Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate is right around the corner! Ahead of previews next week, Chris looks at what we already know.
Streets of New Capenna is fully out in the wild, and while we’re having a blast with all the new goodies it brings, we also try to keep an eye on what’s coming up. Commander Legends: Battle For Baldur’s Gate is next on the release schedule, acting as a bit of a thematic follow-up to last year’s Adventures in the Forgotten Realms while providing a lot of new fodder for the most popular multiplayer format!
Previews for the Commander-centric crossover set begin one week from this article on May 16th. Let’s prepare by going over what we already know:
A (Re)Mix of Lands and Spells
Supplemental sets are the perfect place for reprints of popular and/or useful cards, and with a set of as resonant and thematic as this we’re sure to gets plenty of hits from Magic’s past. We already know of at least two, with spells equally as iconic in both Magic and Dungeon’s & Dragons:
Fireball and Lightning Bolt have been around since the inception of both games, and return here with some nifty new art. In fact, a choice of nifty new arts:
but old-school
The Showcase art style from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms returns, styled to look like illustrations from the original Dungeons & Dragons books – a perfect mix of flavor and form.
Magic does have its own past separate from Dungeons & Dragons, complete with cards that players have wanted reprints of for some time. Commander players in particular have wanted one land cycle to come back around, and it finally has:
Spire Garden; Bountiful Promenade
The Dual land cycle from Battlebond has come back! Uniquely suited as it is for multiplayer environments, a Commander Legends set is a perfect place for it to pop up. And while a normal reprint is welcome enough, this time around, you have options:
Spire Garden; Bountiful Promenade
but fancier
Pack Tactics
Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate features the usual assortment of different products for purchase – let’s take a quick look so we know what we’re getting into with each of these.
Boosters
Draft Boosters for this set are little different from a normal Magic set, each containing 20 cards, one of which is guaranteed to be a traditional foil. Commander Draft works a little differently from a normal draft; to get you up to speed, here’s a video from WotC’s own Gavin Verhey explaining how it works.
While traditional foil cards can be found in Draft Boosters, Set and Collector Boosters are where you’ll find the Showcase and Extended art cards. Whichever type of boosters you’re looking for, buying a box of them at your friendly local game store can net you a buy-a-box promo version of Elder Brain – while supplies last!
Bundles and Prerelease Packs
Prerelease Packs are a great way to have a pre-packaged draft night with some friends, each coming with 3 Draft Boosters, a stamped foil rare or mythic rare, a dungeon card (spoilers, I guess, the dungeon mechanic is returning), and an Arena promo code card.
Bundles will come with eight Set Boosters, 20 foil lands, 20 non-foil lands, a themed spindown life counter, and a promo-art version of Wand of Wonder:
Commander Decks
There will be four 100-card preconstructed Commander decks for Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate:
- Party Time (white-black)
- Mind Flayarrrs (blue-black)
- Draconic Dissent (blue-red)
- Exit from Exile (red-green)
Each of these decks will have 10 completely new-to-Magic cards in them, and will come with a Collector Booster sample pack. I personally want to see what’s in what I’m assuming is an Ithilid Pirate deck, but that’s just me. And sadly, no images of these to show off…yet!
Key Dates
- Card Kingdom Preorder Begins: May 11
- Debut and Previews Begin: May 16
- Card Image Gallery Complete: May 23
- Commander Previews: May 24–25
- Commander Card Image Gallery Complete: May 26
- In-Store Prerelease Events and Sales Begin: June 3
- Worldwide Release: June 10
- Launch Parties: June 10–12
You may notice that first date up there is just a couple days from now. We’ll have Sealed product ready to go when the preorder starts, with Singles available soon after the start of Previews. Starting next week, the Magic world will dive headfirst into one of the most iconic settings and adventures in Dungeons & Dragons history, and we’ll be there with you every step of the way.
And just because I can’t write this article without showing off one of the most well-loved duos in D&D, here’s a look at a new planeswalker from the set as a parting image:
Happy adventuring!
Chris is the Associate Media Producer at Card Kingdom. He would like to apologize to his son for not holding onto more cards from when he first started playing, as that likely would have paid for college. He enjoys pretty much all formats of Magic, but usually ends up playing decks that make other people dislike playing those formats with him.