I've been trying (largely in vain) to get brawl going in my LGS. My girlfriend has said she'd be interesting in brawl if people start playing it (she hates commander) and that's been a big motivator to me to try to get it rolling, besides just the fun of building within restrictions. Unfortunately that has not panned out very well so far. But regardless of whether other people are interested, I'm still having a fun time making brawl decks, so I just play them against the commander decks.
Some backstory:
tldr: {
My local meta is pretty casual - of the people most often there, the majority tend to fit into one of two categories: some of them have mostly good cards but the decks are badly put together (in terms of curve, having a plan, etc), and some have awful cards AND awful decks. woodwraith strangler and decimator web (no poison or mill support btw) come to mind as cards I've seen recently that made me scratch my head. Probably about a year ago, someone played a chaplain's blessing. Still scratching my head over that one.
I have a big collection and I like to use it. I don't make anything I consider OP, but I like to build good decks - see my aryel deck as an example. I'm not going to leave out duals, fetches, and imperial seal if I think they're good for the deck, but I do avoid certain hot-button things like mass LD and infinite combos. I like to build around a strategy that's weak - i.e. knight tribal, rather than, say, storm or stax. That way I can try to build it well without it becoming oppressive (ideally). I think I often have the most powerful deck at the table, but I don't think it's by a large margin.
Adding to this, most of the other players at the store are...not great players. Many of them make constant mistakes with the fundamentals of magic - using instant-speed effects at inefficient times, using removal or counters on the first available target instead of waiting for something threatening, not seeing on-board synergies, and generally being poor at threat assessment. Besides that, I'd say nearly universally they are not great at politics. If they have a threat, they're going to play it, even if it's the sort of threat that will probably result in another player being forced to kill them. So I have a pretty big leg up in that regard as well.
The end result is that my winrate is very high. I'd estimate around 80%. I don't crush games start to finish, but I answer the things that need answering, wait for life totals and resources to get low, maybe for a player or two to die, ensure my threat profile is relatively low but I'm defensively strong enough, and then pounce when it's the right time to pounce. Generally after the game I can usually point to a place in the game where someone should have targeted me more strongly, or made a better play, which would have resulted in me losing. Sometimes when I'm playing against the really bad decks there's just nothing that could have been done, but usually it's close enough that better decisions could have beaten me.
I've wondered if that extremely high win% would bother any of them enough to demand some kind of change, but for quite a while the status quo has seemingly been fine, with no major complaints about my wins.
}
Anyway, so now I'm playing brawl decks against them. I find that to be a fun challenge, because I don't have the advantage of my massive card pool, so it evens the playing field a bit. And while don't think fetches and duals make a huge impact on winrate, it's still satisfying to win with a deck worth $70 rather than a deck worth a few grand. And my winrate is still around 80%.
One player in particular, who's only shown up for a few weeks now but is a friend of some of the other regulars, after losing a game to my brawl deck (he has one of the very weak decks - featuring that woodwraith strangler) commented that I had an advantage playing a brawl deck because, with only 60 cards, my deck is more consistent. I replied that yes, 60 cards is generally better than 100, but the disadvantage of getting to pull from a pool of 1,800 cards instead of 20,000 (not to mention that no cards in standard will ever be equal to the power of sol ring and other "mistake" cards from early magic) is a much more massive downside than any minor upside I get from having a smaller deck. He sort of shrugged and I assumed the matter was settled. I've since beaten him once or twice more with my brawl decks, or at least he was in the same game and was killed by someone else and I ultimately won.
Yesterday, he flat out refused to play against me if I was playing a brawl deck because of this "unfair advantage". I reiterated my same points, but he refused to back down and things got a little heated. A few people agreed with him, with no one really making any effort to support my side of the argument. Happily it's a fairly large group and I have no trouble getting in a few games anyway. But the argument left a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm not sure what the best course of action is to respond at this point.
A few ideas I've considered:
The obvious retort is to build FCT or some other terribly degenerate commander deck and annihilate them without the "unfair advantage" of a 60 card deck. I think that's probably a pretty stupid idea though. Curiously most people seemed to acknowledge that commander CAN be built much more powerfully than brawl, which leaves me wondering why they think brawl is the root of the problem, but whatever. If someone can find some unforseen flaw in my reasoning and prove that brawl IS somehow unfairly advantaged playing against commander, I'd love to hear it of course. But I think more likely it's just reaching for an excuse other than that their decks are badly constructed and they aren't very good at the game.
A somewhat better plan I've considered is to bring a 40 card commander-board, which I offer to shuffle into my brawl deck (raff capashen atm), including cards like sol ring, mana crypt, fetches, duals, mana drain, moat, stp, cyc rift, cryptic, FoF, teferi, etc. I'd probably still avoid any infinite combos and mass LD, and essentially just upgrade my brawl deck into something close to how I'd build it as a regular commander deck (except of course with 60 standard-legal cards). It would still be basically the same game, except that I'd probably win more often and we could avoid the "no fair 60 card" excuse. And by fanning out the commander-board they could get an idea of just how much "less consistent" my deck is likely to be with it in, and might see the error of their ways, who knows.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I could do something akin to my "choose your own adventure" commander deck, and build a brawl deck to intentionally suck but follow some ridiculous theme. It could also just be a generally bad brawl deck - like RG kicker with hallar or something. That would most likely have a pretty negative impact on my win%, and then maybe they'd stop whining - but of course only if they'd actually agree to play against me, which may well not happen.
And then on the most capitulatory side of the spectrum, I could build another "choose your own adventure" deck in commander, designed to suck and follow some dumb theme while also having 100 cards, thus reducing my win% and also preventing their complaints about my deck size. This kind of seems like I'm not getting anywhere, though - I still want to play brawl, and while it's sort of fun to try to piece together a win from a garbage deck, it can get pretty tedious to lose to opponents unburdened with that restriction game after game. But at least I'd get to sit down at the same table and maybe have a discussion while I'm getting my face pounded.
------------
I should add that I don't think it's unreasonable for people to argue that ALL my decks are too powerful and should be toned down. Despite building what I think would be considered pretty reasonable decks for most groups, there are definitely a couple people here who have extremely bad decks put together from what I assume is draft chaff for as little as possible, with no plan to upgrade, and I can see it being frustrating to play against someone with no such budgetary restrictions, although I think the same is true for them playing against the people with "badly made but still containing good cards" decks, except that those people generally lose to me. I'd also understand if they only wanted to play commander decks just because those are the rules. But the fact that they're arguing from the perspective that brawl is somehow unfairly advantaged, and THAT'S the reason why they don't want to play against me, is infuriating.
It sounds like you're just going to have to wait until there are more people wanting to play brawl. Take the decks along and make sure people know you want to play, but you're going to have to bring a commander deck(s) as well, and just play them until further notice.
The "advantage" of 60 cards versus 100 cards, is not a thing with the power-level being completely different. I would say at a major disadvantage, brawl doesn't even compare to commander with broken plays.
But no point arguing it if they have already stuck to their guns.
It's pretty new right, so you're just going to have to wait a while for people to wrap their heads around it. Take as many brawl decks along and offer people their choice of picking from your decks to "have a go". Offer to help with making their own deck, if they like it.
I understand why you're infuriated. You know as well as I do that Commander decks definitely have a leg up on Brawl decks. To Woodwraith Strangler guy, this doesn't particularly matter though. This type of person isn't interested in truth. What they're interested in is excuses. This person wants some way to justify the fact that they're losing to you all the time without ever having to assign blame to themselves. They've identified a difference between your deck and theirs (namely, that you're playing significantly fewer cards than they are), and this provides said person with a way to justify their emotions. That's really what's going on here. This person is upset with you, and they're justifying their emotions with logic. Obviously, this isn't great logic, but it validates their excuses nonetheless.
So, the question remains, what should you do about this person? While I believe your 40-card Commander board is exceptionally clever, I personally wouldn't give a rat's ass about this guy. As an individual, I fail to see what they have to offer you, as so far you've demonstrated very few reasons why you should respect them, so don't buckle to them. Don't give them the power to manipulate you, to make you do things you wouldn't otherwise do because of their stupidity. Just leave them be. Tolerate them, and treat them with kindness, but be reserved.
"Enlightening" said individual may should like an enticing prospect, but pointing out their errors will not cause this person to respect you. Au contraire, this person will continue to be bitter with you; you took away their facade. Even more likely I suspect is that you will fail altogether in any efforts you make to demonstrate how wrong they are though. Any illuminations you might make will instead lead this person to shift blame around from one arbitrary thing to the next. There just isn't any way this sort of person is going to begin taking responsibility here, so don't bother with them. It's clear this person isn't worth your attention.
Private Mod Note
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WUBRGMr. Bones' Wild RideGRBUW Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
The problem is that it isn't just the one guy - one other guy (a regular) agreed with him and also didn't play against me (although that might just have been a coincidence/solidarity with his friend, as he didn't explicitly say he WOULDN'T play against me). Another guy didn't have a problem playing against me, but still agreed with them, and as he was the most reasonable he was the one I ended up actually talking to for a bit about it, and he didn't really seem to completely change his position by the end either, although it seemed to morph into some version of "well, there isn't as much variance, which isn't as much fun". I'm not sure what the optimal amount of variance is. Presumably if I brought a 200 card commander deck he'd have to bow down to my superior format, but whatever. He was at least willing to play me so I can't complain too much. But my point is that it didn't seem to be an argument he clung to for salt-related reasons.
I like the idea of bringing in more brawl decks. Could be a two-for-one that actually gets people interested in the format while dispelling this ridiculous myth. And for the people with trash-tier decks, when I tell them they could recreate my kumena deck for less than $50 that might intrigue them. It is a little tricky, though - I'm trying to keep a singleton collection of all standard cards, which works great for playing one deck at a time, and works like crap for building multiples, especially if they both need to be played at the same time. I can probably build somewhat weakened versions of some decks, though - most of the tribal decks won't share many cards, and I can maybe temporarily add duplicates for some of the more critical cards that belong to multiple decks.
Here's what I've decided to do: I'm building a set of 10 brawl decks, one for each 2-color pair, which don't share any cards. Then I'm going to bring them to commander night and see if I can get folks curious to try playing brawl v brawl.
Obviously the decks will be suboptimal since they aren't sharing, but my goal is to make sure the cards go to the most appropriate deck, and to try to balance the power levels between them. The archetypes are:
Some of them are very focused (kumena) whereas others are a bit...less so (neheb) but I think it'll make for a fun battle box that might get some folks interested. While I don't think any of them will be totally nuts, I do think they'll be more fun to play than a lot of the trash-tier commander decks folks are playing, so it might convince people to play the format just because the decks are enough more interesting than their normal commander ones.
I play vs my causal group's EDH decks every now and again with my Brawl decks. I've won a few games with Huatli when things like Tendershoot Dryad go ham after a boardwipe. No one really complains about it because they understand the limitations (and they realize my EDH decks are waaaaay worse to play against).
I finished building the 10 decks. Ended up sticking to the plan except that neheb became angrath because I think neheb (and more importantly, the other minotaurs) is just too weak to be balanced. I'll throw up lists if I get the chance, but I'll probably see how they actually perform tomorrow.
Now that I think about it, this is really a no-brainer. People are hesitant to jump into brawl because of the cost of building a new deck, in terms of time and money. This lets them give it a shot without any investment.
I play vs my causal group's EDH decks every now and again with my Brawl decks. I've won a few games with Huatli when things like Tendershoot Dryad go ham after a boardwipe. No one really complains about it because they understand the limitations (and they realize my EDH decks are waaaaay worse to play against).
I'd rather not be the boogeyman because my decks are "waaaaay worse to play against". My goal isn't to dominate because my decks are so much better. I love using decks that look like garbage until they're in the hands of a skilled player - phelddagrif is my go-to example of a deck of mine that looks terrible to an inexperienced/unskilled player, but can absolutely wreck when played well. Even the 2DH version of that deck can hit massive win% even against pretty powerful decks. If I'm going to be the boogeyman, I'd rather it was because I'm so good at the game that I can beat commander decks with brawl decks 80% of the time, not because people think I'm cheating and getting a big advantage out of playing 60 cards. Which is super frustrating.
Here's what I've decided to do: I'm building a set of 10 brawl decks, one for each 2-color pair, which don't share any cards. Then I'm going to bring them to commander night and see if I can get folks curious to try playing brawl v brawl.
Obviously the decks will be suboptimal since they aren't sharing, but my goal is to make sure the cards go to the most appropriate deck, and to try to balance the power levels between them. The archetypes are:
I was going to suggest that you do something similar to this, but I would also add that you should bring your normal 100-card Commander decks as well so that players can play both kinds of games.
On the flipside of this, I think it is ridiculous that someone would argue that a Brawl deck somehow has an advantage over a normal Commander deck. Yes, 60 cards is normally better than 100, but the card pool difference is so drastic than any measure of "Consistency" is vastly overshadowed by raw power. This would be like saying that someone's 40-card Draft deck has an advantage over my 60-card Standard deck; the ability to pick 4 of any card you want from the Standard card pool and assemble a deck vastly outpowers being only able to select card via Draft even given the same card pool, and a Draft deck being only 40 cards versus 60 doesn't overcome that.
That is a fairly apt comparison. Except that in this case (for at least many of my opponents), it's a bit more like comparing a standard deck that sucks to a really good draft deck. The draft deck might actually have the advantage - but the size of the decks is a pretty minor component.
Anyway, I brought the decks last night and people were very cool about it (except the one guy, who was still a dick, but I think realized he couldn't reasonably complain about it any more so just settled on being quietly unpleasant). The games went pretty well, although hapatra (which I was playing) ended up gumming up the ground for a long time, but the game still lasted less than 2 hours which is probably below average for normal commander games. Chief complaints was the lack of board wipes, which is kind of inevitable with going singleton across all 10 decks, although I think there's one or two I didn't use that I could have.
Our second game we had a couple people who had their own decks (!!) so we got in a real game, and it was pretty quick, about an hour I think. Both were really fun I thought, and I think all my decks performed pretty solidly (RU wizards did by far the worst, but I think that was largely user error - she discarded the naru meha + illusionist's stratagem combo to jaya among other mistakes, although I think it is also probably the deck that scales the worst to larger multiplayer games). I played hapatra and then depala, and both worked admirably - I would have won with hapatra had my last opponent not topdecked jaya's immolating inferno for lethal, and I would have won with depala had my opponent not had almost exactly unlicensed disintegration (both the life loss and instant speed were crucial) and I hadn't also lost the 1 in 3 on path of mettle. So very solid, fun games overall.
I'd definitely recommend this tact to anyone trying to get brawl worked at their local meta.
Some backstory:
tldr: {
My local meta is pretty casual - of the people most often there, the majority tend to fit into one of two categories: some of them have mostly good cards but the decks are badly put together (in terms of curve, having a plan, etc), and some have awful cards AND awful decks. woodwraith strangler and decimator web (no poison or mill support btw) come to mind as cards I've seen recently that made me scratch my head. Probably about a year ago, someone played a chaplain's blessing. Still scratching my head over that one.
I have a big collection and I like to use it. I don't make anything I consider OP, but I like to build good decks - see my aryel deck as an example. I'm not going to leave out duals, fetches, and imperial seal if I think they're good for the deck, but I do avoid certain hot-button things like mass LD and infinite combos. I like to build around a strategy that's weak - i.e. knight tribal, rather than, say, storm or stax. That way I can try to build it well without it becoming oppressive (ideally). I think I often have the most powerful deck at the table, but I don't think it's by a large margin.
Adding to this, most of the other players at the store are...not great players. Many of them make constant mistakes with the fundamentals of magic - using instant-speed effects at inefficient times, using removal or counters on the first available target instead of waiting for something threatening, not seeing on-board synergies, and generally being poor at threat assessment. Besides that, I'd say nearly universally they are not great at politics. If they have a threat, they're going to play it, even if it's the sort of threat that will probably result in another player being forced to kill them. So I have a pretty big leg up in that regard as well.
The end result is that my winrate is very high. I'd estimate around 80%. I don't crush games start to finish, but I answer the things that need answering, wait for life totals and resources to get low, maybe for a player or two to die, ensure my threat profile is relatively low but I'm defensively strong enough, and then pounce when it's the right time to pounce. Generally after the game I can usually point to a place in the game where someone should have targeted me more strongly, or made a better play, which would have resulted in me losing. Sometimes when I'm playing against the really bad decks there's just nothing that could have been done, but usually it's close enough that better decisions could have beaten me.
I've wondered if that extremely high win% would bother any of them enough to demand some kind of change, but for quite a while the status quo has seemingly been fine, with no major complaints about my wins.
}
Anyway, so now I'm playing brawl decks against them. I find that to be a fun challenge, because I don't have the advantage of my massive card pool, so it evens the playing field a bit. And while don't think fetches and duals make a huge impact on winrate, it's still satisfying to win with a deck worth $70 rather than a deck worth a few grand. And my winrate is still around 80%.
One player in particular, who's only shown up for a few weeks now but is a friend of some of the other regulars, after losing a game to my brawl deck (he has one of the very weak decks - featuring that woodwraith strangler) commented that I had an advantage playing a brawl deck because, with only 60 cards, my deck is more consistent. I replied that yes, 60 cards is generally better than 100, but the disadvantage of getting to pull from a pool of 1,800 cards instead of 20,000 (not to mention that no cards in standard will ever be equal to the power of sol ring and other "mistake" cards from early magic) is a much more massive downside than any minor upside I get from having a smaller deck. He sort of shrugged and I assumed the matter was settled. I've since beaten him once or twice more with my brawl decks, or at least he was in the same game and was killed by someone else and I ultimately won.
Yesterday, he flat out refused to play against me if I was playing a brawl deck because of this "unfair advantage". I reiterated my same points, but he refused to back down and things got a little heated. A few people agreed with him, with no one really making any effort to support my side of the argument. Happily it's a fairly large group and I have no trouble getting in a few games anyway. But the argument left a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm not sure what the best course of action is to respond at this point.
A few ideas I've considered:
The obvious retort is to build FCT or some other terribly degenerate commander deck and annihilate them without the "unfair advantage" of a 60 card deck. I think that's probably a pretty stupid idea though. Curiously most people seemed to acknowledge that commander CAN be built much more powerfully than brawl, which leaves me wondering why they think brawl is the root of the problem, but whatever. If someone can find some unforseen flaw in my reasoning and prove that brawl IS somehow unfairly advantaged playing against commander, I'd love to hear it of course. But I think more likely it's just reaching for an excuse other than that their decks are badly constructed and they aren't very good at the game.
A somewhat better plan I've considered is to bring a 40 card commander-board, which I offer to shuffle into my brawl deck (raff capashen atm), including cards like sol ring, mana crypt, fetches, duals, mana drain, moat, stp, cyc rift, cryptic, FoF, teferi, etc. I'd probably still avoid any infinite combos and mass LD, and essentially just upgrade my brawl deck into something close to how I'd build it as a regular commander deck (except of course with 60 standard-legal cards). It would still be basically the same game, except that I'd probably win more often and we could avoid the "no fair 60 card" excuse. And by fanning out the commander-board they could get an idea of just how much "less consistent" my deck is likely to be with it in, and might see the error of their ways, who knows.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I could do something akin to my "choose your own adventure" commander deck, and build a brawl deck to intentionally suck but follow some ridiculous theme. It could also just be a generally bad brawl deck - like RG kicker with hallar or something. That would most likely have a pretty negative impact on my win%, and then maybe they'd stop whining - but of course only if they'd actually agree to play against me, which may well not happen.
And then on the most capitulatory side of the spectrum, I could build another "choose your own adventure" deck in commander, designed to suck and follow some dumb theme while also having 100 cards, thus reducing my win% and also preventing their complaints about my deck size. This kind of seems like I'm not getting anywhere, though - I still want to play brawl, and while it's sort of fun to try to piece together a win from a garbage deck, it can get pretty tedious to lose to opponents unburdened with that restriction game after game. But at least I'd get to sit down at the same table and maybe have a discussion while I'm getting my face pounded.
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I should add that I don't think it's unreasonable for people to argue that ALL my decks are too powerful and should be toned down. Despite building what I think would be considered pretty reasonable decks for most groups, there are definitely a couple people here who have extremely bad decks put together from what I assume is draft chaff for as little as possible, with no plan to upgrade, and I can see it being frustrating to play against someone with no such budgetary restrictions, although I think the same is true for them playing against the people with "badly made but still containing good cards" decks, except that those people generally lose to me. I'd also understand if they only wanted to play commander decks just because those are the rules. But the fact that they're arguing from the perspective that brawl is somehow unfairly advantaged, and THAT'S the reason why they don't want to play against me, is infuriating.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
The "advantage" of 60 cards versus 100 cards, is not a thing with the power-level being completely different. I would say at a major disadvantage, brawl doesn't even compare to commander with broken plays.
But no point arguing it if they have already stuck to their guns.
It's pretty new right, so you're just going to have to wait a while for people to wrap their heads around it. Take as many brawl decks along and offer people their choice of picking from your decks to "have a go". Offer to help with making their own deck, if they like it.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
So, the question remains, what should you do about this person? While I believe your 40-card Commander board is exceptionally clever, I personally wouldn't give a rat's ass about this guy. As an individual, I fail to see what they have to offer you, as so far you've demonstrated very few reasons why you should respect them, so don't buckle to them. Don't give them the power to manipulate you, to make you do things you wouldn't otherwise do because of their stupidity. Just leave them be. Tolerate them, and treat them with kindness, but be reserved.
"Enlightening" said individual may should like an enticing prospect, but pointing out their errors will not cause this person to respect you. Au contraire, this person will continue to be bitter with you; you took away their facade. Even more likely I suspect is that you will fail altogether in any efforts you make to demonstrate how wrong they are though. Any illuminations you might make will instead lead this person to shift blame around from one arbitrary thing to the next. There just isn't any way this sort of person is going to begin taking responsibility here, so don't bother with them. It's clear this person isn't worth your attention.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
I like the idea of bringing in more brawl decks. Could be a two-for-one that actually gets people interested in the format while dispelling this ridiculous myth. And for the people with trash-tier decks, when I tell them they could recreate my kumena deck for less than $50 that might intrigue them. It is a little tricky, though - I'm trying to keep a singleton collection of all standard cards, which works great for playing one deck at a time, and works like crap for building multiples, especially if they both need to be played at the same time. I can probably build somewhat weakened versions of some decks, though - most of the tribal decks won't share many cards, and I can maybe temporarily add duplicates for some of the more critical cards that belong to multiple decks.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Obviously the decks will be suboptimal since they aren't sharing, but my goal is to make sure the cards go to the most appropriate deck, and to try to balance the power levels between them. The archetypes are:
WU raff - legends/artifacts
UB tezzeret- artifacts/control/theft
BR neheb - minotaurs/steal and sac/pirates
RG hallar - kicker/ramp
GW huatli - tokens
WB aryel - knights/vampires
BG hapatra - -1/-1 counters/cycling/reanimator
GU kumena - merfolk
UR adeliz - wizards/instants/sorceries
RW depala - vehicles/dwarves/board wipes
Some of them are very focused (kumena) whereas others are a bit...less so (neheb) but I think it'll make for a fun battle box that might get some folks interested. While I don't think any of them will be totally nuts, I do think they'll be more fun to play than a lot of the trash-tier commander decks folks are playing, so it might convince people to play the format just because the decks are enough more interesting than their normal commander ones.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
Now that I think about it, this is really a no-brainer. People are hesitant to jump into brawl because of the cost of building a new deck, in terms of time and money. This lets them give it a shot without any investment. I'd rather not be the boogeyman because my decks are "waaaaay worse to play against". My goal isn't to dominate because my decks are so much better. I love using decks that look like garbage until they're in the hands of a skilled player - phelddagrif is my go-to example of a deck of mine that looks terrible to an inexperienced/unskilled player, but can absolutely wreck when played well. Even the 2DH version of that deck can hit massive win% even against pretty powerful decks. If I'm going to be the boogeyman, I'd rather it was because I'm so good at the game that I can beat commander decks with brawl decks 80% of the time, not because people think I'm cheating and getting a big advantage out of playing 60 cards. Which is super frustrating.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
I was going to suggest that you do something similar to this, but I would also add that you should bring your normal 100-card Commander decks as well so that players can play both kinds of games.
On the flipside of this, I think it is ridiculous that someone would argue that a Brawl deck somehow has an advantage over a normal Commander deck. Yes, 60 cards is normally better than 100, but the card pool difference is so drastic than any measure of "Consistency" is vastly overshadowed by raw power. This would be like saying that someone's 40-card Draft deck has an advantage over my 60-card Standard deck; the ability to pick 4 of any card you want from the Standard card pool and assemble a deck vastly outpowers being only able to select card via Draft even given the same card pool, and a Draft deck being only 40 cards versus 60 doesn't overcome that.
Jalira, Master Polymorphist | Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder | Bosh, Iron Golem | Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Brago, King Eternal | Oona, Queen of the Fae | Wort, Boggart Auntie | Wort, the Raidmother
Captain Sisay | Rhys, the Redeemed | Trostani, Selesnya's Voice | Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight | Obzedat, Ghost Council | Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind | Vorel of the Hull Clade
Uril, the Miststalker | Prossh, Skyraider of Kher | Nicol Bolas | Progenitus
Ghave, Guru of Spores | Zedruu the Greathearted | Damia, Sage of Stone | Riku of Two Reflections
Anyway, I brought the decks last night and people were very cool about it (except the one guy, who was still a dick, but I think realized he couldn't reasonably complain about it any more so just settled on being quietly unpleasant). The games went pretty well, although hapatra (which I was playing) ended up gumming up the ground for a long time, but the game still lasted less than 2 hours which is probably below average for normal commander games. Chief complaints was the lack of board wipes, which is kind of inevitable with going singleton across all 10 decks, although I think there's one or two I didn't use that I could have.
Our second game we had a couple people who had their own decks (!!) so we got in a real game, and it was pretty quick, about an hour I think. Both were really fun I thought, and I think all my decks performed pretty solidly (RU wizards did by far the worst, but I think that was largely user error - she discarded the naru meha + illusionist's stratagem combo to jaya among other mistakes, although I think it is also probably the deck that scales the worst to larger multiplayer games). I played hapatra and then depala, and both worked admirably - I would have won with hapatra had my last opponent not topdecked jaya's immolating inferno for lethal, and I would have won with depala had my opponent not had almost exactly unlicensed disintegration (both the life loss and instant speed were crucial) and I hadn't also lost the 1 in 3 on path of mettle. So very solid, fun games overall.
I'd definitely recommend this tact to anyone trying to get brawl worked at their local meta.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6