Inconsistencies with the Brawl format.

Hello everyone, my name is Onnik Islikaplan, and I’m an aspiring content creature. Specifically, my category of content is Tournament Organizer. I’ve been organizing a few tournaments within a Facebook group, and all of the matches are played on Arena. Currently, my next tournament is for the format of Historic Brawl.

At least, that’s what I’d like to call it. Unfortunately, myself and all 90 of my participants have been experiencing several complications when it comes to practicing for the tournament. The way the tournament will be run is by Direct Challenging each other, but they often get errors about incompatible decks.

PROBLEM:

When any player wants to play a game of Historic Brawl, they simply queue up for the format titled “Historic Brawl” with a compatible deck, and the matchmaker does its thing, and the game is set up.

However, when initiating a Direct Challenge, there is no existing option for “Historic Brawl.” The only option there is, is “Friendly Brawl,” and it seems to play by a different set of rules. After a bit of troubleshooting, this is the difference that I have found:

Historic Brawl, which is the queueable format, allows for all cards that are Historic legal to be used, with the exception of a banned list. This includes all of the Rebalanced cards that have the Arena symbol “A” in front of the card name.

Friendly Brawl, which is the Direct Challenge format, does NOT allow the Rebalanced cards to be used at all. Every attempt to issue a challenge to another player will always come up with an error message, stating that all Rebalanced cards are not legal in this version of Brawl.

To make things further confusing, there are FOUR ways to save your Brawl deck when editing your deck. Brawl, Historic Brawl, Friendly Brawl, and Friendly Brawl Rebalanced.

SOLUTION:

The only way two players can send a Direct Challenge to each other and play Brawl of any kind, is to ensure that they do NOT have any Rebalanced cards in their deck. As a result, that gives players two choices.

1, Replace the card entirely.
2, Play with the “original” version of the Rebalanced Card.

The problem with 1 is that certain themes may not even be viable anymore (or a lot less fun/efficient), such as cards that allow you to Venture into the Dungeon.

The problem with 2 is that if they later decide to play the queueable format of Historic Brawl, they will have to re-modify their deck. Of course the alternative is to have two separate decks saved, one for Historic Brawl, and one for Friendly Brawl, but it seems silly to have two versions of the same deck, just so you can play them.

Then you may run into another complication, such as Teferi, Time Raveler, which has been rebalanced. In Historic Brawl, this card is now legal for use, but in Friendly Brawl, there is no option at all, and the card MUST be replaced.

RECOMMENDATION:

I understand that the initial creation of Brawl had the intent to be played with Standard legal cards, but over time, the popularity of Historic Brawl grew and grew, and now players wish to play that as well. I’d like to request an option to where players can Direct Challenge each other for the format of Brawl, and then the next option, players can choose whether to play Standard Brawl, Historic Brawl, or Friendly Brawl.

Additionally, when saving the deck and editing the deck details, the option of Friendly Brawl Rebalanced seems obsolete or redundant. I’d suggest to save your deck with the same exact options on how you can direct challenge and queue for the format, which would be Standard Brawl, Historic Brawl, or Friendly Brawl.

I apologize if parts of this was a bit confusing to read, but unfortunately, my tournament participants found this even more confusing when they were trying to practice with each other. Thank you for taking the time to read this.