I want to talk to you about some of our goals for Brawl. Hey, everyone! I'm Melissa DeTora, lead designer of the Brawl decks. Yes? Perfect! I'm going to go get a sip of water and let Melissa take the reins for a moment. why don't I just let her explain her design philosophy behind the decks herself? Hey Melissa-want to talk about the decks for a moment? It's also a great example of how the architecture process can work: I gave Melissa direction on what to do and guided her design of the decks, and she in turn helped guide these four excellent designers on what to do.Īt the end of the process, Melissa came back and rebalanced the decks, plus did plenty of playtesting to get them just right. This was a really neat process, and it was wonderfully valuable to get the perspectives of others outside of our normal Wizards members on this. She led the red-white-black "Knights' Charge" deck.Įach designer was given access to the Standard-legal cards in their colors, put in communication with each other, and they were off to the races! The team ran for a while, guided by Melissa. It was really great for the team to have this wide range of perspectives, which really helped hone the decklists further-and Stephanie definitely added to that. Hailing from New York, she brought a very useful and more casual eye to the table. The final designer we reached out to was Stephanie Schelble. He led the white-blue-black "Faerie Schemes" deck. He brought a very sharp design eye to the table and did great work on both mechanic suggestions as well as deck design. ![]() And while we weren't able to bring him on board into Wizards immediately, we liked his work and kept him in mind for this project. You might recognize this name-he was a runner up of the Great Designer Search 3. He led the black-red-green "Savage Hunter" deck. ![]() He also plays competitively and loves building new decks. Good work, Henry!) Henry is a local player who has done a lot with community building in the Seattle area-including building up Magic groups, clubs, and working with Card Kingdom to do broadcasting. (Who, in the time since, has been brought on as a contractor to work with our digital teams. Next up, moving along the spectrum of competition, was Henry Davis. She was in charge of the green-white-blue "Wild Bounty" deck. She had always noted an interest in design and was an excellent deck builder, so we wanted to loop her in. You might recognize her from her excellent articles over at Star City Games, and her competitive success as well. Each designer led the design of a different deck.įirst up was Emma Handy. This crew was a mix of different styles and backgrounds, each trying to grab different aspects of the community. But then she led a team of four designers from around the country, all external to Wizards and under contract, to actually design the decks and provide feedback. ![]() She selected the colors based on needs for Brawl commanders and designed several of the cards. She, of course, works here at Wizards on Play Design and even sits right next to me so we could be in constant communication. Melissa DeTora was put in charge of design for the decks. So, we reached outside of Wizards to design the decks. (And what I am about to say will, no doubt, get aspiring Magic designers around the world to bolt up in their chairs.) What was it? Well, if we wanted a community focus, we should involve the community. So, as the architect on the Brawl decks, I worked with our teams to try something a little unusual and unorthodox. ![]() Us finding something fun isn't nearly as important as all of you finding something fun! Ready to dig in? Let's get started! Bringing in the Communityīrawl is a casual, and often social, play format, and for it to work and be successful, it was crucial that the community was finding it fun and had input. and because the MTG Arena decklists differ slightly from the printed decklists, I actually have four preview cards for you to top everything all off. Now that I've laid the foundation out for why we're doing these decks, I want to talk about how we went about creating them, what to expect of them-and, of course, full decklists. (You can check out the above linked article for more details.) We knew it would take some time to get here, so it was on hiatus for a while-but now it's back and better than ever, with preconstructed decks, Brawl on MTG Arena, and in-store play. But for a brief recap: Throne of Eldraine is where we're really firing off the format on all cylinders. Now, if you remember from my last article about Brawl, I talked a bunch about why we were doing Brawl now, and what to expect. As you may have seen elsewhere today, Brawl decks are now available on Magic: The Gathering Arena for you to play! (It's available in paper when Throne of Eldraine releases on October 4!) I'm sure many of you have already taken the opportunity to go in and immerse yourself in the world of Eldraine-and these decks!
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