Winona Nelson completely outdid herself on this one, the angel on the card looks phenomenal. I would really love to know who the angel was modeled after.. and ask her for her phone number. Hot damn. The artwork on this card is just incredible.
Once this card was spoiled, I assume everyone just went into gatherer and looked up all the White, Blue, and Colorless auras that you can slap on to Bruna. If you didn't get a chance, HERE are the search results to give you some context. Bruna is a 3wwu 5/5 flyer, vigilance, and a very.. very specific ability. Bruna digs through your hand, graveyard, and battlefield for any desirable auras that you may attach to Bruna when she attacks or blocks. For the casual and commander/edh players alike, I highlighted some of the cards in the search that I think are fairly noteworthy.
Cards you'll play: Steel of the Godhead, Auramancer's Guise, Battle Mastery, Angelic Destiny, Celestial Mantle, Cho-Manno's Blessing, Corrupted Conscience, Curiosity, Eldrazi Conscription, Empyrial, Armor, Indestructibility, Pemmin's Aura, Pentarch Ward, Diplomatic Immunity and Treachery.
Cards you'll consider playing: Betrayal, Capashen Standard, Cloak of Mists, Daybreak Coronet, Drake Umbra, Eel Umbra, Flight of Fancy, Floating Shield, and Ghostly Touch.
I'm certain I overlooked some auras in the search, but the ones that I isolated are pretty solid. Unlike some of the previous legendary creatures we've talked about, Bruna doesn't quite fit into any particular builds in casual and doesn't play well as a piece of utility in any archetype. Instead, she's a pure build-around-me card and that's how we'll approach building the deck behind her today.
Another problem Bruna faces in our comparison to Sovereigns is the lag time before she can actually hold an aura. Unlike Sovereigns, who immediately hunts out an aura on the turn you cast it if you have a creature ready to swing, Bruna requires a combat phase to get all her auras rolling which will take an entire turn unless you have the ability to give her haste or an opponent foolishly decides to attack into your Bruna blocker. If you're playing against a few opponents, this lag time would give them ample opportunity to find an answer to kill off Bruna before you're able swing with her. We really don't want to lose our 6 mana investment that easily.
How do we counteract these problems? Small creatures. Luckily, Bruna also grabs auras that are on the battlefield and graveyard. This is huge, since you're able to 'throw away' your powerful auras on smaller creatures and still have them available to attach to Bruna in the later game. This is great for generating tempo in your favor to keep up your early game progression. If you have a battlefield full of creatures with high-impact auras, such as Angelic Destiny giving +4/+4 and Flying, it'll be the perfect distraction for sneaking in a Bruna onto the battlefield. If your opponents kill off Bruna, they're still dead to your smaller creatures. They killed off your smaller creatures? All those auras those creatures were holding earlier are now perfect fodder for your Bruna to greedily grab them out of your graveyard and one-shot people in the face. Spamming auras on smaller creatures will give the deck a ton of flexibility in the early game without losing value in the late game. With a fistful of high-impact auras, Bruna will generally get giant stat boosts, making every hit from Bruna a potentially lethal one, especially in 20-life games. I think Bruna is perfect for the 'Johnny' players who are looking for a difficult strategy to pilot and an overall rewarding deck to win with.
I'm very certain this card doesn't have any hidden applications outside of the Casual formats. I don't think they're are enough strong auras in Standard to make this card playable. She's 6 mana, so right now she's out shined by the titan cycle from M11/M12 and she doesn't compete well against popular Frites targets, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight and Griselbrand. Also, Bruna's legendary status is somewhat of a liability with so many Clone effects in the format that even if some broken interaction was found, it would be kept in check pretty easily. The same applies to Modern and Legacy; as much as I'd like, there is no deck for this card.
For the context of Commander, the only card that comes close in comparison is Zur the Enchanter. The difference is quite clear in a several ways. Zur has Black in his identity and searches your library for any enchantment with mana cost 3 or less, while Bruna can search any aura at any mana cost from your hand, battlefield, and graveyard. As Commanders, their play styles are very different. Generically, Zur plays out as a very aggressive control deck by searching out soft-lock enchantments like Solitary Confinement and Counterbalance that stalls out the game and you attempt to deal 21 damage with Zur while you prevent your opponent from resolving any of their spells. The Zur lists generally have very few creatures, so having Zur on the board is vital to the strategy. Bruna is definitely a more casual-focused card with emphasis on strong/high-impact auras to enchant creatures, while Bruna serves as an engine to recurring those auras back to the battlefield or cheating them into play onto Bruna herself. I don't think the strategies coincide in any way and I don't imagine Zur players will be playing Bruna in their list of 99.If you'd want to see a generic Zur the Enchanter EDH/Commander list, click here.
I really like building Bruna with aggressive creatures and auras that give giant stat boosts to make your aggressive creatures incredibly scary. U/W are generally not aggressive colors, so it could easily catch opponents off guard as they stare down their low life total and an army of enchanted creatures. A deck like this would have to play a lot of card draw to compensate for potentially giving your opponents' removal spells 2-for-1's from your victimized, enchanted creatures. Another sweet deck idea would be an Angel-focused theme with Call to the Kindred and Door of Destinies for Angel tribal goodness; I think you'd get a ton of style points for a deck like this. If you're going for the combo/spike, all-in strategy, I think a self-milling strategy is the ticket there. Playing Bruna followed by a Traumatize on yourself before combat to statistically throw half of your auras in your graveyard only to retrieve them back when Bruna attacks seems really sick and will probably kill someone in one combat phase (especially if she's holding Corrupted Conscience and Battle Mastery. Holy cow!). Altar of Dementia, Windfall, and Jace's Archivist are all great cards for this strategy, taking many similar notes from The Mimeoplasm and Teneb, the Harvester.
In whatever strategy you end up playing, you'll need an array of utility including Greater Auramancy, Copy Enchantment, Enlightened Tutor, Auramancer, Winds of Wrath, etc. I think the scariest thing we can see coming from Bruna is streamlining. In Magic, powerful auras are few and far between. As players pick Bruna up and start building around her, the list of 99 could converge to roughly the same list and we could be seeing very similar lists from a lot of players. Animar, Soul of Elements, Zur, and Sharuum the Hegemon are a few offenders of streamlining. I'm optimistic that Bruna builders will be looking for some spicy and flashy wins that will keep the innovation fresh and exciting. To all you brewers out there tackling Bruna in the near future, she's an incredible card and I can't wait to see what decks come out of the wood works featuring this sexy angel. Until the next legendary creature!
-David J.
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