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168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering’s multiverse can be a violent place. Whether it’s a small-scale scuffle between individuals on Zendikar, or a full planar invasion by the Phyrexian🧸s on New Capenna, conflict is at the heart of the game. This is perhaps best represented by battles, a card type intro꧅duced in 2023’s March of the Machine set.
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 yoꦏur 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, followi☂ng the debut of planeswalkers in 2007’s Lorꦅwyn.
At their core, battles are permanents that enter 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, you remove that many defense counters from it. Then, when it loses its last defense counter, that battle is put into your graveyard.
Battles can have abilities just like those found on other permanents. The most common are enter the battlefield abilities, however some subtypes of battles, such as Sieges, also have triggered abilities when their final defense counter is removed.
Damaging And Protecting Battles
While this all sounds very similar to the loyalty counters on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:planeswalkers, one key difference is that you 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 its protector.
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 to block any creatures attacking the battle. It is your job to try and stop the final counter of a battle being removed. You can also 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:use proliferate to increase 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 can attack with your creatures, or use direct-damage spells that allow you to ei🐽ther 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 a Siege. Every battle in March of the Machine is a double-faced Siege, which has caused some confusion on what the difference between the two is.
The Siege subtype defines who protects the battle, and what 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 ꦜhappe𒐪n:
- Instead of going to the graveyard, the Siege is exiled.
- Its controller can then cast the other side of the card without paying its mana cost, meaning it enters the battlefield transformed.
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 and it 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 the Gruul colours of red and green.
Note that in Commander, battles still need to fit the colour identity of your commander on both sides.
There are a total of 36 ൲🎃battle cards. In mono-colour, there are:
- Five red
- Five green
- Four white
- Four blue
- Four black
- One colourless.
In multicolour cards, there is at least one battle for each of the ten colour combinations, except white/black, which has two (Invasion of New Capenna, and Invasion of Tolvada). There is also one five-colour battle, with Invasion of Alara costing one white, one blue, one black, one red, and one gr♛een mana to cast.