Today, on the official Wizards website, they released the full info on the new Brawl format.
You create a 59-card "Highlander" deck (no duplicates of any card besides basic lands) with 1 Commander who's a Standard-legal legendary creature or planeswalker. All players start at 30 life. Your Commander starts in the command zone and can be cast at any normal time you could cast it, plus 2 additional mana for each time it's left the command zone. Decks follow your Commander's color identity.
Now, let me tell you why this will fail.
Brawl is straight-up doomed, okay?
Firstly, let's look at Standard's card pool. Unfortunately, most cards are made for 1v1 play, and big, splashy cards that affect multiple players and have interesting politics are very rare. Additionally, board-wipes and hate cards are more narrow. Mana fixing is generally very limited. Also, the cards are not very powerful and therefore not as exciting to play. In Mono-colored commander, you're going to end up with just a pile of 59 cards that are on-theme. For instance, this deck uses Baral, and I had to shove in some relatively weak cards to fill out the full 59.
Second, the price. This format is obviously meant to crack more packs and drive up the demand for Standard singles. If you want to play Brawl, get used to either throwing together a pile or paying every few months to stay in the game.
Third, the commanders. There are only 45 legendary creatures in Standard, and some of these would be completely unplayable in a Commander-like setting. Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign reduces the cost of a whopping 3 sphinxes, Tetzimoc does a lot less if he's never in your hand, Hope of Ghirapur is hopeless, Mavren Fein doesn't have enough mono-white Vampire support, and Kopala doesn't have enough mono-blue Merfolk support. Not to mention, these commander decks pretty much just build themselves. For tribal leaders, just shove whatever tribal payoff cards you can into the pile. There are an additional 28 Planeswalkers, but 12 are from Planeswalker decks, and are generally not as strong as their pulled-from-the-pack counterparts. On top of all this, only five commanders are 3-colored, and of these, 3 are Grixis and 2 are Naya. We're looking at a bunch of boring decks.
Fourth, the meta. I am thoroughly convinced that one or two commanders would just absolutely stomp all others in a 1-v-1 setting. This Baral deck I just slapped together would absolutely stifle any attempts by any other decks. Hazoret Aggro could stomp any other decks. For multiplayer, the few white decks with board wipe would have a huge advantage, like Gideon of the Trials would be nearly unstoppable.
In my mind, Brawl is a shameless attempt to push more players to crack more packs. Wizards claims that the format is for newer players trying to get into Commander, but what they've seemed to have forgotten is that this is a "Trading Card" Game. You get together 4-7 friends who love the game, and they'll be more than happy to add to your card pool and help build that first Commander deck. I remember my first Commander deck. I had bought the Izzet vs. Golgari, and I absolutely loved Niv-Mizzet. So, I basically chucked out the duplicate cards and added in a bunch of commons I had pulled from boosters, and a bunch of my friends gave me other cards that I still have to this day, like Lightning Bolt, Into the Roil, Think Twice, Desolate Lighthouse, and Curiosity. I traded for these cards, and me and my friends had fun playing each other.
Again, the only person in my mind who would jump on board for Brawl would be new players whose "Standard" deck is basically already a pile of 60 cards.
This all reminds me of a comment I read on a Facebook post regarding Brawl. It basically said the following:
Players: Wizards is out of touch with its players.
Wizards: Hold my beer, we're making Standard Commander!