Brawlers’ Guildhall – February 2020

Today we have some news and updates to the Brawl format for you, following the latest MTG Arena patch today! Brawlers’ Guildhall is being refreshed for another month with a new Commander to build around, changes to Wednesday Brawl times and a Historic Brawl event coming up in March.

We also have eight new Brawl decks for you to try this week – updated for Theros Beyond Death – and a brief writeup on a Kunoros, Hound of Athreos Brawl deck dubbed Hound Town. They are brewed by sidetraK, who is an awesome deckbuilder both fun and competitive (reaches high Mythic ranking each season as well!), so be sure to check out his Twitch stream.

On a final note, we are hoping to completely revamp our Brawl section in the coming weeks and have more regular content hereon, so keep an eye out for the updates as they unfold. In the meantime, why not join our Discord and challenge fellow Brawlers for a match?

Brawlers’ Guildhall – February 2020

This month’s Brawlers’ Guildhall event is available until March 19, 2020 19:00 UTC for the same entry fee of 10000 Gold or 2000 Gems. This month’s new Commander addition for both Brawl and Historic play is The Gitrog Monster, originally from Shadows over Innistrad. It’s a cool commander that wants you to play a lot of lands and ramping spells and we can’t wait to try it out! Previous months Commanders were Talrand, Sky Summoner and Rhys the Redeemed but all of these cards can be crafted using Wildcards.

Wednesday Brawl

Wednesday Brawl is still here to stay for now, and from February 19 (next week), Wednesday Brawl will start at 8 AM PST (1600 UTC, or 1500 UTC after March 8) instead of 12 AM PST.

Historic Brawl

Historic Brawl, or officially known as Friendly Brawl, has been an unsupported “kitchen table” format that has been only supported via Direct Challenge. Starting with the Festival of the Gods – Erebos’s Memoir of Death event starting March 13 – March 17, we can play Historic Brawl on a more official level! It offers three showcase card styles (e.g. the alternate art for Demigods and God like Tymaret, Murder King and Erebos, Bleak-Hearted) but you can still queue up to keep playing afterwards.

For Historic Brawl decks, we have our dedicated section that will be part of the revamp as stated above, and we will endeavour to post a lot of decks for you to try before then!

MTG Arena Brawl Decks of the Week

Here are the eight new Brawl decks for this week as promised, all brewed by sidetraK with a writeup on Kunoros, Hound of Athreos below. Enjoy!

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Hound Town

Hello Brawlers! Welcome to Hound Town. Today we’re gonna talk about Kunoros, Hound of Athreos. Hound Town is all about the black white value plan; to start off we have our Commander, who has 2 relevant abilities in Brawl and 3 Passives which make him great.

Commander
1 Kunoros, Hound of Athreos (THB) 222

Deck
1 Arcane Signet (ELD) 331
1 Athreos, Shroud-Veiled (THB) 269
1 Basilica Bell-Haunt (RNA) 156
1 Bolas's Citadel (WAR) 79
1 Castle Ardenvale (ELD) 238
1 Castle Locthwain (ELD) 241
1 Cavalier of Dawn (M20) 10
1 Cavalier of Night (M20) 94
1 Chromatic Lantern (GRN) 233
1 Command the Dreadhorde (WAR) 82
1 Despark (WAR) 190
1 Doom Whisperer (GRN) 69
1 Elspeth Conquers Death (THB) 13
1 Erebos, Bleak-Hearted (THB) 93
1 Fabled Passage (ELD) 244
1 Firemind Vessel (WAR) 237
1 Foreboding Fruit (ELD) 88
1 God-Eternal Oketra (WAR) 16
1 Godless Shrine (RNA) 248
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel (THB) 99
1 Kaya's Wrath (RNA) 187
1 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper (RNA) 186
1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General (WAR) 97
1 Massacre Girl (WAR) 99
1 Midnight Reaper (GRN) 77
1 Mortify (RNA) 192
1 Murderous Rider (ELD) 97
1 Orzhov Guildgate (WAR) 269
9 Plains (ELD) 253
1 Rankle, Master of Pranks (ELD) 101
1 Realm-Cloaked Giant (ELD) 26
1 Rotting Regisaur (M20) 111
1 Seraph of the Scales (RNA) 205
1 Shatter the Sky (THB) 37
1 Single Combat (WAR) 30
1 Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord (WAR) 217
1 Spawn of Mayhem (RNA) 85
11 Swamp (ELD) 261
1 Temple of Silence (M20) 256
1 Ugin, the Ineffable (WAR) 2
1 Wishclaw Talisman (ELD) 110

Many times we cast him on turn three and start gaining life and pressuring the opponent.

His clause of “creatures cards in graveyards can’t enter the battlefield” and “players can’t cast spells from graveyards” comes up more often than you would think, with a wacky format like brawl!

My philosophy in Brawl is to build a solid deck that can function without its commander. To abuse Command the Dreadhorde and Bolas Citadel, we have a lifegain package in the deck via Kaya, Orzhov Usurper, Sorin Vengeful Bloodlord, Cavalier of Night, Dread Presence, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, and our Commander himself.

Command the Dreadhorde is a nombo with our commander, but I believe this card is too powerful to not run. We can always attack into the opponent and they can kill our commander, or after we have wiped the board, we can refill ours again with Dreadhorde.

Bolas’s Citadel is an extremely powerful card; cheating spells into play has always been something magic players strive to do. Not to mention it gives 3 Black devotion by itself to turn on the Gods in our deck and buff our huge Gray Merchant swings.

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Next up is our removal and sweeper package. 

Brawl tends to be very creature-based, and so we have a lot of removal!
Spot removal all-stars are Murderous Rider and Mortify; being able to hit planeswalkers as well with rider and enchantments with Mortify is extremely good. Cavalier of Night and Cavalier of Dawn also give us answers to problem creatures, with Dawn removing ANY problem nonland permanent we see fit.

We have Erebos, Bleak-Hearted, Midnight Reaper, and Liliana, Dreadhorde General to refill our hands after we sweep the board. Our sweepers are Kaya’s Wrath, Shatter The Sky, Single Combat, Massacre Girl, and Realm-Cloaked Giant

Athreos, Shroud-Veiled can also give us insane value with our sweeper and spot removal package. What’s better than sweeping the board and taking all the opponents’ creatures?

Single Combat I think is the most underrated white card in Brawl; leaving the opponent with only 1 planeswalker or creature is extremely strong. The clause of “players can’t cast creature or planeswalkers spells until the end of your next turn” is very effective for shutting down aggro decks for a turn while we regroup our resources and board state.

For our “ramp” package we are running Arcane Signet, Chromatic Lantern, and Firemind Vessel. We don’t wanna overcommit on ramp, seeing as our deck is fairly low-costed for Brawl.

These are Brawl staples for ramp, I do not think we need any more, seeing as we don’t really have much to ramp into.

Our all-star creature is God-Eternal Oketra; making a 4/4 vigilance token every time we cast a creature is insane. We typically draw more than 1 card a turn, so the recursion clause makes them a major pain to deal with.

Gray Merchant is another key card. We have a lot of black mana symbols in this deck and he can swing games in our favor and gain us more life for a big Command The Dreadhorde and Bolas Citadel.

Our two-all star walkers are Liliana, Dreadhorde General and Ugin, the Ineffable. Both generate tokens for us to sac and chump block and gain card advantage with, and Ugin doubles as the perfect spot removal for basically any permanent in this format.

Our “fun of” card is Wishclaw Talisman, this card does come at a cost, but the ability to tutor twice vs the opponents once is worth the downside. Many times we tutor our most powerful spell like Bolas’s Citadel, and take over the game.

In conclusion, this deck wants to control the board state and play the best creatures in black and white while outvaluing the opponent with card draw and powerful spells.

Thanks for reading and see you in Brawhalla!