Welcome to Pitch It to Me podcast, a show about the
subjective past, present and potential future of flesh and
blood design. Today's episode will be about
the latest flesh and blood expansion on red, yellow and
blue Pitch. Each of our hosts will review
their predictions for the haunted and give their most
pressing opinions. You can find us across all
socials such as Blue Sky and Instagram at Pitch to Me
podcast. I'm Arachne.
I'm also a acne. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
He's a acne, She's a acne. They're Arachne.
I'm Arachne. Are there any other Arachne I
need to know about? No, I think that about covers it
all, right. Cool.
Dude Zephyr Needle gone before their glory.
Dude, no, I'm happy. I didn't want.
To live I didn't want to live with.
The meta that was going to be insane with.
Her Treven Zephyr needle. I always liked the card for its
place in the meta. Like Zen meta was super hyper
aggro. Especially when you're playing
in the Zen mirror right? Like aggro of aggro mirrors and
having a card that's like look I just need to swing my weapon one
time if they block with one I'm already winning.
And that like hyper accelerated like niche that Zephyr needle is
able to fill I always found interesting.
But I can see why LSS was like Zephyr needle is toxic.
With with the retrieve mechanic specifically, right, even more
specifically with the ability to pump it right.
Like I I guess saver bloodshed was never the issue with Zephyr
needle, but like just being able to give Zephyr needle additional
power was already an extremely strong ability.
And so when they printed a new thing that said in ninja give a
dagger plus 4, you just can't let that exist with Zephyr
needle. Yeah.
Yeah, that's insane. Zephyr needle was so cool when
you broke it once and that was it.
Yeah. Because dagger is the swing for
two for one resource. That's just so overpowered,
right? I think that might be the best
rate in the game. We'll see how Fang does.
With, with natural go again specifically, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. And you can trick people into
trying to break them. We want to give a shout out to
all of the Discord users that submitted their predictions when
we did our pitch and predictions episode for The Haunted,
specifically Darth Prentice, Prime Frog, Ichthia Mulvane, and
Talon. Specifically, Talon had a shout
out that was on the money. Yeah, he was the only prediction
to get it correct with Assassin only traps.
His doomer about traps not staying a special little thing
for Riptide came true and it served him well and.
You know what I don't think he was expecting?
Warrior and Ninja on the sidelines also get a trap.
Yeah, I think, I think that is probably even worse for Talon's
mental health than like the fact that there is an assassin I.
Think could be fine. It's like the best meta that
Riptide could ask for also. Very true.
Everyone's doing things at reaction speed, giving things
plus power. And go again.
If you can't see listeners. He's steepling my finger.
Yeah, yeah, I'm. I'm twiddling them like an evil
villain from the 50s. So thank you to everyone so that
submitted their predictions for the rest of the episode.
We're going to be talking about our own predictions for the set
as we publicly gave at our pitch and predictions episode.
So you can check the receipts and we'll also be talking about
some of like the things that we're excited to see in the new
set, as well as some questions we might have about why LSS
chose to go with one design over the other.
I feel like that sounds really foreboding when I say it like
that. But overall, do you guys think
like the set was really hype? Are you really happy to see it
now that it hit? I think it was more hype than
people were initially expecting. There's definitely, there was
some, there was some dumorism going into it, right?
More Assassin Ninja when it feels like we've been getting
barraged with those two in the same sets over and over again.
But I think that what they actually gave us in terms of
design is compelling enough and interesting enough.
And the Zephyr needle band was. Present you that just the last
second until I think save the mentality of everyone going into
the set. Yeah, it feels like they added a
lot of really interesting stuff to assassin and ninja and not
just like the really pushed majestics that I was expecting.
So I'm actually really excited to see like how these ninjas
adapt to that, like dagger play style over like, you know, what
we've seen before, like combo draconic, stuff like that.
Yeah, I know. I'm enjoying the set too, so
let's get into it. For red pitch, Clark is going to
go first. Yeah, so we're going to lead off
by going over our predictions from the previous episode.
So we're going to move through these pretty quick to make sure
that we have enough time to hit everything here.
So my first prediction, the assassin dagger will mark on,
hit full point, full point, right on the way on both
daggers, right? Like the Majestic 1 and the
Common. One, not the token one, but it's
OK, I'll give it to you, yeah. Next legendary generic leg piece
to specifically address Spectra. Now I did really hammer home
that Spectra. Yeah, you just had to.
Be so specific. I do think being more specific
is better, and it did work out in Fuzzy's favor later.
True, but half point. I think you were really trying
to go for LSS printing hate tools against Spectra
specifically you were harkening back to like their announcement
about doing such was your old reason for this one.
I think half of it was also just the fact that a legendary light
piece like just doesn't exist and like that's a slot that need
to be. Filled I'm leaning towards no
points, but I would certainly be willing to concede 1/2 point
depending on how Joel feel. I was also leaning towards no
points. Sorry, no.
This is hella big to lose again, it's just so specific.
Next time I'm going to go for nothing but ground fruit.
OK, third prediction. Chaos will only appear on
assassin cards. So I was expecting a lot of
chaos assassin melded, but not with a blank chaos talent like
we were getting blank draconic. And sure enough that wasn't the
case. We did not get any blank
generically chaos cards except for the gym.
Which is Chaos only. It is Chaos only.
It's a chaos gym. 100% of the Chaos cards that we saw are only
Chaos. Yeah, there are only two of
them. So like Spirit?
Or letter. The fact that you guys didn't
give me halfway for the light beast makes me think.
Why would you get any points here?
You said chaos will only appear on assassin cards and it didn't
at all. You said no talent only cards.
Well, I we did already see Spurlock by the time I made that
prediction, so I meant we probably won't see any more.
It's fine. It's whatever I'm moving.
On Fuck Clark. And.
I don't want to hug your spotlight, Clark, but the way I
remember it is here. I did do like a little side
prediction where I said that there's going to be like a card
that spotlights each of the six Chaos Assassin Demi heroes
because we saw Tarantula talks in and we were talking about
like space in the set codes because I didn't write it down
anywhere else. So I think this is my only point
where I can bring it up. You you also definitely.
I think in that prediction it was like each of the majestics
will be one. Like there would be 1 majestic
for each one, which is not how it.
Ended. That's totally true.
Trying to get extra fucking points.
No, I wouldn't get points Clark section.
That wasn't going to get points in Clark section.
That would be so out of bounds. But.
Clark's the one who tries the game of.
High the predictions the most. All right, prediction #4 rupture
is out of here. And then I gave a prediction for
a new draconic keyword. They did not return to rupture
at all, which was definitely the spirit of my thing.
But I thought they were going to replace it with a new mechanic,
and they kind of didn't. They kind of kept it to counting
chain links only. Now you're counting draconic
chain links, and they really only care up through 2.
I would give you half a point. Yeah, yeah.
I would agree with that. Yeah, very much so like.
They're choosing not to design around having a really wide
combat chain. Feng is draconic but he really
only wants 2, maybe 3. Except for like on power turns
where you're doing like 8 chain links.
Yeah, but even then, not every single one of those needs to be
draconic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK. Fifth, there will be AC and C
reprint. In Genpacts, goddamn it.
I was like waiting for it. I was right, and we don't
technically know the full gem pack list at current time of
recording. It's possible that the CNC ends
up in there, but it's highly unlikely.
It looks like only Commons and rares are going to be in the 22.
The 23rd appears to be a hero. We have the 8 cold foils being
the weapons left-handed and right-handed, and then the
Marvel we now know is an Azuri pulled for the very first time.
Live by Josh Lau on the card, guys, Yeah.
Half point because there's a CNC reprint Yeah, I.
Think that was a fairly decent swing.
You get a half point clerk and then.
Ninja will get a legendary leg piece.
I really can't. Fucking hammering the.
Fucking leg pieces he's like we're getting.
Legs and I think I made even a side prediction at the end of
everything of like I can see Draconic getting a leg piece.
Like I think Fuzzy, you were saying there might have been
like an arms piece and I was saying, well, actually, like the
leg piece might be more interesting, but that wasn't one
of my official predictions. So no, you get.
A ghost point for that mean. Syndra got a dracon.
Glacier got a leg Piece does that like Ninja got a leg?
Piece is that 2 half points? No two points because you said
the assassin dagger will mark CNC reprint and rupture.
Yeah, so I think I am currently sitting at 2 full points.
OK. I'm willing to give him the half
piece, the half point for leg piece.
For keeping it competitive. You're groveling paid off.
Yes, remember kids grovel. So, Clark, now that we've
reviewed your predictions, what are some things about the new
set that you really want to discuss?
So the first thing I really want to talk about is that this is
our first big reaction set since like Welcome to Wraith, where it
feels like so much of the set and the damage and even the
equipment is centred around reactions.
Yeah, people in draft are like, do I run 5D reacts?
And it's like, yeah. I've I've seen people say that
Iraqne just needs to run like 4 + D reacts unlimited.
And Fang is like, do I run only attack reactions?
And it's like, yeah. Like there's definitely a list
out there that does that 100% and I think that's so
interesting. I love how they've designed the
equipment to be one block, but if you block intelligently you
can get conditional 2 block. But then all of those designs
also allow the opponent to play around them.
Really interestingly, the red alert, the leapfrog, like I
think these are great designs for reaction set and giving anti
reaction common and rare equipment.
It it is masterfully designed in my opinion.
Yeah, I love the new equipment designs for sure.
I want to ask, do you guys think that this limited set needed a 0
for 4D react? Because right now all the traps
in the set currently only block for three.
Yeah, it's it's interesting because, and I'll talk a little
bit more about it in my opinions about the set, but it seems like
specifically for Assassin, the ceiling is like 3 per reaction,
like 3 points versus like warrior where the dagger plus
the reaction you can you can push up to four or five.
Yeah, depending on the reaction. Yeah, so even throw 2 reactions
on it. Yeah, exactly.
So sometimes it feels like the the format is like really fast
and it could have need or could have used more D reacts, but I
don't know. I also think like D reacts are
just extremely powerful and a zero for four, unconditional and
limited could make it, you know, a bit more of that fatigue style
that I do not like unlimited. We even have Layla, which is 4
points of value defensively if the opponent is marked as a
conditional 0 for four, quote UN quote D react.
And it's heavily conditional because if you're marked, you're
not even able to play it. Yeah.
I think my 2 main responses to that question are, first of all,
with equipment, we can pretend we have 0 for 4D reacts.
Yeah, with the leapfrog line, we're able to like the.
Additional value that we can get off of these.
Yeah, like the equipment are able to hit your cover, your
breakpoints so well and dynamically, especially
considering how many of them are in the set that I don't think
it's a big deal that you're not able to lock for four, you know?
And I also think that, like, it's OK for offensive options to
be stronger than defensive options, you know?
I I definitely agree, but I've noticed that lethal range can
sometimes start showing up at 10 life yeah.
And I'm not sure if I'm super happy with that specifically.
Just just a little thing that I've noticed about the set and
something that'll probably expand more on and hopefully
maybe even do a full pitch on come our limited opinions
episode. Let me know if you guys are
going to be interested in hearing that.
Moving on. I also want to ask, do dagger
support cards deserve to be overrate?
Because what we've seen with warriors is that for basic
weapon pumps, it's 0 cost for +3 your next weapon gains plus
three it's sharpened steel. Then with daggers they're saying
well now it's zero for plus 4 but only onto a dagger.
That seems to be the big dagger thing going on is that
everything gets to be one above rate 0 for three attack
reactions and all this, and it should be generally OK because
daggers attack for one less while still requiring the same
resource input that it took for warriors to swing with their
weapons. But I'm noticing that it's a
little awkward because it works on the first card you play.
The first zero for four you play is completely fine.
The second one you play is now overrated in a way that Warriors
weren't getting. Is this a good thing?
I think the siloing of dagger support was really well done in
the sense that the 0 for fours don't really strike me as
problematic, specifically because you already mentioned it
Clark, that they have one less base power.
So each of the reactions on the 1st chain link is still going to
be, especially with Fang is going to be like up to four or
five because of that point deficit.
If you don't have the right reactions at the right time, it
could still be under rate and be stuffed by DREC, especially if
they're trying to land a hit while you're marked or something
like that. So to me it seems like a good
enough value proposition. Like especially cuz all the
reactions it seems like block for two so they're also weaker
defensively. All the draconic warrior ones
do, and some of the hybrid ones, but I think not all of them do.
Yeah, there are definitely some 0 for four pumps, which is not
something we're used to seeing, you know.
Those are all non attack action cards though.
All the all the reactions, you are right, Joel, I think are two
blocks. I think it's a little bit fair
in that it's very incentivizing for a player with those daggers
to run larger hands. You know, if I only have A1 card
hand, my dagger is not going to do very much at all.
If I have a two card hand, I might be able to play a 0 for
four pump, but then I'm only attacking for what, 5 or
something? You know, because these daggers
are all based around one power. Yeah, 22 card 5 does not sound
super powerful. But then when you get to three
and four card hands, it starts to get strong.
And I think that's OK to have a play pattern for, you know,
because then somebody throws AC and C at you and you're like,
well, if I block it, I'm not going to be able to do really,
really cool dagger things, you know?
Yeah, I also think dagger heroes are incentivized to end the game
early and steal tempo early to end the game quicker.
Because in a fatigue scenario, like if you're playing blue hit
and run and then pitching for two swings, that's two damage
unless you have actual reactions.
So the fatigue ability of a dagger warrior seems a lot
greater than if you're running Centauri Sabre and Hot Streak
because Hot Streak is like conditional go again if you
block at, you know, lowlife totals with an attack action and
every hit and run, every Blade Runner equals 4 value, or, you
know, one free 2 for each swing. So for that reason, I think
having them lean so hard into the aggressive option as a
dagger hero makes more sense to me than, like, holding back, so
to speak. Yeah.
All right, And the very last thing that I want to talk about
is Hunter's Clave. I think this is a really, really
weird card because one, they wanted a Majestic weapon, but
they didn't want it to be draftable, so they put it in the
expansion slot. It's in the back 2 cards so it's
not playable and limited really. Yes, I thought that was only for
the cold foils. Nope, the Hunter's Clave shows
up in the back 2 cards of a pack and it is not limited playable.
Weird. Super weird because it isn't in
the expansion slot. It is.
It has a normal haunted set code, but it is not intended for
limited play and at the exact same time as ACC tool.
It just kind of makes all of the marked cards open and available
to any and all assassins. Now I really wonder why they
didn't make this a Chaos assassin dagger so that one
Arachne Marionette could play it and Arachne slipped through the
cracks. I think both of those heroes
should use marking and I think are interesting to see marking
in. But didn't you really need
access to the marked card pool Missouri?
Like I'm I'm just very very confused by that intention from
LSS and it makes me think that LSS printed so many Assassins
sets recently purely because they feel like Assassin needs an
equivalent sized card pool and that's why we've been getting so
many of them. Yeah, it's that's a good point
because I remember during previous season a lot of people
were really worried that new but before Hunter's Clave was
revealed, that new Azuri, like all these objectively stronger
assassins we're going to outclass like Marionette and
Slippy because they have access to the same marking support that
they do. And it was fine because there
wasn't really a consistent way of marking outside of flinging
the mark of the Huntsman and or using like a marked card like
you know, the reapers call or whatever.
Yeah, Reapers Call Public Bounty, all of which I think
would have been acceptable to say, OK, you need to run these
like very side, like you need to take cards out of your deck to
put in cards that mark. And that would have just helped
silo it. Like we would have seen a new
that was oriented around marking, right.
But it wouldn't have been essentially the same deck with
like 3 the four cards that care about marking.
Yeah. And now without that deck
building constriction, I think they kind of like work against
like LSS is working against themselves now because Nude just
has like no reason not to run this plus the other like good
Majestics that marking support has.
So it is a little bit perplexing, but I think also
just keeping in mind what you said about wanting to expand the
carpool, I think, you know, having stealth contract and
marking as three separate archetypes in Assassin would be
against what they want to be doing with like releasing so
many assassins. Certainly.
So having a mixture of stealth and Mark or contract and Mark
seems better to me in the long run.
The last thing that I'll probably mention about this is
that expect me to talk about this moving forward in future
episodes and like, bring it in the little asides and side
things because I'm really thinking about whether or not
cardpool size is the most important thing or if cardpool
quality is the most important thing.
Yeah, like I've been thinking about Brute.
Brute actually has a pretty sizable cardpool, but I think
that the quality of a lot of those cards is really low.
So you don't see Brute doing a lot.
So I really wonder if this was the right approach by LSS when
they introduced a new class of like what we needed to catch up.
Because instead what we've really just gotten is Assassin
has had. The best LSS designs because
they have been getting all of their cards designed during the
best era of LSS dev work. True, and other classes that
haven't gotten as much support simply just don't feel up to
snuff. Arachne Huntsman certainly feels
like the old design, yes. And so like there is a section
of their card pool that feels outdated, that has not gotten
the support. And the fact that through three
draftable sets they have not returned to that design is
definitely telling me that like, that part of their card pool is
just kind of tossed by the wayside.
Yeah. So once again I am sitting here
wondering why then? Yeah, I I have heard complaints
from many of my friends who are like, So what do we do with
Huntsman now? Because people like with every
hero that gets released there, someone's going to fall in love
with that design. Same thing happened with
Riptide. But Riptides getting like really
good support over the last few years, whereas Huntsman got
maybe coercive tendencies and that's it.
And so now, yeah, I don't really know what else is in store for
that hero, but it seems like I don't know.
Do you just like LL them? Like take them out of the game
and then absorb the rest of the card puller or route us some
stuff I don't know. Yeah, it's tough.
I mean it just, it definitely seems like they don't want to
return to contract. They've been building everything
around stealth that is the modern design for Assassin, and
it just definitely leaves this hero out behind the shed.
Yeah. Well, maybe we will see some new
assassin design space in the future, maybe returning back to
contract. I kind of hope it'll be a while.
I'd like. To see a two set breakup like
did not see Assassin for the rest of 2050. 5 Two sets.
Maybe an Armory deck, a Huntsman Armory deck, print some good
Majestic, some new buyback equipment in there.
Sure, that would be fun. That would be.
Fun. It'd be interesting.
I would buy that Armory deck. Sure, I get to play Iraqi
Huntsman. Nothing else.
No, no more draftable assassins. I'm I'm full up.
Well, thank you, Clark. Is it a key if I go next?
No, Joel. So for my no, I'm just kidding.
Yeah. But fuzzy, here I am taking and
I am handing to you. Thank you.
So for yellow pitch I'm going to go next.
I'm going to start off with the predictions I made.
So first I predicted that warrior daggers are going to be
very vanilla with basically no effects.
Probably just a draconic keyword.
I was imagining a nice weapon, maybe well stated, that is like
a blank canvas for us to paint effects onto with your various
attack reactions, etcetera. And I was wrong.
They have this cool like when you play a draconic card they
get go again and plus one that's definitely in effect.
Oh yeah, sorry Fuzzy. Next, I thought there might be a
legendary Draconic Arms that gives power based on the number
of Draconic cards that you played.
That would have been, yes. I get balancing is to decide,
like they can tune the numbers to be whatever they want, yeah.
Yeah, it could be like at start a game when you equip this lose.
Four life, you know, like or like the 5th Draconic card you
play each turn gets plus one power, something like that.
You know, So it's like that would be kind of balanced,
right? Ruptured Arms.
Of like whenever like. Like you get to the fourth
chain, like that one gets the plus one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The loose life and the ruptured
arms, those are actually really cool flavor.
I might have to cop in the custom card design channel after
this episode. I also said wait, do I get that
point? No.
I think those are both goose eggs, yeah.
They're stinkers. OK next I said that other than
Spurlocked which was already revealed at the time and the
Chaos hero that we knew of and a Chaos dagger that the only other
chaos card would be a chaos fabled.
Wow. Prophetic.
Wow. I mean, the chaos fabled was a
great prediction. Yeah, yeah, take, take more big
swings, fuzzy. I know that was a really good
one. They definitely never backfire
against you, Yeah. Because I just had this feeling
like they didn't have to print any chaos cards.
Yeah. And I'm still mad they didn't.
I wish we could have seen like some more chaos design space.
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to talk about it a little bit later, but
like, come on. Like what does chaos mean?
Barely anything. It's a fabled and a spurlocked.
Yeah, it's it's really, really small.
So you do mention a Chaos dagger here, which I do not believe
they printed. Is the headpiece Chaos?
No, it's just assassin or acne. Huntsman can run it.
Or acne Huntsman can run it. Just assassin, OK, because I I
think I would give it to you definitely if there was like any
like a chaos equipment, because that was the spirit that I got
from the dagger right like. I was trying to carve space to
be like, there's not going to be any more chaos cards than this.
I wasn't trying to say like there will be a Chaos dagger,
there will be a chaos fabled. Yeah.
What do you think? You made me.
You made me be so specific to predict the chaos babled gem and
then you're not going to give me the point.
Is the graphene. It's not chaos, no, no.
There's no chaos daggers. The gym's great.
I was going to give a point, but I didn't realize how specific
you were being about the daggers and I want to do half a point.
Hey you guys so much. I pushed for the gym and you got
that. Because originally I said
there's gonna be at most one other Chaos card, and you wanted
me to get more specific. I do remember that, and I did,
and that's why I put it. I was right.
I don't give a fuck about the dagger.
Like it's not like I was like, really?
Heck, like, sure. I mean.
Point. Yeah, I'll give a point.
Sure point. Oh, I can't believe I had to beg
for that. Grovel, kids.
Get my hands and knees for the points they deserve.
OK so next I said we will see generic cards that give you a
benefit if you are royal such as Imperial edict, Imperial decree
from dynasty. And we saw one.
We saw one imperial seal of dragon flame, whatever the fuck.
Imperial seal of command, I believe.
Oh yeah. But yeah.
Because it Harkins to the text on Command and Conquer.
Yeah, so now we know that the command is that you can't play,
D reacts and the conquer is fuck your arsenal.
But it does both though. Command and Conquer does both.
Imperial Seal of Command does both only.
If you're royal, If you're royal and you have the command, then
you conquer. True.
If you just command as a like a like a peasant, no one's going
to conquer. Free you can't play D reacts.
Yeah, they just can't play D Reacts, which is a cool effect.
I love this card. So I am a bit surprised that
there's only one. I was kind of hoping to see like
a plurality of these, you know? Yeah, but they did print an
effect like that, harkening back to the imperial set before.
They definitely did. When you put this prediction
down, I was like, whoa, that's such a good prediction.
Fuzzy. Yeah.
Solid. Do you guys feel like I get a
full point for it? Yeah, I'll give you a point.
Your graveling is really going
to win you this. I wasn't graveling there, I was
just asking. The previous one.
Next I said that there's going to be a Razor Reflex.
Razor Reflex. There would be a Razor Reflex
reprint. Yeah, we're leaving that in.
Full point there is. Yep, there was one.
Surprisingly, they only printed it at red.
There's no yellow or blue razor reflex in this set.
We'll. Do that for a lot of cards,
which I like. I think it makes limited a lot
more fun to play. I don't like yellows.
Yeah. And it's kind of when they like
reprint only the good ones. You know, yeah, they're doing
that a lot more with rares, like printing those specifically at
red. And I like that because if the
effect isn't really strong enough, I don't want to see the
yellow or the blue version of that rare in my pool.
Yeah, leaving them at red, I think is actually really,
really. Strong and they already exist in
the game for those that like want it for their collection or
their cube or their really fringe a deck, you know?
Yeah, like their yellow razor reflex prism build.
Please, please. Terrible.
That's amazing yo. Next next garbage or dumpster
dive? Next dumpster dive deck idea.
Oh my God, yes. Razor Reflex.
Then I said Ninja will get a combo card that combos off of a
dagger attack. Like maybe a combo effect that
throws the dagger. Yeah, there were no combo cards
in this set. Yeah, nothing that said combo on
it, so definitely null there, but blade whirling blade dance.
There's like 3 cards that when it when they attack or they.
They can. They can throw a dagger, yeah.
If it's draconic, If it's the second or higher draconic chain
link, and then there is the Blood Runs deep, which we did
already know about. Yeah, it's kind of implied that
they follow a dagger attack, but I would not, I would not accept
any points for this prediction. Yeah, I'm thinking no points for
this one. But you still got three, right?
Yeah. Yep, he did.
Yeah, great job. I'm right?
Half the time. Now, what do you think about the
whole set, now that you've seen it?
I think this set seems to have hit the sweet spot for power
level when it comes to the CC format.
I think maybe assassin might be stronger than I'm imagining
right now, but like at this point in time, like didn't we
already know that Zen was like already running away with the
meta? I think like these heroes all
seem like they could be played, but I haven't seen any of them
like arise to the top. Not that I'm necessarily the
most like right person to talk to when it comes to like the CC
meta, but. We might still be in more points
for Miss Vale, like Miss Vale might still just be the peak of
CC right now. Even with these heroes and these
cards, I don't really know if anyone's going to get a big
enough bump to really unseat what Zen Enigma knew we're
doing. I am really excited to play
Cinder though and Fang seems like he has some game as well.
The fact that Fang seems to have as much game as he does is so
cool to see. Like I am surrounded by a lot of
people who play warrior and doom about warrior, like not even
just Joel, right? Like thanks.
Like I'm saying, quite a few other people and I have not
heard a single person say a real negative thing about Fang and
Fang's design, which is exciting to me, I'm sure, Joel.
Will talk more about that. Oh yeah yeah, sorry, I got I got
plenty to say No, but he he seems like a lot of fun, like
playing with the daggers pumping them up and being really tricky
in the in the combat chain. That's like what I really enjoy
about warrior the most and it's like only a sprinkle of what you
get with like, you know, double sword.
So this double dagger is like, really?
It's a fresh air breath of fresh air for sure.
And if I can shout out Marionette, like Marionette's a
fantastic design. Great.
I think they really hit it out of the park with these hero
designs and I think they're relatively well balanced.
That's at least my early impressions coming to limited.
I know you guys didn't think we could get to a fuzzy pitch
without talking about limited. And so far like I've been
playing a lot online and I've had the pleasure of doing like 3
drafts in person with the set so far and it seems like this set
is challenging me because I can never get like that.
Nice. Like I haven't had any like 3
O's yet, you know, like I'm losing at least one or two games
per draft and my 2 ones have been like one of those ones was
a buy. So I'm finding it really
difficult to get a good deck together.
A big part of it, I think is like the combination of all the
things that you have to juggle and limited for this set.
You have to decide if marking is important to you.
You have to make sure you get your draconic cards in order to
turn on all of your other cards. You have to make sure that
you're juggling these complicated effects like
Arachne. Web of Deceit is like a really
weird hero to get around, you know?
Like, I know that some people have been having some success
with it, and maybe I'm just so ninja pilled that I wasn't able
to like process assassin cards right off the bat.
But it took me a little bit to like get it going and see how it
works, you know? And I've kind of heard the same
thing from some of the other people I've been talking to that
this set is like particularly challenging for a limited
environment. No, it it really, really is.
I've been struggling a lot with it as well, though I haven't
drafted as much as you. Fuzzy really three times in
person. I got to do 2 at the end of the
pre release and I did one at collector legion You.
Did 2 at the light. Yeah, both times I drafted
Syndra and it got cut from me because I was forcing it and the
other players in the in the pod like weren't able to recognize
that they should pivot off of the issue of.
Too many people forcing. Well, there's there's four
Syndra's that are at our draft. Yeah, I drafted our dragon
blood. I'm like, I'm going Syndra and
everyone else, like, I guess I'll go sooner too.
Fuck you. Yeah, I'm the syndrome.
But even like when I try to stay open at the collector Legion
draft first 3 picks for like generics and stuff.
And then I think I decided to draft Syndra at the exact same
time Bill who was to my right decided to draft syndrome.
So I was getting cut off anyway even though I was trying to stay
open. And part of it's like once you
have those generics that like are really solid blue block
threes or like are just solid on rate attacks, like they don't
fit with your game plan. So you can have a do nothing
deck. Like I ended up with like 5-6
draconic attacks in my deck and I had cards that are like all
your draconic attacks get plus one, which is like just so bad
in Syndra. Like I was looking at my deck.
I'm like, how did I get two wins with this thing?
The answers And one of them was a buy, you know, so my struggle
overall with the set is where I am trying to stay open because I
think it's really tough to be on the like 3 of or four of heroes
in this set in particular. And there's so many hybrid cards
that the openness can really bleed into each other.
It can be hard to tell when you're getting cut really
quickly. But then also like, again, it's
really easy to get punished for forcing a hero because you
really want to be on the open hero.
Yeah, I the both times that I've drafted, I stayed open and then
found the exact right pick to pivot into assassin.
In my first draft, I went three O and in my other draft I went
21, But that draft I also one of the wins was a buy, so it was a
little bit awkward. This is definitely a weird set.
I've stayed open in both of my drafts and I think I found the
right moment to go into it. But that still doesn't guarantee
that you're going to have like this crack deck that's going to
like shit on everyone. Like I there were people with
restricted, very contested builds and heroes who were still
able to put together a very strong deck that completely ran
over me. Wow.
So it it's definitely doable. I've definitely been like trying
to shift my paradigm and tackle the set from a bunch of
different angles and perspectives.
And right now I'm looking at like, try to stay open as much
as you can until you get into that really open hero.
And that's coming from me, Fuzzy Mr. Force KO and forces end to
success. You know, like I'm staying open
in this set and I don't like it, but I'm gonna try to find
whatever works, you know? I honestly think it's a little
bit like the generics just don't feel as strong.
Like we have a lot of like blue three block generics and that's
just kind of a lot of the generic pool.
Yeah, there's not like a backbone that you can rely on,
Yeah. There's no like 3.
There's No 3 for seven, you know.
Yeah, yeah. You can't just be like, well
here's my 3 for seven dot DAC. Like blue block fees are good
and they're helpful, but you have to find power cards in your
class. You got to be able to deal,
deal. Damage.
I haven't thought of it that way yet.
Clark, thank you for that little tidbit.
Yeah, I'm gonna be thinking about that one.
Yeah, go ahead and ponder that. Why don't you?
Why don't you, why don't you draw one at the end of your
turn? Oh my.
OK. The last thing I want to talk
about with my pitch is I'm a little bit disappointed.
Question mark with Chaos. There's not a lot going on in
the chaos talent class, no talent and.
Sorry. There's not a lot going on in
the chaos. Talent and what were they hoping
to accomplish with this? I kind of got a similar vibe
with Royal, except Royal was kind of cool as something that
like you could tack on to any hero and get really minute
benefits with, you know, like, I love this idea of these Imperial
line packages that you could fit in and like you could run them
and maybe you would want to run them without.
Like Imperial Warhorn wasn't even run in Royal decks, but you
could make it royal and it would get even better, you know, But
we don't even have that option with Chaos.
Yeah, there's only one hero that has a Chaos talent, and it
doesn't add any, I think, to their card pool.
The only thing is, is they can run this gem.
Like why not just make it an Arachne specialization, right?
Shard of the Arc Knight is a Viscera specialization.
There's no reason why they couldn't have done that here.
I think, I think I share your sentiments, Fuzzy like it.
It seemed like they wanted Arachne to be chaos from the get
go, and that's why they like only made it for Arachne like
they didn't. You know, if they added a crown
like they should have, like I predicted they they should, I
think it would have been a lot more flavorful because then if
you want people to be part of your brood, wouldn't you want
people to like join the brood? Or is it just those 66, you
know, people on the brood? I don't know.
I think thematically it doesn't work for me.
And I think mechanically it could have been expanded a lot
more in the same way that royal is.
But royal also has like has a lot more lore behind it, like
with the Emperor that was the first royal hero.
And then I think along in that same set you have like the royal
items and stuff like that. So there's a lot going for Royal
that Chaos doesn't have just yet.
I don't know if they'll ever iterate on it, but yeah, I don't
know, it just just seems boring. And while you're talking about
Royal, they printed 2 Royal heroes and they didn't do
anything with that either other than an Imperial Seal thing.
And I guess you can run Imperial Edict if you want.
I'm actually really tempted to shove that into some central
lists. Look at their hand and they
can't do anything with those cards.
It's kind of tempting. It's already in all my
fanglists, yeah. I definitely think this is maybe
one of those instances where we see the big gaps in LS s s
ability to marry lore and story or sorry, lore and mechanics,
because I think very clearly Chaos is intended to be this LA
Apocalyptica. Thank you.
I'm pretty sure it's meant to be that cult and like what they're
trying to do that is supposed to be Chaos.
And if you look at the art for Spurlock, like it, it, even
though it's like definitely meant to be, be more of like a,
a nod to a certain player. Brody Spurlock, yes.
Oh, no way. There's no.
Reason I was not trying. To say his name but.
You're right, it sounds awkward to just not use the name.
It's supposed to be a nod to Brody Spurlock.
But like the art is very much like this weird cult, this
backroom dealing these like twisted figures and
abominations. It just feels weird that like
we're kind of getting that now in like 3 places.
We're getting it from Room Blades with a lot of the Viceroy
art. We're getting it from the shadow
talent and now we're also getting it from Chaos.
And this cult seems separate from Irathrial and.
And I just don't know what they're doing with it.
And you're right, it's because we didn't get enough with chaos.
Like if they were going to introduce chaos to us, I would
have much preferred a more chaos oriented set.
And instead we didn't get that maybe there was supposed to be a
fourth hero creating a square sort of shape, and there was
supposed to be another chaos. And then we would have had chaos
as the shared thing, sort of like how Draconic is shared.
And then then they just scrapped everything and just kept the
fable. Well, maybe they just cut that
hero. And the moment that they cut
that hero, yeah, they need to cut everything else.
And I think it's important to remember Flesh and Blood is
still a fairly new game. You know, Magic the Gathering
didn't start doing properly good marrying of storytelling and set
design until 20 years into their game's history.
They have time. They I mean they I think where
flesh and blood succeeds is the mechanics and like the gameplay,
the pro tour circuit. I think there's plenty of time
to build up that lore. So for right now these like one
off talents just seem. Really fucking weird.
Yeah, they're weird, they're awkward, but I think they are
continually building and I think they're putting the right thing
forward. Right.
If it was, hey, we need to try to figure out what to prioritize
here, trying to make this, like, hero design work and force it
into the set so that we can get our nice Chaos introduction as
it works in the story. Or do we take the time and build
a really good set and kind of leave Chaos on the back burner?
Yeah, you you take the second option every single time.
Absolutely. Yeah, you're kind of giving the
LSSA lot of the benefit of the doubt here, you know, and that's
OK. Like LSSI?
Like the set they produce? Don't.
Don't let nobody say I'm not a positive force.
We also kind of need a word now for these half talents, I guess,
like half talents, talents, yeah, because we have Royal and
Royal was like unique and royal's no longer unique in how
underwhelming the design, but it is you.
Know, yeah, good point. It's now like there's two
talents that are both pretty underwhelming as talents.
You know, Royal is interesting because it is in the talent
space, but it isn't specifically like what talents are kind of
intended to be like talents very much in the lore are like
sources of magical energy. We had a really big conversation
about this in the Discord with Equinox.
But like, I, I very much agree with what she was saying in
there, which is like talents are sources of magical energy and
power. That's typically what they are.
That's typically what they represent.
And so like royal isn't that you don't get powers just because
you have the divine right of kings.
I guess maybe they could make that a thing in this world.
But then. That's I thought they kind of
did with emperor because there was a giant monster spirit God
thing that was in the volcano at Volcor and the emperor would
commune with it. I remember reading that in the
story. Freak weird.
All right. I think I've said my piece about
Chaos and Royal, the only the guys, the guys to put a positive
spin on it. I'm really excited to see if
they expand those in any way in the future.
And I think the world is their oyster for how they could
possibly do that. They have a lot of different
ways to go considering the small launching pad that they have.
Joel, do you want to take it away for Blue Pitch?
OK, my turn. So I just wanna, you know, I
just wanna remind everyone I've won last set.
Yeah, if. You say so.
So my first one was that all daggers will cost 2 resources to
activate. Literally only one dagger.
Sorry, Joel. Next.
I predicted that there would be a.
Crown of Dominion Part 2 specifically for Chaos.
Great idea. Honestly I think there should
have been way more cards that were generic but they were like
flavoured differently. If you had chaos or draconic,
what have? You.
Oh my God, that would have been so cool.
So much fun in draft, So much fun in draft.
If you're chaos discard randomly or whatever, I don't know.
Yeah, like neat stuff, but no. Next, I predicted that Chaos
will be like the meme talent with lots of highly variants,
powerful facts like Spurlocked and Marionette's hero power.
But there was only like one other.
Well, actually the other. The fable seems pretty Mimi, but
I'll leave it to the judges. I don't think it's actually that
Mimi. I mean like I think the gym is
actually pretty damn playable. It doesn't seem like a meme to
me. You can like ruin the opponent's
pitch stack for like late game fatigue battles that assassin
typically does. And the ability to like give
your like cheat yourself an extra arsenal or even like give
your opponent an arsenal when you want to like throw the CNC,
like pitching this to throw C&C seems actually pretty damn good.
I didn't even think about that. That's pretty cool.
Yeah. OK, I don't need to hear Fuzzy.
I know it got 0. I was just going to say that
like I think this card schism of Chaos does seem like if chaos
was going to be the weird random effects like fun party games
talent. This is kind of right in line
with that. It can be like a solid playable
effect that you play in CC, but like this is a party game card.
You show up, everyone shuffles and then puts the top card of
their deck into their arsenal. Oh yeah, at the moment I thought
about it in UPF it. Yeah, this is a mean card.
That's funny. But I wish that they had printed
more than one single Chaos card, so that way you could say,
because this sounds like Chaos has an identity and it's hard
for me to say that it does, you know?
Yeah, I agree. I I think I was also hoping that
there would be a lot of lot more chaos cards and that's why I'd
like, you know, this was going to be alongside just rolling
scabs every turn, throwing big attacks, but it just wasn't
that. So I'm on 0, leaning towards 1/2
I think. Clark says no then.
Half. Yeah, okay.
Wait, we're back. Fuzzy totally convinced me the
moment I thought about it in UPF, I'm like, yeah, no meme,
super meme. What's going on?
That's kind of meme. The playable kind of meme.
Again, like I'm hoping that maybe we see more chaos and
that's what it leans to. You're right, but like.
So we'll come back to this episode in like 4 sets and we'll
retaliate up. Yeah, I predicted that the
majority of warrior cards, around 70%, will be non talented
specifically because I wasn't really sure how they were going
to incorporate both draconic and dagger support for Warriors
because they've never had like really huge dedicated dagger
support for warrior and no draconic warrior before now.
So. Okay, Joel, you do the math
prediction, do the math. What do you get?
Would you come up to? So I counted the all the warrior
cards and all the draconic warrior cards and about 44 of
them were generic warrior, the rest were draconic.
How did you count up cards with different pitch colors?
I did. Each color strip as a unique
card because there were some cards that were uniquely red so
I thought it was fair. Otherwise it would just be
slanted towards the draconic cards.
But if you feel like I gamed the game then.
No, I feel like it's fair. I think it's completely fair
methodology because a card coming in red and blue does
doesn't matter, yeah. I agree.
That's that's sort of where I was coming from.
And what was the ratio 76%? OK.
Yeah, to me that sounds like a. Thing.
Yep. Let's go.
I heard it too. All right.
Next I predicted that Flame Scale Furnace would get a
reprint. RIP.
They should have. They really should have,
honestly they really should have because that car jumped in price
and although like. I was thinking they should
because it's draconic, but they also added a really sweet chess
piece for Cinder to use, and I think Fang already has access to
grains that I think he'll be using more than furnace, so
whatever. Yeah.
And then lastly, I predicted that Assassin will get some new
majestic contracts that will irreparably break the game
again. Yeah, this was definitely back
when we thought there would be more of a blend between Contract
and Stealth in the Assassin card.
Pool yeah. Literally printed 2 contract
cards in the set and none no more of them.
Like I got it. Was expecting more.
Yeah, I guess technically three if you think about hand behind
the pen. Hand behind the pen.
That's the mentor. Oh, technically in the set.
Well, that it's in the Blitz collection.
Yeah, I think, I think that's decidedly outside of the set.
I think that pulls the strings. Hand that pulls the strings.
I'm like, hand behind the pen isn't in this set.
That's a rosatic card. That's a.
That's a 2 for six. If it's an on tech action,
destroy it. Yeah, now, well, I do think the
Majestics that came out of Assassin are very strong.
I don't think they're game breaking, which is a nice change
of pace, yeah. Well, I mean, Take Up the Mantle
is pretty fucking nutty. Pretty gassy.
The fact that you can put reactions on either side of that
card resolving is frustrating to say the least, but it's
definitely really, really cool. Yeah.
So I think in total I got. 1 1/2. 1 1/2 RIP to the goat.
Damn, you seem to not do great when your classes are.
I was just thinking that too like this.
Is not well you were you were saying you're called shot was
warriors gonna suck just like it always does and I don't think
that's quite what happens so I like to think you're pleasantly
surprised right Joel I. I genuinely am sure I don't
think Fang is gonna be like competitively like warping by
any means, but if I take. Into an Armory, I'll probably
take a couple games, but have fun throughout the night.
I think he's very much at the level of where like Kasai was
at. Maybe not in terms of like where
the competition was or the meta being as open as it is, but in
terms of power level, I think he's being released at a very
similar, if not slightly above where Kasai was.
Kasai got 200 points. Yeah.
So like I think she like Fang can definitely win APQ can
definitely win an RTN can definitely win armories.
Joel is warrior as bad as we all thought it was?
How's this that buddy? How are you doing?
Yeah, I've been having a lot of fun brewing with Fang, I think
because there's just like lack of large events happening that a
lot of the deck construction, the early editions are mostly
for myself and a few other friends that I've been playing
with and less of like net decking from like the top pro
players, which has been really nice, I'm not going to lie.
Which will I'm sure change once he gets more solved with, you
know, people figure out where he is in the meta.
But yeah, so First things first, I just want to talk about like
in terms of the set, the overwhelmingly large overhaul of
warrior design. And I'm starting off with two
blocks, which I've complained about before, like Warrior
getting two blocks feels sacrilegious, but I think it
makes a lot more sense. We already talked about like how
the daggers pump by like four and five sometimes to give it
that aggressively slanted play style.
And because of that, a lot of the cards I think Fang is
running at its core are two blocks, which makes me think
that LSS is committed to making Warrior a bit more aggressive, a
bit more tempo oriented and not just making them like, OK, all
of your stuff blocks 3 throw your worst card in front and
then throw your best two card hand, which is refreshing
because that's all you know, Kasai is.
That's all hatchets is really. So having this tempo game,
having this explosive turns of daggers has been a really fun to
play with. So I'm still kind of debating on
whether or not I really like this change to two blocks and
like the more aggressive play style of warrior that's coming
up. Yeah.
Also, I was really hoping that there is going to be attack
actions associated with draconic warrior, but we didn't see any.
We saw some new generic draconic attack actions like ultra
Loyalty, which seems super gas. Just a perfect starter.
So good. And Fang yeah, which is cool and
I think it allows Fang to have like really good starters,
really good ways to like clear Dragons when those come back or
clear allies when the when those come back and then still have
those two attacks from your daggers go towards face.
So I think it solves a lot of the issues that warrior has with
illusionist or like bored state heroes.
And we're also seeing like, well, obviously, like this, no
brainer, it's a it's a red line like Cheerios design because
it's draconic. Draconic is red.
But the fact that you have this mini game of building up your
fealty tokens and having this quest to achieve these free
dagger swings has been a lot of fun.
But it also has been challenging to figure out how red line you
want to be, how lean your cost curve is and how many Blues you
want to be building up your stack of fealties early because
you still have to pitch in your daggers and you're not going to
be pitching a red each. That's just inefficient.
It's also a lot of 0 costed cards for the rest of the
warrior pool. I'm thinking of specifically the
new warrior majestic sharpened senses where it can give all of
your weapon swings go again. You know, you play that on a
blood on your hands turn for Kasai and you only need 4
coppers now to pop off and get all and essentially get quote UN
quote all modes. But that's really, really nice
actually. Like, I think it has a big place
in a lot of decks. Yeah, sharpened senses is very
interesting to me because they decided to make it an aura and
not like a non attack action, which makes me think like
there's gonna be a way to pull auras out of your deck somehow
or have an easier way to play auras.
I don't know that maybe that's just my tinfoil hat theory, but
it could have very easily been a non attack action.
But the anthem itself buffing daggers it you know, it lends
itself to have a combo oriented dagger deck without breaking it
or without making it an extremely powerful like
equipment slot or something. Maybe they just want scour to be
able to destroy. Oh yeah, maybe.
Yeah, yeah. Break storm striders, scour, you
don't get your combo turn. Yeah, please use Storm striders
for Scour, not not for spells. The other thing, or the last
thing I wanted to talk about Warrior, was that there's still
no disruption. So there's not really any reason
for you to be blocking Warrior other than marking and hitting
the marked heroes to get field D tokens, which I didn't really
expect for there to be like on hits with the Warriors,
especially with how evasive these daggers seem to be.
So maybe that's not the worst thing in the world, but I think
disruption, especially now with assassins getting this big bump
in playability, is I'm going to be missing it for sure when I'm
thinking about like what here to take competitively.
Always fun to hear Joel's thoughts on Warrior.
Yeah, and I wasn't dooming. It was great.
The fact that you didn't. Doom, I think is again a
testament to actually just how well designed this set is.
I agree, I agree. I think they cooked for sure.
Next, I want to talk about ninja because I feel like, and we've
talked about it before. I was harken back to like our
one of our first episodes, our aggro episode where we talk
about how the aggro decks will push the the limits of how how
much damage you can deal on a turn and control that sort of
have to adapt to that. And that's why every set with
Ninja seems like the Ninja just breaks the mold and sort of
destroys the format. I don't think that's really
happening with Sindra. I think there was a lot of early
hype surrounding her, but she was quickly overshadowed by Ira
before the Zephyr needle ban, and now it seems sort of fine.
Like it seems very impactful, very aggressive.
You have a lot of two blocks, but all of your attacks just
work really well exponentially. Like poison blades is a really
strong anthem effect. That plus all of your flick
effects. But I think to counteract that,
they play with the graveyard a lot more versus these overrate
attack actions, like recurring these daggers back and forth,
especially with like the non tag actions that do so in addition
to Cinder's hero ability. So that inherently makes Ninja a
lot more interactable, especially if they leave daggers
in the graveyard for the following turn.
Which makes me think like they're really starting to
figure out how to put a cap on and like how much Agros get able
to get away with so to speak. Mm hmm.
I was thinking about like how Zen was able to use bonds to
like, you know, this crazy extent, which still played
around with the graveyard, but there just wasn't that many
tools. And even if you hit one copy of
a combo card, if they've already played bonds or if they've
already filled up their graveyard with multiple copies,
like, there's nothing you could really do.
So having these daggers be your so core to your game plan and be
stuck in your graveyard for a turn cycle, just just really
good design. I don't know, Yeah.
I I think ninjas are very strong in a very healthy way right now,
but that also stands to be contested.
I think it's going to be a lot easier now with retrieve as a
keyword for flick knives to get the 5-6 value over the course of
a game than it was for Tiger Stripe Shuko to get 5-6 value
over the course of a game, which it was able to in quite a few
games. Correct me if I'm wrong here,
Fuzzy. No totally, like you could
easily do Shuko procs like every turn or almost every turn out of
like a. Normal game yeah.
And now with the retrieve and re equipping and it, it definitely
feels like flick knives could even replace tiger Stripe in
certain lists. Yeah, for sure.
Which I'm not sure if I like that I because it's it's a lot
less interactable than tiger stripe shoot go.
You know every other hero is typically getting restricted to
like 3-4 value on their arms piece right?
Along with blocking. I don't know, it feels, it just
feels like a lot of value from one piece of equipment.
Flick knives nowadays. Yeah, but you have to recur in
order to get the value back every time and retrieve costs or
resource. So if you're paying one resource
for everyone damage you deal with flick knives, I think
that's pretty fair. Yeah.
But I guess it was also like another way of putting it would
be like if an equipment said once per turn, attack, reaction,
deal one damage, would you not just run that in every single
hero? I think it's definitely going to
be in in contention for what? One of the best pieces of
equipment in this coming set. Like it's never been this
powerful before. It's price spike is very well
justified. Yeah.
Is I is, I guess kind of what I'm getting at.
And I guess I'm a little concerned.
Prevention is king. You are correct, Joel.
I wonder if they gave us enough. Yeah, they definitely gave us
like some good options like shelter from the storm, but
that's that Majestic is going to be so expensive, even calming
Breeze. But some red line decks have
been running calming breeze into me as Viscerae as a way.
Of just being like here's a red that stops 3 damage, same thing
as what Sigil did. Yep.
I always like when sets have the counter play in generics to
these powerful heroes that are being released, but it seems
like direct damage is such a dangerous thing to play with.
The last thing I want to say about Ninja is that I was really
pleasantly surprised when Phi got some really clear cut
Draconic support alongside Sundry getting all of the cards
that she needs to be viable. Specifically, Devotion Never
Dies just seems crazy in five. Like if you go on a long chain
link and you're just like cycling Phoenix flames and shit
like that and then you just play Devotion Never Dies three times
because they ran out of cards to block it with.
That seems insane. Yeah.
That plus Ignite also seems really good.
Ignite being able to reduce the draconic attack actions that he
likes to run, like mounting anger, stuff like that.
Or even Searing Ember Blade. He can make Searing Ember Blade
cost one because it's activate. Yeah, that's good.
Or his ability to go grab a Phoenix Flame.
Yeah, it reduces all of that. Wait.
Oh, interesting, because he's technically a Draconic card.
Yep. Wow, that's insane.
Works that way on Cindra's ability too.
Cool. Yeah.
So super, super flexible. Ignite.
Ignite did a great job of providing like a really
interesting idea to both heroes in the draconic ninja space.
Now, if I can LL in peace and the last thing I wanted to talk
about was like the assassins I'll briefly go over because I
think Clark covered a lot of what I wanted to say.
It feels very complex in draft. You need a lot of stuff.
You need stealth attack actions, you need reactions to interact
with the stealth cards you drafted.
And I think you want a lot of dagger support so that you have
something to do with your action points.
Because like once stealth card plus 3 React is just not going
to win you a game versus what my opponent did to me at our first
draft where they were doing like, you know, equipment
inflicting the Griffin check, Clara's or whatever they're
called. Just wrecking my day.
The Chiclets. Yeah, the Chiclets.
And also I think they really managed to do some good scaling
of the assassin attack reactions.
It seems like all of them don't really go above 3, which was
good to hear because like with just a neck and other cards like
they just, you know, get insane exponential value was just I, I
I don't think I could do another assassin set like that.
I mean. Have you seen the clips of what
people have been doing with Kiss of Death?
Oh no, I haven't and I I will not be watching those.
I They simply do not exist. Yeah.
If I don't see them, they don't exist.
And then I think the marketing support is OP.
It's just insane. I think it's going to be really
hard to keep four or five card hands as Agradex, and I think
that's kind of fine because Agradex have been having the
time of their lives. Wow, Enigma.
'S got 600 points last season. Like clear cut, the best deck
for Rosetta season? I think that Go beat Enigma
yesterday. Didn't Enigma had got more
points than any other hero? I think that's how you know the
Agradex are having such a good time.
I think that was largely because of full of power cyb enigma
winning PQS and not some. Oh and also worlds like that was
200 of it. I'm pretty sure A.
Hundred 100. A. 100 for world yeah, they
really cut the amount that world's gay wow.
I think because they saw 5 go from like 500 to 800 and they
were like. Huh.
You shouldn't just let a hero win one, go on a hero run, win
one tournament and then immediately LL Yeah, maybe
that's not a good thing for this system.
Well, yeah, that's pretty much all I had to say about this set.
Overall, I'm very happy with the way things are landing.
I still think Assassin's going to be annoying to play into, but
I always think that doesn't. This set doesn't really have a
lot to do with that. And as they are, it's they're
intent, it's intentional. Yeah, yeah, All the flavor tech,
it's like this will piss you off.
Yeah. But that's it for me.
I think we have a few more predictions, though, in Arsenal
Zone. Should we do those?
Yeah. So the Arsenal Zone is the part
of our podcast where we talk about a card we like, a card we
hate, a card we like to hate, or just a card that's like fair.
Like when you're going through the draft pack and then you're
like, were there only 13 cards? No, no, no, there.
What's this card doing here? So we're going to start off by
going over the predictions that we made in our pigeon
predictions episode, which is we always like to take the Arsenal
Zone as an opportunity to shout out an expansion slot card or
what could go into the expansion slot for an upcoming set.
So I predicted that a cilia would get an insane
specialization, similar to how Virgin's got Ring of Roses or
Ring around a Rosie. Whatever.
That didn't happen. RIP the goat.
The robot. Yeah.
I guessed there would be a non attack action brute expansion
slot card. There was not.
You want BRB. Two, the slot ended up being the
Command and Conquer. That's what the slot ended up
being. I was expecting a Missouri
specialization and that didn't happen.
We were all wrong. No correct points there.
Look at this no points for expansion slots.
The card that I would like to shout out is Tooth of the
Dragon. It's the zero cost draconic
instant that says your next draconic attack this turn gets
plus three power. And what I like about this card
is it's clearly better in Fang, right?
It's so gas in Fang. As a matter of fact, I feel like
all of the draconic instants are better in Fang because Fang gets
an extra plus one and go again attacked all attached to all of
these. And Cintra doesn't get anything
extra for playing a draconic instant.
If anything she's like, man, I wish that was a draconic attack
then it would have been cool. Then it would have been
contributing to my game plan. So I feel like Cintra is in a
little bit of a weird spot with a lot of these draft cards
because a lot of these comments are instants.
There's also like the for the realm, for the emperor, for the
Jerkai and blaze headlong. Like those are all like pretty
good in Syndra still mostly, but all these instance are like half
of the draconic quote UN quote hybrid cards that these two
heroes share. And I feel like they're just so
much better in Fang, you know, and the ones that are better in
Syndra aren't even really that much better in Syndra.
Like Fang is like, you know, down a clown with like any of
these draconic hybrids. Yeah, definitely.
So that's what I've been thinking.
About yeah, that card's gas 0 for 4:00.
Nice. So I'm going to continue my
tradition of bringing 2 copies of the card that I shouted out
and giving a signed copy to each of my fellow hosts, one for you
and one for you. Thank you, Fuzzy.
So for my card, I was going to talk about Hunt's End because I
think that card's fucking gas. I love playing it so much but
I'm actually changing it to Kabuto of Imperial Authority.
This card is so strong it feels like warmongers diplomacy levels
are strong in the way that this card heavily impacts certain
heroes more than others. Like obviously against Warrior
it's like you didn't block anything the previous turn and
now you gonna throw A5 card hand at me?
I'm thinking you're going to take another turn to do that and
just block with Kabuto. They can't swim with weapons so
strong. Some other decks, like for
instance, Aurora, I could I think it could see some play
during that matchup because if they if they have channel
lightning Valley and you know, they have tunic up, they're
going to send Starfall. You can, you know, block a break
point with the card from hand or some armor or is it right on a
revel turn? Exactly yeah, exactly.
Assuming that I know the revels coming out but it just says.
Read it sometimes. Yeah, for sure.
And for that reason, I think this card is just it has so much
skill expression baked into the design on top of a very, very
powerful effect. So I'm really excited to use
this card and pull it in extended our cord foil.
I thought it was a really cool effect that we saw, you know,
the warriors like the authority on weapons.
Oh yeah, that was cool too, Yeah.
So Fuzzy, you talked about a card that appeared in the set
and was like a great draft common Joel, you talked about
this new really cool legendary piece of equipment.
Not really going to be seen in draft, but like makes a big
impact on your CC hero. I'm going to talk about an
expansion slot Majestic that kind of does fuck all
Pervicerite, Dallas and Roomblood, but your diamond art
is so fucking good. But you're down on that card
again, dude, everyone's down on that card.
We were A lot of people are not really, really hype on that card
now. I mean, Alexander, I'm pretty
sure it was Alexander Voor. It was one of the Voor brothers
who was on the AG Protein, did do a stream testing Vicerite for
Memphis and did play Rouse in that list.
I think that is a really really cool card.
The question is if it's good enough because it really has a
big demand now. It is surprisingly more playable
than you may think in a rattle bone centric list with a good
amount of Blues, Greganian tomes, Sonata arcanics it is
very easy for you to play non attack action cards that
actually end up going card neutral.
And with arcanics and rattle bones specifically you can kind
of go grab quote UN quote grabbed your douse in room blood
after playing a non attack action card.
Could you remind us what the card does, Clerk?
Yes I can. Fuzzy Dallas and Roomblood is A1
for four attack action card blocks for three like most room
blade attacks and it says create a room chant for each non attack
action card you have played this turn.
If you have played three, eight games, go again.
If three or more moon chants are created this way, which is a
little different, right? Yes it is slightly different
because it's synergizers great with Mordred.
So with Mordred you only really need to play two non attack
action cards, which is really only one more non attack action
card which can lead to some disgusting turns like Mordred
pitch of blue dows creepers in revel.
And then like you have two action points and you go like
9th blade weapon into like something else.
There's some disgusting lines in there, but it's a it's a good
card. I like it, but everyone's kind
of down on it right now. It demands a lot and really big
non tac action heavy hands, which we're not trying to do.
We're trying to have the 5050 right.
Especially if you were on a run Arcanics, which synergizes
really, really nicely with the card because you can pitch into
Arcanics and then go grab your Dows and the thing that you want
to play after Dows. So it's it's troublesome.
I don't think this is going to make a really big splash or
really big impact on this right lists.
It doesn't really fit in our cost curve.
We need to start running non tech action cards that we
haven't been prioritizing it just I don't think it's going to
make that big of an impact. But God damn, that art is sick.
I am literally paying someone for the mat from Memphis.
I'm like, kid, can I get your mat please?
I will give you money because that Matt is just sick and I
want to play with it. I like the challenge that it
presents, you know, like this could be a one for seven easily.
It kind of could be a one for as many as you can play, not attack
actions, right? Like it could be more than A1
for seven. Infinite.
But one for seven go again is like a doable rate with this
card, you know? Yes.
And that is definitely it's strongest version.
It's just, how reasonable is it to do that now, You know, we're
already struggling to keep 4 card 5 card hands in some
matchups. Are we really going to start
running a card that does that? And especially if it impinges on
our deck space from things like Snuff out?
Like I'd much rather throw a snuff out against Assassin and
try to get 2 cards out of their hand then to try to keep a four
card 5 card hand and throw this. Maybe this is a Florian card?
Oh could be a Florian card, but then Florian would need to play
two non attack action cards before playing it and then have
something to follow up like. I wonder how reasonable that is.
Or even just like one non attack and then it's a one for six with
no go again, that's not even that bad.
I guess it's not that bad. Yeah.
I mean, Air Thor surge cost 2. Would that pump this or does
that? It would, yeah.
So you could have a three card like 9 + 2 room chance.
No, it's not the worst thing in the world.
Or you play chat. I'm not heroic and.
Then reach it bud. And then the middle.
Epic. Oh.
Oh, OK, yeah. Then you throw this with go
again, and then you have two resources floating for your plow
through paws. That's a.
That's a lot 7. 7. Card hand 7 + 9 plus three rune
chance for five cards and you get to keep your Chen my heroic
after. Holy.
All right, I think that's all we got for today's episode.
No, that's a six card hand. It's 2 Blues, malefic and and
CMH. Malefic Taos, CMH and the power.
So you play force of nature. That's a briar spec.
We're not playing Flory anymore. Snatch, we're back.
No, you Tome of Harvest. Oh.
That still makes it, doesn't make it better.
I think that's all we have for today's.
Thanks for podding with me, boys.
No, thank you. Thanks for listening everybody.
Until next time guys, bye bye. Pitch it to Me podcast is hosted
by Fuzzy Dump, Clark Moore and Joel Racinos, Executive producer
talent Stradley, logistics coordinator John Farkas, music
by Dylan Holtz, logo by on V sound mixing, Christopher Moore
and last but not least, you. Thank you for listening.
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