Brawl

Brawl is a singleton format that blends the commander concept with a fresh, modern card pool. Like Commander, each player leads with a legendary creature or planeswalker as their commander and builds a singleton deck around it. The key difference is the card pool: Brawl uses only cards that are legal in the Standard format, giving it a rotating, up-to-date environment focused on recent sets rather than Magic's entire history.

Brawl decks contain exactly 60 cards including the commander, with every nonland card limited to a single copy (singleton). Your commander lives in the command zone and, like in Commander, can be cast from there and must obey color identity — every card in your deck must match your commander's colors. The smaller deck size and Standard-only pool make Brawl quicker to learn, easier to build, and more streamlined than its 100-card relative, while keeping the satisfying commander-driven gameplay.

Players begin at 30 life in multiplayer Brawl, and a planeswalker can serve as your commander, which is a signature feature of the format. Because the pool is tied to Standard, archetypes mirror current Standard themes — aggressive creature decks, midrange value piles, control shells, and synergy decks built around the latest mechanics — all reframed through the singleton, commander-led lens. Games strike a middle ground between the swinginess of Commander and the tighter play of 60-card constructed.

Brawl is great for players who love the commander experience but want a lower barrier to entry and a constantly refreshed metagame. Because it only uses Standard-legal cards, decks are cheaper and easier to assemble than eternal Commander brews, and rotation keeps the format feeling new. It is especially popular in digital play, where Historic Brawl (a non-rotating, wider variant on Magic: The Gathering Arena) has become the dominant way many players enjoy the format.

As a Standard-based format, Brawl's card legality is governed by the Standard format and overseen by Wizards of the Coast, including a small dedicated Brawl banned list to address cards that prove too powerful in a singleton, commander-led environment. When sets rotate out of Standard, they leave Brawl as well, so the format self-balances over time and Wizards only needs occasional, targeted bans to keep it healthy and enjoyable.