Draft Primer - Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate
By: Tyson Bollinger
This week marks the prerelease of a new Magic: The Gathering expansion titled Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate. Like the previous Commander Legends set originally released in November 2020, Battle for Baldur’s Gate will focus on cards to be used in the popular Commander format. With 62 new Legendary creatures and 26 new “Backgrounds” (More on that later!) we can expect a lot of new, exciting deck building opportunities for our favorite multiplayer format. Battle for Baldur’s Gate looks to be a thematic successor to Adventures in the Forgotten Realms meaning we can expect – well – more Dungeons and more Dragons. D&D Players familiar with the Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus module or video gamers familiar with the Baldur’s Gate video game series will find many familiar faces such as the beloved Minsc and Boo, Timeless Heroes.
Gamers Grove will be hosting Prerelease draft events on Friday June 3rd at 7PM and Saturday June 4th at 2PM. Read on to learn everything you need to be ready for this draft format.
Commander Legends Draft
Unlike normal drafts, Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate is meant to be drafted and played in “Commander” pods, meaning a multiplayer game with 3 to 5 players and will utilize a commander (just like in the commander format). Players will be given a prerelease kit with 3 booster packs and one random promotional card, which they will open and add to their stack of drafted cards before beginning the draft, meaning yes! – you do get to play with your promo card. Players then draft as normal with one exception; players will select 2 cards with each pick instead of 1. Battle for Baldur’s Gate draft packs contain 20 cards which means players will end up with a total of 60 drafted cards plus one promotional card. They will then build a 60 card deck adding as many basic lands as they want. Just like in the Commander format, the cards in your deck must match the color(s) of your commander. That’s where strategy comes in! Drafting cards that support a commander you’ve selected or building around one of the format’s draft archetypes will be crucial to building an effective deck.
Drafting a Commander in Battle for Baldur’s Gate
Step one in your draft should be identifying a Commander you can use so that you know what to look for in the draft. That is where Backgrounds come in – a new card type in Battle for Baldur’s Gate. The set contains 27 different mono-colored Legendary Creatures with “Choose a Background” in the rules text. This text indicates that you can select a second commander – one with the “Legendary Enchantment – Background” text line. For example, Jaheira, Friend of the Forest and Feywild Visitor. These second commanders work like the “Partner” mechanic in Commander. If you have drafted a Legendary Creatures with the “Choose a Background” rules text and a “Background” Enchantment, you can pair them together and use both as your commander. They do not have to be in the same color – as in the example above, we would be able to play both green and blue in our deck. If Backgrounds don’t sound like your cup of tea, fear not. The set also features plenty of Legendary Creatures for all color combinations like Raphael, Fiendish Savior and Gorion, Wise Mentor.
Draft Strategy
Many of the Legendary Creatures and Backgrounds in Battle for Baldur’s Gate will push you towards a certain strategy. Ganax, Astral Hunter wants you to play dragons. But other commander’s like Gluntch, the Bestower are more flexible with how you can build around them. In such cases it helps to know the draft archetypes in the set. When we talk about draft archetypes, we mean the strategies that the commons and uncommons in the set want you to build around. Once you know your colors (signaled by whichever commander you have opted to use) your draft selections should support either that commander or one of the draft archetypes described below.
Red/White: Myriad. Cards like Hammers of Moradin will allow you to keep pressure up against all your opponents at once.
Black/Green: Benefits from filling up your graveyard.
Black/White: Black and white offer ways to turn creatures dying into benefits for you, often called “Aristocrats”.
Green/White: Tokens. Green/White looks to overwhelm opponents by creating an army of creature tokens
White/Blue: Flicker. Benefit from “Enter the Battlefield” effects or dodge removal spells by having your permanents leave and reenter the battlefield.
Black/Red: Treasure and Sacrifice. These colors benefit from sacrificing permanents, and perhaps-not-so-coincidentally are good at making treasure tokens.
Red/Green, Blue/Red, and Blue Green: DRAGONS! All three of these color combinations benefit from playing dragons. Blue and Green focuses on ramping into high cost dragons, red and green uses high-powered dragons that can kill opponents quickly, and the red and blue variation benefits from instant spells that care about you controlling dragons.
Black/Blue: Black and Blue focuses on a new mechanic called “the initiative”. Taking the initiative with cards like [Passageway Seer] allow you to venture into the new and powerful Undercity dungeon. You also get to venture again at the end of the turn if you control the initiative. But be warned: Players can steal the initiative from you by dealing combat damage to you, so be prepared to defend yourself from attackers.
Multiplayer Format
Beating one opponent is hard enough, but winning in a multiplayer pod will require cunning, negotiation, and a little bit of creativity. Fortunately, Battle for Baldur’s Gate offers ample opportunity for all the above. Being a D&D set, we can look forward to some of the classics like Lightning Bolt and Fireball, but players can utilize the goad mechanic on seemingly harmless cards like Taunting Kobold to force players into bad attacks. Cards like Modify Memory can manipulate your opponents while simultaneously building up card advantage for you. The return of the Adventure mechanic means there are plenty of combat tricks like Dread Linnorm to watch out for. Thinking outside the box will get you far in a format like this. Casting Poison the Blade on one of your enemy’s creatures because it’s blocking a huge threat from another opponent may be devious but necessary.
Come and Play!
Gamers Grove will be hosting Prerelease draft events on Friday June 3rd at 7PM and Saturday June 4th at 2PM. Call ahead to reserve your place at the table or sign up on our website. Pre-orders for Draft and Set Booster Boxes, Collector Booster Boxes, Bundles, and Commander Decks are also available on the website and in store.
