My custom keyword reference guide for Magic the Gathering Battle Box

I’ll start by playing a Forest.

Sure, it resolves.

I’ll tap the Forest to generate green mana and use it to cast Battle Box keyword reference guide.

I love Magic the Gathering Battle Box. It’s a great casual pick-and-play format where I can bring it with me to a lunch or an afterwork, shuffle the deck and start playing.

No need for everyone to bring their own deck, no long-winded drafting (although drafting cubes is hella fun) and deck construction. No mana drought or mana flood but a perfect curve.

A single, shared deck full of creatures and other spells that mostly focuses on combat and combat tricks. Each player has 10 lands (1 of each basic and 5 dual-lands) they can play from Command Zone (I’m considering calling it Landfill for the memes).

There’s just one catch.

“Reading the card explains the card” doesn’t always work. With casual players and a bunch of unexplained keywords (like Menace, Madness, Shadow, Surveil), it can be bit of a burden to figure out what the cards do.

That’s why I compiled my own Battle Box keyword reference guide (see the thing I did in my intro where I used a Forest to cast a booklet. smart, huh?): it lists all 41 keywords that are present in my deck in alphabetical order and explains how they work. And the back cover has a quick guide for what “instant speed” and “sorcery speed” mean and when you can activate abilities and mana abilities.

Now, instead of players having to expose what they have in hand and ask me or awkwardly search the wiki on their phone, they can pick up the guide and check.

It was such a fun project and it looks gorgeous.