Last updated on June 2, 2026
Force of Will | Illustration by Rovina Cai
Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast announced a major shake-up for Brawl: They’re considering banning free counterspells in the Commander-offshoot, which has grown to MTG Arena’s second most playable Constructed format, presumably behind Standard.
This counterspell revelation came with the announcement of ranked Brawl, which goes live June 23, the same day Marvel Super Heroes assembles on Arena. Ranked Brawl will have a unique banlist that includes ten powerful commanders currently legal in the format, and Wizards expressed interest in banning free counterspells from regular Brawl games:
“We will also continue to monitor the format and engage with the community about additional bans that might be needed, optimizing for fun and deck diversity. For example, we are currently examining free counterspells that are challenging to play around.”
Source: wizards.com
Which Counterspells Will Be Affected?
Daze | Illustration by Richard Wright
Brawl currently has six counters that might be banned, including Subtlety (which I can’t imagine escaping this potential banning, despite not technically countering spells):
These are all powerful tempo plays for blue decks that are extremely hard to play around since your opponent doesn’t need to present mana. The only exception is Subtlety, as the evoke elemental always gives your opponent priority when they have another blue spell. Despite replacing the mana cost with an alternative, free counters are always powerful because they let the control player have the final say in a counter war or assertive decks tap out for a threat they can still protect.
Free counterspells can also create feel-bad moments for new players and veterans alike. Newer players might not even realize they exist and think spells always cost mana; a Force of Will would be a nasty surprise. Even for players who know what’s happening when a blue player gets priority despite being tapped out, many feel that free countermagic goes against the spirit of a format pitched as a casual way to play Magic, like Commander. Banning these spells would remove both of these feel-bads at an extremely low cost to the format; while losing these cards would make blue weaker in Brawl, it would by no means kill the color.
Is Splitting the Brawl Format Good?
Spike, Tournament Grinder | Illustration by Zoltan Boros
Splitting Brawl is certainly being made with the best of intentions and I imagine it will improve the format for most players because the format suffers from an identity crisis. Spend time in the Brawl queues and you’ll encounter two primary flavors of decks: Extremely spikey decks filled with cheap threats and low-cost interaction (the exact sort of decks to play Force of Will and friends) and more casual decks that see Brawl as a casual format to mess around with rather than a competitive format to min-max every decision.
Being on either side of the mismatch is rarely fun. A casual player doesn’t want to get stomped into the ground by Kellan, Planar Trailblazer aggro or watch every spell get countered by Katara, Waterbending Master; similarly, it’s not exactly fun to be the Spike dealing with constant non-games, either because your opponent’s deck lacks the tools to compete with yours or because they concede when the second counterspell hits the stack.
Ideally, a ranked Brawl queue filters these players into a casual and a competitive pool, as they choose. You’ll find some bad apples that want to farm the casual queue for dailies with cards like Ajani, Nacatl Pariah, but this seems like a promising start to a better Brawl. The current matchmaking system that pairs decks based on power (read more about that here) leaves room for improvement. Maybe that improvement is as simple as giving the Force of Will players their own sandbox and making tweaks from there.
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