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New Magic; The Gathering Casual Format 'Brawl' Announced


Photo: Wizards of the Coast | Art by Zoltan Boros

Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast briefly mentioned a new format that makes use of Standard-legal Magic: The Gathering cards called Brawl; today, the company has officially announced the details of the fun new casual format, and if you're familiar with Commander rules, you get the picture.

Just like Commander, you have a legendary creature or planeswalker that starts at the Command zone, you can only have one copy of any given card in your deck other than basic lands, but unlike Commander, you can only use Standard-legal cards and each Brawl deck consists of 60 cards instead of 100. Life totals start at 30.

Since the card pool is much smaller in Brawl than Commander, I think 60 is the perfect number to help keep the deck focused and fun for building around themes.

Here is the rules overview from Rules Manager Eli Shiffrin:

> Each player's deck is exactly 60 cards. Other than basic lands, no card may appear in a deck more than once. Each card must be legal in the Standard format; cards banned in the Standard format can't be played in the Brawl variant.
> Before the game begins, each player designates one legendary creature or planeswalker card in their deck as their commander. This card begins the game in the command zone and the other 59 cards are shuffled up.
> The mana symbols that appear on your commander dictate what cards may be in your deck. Mana symbols that don't appear on your commander can't be in the deck. For example, if the Dominaria card Firesong and Sunspeaker is your commander, your cards may have R, W, both, or neither, but no B, G, or U symbols may appear anywhere in your deck. This includes the card's text box as well as its mana cost; for example, Pride Sovereign from the Hour of Devastation set can't be in your deck if your commander has only G in its cost and rules text.
> Each player begins the game at 30 life rather than 20. If you're playing a multiplayer game (which we recommend for Brawl!), each player draws seven cards again on their first mulligan and the player who plays first draws a card on their first turn.
> As long as your commander is in the command zone, you may cast it from there. Doing so costs an additional two mana for each time you have cast the card this way this game.
> If your commander is countered or leaves the battlefield, you may put it back into the command zone instead of putting it anywhere else it would go.
> The Brawl variant has no other rules for playing, winning, or losing the game. Have fun!

Every year, Wizards of the Coast releases a bunch of new Magic cards from new sets that are not playable in competitive Standard, and thanks to Dominaria's legendary theme, I think it's the perfect time to introduce this new format.

What do you think about Brawl? Are you looking forward to playing this new format? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Here are the general details for Dominaria:

Set Name:Dominaria
Number of Cards: 269
Magic Open House: April 14-15, 2018
Prerelease Weekend: April 21-22, 2018
Release Date: April 27, 2018
Draft Weekend: April 28-29, 2018
Magic League Begins: April 30, 2018
Standard Showdown Begins: May 6, 2018
Store Championship: June 30 - July 1, 2018
Magic Online Launch: April 23, 2018
On Sale in Magic Online: April 27, 2018
Official Three-Letter Code: DOM
Twitter Hashtag:#MTGDOM
Languages Available: English, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish

Read more: 9 New Dominaria Magic: The Gathering Cards Revealed

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