Isaac Sears – Mana Tutors

This being my first article on the site let me introduce myself for those of you who haven’t met me. My name is Isaac Sears I’m a 2 time grand prix Top8er, 2014 World Magic Cup United States Member and World Magic Cup Semi Finalist, and am a huge fan of modern, legacy, cube, and especially battlebox.

What is battlebox? You may ask. Don’t worry

Battlebox was originally named Danger Room named that after the X-men’s training room. The format, as far as I can tell at a cursory glance, was made by Brian De Mars around June 2014 and popularized by Ben Stark. Each player starts the game with 1 of each basic and 5 comes into play tapped dual lands. After you count all the mana sources each color should be represented exactly 3 times (easiest to use all the ally or enemy guildgates). These lands start in a command zone of sorts from which you may play 1 land each turn. My group likes to have a shared library but separate graveyards, this makes scry decisions more interesting but may not be for everyone. Each player starts with 20 life and 4 cards in hand. 4 cards sounds like too few until you realize there are no lands in the box and a good amount of cards have the text “draw 2” on them. Guess what? your hand size is still 7 mothersmurfer.

One of the things you will realize after playing the format for a while or looking at my list below is that there are no planeswalkers. In fact, oddly enough, in this great format there aren’t too many “great cards” (at least not ones that you’d classically refer to as such). Sure, there’s lightning bolt and fatal push but there’s no Snapcaster, no Tarmogoyf, no Jace, not even a Kolaghans’ Command. “But how can this be Isaac? you said this was a great format.” Well, you know how sometimes you’re playing a game of magic and you’ve out-thought your opponent and jedi mind-tricked them into 3 for 1-ing themselves, or its just a favorable matchup when somehow you draw 16 lands in a row and they rip all 5 of their fireblasts? Well this can’t happen in battlebox.

For one, in battlebox you can never get land screwed or flooded as both players start with the same lands in a zone that doesn’t conflict with either of their draws. And two, the cards (in my battlebox at least) are balanced so that you don’t have these busted unbeatable cards or card advantage machines that then you smush your opponent because:

This is very different design philosophy from other common battlebox choices, as the goal is to reward tight play and remove excessively high variance in top-decks. In short, my box is closer to the more evenly powered Ben Stark interpretation as opposed to the more powerful and swingy Brian DeMars version.

This is also why battlebox was initially called The Danger Room. Like the X-men’s training area, the battlebox is a place for people to sharpen their skills and improve. My cards are more like 5 or 6s on the overall play-ability level in magic, more like a decent 2nd pick in a draft rather than what you’d put in your PTQ deck.