Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa - MTG Arena Brawl Play Guide

Intro

This deck is a combination of a boardwipe-heavy control deck and a Phyrexian Praetor deck. I originally made this when there were a lot of people playing decks that abused Hare Apparent to make an insane number of rabbit tokens and flood the board. I wanted to take care of those creature-heavy decks, while still having a win condition that I enjoyed. The deck plays like a control deck early, then plays Praetors that are hard to deal with combined with a commander that can give indestructible at flash speed.

Here's a video showing how this deck plays on Arena.

The decklist I use on MTG Arena can be found on Moxfield.

Starting hand

This deck requires a lot of different types of mana, but mainly needs white and blue sources early to play counterspells and boardwipes. It's better to have a starting hand with land and a couple of counterspells and a boardwipe than to have any of the Praetors in your starting hand.

Early game

Early game is all about control while building up your mana base. You almost always want to hold up a counterspell on the first couple of turns to slow down the opponent. Against creature-based decks, you'll want to board wipe at least once, but sometimes 2 or 3 times on turns 4-6, as you'll almost always have an empty board. If you need to bait out removal or a counterspell, playing Kyodai at flash speed can make sense if you don't really care about it surviving.

Late game

Late game is all about managing the board and picking the right time to get out one or more Praetors. All of the Praetors warp the game in your favor, so getting any out is going to help you. Ideally, you have enough mana to flash in Kyodai to protect them if possible.

Win-cons

I find that there are a few ways this deck can win:

1. Boardwipe a few times and they quit. I don't love this method of winning but some people will quit if they can't keep creatures.
2. Get a few Praetors out that help you and hurt them. For example, some of the Elesh Norn or Vorinclex cards can block your opponent from doing much while you can do a lot more.
3. Activate Realmbreaker to get all your Praetors at once, who have haste due to Urabrask.
4. Use Kyodai's activated ability to pump it from a 3/3 to an 8/8 or 13/13 to get flying damage.

Bad matchups

Very aggressive decks can sometimes do enough damage before you boardwipe to make you lose. Planeswalker decks that use a lot of control are also tough to keep up against.