I'm not much of an Arena player. I catch a quick draft here and there, but I really prefer playing singleton format on a real table with real people. But when you're stuck inside with your sick child on a rainy day watching How to Train Your Dragon for the umpteenth time, I picked up Arena to catch a draft and saw the Brawlidays event.
I had read a bunch of angry chatter about how brawl was only available occasionally on Arena. I guess that Wizards heard this and created an event for people to play. It costs some gems, which is frustrating for a constructed event, but I needed a singleton format fix and was willing to pay it (basically 2.5 drafts or so for nonstop brawl until mid January.) I do hope they make it available all the time for free just like standard.
I hadn't played Brawl before, and I kept myself from learning more about it before creating decks. Once you look at examples, you really can't create an original deck. It's like spoilers for a TV season. Sure you can read before you watch, but that first experience will be very different when you do and you can't experience something for the first time twice. You got one chance to experience it fully from your own perspective. Don't waste that.
I'm going to share the progression of decks I tried until I found something that worked for me and my thought process throughout.
Let's start with my favorite deck type for lower life total constructed: Red Aggro. I love finishing a game before the opponent can even get their strategy off the ground. Being such a limiting color choice, it forces you to focus. Your deck, your mana curve and your play have to be single minded. Cheap damage, Cheap draw, latch on like a junkyard dog and don't get distracted.
Last I played this type of deck was my Chandra deck from oathbreaker. I knew it wouldn't do well in multiplayer, but it did win in single player, which made me think it would be fine for brawl. But there was a commander I always wanted to try out with this strategy:
I've been trying to move away from infinite combos to more big enough synergies and Torbran was perfect for that. This deck was to be death by a thousand paper cuts. Torbran would just be the lemon juice squeezed into all those tiny wounds.
I started trying to put a go wide strategy together. If each of my 1/1's hit for 3 and then 3 again from cavalcade, the game could be over so quickly.
I loved the idea of a dwarf leading an army of goblins. I packed the deck with hasty little goblins and other fast critters to try to go wide faster than they could deal with it.
And of couse, card draw. Mean card draw. Card draw that gives unfortunate options. Everything in the deck is cheap so we need to keep the hand full to keep the train rolling.
When I started building the deck, I realized the first thing I didn't know about the format and that's the limitation to just cards from the more recent sets. A lot of my favorite cards for this style of deck had timed out. No chainwhirler, no fanatical firebrand, no classic krenko. I really started to miss the giant catalog I pull from for oathbreaker and commander.
I put this deck together in around 15 minutes. Looking back, it was a little top heavy in mana because of what I learned playing oathbreaker and because I didn't have the cheap cards that fit the strategy when limited to recent cards. I didn't win with this at all. I started running into other aggro strategies including white green Rhys the Redeemed decks that could get out blockers early and swarm over me when they reached enough mana to double their tokens.
Lesson learned. I might revisit this deck and put Chandra, Fire Artisan in charge of it. Full disclosure, I didn't know planeswalkers could lead brawl decks. But finding out by playing against is more fun than looking up builds before I started. Getting her guaranteed extra draw is ideal. I still don't know that the strategy will work as there are not enough cheap burn spells to stack the deck so the curve isn't ideal for aggro.
So I moved on to bigger and better things. I had been wanting to do a Yarok commander deck for a long time. I love ETBs. I had a Roon commander deck that I loved playing and built an Aminatou oathbreaker deck. I find them very variable. They take a little time to get the train rolling, but if it pulls into value town before they can stop you it feels so good. You feel like a piano player in front of a bunch of keys that each do something horrible to your opponent.
Panharmonicon on a stick? I'm in! Not to mention a great set of colors to get ramp, counters and removal. Not to mention deathtouch and lifelink to boot. Enter the battlefield effects have never gone out of style so I figured I could find a good set of these in the limited cards available for brawl. I was right.
Elementally my dear Watson. There was such good elemental synergy in M20 and Yarok's even an elemental too! If I was able to get Reef out with Yarok, I'd be discarding cards every turn I had so much draw. There are also plenty of elementals with ETBs: Cloudkin Seer, Overgrowth and all the Cavaliers. Ready made synergies, just add blink.
Blink in blue? Not really too much, just Teferi's Time Twist which is also in this deck. But copies in blue, all over the place. Getting the ETBs a second time is why to have Yarok. If we quasiduplicate while Yarok is out we get 2x2=4 times the effect and once you jumpstart it that's 2x2+2x2=8! This card fills in the gap before we get Yarok and once he's out it's often the closer we needed.
Did somebody say closer? He's pricey but he's worth it. Most of my victories came about with concessions that came after I got Agent of Treachery out with Yarok or got him out and then quasiduplicated. It's pricey and I'm often stopped before I can achieve this combo, but when I do, it feels soooo good.
I got a few victories with this deck, but found it to be a little too slow and a little too easy to disrupt before it could get rolling. Still it was one of the more fun decks to play and I feel it isn't handicapped by the limited card choice as much as Red Aggro. But there was one more archetype that I love that worked well in brawl.
An Aristocrat Eh? I love my Teysa commander deck as much as magic loves people who love killing their creatures. I felt that with the lower life totals, there was a cheaper, faster deck to be built around the aristocrats concept than enter the battlefield effects. I was right.
There are plenty of afterlife creatures available in brawl. My closer was often Divine Visitation, which I have to thank a Rhys player for showing me it was still recent enough to be used. Once you get your first double afterlife trigger with this in play, just sit back and watch your opponent concede rather than face an army of flying 4/4 lifelinkers with vigilance.
Make them pay other ways. The incidental damage and life gain from cards like Cruel Celebrant and Vindictive Vampire are still effective even in commander. In Brawl, where you're life total is a little over half what it is in commander, it can end games. Especially when you have...
...a big finish. I used to play this card a lot in Esper Control. It wasn't my most frequent win condition, but it was the most fun. Seeing 20+ cruel celebrant triggers stack up on the screen feels amazing. And if you don't win right then, you still got all the life gain from Kaya's to give you room to get your feet under you.
All in all, Brawl was the most fun I've had playing constructed on Arena. I'd probably play more Arena if they had Brawl available all the time. It still lacks the multiplayer communication that makes Commander such a great format. As I played brawl, I missed being able to chat with my opponent. Yes there's in game emotes, but those make me feel trapped like that woman in black mirror who was put into the monkey and could only say "Monkey Loves You!" and "Monkey Needs A Hug". It's not a real conversation and just makes me feel like I'm not even playing against another person which is a huge turnoff for me.
Without multiplayer, there's no politics. Some might see this as a benefit. Not me. I love games like commander, poker, settlers of catan where part of the game is how well I can work together with other players to get the result I want. Being able to sit down and feel out your opponents quickly so that you can form alliances and change the narrative to benefit your plans is a life skill that is broadly useful throughout your life. If Arena is going to keep my attention, it needs to add multiplayer and chat. Without it, Arena is just a sandbox to test a limited set of singleton decks 1v1. It's the difference between running on a treadmill and running outside with your friends.