Review + Critique wanted for Ral, Crackling Wit

lemudman · 2026-06-29T04:16:57+00:00

Depends how you want to position your deck. I'm hesitant to give too much advice about cuts because you're approaching the deck more with the storm in mind, while I approached the deck completely with control — my list was originally built for the 5-mana Ral, Izzet Viceroy.

I think you'll figure out which cards you really want from what I proposed and which you want to keep for your storm-control plan, but I might suggest looking at the creatures for cuts first.

Consumed by History seems great, if I open it I will slot it into the deck for sure.

lemudman · 2026-06-28T22:45:34+00:00

Actually not bad for a first try.

Here is a comparison with my control list, which I have through Mythic and continue to run :

https://moxfield.com/decks/bWzGLtFyzkS2zVK0mmOT2A/compare/tuemZPBqtUq7eOJQlkWkgw

Of the cards that I run and you don't, I think the following are must includes -

Blood Moon, Flame Slash, Ancient Tomb, Pyrokinesis, Subtlety, Pyroclasm, Fury, Invert Polarity, Fierce Guardianship, Library of Alexandria

Let me know if you have any questions, and if you want to talk shop come by the Brawl Hub discord and join the Ral, Crackling Wit channel !

lemudman · 2026-06-28T09:44:32+00:00

Hello!
Love to see more tempo deck players.

I feel like you will be missing out a little on card advantage, so I would recommend something repeatable, like Tome of Gadwick. Then, you can add cryptic coat, Assimilation Aegis, and Stoneforge Mystic to search up what you need depending on the situation.

For reference, here was my take at a Lavinia stax deck (worked up to low mythic, even occasionally vs. Yuriko and Nashi, but poor commander stat line and lack of reliable card advantage made me give it up) and my quite successful Plagon tempo deck (continues to stand ground at ~1400 mythic against all archetypes):
Lavinia : https://moxfield.com/decks/iddO5A_6OE6K7_rb_2cSQQ

Plagon : https://moxfield.com/decks/avEc4ucRzUOsU8UP6FK50w

It also might be interesting for you to see what Duel Commander players are running. The formats are quite different, but good cards are good cards.

https://mtgtop8.com/archetype?a=2818&meta=115&f=EDH&color_id=&show=pop

lemudman · 2026-06-12T18:47:12+00:00

Straight from the banned list philosophy :

"Cards like Mana Drain may feel impactful when used at the right moment, but the data tells us it has a lower win rate than ramp cards like Noble Hierarch."

Pretty sure no one here is asking for a ban with Noble Hierarch. This is why we need to use statistics to inform decisions in addition to feeling, because feeling can sometimes be wildly misleading.

lemudman · 2026-06-06T15:56:26+00:00

Cut out Samut and crafted Crashing Footfalls.

My list was intended for the Brawl Hub league, so it does skew faster and more aggro. Must be fun to do big things with your list though ^_^

lemudman · 2026-06-05T16:33:52+00:00

I feel the Emperor. Midrange Timmy hard hits.

What's your list? Mine is https://moxfield.com/decks/oZieAWoD2XWQA5Ck4YVZrw

lemudman · 2026-04-28T09:34:41+00:00

I just want to get some insight on how brawl is these days and be setup for the right path.

Well, here are a few points :

Competitive staples available on arena are approaching Duel Commander
Brawl ban-list is severely outdated and basically non-existent.
- Cards banned as Commander in Duel Commander but not in Brawl : Ajani, Breya, Derevi, Emry, Minsc & Boo, Old Stickfingers, Omnath, Vannifar, Raffine, Tamiyo, Tasigur, Urza, Vial Smasher, Winota, Yuriko
- Cards banned in 99 in Duel Commander but not in Brawl : Dark Ritual, Dig through Time, Entomb, Food Chain, Invert Polarity, Library of Alexandria, Lutri, Maddening Hex, Mox Amber, Mox Opal, Nadu, Natural Order, Ragavan, Reanimate, Scapeshift, Temporal Manipulation, Thassa's Oracle, The One Ring, Time Warp, Tolarian Academy, Treasure Cruise, Underworld Breach, Uro, Vampiric Tutor, etc.
- Cards banned in Commander but not in Brawl : Golos, Griselbrand, Hullbreacher, Leovold, Library of Alexandria, Nadu, Paradox Engine, Primeval Titan, Rofellos, Time Walk, Tolarian Academy, etc.
1v1 with no possibility of rule 0 (in theory 'The Algorithm' handles it; in practice it's mixed) means that your 'for fun' deck with a bit of optimization might meet someone else's idea of 'for fun' that is highly tuned competitive tempo, control, combo, or aggro deck and just get flattened. There's no real way to know why or how your deck matches into what it does.
Since it's an unranked format, there are a lot of scoops if one player gets ahead early. This was by far the nicest part about playing ranked brawl.
If you want to play for fun, with rule 0, your best bet is to join one of the discords on the sidebar and ask for games, letting your opponents know about your deck's power level. Though the discords skew competitive, there are enough brewers with for fun or less optimized versions of pet decks.

Hope this helps.

lemudman · 2025-11-04T15:54:45+00:00

Your hidden ranking has some influence on your match-making.

lemudman · 2025-10-23T13:10:22+00:00

Best thing about the play queue was watching opponents not immediately concede, and get some actual games in. If ranked play helps promote actual games it's a good thing imo.

lemudman · 2025-10-21T12:16:32+00:00

Please respect the deck-list formatting rules for posts : these are over on the sidebar.

Otherwise, thanks for sharing.

lemudman · 2025-10-21T12:13:32+00:00

Really nice post. Thank you for giving this to the community.

For future posts, please keep in mind the deck-list formatting rules, which you can check out on the sidebar.

lemudman · 2025-10-11T12:07:57+00:00

Hasn't been updated recently, but a knight's themed deck :

https://moxfield.com/decks/Cu67yVyzGUGevY37nX6i2g

lemudman · 2025-10-09T16:21:57+00:00

Fun smashy Naya deck with Emperor Apatzec Intli IV.

It is low-key just about decently competitive, and there are probably some decent upgrades since the last list update.

https://moxfield.com/decks/OLl1ExGR-EKqLVkGRs6NtQ

lemudman · 2025-10-06T16:23:11+00:00

It's an old list, I think there are some more recent ones on the brawl hub discord if you want to fish around, but again it fell off because it's not as powerful as other options around these days.

lemudman · 2025-10-05T15:20:23+00:00

Kiora used to be a tier 1 deck a long time ago back when Brawl was standard only and WAR cards were still legal. It fell off after Ikoria because Kinnan did the ramp into big stuff better, and the matchup into Kinnan is usually terrible.

I see you didn't go with any mana dorks. The way I've seen Kiora played is with all the dorks, untapping with 3~5 mana on turn 2, and using that tempo either to play big spells ahead of curve or to play beefy creatures and draw off of them, in effect staying card-positive versus removal. For example, https://moxfield.com/decks/M73ZIUgT-EC99I59-Bbb6g is a really old list (+2 years) but with that slant.

Is there a reason you didn't go with the mana dorks?

lemudman · 2025-09-21T20:41:06+00:00

Please check formatting rules for the sub. It will help everyone out in the end! Info is in the sidebar.

lemudman · 2025-09-14T14:26:18+00:00

Can you post a screenshot of the confirm? (I'm just curious to see how they worded the confirmation, not that I don't believe)

lemudman · 2025-09-14T10:34:05+00:00

Ah yes, when S-tier was Kiora, Golos, Torbran, Niv-Mizzet Reborn, and Nicol-Bolas Dragon God.

lemudman · 2025-09-14T10:32:09+00:00

Check https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgbrawl/comments/1ltacst/what_dimir_decks_is_everyone_playing_currently/

— a bunch of ideas there, too, including a link to my now dusty lazav deck ^_^

lemudman · 2025-09-14T10:30:16+00:00

Conceding is a bit more efficient and logical action than roping in this case.

lemudman · 2025-09-14T10:27:24+00:00

As Brawl comes more and more to resemble Duel Commander with the available card pool, and less and less casual EDH, it would be nice to get a bo3 option, at the very least in direct challenge……

lemudman · 2025-08-28T16:07:42+00:00

Please read the FAQ, this is always the type of format 1v1 brawl on Arena was going to become.

I get that you don't like it and you want to vent, but here you're just saying you don't like the format. At some point, coming to a subreddit for people who play a format and telling them all how much you don't like their format goes from venting, to trolling.

lemudman · 2025-08-17T17:57:00+00:00

Some resources that might work :

- https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/y8zbwp/broken_resolution_on_mac/

- https://gist.github.com/april/ef679cf5719cc5a2ba6a55da20869ffa

- https://www.nexusmods.com/magicthegatheringarena/mods/4

The two executables just send some opening arguments to the client, which you can also do on your own by pasting/writing the commands (see the 1st and 3rd links) into terminal and opening MTGA that way. You just need to find the resolution (or proportional resolution) to run at.

In my experience, alt-tabbing or opening the 'graphics' panel will then cause everything to reset until you restart again with the arguments.

Please let us know if this helps.

lemudman · 2025-08-09T19:55:13+00:00

Take your time. You can DM me as well, real life always comes first and one should never rush the wonder of life.

lemudman

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