Wizards Wants Us to Brawl!

The State of Brawl

When Brawl was introduced as a new format more than a year ago (March 2018), many players thought it was a fun casual format to play. Also known as “Standard Commander,” players could play Commander using the relatively cheaper Standard card pool. Additionally, you only needed 60 cards for your deck, and you could even use planeswalkers as your commander! There was a lot of discussion surrounding the format, but it never picked up that much steam. Several major MTG evens tried to launch Brawl events, but they rarely if ever fired, because no one really showed up for them. Most people felt that Brawl's connection to Standard would wind up being a huge downside, as rotation is always brutal and likely would be more so for Commander players not accustomed to the process. Would they really be able to bridge the casual and more competitive Standard communities? The answer seemed to be no.

Having said that, a small number of players did play the new format and found it exciting. It got off to a less than stellar start though, largely a result of an emergency banning () and rules updates a month after the format was announced. Because of this turbulence, a lot of players simply moved back to other formats. The popularity of Brawl took a nosedive and was on the verge of disappearing completely. Since Brawl is a format created artificially (meaning not created by the community, like EDH/Commander), it feels forced and doesn't seem to have much of a future. Some even assumed that Wizards had just abandoned the idea, given the lack of news after release. 

This is more so since the Brawl format can be "solved" more easily. Brawl will always have a very diminished card pool when compared to commander, and its mostly anonymous online nature makes it less kitchen table and more competitive than Commander. The result of this is that the best commander for Brawl will quickly be discovered after any given set release. Add the smaller cardpool discussed above and these "best-in-slot" commanders will stagnate the meta very quickly. We saw it with Baral, and while that might have been an extreme example, it likely wouldn't take very long in any new Brawl format for players to figure out which deck(s) work better than others, limiting the diversity of the metagame.

The Resurrection of Brawl

Nearly a year and a half later, Brawl finally gets some support. In an article on the 22nd of July, Gavin Verhey announced that Brawl will be getting precon decks with the release of the set Throne of Eldraine (which, if successful, might result in Brawl precons with every new set). Not only that, but it appears that Brawl will also be introduced on Magic Arena and will be supported at the Local Game Store (LGS) level. This means that, after all this time, this new format created by Wizards will finally get support from its creators. But is it just too little too late?

Verhey writes that initially they wanted to see if Brawl was something that players would resonate with and to be honest in the beginning it seemed like a fun interesting idea (I myself wrote an article about this when it was first announced). Also, there is nothing wrong with testing out an idea before committing to it. O fee that the execution of this test was handled very poorly. It would've been more successful if the precons were announced and released in tandem with the new format. This would have made it easier to play Brawl. You could just buy a precon and give it a try, without being forced to commit significant time and resource to a format you're not even sure you'll like.

This also provides Wizards with tangible data and could allow them to better track their investment into making Brawl legitimate. Announcing something like this with just an article on the mothership’s website and then leaving players to fend for themselves was a poor introduction to Brawl. As a result, without any support for over a year after its introduction, many players just forgot about it and continued to play their favorite formats.

It was also shocking how long it took Wizards to offer LGSs the support to organize games of Brawl. Without the support to organize these events, it's hard for LGS's to justify adding a potentially bad format to their lineup. It also makes it easier to gain data on the format in paper if you're offering support to LGS's for Brawl events. As things stand, when Brawl was introduced, it was up to the players to organize games between themselves and provide feedback online.

It was perhaps even more surprising that this new format wasn't present with the launch of the Standard-only Magic Arena (although it was present on MTG Online). If Wizards wanted to use Magic Arena as a way to get new players into Magic, Brawl with its unique casual multiplayer flair would have been extra icing on the cake that is Arena’s polished digital Magic. The fact that Brawl was not initially on Arena might have been due to technical reasons as they still will only have access to one-on-one Brawl when they get it.

Now that all of these missteps and concerns are being addressed and Brawl seems to be fully supported by Wizards, what is its future? I personally think it's too late for the fledgling format. These missteps haunt Brawl and make it very difficult to be excited for the format moving forward.

Brawl Preconstructed Decks or Commander Upgrades?

Let's take a look at the announced preconstructed decks for Brawl. In Verhey’s article, he said that in these Brawl precons, there will be cards designed exclusively for Brawl, which will not be in the regular/current standard set. These cards will be Standard legal, as they have to be, but more importantly, they'll be Commander legal as well. He showed off two cards from these precons and .

Arcane Signet is an immediate Commander staple, offering insane fixing and ramp on a two-mana rock. It even comes into play untapped – that's better than almost all of the two mana rocks currently available. It will see play in Brawl as well, but if you look at the discussion from players, their first thought was how good this was for the flagship casual format. Brawl is an afterthought. This card is potentially going to be as ubiquitous in Commander as and – you'll see them in almost every Commander deck out there.

Chulane is a powerful creature in Bant colors. When it was revealed most players already started brewing Commander decks with him as the lead singer and those decks looked sweet (and pretty broken). While I'm sure people will play it Brawl as well, it really seems like the interest in these cards is focused primarily on Commander. Although maybe Wizards can have their cake and eat it too, offering support for the smaller Brawl format (probably more popular on Arena), while also giving way more support to one of Magic's most popular formats.

Giving Brawl a Second Chance

I can understand why Wizards created Brawl, and on the surface, it's not necessarily a bad idea, but the execution let it down and I'm not convinced it's here to stay. Players rather play Commander or their own variants with restrictions, than buy into a format that rotates. On the other hand, Brawl can be fun if you like to solve puzzles and have a bunch of Standard cards lying around. That is, until you figure out the best deck of the meta. I might sound harsh towards Brawl, but I would give it a second chance just by testing out the precons against each other and find a way to make it work with a close set of friends. I don’t know how much its appeal would last but it is another way to play my favorite game, so why not?

I am sure that if the Brawl precons are cheap they will sell but I also think that this will give the wrong impression to Wizards. Players buying the Brawl precons might play a game or two with the decks out of the box but mostly, they will strip the decks or upgrade them to full Commander decks. These products seem to have value for Commander and as such players will most likely not even consider them for Brawl. 

What do you guys think? Will you be buying the Brawl precons? Are you Brawl players? What are your thoughts about this? Let us know below.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily Cardmarket.