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Magic: The Gathering’smultiverse can be a violent place. Whether it’s a small-scale scuffle between individuals on Zendikar, or a full planar invasion by the Phyrexians on New Capenna, conflict is at the heart of the game. This is perhaps best represented by battles, a card type introduced in 2023’s March of the Machine set.
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Battles can be incredibly confusing, as they fly against a lot of what you may already know about Magic: The Gathering. Fortunately, once you wrap your head around them, the power of battles can be yours.
What Are Battles?
Battles are a card type, just like creatures, artifacts, enchantments, lands, and planeswalkers. This makes them the first totally new card type introduced to MTG in almost 16 years, following the debut of planeswalkers in 2007’s Lorwyn.
At their core, battles are permanents thatenter the battlefield with a set number of defense counters. Whenever a battle takes damage, whether through direct damage spells or by attacking it with creatures, youremove that many defense counters from it. Then, when it loses its last defense counter, that battle isput into your graveyard.
Battles can have abilities just like those found on other permanents. The most common areenter the battlefield abilities, however some subtypes of battles, such as Sieges, also havetriggered abilities when their final defense counter is removed.
Damaging And Protecting Battles
While this all sounds very similar to the loyalty counters onplaneswalkers, one key difference is thatyou can attack battles you control with your own creatures.This is because, when a battle enters the battlefield, one player (as defined by the battle’s subtype) is tasked with becoming itsprotector.
Keep in mind protectors are not the same thing as controllers. For instance, if you play the Invasion of Innistrad and define an opponent as the protector,you still control the battle.
If you are defined as the protector of a battle, you can use your own creatures toblock any creatures attacking the battle. It is your job to try and stop the final counter of a battle being removed. You can alsouse proliferatetoincrease the number of counters on the battle, making your opponents work harder to defeat it.
If you are able to attack a battle (with Sieges, every player who is not the protector can do so, though this may differ with other battle subtypes), you canattack with your creatures, or use direct-damage spells that allow you to either target a battle specifically, or merely say “any target”.
No matter who dealt the damage that removed the final defense counter,the controller gets any benefit listed on the card. For example, a Siege card like Invasion of Llorwyn will be exiled and can be cast by the controller without paying its mana cost, even if another player defeated the battle for them.
What Are Sieges?
As of their debut in March of the Machine, there is only one subtype of battle card, known as aSiege.Every battle in March of the Machine is a double-faced Siege, which hascaused some confusion on what the difference between the two is.
The Siege subtype defineswho protects the battle, andwhat happens when the final defense counter is removed. For Sieges, the battle must always be protected by an opponent of the controller – if the protect leaves the game, the controller must instead choose a different opponent to protect it.Sieges can be attacked and damaged by any player who is not the protector,including the controller of the battle itself.
When Sieges lose their final defense counter, two things happen:
Sieges will only exile if their last defense counter is removed. If the battle is destroyed, sacrifice, exiled, or removed from play in any other way, that counter was not removed andit will not be able to be cast from exile.
What Colour Are Battles?
As a card type,battles are found in all colours.However, they tend to skew more towards theGruul colours of red and green.
Note that in Commander, battles still need to fit the colour identity of your commander onboth sides.
There are a total of 36 battle cards. In mono-colour, there are:
In multicolour cards, there is at least one battle for each of the ten colour combinations, exceptwhite/black, which has two(Invasion of New Capenna, and Invasion of Tolvada). There is alsoone five-colour battle, with Invasion of Alara costing one white, one blue, one black, one red, and one green mana to cast.
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