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Jodah, Archmage Eternal Art by Yongjae Choi

Historic Brawl Fest Event Guide and Decklists

Historic Brawl Festival returns as players await for the delayed release of Jumpstart: Historic Horizons on August 24. In case you missed it, players will have access to a permanent Historic Brawl queue come August 24, and a whole lot of new cards to shake up the format a couple days later. Not only that, Wizards are going through with the decision to change the minimum deck size to 100-cards (including your commander)! Here is our guide to the event, as well as fun sample Historic Brawl decklists for you to try.

Event Details

  • Duration: August 12 2021 at 8:00 AM PST – August 24 at 8:00 AM PST
  • Format: Historic Brawl
  • Entry Fee: Free
  • Ends After: You can keep playing, but rewards do not go past one win.
  • Match Structure: Best-of-one matches (BO1)

Event Rewards

This event will also award 3000 Mastery XP (i.e. 3 levels) for your first match win. This will compensate for the shorter Mastery Pass duration and a tighter schedule. Innistrad: Midnight Hunt releases on September 16, so be sure to plug in your details on our Mastery Calculator and find out if you can reach the desired maximum level before it ends!

  • 1 Win: 3000 Mastery XP

What is Historic Brawl?

Wizards of the Coast are changing up the Historic Brawl format by increasing the minimum deck size to 100 cards as the card pool increases. As usual, build a singleton deck by choosing any favorite Legendary creature or Planeswalker as your Commander and 99 other cards available in MTG Arena.

Banned Card List

The banlist has been revised for 100-Card Historic Brawl, and Golos and Winota are now legal:

Since last August, we have been tracking and weighting specific commanders in both Brawl and Historic Brawl. Our goal has been to better match players with similarly weighted commanders, keeping the challenge for competitive players while ensuring the formats remain hospitable to casual players. Players with high-powered commanders are more likely to square off against each other, and casual players not looking for that high-powered experience are more likely to face similar opponents.

This has been largely successful. With this system in place, we are now more likely to use weighting rather than banning as a tool for managing very powerful commanders. Players who still really enjoy the experience of playing with those commanders may continue to do so, and players who don’t want that high-powered experience can be free from it.

Therefore, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim and Winota, Joiner of Forces are now no longer banned in Historic Brawl. As the format develops, we’ll continue to adjust weighting of various commanders as appropriate.

Source: MTG Arena Announcements, June 16, 2021: Historic Brawl UNBANS and Event Schedule

Historic Brawl can currently only be played in occasional events (such as this one) and direct challenges, coordinated through unofficial methods such as a Discord server.

Latest Historic Brawl Decklists

Here are the latest Historic Brawl decklists from the last time the event came around. They have not been updated for Forgotten Realms, so you will have to refine it according to your preference!

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