When
Phryexia: All Will Be One was released in February, one card (shown above) had an ability that mentioned card types. Magic veterans immediately noticed the listed types included one that nobody had ever seen before:
battle. No battle cards showed up in this set, so it was foreshadowing the following release,
March of the Machines, due out next week. That set has
36 battle cards, and this post looks at this new card type. But before we do, some quick history.
It's highly unusual for
Magic to get a new card type. The initial release (1993) featured seven: Artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, interrupt, land, and sorcery. In 1999,
instants and interrupts were combined into the former, leaving six, where things remained for a long time. In 2007, in
Lorwyn, they added planeswalkers to the game, bringing the total back to seven. (I still remember pulling a planeswalker in a pack. Being unaware of the new type, it was the only time opening a
Magic pack confused me.) Now, in 2023, they added battle.
Battle cards are double-sided. They have a subtype (in this release, the only subtype is 'siege'). Here is a sample:
The text on the front is pretty intuitive, but explaining it:
- when you cast it, you put it under another player's protection, with the number of defense counters on it equal to the value in the lower right
- it has some enter the battlefield effect that benefits you (note: you remain the controller even though it is protected by another)
- when you attack that player, you and other players can choose to attack the battle (instead of a planeswalker or the person)
- when you do [x] damage to a battle, remove [x] defense counters
- when the last defense counter is removed, the card transforms to the other side for free. The transformed side is generally a permanent (artifact, creature, enchantment, or planeswalker), though two of them transform into a sorcery.
Looking at this new card type, it is effectively a twist on planeswalkers. Planeswalkers enter the battlefield with a number of counters and can be attacked by your opponents. They give you some benefit each turn (by adding or removing counters) until all counters are removed (which defeats them). So you have to choose to protect them to keep gaining from the benefit(s). Battles effectively flip the script: now, you have to choose to protect something that will benefit
your opponent if it dies.
The concept seems fine to me, though I worry they will have the same effect planeswalkers do, namely making games last longer. It is easy to see how: if I have played a battle under my opponent's protection, and they have a planeswalker out, I now have three targets to choose from when I attack:
- the opponent
- the planeswalker
- the battle
Do I attack the first (trying to win the game by getting him to zero life), the second (trying to take out a card that is benefitting him), or the third (trying to take out a card that, when it dies, will benefit me)?
Though battles (unlike planeswalkers) do not have an ability that can add counters/be triggered each turn, mechanics that add counters (like proliferate) affect battles, too, making them harder to defeat. Games could get long indeed.
As a final note, any new card type (or mechanic) will have a ripple effect on the game, even on cards produced years ago. Here, any card that benefits from 'card types' could get boosted by battles now being in the game. A scryfall search for cards that have the text '
card types' or '
for each card type' yields about 70 cards in this category. (Notably, the delirium mechanic is based on card types in the graveyard, so any cards with that could benefit.) Two examples:
Mirror Golem's text lists only six card types, since it was produced in 2003, but all cards are 'updated' with the newest rules, so now it would support all eight. And Tarmogoyf can now be an 8/9 creature . . . wow.
