Magic: The Gathering Arena Makes Brawl Free for a Month to Help With Social Distancing

Magic: The Gathering Arena is doing its part to alleviate the stress of social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. In a post on the game's forum, the MTG Arena development team revealed that two events will be going live early on Thursday. Brawlers' Guildhall and Theros: Beyond Death Ranked Draft will both unlock on March 19th. In the case of Brawler's Guildhall, the event will be free. Both events will be available until April 16th. "Because COVID-19 is keeping millions of people around the world indoors, we wanted to do a little something to help make social distancing a little more tolerable," the updates says. "To that end, we are making changes to the Magic: The Gathering Arena event schedule beginning on Thursday, March 19 to give you more ways to play Magic from the comfort and safety of your home:

• The Brawlers' Guildhall event for March will have no entry fee and will be available March 19–April 16.
• Theros Beyond Death Ranked Draft will be available March 19–April 16 in addition to our regular bi-weekly rotating Ranked Draft event.

These changes are scheduled to go live on March 19 at approximately 8 a.m. PT.

Stay safe, wash your hands, and try to avoid becoming too stir-crazy as you're cooped up in your house for the time being. We're continuing to explore ways to make it easier for you to keep in contact with players from your local communities as well as support your local game store, and we hope to have more info on that soon."

Brawl is a popular format that is usually only available for free in MTG Arena on Wednesdays. Previous Brawler's Guildhall events made the format playable for a week at a time but always required an entry free. That it is free for a month consistently should be a welcome development for Brawl players.

Theros: Beyond Death is the latest Magic: The Gathering expansion to come to MTG Arena. It was scheduled to come to the ranked draft format in April, but that event has been moved up to help with social distancing. While the previous set, Throne of Eldraine, remained available to play in ranked draft consistently, the MTG Arena team had announced that Theros would alternate in and out with other sets every two weeks. Those plans have been abandoned at least for the next month.

These events go live on Thursday, March 19th at 8 a.m. PT.