With most of the news revolving around Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming fall set Throne of Eldraine, some players may have missed the new Brawl announcement. A singleton, multiplayer format, Brawl was designed in the same vein as Commander. Players construct 60 card decks that are tied to the single color-identity of your commander and can only use cards that are in the Standard format.
Even though this variant never took off on paper, it has been one of the most requested features for MTG Arena. Announced at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Brawl will be making its way to this online game. To celebrate the announcement, Wizards of the Coast announced a new series of Brawl decks designed to introduce both online and physical players to the format.
Today, two cards coming with these decks were spoiled on Wizards of the Coast’s official website. The first is Arcane Signet, which will surely become a staple in literally every Commander and Brawl deck. Costing only two mana, Arcane Signet is simply a perfect artifact for these formats. It allows players to ramp without any downsides or stipulations such as Fellwar Stone. One of these will be included in each of the four Brawl decks set to release alongside Throne of Eldraine.
The other card is Chulane, Teller of Tales and he is absolutely bonkers. Costing a total of five mana, Chulane encourages creature-based strategy. Giving players a card and potential land drop per creature is extremely powerful by itself, however, this druid has one more trick. For three colorless mana players can tap Chulane and bounce a creature. This not only allows you to remove problematic creatures but makes blocking a nightmare against your board.
Wizards of the Coast explained that they will be filling in holes left behind when Dominaria, Ixalan, and Core Set 2019 rotate out. We fully expect to see a new Grixis, Jund, and Esper commanders when Brawl arrives.