(Note: The actual decklist should be -1 Cosima, God of the Voyage and +1 Counterspell. For some reason, the system is detecting Counterspell as illegal, whereas it is not)

Since WotC put up the 100-card Historic Brawl event, I have been addicted to playing this deck. Since it is currently the off-season, there really isn't much to do and so I have put in about 200 games with this deck. As you may know, Baral was actually banned from the original Brawl format for being too oppressive. Well, guess what, in this new version of brawl, Baral is as oppressive as ever.

The proof, of course, is in the pudding:

In many games, the plan is simply to deploy Baral T2 and then stop your opponent from playing Magic for the rest of the game. For some commanders like Niv or Esika, or basically any opponent who leads with Black or Red mana, it may be prudent to hold from playing the commander until later when you can deploy one counterspell to protect it and then another to counter whatever it is that your opponent will play on their turn.

It is typical for the opponent to concede after you have countered all of their threats. For games where the opponent goes the distance (which are the most fun), the deck has a number of ways to close out the game, from early beatdowns with a T5 Commence the Endgame to lategame threats like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.

The most difficult matchups are versus Kinan, Bonder Prodigy and Esika, God of the Tree. The popularity of Kinnan makes cards like Mystic Subdual necessary evils. If you are lucky enough to slam one of these effects on the unsuspecting prodigy, the game becomes easy street quickly. Ditto if you are on the play since you can deploy Baral and then have countermagic up to counter Kinnan or the mana dorks until you can subdue Kinnan or bounce him. What makes Esika challenging is that the deck can play a number of removal spells and countermagic that can make it difficult to make Baral stick. Unlike Golos decks, it does not need to play as many ramp spells so there are a lot more threats in the deck.

Of course, uncounterable threats are a bane of the deck. However, they are not impossible to overcome. I have won through Carnage Tyrant, Koma, Cosmos Serpent or Chandra, Awakened Inferno. One trick I love to play is to cast Spell Swindle on these spells. They are not countered, but you still generate a ton of treasure tokens that you can typically use for a huge turn that lets you with through their advantage.

Overall, I believe Baral is the undisputed king of Brawl and may face the banhammer if/when the format actually becomes competitively relevant.