Last week WotC made some interesting announcements. Announcements that I’m pretty sure a few MtG podcasts whichever format they cover will discus, dissect, and over analyse with far superior insight than myself.

First up WotC announced a new format for MtG. A kind of Commander lite, called Brawl.

Brawl is meant to be an easier version of Commander for new players to get into. Here is a brief summary of the brawl specific rules:

• 60 card Singleton (apart from basic lands there can only be a single copy of a card in the deck) decks
• 30 starting life
• Only legal cards in Standard can be used
• Commanders can be legendary creatures or Planeswalkers
• No commander damage

Otherwise it follows the Commander rules for everything not covered above.

I’m not sure how I feel about this new format. I’m definitely curious. But there is some doubt about do we really need it? Why not just play Commander? If you read the WotC articles that have gone up about the format and the announcements tied up with it, they argue it has a lower barrier to entry, easier to get into, than Commander especially for new players to the game with smaller collections (which may be just the current set released). It’s interesting to see that WotC see Brawl as an introduction to Commander and Standard. I thought the new Challenger decks were/would serve as that. The question I have is this just a format to sell more booster packs? If this takes off won’t it just push up the price of cards in standard, and thus making the barrier to entry to standard even more expensive? Which is something I thought they didn’t want to do.

I don’t see getting into Commander as that expensive or with the imminent arrival of Challenger decks Standard also. Buying a precon for Commander and upgrading it doesn’t have to be an expensive thing to do. Recently I under took that very exercise with the 2017 Arcane Wizardry precon. After putting my amazing google ninja skills to work I found an article that did a $20 upgrade for the deck (I’ve now ordered the cards from a sister post for the dragons precon). But there are a few articles/videos out there with tips for upgrading them. And I would imagine that not long after the Challenger decks hit, that a few articles will appear on how to upgrade them. Once you get a precon you start to get some of the Commander staples that are needed for building your own decks.

Naturally as a format this is going to have a changing card base. So for Commander players there are going to be a few challenges in building these Brawl decks because all of a sudden staples like Sol Ring are gone. How do you mana ramp in Standard? With that shifting card base decks will also need to change, and I can see certain styles of play coming and going. A deckbuilders paradise.

I think there will be some interesting decks built for Brawl. I’m working on 2 at the moment. Mainly because I want to at least try the format. So our MtG tournament over Easter will now be a Brawl tournament instead of a Commander tournament. I’m doing the 2 decks so that Dale can join in. One will be a Dino tribal deck which will be the one I’ll give to Dale to play. Whilst mine is probably going to be mono green, trying to use the etb effect to my advantage. I’d like to keep bouncing creatures to get multiple etb use from a card. But I need to solve how to do that in Standard.

Tied up with the new format is the poster child for it, the buy a box promo legendary creature, Firesong and Sunspeaker Minotaur Cleric.

This card will only be available as a promo and only when you buy a booster box while stocks last. I think it’s pre-orders only too. But I may be wrong on that front. So yes like many I’ll probably be building a deck with it as the commander. Although I gather there may be some complaints about this exclusivity.

The final announcement was that WPN authorised stores (ie your FLGS) are allowed to sell booster boxes a week early at the pre-release events! Great news for the FLGS (especially US ones that have to compete with the likes of massive chains like Walmart for your MtG money, UK FLGS don’t have that competition yet to my knowledge). Pre-release weekend is going to be massive for the FLGS. But is it only shifting sales from one weekend to another? Hopefully it will get more people taking part in the pre-release events.

What do you think about this news? If you haven’t commented before I need to approve your first comment then after that you can comment as often as you like without my approval. This was the least intrusive way to cut out on spam. So I hope it hasn’t put too many folks off from leaving comments.