By now every Commander player on the web has heard about Brawl. There are a bunch of opinions going around about it: "It's a marketing ploy to sell new cards!" "It's Wizards' attempt to take control of even fan-driven casual formats!" "Why play a format that rotates casually?" "Looks like it might be a fun way for new players to get into the game."

Recruiting new players is a worthy goal. A few months ago, Abe Sargent and I wrote a series on how to introduce Commander to players new to Magic. Because one of the largest hurdles to getting into Commander is a simple lack of cards, we proposed buying a cheap deck which you gift to your friend, so they have a pool they can build on. Brawl's restrictions make the card pool from playing Sealed and Draft events and FNMs and Prereleases a viable way to start a useful deck. Also the player who opens a single high-dollar mythic rare can play with it in a real way without having to buy three more to fill out a Standard deck.

That said, it is a bummer that the decks rotate. We're looking at a Standard format which is going to change in just a few weeks, and when it does, all the Brawl decks people have been building the last month will no longer be playable without serious adjustment. I've seen a few different ways of managing this problem. One I thought was quite clever: Eternal Brawl, by Brandon Isleib. His articles are always worth the read, and this one is right up there. Rather than limiting decks to current Standard, the idea is you can pick any legal Standard pool and build your Brawl deck from there. It's a neat way to explore older Standards, plus use some of those older cards sitting around which may not make the cut in Commander but could be useful in the more limited Brawl format. I like to think of it as a flexible card ban list: cards outside your selected Standard pool are banned! For the creative brewer, the restrictions create a great opportunity. Brawl is good for the new player, while Eternal Brawl can be fun for the player with an extensive collection who wants to explore how the mechanics of different Standard blocks play out against each other.

It also occurs to me the Convertible technology could be useful here. We could build a 60-card Brawl deck, then use our Optionboard to fill out the remaining 40 cards and have a working Commander deck. A small piece of paper in the face of the sleeve of the 40 Optionboard cards will make separating the two decks a cinch, and this gives us a nice way to use the deck two ways. For the new player, it means they are well on their way to a fully-fledged EDH deck by the time the Brawl deck rotates out.

Brawl permits us to use strategies we wouldn't use in Commander because there's just not enough support. The example Wizards likes to give us is Pirates: there are enough Pirates to make a reasonable Brawl deck, but it's really scraping the bottom of the (grog) barrel to get enough to make a viable 100-card stack. So we can't just build any old Brawl deck and expect it to transform easily. But what we can do is build a traditional strategy and, as we grow into a Commander deck, expand on that strategy using cards from the whole history of Magic. Let's start with a deck built on the current Standard pool, using cards a new player might already have.

Huatli, Radiant Champion -- Rivals Brawl | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Huatli, Radiant Champion

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Angel of Invention
• 1 Archangel of Tithes
• 1 Caustic Caterpillar
• 1 Consul's Lieutenant
• 1 Countless Gears Renegade
• 1 Cultivator of Blades
• 1 Glint-Sleeve Artisan
• 1 Highspire Artisan
• 1 Jungleborn Pioneer
• 1 Martyr of Dusk
• 1 Oketra the True
• 1 Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter
• 1 Pride Sovereign
• 1 Steward of Solidarity
• 1 Tah-Crop Elite
• 1 Visionary Augmenter

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Gideon, Martial Paragon
• 1 Nissa, Nature's Artisan

• Instants (3)
• 1 Naturalize
• 1 Prepare // Fight
• 1 Pride of Conquerors

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Appeal // Authority
• 1 Dusk // Dawn
• 1 Engineered Might
• 1 Fumigate
• 1 Queen's Commission
• 1 Servo Exhibition
• 1 Sram's Expertise

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Anointed Procession
• 1 Call for Unity
• 1 Cast Out
• 1 Gideon's Resolve
• 1 Legion's Landing

• Artifacts (2)
• 1 Thaumatic Compass
• 1 Treasure Map

• Lands (24)
• 3 Forest
• 5 Plains
• 1 Arch of Orazca
• 1 Cradle of the Accursed
• 1 Desert of the Indomitable
• 1 Desert of the True
• 1 Dunes of the Dead
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Field of Ruin
• 1 Grasping Dunes
• 1 Hashep Oasis
• 1 Hostile Desert
• 1 Scattered Groves
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 Shefet Dunes
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Sunscorched Desert
• 1 Tranquil Expanse

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We're basically broken down into four categories here: lands, creature producers, anthems, and removal. Our lands are as good as we can make them in this format; it's going to be a bit bouncy without 20 years of mana fixing. We really don't want to run fewer than 24 because we want to hit our land drops for the first few turns, and 24 is the equivalent of 40 for a Commander deck. We're running fairly lean on our average CMC, with only a couple of six-drops and few 5-drops, so as long as things don't go terribly wrong we'll be all right. There's a mild desert theme because, well, deserts are a thing right now. Turns out there are some useful abilities, particularly when they go away, so it's worth it to run a few extra deserts to have them to sacrifice. Thaumatic Compass is the only artifact helping our mana along, but it can be a lifesaver if we're drawing nothing but gas and are stuck on three lands. Flipping into Maze of Ith isn't too bad, either.

Most of our creatures make other creatures. We've got Revolt, we've got Fabricate (it'll be the rare corner case when we want the counters. Most of the time, we want the extra dudes), we've got Vampires. We've also got a few spells which dump out little dudes. The ideal start for us is something like: Legion's Landing, Servo Exhibition, Highspire Artisan, Huatli to 8 loyalty. We want single cards which make multiple bodies to boost our creature count and get us to that first emblem.

Our anthems are each variations on a theme: make the dudes bigger. Some of them work permanently, like Call for Unity, and some of them work temporarily, like Engineered Might or Pride of Conquerors. Our two other 'walkers are anthems, too. Nissa, Nature's Artisan's ultimate is close to Titanic Ultimatum, and Gideon, Martial Paragon gives us an anthem at +2 and a free hit at all our opponents for its ultimate. We've even got a Shefet Dunes. Go ahead and play out the enchantments, but hold the one-shot ones for the right moment. There are few enough they shouldn't be played just because they've been drawn.

Removal is pretty standard. Naturalize and Prepare // Fight kill stuff. Cast Out is our really fast Oblivion Ring. We're even running sweepers in the form of Dusk // Dawn and Fumigate!

Two cards worth highlighting are Anointed Procession (giving us extra tokens) and Appeal // Authority. Appeal boosts a single creature, which is unusual in this deck, but Authority lets us tap down two creatures, which might be enough to get through someone's defenses. Anointed Procession is great at pretty much every step of the game. Early it helps build our board presence; after a Huatli emblem it means we draw that many more cards; and late is helps us go even wider. Seems worth it.

So let's see how we can get this Brawler a lifetime achievement award.

Tolsimir Wolfblood Additions-- Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Tolsimir Wolfblood

• Creatures (3)
• 1 Jazal Goldmane
• 1 Juniper Order Ranger
• 1 Wilt-Leaf Liege

• Instants (4)
• 1 Arachnogenesis
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Second Harvest
• 1 Secure the Wastes

• Sorceries (4)
• 1 Martial Coup
• 1 Overrun
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Triumph of the Hordes

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Banishing Light
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Cathars' Crusade
• 1 Collective Blessing
• 1 Dictate of Heliod
• 1 Mirari's Wake
• 1 Oblivion Ring
• 1 True Conviction

• Artifacts (4)
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Selesnya Cluestone
• 1 Selesnya Keyrune
• 1 Selesnya Signet

• Lands (16)
• 5 Forest
• 5 Plains
• 1 Blossoming Sands
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Fortified Village
• 1 Selesnya Guildgate
• 1 Temple of Plenty
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse

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After that, we add in a bunch more anthem effects, most of which are much more powerful than anything we've got in Standard. Beastmaster Ascension and Dictate of Heliod are both really strong, but few things hold a candle to a card like Cathars' Crusade in a deck like this. That card will very quickly make other decks notice how truly large your tokens are getting. True Conviction can put us back in a game we were certainly going to lose. Jazal Goldmane (Ajani's brother!) is an Overrun on a stick, plus we have actual Overrun and one of my favorites, Triumph of the Hordes (that card will surprise the table every single time. Doesn't matter how many times you do it). Martial Coup is an additional wrath effect plus a token generator, and Secure the Wastes, Arachnogenesis, and Second Harvest all get us more dudes. Heroic Intervention will save the team through someone's Extinguish All Hope; Mirari's Wake joins some artifacts to help with mana; and Banishing Light plus Oblivion Ring help with more removal. Shamanic Revelation seems like a natural fit when it will often draw us more than 10 cards.

So there we have it, a Brawl deck which converts to a Commander deck and back again, at least for the next few weeks. I'd like to keep trying this, but I'm going to need help as we explore this format together. What other ideas should we try to keep a rotating Brawl deck relevant? Please start the discussion in the comments!

I doubt this will be the world's best Brawl deck, but it will play fun and reasonably straightforward, so it'd be great for someone learning. The EDH deck it turns into isn't going to win any tournaments, but it's a place to start. Someone's new? Help them build this Brawl deck and learn how to play. Then upgrade it to the Commander deck to show some deeper synergies and more complex interactions. The deck has a lot of directions to go from here, but at least it's begun the journey.

Thanks for reading.