Battling in Out with March of the Machine's New Card Type

 March of the Machine is the climactic conclusion to this year's Phyrexian arc, which seems to have more or less brought an end (until WotC wants to pull them back out of the vault) to the second generation of Phyrexians that started with the Scars of Mirrodin block. This is an "event set" similar to War of the Spark, which itself had concluded a years-long arc about Nicol Bolas' plans to restore his pre-Mending godlike power via just a whole lot of Planeswalker murder.

This set sees really the biggest event in Magic's history, with the Phyrexians led by Elesh Norn invading more or less every plane we've heard of at once (and some of these are deep, deep cuts). And, given how big a deal that is, the folks at the Magic team decided to create a whole new card type to represent the battles of this massive, multiversal war.

This marks the first brand-new card type since Planeswalkers were introduced (as someone who stopped playing around Time Spiral during my MTG Online days in college, coming back on Arena meant getting used to these newfangled Planeswalkers,) which, previously, were I believe the only card type ever added to the game since the game premiered in 1993 (ignoring discontinued types like Mana Sources, which were things like Dark Ritual that had initially been Interrupts. I believe 6th Edition of the Core Set is when Interrupts and Mana Sources were folded into Instants).

Every Battle we get in March of the Machine also has the subtype "Siege," which might imply that the mechanics of future Battles could be different, but here's how they work:

You play a Battle, and it goes onto the Battlefield on your opponent's side of the board, though you still control it (just like, say, an aura attached to an opponent's permanent). The Battle usually (I think always in the ones we have) has an enter-the-Battlefield effect, meaning sometimes that will be the extent of your use of the card. However, each Battle has a number of Defense counters on it, set by a number in its lower right corner (similar to a Planeswalker's starting loyalty). Just like a Planeswalker, you can choose to attack a Battle, and any damage it receives will reduce its defense counters.

When the last counter is removed, the Battle gets flipped, and you can immediately cast the spell on the other side for free. Often, this will be a creature, but there are also artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers to be found at the successful conclusion of one of these battles.

So, what do we think?

Obviously, one thing this does is create a third potential target for your creatures to attack, and a board with an enemy planeswalker and your own battle (or multiples of each) will be a "target rich environment," with a lot of things that draw your creatures' attention away from the goal of hitting the opponent.

I will say that I don't find this to be too big of a problem, though: you're the one opting in to attack your battle, and so far there are no battles that create a pressure to attack them beyond the benefit of the creature or whatever you would get from doing so. Unlike a Planeswalker, who might be frustratingly difficult to take down while they use some deadly loyalty ability to hinder or harm you, it's fairly safe to just let a Battle sit on the board for any number of turns, and even to just make use of its initial effect and ignore it, essentially treating it like a sorcery.

The flip sides of these cards need to be pretty powerful to justify spending turns attacking it. Most have an initial defense of 4 or 5 counters, which can often mean needing to spend more than one turn (depending on your deck) going after them. So far, the ones I've played with have had pretty decent rewards, but that will be an interesting balancing act.

Defending players have only a few options to prevent battles from being won - they can block with their own creatures, of course, but beyond that I think the only other option is Proliferate, to bump up the counters on them. Of course, given that they become permanents after they flip (I think with the exception of Invasion of Alara, which becomes a Sorcery) you can also deal with them simply by using removal against the resultant reward.

Time will tell if these wind up being a one-off oddity from this particular set or if they'll become an evergreen part of the game. I'm curious to see what other design space exists for them. Does the "siege" subtype mean anything? Not yet, because every Battle is also a Siege. But what other kinds of battles might we see?