What is Brawl and Why Should I Play It?

Brawl is a format that is extremely fascinating among Magic players, but underappreciated. A format that was inspired by the ever popular Commander format, Brawl is very similar, but has unquestionably unique rule sets and play patterns.

This format can be played with two or more players, two person matches having different rule-sets than three or more players, so let’s dive in!

 

Brawl 1v1: 

-Same rules as commander except:

-Each player starts at 25 life points.

-Constructed of only cards from the current Standard format.

-Your “commander” can either be a legendary creature or a legendary planeswalker.

-Your deck must contain only 60 cards, including your commander.

-If a player’s deck has a commander with no color identity, they can choose any number of one type of basic land (For example, Karn the Great Creator).

-You get one free mulligan (redraw back to seven cards in your opening hand after taking the first mulligan).

-Different banned list. At the time of writing this, the banned cards are: Sorcerous Spyglass, Oko, Theif of Crowns, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, and Lutri, the Spellchaser.

 

Brawl Multiplayer:

-Same rules as Brawl 1v1 except:

-Each player starts at 30 life points.

 

 

That’s the basic run-down on Brawl! So, what’s Brawl all about? Well, the beauty of it is that despite the small card pool, the possibilities are endless! With the addition of Planeswalkers as commanders, the potential strategies and building blocks of decks are morphed accordingly. Currently, the Brawl format consists of a wide array of commanders, but here is a list of the most popular:

Korvold, Fae-Cursed King: Decklist

Alela, Artful Provocateur: Decklist

Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God: Decklist

Kenrith, the Returned King: Decklist

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim: Decklist

Chulane, Teller of Tales: Decklist

Torbran, Thane of Red Fell: Decklist

A common theme: They’re all three colors or more! Well, except our dear friend Torbran. Torbran doesn’t care about how many colors your opponent is playing. Going 1 drop, 2 drop, 3 drop, TORBRAN, is a time tested experience. Highly recommended.

The Brawl queue can be found on MTG: Arena as well as finding people at your local game stores (when they reopen!). It’s a truly wonderful format and we hope that you’ll join us in checking out “commander lite!”

If you love commander, give Brawl a try. It's FUN.

Cheers, keep dropping Torbran on four and SMASHING,

Mitch

Inked Gaming