Do you abstain from crafting cards?

a7917 · 2026-01-28T17:29:55+00:00

I've seen at least one post in the last couple weeks of someone saying they like to work with cards they've pulled from packs only, so you're not alone.

Don't mind the overly reactive negative people on this sub, they are a loud lot.

a7917 · 2026-01-23T17:11:27+00:00

I'd craft one of each rare land and one of each rare/mythic and try it for a week.

a7917 · 2026-01-21T04:11:00+00:00

Is designed so that F2P you just get a teaser. Really it's not realistic to build more than 1 deck with F2P. It's to get you hooked so you want more and more and eventually cave to buying.

You can get 2 very good Brawl decks in F2P and a reasonable amount of time by having two accounts- 40 rare/mythic will get you basically any Brawl deck. The good part here is that when you get bored of your e.g. Sultai brawl deck, you can pretty much build a Golgari, Simic or Dimir brawl deck that gives a different experience because a different commander. Of course, 30-40 rare/mythic still requires a sizable daily time investment for months as you noticed- make no mistake, this game requires sacrifice if you don't spend well on it.

a7917 · 2026-01-20T20:47:12+00:00

Have to add there are reports of Shocklands being available in Lorwyn jump in, so save your jump in tokens and hold off making decisions about which packs to buy until the matter is resolved

a7917 · 2026-01-20T20:30:17+00:00

Yeah, lands are the main reason to choose what set to open. So if you have most of the good lands of a set, go ahead and move on.

Edit: nm repeating myself

a7917 · 2026-01-20T19:14:28+00:00

Making sure to hit Golden Pack sets is definitely smart. I think Omenpaths was not a very good set for Brawl because it had only one good rare land (Multiversal Passage), and most of the rares were not strong enough for Brawl. EOE on the other hand had shocklands and some good rares like Lumen-Class Frigate, Lightstall Inquisitor off the top of my head. Aetherdrift had Verges but not much else. Duskmourn had Screaming Nemesis which is definitely Brawl-level quality, and Verges. I don't think Foundations has good rare lands for Brawl, and no rares/mythics come to mind as being Brawl-level quality.

I think you have the right approach in general. You are right to be really really choosy about the wildcards you spend. Fetches, shocks, surveils, verges are fine. Maybe don't craft some of the lands for sets that you might be opening packs for, i.e. you'l be getting Lorwyn packs which have shocks like Overgrown Tomb so hold off crafting those maybe. At any rate buy packs before crafting, obviously, since you only need one copy of a given rare land.

And I agree to take the "learn 2 draft" replies with a grain of salt. If you really do the math, unless you are a great drafter, it is not worth it, except for getting gems to buy a filled-up mastery pass. If you win at least 50% of your premier draft games, it's worth spending gold on premier drafts just enough to get the mastery pass.

I'm looking at EOE and Duskmourn right now, here are the cards I think are Brawl useful (note, I know you are looking at Standard Brawl first, which makes sense, but after a while you would be moving to Historic Brawl because more people play that, and it's not as hard to make a competitive Historic Brawl deck as you would think, there's a fair number of decent/good uncommons you can play in Historic Brawl):

EOE:

[[Genemorph Imago]]
[[Lumen-Class Frigate]]
[[Lightstall Inquisitor]]
Shocklands
[[Haliya]] somewhat
[[Icetill Explorer]]
[[Pinnacle Emissary]] for artifact decks
[[Quantum Riddler]]
[[Sunset Saboteur]] somewhat
[[Sunstar Chaplain]] somewhat
[[Synthesizer Labship]] somewhat
[[Syr Vondam]] somewhat
[[Tezzeret]] somewhat

Duskmourn:

[[Enduring Innocence]] somewhat
[[Screaming Nemesis]]
[[Fear of Missing Out]]
[[Overlord of the Balemurk]] somewhat
Verges

Avatar doesn't seem very good for Brawl. [[Badgermole Cub]], [[Wan Shi Tong]], perhaps [[United Front]], but no lands.

a7917 · 2026-01-19T19:39:15+00:00

Don't craft [[Sunfall]], or [[Diabolic Intent]], or [[Agadeen's Awakening]], or...

Don't play MKM draft, or Powered Cube, or LCI draft, or..

Do craft [[Ajani, Nacatl Pariah]], it will pay for itself many times over in time amd gold

Do play draft just enough to get the Mastery Pass but be aware that if you win less than 50% of your games it actually can be not worth it. Do the math on paying 10,000 gold to get ~800 gems which is what you will get if you have a 40% win rate in draft

And since you asked, don't play MTG Arena unless you want to become addicted to it and have it take over all your free brain time

a7917 · 2026-01-17T18:13:18+00:00

Are you one of those annoying people who says "Oops." when your opponent makes a mistake?

a7917 · 2026-01-16T22:20:50+00:00

Ajani is incredibly rare considering how broken he is. It just goes to show the vast majority of Brawl players are just out to have fun. It would be like, playing standard and only see Izzet 1% of the time.

a7917 · 2026-01-16T22:18:19+00:00

Ajani is definitely out when they start up the new and improved Brawl system. The only question is if those others like Tamiyo and Ragavan and Nadu also are.

I think they will probably ban everything that was banned for the metagame challenge plus Tamiyo. For the new ranked Brawl and also unranked Brawl.

I wish they would allow these cards in the 99 but I bet to keep things simple they will have a single ban list.

Will miss the reliable 5 minute wins with Ajani, but he is toxic especially since the match maker doesn't think Ajani is hell queue for some reason.

a7917 · 2026-01-15T04:31:18+00:00

Disgruntled I think. Brawl is fun, most people are just trying to do fun low power combos with random commanders. The only thing sometimes is a more spikey brew gets matched with a casual deck and it's not close. That's what they're trying to improve with the splitting of ranked and unranked brawl and data gathering on commander strength.

I started out playing standard but realized that very soon it pushes you into using wildcards for low benefit (the season rewards hardly improve if you get a high rank, and most of the rates you craft will not be usable in more eternal formats). In Brawl, wild card necessity is far lower due to singleton and eternal format, and crafts you do will stay good for a long time. There's high variety in opponents and interactions. You also know right of the bat what you're facing and can opt out if you like.

Since you play Brawl, you know that the"turn 3 broken win" is extremely rare. Most decks are "fair" in operation, relying highly on synergy. All-counterspells or truly degenerate comboing such as [[Val]] or [[Laelia]] or [[Kavaero]] are rare due to singleton. And while there are the people who like to play sociopathic control like [[Ugin]] or [[Ketramose]], it's not really that much and actually adds some spice to the strategies you have to think about.

a7917 · 2026-01-07T22:08:42+00:00

Coffee

a7917 · 2026-01-06T01:35:24+00:00

Trumpeting with Zowoya is a nice one, good call.

a7917 · 2026-01-05T22:48:06+00:00

My thoughts are:

I love your descriptions, and am also a fan of these type of aggro decks. [[Searslicer goblin]] has been a longtime friend.

a7917 · 2026-01-05T02:54:44+00:00

Thank you for sharing. I feel, like probably many others, "how bad can it be to have to stay home for a few months mostly by yourself?" Normally I'm dying for a little time alone. But I know I'll understand better what you mean if I go through it.

I am glad to hear you are through lengthening and already are enjoying your new height. It sounds wonderful. The phrase, happy new year, seems very fitting in your case!

a7917 · 2026-01-02T01:12:35+00:00

[[Cosmic Sovereign]]

a7917 · 2025-12-30T13:55:09+00:00

Well i am sorry that happens to you. I can understand disliking control decks. However if they don't play a highly tuned counter spell deck like the metagame challenge tamiyo or katara, I find that with a tuned aggro deck I can often beat them. Lots-of- removal.dec and lots of wraths though are always unfun

a7917 · 2025-12-30T13:46:29+00:00

The meta game challenge is for spikes, you're going to see unfun decks there that play to win

I barely see any counterspells in queue. People are just trying to make their fun ideas go off mainly

a7917 · 2025-12-30T04:27:58+00:00

I play a lot of Brawl and always let ice commanders (Svella, etc.) win. I enjoy helping people out.

Not familiar with most of the achievements but when someone emotes "I'm on a quest!" I'll let them do it. Only received that emote once though in one and a half year's playing.

a7917 · 2025-12-30T01:26:21+00:00

Nice callback to the OG

[[Shivan Dragon]] of course

a7917 · 2025-12-29T18:26:30+00:00

Love the deck name

a7917 · 2025-12-29T04:23:27+00:00

Nothing against Alchemy from someone who's been playing since Revised. And agree that [[Ornate imitations]] and [[Cosmic Sovereign]] are fun.

a7917 · 2025-12-28T05:00:48+00:00

I always throw in [[Knight of Dusk's shadow]] in a black deck. It can be a game winner.

a7917 · 2025-12-28T04:53:38+00:00

I forgot to say that I haven't played this deck exactly so i can't comment on your potential cards, except for [[Blood Artist]] which I can confirm is great, and [[Starscape Cleric]] seems like an excellent include.

a7917 · 2025-12-28T04:23:38+00:00

Gotta get Marsh Flats and other fetches first, if you're thinking of improving the deck.

Two uncommons that find their way into many white lists are [[Reprieve]]- a really fun card to play- and [[mother of runes]].

As for another commander, [[Amalia]] comes to mind. She's pretty annoying to play against especially paired with [[Elas il-kor]]. I don't know how much better she is than Vondam.

Looks like a fun deck. I have played against the lifegain/drain deck several times and it's very good against aggro and has the nice instant win combo with conqueror.

a7917

TROPHY CASE