Nadu, Winged Wisdom is everywhere nowadays. Most prominently, Nadu has been tearing up the Modern metagame by offering devastatingly quick wins. Alongside this worryingly impressive feat, Nadu, WInged Wisdom is also seeing play in Commander, Legacy, Timeless, and Historic.
Concerningly, in the vast majority of these formats, Nadu is a problem. Thanks to the game’s digital sensibilities, this is especially true on MTG Arena. Even without the gold standard combo engine of Shuko, this card is a scary threat. This is especially true in Brawl, where Nadu, Winged Wisdom is always a looming threat.
Beyond just being scary, Nadu, Winged Wisdom is actually doing major damage to Brawl. As the latest broken Commander option, this card is creating an incredibly toxic metagame that’s incredibly difficult to avoid.
Breaking Brawl
As fun as it may be, the Brawl format on MTG Arena has a few major problems. With no multiplayer, no match browser, and mismatched matchmaking MTG Arena is lagging far behind Magic Online. In theory, players have solved some of these issues, but the main solution is sadly far from perfect.
With no way to select opponents when matchmaking, instantly conceding matches is a surprisingly regular occurrence when playing Brawl. Since there is no punishment for this action, players can do this cycle through opponents until they’re happy. Mercifully, this practice is typically reserved for avoiding certain overpowered Commanders, so it’s not the biggest issue.
Unfortunately for those looking to play Brawl, Modern Horizons 3 has introduced an incredibly powerful, incredibly popular problem. Thanks to their implicit power, Nadu, Winged Wisdom has exacerbated the existing problems in Brawl. As Reddit user WishbladeZ recounted recently, this has created an incredibly toxic metagame.
According to WishbladeZ, Nadu, Winged Wisdom decks are basically unplayable on Brawl. While the combo works just fine on MTG Arena, the game’s players simply won’t let you do it. Since the win is so obvious and so hard to beat, players are conceding against Nadu decks incredibly quickly.
Due to their strength, WishbladeZ claims that “50%” of games that aren’t mirror matches end in instant concedes. As if this wasn’t bad enough, even Nadu players are reportedly very quick to concede against one another. Since the majority of Nadu decks play to win, any minor misplay or unanswered threat results in an instant concede.
Magic Online Does It Better
Sadly for anyone intrigued by its unique combo, it seems Nadu, Winged Wisdom is basically unplayable in Brawl right now. While they may have a home elsewhere, this is nonetheless disappointing as Brawl should let every card thrive. Considering the strength of Nadu, Winged Wisdom, this may seem incredibly difficult, but Magic Online may hold the answer.
While it may look somewhat dated, Magic Online has everything Brawl needs to thrive on MTG Arena. Offering more cards, multiplayer, a match browser, and even competitive events, Magic Online caters to all. Regardless of what deck you’re playing, you should be able to find a well-suited opponent and have fun on MTGO.
As much as more cards and multiplayer are nice, the key difference here is the match browser. Since players set up their own lobbies with names and descriptions, players can filter opponents somewhat. If you want to have fun with Typal or janky decks, you can open a lobby around that. Alternatively, if you want to go all out with cEDH combos, you can post a lobby for that too.
On top of these player-driven lobbies, Magic Online also has competitive Commander events. This not only allows cards like Nadu, Winged Wisdom to have a home but also combo out against fierce competition. While “Hell Queue” may exist on MTG Arena, it’s still worlds apart from true competitive events.
Sadly, as much as we’d love a match browser on Arena, this feature would require an immense amount of work. Depending on the backend of MTG Arena, there’s a chance such a feature isn’t even possible. Until such a possibility is discussed by the Arena team publicly, we may be left waiting for quite some time.
Fundamental Fixes Needed Soon
At the end of the day, there is a simple fix to the Nadu, Winged Wisdom problem. Currently, this card is running rampant in regular matchmaking, so Wizards simply needs to put it in hell queue. Here, this deck would be up against Commanders like Esika, God of the Tree who are playing to win.
Once the ranking of Nadu, Winged Wisdom is updated, much of this current problem will go away, returning order to the format. Once that happens, however, it doesn’t mean that everything is hunky dory. Right now, instant conceding is a frustrating albeit not too impactful issue. Once multiplayer gets properly introduced, however, the frustration caused will be significantly amplified.
To mitigate this problem, we can only hope that multiplayer will launch alongside a revitalized matchmaking system for Brawl. In case it wasn’t obvious already, we’d to see a Magic Online style match browser, if that’s possible. Regardless of whether that can be done or not, it’s clear that something will need to change to fix Brawl’s woes.
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