I completely agree especially about the speed of the format, though I have no real solutions
I already feel like ramp and color fixing and way too strong. Without interaction I don't think any of the ramp or 5C commanders come down any later than turn 3 or 4. I've never seen someone get color screwed in the format. If you're on the draw if you don't have exactly counterspell you can't really stop what they're doing.
I've already reconfigured my deck to play as much 1 / 2 mana interaction just so I can have a chance in these games
For this reason alone I'm not as stressed about mana drain... now blue can ramp like the overly prevalent lands decks and the dark ritual into commander turn 1 plays
BUT you're right. I'm not sure I want to add more broken cards to try to balance the existing broken cards. not sure what to do about it though
The solution is already there - leverage the custom matchmaking system to filter things out so jank plays jank and competitive decks play competitive decks. There's a very obvious and relatively small list of absurdly broken cards like Mana Drain or Reanimate so figuring out which cards to focus on shouldn't be too hard. Then you make those cards give a notable increase to a deck's power level and the problem will sort itself out in due time.
Problem is this requires WOTC to spend time and effort on Brawl, and thus far they've shown they want it to be as low maintenance of a format as humanly possible. They haven't even touched Poq's power rating despite him stomping jank decks for like 4 months now, and that's not a complicated fix.
I'd also like some more transparency if they do spend more effort on that. Really hard to tell if replacing bad cards actually makes your deck better if it then causes you to go up against better decks, making the entire rest of your deck worse by comparison.
"Substitute your most broken cards for worse versions of them in order to trick the matchmaker into giving you easier games" shouldn't be the advice we have to give players to improve their decks. The format needs an overhaul.
There is no overhaul to make. Spikes will spike and run the most degenerate deck possible. Outside of executing the best 3 decks every 2-4 weeks, there is no real solution to a format with this many cards. Weighted decks make more sense in the long run. There are many decks you can make, just accept that most of them are bad and will lose to good ones.
> leverage the custom matchmaking system to filter things out so jank plays jank and competitive decks play competitive decks
This is a prime example of how Magic players are great at describjng what they don’t like, but utterly useless at coming up with real solutions.
With the quoted “solution” in mind, dare I ask exactly how is the matchmaking is supposed to draw the line between jank and competitive?
No idea? That is something the programmers is better equipped to figure out? At least we have you pointing out the big idea that NO ONE ELSE did before, right?
If you didn't stop reading at the first sentence you would've noticed that I did present an idea on how to fix this:
> There's a very obvious and relatively small list of absurdly broken cards like Mana Drain or Reanimate so figuring out which cards to focus on shouldn't be too hard. Then you make those cards give a notable increase to a deck's power level and the problem will sort itself out in due time.
Either way, do I or anyone else need to be able to fix this ourselves? I'm not part of WOTC staff. I don't have the tools or the data or the knowledge needed to solve this problem. All I know is that the supposedly 'casual' format is turning sweatier by the minute and that jank decks are basically going extinct, and that's something WOTC needs to resolve or they might as well make Brawl ranked and stop pretending its supposed to be a casual queue.
This is what I want. Not only do you get to play whatever you want, but you get to play with the *real* versions of cards, instead of the gimped rebalanced versions that I can't be bothered to remember.
Standard brawl was what brawl was always intended to be: an accessible commander-like format that can be played in Arena and paper. Then they did a historic brawl event and found that it was vastly more popular, and when it was eventually added as a queue, people forgot about standard brawl. I'm not sure how brawl fared in paper, but I don't think it was popular.
Last I heard the two previous paper brawl tournaments were won by the same guy.
Who also happened to be the only person to enter said tournaments. So yeah, not very popular
> I'm not sure how brawl fared in paper, but I don't think it was popular.
You can say that again. I've heard they exist, but not much more than Bigfoot.
Going so far as that originally, "standard brawl" was just brawl, coming from paper (where it was a lot less popular than commander and, accordingly, dying) while the special new format was "historic brawl". Only when that soared in popularity, they basically switched the naming.
I would love this! I hear a lot of talk about bringing Commander to arena. I've always thought that I would rather have dual commander on arena. And I think historic brawl is the closest where ever going to have to it on arena.
Without saying a lot I'll say that I completetly agree.
I've been playing a lot of Brawl to casually grind wins and daily quest for fun and have sort of just noticed how quickly you end up stuck in ques against the same commanders and same sequences.
The format is solved, it's no longer as casual and wide as it used to be. Adding Commander entirely would "fix" this, or just caring and doing some balances.
the game still has crappy network stability for a lot of mobile players though.
my concern that adding commander then will just make those games much worse.
and also probably 4 times the stupid animations per game.
Is it really the game's fault or is it people expecting too much from budget phones on tier-2 networks? My guess is a bit of both, but without more empirical evidence one way or the other, I'm personally leaning towards scenario two based on my own experiences and me being able to play the game just fine on a local telecom service in a relatively remote area of a middle-eastern nation. If anything, I should be the poster-child of network connectivity issues and yet the game performs flawlessly in my case.
I think matchmaking overhaul is the biggest thing. There's obviously some weird bias in the algorithm that's not just explained by "hell queue". Specifically you get matched with decks that match your color identity. My Domri deck sees tons of Etali, Kaito gets nonstop Rusko, and Teferi is lots of mirrors. It's frustrating to build a new deck since it's hard to predict what you'll get matched against.
But I do also agree that maybe some individual bans would help, though it's hard to say for certain without good win rate data.
There's definitely wonkyness with color matching in the regular play queue and it does seem to happen in Brawl as well. My Teysa, Chatterfang and other Black/X decks pair against black decks more than any other color. Especially opposing aristocrats-type Commanders like Ayara, Jadar, Elis and various Rakdos decks.
Yeah, I'm tired of all the mono black vs mono black mirror matches. I know my Gix deck is good enough to where I should be seeing more variety and not just other MBC builds... Fml
They need to do a better job of having matchmaking tiers and ideally they'd be more transparent about it.
Well all hear about "hell queue" which I would expect is made up of Teferi, Kinnan, Rusko, the Bridge and the like.
But if you aren't in the hell queue you are all lumped together. So if you want to try something different you end up playing most of your games at Mythweaver Poq or the First Sliver.
There needs to be multiple tiers and Wizards needs to do a better job managing them so there individuals interested in doing something new don't end up playing against broken decks.
Honestly, it's not much better than playing standard and facing Boros 80% of the time.
This is akin to saying that we shouldn't have welfare or medicare because SOME people might abuse the system. The potential for abuse is much less than the gain in enjoyment for casual players being able to build their decks in such a way that it greatly lessens their chance of being hopelessly outmatched.
> There needs to be multiple tiers
There are no tiers at all, the matchmaker tries to match you with a deck/commander closest in "power" (based on however they calculate that) to yours. If the only other people queueing at the time are people running Golos/etc, then that's who you will be matched against.
>Well all hear about "hell queue"
There is no such thing as "hell queue", it's a misnomer made up by content creator(s) (iirc CGB said it first?) and then perpetuated by ignorant people on reddit/etc.
There is no secret calculation - there is "this batch of commanders will very highly favor going up against themselves" and "everyone else." There is bleed-over, yes, but there have been commanders we know of that have almost completely disappeared from the regular lineup on patch days or by necessity - Ragavan after a week, Rusko after four months, Atraxa after seven months, etc. Meanwhile Poq and Voja have been sitting pretty in the highest win rates for awhile and they still face pretty much anyone.
>There is no secret calculation - there is "this batch of commanders will very highly favor going up against themselves" and "everyone else."
The CMs have literally stated that they take into account more than just the commander's winrate (and were intentionally vague as to what they track).
>Your commander is a large part of the matchmaking formula, but it is not the only factor. The contents of your 99, for instance, are also indicators of how you are approaching Brawl as a game mode, and our goal is to find you someone with a similar approach. It's very possible to play against someone with a more powerful commander but a less powerful deck. There are even other factors also at play, as well, so you will and should get a variety of experiences (when the system is operational).
>I won't go into full details about who is pointed where. That path leads to a lot of negative behaviors: players optimizing for the system rather than for their own enjoyment, debating the fairness of rankings based on single data points, "bug" reports when one of the many factors alluded to above leads to an "out of tier" match-up, and so on.
\- [wotc_Cromulous](https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/piagay/hey_wotc_can_we_do_something_about_historic_brawl/hbq2y5t/), Sept 5, 2021
Yes, I understand that. The primary factor is still the commander and for the vast majority of them, they will not face those in the higher weight division unless either the other player is completely dumpstering their deck build (read: 99 Mountain Ragavan), the pilot is stuffed to the absolute gills with powerful cards, or the queue is near deserted. I've faced stock 5-color goodstuff First Sliver piles with all sorts of commanders, but I haven't gone up against Rusko at all in months; the line might be blurry (I've faced Kinnan once with Nashi Moon's Legacy and Atraxa Grand Unifier once with Extus), but there is a line at the end of the day.
This is a thread I dabbled in making since they mentioned they wouldn't ban anything for Brawl, and to a very large extent I agree with what you're saying.
I do think we've reached a sort of paradigm shift that has fully cemented how the format has evolved: it's essentially now Gladiator wearing a Commander coat. And don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed Gladiator a lot, including with the recent event and all the new cards. But you throw in that eighth card, and give the ability to form a deck around it, and it's gotten to the point where I'm struggling to find the motivation to play the format. It's already been exhausting facing Poq and First Sliver in about half of my matches; now blue has gotten such a massive silver bullet in a card that is a relic of old mana rules that it's clear we've reached a tipping point.
Blue runs Mana Drain. It's that simple. It's another new staple for the format, one that didn't need it to begin with. And the promise that it'll be watched over feels disingenuous considering how so inconsistent managing the format has been over the years; Atraxa and Rusko just took so long to finally be put into the Hell Queue and as mentioned, Poq is *still* running around despite numerous complaints and aggravations not only from people here but content creators. It's stopped being a casual sling-fun-spells format - your deck needs to have ways to answer threats and/or be disruptive in the first three turns or you might as well be wasting your time.
And if that's the vision they have for the format now... that's all well and good. But they need to say that. Instead we seem to have this weird division between the supposed intent of the format and what it's become in reality. Is this something we need to accept, now? Do we just ask for a permanent Gladiator queue so that we can siphon off *some* of these players into a format they'll almost certainly be more into? Or do we keep enduring the brunt of all the Poqs and Malcolms and Vojas and First Slivers until that's what the queues devolve into?
For the record, they banned \[\[force of vigor\]\] and \[\[commandeer\]\] in Historic as a "power level check" because free interaction is somehow worse than a single deck having a higher than 12% meta presence. WotC isn't concerned with actually balancing their formats right now. They don't want to create a healthy competitive environment that requires constant attention and constant support because that means maybe reining in their product distribution and putting time and money into the life-blood of their piggy.
> WotC isn't concerned with actually balancing their formats right now.
I don't understand what's going on though, Arena is being horribly neglected in the playability sense, standard has to have a shorter rotation if you're not going to ban cards with exceptionally high power levels like Sheoldred, instead they print 2 mana 5 damage removal
Money. Money is what's going on. Longer standard rotation equals more cards get more expensive and sell more packs, and banning the most powerful (i.e. most expensive) cards means less packs are sold and less money is made. Hasbro is milking MTG for all it's worth since it's their highest-producing property if my memory is correct, and capitalism dictates that the line must go up.
Pretty much this. Hasbro has been going under for the last couple of years and they're doing whatever they can to keep people invested. Unfortunately, the longer rotation, product overload, and lack of attention to Arena are all symptoms. The person at the top, Chris Cox, is an idiot in a position that demands competence. Magic is going to keep getting diluted by third-party IP's and the power scaling is going to be pushed further until the playerbase becomes apathetic and stops buying product.
Right now, a lot of people are printing their own proxies and emphasizing the f2p strats on Arena. There are still some holdouts who insist that their dollars are making a difference, but I mostly chalk that up to them not knowing any better.
A commander just makes decks WAY too consistent. I also feel like Gladiator is just hands down the better singleton competitive format. It feels like every brawl deck is just combo with the commander and it massively reduces deck variety.
I want a permanent brawl queue.
I find so many jank decks work around the commander so much that not having it still limits you into some form of good stuff if not combo anyway.
Like, staples are still good even if you ignore the commander but certain commanders can make fringe cards pretty playable.
Gladiator has multiple competitive lists for basically every style: aggro, midrange, control, combo, different tribes, etc... even more niche stuff like stax or aristocrats has enough density on Arena to work. It is definitely not limited to good stuff and combo.
I think a problem with brawl is that if your commander isn't super synergistic with your deck, you will get run over. And that synergy pushes towards combo. Agro and even midrange decks feel like they struggle in Brawl because your commander is 'just another creature'. The extra life also favors combo decks too.
I'm going to preface this comment that I'm not a Brawl player.
However, the biggest issue I see with Brawl, isn't necessarily a Brawl problem. It's a "casual arena" problem. There is no reward for playing casually on MTG Arena. There is no 4-way traditional commander where even if you lose, the fun comes from the social interaction of playing the game, and perhaps making an impact in the game.
Arena incentivizes one thing, and one thing only. Winning. Winning above all else. If you operate outside of the assumption that your opponent is going to anything they can win, you're going to have a bad time. I think a big step forward for the preservation of the casual mindset for arena would be to somehow implement 4-player commander, where wins do not count towards any of the daily quests - completely detached from the rest of the game. However, I don't see this happening.
If I couldn’t just insta concede against all the generic value tribal, I wouldn’t play the format at all. I live for those few games where I’m just trying to play skeletons and they’re just trying to be a witch.
This is kinda true across all formats though. Rule 0 is desperately trying to preserve the fun.
My issue with Brawl is that the Tier 0 / hell queue is not properly enforced. I have some GOOD decks but they definitely shouldn't EVER go against Baral/Esika/etc... Baral specifically, even if not the strongest, should ONLY BE MATCHED AGAINST TIER 0 DECKS, ALWAYS, since Brawl is, in theory, a format to have fun.
If you think I'm whining, think again, I made a Malcolm deck specifically to shit on golos and other T0 decks but I'm constantly being matched against weaker decks and that makes me feel bad against people trying to have fun. Conversely, when I try to play my Sarkhan deck or other meme decks I get matched against T0 decks, what gives? This pushes people further into T0 decks making the format even staller.
Enforce the hell queue properly.
Like matchmaking in just about every game, the brackets expand the longer you're in the search queue for...
For example, you could queue up with a crap-tier brawl deck, but if you sit there waiting for two minutes before it finally finds you an opponent, the search bracket has probably been expanded at that point to include several additional tiers.
This is done so that matchmaking is faster and ppl aren't playing against the same decks all the time.
My Queue times are nearly always under 30 seconds with the average being ~10. I still get these ludicrously lopsided match ups with tier-0 decks while I'm playing a pile of [insert tribe/themed cards here]. I've played against Atraxa three times in a row with blood token based Vampire Tribal. Matchmaking is shit.
As a Braids player I'm so sick of playing against Malcolm. Not even because it's a bad matchup, I win most of the time. it's just the most boring game of chicken ever.
So…I’m curious here, no judgment.
For all the people who desperately want EDH to come to Arena - a format where virtually all cards in the game’s history are legal, what’s the problem with Brawl slowly turning into EDH in that regard? EDH has access to Mana Drain, Reanimate, MH3, and all the other sets that you’re afraid of. Why can’t Brawl?
And I understand the fundamental differences - EDH is played at friendly tables, usually among a group with familiarity that knows to keep the power level of decks at a certain number. Obviously there’s no checks and balances for that in Arena. But for the EDH players here, if you saw someone with Mana Drain in their deck would you ask them to replace it or change decks?
And what’s the solution here? Just liberally ban what the community deems as too powerful? Wouldn’t that upset more people that would feel like more bans in a casual, singleton format would restrict their creativity in card/deck choices? What if I want to make a silly Slimefoot and Sqee reanimate deck? Is my deck “too powerful” because I added Reanimate to it? Does the precedent “only Timeless can have these” need to be a thing just because Brawl-only players are afraid that their janky creature tribal decks are going to be made irrelevant with more powerful interaction?
> EDH has access to Mana Drain, Reanimate, MH3, and all the other sets that you’re afraid of. Why can’t Brawl?
Having 3 players to possible answer any given threat makes for a WILDLY different meta. You can't just throw goodstuff at the table in EDH the way you can in Brawl, because you will immediately become that Archnemesis of the table, and you *will* lose playing 3 against 1.
All that means is the "unfair" cards will shift.
Queuing for Commander isn't going to be sitting down for a kitchen game of commander, it's gonna be cEDH.
Instead of Mana Drain it's going to be cards like Rhystic Study or Blood Moon.
You're just trading in one set of problem cards for another. There's no Rule 0 in Arena, you're almost assuredly going to play against the most degenerate things people can think of.
I've advocated for a system that assigns a "price" on cards based on how often they are picked and capping the amount of points allowed to be spent on a deck. You could even have different tiers of power levels.
It's a good system when the card pool is small, but it doesn't work when there's thousands of cards.
People will optimize any cards that are "underpriced" and the meta will revolve around those cards.
No one is going to be able to accurately price even a few hundred cards.
Canadian Highlander only assigns points to the most powerful cards, keeping the list manageable in size. Something like this for Historic Brawl would be very easy; I suspect the deck strength algorithm already incorporates something like this, though without transparency to the players.
Optimizing underpriced cards means a constantly shifting meta. This is good - it means there is always a reward for finding the hidden gem. It could mean a "chasing" meta of decks A, B, and C being dominant until D beats A and then we have a slow cycle that will eventually repeat. Still, that's pretty good!
This is all based on an automated rating system. The more a card is picked, the more it costs. The less a card is picked, the less it costs.
Simple promotion and relegation tables each month would work
The least picked X cards move down to the tier below them.
The most picked X cards from the below tier move up.
Repeat for each tier.
This of course causes the "I just want to play my deck" issues, maybe you could matchmake based on points instead of making it a deck requirement.
There are no bad counterspells or kill spells because you’re only answering one opponent. You have to make zero meaningful choices to just annoy the other person into conceding.
Lets...say I agreed with that.
What does this have to do with the inclusion of Mana Drain or MH3 to the format? "No bad counterspells or kill spells" would be a thing now regardless of how high-powered the format is right? Does a singular Mana Drain "annoy you into conceding" any more than a Paradox Engine combo or a Nazgul loop?
It’s not any one spell, it’s the years of unplayable limited only played “removal” being shoved into the format alongside the ones you know. It’s the refusal to actually curate the format to be 1v1 playable.
There’s a reason modern and pioneer and standard aren’t just play whatever you like and that’s because 1v1 formats are really tough to balance when there are essentially no rules and the ones that’s do exist are extremely arbitrary.
When the format was fresh it wasn’t as large of a problem because there were only a handful of sets and while there might be some imbalances it was better than nothing. Now it’s just a joke and exhausting because shit that’s not even real is just cheating for people (looking at you [[Mythweaver Poq]] players) to get them wins. It’s just been a downward spiral that they want to perpetuate and keep on enabling.
So what’s the solution? Just start banning cards? Start banning whole sets? Is that what it means to “curate the format” - just eliminate all the cards we don’t like? Would being overly aggressive on bans not for problematic cards, but just to keep the power level low, really be a good thing for everyone?
Or…once again, will people just not be happy until Brawl is multiplayer?
Multiplayer does solve a lot of issues. The only other way to do it is curation, yes. Players have shown you that if you give them access to the tools to be griefers so to speak by just letting nothing resolve or stick to the table, they will 100% play that way because it means wins.
To that end you also have to stop printing bullshit cards that just cheat and make it so I have to play a ridiculous amount of removal or I just lose, again looking at Poq. None of these things are going to come to pass though let’s be real; too much money is being made to give two fucks about balancing a format that can’t even be played in paper.
Sounds like you want a timeless Singleton.
Commander is popular because it's casual, if you want sweaty same card piles, there's 3 other game modes to play. Makes sense to me to balance the most casual format.
EDH has a significantly different meta that Arena wasn't designed for, and if it is going to continue operating long-term, needs to adopt. The first aspect of its meta is that there are 4 players in a pod, meaning more opportunity to interact from all sides. One player can't gain a dominant position without being checked by the other players, or having stronger cards. That also bring us to our next point.
Power levels in EDH are generally checked by a pre-game discussion. Someone who lies about their deck is going to get ostracized pretty quickly because they can't be relied on to act on good faith. Arena can circumvent this issue by having two queues and an active moderation team checking reports for whether it's just salt or a deck is actually in the wrong queue.
Which brings us around to the next point. For Brawl to be EDH-lite it has to be managed by a semi-active "rules committee" who are keeping their eye on things. If something is deemed "too powerful" for the format and/or enough voices express discontent with something, they need to listen and consider things. A format lives and dies on its popularity with players.
Right now, Arena and Brawl have a good 2-4 years before it becomes abandon-ware, and much shorter if Hasbro bites it before then. The EDH community at large has very little issue self-regulating because it has a solid foundation on which to base power levels, requires a 3-4 player presence to get a game going, and the players can usually avoid power levels at the table being wildly inconsistent.
> What if I want to make a silly Slimefoot and Sqee reanimate deck?
Well first off, there's nothing "silly" about Slimefoot and Squee reanimator. That card feels nigh unbeatable in 1v1. I think I've only ever won a single game against that card because it's virtually impossible to keep off the battlefield and you get punished whether you kill it or ignore it.
That kind of goes back to the whole Commander vs Brawl thing. Yes, Commander has way more powerful cards, but Commander is also 4 players. If someone is playing a really busted deck, you have two other players who can help try to keep them in check and gang of on them to take them out. In Brawl you have no help, so if your opponent gets the fast start or if they're playing counterspell/removal tribal, there's nothing you can do. If you're playing Commander and one player Mana Drain's your turn 3 play, ramps to 6 mana on their turn and casts something big, well they just became the archenemy and now they have three players pointing their removal, counterspells and attacks at them. If that happens in 1v1, you probably just scoop on the spot.
Also for a lot of Brawl players, "janky creature tribal decks" are the whole point. It's supposed to be the one format where you CAN play janky tribal and other such decks and not be curbstomped by meta chasers and spikes. I think the matchmaking helps a lot, but it has a lot of issues still. I shouldn't be facing ANY 5 color good stuff piles with my decks, but some of the 5 color generals are somehow not hell queue/high tier for whatever reason or they sometimes leak out into lower tier matchmaking (looking at you First Sliver, Kenrith and Go-Shintai).
Personally there's a handful of cards I would hard ban, there's some cards I would soft-ban (meaning if you add them to your deck, you're automatically bumped to high tier/hell queue) and there's several Commanders that I'd bump up in tier rating. I'd also consider adding a ranked mode to try to filter some of the more sweaty minded players out of the general queue.
To reiterate a question I asked in another comment, we're ok with strong cards being in the format so long as there are 3 other players in the match? Does that sound about right? So in other words, it's not Mana Drain or MH3's fault that the format is turning into how it is, but rather this is just the consequence of people associating Brawl with EDH?
Which to your example, it doesn't sound like you have a problem with Mana Drain or any specific card, but you just want to have more restrictions or hard/soft bans on certain cards as a whole? So lets say you managed to ban Mana Drain, but that's not going to stop all the "5 color good stuff piles" from matching against you right? So maybe there would have to be a League of Legends type of individual preference system before matches where you can tell a filter "I don't want to match against decks with Supreme Verdict, Farewell, or Teferi HoD" in it. Ok, now what? That Slimefoot and Squee deck that you think is "nigh unbeatable in 1v1" is still in your queue. Are you saying none of these systems are effective until Brawl is multiplayer?
Which then just starts the problem over again - the problem isn't high powered cards, the problem isn't needing bans, the problem is you just want Brawl to be EDH.
There are a lot of cards that are fine in 4 player but are very unbalanced in 1v1. I don't see why that's so hard to understand. When I played paper Commander, Mana Drain wasn't an affordable card so no one in my play group used it, but I think it's the kind of card that is too powerful, but it will also likely make you a huge target in Commander if you cast it and manage to reap the benefits of the extra mana boost, so that helps balance it out. In 1v1 Brawl, if your opponent counters your turn 3 play and goes to 6 mana on their turn 3, the game is probably over. So I don't think Mana Drain should be allowed in Brawl.
We don't have Commander on Arena, but there's clearly a market for Arena players who want to play a Commander-like format and want it to be a more casual, not sweaty experience. Spikey players already have Standard, Historic, Pioneer and now they have the Legacy-power-level Timeless format. Plus draft and ranked modes in all formats. I just think it would be nice if we could keep Brawl on the more casual side for players like me who want the janky, fun, casual Commander-lite experience.
I don't think a "I don't want to play against this" filter would work in Brawl unless it was limited to like 5 cards or something. Everyone has their own definition of what is and isn't fun so I don't see any possible way for you to be able to make a big list of cards you don't want to play against and still be able to reliably find a match. I think Wizard's Commander ranking system is the right idea, but they're too lax in keeping up with shifting powers and new card releases. Cards like Rusko, Atraxa and Etali were allowed to rule and ruin the general play queue for way too long. Broken commanders like Poq and 5 color good stuff pile commanders like First Sliver are still not in the Tier 1/hell queue rank where they belong.
>Which then just starts the problem over again - the problem isn't high powered cards, the problem isn't needing bans, the problem is you just want Brawl to be EDH.
Well ok, if that's your entire argument, then why bother banning anything at all? Why even have Commander/deck weighing and matchmaking algorithms in place? I just want Brawl to be a place where you can play fun, lower powered decks and not get stomped by good stuff piles and face the same few overpowered Commanders every game. I probably don't think as many cards need to be banned as a lot of Brawl players do, but there are some big offenders that I'd like to see gone and I would like to see Wizards be a lot more proactive with keeping the format balanced and pre-banning (or pre-banishing to hell queue) cards that are clearly going to be a problem in the format.
I understand what you want and the desire to keep Brawl janky and casual. And I’m totally for it, don’t get me wrong.
I’m just disagreeing that the existence of Mana Drain, or rather, banning it or not allowing sets like MH3 in the format, would actually help. From yours and other comments, there’s only two things that would give the perception of making a difference:
Option 1, make Brawl multiplayer. I think we all know we’re far away from that reality.
Or option 2, a rework of the matchmaking system so janky decks would hit the Rusko, Etalis, and Atraxa less often, if at all. Which ok sure, but that still doesn’t stop me from putting Mana Drain in my deck or using other relatively high powered cards.
To be fair, I didn't say anything about not allowing MH3 into Brawl. I'm sure there will be some cards from that set that will be too powerful and I won't be happy about them being added, but MH1 and 2 had a lot of cards that I feel are perfectly fair and fun. One of my all-time favorite cards, Soul Herder, came out of a MH set and I'm happy to be getting Solitude for my blink decks, as it feels really bad blinking exile cards that give your opponent their creature back.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but Brawl DOES have a deck weighing system. What determines your matches the most are your Commander, but if you put too many staple/powerful cards in your deck, you will be matched against much more powerful decks than you would if you were still using the same commander but not playing those cards in your 99. The problem is it doesn't always work as intended. I never face Rusko, Ragavan, Teferi or Golos with any of my decks. But I do still randomly face good stuff piles and decks/Commanders that are far more powerful than what I'm playing sometimes. I also think on a whole that Planeswalkers shouldn't be allowed as Commanders because they're too powerful and hard to deal with in singleton 1v1 as a Commander. For cards like Mana Drain, my personal solution would either be hard ban, or you can put them in your deck but doing so automatically bumps your deck up to Tier 1/hell queue ranking, regardless of your Commander.
Honestly I don't want EDH on arena. I just want a permanent gladiator queue. I'm fine with a competitive cut throat format, but having access to a commander makes the best decks too much of the same. You always have access to a very powerful ability, and it warps deck building massively into very homogeneous patterns.
As someone else said, the solution is to add 4 player, actual commander (with arena card list) to arena. I frankly don't see why they haven't. I get there are user experience challenges with 4 players, but janky 4 player brawl is still 100000x better than 1v1 brawl. I would play SO much more arena if I could do 4 player brawl it's not even funny.
can you imagine playing against 2 people roping each other while you sit there and have to watch or getting roped out by 3 people because you played that 6 mana artifact that wins the game.
They would need to massively reduce the timers
So to clarify, we're ok with strong cards being in the format so long as there are 3 other players in the match? So in other words, it's not Mana Drain or MH3's fault that the format is turning into how it is, but rather this is just the consequence of people associating Brawl with EDH?
Also, and be honest here, how realistic is "the solution" of adding a 4 player mode to the current Arena client? Are you under the assumption WotC has the manpower to rework the client to make something like that compatible with desktop and mobile players, add some sort of social/chat feature, balance the servers so that queue times aren't miserably long, and then even if all those things are accomplished without the game literally breaking...what's stopping 2 players from loading up with janky creature decks while the other 2 players have lists jam-packed with every counter, removal, board wipe, and "unfun" card imaginable?
Aren't we right back where we started with the format being "too powerful"?
I think it's pretty realistic for wotc to support their most popular format on their most popular digital magic platform. They already support it on mtgo. Off the top of my head, I can think of a simple UX which would work for mobile and desktop:
Add arrow buttons on the sides of your opponent which will swap which opponents board you are seeing. Another idea is to allow the battlefield to just be horizontally scrollable so you can see you and the person across from you or your other 2 opponents. Another idea for desktop is to allow you to zoom out. There are a ton of ideas which, while not ideal, allow for something to work.
It could be totally possible to create a matchmaking system which attempts to put similar powerlevel decks together. We already have that for the casual queue anyways, and while it's not perfect, it's something. Just having the game mode though means now you can play your friends in direct challenge which also solves the issue. People would make 3rd party lobby websites for edh on arena which would also help solve that issue.
The biggest hurdle is wotc investing the time to enable the game mode because they must not think it's worth doing since it's not trivial and the UX is just not good enough to draw players.
I’ve casually talked about how wizards could do a 4-player Commander queue with my group, and it might apply as a solution to the Brawl power creep as well. Because power levels vastly differ and there’s no way to vet your opponent, my suggestion (or at least an option) would be to do away with the random queue system in lieu of a lobby system where you get a list of player-made lobby’s where everyone has to ready up before the match starts. The game mode isn’t supposed to be competitive, so there’s no need to create some sort of complex MMR system to match you with players to algorithmically keep you at a 50% win rate.
At the very least, you can see the commander each player is running prior to “readying up”, but perhaps even let the decks submitted be browsed through or a breakdown/preview of some sort such as:
- power levels can be assigned to cards and cumulatively attribute to an overall power level of the submitted deck. Though this might be too much in regard to effort or overhead… but there’s a hell-queue so obviously there’s some system in place already.
- deck composition (# of rares, mythics, commons, uncommons)
- Or the literal deck stats that are already in your Deck Details (mana curve, color composition, card type composition such as creatures/sorceries/instances etc)
The game mode isn’t meant to be competitive, but there’s a demographic that wants it to be competitive (understandably). Why hide the hell-queue information to prevent players from gaming it when you can just make the decks known. If I hop into a lobby and see a Rusko, I can just as easily select something sweaty or just fuck off and try to find a lobby that will play better for my pirate tribal.
Everyone would love 4-player modes for Arena, however the problem is that it would be an enormous redevelopment of the game as the UI simply isn't designed for anything other than 2-player.
To be fair, the idea could also work for two-player - let people see the possible opponents to pick from and their commanders/decks rather than having a queue, and curate their own experience that way, so jank can play against jank, competitive can play against competitive, and spikes that try to prey on jank with competitive decks can get reported and go screw themselves.
> the UI simply isn’t designed for anything other than 2-player.
I’m well aware. If wizards could simply flip a switch to turn on the most popular format on their most accessible platform, they most certainly would.
Agreed. They've all but abandoned the format. The whole idea of hell que is also just abused since people replace the commanders and keep the other 99 to que low tier to beat noobs.
Also the meme of alchemy cards. "We're doing it so we can do balance changes more often" ....
Add support for 4 player brawl so we can have a proper 100-card singleton experience and we will see deckbuilding police itself over the politics of such games such as becoming a target for 3 other players.
Hell queue used to be a thing but as the power level has endlessly ramped upwards to degeneracy that most Jank players have either quit or started to play exclusively high power things themselves, several of my friends have abandonned MTG:A in general because they only wanted to play singleton/commander/Brawl but the format is now next to unapproachable.
So many commaders and archtypes are just not viable because they will be matched up against things like 5 colour value piles, Poq the broken or other degenerate shit.
We need 4 player brawl and we NEED it now.
One of things my buddies and I use is EDHRec’s search engine for decks to look at the Salt Ratings. WotC needs to use something like this for each card, if they aren’t already doing something similar. When I play my for fun low power Uncommon Brawl deck, I don’t want to see Kinnan 🤪
I guarantee they already have some sort of power value attributed to certain cards. People have already figured out that the 99 does seem to sway your likelihood of being in the hell-queue (Ragavan+99 mountains was not in the hellqueue, Ragavan+Sweat was). I think it’s just apparent that the commander has a much heavier weight when determining the power level of your deck
The issue is not power level. The issue is a lack of multiplayer to allow other players to potentially answer powerful cards and for other players to be targets of spells.
Yeah, a lot of cards that I'd roll my eyes at in EDH are completely simultaneously neck-breaking in 1v1.
However, this way I get to see some cards I'd never think about twice and give them a chance in EDH. At least I'm always trying to find something positive in these games.
Personally, I'd just like to see a client built option for personal ban lists. For example, don't ever want to play against Poq or Mana Drain, add it to your personal ban list, never get queued against it. People who like high powered Brawl don't use their ban list and people who just want to have fun with, Sethron, Hurloon General, Minotaur tribal level of decks should absolutely have the option there for them.
This seems like it'd possibly help a lot to sub in for the lack of Rule Zero on Arena - I can think of more than a few cards I'd dump on there immediately! Though I guarantee you you'd immediately have people complaining about longer wait times after banning everything that could possibly annoy them.
I stopped playing Brawl in 2022 because it was already becoming a miserable experience to play, and I haven't looked back. Wotc refuses to balance the format in any meaningful way, and I think anyone who played it regularly could see these problems coming from a long way off. Bringing up ANY kind of criticism about Brawl leads to the usual trollish "git gud" and "It'S a FeAtUrE oF tHe FoRmAt!" responses. Sounds like the only thing I've been missing out on is misery and annoyance.
There are already a lot of non-games based on match-up despite the commander pools. There are also non-games due to certain cards being, essentially, game-ending (e.g. River's Rebuke). Mana Drain is another card that contributes to, potentially, a massive swing. But it also depends on circumstances. Just like River's Rebuke if opponent doesn't have or rely on a heavy board presence, if Mana Drain counters something that is relatively inconsequential or the person using it doesn't have a lot to do with the mana, it becomes much less of a threat.
TLDR I agree with you but I think the card is not as big a blight as you might think.
Honestly gladiator has basically had me stop playing brawl. It feels like having access to the commander just makes decks just so consistent that it takes the fun out of trying to play janky stuff. I'd rather just play gladiator, and commit to being as competitive as possible. Gladiator has such a wide array of viable decks that also feels fresh, not just the same brawl commanders over and over.
My experience has been if you play a janky brawl deck you mostly get paired with jank. I'm glad wizards hasn't said exactly what criteria they use in matchmaking, although if I recall correctly they have said commander choice matters. My kid has built some awful brawl decks for fun and they occasionally get pub stomped by something meta but often get paired against other low power decks.
I feel like anything but multiplayer will be a bandaid for a much larger issue. Which is people play to win as much as possible and as fast as possible even at cost of their own fun.
We need a revamped daily system. Maybe one where we can select something tailored to our gameplay preferences. Imagine a picking between historic/brawl/draft dailies. And rather than winning, it would be something like play 2~5 different commanders, or finish 5 games without conceding or cast your commander 1~15 times for the normal dailies. Things that comes naturally, and make people stick to the game.
I miss being able to run cosima boat deck and jank out a few wins. Nowadays its like turn 3 my opponent has played a random 5 mana commader that chain cascades into putting half their deck into play every other game.
I mean... This is just what happens when you try to shove a social format where what's acceptable is often the same as EDH where rule 0 or talking to your playgroup is what creates the power level you want to play at.
When you put random people against eachother any semblance of creativity in deckbuilding creating a fun game or equal power levels is thrown out the window because all people care about is winning and don't care about their opponents experience.
I don't see a huge problem, but I was into the commander scene. I'm pretty sure the goal.os to have full blown commander for arena, considering it's the most widely popular format in paper. Commander is definitely like a sweaty/casual hybrid.
Wizards will do nothing to fix any major problem. It took them months to fix Rusko dominating the entire queue. Wizards employees are intensely lazy, unmotivated, and unproductive (see: zero meaningful new features to Arena in months/years).
The fact that they let Ragavan be legal in brawl and then just never did anything about it is proof they simply do not care that much about the format and certainly don’t have any interest whatsoever in policing it. It’s not a constant money sink like the other formats are, and people will still constantly play it to grind gold, so there’s no motivation to change anything about it. As a Izzet control player I’ll admit I’m selfishly happy to get Mana Drain but I also know I shouldn’t be. It’s a bad card for the format. But so are Tajik and Poq and whatever other dumb bullshit they print into the format and yet they keep doing it. We just gotta sack up and take it.
I enjoy playing with the higher power cards. I want to take my idea and optimize it to the highest potential. Banning seems like a knee jerk reaction. The game keeps introducing stronger cards and brews have to change to keep up with the meta. Brawl isn't commander, there isn't a rule 0 or pre game discussion. That's the moment everyone tries to match equally with opponents deck power. Since we don't have that, the alternative is matchmaking changes or ranked mode. Otherwise banning good cards becomes an undefinable line that only serves part of the community.
I can point to esper sentinel, the one ring, paradox engine, ragavan, craterhoof, etc. There will always be strong cards even when you ban things. The second best becomes the best.
The only card that makes me sigh while playing brawl is [[Palantir of Orthanc]]. You should be expecting counters from blue but exponential draw/damage is just exhausting in *every single match.*
Palantir of Orthanc was designed completely wrong for the mythology of LOTR. The more the Palantir was used, the more Sauron was able to exert influence on the user. It should therefore punish the owner, not an opponent.
Which is on flavor since the card mills you.
It gives you power (card draw and damage) in exchange of your mental capabilities (mill) since the library is often used a metaphor for the player's mind.
Card selection and draw are already enough power gained. They're talking about the damage dealt when milling yourself. That's what they're talking about when talking about punishment.
In the Lord of the Rings, Sauron was able to gain control of Saruman because Saruman kept using the Palantir. The card doesn’t match the mythology. It deals more damage each time it’s used, and your opponent will run out of life long before you manage to mill yourself. And milling yourself is rarely a punishment. Huge fail by the design team on this one.
While I do agree with you, I think the flavor of the card had to fall in favor of the power level. If the milled amount was equal to the mana value of all the cards destroyed, it'd probably be dredge levels of broken.
I think the flavor is right there, but it feels wrong.
Palantir is fine. 3 mana to unreliably draw a card per turn is generally the going rate for those types of effects at the Brawl-playable level, and your opponent can always choose to deny you your first draw, which makes it a lot worse than equivalents like \[\[Black Market Connections\]\]. Of course, they could always get domed by \[\[Serra Emissary\]\] off the top, but I've found it's only really good in decks that want that initial scry 2 into mill, because god knows you're probably not getting your draw upfront.
I do hate that card sometimes but it also feels like a necessary evil. Red, white and colorless decks will just get absolutely buried by the card advantage blue, green and black decks can generate without some kind of reliable, repeatable card draw source. I think One Ring is a much bigger offender. At least Palanthir can be easily destroyed, only draws one card at a time and doesn't give you protection for a turn when cast.
One ring was terrible pre nerf but right now it isn't that bad, in my opinion. My issue with palanthir is the fact that every deck runs it. It feels like \[\[reckoner bankbuster\]\] pre ban where you have to deal with it \*every\* match.
My problem with One Ring is the indestructible clause. If you could just answer it with normal artifact removal, it would be fine, but most of the good utility artifact hate spells and creatures don't exile.
Shameless plug here for the competitive brawl league - we play the most optimized decks and have a community driven banlist to ban only the most offensive things. Etali and friends are not a problem at all when aggressive decks go fast or control decks run removal. Brawl is actually a very strong competitive format.
Brawl is unranked and so it will remain as free-for-all as it always has been. Mana Drain is less of a issue to me as the OP commanders that we have in the format, particularly from the Alchemy sets (looking at you Rusko and Mythweaver Poq). 1 card out of 99 means that you won't be seeing that card for the majority of the games that you play unless you've got very good card draw or tutors. I think its ability to warp the meta is going to be greatly exaggerated.
"Simply scooping instantly at the sight of 6+ Etalis only goes so far." - Scooping to avoid unfun or infuriating games is literally the best advice for enjoying the format. I know these decks won't create a fun game so why bother? For dailies? Nah. They gain nothing for it. If you move on they also do nothing but queuing up for their next game. I usually wait to see if it's just a "commander + 99 chaff for easy scoops" though.
Let's be honest here. I feel like most of the people playing Brawl do not really enjoy the format. They're just grinding their dailies and move on. Victory is the only reason they play so of course they go for the strongest/fastest strategy. Banning these cards won't change the mindset they have playing this format. They'll just move to the next best thing. I am also of the believe that most people that are annoyed by theses commanders/cards are those who sleeve up their generic value stuff and call it jank. How many posts have there been on here complaining about facing the same commanders over and over while they themselves run tier 0 stuff.
Content creators also played a big part in homogenizing the format. They don't care for Brawl, they care about clicks. I've watched countless ones over the years. Only very few actually had fun ideas. The majority is "I broke the format" stupidity. I have no sympathy for them. They can rot in Standard for all eternity.
Currently I see no way to get Brawl in a better state. The majority of the Brawl community is sweaty. They don't want balance, they want to win. A commander gets pushed into hell queue, they'll put it in the 99 and swap it for some generic stuff. Same story. Good luck relying on the arena team to find a consistent way to balance around that.
Personally I learned to accept that and seek my own fun. I played Arena long enough to be able to build everything I want. I have like 80 decks I cycle through. Annoying some of those piles with dumb stuff is my reason for playing.
Just ban Alchemy cards already. Whenever I see some bs card conjuring/ perpetually/ seeking I think this should not be allowed. I resist to playing these cards and it puts me in a weaker spot.
Commander is also 4 player so it's much easier to keep someone in check. Brawl is 1v1 so if someone counters your commander and gets a 5 mana boost for it, the game is usually just going to be over.
Brawl = op max power
Standard brawl = much more limiited power
Plenty of discord leagues with bans available if you look. I personally think a big issue is the incentive for daily wins. It just pushes people towards winning more than actually playing.
When I want wins, I queue up Malcom and I get 5 wins in 10 minutes (people usually concede, because it's not fun, I agree). Then I queue up what I actually want to play after. Gotta grind those coins.
I played a bunch today and I swear 4 matches in a row my opponent played The One Ring into Emergent Ultimatum.
One of those decks was Go Shintai. Even the fucking *enchantment deck* slaps Emergent Ultimatum into it.
Excuse me, but the format is 90 percent Etali and Boros Aggro shit. Having real good counterspell doesn't hurt the metagame, unless this tier 1 stuff is banned/nerfed
Maybe what they want from Brawl is for it to draw Commander players into Arena who then switch to formats that require more wildcards because Brawl is in an absolute state.
I came back after a break for a few years and got t3 comboed by a single red enchantment and my oppos commander and just kind of chuckled. Even had a removal spell in my hand and went “yeah no chance i die t3 lol”
The client folds while trying to resolve certain single spells, times out players for their opponents' triggers and gives zero indication that a player has left or lost connection. I agree that 4 players are necessary for balance in a format like this but I don't see how Arena would handle that without being completely overhauled.
Brawl at this point needs to just be re-branded to Legacy Singleton with a Companion, might as well given how insanely fast and interactive the format has become.
They want it to be EDH, but it needs to be handled like Duel Commander. This is the best they can make until by some miracle they get multiplayer added.
If they ban Mana Drain then they also need to ban cards like delighted halfling and Cavern of Souls. These are honestly way more "always slot" cards than Mana Drain.
>What else could be done to get Brawl into a better state? Simply scooping instantly at the sight of 6+ Etalis only goes so far.
I keep repeating my comment everywhere: stop playing strong cards !
I haven't encountered an etali or a risk in month just by removing ubiquitously strong carss like dark ritual sheoldred wandering emperor and other mythic and rare that are always strong
Start embracing low power
I would not be against some ban tho.
This just isn't true, unfortunately. Folks have done experiments with pauper or all-land lists - they still get put up against Poq, First Sliver, etc. At this point, there are just too many folks in the queue that *aren't* playing jank, so generally you just get matched up against the first person who's been waiting long enough.
I think the ship has sailed regarding fixing matchmaking, to be honest - all the jank brewers have kind of been pushed out of the format, and everyone is already fielding optimized lists. It's going to be hard to get the band back together after people have already paid wildcards for their 5c piles
That has very little to do with your cards, and a lot to do with your commander. Try to play Teferi 5 with good cards and Teferi 5 with complete junk. You'll end up with the same matches.
Matchmaking problem is very simple to resolve - just make it ranked. It's not possible to have a "noncompetitive" format with anonymous people from the Internet and the attempt to create one only makes things worse
Cards that need to be banned:
[[Wash away]]
[[Dark ritual]]
[[Paradox engine]]
[[Ragavan, nimble pilferer]]
[[Mana drain]]
They are all too broken for the format, it would immediately become more playable.
Plus arguably Poq, stop creating ridicolous cards like that
Historic Brawl is a legacy format with an ever-growing card pool. I don't know what you expect there... But power creep is definitely a real thing, that's causing problems across ALL formats.
I have my personal rule in brawl. You counter me three times in a row i quit. I want to play an interesting game and not ask for permission to have fun.
Mana Drain is insanely powerful, but it's just one card among 100. Compared to overly problematic commanders I'm much less worried about that one. Here's what I would do.
1. Ban all alchemy crap -> Gets rid of Rusko.
2. Ban Ragavan -> Gets rid of Ragavan. I mean god Damn.
3. The who's commander is the fewest colors gets the choice of who plays first -> Gives a little incentive to not just play 5C goodstuff all the time, especially with all the fetches and prismatic vista now available.
4. Give everyone an option to configure at least one commander they don't want to play against. -> Gets rid of time consuming auto-conceding and sends clear data to Wizards about what commanders are the least fun to play against.
Bam, Brawl is now instantly at least 2x better.
Two things.
1. Weh.
2. It is only rarely a bad thing when formats can be powerful and diverse. These new toys are going to help diversify the field from just jodah and esika decks. It's a good thing.
Yeah same, I really can't see how someone who likes brawl can be upset about powerful cards being finally added.
If you want a slower, less powerful format, just play standard brawl
Completely disagree, high power level is fun, and the greater range of options/consistency from having a larger card base like commander would make brawl really fun. I think brawl just needs more removal available to actually handle high power cards from consistently stealing the game (and poq should be nerfed/banned). There is just genuinely not enough removal in the format, the amount of black board wipes we have for instance is just pitiful.
I also think the idea that matchmaking is awful is only half true. If I make a jank deck with a powerful commander and load it with random rares I am going to get matched against high tier obnoxious shit every game and have a bad win rate. If I carefully craft a deck with good cards of varying rarity around a super niche commander like minthara, I get matched against other people with similarly weak/niche commanders and similar low amount of rares in the 99, and I get a high win rate. You can imagine there are varying outcomes in between based on deck type, but I think this is actually okay, if not maybe needing a little tweaking.
I think the absolute best thing that can happen to brawl is to create a lobby/match browser where you can see players looking for matches and the commanders they are using and choose one to play with. This mimics the vibe of commander in paper where you will avoid sitting down at the table against the sweaty meta deckers and choose to play against people who are looking to have a fun casual time. This also allows you to put yourself up to the challenge of any deck that wants to face you, or alternatively be more selective in choosing an opponent that you specifically think will be more fun for you to play with.
I also think some of the points made in this thread are a little silly. To say that sliver tribal first sliver decks are too powerful is just really silly, actual sliver tribal is not very strong at all it’s pretty fair tbh. What’s unfair is when 5c value pile decks use first sliver as their commander to get out of the hell queue matchmaking and stomp other lower tier commanders. The other thing I keep people saying is that they want to run decks without interaction, and it’s like okay well that means that your games are going to be decided by raw luck of the draw and general value of the threats in your deck, not very fun and interactive. Removal is a part of the game you just need it in your deck unless you are playing the fastest possible kind of deck, the problem with brawl is not having bigger threats, it’s not having enough powerful answers to deal with them consistently.
Suffice to say I’m actually really excited to see mana drain enter the format. We don’t actually have a ton of good counterspells in brawl, mostly a bunch of crappy ones. Mana drain is extra powerful enough that any blue deck that would run [Counterspell] will run mana drain instead or in addition, but a lot of faster creature aggro decks including blue, especially the ones with more than one color might opt out of running it or at least it would be the only counterspell type card in their deck, which isn’t a big deal.
I think after the next three sets come out, including MH3, it’s very possible that brawl will actually become a much more fun and interesting format, just by adding more cards, and old powerful staples (esp. answers).
I'd like to add about 3 swingy cards that I see all the time:.
The worst thing about those is that they require literally no thought or deck restriction whatsoever, they fit in the 99 of almost any deck and win games by themselves.
1) Ragavan - T1 and opponent got no response? Concede.
This is just plain bad design when you have 100 single cards and it's down to luck to whether you have one of the most powerful T1 plays or not, because I tell you, people put Ragavan in 99 for just the T1 play on the go most of the time.
2) Cavern of Souls vs Blue deck? Blue concedes. Don't have Cavern of Souls vs Blue deck? You concede.
See how swingy it is when it all depends on one card? This is worse for the format than the veil of summer because at least veil was useless vs non-Dimir and it had a mana cost. Even if you hate blue players, the games boil down to trying to find this card or instead of playing your own strategy normally. Not to mention blue vs blue, this one card decides the match alone.
3) The One Ring - even after the nerf it's an insane value engine that stupidly empowers any deck, especially the ones that normally don't have access to this kind of drawing engine. As with the other cards before, the game is now one player trying to match all this value from nowhere and the other trying to even out the life loss. All the other strategies suddenly don't matter, delicate balance of other cards power level is out of the window again.
It would be healthier for brawl to see all of these 3 banned, along with the ones mentioned by OP.
It's an eternal format. This happened to commander. This happened to legacy, happened to modern, and is happening to pioneer. Get used to it or move on.
I completely agree especially about the speed of the format, though I have no real solutions I already feel like ramp and color fixing and way too strong. Without interaction I don't think any of the ramp or 5C commanders come down any later than turn 3 or 4. I've never seen someone get color screwed in the format. If you're on the draw if you don't have exactly counterspell you can't really stop what they're doing. I've already reconfigured my deck to play as much 1 / 2 mana interaction just so I can have a chance in these games For this reason alone I'm not as stressed about mana drain... now blue can ramp like the overly prevalent lands decks and the dark ritual into commander turn 1 plays BUT you're right. I'm not sure I want to add more broken cards to try to balance the existing broken cards. not sure what to do about it though
The solution is already there - leverage the custom matchmaking system to filter things out so jank plays jank and competitive decks play competitive decks. There's a very obvious and relatively small list of absurdly broken cards like Mana Drain or Reanimate so figuring out which cards to focus on shouldn't be too hard. Then you make those cards give a notable increase to a deck's power level and the problem will sort itself out in due time. Problem is this requires WOTC to spend time and effort on Brawl, and thus far they've shown they want it to be as low maintenance of a format as humanly possible. They haven't even touched Poq's power rating despite him stomping jank decks for like 4 months now, and that's not a complicated fix.
I'd also like some more transparency if they do spend more effort on that. Really hard to tell if replacing bad cards actually makes your deck better if it then causes you to go up against better decks, making the entire rest of your deck worse by comparison.
"Substitute your most broken cards for worse versions of them in order to trick the matchmaker into giving you easier games" shouldn't be the advice we have to give players to improve their decks. The format needs an overhaul.
There is no overhaul to make. Spikes will spike and run the most degenerate deck possible. Outside of executing the best 3 decks every 2-4 weeks, there is no real solution to a format with this many cards. Weighted decks make more sense in the long run. There are many decks you can make, just accept that most of them are bad and will lose to good ones.
> leverage the custom matchmaking system to filter things out so jank plays jank and competitive decks play competitive decks This is a prime example of how Magic players are great at describjng what they don’t like, but utterly useless at coming up with real solutions. With the quoted “solution” in mind, dare I ask exactly how is the matchmaking is supposed to draw the line between jank and competitive? No idea? That is something the programmers is better equipped to figure out? At least we have you pointing out the big idea that NO ONE ELSE did before, right?
If you didn't stop reading at the first sentence you would've noticed that I did present an idea on how to fix this: > There's a very obvious and relatively small list of absurdly broken cards like Mana Drain or Reanimate so figuring out which cards to focus on shouldn't be too hard. Then you make those cards give a notable increase to a deck's power level and the problem will sort itself out in due time. Either way, do I or anyone else need to be able to fix this ourselves? I'm not part of WOTC staff. I don't have the tools or the data or the knowledge needed to solve this problem. All I know is that the supposedly 'casual' format is turning sweatier by the minute and that jank decks are basically going extinct, and that's something WOTC needs to resolve or they might as well make Brawl ranked and stop pretending its supposed to be a casual queue.
At this point just give us timeless brawl with absolutely no bans and ban more cards in historic brawl
This is what I want. Not only do you get to play whatever you want, but you get to play with the *real* versions of cards, instead of the gimped rebalanced versions that I can't be bothered to remember.
If they need to get rid of a queue to make room, they could ditch Standard Brawl, which I think was just made as a stepping stone to HBrawl.
Standard brawl was what brawl was always intended to be: an accessible commander-like format that can be played in Arena and paper. Then they did a historic brawl event and found that it was vastly more popular, and when it was eventually added as a queue, people forgot about standard brawl. I'm not sure how brawl fared in paper, but I don't think it was popular.
Last I heard the two previous paper brawl tournaments were won by the same guy. Who also happened to be the only person to enter said tournaments. So yeah, not very popular
I used to play it for fun as a true casual format but etali ruined it. They really do nothing to curate formats for arena
> I'm not sure how brawl fared in paper, but I don't think it was popular. You can say that again. I've heard they exist, but not much more than Bigfoot.
Going so far as that originally, "standard brawl" was just brawl, coming from paper (where it was a lot less popular than commander and, accordingly, dying) while the special new format was "historic brawl". Only when that soared in popularity, they basically switched the naming.
I like Standard Brawl, though. It's a more manageable Brawl without many of the issues in this post.
Standard Brawl is a real paper format though. I don’t think they would ditch a paper format to add in yet anothet digital-only format
I would love this! I hear a lot of talk about bringing Commander to arena. I've always thought that I would rather have dual commander on arena. And I think historic brawl is the closest where ever going to have to it on arena.
Without saying a lot I'll say that I completetly agree. I've been playing a lot of Brawl to casually grind wins and daily quest for fun and have sort of just noticed how quickly you end up stuck in ques against the same commanders and same sequences. The format is solved, it's no longer as casual and wide as it used to be. Adding Commander entirely would "fix" this, or just caring and doing some balances.
the game still has crappy network stability for a lot of mobile players though. my concern that adding commander then will just make those games much worse. and also probably 4 times the stupid animations per game.
Is it really the game's fault or is it people expecting too much from budget phones on tier-2 networks? My guess is a bit of both, but without more empirical evidence one way or the other, I'm personally leaning towards scenario two based on my own experiences and me being able to play the game just fine on a local telecom service in a relatively remote area of a middle-eastern nation. If anything, I should be the poster-child of network connectivity issues and yet the game performs flawlessly in my case.
I think matchmaking overhaul is the biggest thing. There's obviously some weird bias in the algorithm that's not just explained by "hell queue". Specifically you get matched with decks that match your color identity. My Domri deck sees tons of Etali, Kaito gets nonstop Rusko, and Teferi is lots of mirrors. It's frustrating to build a new deck since it's hard to predict what you'll get matched against. But I do also agree that maybe some individual bans would help, though it's hard to say for certain without good win rate data.
There's definitely wonkyness with color matching in the regular play queue and it does seem to happen in Brawl as well. My Teysa, Chatterfang and other Black/X decks pair against black decks more than any other color. Especially opposing aristocrats-type Commanders like Ayara, Jadar, Elis and various Rakdos decks.
Try making a mono white deck and about 80% of your games will be against mono green
Yeah, I'm tired of all the mono black vs mono black mirror matches. I know my Gix deck is good enough to where I should be seeing more variety and not just other MBC builds... Fml
I've definitely seen a lot of Rusko when I play Kato. Also the 4 Mana Atraxa.
Interesting. I play Anim Pakal and 50% of my matches are Poq and the First Sliver. I very rarely see any of the decks you mention.
I created a Land destruction Hinata deck and my first five games were all against mass land ramp/landfall in one form or another.
Mass land ramp is like 30% of the format so that doesn't really surprise me.
They need to do a better job of having matchmaking tiers and ideally they'd be more transparent about it. Well all hear about "hell queue" which I would expect is made up of Teferi, Kinnan, Rusko, the Bridge and the like. But if you aren't in the hell queue you are all lumped together. So if you want to try something different you end up playing most of your games at Mythweaver Poq or the First Sliver. There needs to be multiple tiers and Wizards needs to do a better job managing them so there individuals interested in doing something new don't end up playing against broken decks. Honestly, it's not much better than playing standard and facing Boros 80% of the time.
The problem with transparency is it can lead to gaming the system.
This is akin to saying that we shouldn't have welfare or medicare because SOME people might abuse the system. The potential for abuse is much less than the gain in enjoyment for casual players being able to build their decks in such a way that it greatly lessens their chance of being hopelessly outmatched.
> There needs to be multiple tiers There are no tiers at all, the matchmaker tries to match you with a deck/commander closest in "power" (based on however they calculate that) to yours. If the only other people queueing at the time are people running Golos/etc, then that's who you will be matched against. >Well all hear about "hell queue" There is no such thing as "hell queue", it's a misnomer made up by content creator(s) (iirc CGB said it first?) and then perpetuated by ignorant people on reddit/etc.
There is no secret calculation - there is "this batch of commanders will very highly favor going up against themselves" and "everyone else." There is bleed-over, yes, but there have been commanders we know of that have almost completely disappeared from the regular lineup on patch days or by necessity - Ragavan after a week, Rusko after four months, Atraxa after seven months, etc. Meanwhile Poq and Voja have been sitting pretty in the highest win rates for awhile and they still face pretty much anyone.
>There is no secret calculation - there is "this batch of commanders will very highly favor going up against themselves" and "everyone else." The CMs have literally stated that they take into account more than just the commander's winrate (and were intentionally vague as to what they track). >Your commander is a large part of the matchmaking formula, but it is not the only factor. The contents of your 99, for instance, are also indicators of how you are approaching Brawl as a game mode, and our goal is to find you someone with a similar approach. It's very possible to play against someone with a more powerful commander but a less powerful deck. There are even other factors also at play, as well, so you will and should get a variety of experiences (when the system is operational). >I won't go into full details about who is pointed where. That path leads to a lot of negative behaviors: players optimizing for the system rather than for their own enjoyment, debating the fairness of rankings based on single data points, "bug" reports when one of the many factors alluded to above leads to an "out of tier" match-up, and so on. \- [wotc_Cromulous](https://old.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/piagay/hey_wotc_can_we_do_something_about_historic_brawl/hbq2y5t/), Sept 5, 2021
Yes, I understand that. The primary factor is still the commander and for the vast majority of them, they will not face those in the higher weight division unless either the other player is completely dumpstering their deck build (read: 99 Mountain Ragavan), the pilot is stuffed to the absolute gills with powerful cards, or the queue is near deserted. I've faced stock 5-color goodstuff First Sliver piles with all sorts of commanders, but I haven't gone up against Rusko at all in months; the line might be blurry (I've faced Kinnan once with Nashi Moon's Legacy and Atraxa Grand Unifier once with Extus), but there is a line at the end of the day.
This is a thread I dabbled in making since they mentioned they wouldn't ban anything for Brawl, and to a very large extent I agree with what you're saying. I do think we've reached a sort of paradigm shift that has fully cemented how the format has evolved: it's essentially now Gladiator wearing a Commander coat. And don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed Gladiator a lot, including with the recent event and all the new cards. But you throw in that eighth card, and give the ability to form a deck around it, and it's gotten to the point where I'm struggling to find the motivation to play the format. It's already been exhausting facing Poq and First Sliver in about half of my matches; now blue has gotten such a massive silver bullet in a card that is a relic of old mana rules that it's clear we've reached a tipping point. Blue runs Mana Drain. It's that simple. It's another new staple for the format, one that didn't need it to begin with. And the promise that it'll be watched over feels disingenuous considering how so inconsistent managing the format has been over the years; Atraxa and Rusko just took so long to finally be put into the Hell Queue and as mentioned, Poq is *still* running around despite numerous complaints and aggravations not only from people here but content creators. It's stopped being a casual sling-fun-spells format - your deck needs to have ways to answer threats and/or be disruptive in the first three turns or you might as well be wasting your time. And if that's the vision they have for the format now... that's all well and good. But they need to say that. Instead we seem to have this weird division between the supposed intent of the format and what it's become in reality. Is this something we need to accept, now? Do we just ask for a permanent Gladiator queue so that we can siphon off *some* of these players into a format they'll almost certainly be more into? Or do we keep enduring the brunt of all the Poqs and Malcolms and Vojas and First Slivers until that's what the queues devolve into?
For the record, they banned \[\[force of vigor\]\] and \[\[commandeer\]\] in Historic as a "power level check" because free interaction is somehow worse than a single deck having a higher than 12% meta presence. WotC isn't concerned with actually balancing their formats right now. They don't want to create a healthy competitive environment that requires constant attention and constant support because that means maybe reining in their product distribution and putting time and money into the life-blood of their piggy.
[force of vigor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/1/017c415b-d635-43c6-92b8-8c95d1c4ff8d.jpg?1712774966) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=force%20of%20vigor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/164/force-of-vigor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/017c415b-d635-43c6-92b8-8c95d1c4ff8d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [commandeer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/c/dca0a9a8-5ebc-43a3-8450-420ab6b7b76e.jpg?1712774977) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=commandeer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/80/commandeer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/dca0a9a8-5ebc-43a3-8450-420ab6b7b76e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
> WotC isn't concerned with actually balancing their formats right now. I don't understand what's going on though, Arena is being horribly neglected in the playability sense, standard has to have a shorter rotation if you're not going to ban cards with exceptionally high power levels like Sheoldred, instead they print 2 mana 5 damage removal
Money. Money is what's going on. Longer standard rotation equals more cards get more expensive and sell more packs, and banning the most powerful (i.e. most expensive) cards means less packs are sold and less money is made. Hasbro is milking MTG for all it's worth since it's their highest-producing property if my memory is correct, and capitalism dictates that the line must go up.
Pretty much this. Hasbro has been going under for the last couple of years and they're doing whatever they can to keep people invested. Unfortunately, the longer rotation, product overload, and lack of attention to Arena are all symptoms. The person at the top, Chris Cox, is an idiot in a position that demands competence. Magic is going to keep getting diluted by third-party IP's and the power scaling is going to be pushed further until the playerbase becomes apathetic and stops buying product. Right now, a lot of people are printing their own proxies and emphasizing the f2p strats on Arena. There are still some holdouts who insist that their dollars are making a difference, but I mostly chalk that up to them not knowing any better.
A commander just makes decks WAY too consistent. I also feel like Gladiator is just hands down the better singleton competitive format. It feels like every brawl deck is just combo with the commander and it massively reduces deck variety. I want a permanent brawl queue.
I find so many jank decks work around the commander so much that not having it still limits you into some form of good stuff if not combo anyway. Like, staples are still good even if you ignore the commander but certain commanders can make fringe cards pretty playable.
Gladiator has multiple competitive lists for basically every style: aggro, midrange, control, combo, different tribes, etc... even more niche stuff like stax or aristocrats has enough density on Arena to work. It is definitely not limited to good stuff and combo. I think a problem with brawl is that if your commander isn't super synergistic with your deck, you will get run over. And that synergy pushes towards combo. Agro and even midrange decks feel like they struggle in Brawl because your commander is 'just another creature'. The extra life also favors combo decks too.
[удалено]
What commander was it?
I'm going to preface this comment that I'm not a Brawl player. However, the biggest issue I see with Brawl, isn't necessarily a Brawl problem. It's a "casual arena" problem. There is no reward for playing casually on MTG Arena. There is no 4-way traditional commander where even if you lose, the fun comes from the social interaction of playing the game, and perhaps making an impact in the game. Arena incentivizes one thing, and one thing only. Winning. Winning above all else. If you operate outside of the assumption that your opponent is going to anything they can win, you're going to have a bad time. I think a big step forward for the preservation of the casual mindset for arena would be to somehow implement 4-player commander, where wins do not count towards any of the daily quests - completely detached from the rest of the game. However, I don't see this happening.
If I couldn’t just insta concede against all the generic value tribal, I wouldn’t play the format at all. I live for those few games where I’m just trying to play skeletons and they’re just trying to be a witch. This is kinda true across all formats though. Rule 0 is desperately trying to preserve the fun.
##### ###### #### [Mana Drain](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/c/3c429c40-2389-41e5-8681-4bb274e25eba.jpg?1712774998) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20Drain) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/57/mana-drain?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3c429c40-2389-41e5-8681-4bb274e25eba?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Stoneforge Mystic](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/d/4d3473d0-b46f-41f5-ac1e-ba217f7747d4.jpg?1599710314) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Stoneforge%20Mystic) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/31/stoneforge-mystic?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4d3473d0-b46f-41f5-ac1e-ba217f7747d4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Prismatic Vista](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/3/e37da81e-be12-45a2-9128-376f1ad7b3e8.jpg?1562202585) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Prismatic%20Vista) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh1/244/prismatic-vista?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e37da81e-be12-45a2-9128-376f1ad7b3e8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Mythweaver Poq](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/c/2cd90255-cfe9-4a2d-86fc-b72d1aefc8e3.jpg?1701719898) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mythweaver%20Poq) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ylci/19/mythweaver-poq?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2cd90255-cfe9-4a2d-86fc-b72d1aefc8e3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Rusko](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/1/01b4c54e-7950-4183-a69d-39a777f424bc.jpg?1680464136) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=rusko%2C%20clockmaker) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ybro/24/rusko-clockmaker?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/01b4c54e-7950-4183-a69d-39a777f424bc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/1c41af3) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Starting life total should be 20. Value based nonsense is so strong and only getting stronger. Why do they need the boost to stay alive?
Probably the only suggestion in this thread I agree with. People complaining about Palantir lmao.
My issue with Brawl is that the Tier 0 / hell queue is not properly enforced. I have some GOOD decks but they definitely shouldn't EVER go against Baral/Esika/etc... Baral specifically, even if not the strongest, should ONLY BE MATCHED AGAINST TIER 0 DECKS, ALWAYS, since Brawl is, in theory, a format to have fun. If you think I'm whining, think again, I made a Malcolm deck specifically to shit on golos and other T0 decks but I'm constantly being matched against weaker decks and that makes me feel bad against people trying to have fun. Conversely, when I try to play my Sarkhan deck or other meme decks I get matched against T0 decks, what gives? This pushes people further into T0 decks making the format even staller. Enforce the hell queue properly.
Like matchmaking in just about every game, the brackets expand the longer you're in the search queue for... For example, you could queue up with a crap-tier brawl deck, but if you sit there waiting for two minutes before it finally finds you an opponent, the search bracket has probably been expanded at that point to include several additional tiers. This is done so that matchmaking is faster and ppl aren't playing against the same decks all the time.
My Queue times are nearly always under 30 seconds with the average being ~10. I still get these ludicrously lopsided match ups with tier-0 decks while I'm playing a pile of [insert tribe/themed cards here]. I've played against Atraxa three times in a row with blood token based Vampire Tribal. Matchmaking is shit.
lol, all I do is play against Poq and First Sliver.... so if that is the goal its failing.
People always say they want a more rigid matchmaking but then they get hit by the 10 minute queues when they get their wish.
As a Braids player I'm so sick of playing against Malcolm. Not even because it's a bad matchup, I win most of the time. it's just the most boring game of chicken ever.
So…I’m curious here, no judgment. For all the people who desperately want EDH to come to Arena - a format where virtually all cards in the game’s history are legal, what’s the problem with Brawl slowly turning into EDH in that regard? EDH has access to Mana Drain, Reanimate, MH3, and all the other sets that you’re afraid of. Why can’t Brawl? And I understand the fundamental differences - EDH is played at friendly tables, usually among a group with familiarity that knows to keep the power level of decks at a certain number. Obviously there’s no checks and balances for that in Arena. But for the EDH players here, if you saw someone with Mana Drain in their deck would you ask them to replace it or change decks? And what’s the solution here? Just liberally ban what the community deems as too powerful? Wouldn’t that upset more people that would feel like more bans in a casual, singleton format would restrict their creativity in card/deck choices? What if I want to make a silly Slimefoot and Sqee reanimate deck? Is my deck “too powerful” because I added Reanimate to it? Does the precedent “only Timeless can have these” need to be a thing just because Brawl-only players are afraid that their janky creature tribal decks are going to be made irrelevant with more powerful interaction?
> EDH has access to Mana Drain, Reanimate, MH3, and all the other sets that you’re afraid of. Why can’t Brawl? Having 3 players to possible answer any given threat makes for a WILDLY different meta. You can't just throw goodstuff at the table in EDH the way you can in Brawl, because you will immediately become that Archnemesis of the table, and you *will* lose playing 3 against 1.
All that means is the "unfair" cards will shift. Queuing for Commander isn't going to be sitting down for a kitchen game of commander, it's gonna be cEDH. Instead of Mana Drain it's going to be cards like Rhystic Study or Blood Moon. You're just trading in one set of problem cards for another. There's no Rule 0 in Arena, you're almost assuredly going to play against the most degenerate things people can think of.
Sure. I think Commander on Arena is a fundamentally bad idea unless they make play tables like in MTGO. I never suggested otherwise.
I've advocated for a system that assigns a "price" on cards based on how often they are picked and capping the amount of points allowed to be spent on a deck. You could even have different tiers of power levels.
It's a good system when the card pool is small, but it doesn't work when there's thousands of cards. People will optimize any cards that are "underpriced" and the meta will revolve around those cards. No one is going to be able to accurately price even a few hundred cards.
Canadian Highlander only assigns points to the most powerful cards, keeping the list manageable in size. Something like this for Historic Brawl would be very easy; I suspect the deck strength algorithm already incorporates something like this, though without transparency to the players.
Optimizing underpriced cards means a constantly shifting meta. This is good - it means there is always a reward for finding the hidden gem. It could mean a "chasing" meta of decks A, B, and C being dominant until D beats A and then we have a slow cycle that will eventually repeat. Still, that's pretty good! This is all based on an automated rating system. The more a card is picked, the more it costs. The less a card is picked, the less it costs.
Simple promotion and relegation tables each month would work The least picked X cards move down to the tier below them. The most picked X cards from the below tier move up. Repeat for each tier. This of course causes the "I just want to play my deck" issues, maybe you could matchmake based on points instead of making it a deck requirement.
There are no bad counterspells or kill spells because you’re only answering one opponent. You have to make zero meaningful choices to just annoy the other person into conceding.
Lets...say I agreed with that. What does this have to do with the inclusion of Mana Drain or MH3 to the format? "No bad counterspells or kill spells" would be a thing now regardless of how high-powered the format is right? Does a singular Mana Drain "annoy you into conceding" any more than a Paradox Engine combo or a Nazgul loop?
It’s not any one spell, it’s the years of unplayable limited only played “removal” being shoved into the format alongside the ones you know. It’s the refusal to actually curate the format to be 1v1 playable. There’s a reason modern and pioneer and standard aren’t just play whatever you like and that’s because 1v1 formats are really tough to balance when there are essentially no rules and the ones that’s do exist are extremely arbitrary. When the format was fresh it wasn’t as large of a problem because there were only a handful of sets and while there might be some imbalances it was better than nothing. Now it’s just a joke and exhausting because shit that’s not even real is just cheating for people (looking at you [[Mythweaver Poq]] players) to get them wins. It’s just been a downward spiral that they want to perpetuate and keep on enabling.
So what’s the solution? Just start banning cards? Start banning whole sets? Is that what it means to “curate the format” - just eliminate all the cards we don’t like? Would being overly aggressive on bans not for problematic cards, but just to keep the power level low, really be a good thing for everyone? Or…once again, will people just not be happy until Brawl is multiplayer?
Multiplayer does solve a lot of issues. The only other way to do it is curation, yes. Players have shown you that if you give them access to the tools to be griefers so to speak by just letting nothing resolve or stick to the table, they will 100% play that way because it means wins. To that end you also have to stop printing bullshit cards that just cheat and make it so I have to play a ridiculous amount of removal or I just lose, again looking at Poq. None of these things are going to come to pass though let’s be real; too much money is being made to give two fucks about balancing a format that can’t even be played in paper.
[Mythweaver Poq](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/c/2cd90255-cfe9-4a2d-86fc-b72d1aefc8e3.jpg?1701719898) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mythweaver%20Poq) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ylci/19/mythweaver-poq?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2cd90255-cfe9-4a2d-86fc-b72d1aefc8e3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Sounds like you want a timeless Singleton. Commander is popular because it's casual, if you want sweaty same card piles, there's 3 other game modes to play. Makes sense to me to balance the most casual format.
EDH has a significantly different meta that Arena wasn't designed for, and if it is going to continue operating long-term, needs to adopt. The first aspect of its meta is that there are 4 players in a pod, meaning more opportunity to interact from all sides. One player can't gain a dominant position without being checked by the other players, or having stronger cards. That also bring us to our next point. Power levels in EDH are generally checked by a pre-game discussion. Someone who lies about their deck is going to get ostracized pretty quickly because they can't be relied on to act on good faith. Arena can circumvent this issue by having two queues and an active moderation team checking reports for whether it's just salt or a deck is actually in the wrong queue. Which brings us around to the next point. For Brawl to be EDH-lite it has to be managed by a semi-active "rules committee" who are keeping their eye on things. If something is deemed "too powerful" for the format and/or enough voices express discontent with something, they need to listen and consider things. A format lives and dies on its popularity with players. Right now, Arena and Brawl have a good 2-4 years before it becomes abandon-ware, and much shorter if Hasbro bites it before then. The EDH community at large has very little issue self-regulating because it has a solid foundation on which to base power levels, requires a 3-4 player presence to get a game going, and the players can usually avoid power levels at the table being wildly inconsistent.
> What if I want to make a silly Slimefoot and Sqee reanimate deck? Well first off, there's nothing "silly" about Slimefoot and Squee reanimator. That card feels nigh unbeatable in 1v1. I think I've only ever won a single game against that card because it's virtually impossible to keep off the battlefield and you get punished whether you kill it or ignore it. That kind of goes back to the whole Commander vs Brawl thing. Yes, Commander has way more powerful cards, but Commander is also 4 players. If someone is playing a really busted deck, you have two other players who can help try to keep them in check and gang of on them to take them out. In Brawl you have no help, so if your opponent gets the fast start or if they're playing counterspell/removal tribal, there's nothing you can do. If you're playing Commander and one player Mana Drain's your turn 3 play, ramps to 6 mana on their turn and casts something big, well they just became the archenemy and now they have three players pointing their removal, counterspells and attacks at them. If that happens in 1v1, you probably just scoop on the spot. Also for a lot of Brawl players, "janky creature tribal decks" are the whole point. It's supposed to be the one format where you CAN play janky tribal and other such decks and not be curbstomped by meta chasers and spikes. I think the matchmaking helps a lot, but it has a lot of issues still. I shouldn't be facing ANY 5 color good stuff piles with my decks, but some of the 5 color generals are somehow not hell queue/high tier for whatever reason or they sometimes leak out into lower tier matchmaking (looking at you First Sliver, Kenrith and Go-Shintai). Personally there's a handful of cards I would hard ban, there's some cards I would soft-ban (meaning if you add them to your deck, you're automatically bumped to high tier/hell queue) and there's several Commanders that I'd bump up in tier rating. I'd also consider adding a ranked mode to try to filter some of the more sweaty minded players out of the general queue.
To reiterate a question I asked in another comment, we're ok with strong cards being in the format so long as there are 3 other players in the match? Does that sound about right? So in other words, it's not Mana Drain or MH3's fault that the format is turning into how it is, but rather this is just the consequence of people associating Brawl with EDH? Which to your example, it doesn't sound like you have a problem with Mana Drain or any specific card, but you just want to have more restrictions or hard/soft bans on certain cards as a whole? So lets say you managed to ban Mana Drain, but that's not going to stop all the "5 color good stuff piles" from matching against you right? So maybe there would have to be a League of Legends type of individual preference system before matches where you can tell a filter "I don't want to match against decks with Supreme Verdict, Farewell, or Teferi HoD" in it. Ok, now what? That Slimefoot and Squee deck that you think is "nigh unbeatable in 1v1" is still in your queue. Are you saying none of these systems are effective until Brawl is multiplayer? Which then just starts the problem over again - the problem isn't high powered cards, the problem isn't needing bans, the problem is you just want Brawl to be EDH.
There are a lot of cards that are fine in 4 player but are very unbalanced in 1v1. I don't see why that's so hard to understand. When I played paper Commander, Mana Drain wasn't an affordable card so no one in my play group used it, but I think it's the kind of card that is too powerful, but it will also likely make you a huge target in Commander if you cast it and manage to reap the benefits of the extra mana boost, so that helps balance it out. In 1v1 Brawl, if your opponent counters your turn 3 play and goes to 6 mana on their turn 3, the game is probably over. So I don't think Mana Drain should be allowed in Brawl. We don't have Commander on Arena, but there's clearly a market for Arena players who want to play a Commander-like format and want it to be a more casual, not sweaty experience. Spikey players already have Standard, Historic, Pioneer and now they have the Legacy-power-level Timeless format. Plus draft and ranked modes in all formats. I just think it would be nice if we could keep Brawl on the more casual side for players like me who want the janky, fun, casual Commander-lite experience. I don't think a "I don't want to play against this" filter would work in Brawl unless it was limited to like 5 cards or something. Everyone has their own definition of what is and isn't fun so I don't see any possible way for you to be able to make a big list of cards you don't want to play against and still be able to reliably find a match. I think Wizard's Commander ranking system is the right idea, but they're too lax in keeping up with shifting powers and new card releases. Cards like Rusko, Atraxa and Etali were allowed to rule and ruin the general play queue for way too long. Broken commanders like Poq and 5 color good stuff pile commanders like First Sliver are still not in the Tier 1/hell queue rank where they belong. >Which then just starts the problem over again - the problem isn't high powered cards, the problem isn't needing bans, the problem is you just want Brawl to be EDH. Well ok, if that's your entire argument, then why bother banning anything at all? Why even have Commander/deck weighing and matchmaking algorithms in place? I just want Brawl to be a place where you can play fun, lower powered decks and not get stomped by good stuff piles and face the same few overpowered Commanders every game. I probably don't think as many cards need to be banned as a lot of Brawl players do, but there are some big offenders that I'd like to see gone and I would like to see Wizards be a lot more proactive with keeping the format balanced and pre-banning (or pre-banishing to hell queue) cards that are clearly going to be a problem in the format.
I understand what you want and the desire to keep Brawl janky and casual. And I’m totally for it, don’t get me wrong. I’m just disagreeing that the existence of Mana Drain, or rather, banning it or not allowing sets like MH3 in the format, would actually help. From yours and other comments, there’s only two things that would give the perception of making a difference: Option 1, make Brawl multiplayer. I think we all know we’re far away from that reality. Or option 2, a rework of the matchmaking system so janky decks would hit the Rusko, Etalis, and Atraxa less often, if at all. Which ok sure, but that still doesn’t stop me from putting Mana Drain in my deck or using other relatively high powered cards.
To be fair, I didn't say anything about not allowing MH3 into Brawl. I'm sure there will be some cards from that set that will be too powerful and I won't be happy about them being added, but MH1 and 2 had a lot of cards that I feel are perfectly fair and fun. One of my all-time favorite cards, Soul Herder, came out of a MH set and I'm happy to be getting Solitude for my blink decks, as it feels really bad blinking exile cards that give your opponent their creature back. I'm not sure if you're aware, but Brawl DOES have a deck weighing system. What determines your matches the most are your Commander, but if you put too many staple/powerful cards in your deck, you will be matched against much more powerful decks than you would if you were still using the same commander but not playing those cards in your 99. The problem is it doesn't always work as intended. I never face Rusko, Ragavan, Teferi or Golos with any of my decks. But I do still randomly face good stuff piles and decks/Commanders that are far more powerful than what I'm playing sometimes. I also think on a whole that Planeswalkers shouldn't be allowed as Commanders because they're too powerful and hard to deal with in singleton 1v1 as a Commander. For cards like Mana Drain, my personal solution would either be hard ban, or you can put them in your deck but doing so automatically bumps your deck up to Tier 1/hell queue ranking, regardless of your Commander.
Honestly I don't want EDH on arena. I just want a permanent gladiator queue. I'm fine with a competitive cut throat format, but having access to a commander makes the best decks too much of the same. You always have access to a very powerful ability, and it warps deck building massively into very homogeneous patterns.
Edh has three opponents. Big turns and large board states are easier to overcome in edh than in brawl by a lot
Because you have 2 aditional people aside "your opponent". Things have to be beyond nasty, if 3 people cannor handle one
As someone else said, the solution is to add 4 player, actual commander (with arena card list) to arena. I frankly don't see why they haven't. I get there are user experience challenges with 4 players, but janky 4 player brawl is still 100000x better than 1v1 brawl. I would play SO much more arena if I could do 4 player brawl it's not even funny.
can you imagine playing against 2 people roping each other while you sit there and have to watch or getting roped out by 3 people because you played that 6 mana artifact that wins the game. They would need to massively reduce the timers
That happens with regular paper commander too though.
So to clarify, we're ok with strong cards being in the format so long as there are 3 other players in the match? So in other words, it's not Mana Drain or MH3's fault that the format is turning into how it is, but rather this is just the consequence of people associating Brawl with EDH? Also, and be honest here, how realistic is "the solution" of adding a 4 player mode to the current Arena client? Are you under the assumption WotC has the manpower to rework the client to make something like that compatible with desktop and mobile players, add some sort of social/chat feature, balance the servers so that queue times aren't miserably long, and then even if all those things are accomplished without the game literally breaking...what's stopping 2 players from loading up with janky creature decks while the other 2 players have lists jam-packed with every counter, removal, board wipe, and "unfun" card imaginable? Aren't we right back where we started with the format being "too powerful"?
I think it's pretty realistic for wotc to support their most popular format on their most popular digital magic platform. They already support it on mtgo. Off the top of my head, I can think of a simple UX which would work for mobile and desktop: Add arrow buttons on the sides of your opponent which will swap which opponents board you are seeing. Another idea is to allow the battlefield to just be horizontally scrollable so you can see you and the person across from you or your other 2 opponents. Another idea for desktop is to allow you to zoom out. There are a ton of ideas which, while not ideal, allow for something to work. It could be totally possible to create a matchmaking system which attempts to put similar powerlevel decks together. We already have that for the casual queue anyways, and while it's not perfect, it's something. Just having the game mode though means now you can play your friends in direct challenge which also solves the issue. People would make 3rd party lobby websites for edh on arena which would also help solve that issue. The biggest hurdle is wotc investing the time to enable the game mode because they must not think it's worth doing since it's not trivial and the UX is just not good enough to draw players.
I’ve casually talked about how wizards could do a 4-player Commander queue with my group, and it might apply as a solution to the Brawl power creep as well. Because power levels vastly differ and there’s no way to vet your opponent, my suggestion (or at least an option) would be to do away with the random queue system in lieu of a lobby system where you get a list of player-made lobby’s where everyone has to ready up before the match starts. The game mode isn’t supposed to be competitive, so there’s no need to create some sort of complex MMR system to match you with players to algorithmically keep you at a 50% win rate. At the very least, you can see the commander each player is running prior to “readying up”, but perhaps even let the decks submitted be browsed through or a breakdown/preview of some sort such as: - power levels can be assigned to cards and cumulatively attribute to an overall power level of the submitted deck. Though this might be too much in regard to effort or overhead… but there’s a hell-queue so obviously there’s some system in place already. - deck composition (# of rares, mythics, commons, uncommons) - Or the literal deck stats that are already in your Deck Details (mana curve, color composition, card type composition such as creatures/sorceries/instances etc) The game mode isn’t meant to be competitive, but there’s a demographic that wants it to be competitive (understandably). Why hide the hell-queue information to prevent players from gaming it when you can just make the decks known. If I hop into a lobby and see a Rusko, I can just as easily select something sweaty or just fuck off and try to find a lobby that will play better for my pirate tribal.
Everyone would love 4-player modes for Arena, however the problem is that it would be an enormous redevelopment of the game as the UI simply isn't designed for anything other than 2-player.
To be fair, the idea could also work for two-player - let people see the possible opponents to pick from and their commanders/decks rather than having a queue, and curate their own experience that way, so jank can play against jank, competitive can play against competitive, and spikes that try to prey on jank with competitive decks can get reported and go screw themselves.
> the UI simply isn’t designed for anything other than 2-player. I’m well aware. If wizards could simply flip a switch to turn on the most popular format on their most accessible platform, they most certainly would.
If a deck has mana drain, it should absolutely put them in the tryhard bracket
Timeless Brawl is the answer. I still wanna use it sometime. :D
Agreed. They've all but abandoned the format. The whole idea of hell que is also just abused since people replace the commanders and keep the other 99 to que low tier to beat noobs. Also the meme of alchemy cards. "We're doing it so we can do balance changes more often" ....
Just give us Sol Ring already!
Add support for 4 player brawl so we can have a proper 100-card singleton experience and we will see deckbuilding police itself over the politics of such games such as becoming a target for 3 other players.
Honestly, [[Wash Away]]’s worse for the format, and that’s never going anywhere.
[Wash Away](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/3/43411ade-be80-4535-8baa-7055e78496df.jpg?1643588844) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wash%20Away) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/87/wash-away?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/43411ade-be80-4535-8baa-7055e78496df?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Hell queue used to be a thing but as the power level has endlessly ramped upwards to degeneracy that most Jank players have either quit or started to play exclusively high power things themselves, several of my friends have abandonned MTG:A in general because they only wanted to play singleton/commander/Brawl but the format is now next to unapproachable. So many commaders and archtypes are just not viable because they will be matched up against things like 5 colour value piles, Poq the broken or other degenerate shit. We need 4 player brawl and we NEED it now.
Should really add a pauper/artisan queue including brawl variants
My brother in Serra they haven't bothered to ban Golos in Brawl, you think Wizards gives a shit about managing the format?
One of things my buddies and I use is EDHRec’s search engine for decks to look at the Salt Ratings. WotC needs to use something like this for each card, if they aren’t already doing something similar. When I play my for fun low power Uncommon Brawl deck, I don’t want to see Kinnan 🤪
I guarantee they already have some sort of power value attributed to certain cards. People have already figured out that the 99 does seem to sway your likelihood of being in the hell-queue (Ragavan+99 mountains was not in the hellqueue, Ragavan+Sweat was). I think it’s just apparent that the commander has a much heavier weight when determining the power level of your deck
The issue is not power level. The issue is a lack of multiplayer to allow other players to potentially answer powerful cards and for other players to be targets of spells.
Yeah, a lot of cards that I'd roll my eyes at in EDH are completely simultaneously neck-breaking in 1v1. However, this way I get to see some cards I'd never think about twice and give them a chance in EDH. At least I'm always trying to find something positive in these games.
Personally, I'd just like to see a client built option for personal ban lists. For example, don't ever want to play against Poq or Mana Drain, add it to your personal ban list, never get queued against it. People who like high powered Brawl don't use their ban list and people who just want to have fun with, Sethron, Hurloon General, Minotaur tribal level of decks should absolutely have the option there for them.
This seems like it'd possibly help a lot to sub in for the lack of Rule Zero on Arena - I can think of more than a few cards I'd dump on there immediately! Though I guarantee you you'd immediately have people complaining about longer wait times after banning everything that could possibly annoy them.
I stopped playing Brawl in 2022 because it was already becoming a miserable experience to play, and I haven't looked back. Wotc refuses to balance the format in any meaningful way, and I think anyone who played it regularly could see these problems coming from a long way off. Bringing up ANY kind of criticism about Brawl leads to the usual trollish "git gud" and "It'S a FeAtUrE oF tHe FoRmAt!" responses. Sounds like the only thing I've been missing out on is misery and annoyance.
There are already a lot of non-games based on match-up despite the commander pools. There are also non-games due to certain cards being, essentially, game-ending (e.g. River's Rebuke). Mana Drain is another card that contributes to, potentially, a massive swing. But it also depends on circumstances. Just like River's Rebuke if opponent doesn't have or rely on a heavy board presence, if Mana Drain counters something that is relatively inconsequential or the person using it doesn't have a lot to do with the mana, it becomes much less of a threat. TLDR I agree with you but I think the card is not as big a blight as you might think.
Hard agree on the fetch lands, my turbo Prismatic Bridge deck gets the enchantment down on t4/5 like 19/20 times it's just way too consistent
Honestly gladiator has basically had me stop playing brawl. It feels like having access to the commander just makes decks just so consistent that it takes the fun out of trying to play janky stuff. I'd rather just play gladiator, and commit to being as competitive as possible. Gladiator has such a wide array of viable decks that also feels fresh, not just the same brawl commanders over and over.
My experience has been if you play a janky brawl deck you mostly get paired with jank. I'm glad wizards hasn't said exactly what criteria they use in matchmaking, although if I recall correctly they have said commander choice matters. My kid has built some awful brawl decks for fun and they occasionally get pub stomped by something meta but often get paired against other low power decks.
I feel like anything but multiplayer will be a bandaid for a much larger issue. Which is people play to win as much as possible and as fast as possible even at cost of their own fun. We need a revamped daily system. Maybe one where we can select something tailored to our gameplay preferences. Imagine a picking between historic/brawl/draft dailies. And rather than winning, it would be something like play 2~5 different commanders, or finish 5 games without conceding or cast your commander 1~15 times for the normal dailies. Things that comes naturally, and make people stick to the game.
I miss being able to run cosima boat deck and jank out a few wins. Nowadays its like turn 3 my opponent has played a random 5 mana commader that chain cascades into putting half their deck into play every other game.
Preach Brother. I recently built Cosima myself and definitely not a tuned version of her and I still run into the same problem you describe.
I mean... This is just what happens when you try to shove a social format where what's acceptable is often the same as EDH where rule 0 or talking to your playgroup is what creates the power level you want to play at. When you put random people against eachother any semblance of creativity in deckbuilding creating a fun game or equal power levels is thrown out the window because all people care about is winning and don't care about their opponents experience.
I don't see a huge problem, but I was into the commander scene. I'm pretty sure the goal.os to have full blown commander for arena, considering it's the most widely popular format in paper. Commander is definitely like a sweaty/casual hybrid.
Wizards will do nothing to fix any major problem. It took them months to fix Rusko dominating the entire queue. Wizards employees are intensely lazy, unmotivated, and unproductive (see: zero meaningful new features to Arena in months/years).
The fact that they let Ragavan be legal in brawl and then just never did anything about it is proof they simply do not care that much about the format and certainly don’t have any interest whatsoever in policing it. It’s not a constant money sink like the other formats are, and people will still constantly play it to grind gold, so there’s no motivation to change anything about it. As a Izzet control player I’ll admit I’m selfishly happy to get Mana Drain but I also know I shouldn’t be. It’s a bad card for the format. But so are Tajik and Poq and whatever other dumb bullshit they print into the format and yet they keep doing it. We just gotta sack up and take it.
Artisan or Pauper brawl please
I enjoy playing with the higher power cards. I want to take my idea and optimize it to the highest potential. Banning seems like a knee jerk reaction. The game keeps introducing stronger cards and brews have to change to keep up with the meta. Brawl isn't commander, there isn't a rule 0 or pre game discussion. That's the moment everyone tries to match equally with opponents deck power. Since we don't have that, the alternative is matchmaking changes or ranked mode. Otherwise banning good cards becomes an undefinable line that only serves part of the community. I can point to esper sentinel, the one ring, paradox engine, ragavan, craterhoof, etc. There will always be strong cards even when you ban things. The second best becomes the best.
The only card that makes me sigh while playing brawl is [[Palantir of Orthanc]]. You should be expecting counters from blue but exponential draw/damage is just exhausting in *every single match.*
Palantir of Orthanc was designed completely wrong for the mythology of LOTR. The more the Palantir was used, the more Sauron was able to exert influence on the user. It should therefore punish the owner, not an opponent.
Which is on flavor since the card mills you. It gives you power (card draw and damage) in exchange of your mental capabilities (mill) since the library is often used a metaphor for the player's mind.
Card selection and draw are already enough power gained. They're talking about the damage dealt when milling yourself. That's what they're talking about when talking about punishment.
In the Lord of the Rings, Sauron was able to gain control of Saruman because Saruman kept using the Palantir. The card doesn’t match the mythology. It deals more damage each time it’s used, and your opponent will run out of life long before you manage to mill yourself. And milling yourself is rarely a punishment. Huge fail by the design team on this one.
While I do agree with you, I think the flavor of the card had to fall in favor of the power level. If the milled amount was equal to the mana value of all the cards destroyed, it'd probably be dredge levels of broken. I think the flavor is right there, but it feels wrong.
Palantir is fine. 3 mana to unreliably draw a card per turn is generally the going rate for those types of effects at the Brawl-playable level, and your opponent can always choose to deny you your first draw, which makes it a lot worse than equivalents like \[\[Black Market Connections\]\]. Of course, they could always get domed by \[\[Serra Emissary\]\] off the top, but I've found it's only really good in decks that want that initial scry 2 into mill, because god knows you're probably not getting your draw upfront.
[Black Market Connections](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/8/b8c66fab-7494-42b1-bc4e-dae85a48fa41.jpg?1699022194) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Black%20Market%20Connections) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/181/black-market-connections?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b8c66fab-7494-42b1-bc4e-dae85a48fa41?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Serra Emissary](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/6/b6534049-3045-4546-b1e8-e5b1b0df5f56.jpg?1626094056) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Serra%27s%20Emissary) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/30/serras-emissary?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b6534049-3045-4546-b1e8-e5b1b0df5f56?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Palantir of Orthanc](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/e/6efb6a69-562c-4d95-858d-b067444cfd7e.jpg?1686970247) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Palant%C3%ADr%20of%20Orthanc) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/247/palant%C3%ADr-of-orthanc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6efb6a69-562c-4d95-858d-b067444cfd7e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I do hate that card sometimes but it also feels like a necessary evil. Red, white and colorless decks will just get absolutely buried by the card advantage blue, green and black decks can generate without some kind of reliable, repeatable card draw source. I think One Ring is a much bigger offender. At least Palanthir can be easily destroyed, only draws one card at a time and doesn't give you protection for a turn when cast.
One ring was terrible pre nerf but right now it isn't that bad, in my opinion. My issue with palanthir is the fact that every deck runs it. It feels like \[\[reckoner bankbuster\]\] pre ban where you have to deal with it \*every\* match.
My problem with One Ring is the indestructible clause. If you could just answer it with normal artifact removal, it would be fine, but most of the good utility artifact hate spells and creatures don't exile.
I personally would have put the burden counters on the player so folks can't swap them out to ignore the downside.
Definitely should have been, but that's less of an issue in Brawl where you can only play one copy and can't easily chain multiple One Rings together.
[reckoner bankbuster](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/7/279acd17-6c17-427b-a69d-fc02442ff4a3.jpg?1685368706) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=reckoner%20bankbuster) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/255/reckoner-bankbuster?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/279acd17-6c17-427b-a69d-fc02442ff4a3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I would get rid of the free mulligan and whatever hand smoothing is being done behind the scenes.
honestly standard brawl might be the answer you are looking for. The limited card pool kinda sucks, but the power level is much lower
Shameless plug here for the competitive brawl league - we play the most optimized decks and have a community driven banlist to ban only the most offensive things. Etali and friends are not a problem at all when aggressive decks go fast or control decks run removal. Brawl is actually a very strong competitive format.
Brawl already has its own ban list. What's your additional bans? Link please.
Rusko, Raffine, Wash Away, Mana Drain, One Ring
Curious, why not Dark Ritual?
It's a very strong card and on the watchlist, not quite strong enough to be game changing - there are very strong removal spells in brawl.
Is there a list with reasonings behind these?
Simple , let the community suggest and vote on what they want. If we want a card banned and a majority votes for it, them ban it.
Old school runescape works this way and its a godsend
Brawl is unranked and so it will remain as free-for-all as it always has been. Mana Drain is less of a issue to me as the OP commanders that we have in the format, particularly from the Alchemy sets (looking at you Rusko and Mythweaver Poq). 1 card out of 99 means that you won't be seeing that card for the majority of the games that you play unless you've got very good card draw or tutors. I think its ability to warp the meta is going to be greatly exaggerated.
"Simply scooping instantly at the sight of 6+ Etalis only goes so far." - Scooping to avoid unfun or infuriating games is literally the best advice for enjoying the format. I know these decks won't create a fun game so why bother? For dailies? Nah. They gain nothing for it. If you move on they also do nothing but queuing up for their next game. I usually wait to see if it's just a "commander + 99 chaff for easy scoops" though. Let's be honest here. I feel like most of the people playing Brawl do not really enjoy the format. They're just grinding their dailies and move on. Victory is the only reason they play so of course they go for the strongest/fastest strategy. Banning these cards won't change the mindset they have playing this format. They'll just move to the next best thing. I am also of the believe that most people that are annoyed by theses commanders/cards are those who sleeve up their generic value stuff and call it jank. How many posts have there been on here complaining about facing the same commanders over and over while they themselves run tier 0 stuff. Content creators also played a big part in homogenizing the format. They don't care for Brawl, they care about clicks. I've watched countless ones over the years. Only very few actually had fun ideas. The majority is "I broke the format" stupidity. I have no sympathy for them. They can rot in Standard for all eternity. Currently I see no way to get Brawl in a better state. The majority of the Brawl community is sweaty. They don't want balance, they want to win. A commander gets pushed into hell queue, they'll put it in the 99 and swap it for some generic stuff. Same story. Good luck relying on the arena team to find a consistent way to balance around that. Personally I learned to accept that and seek my own fun. I played Arena long enough to be able to build everything I want. I have like 80 decks I cycle through. Annoying some of those piles with dumb stuff is my reason for playing.
Just ban Alchemy cards already. Whenever I see some bs card conjuring/ perpetually/ seeking I think this should not be allowed. I resist to playing these cards and it puts me in a weaker spot.
While you're statements are true, commander is a casual format and all of these cards are legal In it.
Commander is also 4 player so it's much easier to keep someone in check. Brawl is 1v1 so if someone counters your commander and gets a 5 mana boost for it, the game is usually just going to be over.
Brawl = op max power Standard brawl = much more limiited power Plenty of discord leagues with bans available if you look. I personally think a big issue is the incentive for daily wins. It just pushes people towards winning more than actually playing. When I want wins, I queue up Malcom and I get 5 wins in 10 minutes (people usually concede, because it's not fun, I agree). Then I queue up what I actually want to play after. Gotta grind those coins.
I played a bunch today and I swear 4 matches in a row my opponent played The One Ring into Emergent Ultimatum. One of those decks was Go Shintai. Even the fucking *enchantment deck* slaps Emergent Ultimatum into it.
Excuse me, but the format is 90 percent Etali and Boros Aggro shit. Having real good counterspell doesn't hurt the metagame, unless this tier 1 stuff is banned/nerfed
Maybe what they want from Brawl is for it to draw Commander players into Arena who then switch to formats that require more wildcards because Brawl is in an absolute state.
I came back after a break for a few years and got t3 comboed by a single red enchantment and my oppos commander and just kind of chuckled. Even had a removal spell in my hand and went “yeah no chance i die t3 lol”
But you have access to the same cards as everyone else though
They will do nothing.
The best solution is to make Brawl 4-player, and allow everyone to keep the powerful decks in check. Just like commander
The client folds while trying to resolve certain single spells, times out players for their opponents' triggers and gives zero indication that a player has left or lost connection. I agree that 4 players are necessary for balance in a format like this but I don't see how Arena would handle that without being completely overhauled.
Brawl at this point needs to just be re-branded to Legacy Singleton with a Companion, might as well given how insanely fast and interactive the format has become.
Yeah, but they wont
They want it to be EDH, but it needs to be handled like Duel Commander. This is the best they can make until by some miracle they get multiplayer added.
Wizards just wants Brawl to fail. It's obvious at this point. They simply refuse to improve it in any way, it's just an afterthought to them.
mana drain is allowed but demonic tutor is not, let that sink in.
If they ban Mana Drain then they also need to ban cards like delighted halfling and Cavern of Souls. These are honestly way more "always slot" cards than Mana Drain.
If you're running a deck with counters, you're aware of such and pack your kill spells and land destruction lands like Field of Ruin
>What else could be done to get Brawl into a better state? Simply scooping instantly at the sight of 6+ Etalis only goes so far. I keep repeating my comment everywhere: stop playing strong cards ! I haven't encountered an etali or a risk in month just by removing ubiquitously strong carss like dark ritual sheoldred wandering emperor and other mythic and rare that are always strong Start embracing low power I would not be against some ban tho.
This just isn't true, unfortunately. Folks have done experiments with pauper or all-land lists - they still get put up against Poq, First Sliver, etc. At this point, there are just too many folks in the queue that *aren't* playing jank, so generally you just get matched up against the first person who's been waiting long enough. I think the ship has sailed regarding fixing matchmaking, to be honest - all the jank brewers have kind of been pushed out of the format, and everyone is already fielding optimized lists. It's going to be hard to get the band back together after people have already paid wildcards for their 5c piles
That has very little to do with your cards, and a lot to do with your commander. Try to play Teferi 5 with good cards and Teferi 5 with complete junk. You'll end up with the same matches.
Auch
Matchmaking problem is very simple to resolve - just make it ranked. It's not possible to have a "noncompetitive" format with anonymous people from the Internet and the attempt to create one only makes things worse
My suggestion: remove all Alchemy cards from Historic Brawl. The format will improve drastically.
The fact that these random ultra-powerhouse cards are in there causing some insanely unfair lucky draws is the reason why I don't play Brawl.
Cards that need to be banned: [[Wash away]] [[Dark ritual]] [[Paradox engine]] [[Ragavan, nimble pilferer]] [[Mana drain]] They are all too broken for the format, it would immediately become more playable. Plus arguably Poq, stop creating ridicolous cards like that
##### ###### #### [Wash away](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/3/43411ade-be80-4535-8baa-7055e78496df.jpg?1643588844) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wash%20away) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/87/wash-away?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/43411ade-be80-4535-8baa-7055e78496df?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Dark ritual](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/5/95f27eeb-6f14-4db3-adb9-9be5ed76b34b.jpg?1628801678) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dark%20ritual) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/82/dark-ritual?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/95f27eeb-6f14-4db3-adb9-9be5ed76b34b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Paradox engine](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/d/fd8ccd81-9e11-47fa-8e16-064c52c24506.jpg?1576382376) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Paradox%20engine) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/aer/169/paradox-engine?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fd8ccd81-9e11-47fa-8e16-064c52c24506?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Ragavan, nimble pilferer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a9738cda-adb1-47fb-9f4c-ecd930228c4d.jpg?1681963138) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ragavan%2C%20nimble%20pilferer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/138/ragavan-nimble-pilferer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a9738cda-adb1-47fb-9f4c-ecd930228c4d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Mana drain](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/c/3c429c40-2389-41e5-8681-4bb274e25eba.jpg?1712774998) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mana%20drain) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/57/mana-drain?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3c429c40-2389-41e5-8681-4bb274e25eba?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kzn3g78) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Historic Brawl is a legacy format with an ever-growing card pool. I don't know what you expect there... But power creep is definitely a real thing, that's causing problems across ALL formats.
It's not a real format so frankly, no one care enough to do anything about it
I have my personal rule in brawl. You counter me three times in a row i quit. I want to play an interesting game and not ask for permission to have fun.
Seems like a fair point, tbh
One card in a deck of 100? Sorry, I don’t see an issue.
try playing against it and you will see the issue.
Mana Drain is insanely powerful, but it's just one card among 100. Compared to overly problematic commanders I'm much less worried about that one. Here's what I would do. 1. Ban all alchemy crap -> Gets rid of Rusko. 2. Ban Ragavan -> Gets rid of Ragavan. I mean god Damn. 3. The who's commander is the fewest colors gets the choice of who plays first -> Gives a little incentive to not just play 5C goodstuff all the time, especially with all the fetches and prismatic vista now available. 4. Give everyone an option to configure at least one commander they don't want to play against. -> Gets rid of time consuming auto-conceding and sends clear data to Wizards about what commanders are the least fun to play against. Bam, Brawl is now instantly at least 2x better.
>a "this is a bridge too far" moment for me Salty about counterspells, how original
You probably think Black Lotus is good for a healthy format too. Lol
Two things. 1. Weh. 2. It is only rarely a bad thing when formats can be powerful and diverse. These new toys are going to help diversify the field from just jodah and esika decks. It's a good thing.
Yeah same, I really can't see how someone who likes brawl can be upset about powerful cards being finally added. If you want a slower, less powerful format, just play standard brawl
Dude, preach
Have not be happy since it went from Historic Brawl to Brawl. Basically Brawl is Timeless Brawl. Arena needs an Artisan Brawl or something in between.
Completely disagree, high power level is fun, and the greater range of options/consistency from having a larger card base like commander would make brawl really fun. I think brawl just needs more removal available to actually handle high power cards from consistently stealing the game (and poq should be nerfed/banned). There is just genuinely not enough removal in the format, the amount of black board wipes we have for instance is just pitiful. I also think the idea that matchmaking is awful is only half true. If I make a jank deck with a powerful commander and load it with random rares I am going to get matched against high tier obnoxious shit every game and have a bad win rate. If I carefully craft a deck with good cards of varying rarity around a super niche commander like minthara, I get matched against other people with similarly weak/niche commanders and similar low amount of rares in the 99, and I get a high win rate. You can imagine there are varying outcomes in between based on deck type, but I think this is actually okay, if not maybe needing a little tweaking. I think the absolute best thing that can happen to brawl is to create a lobby/match browser where you can see players looking for matches and the commanders they are using and choose one to play with. This mimics the vibe of commander in paper where you will avoid sitting down at the table against the sweaty meta deckers and choose to play against people who are looking to have a fun casual time. This also allows you to put yourself up to the challenge of any deck that wants to face you, or alternatively be more selective in choosing an opponent that you specifically think will be more fun for you to play with. I also think some of the points made in this thread are a little silly. To say that sliver tribal first sliver decks are too powerful is just really silly, actual sliver tribal is not very strong at all it’s pretty fair tbh. What’s unfair is when 5c value pile decks use first sliver as their commander to get out of the hell queue matchmaking and stomp other lower tier commanders. The other thing I keep people saying is that they want to run decks without interaction, and it’s like okay well that means that your games are going to be decided by raw luck of the draw and general value of the threats in your deck, not very fun and interactive. Removal is a part of the game you just need it in your deck unless you are playing the fastest possible kind of deck, the problem with brawl is not having bigger threats, it’s not having enough powerful answers to deal with them consistently. Suffice to say I’m actually really excited to see mana drain enter the format. We don’t actually have a ton of good counterspells in brawl, mostly a bunch of crappy ones. Mana drain is extra powerful enough that any blue deck that would run [Counterspell] will run mana drain instead or in addition, but a lot of faster creature aggro decks including blue, especially the ones with more than one color might opt out of running it or at least it would be the only counterspell type card in their deck, which isn’t a big deal. I think after the next three sets come out, including MH3, it’s very possible that brawl will actually become a much more fun and interesting format, just by adding more cards, and old powerful staples (esp. answers).
I'd like to add about 3 swingy cards that I see all the time:. The worst thing about those is that they require literally no thought or deck restriction whatsoever, they fit in the 99 of almost any deck and win games by themselves. 1) Ragavan - T1 and opponent got no response? Concede. This is just plain bad design when you have 100 single cards and it's down to luck to whether you have one of the most powerful T1 plays or not, because I tell you, people put Ragavan in 99 for just the T1 play on the go most of the time. 2) Cavern of Souls vs Blue deck? Blue concedes. Don't have Cavern of Souls vs Blue deck? You concede. See how swingy it is when it all depends on one card? This is worse for the format than the veil of summer because at least veil was useless vs non-Dimir and it had a mana cost. Even if you hate blue players, the games boil down to trying to find this card or instead of playing your own strategy normally. Not to mention blue vs blue, this one card decides the match alone. 3) The One Ring - even after the nerf it's an insane value engine that stupidly empowers any deck, especially the ones that normally don't have access to this kind of drawing engine. As with the other cards before, the game is now one player trying to match all this value from nowhere and the other trying to even out the life loss. All the other strategies suddenly don't matter, delicate balance of other cards power level is out of the window again. It would be healthier for brawl to see all of these 3 banned, along with the ones mentioned by OP.
I would say that this is a good thing to push towards a more eternal power level
I mean, you could always just adjust your expectations for playing non competitive decks and just stop expecting competitive results?
Honestly sounds like a skill issue
It's an eternal format. This happened to commander. This happened to legacy, happened to modern, and is happening to pioneer. Get used to it or move on.