Brawl for All: Best Cards for Brawl: Alpha: Limited Addition Alpha
Good Morning Fellow Brawlers. Today we are going to review the top Brawl cards (one for each color and colorless) along with some likely “secret tech” you may not have found with these cards. We will be looking at once of the earlier Magic sets today, the one called “Limited Edition Alpha”.
I know what you are saying OH CHRIS THIS SET IS CURRENTLY NOT STANDARD LEGAL. Well good soul, what you must know is that any plane has the possiblity of a return set. We may get a Return to whatever plane Limited Edition Alpha is from and these cards would all be likely to see a reprint in such a set. That in mind, I figured I would get you folks “ahead of the game” so that you are Brawl Ready for this set before spoilers even start. We’ll review these cards in the alphabetical order for the color letters that are denoted in the color pie.
White
Lifegain is a very viable strategy in Brawl. It is especially important since you start at a svelte 25 (30 in multiplayer) life as opposed to the bloated 40 life in Commander. You are gonna have lands, and for a cheap two white mana you will be able to gain one life each turn. So in 10–15 turns you will have as much life as if you were playing Commander! Also the land still taps for mana so there is literally no investment to playing this card.
Black
While Black is a little light on sacrifice effects at the moment, if some should come down later in a future set this card will definitely shine. For now though it serves a very important role. Since it is a 1/1 you will be able to negate the opponent’s farmstead activation every turn keeping life at parity. If they do manage to kill nether shadow once you have three more creatures die you will be able to cast it from your graveyard. Also since it has the “Shadow Can attack on the Same turn it was summoned or return to play (Im sure this will be keyworded soon) ability you will be able to keep them off getting ahead on life via Farmstead the turn you cast it.
Blue
This card is very very very useful. If you are in blue you don’t have a ton of viable options to deal with an opponent’s FarmStead. With this bad boy though you will be able to add a considerable mana cost to their Farmstead at the beginning of each turn. If they happen to not have the mana (say they cast a Turn 3 Farmstead, pretty much the optimal play in decks containing white) you will be able to wholly negate their lifegain that turn. Either they pay the mana to gain the life off of Farmstead, or they pay the mana to keep from being damaged by Power Leak. Either way you stay at life parity.
Red
Red is classically the color of control, so this card fits in quite nicely with a classic red plan. Where this really shines though is in red/white (white should at least be splashed in all decks.) Let’s say your opponent is on the nether shadow plan to deal with your Farmstead. This card allows it so that they can only untap their Nether Shadow and no other creatures their turn. This means you can consistently have your creature you have denoted to block their nether shadow untapped every turn and keep getting ahead on life with your Farmstead.
Green
While I normally eschew land destruction, in the current Farmstead-heavy meta it is a necessary evil. Since the usual style of play is turn 3 farmstead, turn 4 play a land so you have both farmstead and power leak mana available this card is a killer combo with Power Leak. Just make sure that you don’t have your own Farmstead out yet as they will likely target your Farmstead land after Kudzu has destroyed their Farmstead land. So play Kudzu and play the waiting game. Once they have put Kudzu on one of your lands you can safely play your Farmstead.
Colorless
The black farmstead
Hopefully this article has really helped you get into the meat of Limited Edition Alpha for in the near future when it becomes Brawl Legal.
Until then hope to see you on the Brawl Pitch
Chris
