Battlebond, released June 8, 2018, was the first Magic set built entirely around Two-Headed Giant, a team format where two players share a single 30-life pool against another team of two.
To support that team-based draft experience, Battlebond introduced Partner with [name], a locked variant of Partner that guarantees two specific cards work together rather than leaving the pairing up to player choice.
While Two-Headed Giant itself never became a mainstream constructed format, the Partner With cards Battlebond printed found a lasting home in Commander instead, where they still see regular play today.
This guide covers what Battlebond actually introduced and how its legacy shifted from limited drafting toward Commander deckbuilding.
Battlebond was designed to be drafted specifically as two-player teams, with 254 unique cards split across five rares, five uncommons, and supporting commons, all themed around cooperative, two-on-two combat.
Alongside Partner With, the set introduced Assist, letting a teammate help pay for your spell's generic mana cost, reinforcing the set's cooperative design throughout both limited and constructed applications.
Battlebond's Partner With cards came in three tiers: five rare legendary pairs, five uncommon non-legendary pairs, and the mythic rare planeswalkers Will and Rowan Kenrith, who also share the Partner With ability with each other.
The rare legendary pairs are Regna, the Redeemer with Krav, the Unredeemed (white-black), Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom with Okaun, Eye of Chaos (blue-red), Virtus the Veiled with Gorm the Great (black-green), Khorvath Brightflame with Sylvia Brightspear (red-white), and Pir, Imaginative Rascal with Toothy, Imaginary Friend (green-blue).
Two-Headed Giant never became a heavily supported constructed format outside of casual play and occasional organized events, which meant Battlebond's dedicated draft environment largely stopped being drafted for its own sake after release.
The Partner With legendary creatures, however, were fully Commander-legal from day one, and their guaranteed synergy made them attractive commander pairs independent of whether anyone still played the set's original team format.
Pir and Toothy in particular became a popular Commander pairing built around doubling counters and tokens, showing how a pair designed for two-on-two drafting translated cleanly into a completely different, single-player Commander shell.
Zndrsplt and Okaun also found a home in more chaotic, coin-flip-themed Commander decks, leaning into the randomness both cards were originally designed around for team-based limited play.
Battlebond demonstrated that a locked two-card pairing could be balanced more aggressively than free-choice Partner, a lesson that influenced how later Commander-focused products approached multi-commander design.
The set also proved that limited-focused mechanics could have a second life entirely within Commander, a pattern that has repeated with other originally-limited-focused Magic mechanics since.
Because Battlebond was designed as a draft product rather than a mainline set, its print run and availability differ from a typical Standard-legal release, which affects how easy specific pairs are to track down years later.
Guaranteed pack placement for each pair, foil-matched between both halves, remains a distinctive collecting feature unique to how Battlebond was structured at print.
Beyond Partner With, Battlebond's rare dual-land cycle and its enemy-color partner pairs influenced how later Commander-focused products approached mana fixing and multicolor support for two-commander decks specifically.
The set's overall design also demonstrated that a Commander-legal product did not need to be marketed as a traditional Commander precon to have a lasting impact on the format.
Alongside its new cards, Battlebond reprinted a range of returning favorites with fresh artwork, giving the set broader appeal to collectors beyond just its new Partner With mechanic specifically.
This mix of new mechanics and curated reprints became a template other supplemental Commander-adjacent products have followed in the years since.
Battlebond was also sold in Booster Battle Packs containing six boosters bundled specifically for two-player team drafting, reinforcing how central the two-headed format was to the set's original retail presentation.
This packaging choice made it easy for two friends to pick up a ready-to-draft bundle together without needing to separately source six individual boosters themselves.
Battlebond released on June 8, 2018.
It was designed as the first set built specifically for Two-Headed Giant drafting.
Yes, the legendary creatures among them are fully Commander-legal.
Yes, both planeswalkers share the Partner With ability specifically naming each other.
Battlebond's guaranteed pairings turned out to have a much longer life in Commander than in the two-headed format they were designed for. A set of EVORETRO matte sleeves keeps a locked pair like Pir and Toothy glare-free and easy to read during a long multiplayer game.
A dedicated deck box also keeps your full 100-card Commander deck organized between sessions, whichever Battlebond pairing you decide to build around. The EVORETRO plastic deck box fits a full Commander deck comfortably.
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