still open to refining my Legendary choices to best suit my power level (as well as guild synergy needs).

These are my current Commander choices for “8-player Guild Commander Wars” and here’s an example of what a multicolor pack looks like before a player drafts the monocolored spells in the pod:

I’m really excited about multiplayer drafting my Battle Box. It’s a lot of games that work into less than 400 preselected cards!

I’m also open to suggestions for other Commanders that people would like to see as options in Danger Room Cube. Feel free to let me know on Twitter, @Briandemars1

5. THE DANGER ROOM CUBE