Brawl In The Study Hall

Out of the many reasons I’m excited for the release of Dominaria, there probably isn’t anything I’m more hyped about than being able to Brawl. Just like Ross Merriam, who wrote about this new format earlier in the week, I’ve never considered myself a casual player. I’ve never owned a Commander deck, nor had any desire to build one. However, I’m fascinated by Brawl and have loved playing the format so far. Not only will I be playing the format in Leagues online, I’m also planning on having my own paper Brawl deck built to play games at #SCGATL.

By the time you’re reading this article, 1v1 Brawl will be available on Magic Online and that’s the format I want to discuss today. I know Brawl is also designed to be a multiplayer game, but for the most part I believe it will be a 1v1 format, so everything I write will be based around that. I’ve built a few different decks by now and played a handful of games, so I wanted to write about some of my takeaways of the format so far, go over my picks for format staples, and end with a couple more decklists.

First, some takeaways about Brawl:

Format Speed

Now I know this isn’t a surprise to anyone, but Brawl is slower than Standard. You have 50% more life to start the game, and the decks aren’t as consistent since you can only play one of each card. However, this doesn’t mean you can fill your deck with only powerful top-end cards and ignore the first few turns of the game. 30 life is significantly less than 40, for those of you who play traditional multiplayer Commander games, and you don’t have other players for your opponent to be focused on.

You still need to build your deck with a regular Standard-like mana curve to not fall behind too quickly, as the thirty life can go away in a hurry. There aren’t as many ways to catch up when you fall behind since you can only play one of each card, which leads to my next point.

Sweepers Are Crucial

Unless you’re playing an aggressive deck, you need to have access to some kind of sweeper effect to be able to catch up when you’re behind. I’m talking about cards like Fumigate, Bontu’s Last Reckoning, or Hour of Devastation. Such cards can drastically change the state of the battlefield, an effect more desirable than normal in a longer game. Again, remember you only have one of each copy of any card in your deck, so be prepared to have multiple sweepers instead of just relying on one if needed.

Be Able to Interact with Artifacts and Enchantments

You don’t have access to a sideboard in Brawl, so you can’t completely ignore interaction with artifacts and enchantments when building your deck. Many of the format staples that I’ll be going over in the next segment are artifacts or enchantments, and being able to remove them can be the difference between winning and losing. I would say more often than not you’ll have a target for a Naturalize effect, but of course the best ones to play will be versatile options such as Thrashing Brontodon, Abrade, or Cast Out.

Now that you have a few baselines on what to keep in mind when building your Brawl deck, let’s go over a few colorless cards that will be staples of the format, as well as one card in each color that I believe could fit into a wide variety of strategies.

The Colorless Staples of Brawl

As far as format staples go, there’s no better place to start than Walking Ballista. Walking Ballista simply will be the most common card in Brawl, and I expect every deck to run a copy. It is colorless and so can fit in every deck, is good early in the game if you need it to fill out your curve, and is an amazing topdeck late in the game. Plus, there are plenty of synergies in the format with historic cards or +1/+1 counters. Just put this card in all of your decks, and expect to see it on the other side of the table when choosing lines of play during games.

Treasure Map is another card that I expect most Brawl decks to include, yet it won’t be quite as ubiquitous as Walking Ballista. With starting at 30 life, and therefore a longer game than you’d normally play in Standard, a two-mana artifact that fixes your draw step as well as ramps in the mid-game is a welcome addition to most every deck. Maybe the aggressive Brawl decks will pass on Treasure Map, but they’ll be in the minority.

Gilded Lotus is exactly the kind of card that’s made for Brawl, and it’s a wonderful inclusion in Dominaria for the format. Having a mana advantage over the opponent is key when playing midrange and control decks, and that’s exactly what Gilded Lotus provides. Also, the manabases in Brawl aren’t the most consistent, considering you can only play one of each nonbasic land that your deck desires, which makes the color fixing Gilded Lotus provides valuable as well. Even if your curve tops out at six or seven, there are still many mana sinks you can play in the format to take advantage of Gilded Lotus, making it a strong consideration for most decks.

Field of Ruin would be an important addition to Brawl manabases just taking into consideration the ability to fix your mana when needed, but it does so much more. The Ixalan legendary enchantments that transform into lands, such as Search for Azcanta, are powerful enough to take over games, making Field of Ruin a necessary answer.

One Key Card of Each Color

With those being the colorless cards that I see most decks finding room, let’s check out one card of each color that I think should be strongly considered when building a Brawl deck.

We already talked about how good Wrath effects are in Brawl, but instead of going with one of them, I wanted to talk about how Gideon’s Intervention is a surprisingly good card in the singleton format. When Gideon’s Intervention enters the battlefield, you name a card and then your opponent can’t cast that card anymore.

Usually this effect would be saved for combo decks that rely on a certain card. However, with Brawl, you know your opponent will always have access to casting their commander, even if you remove it from the battlefield, and the only way to keep your opponent from recasting their commander is with Gideon’s Intervention. So for those of you who don’t want to deal with The Scarab God coming back over and over again, I’d recommend trying out a Gideon’s Intervention to keep it off the battlefield for good.