Welcome to Pichitumi Podcast, a show about the subjective past,
present and potential future of flesh and blood design.
Where every card is special in its own way.
Today's episode will be about hero specializations on red
pitch. Clark asks why is this a
specialization on yellow pitch? Joel will read between the lines
on specializations and on blue pitch.
Fuzzy analyzes why some heroes get special treatment.
You can find us across all socials such as Blue Sky, TikTok
and Instagram at Pitch It to Me podcast.
I'm fuzzy. I'm Joel.
And I am Sparta. And that's Clark.
So this is our first banked episode, quote UN quote,
recorded in January and released whenever we feel like it being
released. Probably the first time we got
busy and didn't record an episode for this week.
Yeah, we've discovered after a year and a half of being flesh
and blood podcasters that sometimes there's a big event
that us flesh and blood players want to go participate in and
that makes it hard to do. Flesh and blood podcasts, or
even like a wedding. Or like a vacation?
Or like literally not podcasting every single week.
So part of our 2025 New Year's resolution for the podcast has
been like actually record some episodes in advance.
So that way they're ready to go when we get them out.
You know, something we've talked about doing for a long time and
something we're hopefully actually doing now.
So the farther away from January 4th you hear this, the better
this has been in practice. For this episode, we want to
return to a lot of the origin of why we started this podcast
talking about those base design elements that flesh and blood
does differently and special from other TC GS.
And so we sort of took a look at some of the fundamental design
elements of the game. And one that we sort of never
really talked about before and I don't see a lot of people
talking about are hero specializations.
So we dedicate an entire episode to it.
Yeah, imagine you're making a trading card game and you have
to structure what cards are allowed in what decks.
Specializations are key to that structure, to how flesh and
blood works. So we can talk for it about an
entire episode. So Hero specializations are
cards that only a named hero can use.
For instance, Arc, like Sentinel, has prison
specializations so that only heroes named Prism can use that
card. Yeah, it doesn't matter if they
are the OG Prism or the new Prism either.
Prism hero, even though they have different card texts, are
both Prism heroes and therefore both can play Arclight Sentinel.
Let's jump into my red pitch. Why is this a specialization?
When we talk about why specific cards get the specialization
treatment, it's a hard conversation because a lot of
the times it barely matters that it's a specialization.
A lot of the time, at least a lot of the time, it feels that
way. Like in the in the example we
brought up in turn 0, Prism's the only Light illusionist, so
she's the only one that can play Arclight Sentinel even though it
says they're on the card. Only Prism can play it.
There's no other contenders. There's no other people that are
like ah Dang, it says Prism specialization so I can't use it
if anything. Sorry that was about to jump
topics to Shiana for a second. We're gonna talk about Shiana at
all. I think we at least have to
mention her at some point, and it's going to be a tangent that
completely derailed the. Episode I was about to do it on.
The first bullet point, it's gonna extend the extend the
pitch by like 5 minutes. A lot of the times it barely
matters. And then also when people use
online deck builders like February or they look at things
like fabric, it's only going to include the cards that you can
play in your deck. So you don't think about the
cards that like, could have been playable if they didn't have
this one line of text on it, right?
Yeah. Like, is it worth it to think
about playing Crippling Crush in Victor if you can never play
Crippling Crush in Victor to begin with?
Yeah, stop thinking about it. Yeah, listener, stop thinking
about crippling crush in Victor. But one thing that I believe
specializations do is that they help create clear definitions of
play patterns for heroes. Ellie Bird actually just put out
a really great tweet in January where she said like one of the
best things about flesh and blood is how invested people get
into heroes and hero designs and they become, they identify with
the hero designs. Specializations are all about
helping define the hero and give them a unique mechanical
identity that is just for them, that is special for them.
And I think that's really important, right?
Dory uses Dawn Blade because a lot of Dory specializations say
the word Dawn Blade on them. I want to play Dory.
So you go to the little search bar and you type in Dory and you
see cards that pop up that say Dory on it.
And then some of those Dory cards say Dawn Blade.
And you go, oh, I should run Dawn Blade.
And Dory becomes the Dawn Blade hero in that moment, right?
It's a very clear, linear way, saying this is the core identity
of the hero and how we intend to build and play her.
You can find other strategies, right?
Hatchet's story is still strong, but Dom Blade is the identity
for Dory. And at the risk of bringing this
up, for every bullet point, there are also like counter
examples. It's like specializations have a
lot of ways they can be used, a lot of ways they can add to the
game, even though they're like very hard structured way of
organizing the game. You know, like there's certainly
specializations that can think of that do not give you a game
plan. You can build your plan around,
you know, Oh. Yeah, like there are other ways
that they have learned to use specializations, but I think
that was especially how they designed early specializations.
So it's a signal to players, play this card, this card is
good. This card is for your hero.
Play it. We designed it specifically for
them. It is all special and neat and
gift wrapped for them. So it's actually I think a
really good idea that when you first start building a new hero,
to look at what the specializations for that hero
are and really start to get an idea of what is strong about
this hero. What is this hero trying to do?
Like plan A? Yes.
But you're right, fuzzy, there's lots of different reasons why
things are made specializations. I think one of them is cycles.
So something that I've noticed recently is that when they give
a specialization in a way to one hero in a set, it's also given
to other heroes in the headset the same way.
LSS really enjoys making these cycles and these patterns, and I
love it too, right? Like my little ADHD brain goes,
Oh yes, pattern recognition. And I think that it's important
for things to be a part of a cycle because it helps give them
all shared identity, and it helps with set identity as well,
right? A great example of this is in
heavy hitters. All of the heroes got a uncommon
headpiece specialization. Which was also kind of unique in
and of itself because I don't think we saw specializations.
Well, we had the a couple rare ones from Monarch, right?
Yes, salt harvests is a rare and herald of judgement.
Once they all got one. Yeah, but they're not like
equipment slots, I think is what Clark is trying to get at, Yeah.
Well, no, no, no, I mean like it, it's good, right, like, but
the point is that I see them regularly do cycles.
I mean, even the Monarch 1 is a great shout to this, right?
They all got a rare cycle of specialization cards.
And so I think that that is actually I don't is Bolton's a
rare B is via specialization. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they they like all got a rare specialization and.
Like when you have three kids, you have to give them all a
Christmas present. Very much so.
Yep. Going to the origin of the game,
we can look at the Welcome to Rate specializations and how
they're all tutors. Actually, I'm so sorry,
technically the 1st two sets all have tutor specializations.
Yeah, so the first two sets, right.
It's not even welcome to Ray. It's also includes Arcane
Rising. Like specializations were the
tutors for those heroes originally.
And it's interesting because we talked about tutors in an
episode way, way back when in 2024.
And we were like, yeah, so cool. Like all the classes got a got a
tutor. We didn't even talk about how
all those tutors are technically hero specializations.
I think that's really, really fascinating, right?
The idea of creating these things in cycles is something
that has been foundational to flesh and blood.
Why do you guys think that is? Well, basically my answer is 2
parts. One, because it's kind of cool.
We love the patterns. You mentioned this before.
I think literally it gives trading card players a little
bit of a :) on the inside. When they see that they
recognize the pattern. They're like, oh, they all got
one at rare or they all got a funny hat.
It's. Cute. 2nd to that, I think it's
also about favoritism. Trading card players, especially
in flesh and blood, get attached to their certain hero.
So when a new hero, even if it's the first time they got seen in
that set right, they're excited to play with that card.
If your hero didn't get one, you better believe that the other
heroes didn't get one either, or else you're the kid who didn't
get a Christmas present even though everyone else did.
Yeah, even in Heavy, a set where we talk about there being
winners and losers in the hero releases.
Yeah, very much so. Still, the vein of like, well,
everyone got this, a headpiece specialization.
Where's my hat? Yeah, you don't want to be the
guy without a hat. And interestingly enough, I
think Victor got the worst hat, but that's because Victor also
got the legendary shield arm Aegis.
Yeah, he got a bonus spec. He is the favorite.
He he was the favorite from that set, but they made his shared
specialization the worst. Well, did everyone get a a
specialization outside the headpiece?
Because. They all got a majestic
specialization. As well.
So maybe he's not like Onoz is legendary, right?
Armagus is legendary, but then he also got the four costs that
can sack of gold for the +3 and overpowered golden son.
Man. So he also got golden Son.
So he got 3 specializations. Everyone else in heavy only got
2. But his headpiece specialization
is objectively the worst. No one runs that fucking card.
Like I don't even think in Commodore people run that card
maybe as A2 block but like the effect is really bad.
I would I would wager that Kasai or you would wager I would I
would get wager Kasai. RKO have some of the worst ones
cuz what is golden glow? You block with one yellow card,
get a gold. If you block with two yellows,
get a gold. You have to have two yellows in
hand when you want to block with the headpiece as well.
Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty rough.
Like I've I've seen Kasai's run the the hood I've I even in
budget lists I've never seen a Victor run the run Golden glare.
The last reason why I think LSS makes things specializations is
because James White in his infinite wisdom said so.
Like I, I think there is something to be said for like a
specialization being just for a specific hero of a specific
name. And then when they LL they may
not want that strategy or that ability around anymore.
And I think that is actually something that only really James
knows. Like I don't even think the rest
of the dev team is really aware of the like 20 year plan that
James White had when he first made this game.
For me it's less about power level right?
And it's more about saying, well, next time we print Light
warrior, we might want to build it around different mechanics or
we might want to shift the perspective.
And this is me specifically thinking about what they just
did in Rosetta with Briar and how they then split Briar into
an earth room blade and a lightning room blade.
That neither of them really existing in Briar's space as it
were doing the same things that Briar did.
Both of them feel very distinctly different, even
though they were supposed to be the print, right?
So I think specializations can be a way to say, well, here's
this play pattern. And then in the future, if we
return to it and don't go down that route, we can print other
things for them. And this won't have to be a
carryover or a holdover in that regard.
We've never had one of the original 8 heroes LL, but there
is a chance that when they LL, they print a different hero with
a different name back into that slot.
And it's important that they then don't get access to things
like Lesson in Lava, Knock the Death Whistle, become the Ark
Knight. Those are really, really
powerful effects that maybe they don't want on those future
heroes. And while I was doing research
for this, I found something out in the release set.
For every single CC hero, they have had a specialization.
Every CC hero has been released with a specialization except
Mist Veil. What the fuck happened with Mist
Veil? Why did they not get any
specializations? That's weird, right?
Like even Arachne in Dynasty got regicide.
Even Arachne got a specialization.
What is going on in this veil? Yeah, I I was thinking about
that too. And one of the thoughts that
came to mind was I wonder if some specializations are like so
obvious that they don't need to be specializations.
And I'll talk a bit more about that in my pitch, but like all
of them are very centered around, you know, it's the
sacred with like the crouching tiger fucking Fang strike and
slither specific new and spectral Shields for enigma.
And I don't think Mystic is a class that they like necessarily
have to return to in general, But I also think like we could
see completely different classes because they're so and they
share so many different cards in that same card pool.
Like the sacred arts could just be like they don't have to be
specializations because it'll there's no worry about using
them in other classes in the future.
Yeah, sure. I mean, the counter to that is
that they've put specialization on things like that in the past,
right? A lot of these talented heroes,
Arclight Sentinel was the example we started this pitch
off with. They would exist almost in the
same space. And also Joel, what you're
suggesting I don't think LSS would do because they promised
that every card will always be playable, they will always
reprint something. So even if these 3 Mystic heroes
LL, they will print another Mystic ninja war ninja assassin
illusionist. I got there, I remembered.
I don't know. I want to agree with what Joel
is saying. You know that it's possible that
they have no intention to ever return to the Mystic talent, at
least for these specific classes.
I could see it being like, it was really strong the last time
we returned. It'll be really hard for us to
honor that design space as we returned again, and these heroes
will always be playable in Living Legend.
I think one thing that's true now that wasn't true in the past
is that Living Legend has a lot more players on it.
It has a lot more presence in the community.
So it's a lot more reasonable to say like your collection is not
useless. You just have to go play a
different format. You know, we know you invested
in this hero, you love this hero, you want to play this
hero, but you can't anymore. Well, you can still go to Living
Legend. You don't have to like wait for
your hero to be reprinted again because it might not happen.
Like I think that could be a reasonable shift in their
stance. For my last point here, I think
that certain cards are also specializations because it
allows them to print cards for specific formats.
This was most apparent with young heroes and when they first
printed young heroes with specializations.
These are our Benji's, our KO Berserker Runt, these are our
Kasai, right? They've since printed adult
heroes, I think because they looked at that print strategy of
young only heroes and didn't like it, and they saw a big push
from the community to bring those heroes into CC.
So they did, but it's caused problems.
Twice now we've had LSS confirmed that they wanted to
give a hero design a different name, but couldn't because of
the specialization that they had.
A-IO was supposed to be Data Doll originally, but
Microprocessor was just way too strong of a card in CC.
Similarly, Zen was supposed to be Benji, but they were
struggling designing around Wander with Purpose and Spring
Tidings, so that seems rough. If it's getting in the way of
design to print these heroes into other formats, why not just
ban those specialization cards in the specific format?
Why not just ban microprocessor when dated all comes out and
give her a new specialization in the set?
Yeah, they've certainly done preemptive bands before, like
Stubby Hammers with Phi specifically in Blitz and then
later in CC because it was just so absurdly broken.
Paired with Art of War, I could see them doing the same thing
for some of these specializations that they find
so hard to build around. They've done it before, they can
do it again. Yeah, but I think they don't
want to because, back to my original point, specializations
are supposed to be core to how you play a hero.
I think they really, really want to avoid banning specialization
cards because they are supposed to be how the hero plays.
And by saying well we made it a little too strong or overpowered
is actually not really something that they want to be signaling I
think to the player base or community.
I think they want to deliver on the fantasy of the Hero of the
Class slash class talent combo through the specialization
cards, and when you have to ban one to do that, it's not a good
look. So I think LSS is really going
to have to struggle to get their adult date at all and their
adult Benji into CC while still maintaining these cards that
they designed to only be good when everyone has 20 life.
But if they're able to figure it out, then I think that the game
will be healthier and better for it because these specializations
didn't get banned. All right.
Thanks, Clark. Joe, what do you have for yellow
pitch? So my section is titled
Specializations are the future. And obviously like whatever the
specialization has printed will give information about like what
the hero's primary intended archetype is.
Clark's talked about like your identity and how specializations
sort of lock these heroes into those identities.
But what I find interesting about specialization is like
what they don't tell you what's not on the card and what
archetype they're maybe saving for another hero down the line
or in the same like talent slash or the same talent slash class
combo. And my first example is Luminous
Ascension with Bolton. And it got me thinking because
I've heard a lot of discourse about like.
Bolton's being held back specifically because of Luminous
Ascension and should just be banned along with like Beacon
and Victory which is not a spec but just a good card.
And it makes me think like the next Light Warrior will either
be a Bolton 2 point O or it could be a completely different
one. Because they won't have access
to Luminous ascension, they would be relegated towards like
attack Action focus rather than weapon focus like Bolton is with
Raiden. Yeah, I would love to see a
future where there's another Light Warrior printed and we get
to see the interplay between the new Light Warrior as well as
what old support Bolton can get from the new set.
Kind of like how we're seeing with Florian and Aurora right
now and Viscerae, you know, like Viscerae getting the extra
support. It feels like not only have we
have 4 new heroes, but also we get to have extra play with the
previous ones, and Bolton as a very siloed talented hero is
getting a lot less opportunities to see new cards.
So it feels like if we want to see the light Warrior space
expand, it's got to specifically be Light Warrior.
That's what you were saying? Just made me think of Joel.
And it also feels like the specializations are a promise
right? That there will be no reason to
silo these behind the specialization keyword unless we
were going to see more Light Warrior in the future, you know?
Yeah. And I think one of the biggest
issues with Bolton specifically is he's the 1st Warrior to
incorporate attack actions within the Warrior class.
And because of that, you're kind of contending with both weapon
synergy and attacks attack action synergy that we won't get
to see iterated on very much until Bolton LLS and, you know,
after he gets to a point where you can get LL points.
They've shown both strategies where they are willing to print
the hero with the exact same name Prism, and they want to
print someone with a completely different name chain and
vincette. Right?
So I guess what are you guys are saying is because so much of
Bolton's power level is in his specializations, but the general
carpool needs so much help and a reimagining that they would
specifically not reprint Bolton so to allow themselves the
design space to play with light warrior.
Yeah, kinda. I think that's one rap that
could go with it. Yeah, I think in order to
reiterate on the like attack, attack action side of Bolton,
because his here ability specifically says charge, we're
gonna be stuck on charge until he's gone.
And then if he LLS, the next light warrior will either have
to go back into the same place as Bolton or a new light
warrior. And then we can reiterate on
attack actions what it means to get value from charging, if
there is gonna be charging, things like that.
There's just a lot of open ending questions with Bolton
specifically that I think. And that's what makes his
specialization interesting to me.
Yeah. The next combination I was
thinking of when typing out the notes was rise up and red Hot
with Droma and Phi. And this might be a little bit
of ground fruit because we know what the next iteration of
Draconic is. And with red Hot specifically,
like we've talked about how Draconic has very, very weak
class identity or talent identity.
And that's part of why red hot specifically says if you reveal
Draconic car to deal damage. Conversely, with is it Rise Up,
that Rise Up does Phoenix Flames OK, but with Rise Up, it's
specifically it says Phoenix Flames.
So we can kind of assume that through looking at this
specialization with Phi and with Dromi, Phoenix Flames won't
appear in the next Draconic set. And we see that now with Syndra
and Fang with no mention of Phoenix Flames whatsoever.
We can kind of assume that neither neither one of them will
use Phoenix flames. But that's sort of like the
deductions that I would make from specializations, especially
when the talented heroes of LL and we're sort of waiting on the
next iteration. Rise Up and Red Hot are also
fascinating because they are Dromi and five specializations.
They are shared between the two heroes, and you can see
arguments for why you know one of them might be better than the
other. I think that's cool.
Definitely and then lastly, you know, stick with me on this one.
I think Doomsday and blasted fed like Levi consume slash Levi
redeemed is another example of what we can expect out of the
future of flesh and blood because based on these
specializations, I think we could never see another shadow
brute. Like it might just be iterations
of Leviah down the line. Yeah.
And that's because Doomsday is also like a moment in the lore
and her specialization, you know, Blasafed, Leviah consumed
and Leviah redeemed. While it is a great card, I
think there's a lot more lower implications that make it a
Leviah specialization and not a shadow brute like card.
Like similar to Shadow realm horror.
That makes me think that, you know, there's a lot more lore to
be unlocked with this card and also locks down what's possible
for the evolution of shadow brew as a whole.
Especially because mechanically these cards care about stacking
blood dent and that might not be a play pattern they want to
return to at a later date. You know, it could just be Levi
specific. It's so interesting because I
mentioned in Red Pitch about how a lot of the times it is about
hero identity. That identity is not just
mechanical identity, it's also lore and storytelling identity.
And So what you're sort of pointing out here is like these
specializations are telling the story of the hero as it
progresses. I think Visserie had something
very similar happened throughout in 2024 where we were getting
these expansion slot cards that sort of showed Visserie going
through Eraphiel and just being like, oh, pretty landscape.
Oh, pretty landscape, what's going on over here?
What's going on over there? And it's like, what are you
doing? Where are you going, my God?
But it, it helps tell their story, right?
Specifically for the hero. Yeah, and in that way, some play
patterns are I feel like are just going to be hero locked,
like the way that Dory wields the Dom blade after she LLS.
You know, it's kind of interesting, something I didn't
say in your pitch, Clark, but the way that they silo these
designs, it could be to strengthen the lore behind the
heroes, but it also could be like, they saw what this
archetype did in the meta and they're like, OK, now we have
the freedom to kind of move away from this.
And we know that these specific cards, especially if they're
specializations, will never be abused again if we don't want it
to. And that way they can print like
the next line of warriors that wield the Dom blade or go in a
completely different direction with like axes or whatever.
And they can't really use like, you know, Steel Blade Supremacy
to draw a card after every like dagger hit for instance.
I actually have something interesting here.
I kind of want to combine what you're saying about Bolton and
what we were just saying here about Durinthia in terms of like
storytelling moving forward. Could you ever see a world where
like Durinthia becomes the new Light warrior and like the Dawn
blade truly becomes the Dawn blade and becomes the light
Warrior weapon? It's sort of giving an evolution
and letting these specializations follow Dawnblade
into a light warrior space even though they are warrior only
cards. I think there's like, there's so
much like tension between Bolton being the light hero and
Durinthia being like the next like obvious pick for a light
hero that you could like cut it with a knife, like how obvious
it is, you know what I mean? So I could definitely see
Durinthia being the new Light Warrior and how the Durinthia
specializations paired with like the light worry cards and.
Could you also imagine Lumina ascension on a Dawn Blade build?
I could, and I'm glad that it's a Bolton specialization because
that would be stupid, yeah. Like I, I think that really sort
of nicely shows maybe why some of these specializations are
landing where they're landing and how they can give us signals
into future design spaces and story beats as LSS moves
forward. This is a little off topic here
but it's interesting that you mentioned Dory becoming the new
next Light warrior because like that design space is going to be
intention for like all the original 4 heroes.
They feel like they could be they would be talented if they
were printed today. You know like Bravo in lore is
from Arya which is why he's the one that got reprinted as Bravo
star of the show. You know, like he's one with the
flow that like gives them the element to energy.
This right is very connected to. Erathiel the the Ratherly
Monastery like in lore, like he is shadow but he's not in
because when they were printing them they weren't printing
talents at that time. You know, Dory's the same way
with the Monarch, like dudes right now.
OK, so that's much fun. But but Katsu is.
From He's from Mysterio. He's green.
The green talent. But Katsu is from Mysteria, you
know, he could easily be Mystic if you're yeah, I guess I'm in
my head this or I was in welcome to rage and Radar wasn't.
I'm like, I count 4. That means welcome.
Yeah. So my last point for this pitch,
I think conversely, while we're doing this analysis of
specializations, I could, I think it could also be like as
simple as I forgot to put it on there, but you get the idea.
And this sort of example is like the number one is Spirit of
Arena. Like it's not a bolted
specialization, but on the text it says you can play luminous
ascension at instant speed and luminous ascension is a bolted.
Yeah. So it's like, why wasn't this a
specialization? Could it be like a logistical
flaw? I don't know.
But like there are there are cars where I'm like, what, what
happened here if there's so much flavor everywhere else?
Yeah, that's kind of like Lord of Wind is a Katsu
specialization, and it only works if you play it with
another Katsu specialization against you release, you know,
so they didn't really have to make Lord of Wind a
specialization because there would be no reason to put it in
your deck. Right, right.
So there's like a little, you know, a lot of examples of
redundancy. Also with Reelin and Plan for
the Worst, those are not Riptide specializations.
But I cannot see a world where other heroes would be playing
that to great effect if you're not Riptide.
Unless we see like the Ranger design go somewhere else where
like it can be a bit more mid rangey and like use traps as
like their defensive cards. Yeah, could be interesting.
Definitely. I think there's a lot of
iteration left for Rangers, so I could see that being the case.
So yeah, that's my two cents on, you know, the implications.
Reading between lines of specializations.
That's stuff I think about, in case you're wondering, Like what
goes on in my mind. I thought that your pitch was
really fun, Joel, because it pretends that we can understand
what LSS is thinking based on like which cards are made
specializations or not. Because really, I don't think we
have that much of A clue. Like, who knows what they're
going to print in the future? I think it's whatever they want.
If we're getting another Ninja Assassin set like right after
Outsiders, like they can print whatever they want, you know?
Absolutely, yeah. One last thing that that I do
want to mention for your pitch, Joel, is I, I think it's really
cool that specializations can kind of tell us the future of
the hero and like if they'll stay a certain way or if they'll
change or where they might change to whilst keeping a
certain core identity. Because like at the end of my
pitch, I sort of brought up Benji and Data Doll.
It was almost an afterthought. It was like the last thought I
had while doing the notes. But it does tell us what would
these heroes look like in CC, Sort of similarly to how we
could have looked at how blood on her hands works mechanically.
And that could have given us a very strong idea of what Kasai
looks like in CC. And it did the idea of like
building up money and then sacrificing it for power.
Sure, they went for the gold route rather than the copper
route, but it's the same general play style of building a
resource to sacrifice for power turns.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
I actually disagree. I think they thought copper
generation was too strong, so they added and this is like my
tinfoil hat there really, but I think they thought that copper
generation in CC was too powerful because of blooded her
hands. And for that reason they decided
to change the lore and make it gold oriented so that you know,
you still there was like still this quest to get copper because
it was very easy in blitz and I could very easily see that card
being broken in CC. But still a similar pay play
pattern. So maybe if now we're looking at
Benji and Data Doll and what they might look like, OK, this
card needs to be legal and useful, but maybe in just a
different way than what? What might be expected, right?
Yeah, I too am excited for a Crucible 2 point O Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Actually, no, 3 point O because
technically Eberfest was like 2 point O anyways.
But yeah, that's my pitch. Do we want to go to blue?
Maybe. All right, so for Blue Pitch
today I want to talk about why some heroes have more
specializations than others, and I'm going to link it to a theory
about the original 8 heroes in the game and why they're still
here and why there's some of LSS favorites.
Okay, okay, we were doing a little bit of like cursory
research for this project, right?
Clark was over there looking up like which heroes have the most
specializations, and there's definitely a pattern in the game
where untalented heroes have more specializations than
talented ones. And this makes a lot of sense to
me for a couple different reasons.
I'm going to start with two simpler ones and then a more
radical reason, which is the focus of my pitch.
OK, first of all, untalented heroes are going to have more
specializations because LSS needs those heroes to have the
cards that are special to them because they don't have talents.
Literally, they're untalented, right?
Think like Azalea and Riptide need to have cards that are
special to them, otherwise their entire card pool would be
eclipsed by heroes like Lexi. Lexi can play all of Azaleas
cards plus the lightning ones and the and the frost ones and
elemental ones, right? So you need to give those heroes
specializations in order for them to be able to have their
own unique cards that are not abused by Lexi.
And I don't think that's very controversial, right?
Like, you want them to have something special, that way
they're that one little word at the bottom of the hero isn't
like, making it so much more special, you know?
Yeah, but you also want them to be able to separate from
themselves, like Azalea and Riptide.
You want them to have different hero identities.
That's literally the only way you can do it right.
Riptide gets his special traps because he's the trap Ranger.
It like you were saying, Clark, it helps them cement their own
identity. Secondly, I think untalented
heroes are more likely to get specializations because they're
in the game for longer and because they are weaker than
talented heroes. And these two points kind of
feed into each other. If a hero is weaker, it's going
to be in the game longer, and if a hero is in the game longer,
it's going to get more support because it has more
opportunities. Like when you're looking at the
roster, your LSS, you're designing cards for the
expansion slot, you're like who gets specializations?
If I just pick at random and use no other metric, then the heroes
that are around to get picked more are eventually going to get
more specializations than the ones that are only around for
like three sets for like a year, you know what I'm saying?
So not just because weaker heroes tend to be around longer
and have more opportunities, but also like Clark, if I gave you
one dedicated expansion slot that you could print for any
hero you wanted. Yeah.
What hero would it be? Would it be a strong hero like
Viscera or Zen? Or would it be a weak hero like
Betsy or? Yeah, it'd be a weak hero,
right? Yeah.
I think the community kind of has this expectation that the
heroes that get support are the ones that are weaker.
Typically they are at least, especially in the expansion
slot. We have seen that they have used
those spaces to print support for weaker heroes sometimes.
They definitely done other things with the expansion slot.
Yes, they use that space for a lot of things, but that is one
of them. They're not going to print.
Let me put it this way, Aurora's doing really good right now.
I don't think we're going to get an Aurora specialization in the
expansion slot that's going to like suddenly make her that much
stronger. I would agree, and I don't think
we're necessarily going to see a viscera one either, even though
he's untalented. Or if we do, it's going to be
one that doesn't really move the needle like Phantasmia.
And even that one came out before Rosetta, right?
Like now that Rosetta's out, he doesn't really need it.
So the heroes that need support are generally weaker ones.
So naturally they keep printing Riptide specializations because
he's not that strong and they feel like they need to keep
pushing him, right? And when they print support for
that are directed at untalented heroes like Azalea got judged
jury executioner, right? It's very targeted support.
She's the only one that gets it. You have to be specific with
untalented heroes because otherwise the talented people
are going to umm NUM NUM NUM NUM eat up all the support as well.
Yes, I think one thing that's really dangerous here is if like
they reprint a hero before an older weaker version has LL D
and now that hero is really left in the dust.
I say this because Arachne Marionette could be pretty good
in the Haunted set and could end up doing very well, and then
Arachne Huntsman really has no way of getting any support.
Yeah. Like you can't print an Arachne
specialization card anymore to support Arachne Huntsman because
that will also just seek to benefit Arachne Marionette when
they're in the game at the same time.
This is a tangent, but it's a good one.
Specializations don't can no longer be that way of directing
support. I could see a world in the far
future where they do want to direct support specifically at
Arachne Huntsman, so they rework how specializations work.
They could literally make an Arachne Huntsman specialization,
which is kind of a little bit of a messy way of doing it, but it
would get what they wanted if they wanted to specifically
target for a specific iteration of a hero.
The thing that I really want to talk about for my pitch is that
I think there's another reason why older heroes especially are
getting more specializations. And that's because I think they
provide a backbone for the game that LSS doesn't necessarily
want to go anywhere. And when they keep printing
specializations for these heroes, it's to keep them
interesting and fun and relevant even though these heroes aren't
seeing huge competitive results. Fuzzy.
That's not what's written here in the notes.
Right. In my notes I said old heroes
are kind of bad on purpose. Whoa.
Because we've established that like the heroes that are getting
specializations are the ones that are generally weaker,
partially because they simply don't have talents and talented
heroes I think are generally stronger.
But also like, OK, look, Alice has has made a game that has a
one foot in one foot out rotation system.
They are half assing the rotation and it's in the name of
doing something unique and cool and interesting for the game.
And I like the rotation system. But I think we can agree that
like they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
They want a game that's interesting and changes
regularly. So people are always looking to
like it's constantly evolving, right?
But also your cards are worth something and their value is
static. They want a dynamic experience.
That still has that like static foothold for people to to grasp
onto. That's a really challenging
thing to do. And so far I think they're doing
a pretty good job of it. And one of the big reasons that
I think it works is they have these original 8 heroes that are
reliable and have been in the game for the entire duration of
it, right? We just hit our five year
anniversary. We have heroes that have been
legal for those five years without getting enough living
legend points in order to leave the game.
So when a hero's really good, it rotates out.
Not every player wants to play a hero that is going to win every
event, and sometimes they want heroes that are going to stick
around for a while. But a player's never going to
look at you and say I want a hero that's going to lose games.
Yeah. All of the original 8 are able
to provide you a gameplay experience that is approachable.
They have a game plan that's easy to follow.
You don't have to worry about talents, something that a newer
player can understand while it's still being challenging enough
for them to be interested in the game and get a lot out of it.
But they also hit a sweet spot for power.
If these heroes were too strong, then this fundamental like
backbone of the game would no longer be there and the whole
game would feel more volatile. If they were weaker, then
there'd be a lot less interest in playing them at all, right?
Like who wants to bring Betsy to an event right now where Betsy
doesn't have a strong identity? She doesn't get to win any
results, so it doesn't make any sense to play her when you could
rather play like Victor or Bravo even.
At least Bravo has a pretty strong identity, some really
cool specializations that you can be attached to.
And a big part of how these heroes exist in that fundamental
space in the game is these specializations.
They have really strong identities because you have
these specialization cards. Crippling Crash.
What's the the Reiner stack? Alpha Rampage Alpha.
Rampage, right? These specializations are strong
enough to lead you to want to play the hero.
They tell you what the hero is supposed to be doing.
I also kind of feel like every time we get a new one, it's like
an advertisement to direct players back to these original
8, reconceptualize them, and help them stay relevant in the
meta over and over again. I I get what you're saying with
the like half in half out but I don't know how invested LSS are
in being like these heroes will never LL.
Like if I think if you went to AQ and A and asked any of the
devs do you want Katsu to LL they'd be like if he's strong
enough and the players perform well enough on him, sure.
Like I don't think that LSS is really designing their game
around making certain heroes LL or not making them LLI don't
think that's what they're trying to go for when they designed the
game. But I do think that when they
designed the 1st 2 sets, you're right in saying that they really
wanted to provide this like restrained simple yet with depth
and complexity in the designs. And they put a ton of effort
into that. And that's resulted in, once
they started maybe getting a little bit more loosey goosey
with these talented heroes, and they started letting themselves
print more powerful cards because it won't affect those
guys over there, so it's okay. It'll just be this one hero.
Once that started leaking in, it became clear that they were
getting outpaced by the rest of the field.
And I guess part of my picture is that.
I see Viscera going very, very soon.
I see Dash IE going very, very soon.
Just grab a couple of wins at a procrest, grab a couple wins at
RTN and she's gone. Yeah, she.
Doesn't need a big win. Yeah, she's already Dash
inventor extraordinaire is already at 940 out of 1000.
She is like the closest to Elling Elling out of all the
heroes in the game right now. But also, that would make her
the first untalented hero to hit living Legend, you know?
And I think Visserie might overtake her.
Has might have already overtaken her, right?
They're both right there. They either just need the last
couple of wins or the one big win to get them there.
And Kano isn't isn't close enough.
Yeah, pack your AB. Folks, it's part of the system,
right? Like all heroes hit living
legend eventually. That's part of the promise, you
know, But I think having those heroes in particular take so
long has been beneficial to the game up until this point, you
know? Yeah, because now we're dealing
with the hero blow. And I think it's like you were
saying, the longer the heroes in a game and the worse they are,
the more specializations they get.
So when you're in the game for a really long time and you're not
doing good for a long period of that time, you can end up with
like a ridiculous amount of hero specializations.
We could almost use hero specializations as a way of
tracking how old a hero in the game is at this point.
It's not perfect, but we could. So assuming you guys kind of
agree with this idea, my follow up would kind of be like, do
other untalented heroes other than the original 8 follow this
idea of being just powerful enough to bring players to get
players interested in them and excited to play them even though
they're not super competitive. And I think Riptide actually
also really fits this definition.
He keeps getting specializations printed in the expansion slots,
partially because he kind of needs them to help fill out his
identity, but also he's not super strong, but he also has a
lot of people who are really attracted to the identity that
he does have. So he is something that I've
seen a lot of newer players get interested in.
And maybe that's my bias because I happen to know talent and any
new player that gets into Riptide, I've heard about them.
Joel, what do you think? I think specifically off of
heavy hitters and warrior, I feel like we saw 2 brand new
untalented heroes enter the warrior space.
I mean cuz I was massively popular in blitz right?
Yeah, I think a lot of people really fell in love with that
dual wielding sword fantasy, myself included.
Kasai Centauri sell sword is one of my favorite heroes in the
game and I think Dice Commando also really likes site Hero and
a bunch of other people. So yeah.
And people like Kasai. But when heavy hitters came out
and we saw those new untalented hero designs, did you feel like
they were really harkening back to the ages of welcome to Wraith
with how restrained they were? I think my bias around Warrior
is really influencing how I feel about the Olympia and Kasai
specifically. And I, we've spoken, we've spoke
extensively about how heroes are released with less than their
full care. I think Olympia suffers from
that the most. I think Asai was sandbagged as
well because her specialization would have been too powerful if
she created coppers through her hero ability in CC as well.
So I think there's a lot more factors with those two heroes
than some other untalented heroes.
I do feel like Victor, while not having a talent, has felt strong
enough that he competes with the other talented heroes and
doesn't have that like stability where I expect him to be in the
format for years to come, you know?
Yeah, I guess KO is also sort of up there, right?
KO Armed and dangerous, the CC version of the hero, both of
them fell like the quote UN quote push version, sort of like
how Kasai was the pushed version.
We've talked about this in heavy hitters.
They were like the three heroes that were like seen as the
strong ones in the class and the three heroes who were seen as
the weak ones in the class for that set.
And as it's shaken out, Kasai has gotten a decent amount of
living Legend points, but not too many.
But I think it's definitely something to be said for the
fact that they want to be restrained when they print
talentless sets, because they know that that card pool will
influence the talented heroes. And if they make those cards too
strong, then the talented heroes are just going to gobble them
up. But I think that that's a bit of
a weird heuristic to take, because we've seen in Rosetta
how a lot of the brand new Roomblade cards actually did way
more for Visserie than they ever did for Aurora OR Florian.
I think if they actually just get better at siloing talented
designs from untalented designs then it's going to get a lot
healthier. I think that's all I got for
blue pitch. Do you guys want to move on to
Arsenal zone? Yeah, The Arsenal Zone is the
part of our podcast where we talk about cards we love, cards
we hate, cards we love to hate, or cards that just kind of
exist. Joel, why don't you start us off
I. Actually want to change mine.
I'm sorry. So the car that I want to talk
about for the Arsenal Zone is Banksy, which is Max's only
specialization, which I think is stupid.
That's crazy. Yeah, I love the idea of
signature weapons, but I don't like the idea of your signature
weapon being your only specialization.
To me, it just feels lazy. Bright lights in general I have
a lot of issues with, but Banksy is just one of those cards where
it's really cool and I think they could have really iterated
it upon that cranking design for Max specifically because it
seems like Dash IO at this time is the item hero and the crank
hero. So in the future I really would
like some more Max cards. That's probably the only way I
would ever approach Mechanologist in the future just
because Banksy is a cool card. Great card.
I remember picking up a cold foil Banksy off you for like.
A little cheap, not not like super cheap.
I think it was still like 20-30 bucks.
But like I was like, oh, I got a good deal on this.
One of these days, Banksy's gonna be a good guy.
I know we're trying to shout out Banksy and not just dunk on Max,
but I think it's kind of funny that, like, the card that I
associate the most with Max right now is Nitro Mechanoid,
which has dash on the art. Yeah.
Right. It's also interesting.
Symbiosis Shot is a dash specialization, Banksy is a Max
specialization, but the Evil Weapon is not Teclo.
Yeah, Teclo Leveler is not a Teclo Boston specialization.
His specialization in the set was Singularity.
Yeah. Whack.
It's funny because Teklu has the best identity out of all the
mechanologists, but the worst playability and.
I think those go hand in hand. Yeah, definitely, yeah.
Cuz he's so specific as to what he wants to do.
You gots to do evos. It's really, really cool though
I ultimately really like Banksy has a card.
It's a good shout. But that's it for me.
How about y'all? For my card I chose Angelic
Wrath after the Tomb of Divinity ban.
Prism sort of filled by the wayside.
But we have a lot of Prism mains at our locals and people who
like playing Prism and they've started running this card and I
hate this card. This.
Card is so annoying. This card annoys me so much.
I also just am not a big fan of incense that pump power because
like they're just not attack reactions but they're played
exactly like attack reactions. That bothers me somewhere deep
down. Inside and it's a yellow for
three. And it's a yellow for bullshit
three. Yeah, Like it's really, really
strong. And it's just I'm just like,
what is this? But I blocked but I did the
thing. And it's always on heritable
triumph or fucking arrow. Shown out so many times by this
card, I I think it's a surprisingly solid card.
I think even as Prism grows and gets support again, no.
I think this card made stick around just because it's
actually really efficient, especially into heroes who don't
have a lot of poppers. Yeah, that whole sentence just
ruined my day. Yeah.
Like like a room blade meta. Yeah.
Oh yeah, that. One's even worse than the
previous sentence. Prism's been pretty solid into a
room blade meta where we don't have a lot of sixes.
The card Angelic Wrath really double s down on the like.
Have popper or die. Yeah.
Because like, if, if you pop it, Angelic Wrath isn't going to do
shit, you know? Yeah.
We should get an Missouri that as AD react.
Can swap a blocking card with a blocking card.
Surprise phantasm. Yeah, so it's like a blocking. 3
fantasm. Good luck.
All right, so the card that I'm going to shout out today is
Ticket Puncher. It's the card from Heavy
Hitters. It's the arms piece.
It gives you extra block depending on the number of
opponents you have with more life.
Oh oh. Like that was a fun little
cycle. Like a bloodied Oval and all
that shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ticket Puncher is the arms piece, and I think it's my
favorite name out of the cycle because you know, when you
imagine a ticket puncher, it's like a little machine.
You press like a hole, punch right, and you just hit your
little ticket. But the art is a guy raising his
first in the air. He's like literally punching
something. Not a ticket.
Right. Like maybe he's punching your
ticket to sleep. OK.
Or he's punching your face, which is the proverbial ticket.
Yeah. So sort of like not my face,
it's my meal ticket kind of thing.
So it's a funny name to me anyway.
Yeah, I'm doing a good job of selling the comedy of this.
So I like this cycle of cards because it's something that is
playable in A1V1 game of limited and it is also extra cool in a
UPF game of limited. And it's an example of like how
they're able to design A multi purpose card, not even just for
like limited versus constructed, but like multiple different
limited formats in the same set. And that's really elegant and
hard to do. So perhaps to LSS for that, even
if the design like would never be played in constructed, I
think it's a cool design for limited.
I mean, bloodied Oval is like surprisingly playable.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of these days, I want to sit
down as a guardian at a UPF table and just flip over the
entire suite. I just watch the players be
like, if we kill them, we like have to gang up on them, right?
Like, like we have to be like, OK, now's the turn, now's the
turn, now's the turn. Everyone go for it.
And I'm also hoping that tomorrow we get to play UPF
heavy hitters. We're all gonna draft.
I haven't decided what format yet, but that's the one that I'm
hoping for. No one's told me no yet, except
Joel. That was a staunch no, yeah.
So that's my card and I brought one to sign, one for you and one
for you. Thank you, Fuzzy.
Thank you guys for podding with me.
Thanks. Yeah.
This was fun. I liked returning to the sort of
OG design sort of episodes that we did at the at the very
beginning. We we have a few more that we're
hopefully recording soon that'll be they'll be released
throughout the month. So look forward to it.
So stay. Tuned.
Bye bye everyone. Until next time, guys, bye.
Pitch It to Me podcast is hosted by Joel Rosinos, Clark Moore and
Fuzzy Delp. Our executive producer is Talon
Stradley, our logistics coordinator is John Farkas,
Music is produced by Dylan Hulse, logo is designed by Han V
and our sound mixing is done by Christopher Moore.
Last but not least, thank you, the listener for taking the time
to listen to our podcast. Be sure to give us a follow on
your favorite social media platform at Pichitomi Podcast.
That was a good one. That was Co wispy.
Our listeners just cringed right now, it was that good.
No no dude, they fucking love that shit.
That was a good cringe it. Was a good cringe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's not a cringe.
That's just like, it's like just above his knees, right?
It's like like a sneeze is like an eighth of an orgasm that was
like a six. It was like an exerted.
I think this. Is more than an eighth, you said
above a sneeze. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, the
lines up. I know how fractions work fuzzy.
I heard it wrong. Glad someone on this podcast
does.