Thorin, Company's Leader | Illustration by Eric Deschamps
Hobbit season isn’t quite over. Sometime next year, the Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit hits shelves, designed as a multiplayer cooperative product with a twist.
Co-op products are great for younger and newer gamers because they allow players to come together and defeat an enemy as a team, rather than there always being a winner and a loser. But this co-op product seems like it’ll work both for this friendlier style of gameplay and the chaotic free-for-all that avid Commander players know and love.
So, what do we know about the Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit so far? Not much, but I’ve got your early scouting report.
What Is the Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit?
The Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit is a supplementary Magic product that releases in 2027. It’s a multi-deck kit that allows players to pilot a deck built around one of five factions, either to take down a common enemy or face each other in a battle royale.
The Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit is flavored after the climactic battle during the events of The Hobbit, when Thranduil’s elves, Thorin and Dáin’s dwarves, and the men of Lake-town banded together to defeat oncoming goblin and Warg armies.
When Does Battle of Five Armies Release?
The Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit releases sometime in 2027. No specific dates have been announced.
Gallery of Battle of Five Armies Cards
These are all of the Battle of Five Armies cards spoiled so far. For up-to-date spoilers as they’re leaked, check out the Draftsim spoilers page.
- Bilbo, Unexpected Adventurer
- Gandalf, Shadow's Foe
- Thorin, Company's Leader
- Bard, Heir of Girion
- Bolg, Erebor's Reckoning
- Chief of the Wilds
- Dáin of the Ancient Halls
- Great Goblin, Foul-Hearted
- Thranduil the Strategist
Where Can You Get These Cards?
Nine of the Battle of Five Armies cards were printed in non-foil extended art treatments in The Hobbit Collector Boosters. They appear in one of the two non-foil Booster Fun slots about 5.3% of the time.
How Much Does Battle of Five Armies Cost?
We don’t have official word the price of the Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit, but we can make some educated guesses.
The Turtle Team-Up kit from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released with an MSRP of $49.99 with four 60-card decks to represent each of the four turtles, an enemy deck, event cards, and four TMNT Play Boosters. The Battle of Five Armies kit should come with a similar loadout. We know that there will be at least two enemy decks for Goblins and Wargs/Wolves. I’d expect five decks total given the “Five Armies” of it all. Add in some Play Boosters, and I could see the MSRP climb higher than Turtle Team-Up‘s $49.99.
Battle of Five Armies Speculation
The nine cards printed for The Hobbit Collector Boosters should give us a few hints that we can build on.
Firstly, the decks look like they’ll line up like this:
Gandalf, Shadow's Foe’s landfall ability suggests that it slots into the Elves deck. Bilbo, Unexpected Adventurer’s battle damage payoff matches Thorin, Company's Leader, so Bilbo is likely with the Dwarves.
We already know that the Wolves and Goblins have instructions on how to run them as enemy decks; the natural formation would be to run those two as enemies, while three players run the others and try to defeat them. But given how some of the marketing talks about playing the Battle of Five Armies kit as a free-for-all, I wonder if there’s also the possibility for five players to get together and duke it out. I’d love if all of the decks could run as enemies too, but some of the cards spoiled so far need you to make decisions. That’s a poor fit for enemy decks.
It’s unclear exactly how many new cards will be in this product; the Dwarves deck, for example, could feature a whole new batch of cards for Thorin’s company. Cards from the main Hobbit set might appear, likely commons, uncommons, and basic lands.
As for battles, that’s a card type that would work phenomenally in a cooperative product. But I’m not sure whether they’ll be in the player decks, or if there will be something different or special about them. The easy thing would be if they were just regular cards, though I wonder if there’s something you could do that uses them more like planes in Planechase or other more global effects.
If I were to design this product, I might consider having a battle in every player’s command zone. You always have access to it, so you cast it when you can, and designate either the autopiloting enemy deck or an enemy player to defend it. Your fellow players can choose to help you get the perk on the back of the battle, or leave you to your sidequesting. It would help to cement the different motivations of each faction.
Wrap Up
Bilbo, Unexpected Adventurer | Illustration by Marius Bota
Having dug into it a little more deeply, the Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit has some interesting potential. It looks positioned to allow players to play both cooperative Magic and the classic melee style many of us know and love.
Co-op kits seem to be the evolution of the 2-player Starter Kits we used to see, for better and for worse. On the one hand, they work well for larger groups and remove the adversarial nature of 1v1 Magic. On the other… more cards (plus Play Boosters) will lead to increased prices. The Turtle Team-Up kit has an MSRP of more than double that of the Final Fantasy Starter Kit.
Will you pick up the Battle of Five Armies Co-Op Kit? What do you think will be in it, and how will it incorperate battles? Let me know in the comments below, or over in the Draftsim Discord. And be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, The Daily Upkeep.
Until next time, stay safe!
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