In Defense of Brawl

I keep hearing gripes about Brawl. “It’s a naked cash grab by WOTC,” or “rotation is something Commander players want to avoid,” and “it’s not fully supported on Arena,” among others. While many of these criticisms are understandable, and I share some of the concerns; overall I believe multiplayer Brawl is an excellent format and I’d like to explain why I’m drinking this particular flavor of Hasboro’s Koolaid.

Before I get into specifics, let me explain where I’m coming from and why you should care what I think. When I was born, ‘Stayin’ Alive’ was the #1 song and ‘A New Hope’ was still in the theatres. Later in the early 90’s I was in high school listening to Nirvana and playing D&D. I had friends trying to get me to play a new card game called Magic: The Gathering. But my pot sodden brain thought “magic” and “gathering” sounded like some ridiculous hippie **** and it certainly wasn’t punk rock enough to satisfy my overly developed sense of “cool” ( don’t look at my D&D obsession, nothing to see here folks… move along… move along). I rebuffed all attempts to get me to play what I would discover, decades later in early 2019 is the greatest game ever invented.

The point of this babbling, self-indulgent preface is meant to say that I’m a noob with less than a year of playing magic under my overly long belt. I have been trying to make up for the lost time by playing constantly on Arena and two to three days a week at my small but awesome LGS. At this point, I’m totally addicted to brawl, and here’s why.

When I started playing Magic, my first exposure was Friday Night Magic Standard. I was lucky enough to have come in shortly after the 2019 Challenger decks were released so I had an easy time getting going. I was able to sit down every Friday night for my weekly lesson in humility, and I started really learning about and enjoying my new obsession. But I soon discovered that my Challenger deck was not long for this world and that my white weenie (deck) was about to shrink after the soon to come rotation. 

This is when, looking down the barrel of a fatal shot to my budget, one of my new friends told me about Thursday night and an intense sounding format called Elder Dragon Highlander. What’s so intense about this, you might ask, and I would answer: A. the name B. way more cards and mechanics and C. two to three extra people. It turns out that B. and C. where totally valid concerns for a newer player. But I found out to my great joy that the format is so fun and so casual that B. and C. are actually points in Commander’s favor. The added complexity opens up amazing prospects for creativity, and the multiplayer aspect actually accelerated my learning curve thanks to the casual atmosphere. I could ask questions in real-time and get great explanations and loads of patient general assistance. This may be partially attributable to just having a great set of people at the shop, but I think a lot of it is the format itself. I believe Brawl shares these points in its favor.

Brawl and Commander also share a few other bright points above singleton formats. The first is financial, especially for newer players with small collections, but also for established players. Buying full playsets of each card can be quite taxing unless you already have a large collection. This is definitely true for standard and can be an insurmountable barrier for players wanting to break into non-singleton eternal and semi eternal formats (including Pioneer).

I believe that multiplayer Brawl is superior to EDH for newer players. Brawl is particularly easy on the wallet, as buying one copy of each card in the standard pool is not the craziest task. It opens up the opportunity to build more decks, try fun experiments, and express oneself without exhausting a small hobby budget, at least in my case. The smaller card pool also has a leveling effect, so it’s possible for a newer player to learn and know all the mechanics and cards in a reasonable amount of time, just by drafting and playing. This, of course, is the same way more experienced players attained their knowledge of the cards in eternal formats.

In closing, I’m far from being the only new player this year but I think most of them are playing on Arena and have never set foot in their LGS. If Wizards develops it correctly and the community supports it, I think Brawl can help bring them into paper and help keep our locally owned card and comic shops alive and kickin’.