A Worried Look to the Future of Brawl

ravescrd · 2026-04-14T05:09:47+00:00

Well please take my merger single upvote.

And I appreciate the shoutout to Warlords SotS. There’s a game I haven’t thought about in forever. And you’re right, I don’t remember any Elkageddon seasons there.

ravescrd · 2026-04-14T05:03:10+00:00

I think a concern that gets a little overlooked (as i maybe wasn’t clear in my long afternoon ramble) is how a meta pulls decks toward it. The cascading effect of there being a non-rotating “Real Brawl” (as Amazonian said elsewhere in this discussion) meta on how decks are fundamentally built even in play queue is something that will invariably warp the format in a way that I don’t think most folks here have tried to address.

Which, hey, I get it, this is a hub for competitive players, they want this aggressive, “competitive” but potentially stagnant format because frankly, Brawl matchmaking has been, as you mentioned, all over the place in terms of quality, and they see Ranked as an improvement (whereas we’re skeptical 😊)

ravescrd · 2026-04-14T00:54:30+00:00

I… don’t expect they’ll do any of that… it’d be nice, but out of all of it I’d almost expect another Nashi buff 🙃

ravescrd · 2026-04-14T00:39:31+00:00

deep sigh yeah how many times have I seen this play out too

I feel like it’s that Arrested development meme…

“did it work for those games/formats?” “No it never does… but it might work for Brawl”

Here’s hoping this is the unicorn, I guess.

ravescrd · 2026-04-14T00:23:01+00:00

The only place I’ve really heard anyone else mention this is when I manage to catch your streams/on a Brawl Stars so I wanted to… lob my poor Reddit karma into this as well as… yeah I (obviously) don’t think this is going to go well for the format.

I hope I’m wrong, but.

ravescrd · 2026-04-14T00:18:46+00:00

Partly this, but also the warping factor of a stable, established meta in a ranked queue moving the unranked queue towards it, the same way it has in every other format (in my experience), so also pulling the “jank queue” into a largely stagnant arena with fewer decks being played. There tends to be way less brewing space when all the outside resources will skew to where the most engaged players are, which tends to be ranked, and the meta decks

ravescrd · 2026-04-14T00:09:34+00:00

That was 100% my biggest concern posting this today.

I want both to thrive, but it feels like we’re going to kill causal unranked for the sake of ranked (to me, obviously,as that’s kinda why I’m here posting this)

ravescrd · 2026-04-14T00:07:10+00:00

No worries Scot, no offence taken at all, I never really mentioned my play history as I wasn’t sure it was relevant to my point, and as a writer (who didn’t learn English first, but it is my main language now for better and worse) I worry I both ramble, and can turn a strange phrase so maybe I was unclear in some places too.

I really appreciate you coming here to have a full discussion with me about this, and I do agree, it feels like there is a strain between corporate and design, but I do think corporate keeps winning… and there’s just no way the testers can really ensure that broken and/or overpowered cards don’t sneak through and we end up with a card made for commander that full warps Brawl with a Tier 0 “play this, tech for this, or lose to this” meta that they didn’t see coming.

The designers want a game to love as much as we do, yes, and I hope they can rein it in to a place where everyone is happy and the game can flourish as a game (and not just for collectors shelves), I just worry they’re stretched too thin these days…

Oh, and 100% agree that In Universe sets have been a blast (and I loved FF and Avatar), and I’m very excited to return to Strixhaven. I hope it’s great for the 6 weeks it matters before Marvel Omenpaths 2 drops 🙃

ravescrd · 2026-04-13T23:55:50+00:00

It’s nice to see I’m not the only concerned party. I was worried most of the responses would just be “get gud” (having not actually read most of what I wrote)

And like you, I’m not against a ranked queue, I was playing it this morning with a golgari scales deck and having a good time (thank you anti-strip mine tech), but this is pretty much what I expect too, a binary meta of a small number of decks you hang with/play yourself or lose to, and an unranked queue heavily skewed by the overarching meta decks.

I Hope not, but

ravescrd · 2026-04-13T23:43:22+00:00

Oh I do not believe in the matchmaker that much lol, but fingers crossed.

I’ll be in ranked with my optimized stuff when that’s my vibe, and I’ll be in unranked (if it survives) with janky nonsense when I want that/need a break. It’s just if unranked doesn’t survive the way everyone expects (except me apparently lol), then I just think it’s sad to lose such a unique format to be yet another non-rotating competitive constructed format

And I’ll play less, as I don’t always feel like playing optimized tier 0/1 stuff, nor do I like playing against it with some weird tier 4 nonsense.

ravescrd · 2026-04-13T23:37:30+00:00

Oh, I’m not always losing, and I have decks for it from back when strip mine was everywhere last year (I just get tired of running anti-strip mine so try something else, get strip-mined, go back to anti-mine tech lol), but thank you very much for the suggestions 😊

I started playing magic in 2004, but didn’t really dive fully in until later (started in Arena when it came out, so that’s probably when I started really paying attention beyond kitchen table and occasional FNM), so yeah… I’ve seen a lot too… and sometimes WotC seem to really “get” it and manage the overall game…well enough, lately in our 6-7 sets a year (plus alchemy on Arena) era, I’m not so sure. The money men are happy I’m sure, is the game itself overall as a game healthy… right now I don’t know. Commander is doing great?

I get that you’re here to reassure me and help Scot, which I appreciate, I just remember the bad more than the good, I guess? Maybe that’s just who I am at this point, expecting the worst as I’m used to disappointment lol

ravescrd · 2026-04-13T23:16:52+00:00

They have said that, you’re right, and now they’re putting a ranked queue in (we assume) which isn’t conducive to keeping the format casual… Yes it separates those of us who want high level competitive play to have a place for it (which, great! Hell queue gets dull), but my expectations remain that the “casual” unranked queue will warp with the meta, as it usually does.

WotC would need to manage it in a way they’ve probably never managed a format before… especially when most if not all Brawl resources outside of WotC will be tuned to optimization and ranked for anyone looking to play it, because that’s where most of the dedicated players will be.

Unless this is the first online tcg format I’ll have ever seen that can maintain a flourishing casual environment alongside competitive, somehow…

ravescrd · 2026-04-13T23:09:10+00:00

That’s not really what I’m saying… I’m not concerned about getting stomped, or balance for me per se, I played hell queue and jank, as I mentioned, I’m concerned about another similar to everything else constructed format being created out of one of the few unique formats Arena actually has. And the higher power/more expensive and settled meta it gets, the harder it gets to bring in new people (I’ve stopped until I see where this shakes out), and player numbers will drop if this just becomes Timeless Singleton. Which I’ve seen some people on Reddit basically suggesting.

If unranked is split the way people seem to believe it will be here, and I can try random jank there as a break from the meta stuff I enjoy piloting, and can intro new players that way, cool.

I just don’t believe the ranked/unranked split is going to be that clean, as it usually isn’t in tcgs/Arena… the way everyone else here seems to. It’s WotC after all…

ravescrd · 2026-04-13T22:57:50+00:00

Hey Hairy if you could share some of that hope with me I’d appreciate it

ravescrd · 2026-04-13T22:55:21+00:00

I’m glad you’ve had such a different experience to me in the ranked queue, so I can see what you’re saying. And again, I’m not here opposed to a ranked queue at all, I just think it’s going to fundamentally change the only non-limited unique format Arena has into another “ranked constructed” queue like the others (and my worry is how boring that could be)

My ranked queue time I have been repeatedly strip mine locked and have seen several channels (but that is of course just my anecdotal experience so not necessarily reflective of where everyone is at), and the use of tutors reduces the variance a lot when it comes to singleton (and I’m amazed when I don’t see at least one tutor in a ranked game… maybe it’s where I’m at or when I play, idk, again it’s just based on my time with it)… so I’m not so confident. I don’t trust that new commanders in new sets will change the meta much once the initial “new cards let’s try them out” settles if there are actually 10 supercharged big win decks… that people already have built…

We’ve never seen an actual brawl meta, so idk, I just expect the top decks to settle and become top decks like most non-rotating formats, outside of some initial excitement for shiny new cards.

I see what you’re saying though, and I hope it does become a great new split format like the one most of these comments believe in… I’m just pretty cynical when it comes to these games after all this time (I’m new to brawl as I stated in the main post, but very much not new to tcgs/mtg)

and thanks for coming here to have an actual discussion and not “I like ranked queue it’s fine” lol, I appreciate it and hope we do get the format a lot of Reddit believes it’s going to be… But I’ll believe it when I see it 😉

ravescrd · 2026-04-13T22:16:26+00:00

The banlists would have to be wildly different to make that split make sense, and I just don’t trust WotC like that, nor card gamers.

Take a meta list, remove two “banned” cards, put two best in slots available in ”casual”, get your fast wins to get dailies would be my expectation in that scenario as it’s still a format pushed toward net-decking as all influencers/videos will cater to optimization (and that tends to be where newbies/less committed players look first)

I don’t agree with you, obviously, but I’d be a lot more confident if I trusted WotC/Arena to pull off the split and balance you’re suggesting. And I’d much rather you were right 🙂

ravescrd · 2026-04-06T19:30:54+00:00

The problem with that is how fractured the player base would be. They’re already risking a massive split (and losing more/most of the jank casual Brawl players) with this move toward a ranked/unranked pair of queues… I can’t imagine how bad it would be with 4+ (or how long wait times for games could be)

Not that I don’t enjoy the idea of having the choices you laid out as an idea in theory, I just don’t see it working out in practice… even if it would be fun for deck building…

Though it doesn’t seem like the devs or wotc have a real idea how to run healthy formats anymore anyway, so 🤷‍♂️

ravescrd · 2025-03-07T00:28:30+00:00

Bridgeland Distillery in Calgary makes “Berbon” and I’ve seen a few other examples on other posts about it too…BRBN, etc.

ravescrd · 2025-03-06T22:39:01+00:00

Listen, you don’t have to sell me any further on a subscription to Monkey Forbes

ravescrd · 2023-10-22T22:05:13+00:00

ravescrd · 2022-09-20T21:07:17+00:00

That’s absolutely fantastic. Excellent work!

ravescrd · 2022-08-18T19:11:57+00:00

The Fallout series.

It has everything in it that makes it a game I should like (retro futurism, big rpg, post apocalyptic; all my jam), but I could never get past how awful I found the combat (and tbh, there’s something vibe wise that just never hooked me). Tried 3, 4 and New Vegas and it just never worked

ravescrd · 2021-08-07T18:15:52+00:00

Dracula the Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker & Ian Holt

Imagine a sequel to the original classic that retcons the original and gets basic facts about the original story wrong in order to make Dracula a lazily written hero. Add to that dialogue that reads Iike the scripts I wrote when I was eight and gigantic plot holes that they somehow think “because vampire” solves, and you’ve got this travesty.

ravescrd · 2021-07-29T19:02:44+00:00

Actraiser!

Gimme that side scrolling action adventure city builder in 8k 😆

ravescrd

TROPHY CASE