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I'm currently experimenting with some new decks for Historic Brawl. It's getting easier because it became the format I'm most familiar with. Especially because it's the most forgiving format if your card pool is still lacking 😊😅

The decks I'm building right now are all Human Tribal because... I. Love. Human. Tribal. I mostly played it in red and white, but I wanted to test it in other color variants. The deck I built today is centered around Faramir, Prince of Ithilien, a commander I'm enjoying a lot so far. The primary win con are human tokens and Faramir is helping a lot with it. In the best case, he's also supported by the Horn of Gondor. Aside from it... well, it's missing a bit of a win con and the deck just tries to out-grind the opponent. Currently, it is struggling, but I had some great wins and super entertaining match-ups. The last one was going on for so long that l had to pay 18 mana to re-cast Faramir for the last time. In the end, I lost against Vorpal Sword.

It's super rare for me to build a deck and then toss it in Historic Brawl but I reconfigured my Nissa Who Shakes the World deck into an Nissa, Resurgent Animist deck and. Did. Not. Like.

#HistoricBrawl

I just won maybe the perfect match with my baby Quintorius, Field Historian. 🐘 📜 👻

It was against an Ezuri, Claw of Progress deck. Survived a Kiora Bests the Sea God. Survived them stealing my Bruna, the Fading Light. Survived Koma. Survived a Feasting Troll King (and the reanimated Feasting Troll King). Survived a Hydroid Krasis. It's the kind of win that makes the ~15 other game losses with the deck today worthwhile.

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Final round!

Siona's Squad: Kind of a go-wide auras deck. The games here are really grindy, but they're a lot of fun too. This is one I always consider building for Commander.

Ulamog's Rocks: I ramp into Ulamog and then people scoop.

Rin & Seri's BFFs: It's cat and dog tribal and I love it. Got a lot of help tuning this on Reddit after I was despairing that I bought the Lisa Frank sleeves for it and the deck kept getting stomped.

Raffine's Scheme: Kind of boring, hell queue resident deck. There's some reanimator in there, some dungeon delving. Not a huge fan.

Vadrok's Cyclkoria: Probably my weirdest, least winning deck but it's so unique I'll never get rid of it. Cycling with mutate somehow manages to win big sometimes.

Kaya's Ghostform: Exile tribal and part of the Gatewatch series. So much removal with a very unexpected wincon if you're not ready for it.

Nissa's Garden: Hell queue deck that I built to fill out the Gatewatch deck series. Ramps, dorks, with a green elementals subtheme.

Shadowheart's Sins: I love this, she pings you to death and maybe doesn't ping herself in the process. It's black at it's best.

Zur and the Enchantments: I liked this a lot less that I thought I would. It's more of a enchantment creature deck than pillow fort style.

Ajani's Pride: White weenies with lifegain. It's part of the Gatewatch series of decks, but a bit linear.

Gorion's Adventures: This is Adventures tribal and it's great. The games are so bizarre and off the wall. I suspect there will be a lot of hard choices to make when Wilds of Eldraine comes out.

Greasefang's Greasers: It's Greasefang in Historic Brawl! I reanimate vehicles and generally menace my opponents. It wins.

Raiyuu's Edge: Samurai/warrior tribal that likes extra combats. Okay I guess.

The Pantheon: It's a god tribal, but so flavorful that even the support cards are all religion-related (Gods Willing, Renewed Faith, Divine Smite, etc). The deck sucks and cannot compete with the hell queue matchups.

Knights in BW Satin: Aryel-headed knights tribal. Got this to be consistent after a lot of work. I chose not to replace her with Raddic, Tal Zealot when he come out because of our history together and that card just feels too broken.

That's it! Hopefully the answer on who to cut is clear now. If you have any opinions I'd be glad to hear what you think.

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Fifth batch, now we're getting into to the potential for some real cuts:

Mowu's Loyalty Points: It's a green +1/+1 counters voltron deck with tramplers. I make Mowu big and swing.

Inniaz's Pretty Fly Guys: Flying weenies tribal that then steals your shit in exchange for a 1/1 bird or something.

Isshin's Ish: It's the same Isshin deck everyone plays.

Cpt. Vance's Cannons: If I can cast three spells with Cpt. Vance out, you're dead.

Narset's Whirlwind: A hell queue resident. Jeskai burn spellslinging. The plan is to ult Narset asap and then just cast spells while doing two to the face. Now with Proliferate!

Jegantha's Wild Ikoria: An all-Ikoria mutate themed Kaheera companion zoo of nightmares, elementals, beasts, dinosaurs, and cats.

Tameshi's Reality: Let's call it the "mystical/unnatural" artifacts-enchantments theme with a vehicle subtheme. It likes things in the graveyard and bounce spells.

Ramos' Rainbots: Another Zirda companion deck. The idea was to build around the Brother's War colored artifact creatures but it didn't quite work and it works against Ramos' ability. I'm not a huge fan of this one.

Prisbrawli: It's treasure maker tribal big mana spells. I probably need to update this. Somehow the Kari & Baral deck is different?

Quint's Excavation: One of my oldest decks, and it's been through a lot. Awful winrates, but when it works it's amazing. Please match this up with a mill deck any day.

Chandra's Inferno: It's big red burn with an elemental subtheme. Built as part of the Gatewatch series.

Geralf's Skaabs: Geralf likes big butts and he cannot lie. Lots of crabs that transform into skaabs.

Baird's Batch: This is a really strong deck that has something like an 80% winrate. No one sees it coming.

Kaalia's Krew: It's dragon-angel-demon tribal. Dumb but it's been around for a while.

Lazav's Doom of Depths: Gyruda companion self-mill reanimator, only allows even-cost cards. A bad deck name but in keeping with a sort of tradition of using the companion's name in the deck title.

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Fourth round:

Emrakul's End: This one's in the hell queue. Built to see how Emkarul works. It works fine.

Jace's Mysteries: One of the Gatewatch decks. I try to deck myself for the win. I play some counter spells, but more often I'm enchanting down and stealing creatures to stall the board and buy time.

Tolsimir's Friends: I built a wolf and werewolf tribal but in Selesnya instead of Gruul with a blink subtheme.

Jan's Workshop: Built this to see if I could make it work since someone on Reddit was complaining. They were doing it wrong, this is strong.

Codie's Spellbook: A Jegantha companion deck. I'm mean and I cast spells for free. Lots of token creating spells and direct damage. Jegantha might come out if Codie gets sniped early.

Kykar's Voltron Set: It's voltron and Jeskai equipment. Weird and can pop off.

Bolas' Dreadhorde: Only uses cards from War of the Spark and the two Ravnica sets as a rule (except the mana base). I'm somewhat tempted to break that rule with the new LotR amass cards.

Karn's Karnstructs: Construct tribal artifacts deck. Colorless can win without Paradox Engine.

Narfi's Brainz: It's a Dimir zombie deck that isn't the Scarab God.

Volo's Complete Guide: It's Volo, it looks like every Volo deck. It's fun I guess.

Omnath's Roil: A worse elemental tribal with more landfall effects than my Jegantha deck.

Kudro's Last Stand: Humans tribal with a legendary matters subtheme. Runs a lot of removal as flavor. It's alright.

Rigo's Mentees: It's Bant weenies with a lot of card advantage. Fun.

Zegantha's Merfwoke: One of my earliest decks with a counters subtheme.

Brawlhold: This is a Dragon's Approach deck that tries to get out Velomachus asap. No one runs Plargg, but he's surprisingly good. This one's fun.

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Next up:

King's Campaign: It's a 5c venture into the dungeon tribal. Pretty bad, but games can be fun.

Judith's Dance: Obosh companion deck, all the cards have odd-numbered mana values. Lots of death triggers and damage intensifiers. Grindy, fun.

Lukka's Chaos: I play this when I'm in a bad mood. Lukka sacs low cost creatures or tokens and brings out huge red monsters with ETBs or Ulamog/Emrakul. Mean.

Shessra's Sheesh: Deathtouch tribal that forces you to block. Lots of death triggers, with a poison subtheme.

Varis' Veenies: Elfball with a dungeon delving twist. Tough matchups.

Borbor Flick Most: I talked about this on here before (https://mtg.garden/@MTG3K/110358020908001927). Here's a decklist that *I think* is up to date: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/1NoIFiAnykuJcGOgRpqs5w

Tawnos' B&B: More beasts than birds. I'm ambivalent about this one.

Tazri's Party Time: 5c Party tribal! It sucks! Unless it actually works, which can happen. Used to hell queue in the old days, not anymore thankfully.

Silver's Superfriends: I play this drunk or stoned when I can't pilot things more complicated. 5c superfriends with the First Sliver there just to free cast some big walker I hope.

Liliana's Majesty: Maybe my strongest deck. Discard everything then ultimate Liliana to reanimate everything forever. It's part of the series of decks I built for the Gatewatch members. Mean and fun.

Depala's Driving in Cars with Dwarves: It's dwarves and vehicles, and it smashes. A deck I like so much I have a version for Commander (where it's much worse!)

Kenrith's 3D Tribal: As seen on the banner in my profile, all the cards have 3D animations or some other graphic. Tries to put as many animations in play at once to blow up your phone. I don't play it much for that reason.

Nethroi's Yard: Reanimator. It's okay.

Elas' Dream Den: A Lurrus companion deck, every permanent costs 2 or less. Death by a thousand cuts, while keeping Lurrus protected.

Old Stickfiner's Yard: Reanimator, but it's an Umori companion deck so it only runs creatures. Lots of self-mill and other ETBs. Tough to pull off, but can be fun.

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Second up:

Grumgully's Forest: It's a goblin-elf tribal that grew out of a Jumpstart combination. Counters matter. It's fun, but gets very tough matchups and loses a lot.

Jor Mirrodin!: Newish. A go-wide equipment deck. The winrate is disturbingly high.

Zada's Grind: Light goblin tribal that really just wants to hurt you.

Elesh's Invasion: Phyrexian-themed white weenie aggro with a light stax subtheme.

The Weatherlight Crew: I dislike Jodah decks, but I always wanted a deck based on the Weatherlight crew. All the legendaries are Weatherlight crewmembers (with subs for Mirri and Tahngarth, who aren't on Arena).

Gisa's Ghoulish Procesh: Just a pure fun zombies tribal.

Ashiok's Nightmare: A hell queue deck that exiles everything and then plays spells from exile. People hate this.

Tergird's Shadow: It's Tergrid, my most scooped-to deck.

Kyodai's Kamigawa: This is my Shrines deck, but all the other cards besides the mana base are set on Kamigawa.

Verazol's Route 66: Kicker tribal with counters subtheme. No one sees this coming. Fun but loses a lot.

Illuna's Wish: Keruga companion deck so nothing costs less than 3 mana. That means it starts slow, but I play a lot of hexproof creatures and then mutate on them. It DOES NOT run Omniscience.

Omnath's Manfall: Used to be hell queue, but not so much these days. It's Landfall optimized.

Sol'crifice: A fun deck that likes to sacrifice/blink/bounce. Grindy games.

Mishra's Dragon Engine: I just try to tutor for the Dragon Engine and meld asap. It sucks mostly, but can be explosive.

Tezzeret's Gambit: Blue artifacts and animation. The gameplan is to ultimate Tezzeret asap. Lots of indestructible artifacts to animate.

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First up, in order of most-recently played:

Sauron's Ring: Just good reanimator fun with a LotR subtheme

Gandalf's Sortie: My latest deck. It's a pure white weenie aggro deck, with a light stax subtheme.

Omnath's All: Pretty dumb three-color matters deck that is somewhat similar to my Ramos deck.

Dovin's Subcommittee: It's stax.

Jegantha's Jank: My first deck and still my baby. 5c Elementals tribal. It will never be deleted.

Vivien's Hot Pockets: Built to showcase the free loot I got for force feeding myself Hot Pockets. Big dumb and green.

Aurelia's Lead: Built originally as a budget intro build for @To, I've made some upgrades with some fun Rohirrim cards from LotR. Deck is stupid fun.

Thalia's 1040s: It's stax.

Baral & Kari Slinging: Spellslinging and casting and copying.

Mr. Orfeo's Crew: It's a trample/menace tribal aggro for big boy damage.

Kethis' Legends: Kind of terrible legendary-matters deck with recent LotR upgrades. Games are long, and eventually lose.

Ratadrabik & All the Cops Scattered: Another legendary-matters, but with more token support. Fun, sometimes frustrating.

Minsc & Zoo: Pretty terrible actually. I've tried builds around tokens, aggro, ramp. The latest version uses steal spells for Minsc to turn opponents' creatures into 0/0s.

Hama's Wizkids: It's a blink, creature copy, wizard tribal, dungeon delving deck. Insanely fun when it pops off, which it does infrequently.

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Historic Brawl census is here!

I play A LOT of Historic Brawl and get very attached to my decks. Unfortunately, I'm closing on 100 decks again and I like to keep some room to work with.

I'm going to go through the decks I have on here and see if the process helps me work out who to retire.

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Made a big dumb Vivien deck to show off all the free Hot Pockets loot on Arena.

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Updating my spreadsheet of #HistoricBrawl decklists for the first time since NEO and I'm blown away by how many more rows each deck is taking up.

It's probably due to my shift to running more utility/fetch lands than basics, but it feels like a visualization of growth as a deckbuilder.

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I usually don't pay for events that only offer styles, and especially not when there's a free queue available for the format, but I joined the Historic Brawl festival anyway.

I don't regret it, they're pretty styles.

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I'm out there blowing up phones again with Kenrith's 3D Animation tribal.

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I made an Emrakul deck for Historic Brawl (surprise---it's a clone of my Ulamog deck) and so far it hasn't been that bad. Even when I cast her, it's not an immediate lock depending how the early turns have played out, but it does get put in the hell queue (unlike Ulamog). Smashing someone's Golos into her on turn 6 was fun.

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