In all of Magic: the Gathering, there wasn’t really a format that existed that hit my buttons – so, I made up my own! If you’re a fan of multiplayer Magic and trying out playing with the most powerful cards ever created in a multiplayer setting – you’ve come to the right place!
A little bit about me, my name is Brian DeMars and in my MTG prime I was a Pro Tour player (5 Grand Prix Top 8s and a SCG Open Win) and a Vintage specialist (5 Eternal Weekend Vintage Top 8s and 7 SCG Power 9 Top 8s). Let’s just say, I know my way around playing with the most Powerful cards and am a fan of playing with them whenever I can.
The Pandemic kind of marked the end of my time as a professional tournament player, and turned into a more casual MTG enthusiast, as the game and my life both changed in such a way that I just didn’t have the time or interest to further pursue the grind of Tournament Play. I’m an avid MTG collector, as well as card and board game enthusiast.
OBSERVATIONS ON MULTIPLAYER
With that said, I’ve always been a big fan of the game and playing it for fun as a hobby and not just as a Pro. I love game nights and gathering to play games with friends. As much as I enjoy a hard fought 1v1 duel on the tabletop in a MTG tournament, when it comes to playing ‘just for fun’ I love multiplayer games and niche fan-created formats.
Based on my experience playing Magic since 1995, there are a few things I really enjoy in my casual, free-time MTG play:
1. I like multiplayer games.
2. I like playing the most powerful cards, as well as the classic cards I grew up with.
3. I like niche formats that allow me opportunities to be creative with my play and exploring new contexts for playing Magic.
4. I prefer faster paced, exciting games.
One of the coolest parts about building a Multiplayer Cube, or Battle Box, is that you are able to tune the cards to whatever kind of game you and your friends enjoy. In the same way that Vintage, Legacy, Modern, and Standard offer a variety of Power Levels players can choose to play at in 1v1, I think there should be options for playing a variety of Power Levels in Multiplayer as well. I’m looking forward to seeing what WotC cooks up as Power breakpoints for Commander deck building in the future, but ultimately I doubt they are going to allow the Power 9 type cards in EDH.
One thing I really wanted to do with this Battle Box was to showcase playing with High Power cards and games of MTG in a multiplayer setting in a way that wasn’t just derivative and lame, but rather fun, exciting and novel.
Elder Dragon Highlander #MTGCommander already exists, and while the format does check some boxes for me (specifically, getting to build my own deck), ultimately it falls a little short in a few key ways of being my favorite way to actually play Multiplayer Magic.
What I was looking for in a Magic: the Gathering multiplayer game was a play experience similar to the vibe of a friendly Poker or Euchre game; where the pace of play is a little more brisk (and a little less tedious) and where I can enjoy playing with all of my favorite classic Magic: the Gathering cards I’ve collected – especially the most powerful ones!
I have a few gripes about Commander game play: for all the good Commander has brought to the game in terms of turning on new players to multiplayer Magic, it has some flaws as a format, in my opinion. I have three critiques of EDH that led me to sort of take the initiative and create my own MTG way of playing multiplayer MTG.
1. Way too much time is wasted shuffling & searching libraries!!! As much as ½ the playtime is spent searching one’s deck for lands and tutor targets – it wastes way too much play time. Don’t even get me started on players who cast “tutors” and don’t know what they are searching for….
I understand that tutoring from a 100-card singleton deck is easily the best thing one can do in a multiplayer MTG game (and that’s why decks are built that way) – but, what if that wasn’t the case…? What would such a format even look like…?
2. Attacking is BAD in Commander!!!
Starting with 40 Life Points, and needing to defeat up to 3 different opponents, creates a weird dynamic in Commander where attacking is straight up disadvantaged. Basically, in my opinion, because of the weird choice to allow players to start with such an abundance of extra hit points, EDH is a format where Combo decks are unfairly advantaged because there is no real way to pressure them (besides to Combo faster).
3. The most powerful, iconic cards are BANNED from Commander!
I’m a firm believer that if WOTC creates a card, sends it to print, and I buy it, that I should be allowed to play with my toys and not be told by the company that sold the card in the first place that the toy isn’t acceptable in casual multiplayer games.
What if I like playing Magic with the most powerful spells? It’s not my fault WOTC got themselves into a bind with a terrible RESERVE LIST policy and can’t reprint classic cards (to meet the huge demand for them). I just want to play with the cards I grew up with. I hope with WotC’s upcoming Power Level Breakpoints for Commander there is a way of playing EDH with a significantly smaller banned list than the current one – that’s the kind of game I prefer and would enjoy playing the most.
I’m also a staunch advocate of using proxies for expensive Reserve List cards for casual play. The reason I quit playing Vintage (my favorite format and a format I’d played for almost 25 years) was I didn’t feel safe traveling around and carrying such a humongous amount of money cards around with me all day in a deck box. I still own my set of Power 9 but I choose to proxy them for casual play to avoid it ever being misplaced, damaged or stolen.
Another opinion WoTC won’t like: Normalize proxying Reserve List cards in non-sanctioned multiplayer games, Cubes and Battle Boxes!
To me, Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and the Moxen are the best game pieces ever made and players deserve the opportunity to cast these spells on the tabletop (and not just on MTGO Cube where WOTC found a way to monetize them despite the RESERVE LIST).
One of the great things about building your own Battle Box is that it takes all the control away from WOTC and puts it firmly in the hands of players and cube-builders who care about the quality of game play more so than selling new products. I’m much more interested in playing with the classic game pieces than buying and collecting an endless stream of hokey Universes Beyond soup cards.
In fact, it was the last Commander B&R that really got me thinking about my new Battle Box concept in the first place….
While I do think Dockside Extortionist and Nadu teeter into the Power Level (or unfun play patterns) worthy of a ban in Commander, I thought the bans to Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt was awful news. Especially, when in the same breath that they took away Mana Crypt they also explained why Sol Ring was somehow O.K. and getting a free-pass for life!
Basically, what I sought to accomplish with this Battle Box was to accentuate the positives I enjoy the most about Multiplayer (powerful Eternal Staples), while minimizing some of the characteristics of Commander that I don’t find ideal (how when EDH decks are built and played optimally, it tends to create pods with four players gold-fishing combo decks like ships passing in the night).
Why doesn’t that exist? So, I decided to Will it into existence.
CHANGE THE CONTEXT – CHANGE THE GAME
I’ve always been a big fan of Battle Boxing as a casual format. The premise behind the format is that it’s supposed to be a “sit down and play” way of enjoying games of Magic: The Gathering. Even when I was playing on Pro Tours and Grand Prix, I’d always bring my Battle Box to events with me because those were the games I thought were the most fun to actually play. Nothing beats a high stakes match on camera in terms of the rush, but as far as a sit down with a few friends to enjoy some friendly games – Battle Box hits the spot for me.
For years and years, I tuned my Battle Box for 1v1 play but once I got more into playing multiplayer Magic in my free time I realized the template for Battle Box actually ported really well to multiplayer games. I’ve changed my Battle Box around a lot over the past five years and have catered it to Multiplayer (whereas it used to be a 1v1 stack), but if you’re looking for a template for a sweet 1v1 Battle Box, I highly recommend checking out this article by Kyle Boggemes:
The basic tenet of Battle Boxing is: each player’s lands, 10 total, start in exile and can be played from there and that everybody plays from a big stack of shared spells.
There’s no wrong context to create as long as it facilitates the style of play you’re looking for in your playgroup’s games.
For my Powered Box, each player receives 10 Utopia of Power Lands (all starting in exile and playable to the board). I originally started with one of each Revised Dual Land, which was a fine start but the land sequencing was a little tedious (especially for newer players).
I actually “Powered Up” the lands a little bit to make them easier and more intuitive to use, but also to create synergy to power up aggressive creatures and tactics in the spell stack. Change the context – change the game.
Another thing that is cool about putting everybody’s land drops in the Command Zone is that nobody ever plays mana screwed, ever. While I appreciate the variance that constructing Mana Bases brings to deckbuilding and tournament play – in a casual setting, I prefer games where everybody’s mana “works” and everybody is able to mix-it-up at the table and participate in how the game will ultimately play out.
In addition to a Powerful Land (to be played along high powered spells) I created an Emblem – Graveyard card, called “Powered Yard” that each player starts with in their graveyard.
Essentially, the Land Cycle and Emblem fully POWER UP a plethora of already powerful creatures and spells in such a way that brings their Power Level closer to an actual Power 9 card in terms of dynamic game play.
What I was looking to do was to essentially use the Mana Base, and also Graveyard emblem, to “turn on” mechanical keywords right away without requiring turns worth of synergistic setup and card churning for them to become active.
Some keywords that my Lands and Emblem enable:
–Total number of Artifacts & Enchantments in play Matters
Something I’ve noted about playing Multiplayer in the traditional Commander context is that creatures (that don’t make mana or combos) and attacking STINK. Not the case in Powered Multiplayer Battle Box…. The game is combat-oriented and attacking, blocking, and identifying and pressuring the player(s) in the most advantageous positions are an incredibly important facet of game-play.
The other context that is shortcutted is that without stacking the deck full with Tutors, a ton of card filtering and niche combo cards (in favor of more outright powerful haymaker spells) is games tend to play out more organically like traditional Magic and less like a four-player goldfish-a-thon. It’s rare a hand is drawn (even with Power in the stack) that is strong enough to “run the table” – keep in mind that everybody’s hand is always stacked with great, flexible and high powered cards.
If you’ve never played Multiplayer Battle Box, hopefully the first half of this article has piqued your interest to consider giving it a try… If you’re already a Battle Box player, let’s get to how I ultimately rounded out the stack for Powered Battle Box.
One of the principles I’ve always found important about Battle Box (and Cube – for that matter!) is that since the game players don’t preselect and bring their own cards to the game (everybody uses a shared deck) is that finding the right mix of cards and supporting a coherent Power Level is really important.
When starting with cards like the Power 9 as a baseline, it’s important that the power level of the cards in the Battle Box or Cube is very high, otherwise games become too predictably skewed toward whoever draws the Power cards tends to just win the multiplayer game.
As it turns out – The Power 9 and other high Powered cards are quite Powerful and a cut above the rest! Which is one of the reasons I decided to make up my own Lands and Graveyard emblem, since by altering the context and how Lands and Graveyards work, also change how various cards function relative to their mana cost and ultimately raise their Power Level.
“What a card does” + “Relative to its mana cost” = “A card’s Power Level.”
The Power Level of a card is a function of how much it impacts the game relative to what cost is paid to generate the effect (typically how much Mana is spent).
Is adding 2 Mana Powerful in Magic? It depends on the cost to do so! There’s no shortage of cards that will bump up one’s mana production by two per turn, but such an effect is typically weighted around 4ish mana to achieve. Getting +2 Mana every turn for the rest of the game for an initial investment of 1 is an incredibly good rate and it is in fact the great rate that translates to a card like Sol Ring, or Mana Crypt, being a Power Card.
The Utopia of Power Mana System and Powered Yard Graveyard Emblem are not just arbitrary designs of whimsy on my part, but rather an attempt to raise the Power Level of the cards in the deck to be closer to that of the Power 9. Since the Lands and Emblem provide opportunities for synergies to be created (and mana costs reduced) I was able to essentially create a different style of multiplayer gameplay with a faster pace.
What I was able to achieve with the Lands and Emblem was a context where many cards began to close the gap and start to play more like Power. It also created a confluence where games were a little bit condensed and played a little smoother.
I would say that the Utopia of Power and Powered Yard facilitate a context where the game feels like it’s starting around turn 3 of development. Typically, the first few turns of Commander are spent developing mana (mana is free in battle box) via acceleration or cheap filtering cards (which also set up graveyard synergies) and I decided to just enable those mechanics outright via contextual help rather than include a bunch of filtering, synergy enablers or Tutors.
For instance, if we think about Power Level as a function of what a card does for how much mana, even with the Delve Mechanic fully powered up, Treasure Cruise is still just a Sorcery speed Ancestral Recall. The key to what makes the gameplay of Powered Battle Box so fun and unique is that the context creates more cards that feel closer in Power level to the creme de la creme of Powerful cards.
The one aspect of Powerful effects that I didn’t include in my stack are cards that outright punish the mana production from the Utopia of Power lands.
While cards like Null Rod, Energy Flux and Kataki do become incredibly powerful in a context defined by Utopia of Power in the Command Zone – ultimately, it didn’t feel like a fun play pattern to just lock everybody out of using the lands so that whoever is in the lead can just win. So, I omitted cards such as these from the stack.
Aside from cards like Null Rod and Blood Moon that lock all players from being able to use their lands as intended, I didn’t shy away from including the most powerful proactive cards I could possibly find to thrive in this new Powered Multiplayer context.
I also decided that 200 cards was a nice number to cap the shared stack at. It felt like there were enough Powerful cards that played well together at that size, opportunities to cut cards for future printings, and the stack is draftable at 200 (with each Multiplayer drafter selecting 50 cards to function as his or her own deck in draft).
Here are the 200 cards I ended up including:
As you can see, what ultimately ends up making the cut in the Power Battle Box are cards that are sort of inherently broken multiplayer staples, banned cards, and cards that receive an ample boost from the Utopia of Power lands & Powered Yard emblem.
Effects like Sanctimony become extremely powerful in a context where every land counts as a Mountain. One thing I also tried to achieve in my stack was to include as many different kinds of cards as possible and have the entire strategic arsenal of Magic represented. Sanctimony is the bomb life gain spell in the stack.
I’ve been super impressed with Toppelgeis. Its Delirium ability, always being turned on, at the cost of a single mana, makes it impactful. It may be the all around best one-drop creature in the entire stack because of its unique ability to control opposing creatures via tapping them down!
Even in a context where many of the other cards receive a big Power Boost, I still think Balance is the strongest White card in the entire stack (and it may well be the overall most powerful card in the entire stack!).
It draws cards and counters spells.
Brainstorm is kind of a sweet one when players play off the same stack, since it allows the caster to essentially stick others with the cards they don’t want. It’s like clearing the top with a Fetch Land, but better!
Time Walk gets my vote as the most powerful Blue spell (and possibly best first pick in the stack). The don’t make ‘em like Time Walk anymore.
The Black card suite of my Battle Box represents a lot of what Black has historically done well in Magic.
Returning creatures from Graveyards to play.
In addition to doing what we’d traditionally expect to see Black cards doing in multiplayer, cheap Black creatures are extremely strong thanks to the Delve mechanic being universally turned on.
It certainly changes how multiplayer games feel and play when 1-drop creatures can be larger than one would typically expect them to be AND players start the game with only 20 life. Creatures and attacking for chip damage matters!
Red has a solid cast of damage dealers and hasty threats in the stack, as one would expect.
Red is one of the hardest colors to build optimally because its creatures tend to get a little bit outclassed by some of the inexpensive threats created by Powered Yard – since Red isn’t typically a great “graveyards matter” color.
Red does have some fantastic synergy with Artifacts, as well as punishing artifacts that works to its advantage when powering up.
Pound-for-pound, Sarpadian Avenger is one of the strongest cheap threats in the entire stack, since it counts all of the opponent’s lands toward its Power Total. It also has First Strike and Trample which makes it difficult to block in combat.
The EDH Ban of Dockside Extortionist and Mana Crypt was a catalyst for designing my Battle Box and I can honestly say that Dockside is more Powerful in my stack than it was in EDH because all of the lands are also Artifacts! Dockside is my pick for most Powerful Red card in the stack.
I tried to keep the flavor of Green as evergreen as possible, and it turns out that Mana Dorks and Mana Acceleration are what Green really excels at.
I dipped into my #MTGPAUPER grab bag for this tech:
Since every land in play also counts as an Enchantment, Mask is typically a one-shot Aura when it connects which is kind of cool.
Far and away, the most Powerful thing Green has going for it in this context is the ability to play additional lands, since there are ten in exile that can essentially be played as an extension of one’s hand.
Fastbond is likely the most Powerful card in the entire stack! However, I will note that there is an apparent Fastbond Curse because no one who has drawn the card in their opening hand has been able to translate it to a pod victory yet.
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The Moxen are a great baseline for mana acceleration in a Powered stack. Comparable to mana dorks, but better. I proxy the Power in the stack.
The One Ring is easily one of the most Powerful cards in the stack. The ability to “take a turn off” from being pressured and also translating to additional drawn cards down the line is a big game.
What kind of Classic MTG Stack wouldn’t want to include some of the most iconic creatures and characters of all time. Emrakul is super good in this stack and one of the cards that has correlated to the most victories across pods played.
For multicolor staples, I tried to evenly distribute my picks between 2-color Guilds (2 apiece) and also included some three color bombs.
I think this card is sweet and there’s just no reason to play it anywhere else but it really shines in this deck.
There’s also some banned in EDH cards that really get a chance to shine in a Powered Context…
I learned a lot about Multiplayer and the nature of Powerful cards by putting this new Battle Box together. I think the most important thing I learned about Magic is twofold:
Powerful cards in Magic can be inherently powerful (getting a great rate on an impactful effect); Or, contextually powerful (cards are good within a specific context, such as using Utopia of Power + Powered Yard as a background, or even in EDH since that platform naturally privileges combo-centric strategies).
My goal for this project was to create something fun and new to play with my friends at RIW on game nights and so far everybody who has played this stack has enjoyed it. Considering how much the average Magic Player tends to complain and have their own preferences about Power Level and game play, and the fact that the Power Level of this stack is so high, that’s a pretty nice compliment of the stack I put together that the people I’ve demo’d it with all one to play another game after trying it out.
The key was that I wanted fun, fast paced, exciting games of Magic using the most powerful cards ever printed and I was able to achieve that using a little bit of imagination.
Building a Battle Box is a great way to personalize your Magic game nights. It takes all the Rule 0 matchmaking at an LGS out of the equation and allows you to simply sit down and start playing even with complete strangers. Since the Power Level is relatively consistent and everybody has functional mana the games tend to play out in exciting and balanced fashion.
The other big takeaway from this project is that there are tons of new contexts, fan-created formats, and opportunities for casual and multiplayer games out there yet to be discovered and explored by fans and players. Battle Box, in particular, is a context that really gives deck-builders and format-tuners a unique space to really customize and personalize a gaming experience. We, as players and fans, are not beholden to whatever WotC perports as the Standardized way to play Magic but rather are only limited by the imagination and creativity that we collectively bring to the game.
While this was an exercise in learning how to build a Multiplayer Battle Box with the most Powerful Cards ever designed, I think my next project will be to design a Peasant, or Pauper Battle Box, since that offers a completely different context and style of play that I also enjoy.
