Time to Brawl?

Wizards has just announced they want to support a new format called "Brawl". This format is similar to commander, with some changes. Here are my thoughts on the new format.


First, let's go over their official rules for brawl.

• Each player's deck is exactly 60 cards. Other than basic lands, no card may appear in a deck more than once. Each card must be legal in the Standard format; cards banned in the Standard format can't be played in the Brawl variant.
• Before the game begins, each player designates one legendary creature or planeswalker card in their deck as their commander. This card begins the game in the command zone and the other 59 cards are shuffled up.
• The mana symbols that appear on your commander dictate what cards may be in your deck. Mana symbols that don't appear on your commander can't be in the deck.
• Each player begins the game at 30 life rather than 20. If you're playing a multiplayer game (which we recommend for Brawl!), each player draws seven cards again on their first mulligan and the player who plays first draws a card on their first turn.
• As long as your commander is in the command zone, you may cast it from there. Doing so costs an additional two mana for each time you have cast the card this way this game.
• If your commander is countered or leaves the battlefield, you may put it back into the command zone instead of putting it anywhere else it would go.
• The Brawl variant has no other rules for playing, winning, or losing the game. Have fun!

60 Cards

If we start with commander as the base, there are some big changes between the two formats. The first listed rules change is the 60 cards instead of 100.

One of the most daunting factors in commander that put off new players to the format is the huge deck size. I think the 60 card deck size will allow players to enter the format much easier. Getting 33 playable cards (as well as 24 land and your commander). Is going to be much more accessible than the 59 you need now.

Not only does the 100 card deck make it harder to find cards to build a deck, it makes it hard to shuffle. I'm good at shuffling and have above average hand size, yet I still shuffle by splitting the deck into three parts and shuffling two together at a time. This is a large time constraint, especially if I search my library during play (one of the reasons I avoid doing so). Reducing deck size to 60 cards will allow easier, faster library searching and shuffling afterwords.

Overall, I think that the change to a 60 card format is great and would likely be a healthy change for commander in general.

Planeswalker Commanders

Planeswalkers should be viable commanders for commander. My playgroup has allowed planeswalkers as commanders for a while now and we have rarely experienced problems with this. There have been issues with a specific commander, but he was already an exception and allowed as a commander already. This is solved the exact same way any problematic commander is solved: stop playing that commander!

This is a change that needs to happen in commander. It's long overdue in my opinion.

Standard Only

Another big change is a fairly format defining change for Brawl. It only allows standard legal cards.

On the surface, this difference makes it seem like it will keep the format fresh. A card is only legal (aside from reprinting) for about two years. This means you will not be using the same commander today as you will in two years. You will have to rebuild your Brawl deck constantly. It's easy to call this a money grab as it will force players to constantly buy new cards, but honestly we already do this. As long as I am actively playing, I edit my decks constantly -especially my commander decks. I change out what commanders I play constantly.

What actually bothers me about this change is the issue that I wont be able to use side product cards in Brawl. We cannot use cards from the commander sets, conspiracy type sets, nor reprint products like the master series. For wizards this means, assuming the format takes off, that less of these products will be sold.

A not so simple solution would be to allow these side product sets to be standard legal, which would automatically make them Brawl legal. This would mean they would have to be more careful about the reprints printed in these sets. Maybe we leave out the masters series if this option is taken.

Another solution would be to switch this to modern legal instead of standard legal. This still excludes the side product, which I think should be made modern legal (just preemptively ban problem cards like sol ring).

One solution I do not think they should make is to make exceptions. Saying standard legal cards and other cards printed in the last 2 years, or something like this would just make the format legality too complicated.

30 Life

Using thirty life instead of forty means the games will be a little bit faster and will allow aggro decks to have a much larger impact on the format. I fully support this change. One of my favorite parts about tiny leaders was the smaller life total.

No Commander Damage

One change that may go unnoticed on the first read through is that there is no such thing as commander damage in Brawl. "The Brawl variant has no other rules for playing, winning, or losing the game."

I'm going to preface this by saying, "I love playing voltron commanders!"

Commander damage is clunky, causes too much bookkeeping for casual play, and is a crutch for the format! It needs to go!

From a game designer perspective, I have come to realize that players do not want this much bookkeeping. I shouldn't have to worry about 5 different life totals while playing a casual game. If I'm playing with 3 other players and keep track of commander damage then I have to keep track of how much damage 3 commanders have dealt, what my actual life total is, and watch poison counters. This is too much.

More often commander damage at our tables were ignored until it became a factor and then players inevitably say "Oh yeah, I forgot about commander damage." Which creates a feel bad moment. So, we generally just ignore commander damage all together. You know what changed? Nothing. Ruhan still knocks players out of the game quickly if not stopped. Voltron still wins from time to time.

The only exception to ignoring commander damage is commander damage nights. These nights we only allow death by commander damage. Since this is a variant table rule, it can be allowed in brawl as well.

Conclusion

I'm excited for Brawl. I would like to see many of the differences between brawl and commander be switched to Brawl's current rules. 30 life is better than 40, 60 cards is more manageable than 100, and commander damage needs to end. I would like to see some changes to what is allowed (or to what standard means), but for now it seems to be a format going in the right direction.

Support

Wizards asked what they can do to support this new format.

First, determine if you want to support it. EDH was a healthy format long before Wizards decided they wanted to support it. It didn't need any additional support, and initial support often ended with banned cards for the format, or cards that are hated out by play groups. Now, is it a better format then it was when it was EDH? I believe that it is. While they went too strong at first, they have learned from their mistakes and are making more Commander friendly legends (and other format friendly cards).

If you decide you want to support it, support it. I think preconstructed decks are a good start, but I honestly don't think another line of product is a great idea. It would need to replace commander decks, which I'm 100% against at this time, or it would need to replace the planeswalker decks, which it could do fairly easily. I love how the planeswalker decks currently play, but the only changes would be making the decks singleton and matching the planeswalker to the colors of the deck. Both of these changes would make me happy as a commander player.

I think the biggest issue I have with the format is the limit against newly printed cards. Including these cards in standard somehow would be a huge boon to Brawl. We already have standard cards that are not found in standard packs of cards (planeswalker decks) and it seems to be being taken further with the newest buy a box promo. Printing a new product deck line called brawl, making it standard legal, and making it reprints that include specific cards from the commander and/or conspiracy type sets could go a long way to solving this issue.

I hope you enjoyed today's article as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Let me know what you think about the format and if there is anything I missed.