Battle Decks: What are they and how do you use them?

[0verbeing]

What are Battle Decks?
A collection of Battle Decks are premade decks specifically meant to be played against each other. The old duel decks or commander precons are good examples of battle decks made by Wizards. They are a great way to level the playing field and have decks offhand to grab and play or to set up and event revolving around them.

I love casual Magic. Cube has to be one of my favorite ways to play, Commander is amazing if you have a good group and a balanced power between the players, but I wanted another option and a place to brew and isn't just jamming 1v1 commander or pulling out outdated standard or modern decks. So I started building decks using a restriction in an attempt to make them unique, and I have been building and refining my collection of decks for 7 years now.

The most common way I have seen other players build Battle Deck collections is usually honing in on a format. Pauper is an especially common theme for people to choose because the decks are so cheap. I have seen people do it with Standard decks across time or Modern decks too. My personal collection of Battle Decks is using my own format Eternal Artisan. Any black boarder card that has ever been printed as a common or uncommon and that I haven't decided to ban yet. My collection doesn't currently have sideboards, but I plan to add them eventually.

All of my decks that are sleeved up and ready to go can be found here: https://deckstats.net/decks/183308/f89553/

I have another set of 5 Battle Decks that I call my beginner or Starter Decks. There is one for each mono color and I wanted them to represent and teach what magic is and what each color is about. I have only evergreen keywords and try to show examples of common creature types in each color. They are meant to be played against one another and have a balanced power level.

Check them out here: https://deckstats.net/decks/183308/f89994/

How do you use Battle Decks?
The most common way I have used them is just grabbing decks and jamming games. We love to grab decks at random, play test new decks and play old favorites. I love playing King of the Hill (Winner keeps playing their deck, loser switches to a new one, sometimes we will try to switch to a different deck that we think will give us a good matchup bot mostly we like to make it random), King of the Pit (Loser keeps playing their deck, winner switches to a new one).

I have also hosted a couple events using them. Often when people build battle decks, they will build exactly 8 so they can set up a tournament bracket with their play group. You can add and change decks that are under or over performing for next time to keep it fresh.

My battle deck collection is currently over 70 decks, so I have gotten to be pretty creative with what I can pull off. 2 years back for my birthday, I held and event where I had around 25 people, all of my decks laid out and labeled, and I had a big whiteboard with objectives and leader boards. I had objectives like gain infinite life, win by turn 3, mill out an opponent. the leader boards had things like most damage dealt in one turn(without being infinite), highest ending life total(without going infinite), highest number of games won using different decks. I had bounties on the more experienced players and offered prizes for those who could defeat them. I had a crown that I started the event with, to get the crown, you have to defeat the person who is wearing it and become king of the hill. The event was a blast and the objectives kept everyone exploring and challenging one another in a casual Free Play environment.

Just last week a ran what I called a Randomizer Tournament. We had 8 people and set up a bracket. Before round one, each player was presented with 3 random Battle Decks. They were able to look through them, look at the lists and descriptions online and ask any questions they had, then choose 2 of them to use for round 1 and discarded the other. For each round, you may play either deck for game 1, your other deck for game 2, then either deck if it goes to game 3. Between each round, each player was presented with two additional randomly selected Battle Decks and were given the option to swap 1 of their current decks for 1 of their new options.

I wanted a balance of random and decisions. I also liked that this limited the number of decks that they needed to evaluate and learn to play. It was a huge success and the only thing I would change is give the option for players to trade both of their decks in for 2 new random decks in the blind. A couple of the more experienced players just wanted to play as many different decks as they could. I liked that letting people slowly switch out their decks meant that if you had ones you didn't like or that you didn't think were good, you were able to make upgrades as the rounds passed.

Battle Decks are a great alternative way to play as casually or competitively as you want, with as many people as your collection can accommodate.

(Note: Battle Deck collections are sometimes called Battle Boxes, but that can get confusing because there is another format specifically called Battle Box.)