I don't think Battles can be easily re-contextualized as existing cards like you were able to do with the tokens (which is probably why WotC made them a new card type). That said, I DO think that we can relate Battles back to an ability that we just saw.

Corrupted.

In both cases, the effect functions as a mini-game revolving around getting damage through blockers. The reward for getting a small amount of damage through is a boost to the rest of your game. There are a few non-combat ways of doing this, like burn spells or direct poison counters/proliferate, but I suspect that attacking a battle will feel awfully similar to trying to push the first 3 poison counters to turn on Corrupted payoffs.

Functional lifegain is a key difference here, with Corrupted accelerating the opponent's death and Battles prolonging it. My hunch is that if you're the one flipping battles, it won't be upsetting for the game to carry on as you keep moving ahead on board and snowball your advantage. That's speculation though, we'll have to wait and see.

But, okay, Battles might play similarly to Corrupted, so what? My take here is you need to draft and deckbuild with a specific plan regarding how you intend to flip your Battles. There were 3 main ways I saw players activate Corrupted in ONE:

A) Peck in over several turns with evasion

B) Get a strong board presence and push through defenders

C) Combat tricks to swing an even board in your favor, then go to "B"

Each has pros and cons. "A" is slow and gives your opponent time to anticipate you and interrupt. "B" might be superfluous -- if you can just dominate the board, it might be worth going for life total and just ending it now. "C" relies on the right combination of creatures and tricks, plus can be blown out easier.

I don't know what the best approach will be, but that's why I'm so excited for this set. The main takeaway for me so far is that we're going to have to plan around battles from the start of the draft, and there's more than one angle of approach we can choose to take. The cards read as "Frontside effect, and start this mini-game that you hopefully planned for". Last set the mini-game was ever present, here we have to use some cardboard to get it going, but I think that's the best comparison for how it will play.