Take The Initiative In Magic: The Gathering’s New Commander Legends: Battle For Baldur’s Gate Set

Next month, Wizards of the Coast is mixing two of its largest properties as soon as once more, however this time with a Commander twist. Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate brings D&D taste again to Magic: The Gathering in a totally draftable set centered on the Commander format.

Like the earlier Adventures within the Forgotten Realms set from final summer season, Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate let’s Magic gamers step foot into the prevailing role-playing world of Forgotten Realms, however with a tighter deal with the settlement of Baldur’s Gate. The set takes inspiration from the D&D rulebooks and adventures and makes use of areas and characters from Bioware’s traditional Baldur’s Gate video video games and Larian Studio’s upcoming Baldur’s Gate III. And sure, Minsc and Boo are again in motion, however this time in Planeswalker kind!

Let’s take a look at among the playing cards and mechanics coming in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate.

The Initiative

A mechanic known as Monarch has been a mainstay in Commander matches for years, and Battle for Baldur’s Gate is bringing an attention-grabbing new variant on this new set with “the initiative.” The initiative in Dungeons and Dragons determines the flip order for gamers and NPCs, however the Magic model works just a little in another way. 

For the primary particular person on the desk to achieve the initiative, a spell must be solid, just like the one above, that features the phrases “take the initiative” within the guidelines textual content. This will give that participant the possibility to enterprise right into a particular dungeon named after the legendary Forgotten Realms location, Undercity, which may solely be ventured into by somebody with the initiative. No different earlier enterprise playing cards will push you ahead within the dungeon, although, so you may need to maintain the initiative in your management if in any respect doable. If the participant with the initiative is dealt fight harm by one other participant, that participant takes the initiative and might reap the rewards discovered inside Undercity when their repairs step comes round.

Here are the official guidelines for the initiative on the mechanic’s reminder token:

Backgrounds

Battle for Baldur’s Gate has a intelligent approach of including further colours to your commander’s identification with out creating much more legendary creatures with the hard-to-balance “Partner” mechanic. The answer is a set of enchantment playing cards castable out of your Command Zone known as Backgrounds. To play these spells as a stand-in for a Commander, you may must pair it with a legendary creature from the set with the principles textual content “select a background.” Because it acts like a Commander, the identical guidelines apply to those spells, together with having to pay extra for the spell every time it has been solid from the Command Zone. 

Not solely can Background enchantments be solid as a pseudo-Commander, however it’s also possible to put them in your deck like another card, though it provides a lot extra taste to the sport by bestowing a tragic or heroic story to your deck-leading common. These spells additionally increase your Commander whereas each spells are on the battlefield, leaning arduous into the fantasy of this being a part of your creature’s life indirectly. Maybe your legend was raised by giants, belongs to a cult, or was born into the Aristocracy. Only the playing cards will inform what your story will probably be. 

Adventures Return

This key mechanic from Throne of Eldraine is again in an enormous approach and provides loads of worth to the spells it exhibits up on. As a refresher, Adventure playing cards have two spells on one card, with the principle operate being a creature and the Adventure spell being an instantaneous or sorcery. If you solid the Adventure a part of the spell, you pay the price and resolve that part’s results like another spell, however exiling the cardboard as an alternative of tossing it within the graveyard. Then the creature half might be solid at sorcery velocity as if it have been solid out of your hand.

Adventures are a no brainer inclusion for a set that is based mostly on a sport centered round questing and journey. Other than there being extra Adventure playing cards in Battle for Baldur’s gate, nothing concerning the mechanic has modified because the halcyon days of Eldraine.

D20 Dice Rolling

I’m of the opinion {that a} set based mostly round Dungeons and Dragons wants a cube rolling mechanic every time, and Wizards didn’t let me down. Once once more, you may roll a twenty-sided die every time a card deems it authorized to take action, with totally different outcomes of the roll performing totally different results on a given card. 

Dice rolling is not all that aggressive of a mechanic, at the very least not in conventional constructed codecs, however it’s a blast in draft, and is extremely enjoyable to construct round in Commander. There have been methods of manipulating the result of your rolls to stack the percentages in your favor in previous units, so I’m hoping we see extra as preview season rolls on for Battle for Baldur’s gate.

Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate is coming very quickly, with pre-release occasions beginning on June 3 and the total set launch taking place on June 10. Magic: The Gathering Arena gamers may even be getting a model of Battle for Baldur’s Gate with Alchemy Horizon: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, which brings over 250 playing cards to Arena’s Alchemy and Historic codecs. That digital set will drop on July 7.

We’ll have an unique preview card for the set to disclose on May 24, so maintain an eye fixed out for that on the location subsequent week!