Wallet Warriors: Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain (Brawl)

Welcome back Wallet Warriors! Dominaria has brought with it a brand new format that is looking like it has some legs. Today we’re looking at a budget Brawl deck led by Jhoira Weatherlight Captain!

Brawl is a sweet new variant on the Commander format that has been getting very positive vibes from the community so far.

The full list of differences between Brawl and Commander are as follows:

• You may only use Standard legal cards
• Your deck must only contain a minimum of 60 cards including your commander
• You start at 30 life
• You may use planeswalkers as your commander
• There is no commander damage

Other than that it’s got all the things we love about Commander. It’s a singleton format meant to be played in a multiplayer environment. That being said, 1v1 Brawl is not lagging too far behind in terms of fun and playability compared to multiplayer. Since this article series has focused on multiplayer commander in the past I will be trying to do a seamless transition for this one and talk about the format as a multiplayer experience.

Now let’s get to the good part: the deck list

To see the list separated into the categories I talk about click here: 

Deck Overview

This is most certainly not a Brawl deck meant for 1v1 games. Jhoira is incredibly powerful but does require some setup to get going. Since Paradox Engine is a bit above our price range we will be generating mana the way Garfield intended: Playing lands and mana rocks.

We’re looking to spend the early turns setting up our mana and trying to stick Jhoira onto the board. Some politicking may be required but very often if you do a good job of not seeming like a threat, people will generally leave you alone.

Once we have Jhoira online and have saved up some cheap artifacts in hand we can start going off, digging through our deck for one of our win conditions.

Win Conditions

Plan A stands for Aetherflux Reservoir. When practically every card you play draws a card with your commander in play it is not difficult to get to 50 life with a reservoir on board. Once you do hit that important life threshold the game gets interesting because you have a giant laser cannon that can point at the person that is irritating you the most. It is the perfect time to open the forum for deal making.

We have two other cards that do something similar to Aetherflux Reservoir in The Locust God and Reckless Fireweaver. One makes us hasty flyers every time we draw a card while the other wittles our opponents life totals down. The god is great with Jhoira since it is historic itself as well as being very powerful in a vacuum. The fireweaver is less exciting since it does not do a ton when you are not going off with Jhoira and it does not kill very quickly but the fact that it hits all opponents is relevant and sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

Most of the rest of the cards in this section are big dumb creatures that we have to *gag* attack with. I know it’s disappointing but we do want a contingency plan for those games where Jhoira happens to die a few too many times.

Ramp

As I mentioned before, without Paradox Engine we need a few ways to generate extra mana if we want to play a bunch of spells in the same turn. Jhoira’s Familiar and Foundry Inspector provide us with extra mana by reducing the amount we have to use. These two cards are very important for going off on a big turn so they should not be exposed lightly.

Gilded Lotus and Pyramid of the Pantheon are our big ramp spells, one you pay a bunch of mana upfront to get your three mana a turn, the other requires a mana investment over time to get there.

Then to round things out we have Orazca Relic, Cultivator’s Caravan and Manalith as some extra ways to get ahead on mana.

Getting Value off Cheap Historics

We want to be playing a critical mass of cheap historic spells anyway so we may as well make sure those spells are good on their own.

Renegade Map and Traveler’s Amulet are great because they effectively act as land that can trigger our commander.

Treasure Map, Saheeli Rai and Merchant’s Dockhand all provide some form of card filtering/advantage with some interesting upsides. Treasure Map is turning out to be one of the staples of the format since it offers so much for so little and it is perfect for our deck.

Thaumatic Compass and Filigree Familiar offer some defensive tools and Mirage Mirror is just a weird one that always performs above expectations. Something to keep in mind with the mirror is if you are comfortable with a complicated stack you can copy multiple things in the same turn. The only reason to do this is if you are able to get value off a copy at instant speed such as tapping for more mana than you paid for the copy.

For example with a Gilded Lotus and a Jhoira’s Familiar on board you ultimately want to copy the familiar but can get some extra value. You activate the mirror targeting the familiar then hold priority and activate the mirror targeting the lotus. You let the lotus transformation resolve and with the familiar transformation on the stack you can tap the mirror to float three mana. Then you let the second transformation resolve and you now have the familiar copy with a bit of extra mana to work with that was essentially free.

Interaction

This is a relatively focused combo deck so we don’t have a lot of room for interaction but it’s still nice to have some answers for when our opponents ask some difficult questions.

The format is very low on board wipes so having access to Sweltering Suns, Hour of Devastation and River’s Rebuke is nice especially since we can easily play into them by building out our board with non-creature artifacts in the early game.

Deep Freeze is an important answer since it can shut down opposing commanders while not giving our opponents the option to send them back to the command zone.

Skysovereign, Consul Flagship and Jaya’s Immolating Inferno are great since they double as win conditions and answers to pesky creatures.

Upgrades

These two expensive artifacts help out our game plan tremendously. The engine lets us continue digging through our deck if we have a few mana rocks in play as we are typically netting mana when casting cheap historic spells.

The Immortal Sun is an additional effect that reduces the cost of our spells while incidentally drawing extra cards on it’s own. Shutting down planeswalkers is also a nice bonus.

Mox Amber is perfect for this deck since you are able to play it alongside Jhoira to draw a card and immediately generate some mana.

Finally, these are two incredibly powerful planeswalkers that, thanks to the rules change from Ixalan, are historic so on top of being overall fantastic you also draw a card when casting them with Jhoira in play.

Wrapping Up

Well that’s my first Brawl deck tech in the books! I hoped you enjoyed our dive into this brand new format. We will be returning to regular Commander content very soon but this format is looking especially sweet. It’s an awesome place to use your standard cards that might be just shy of regular standard playable as well as commander playable.

Let me know what you thought of the deck in the comments and if you would like to see more Brawl content in the future!

See you all next time! Cheers!