This was confirmed on the Weeklymtg stream.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2265055461?t=00h35m03s
Gavin: "One thing that Brawl does on Arena is, it kind of buckets your deck into 4 different categories. We worked on (edh) brackets before I learned this btw... It seems to be working decently well for them. It pairs you against people that have a similar benchmark of cards. I think there is a lot we can learn from that."
External link →I think it also cares about wait time, so the longer you wait the more likely you are to be paired out of your bracket to reduce wait times.
This is accurate. All matchmaking on Arena (or any game, really) is a compromise between finding a good pairing and a quick pairing. The longer it's taking to find a match, the wider it can go.
Hey all! Just to clarify what I was talking about today, the four bucket system isn't literally how Arena Brawl works - it's more nuanced and conceptual. As I even mentioned on stream, I just learned about this myself as we dug into this concept so I might have been a little off. Just want to avoid you all going down rabbit holes that aren't quite right. Hope this helps clarify and happy Brawling!
(Wotcstaff)
Mods, this is actual-Gavin-Gavin, and worthy of flair
Thanks for the clarity. Is there any chance we might see some type of flag for brawl decks that tells us what bracket that deck would fall into?
In general, we don't want to expose too much of the system that way, because it will lead to people gaming it, and that kind of gaming leads to worse player experiences overall. We talked more about that in this article: MTG Arena Announcements – June 3, 2024 (wizards.com)
Thanks! Does this refer to both Standard Brawl and Brawl?
Standard Brawl and Brawl both use the same basic matchmaking system, yes
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