General Random Stack Design (e.g. Battlebox)

[Jason Waddell]

I was wondering if you guys had thoughts on designing single card stacks. For the purposes of this discussion, I mean a format where players are randomly given cards (through some mechanism) from a stack of cards.

More specifically, for my purposes I mean designing a pile to do cube pack wars with.

Currently my approach is:
- high on interaction
- little to no artifact / enchantment based threats
- high gold density / tri-color cards are loved
- avoid overly narrow cards / potentially dead cards
- limit the power of top-end bombs


Are there approaches you guys use? How do you maximize fun via stack design?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That is pretty much what I did for my battlebox. It's seen little use lately, but there's a list on CT I believe...

Yes! http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/13646

I designed my Battle Box with one golden rule in mind.

• Make sure it matters in which order you play your ten lands.

Ok, quick rundown of the format for those not familiar with it.

• A battle box is a stack of nonland cards, in my case 200, that is used as a shared library.
• Other than the library, there are no shared game zones.
• Each player starts with a hand of four cards, plus ten lands in the command zone.
• These ten lands are one each of the five basic lands plus one each of either allied or enemy tap-lands.
• On your turn, you can play one land from your command zone rather than play one from your hand.
• If a land you control would leave play, you may put it in your command zone instead. (This is actually a house rule, but unless you want your games to revolve around screwing opponents out of a color, I suggest you use it as well.)
• Other than that it is played like a normal game of Magic.

With that out of the way, in practice the golden rule means my list includes the following.

• Cards that get a bonus depending on your basic lands, e.g. Tribal Flames and Kird Ape.
• One drops that you want to drop early, e.g. Figure of Destiny.
• Three drops that don't use colorless mana, both monocolored and multicolored, e.g. Leatherback Baloth, Boggart Ram-Gang, Woolly Thoctar.
• Cards that use the full available three mana of one color, e.g. Planar Cleansing.
• A lot of multicolor cards (a full 50% of my Battle Box is multicolor).
• No colorless cards. Not a single one.
• Mono-colored cards are low on the mana curve on average.

Other than that, the only other things I paid attention to were for early drops to still have relevance in the late game, and no bombs that end the game on the spot (though there is one two card combo in there ) It's always a blast to pull it out at the prerelease for a quick game, and I always get comments on how it's a real puzzle to figure out what lands to play when, so I guess mission accomplished.

 

[Jason Waddell]

• If a land you control would leave play, you may put it in your command zone instead. (This is actually a house rule, but unless you want your games to revolve around screwing opponents out of a color, I suggest you use it as well.)

Is this all that necessary? Can't you just not run land destruction in your stack? Or where do you land on that?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Is this all that necessary? Can't you just not run land destruction in your stack? Or where do you land on that?

Yes, that's a perfectly viable option and one that I currently use as well. I included the house rule on the spot after an unforeseen interaction between Deprive (I meant to include Familiar's Ruse) and Brainbite came up during play. I think there's some interesting lines of play when you can tactically take out a basic land that boosts an opponent's creature or a tap land to slow them down, but I too chose to stay away from those cards. It's good to have the rule in place in case you missed some interaction though, even if you don't have to explain it to someone playing your battlebox, when it comes up you can go: "Oh, yeah, well, now it returns to your command zone and you can play it again next turn. Don't worry."

 

[Jason Waddell]

I'm not sure how effective it will be, but when we've been playing, we've used a houserule for Cube Pack Wars that fetchlands don't deal damage to use. Since you can't do that in MTGO (or change the starting life total), I've put in a higher density of incidental lifegain than I normally would. Haven't tested it yet though.

 

[Aston]

Since you can't do that in MTGO (or change the starting life total)

You could use a Vanguard, just looking quickly Barrin gives +6 life and doesn't affect hand size. Just agree not to use the avatar power.

 

[Jason Waddell]

You could use a Vanguard, just looking quickly Barrin gives +6 life and doesn't affect hand size. Just agree not to use the avatar power.

This never would have occurred to me. Thanks!

 

[Jason Waddell]

What about...

Xantcha
Sacrifice a permanent: Regenerate target creature
Starting & Max Hand Size: +1
Starting Life: +3

 

[ellogeyen]

I want to revive this thread because I've been tinkering with a battlebox of my own for a few months. Love the format as a quick way to play, and my 100-card list fits into a Commander deckbox which is awesome.

• shared library and exile
• separate graveyards
• 4 card starting hands
• 7 lands in the command zone

That last point is a change that works really well for me. It prevents players from emptying their hands too quickly. 2 Grand Coliseum still enable full access to every color... at a price. Them entering tapped makes sequencing land drops very relevant as well. If anybody here still wields a battlebox, I can highly recommend testing this land pool:


I've also set rules for the cards to include, mainly to have it playable without any outside-of-the-game resources like dice.

• no shuffling
• no counters
• no tokens
• no double-sided cards
• no interaction with lands

Honestly, I recommend everybody to create a battlebox for yourself! It's quick to play and fun to have for dull moments during game nights or short opportunities like lunchbreaks.