How to ACTUALLY Approach Battlefield selection

While reviewing deck lists and watching decks play in these first few Opens, there’s something that a lot of people are getting wrong. Battlefields are a core mechanic to Riftbound’s gameplay and are a very important piece of the deck building puzzle.

The goal of this article is to:

• Explain my philosophy on how to choose which battlefields I should play in my deck
• What are the different types of battlefields
• The most common mistake players make when choosing battlefields
• Different strategies for how/when to play your battlefields

While battlefields are usually one of the last parts of my decks that I optimize and focus on, they are just as important when it comes to giving my deck the best chance to win and increasing it's win percentage against specific matchups. My overall philosophy on choosing battlefields is a simple check list:

• Are there any battlefields that drastically improve my deck's winrate by helping with the gameplan in a significant way
• What are all of the battlefields that my deck can benefit from
• Which of these battlefields offer the least amount of help or benefit for the other decks in the meta

The first check on my checklist is the most simple and the one that everyone uses. Are there any battlefields that drastically improve my deck's winrate by helping with the gameplan in a significant way? For today we're going to be using MF Aurora as our example deck since it has a very clear battlefield it wants to use and then the other 2 options are not as 100% locked in. In MF Aurora when I ask this first question, the battlefield that pops out to me immediately is Aspirants Climb. Aspirant's Climb increases the length of the game which is great for my deck that's wanting to scale into this unbeatable late game and gives up a lot of tempo early game. It covers all of my deck's weaknesses while also playing to my deck's strengths. It also doesn't benefit many of the decks in the current meta so it's a very once sided battlefield. For all of those reasons Aspirant's is an auto include in all of my MF Aurora decks. After going through the entire battlefield list, I decide Aspirant's is the only battlefield that is the only MUST INCLUDE battlefield due to the benefits it gives and the lack of downside it gives to my gameplan.

The second question I ask is what are all of the battlefields now that my deck can benefit from. This is talking about after I decide the must include and see what's left in the card pool. So looking at the rest of the card pool, the only other battlefields that look like they can actually benefit my deck are: Altar to Unity, Back-Alley Bar, Obelisk of Power, Sigil of the Storm, and Vilemaw's Lair. Not going to go too in depth on the specifics here since this isn't an MF Aurora guide, but all of those battlefields give some sort of benefit to my deck, or my deck will benefit from the negative effects it imposes in the game. The last question I ask now is which of these battlefields offer the least amount of help or benefit for the other decks in the meta. Again, I'm not going to go into why and how each battlefield benefits Aurora, but after answering this question for every battlefield, it leaves me with the options of Sigil of the Storm, Obelisk of Power, and Vilemaw's Lair.

So now it's choosing the actual battlefields we want to play. One of our battlefields is the auto include aspirant's, so the last 2 spots have to be chosen from the 3 remaining options. Since we've decided all 3 are good enough to play, how do you decide which 2 to play and which one gets left out? That will mostly come down to the meta and the matchups you want the most help with. Each battlefield has its specific pros and cons into every matchup, so you have to decide which matchups do you care about the most and want that extra help with.

The most common mistake players make is not asking themselves the last question on my checklist. Too often I see decks playing battlefields that benefit their deck, but benefit the opponent's deck just as much and sometimes more. The most common example is Obelisk of Power. I see too many decks and players just throwing in Obelisk in their deck because their deck can play 2 units on turn 2 if they go first, or they have some good 3 cost units they can now play on turn 1 or something like that. While those are good play patterns that Obelisk enables, the main thing you're forgetting to ask yourself is "Can my opponent use this just as effectively or maybe more effectively than I can?" and oftentimes the answer is yes. Now you're not only helping out the opponent by giving them more resources and potentially unlocking their decks potential by speeding them up, but you don't even have that much of an advantage unless the play patterns you gain with the extra mana are actually super above rate compared to what other decks are doing.

The two main types of battlefields are "Go First" battlefields and "Neutral" battlefields. There's very few battlefields I'd actually call a "go second" battlefield. Most of the time when we are referring to a "Go second" battlefield we're really just talking about a battlefield that's neutral and doesn't benefit the player going first as much, not a battlefield that actively benefits the player going second.

Go First battlefields are basically exactly what the name implies, they're battlefields that benefit the player that goes first and has the tempo advantage of conquering first. Some examples of these battlefields are battlefields that have hold effects like Grove of the God-Willow and Startipped Peak. Most battlefields that have some sort of conquer effect or hold effect are going to be considered Go First battlefields since the player that goes first gets the first use out of that battlefield or is set up in a way to take advantage of that battlefield before/more times than the player that's going second.

Neutral Battlefields are battlefields where if the player going first moves to it or tries to hold it, the advantage they gain (if any) is a lot smaller of an advantage compared to a Go First battlefield. These are battlefields like Zaun warrens where both players can get advantage from conquering there and being able to filter their hand, but if the other battlefield in play has a better conquer effect or hold effect, the opponent will probably ignore Zaun Warrens in order to get max value out of the other battlefield.

Right now there's 2 main strategies being used when deciding what battlefields to put in your deck, and when to play them.

The first and most common strategy is to have 1 Go First battlefield that really benefits your deck and you plan to play out this battlefield if you lose a game and know you're going to be going first guaranteed, and at least 1 Neutral Battlefield for the game after you win, you want to have a battlefield that doesn't have a big advantage for going first since the odds of you going first when your opponent gets to choose is very low. Then the 3rd battlefield in that strategy is usually another neutral battlefield for game 1. This makes it so if you lose the die roll and end up going 2nd in game 1, you didn't put out a go first battlefield and give your opponent even more of an advantage for going first.

The 2nd strategy, and my personal preference, is to play 3 Go First battlefields. The worst part about this plan is in Game 1 where you're rolling a die to go first, if the opponent puts out a neutral battlefield and you put out a Go First battlefield, it's actually just a 50% chance that you're making game one even harder to win while going second, but the plus side is if you win the coinflip and go first, you've increased your advantage by a good amount. The real benefit to this gameplan comes in in games 2 and 3. So after Game 1, lets say you lost the die roll and lost game 1. You now have 2 Go First battlefields left, one you'll play the next game where you're going to choose to go first so that is just like the first strategy and has the same benefits. The biggest advantage this strategy has though is the game 3 where your opponent is going to choose to go first and put out their Go First battlefield. Now what happens is you almost completely cancel out the advantage their Go First battlefield gives since there's 2 battlefields out there that have a good ability when conquered or held, and the opponent can only conquer one of them before you conquer the other. So if there are now 2 great options, it evens out overall and both of you will have a good battlefield to conquer and/or hold starting with your first possible conquer turn.

I hope this article gives you an in depth perspective about how to decide what battlefields to play, what strategies you can use when deciding, and how to not make the most common mistakes other players are making.

As always, thanks for your time, I hope I've helped you on your journey to achieving your Riftbound goals, and have a nice rest of your day, evening, or morning! ~ Moe