Brawl

An exciting deck-brewing challenge, Brawl is a bit of a mixture of Standard+Commander. In this format, you'll use cards legal in Standard to build a Commander-style deck around a legendary creature or Planeswalker. You can play 1v1 games on MTG Arena.

• 1 commander card (any legendary creature or Planeswalker from a set currently in Standard)

• 59 other Standard legal cards (same color identity as your commander card)

• Only one copy of any card except for basic lands

A card’s color identity is not quite the same as a card’s color: It can come from any part of that card, including its casting cost and any mana symbols in its rules text. 

• Every card in your Brawl deck must only use mana symbols that also appear on your commander.

• Colorless cards are allowed in any deck.

• As an example, Kenrith, the Returned King’s color identity is all five colors, and thus you are able to use all five colors in your deck, should you wish to do so.

• In MTG Arena, once you have chosen your commander the deck builder will automatically filter cards based on its color identity and enforce the singleton (one copy of any card) deck building requirement.

This is the special game zone where your commander resides when it is not in play (shown in the bottom right side of the image above): 

• Each commander starts the game face up in its controller’s command zone. When a player’s commander is in the Command Zone, it will appear as a ‘near-hand’ castable. You can hover both your and your opponent’s commander card to view a larger version. The commander’s name is also listed below each player’s names; you can click this to view an enlarged version of the card as well.

• A commander can be cast from the command zone, as though it were in your hand, for its normal costs, plus an additional two mana for each previous time it’s been cast from the command zone this game (informally known as the “commander tax”). This will automatically update in-game and you can hover the card to see the final mana cost. When played, the commander will have a distinct border on the battlefield.

• If your commander would change zones (i.e., be put into your library, hand, graveyard, or exile from anywhere), you will receive a prompt to choose which zone to send it to – sending it to the command zone is a may ability!

• With 3 or more players, start at 30 life; with only 2 players, start at 25 life. MTG Arena currently does not support multiplayer games.

• The first mulligan is to seven cards, then each mulligan afterward results in one fewer card (six, five, four, etc).