Brawl

This page is about the Historic-inspired format. For the original paper format, see Standard Brawl.

Brawl
Where to Play
Paper	MTGO	Arena
Constructed
Players	2
Life	25 points
Decks	100 cards (no sideboard, singleton)
Rules	Commander (color identity, no commander damage)
Scryfall Statistics
legal cards
banned cards

Brawl was introduced in December 2020 as Historic Brawl — a Historic variant of Standard Brawl (which, in a confusing turn, itself used to be called simply "Brawl" when it was initially introduced). Except for its banned cards, all cards available on MTG Arena are legal in Brawl. It is the closest analogue available on MTG Arena to the Commander format.

History

At its introduction, the format was just what one would expect: the 60-card Standard Brawl format, but expanded to use the entire Historic card pool. It was introduced to MTG Arena in December 2020. From its inception, Brawl has had its own ban list.

As an experiment, a 100-card Historic Brawl option was introduced in June 2021. This ultimately became a permanent change. This larger deck size made the format more similar to the Commander format.

In December 2023, the format was renamed to just "Brawl", as the Historic ban list had diverged from Brawl's ban list even further in the years since its creation, and the available card pool now more closely resembled that of the newly-launched Timeless format. Since appending any format's name in front of the word "Brawl" would be an inaccurate description of the format, the decision was reached to rename the format to simply "Brawl".

Brawl Metagame Challenges

During the Through the Omenpaths 1 release season, the format chosen for the Metagame Challenge was Brawl rather than any 60-card constructed format. This was in preparation for another competitive Metagame Challenge in December, where the top commanders were banned, but all other spells (including those currently banned in the ordinary Brawl queue) were legal. This event was also all-access and ranked with normal ranked matchmaking, but no free mulligan. These Metagame Challenge events were created, in part, to gauge what direction to take the Brawl format. Brawl began as a more casual, low-powered format but had grown to be far faster and more competitive in the wake of regular bonus sheets, Special Guests, anthologies, and the Powered Cube bringing extremely powerful cards to Arena for the first time. This rapid increase in the power level of the format has had a mixed response, with some players feeling that Brawl has lost what used to make it special, while others appreciate the more high-powered nature of current Brawl.

The banlist for the 2025 event was:

• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Ajani, Nacatl Pariah
• Rusko, Clockmaker
• Old Stickfingers
• Wrenn and Six
• Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
• A-Nadu, Winged Wisdom
• Lutri, the Spellchaser

Popularity

A plot of relative play rates of formats on MTG Arena over 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. The line labeled "Brawl" combines data from both Brawl and Standard Brawl, although the ratio of the two is known to have been roughly 9:1 at the time.

Despite being originally introduced as a spinoff of Standard Brawl, Brawl has grown to be far more popular than Standard Brawl and one of the most widely played formats on Arena. Internal data on Arena play rates showed the number of Brawl games played beginning to surpass Historic games played near the end of 2024. Although this data combines the play rates of Brawl and Standard Brawl, it was confirmed that Brawl games outnumber Standard Brawl games by a ratio of roughly 9:1. It was again confirmed at the end of 2025 that Brawl is the second-most popular format on Arena.

Rules

In this format, you'll build a Commander-style deck and play 1v1 games on MTG Arena.

Deck construction

• 1 commander card (any legendary creature, planeswalker, vehicle, or spacecraft with a power/toughness box)
• 99 other Brawl legal cards (within the color identity of the chosen commander)
• Only one copy of any card except for basic lands
• Brawl decks do not have a sideboard, but you may have a companion if you meet its requirements (it does not count towards the 100-card deck size)

Additional rules

• Starting life total is 25
• Best-of-one, including a free mulligan

Major Differences from Commander

• Games are played exclusively 1v1, as Arena does not support more players.
• Planeswalkers are legal as a commander by default; explicit permission via an ability (such as that found on Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes) is not required.
• The starting life total is 25 instead of 40.
• The commander damage rule does not exist.
• The card pool is restricted to cards available on Arena. Cards not craftable on Arena are not legal. Inversely, cards that exist only on Arena (e.g., digital-only cards) are legal in Brawl but not in Commander.
  • If a paper card has a rebalanced version, only the rebalanced version can be played in Brawl.
  • If a card with specialize (all of which are currently monocolor) is chosen as a commander, up to one other color can be chosen during deckbuilding and added to the color identity of the deck, thus making the deck two colors and allowing for one of the two-color specialize options to be built around.

Banned list

See also: Banned and restricted cards/Timeline

The following individual cards are banned in Brawl tournaments:

• Agent of Treachery
• Ancient Tomb
• Chalice of the Void
• Channel
• Chrome Mox
• Deadly Rollick
• Deflecting Swat
• Demonic Tutor
• Disruptor Flute
• Drannith Magistrate
• Field of the Dead
• Fierce Guardianship
• Flawless Maneuver
• Gideon's Intervention
• Iona, Shield of Emeria
• Lutri, the Spellchaser
• Mana Drain
• Meddling Mage
• Natural Order
• Nexus of Fate
• Obscuring Haze
• Oko, Thief of Crowns
• Phyrexian Revoker
• Pithing Needle
• Runed Halo
• Sorcerous Spyglass
• Strip Mine
• Tainted Pact
• Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Previously banned

• Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
• Teferi, Time Raveler
• Winota, Joiner of Forces