Welcome to Pitch to Me podcast, a show about the subjective
past, present, and potential future of flesh and blood
design. In preparation for
mechanologists return in high seas.
We will analyze a selection of cards from bright lights and see
what we can learn from that set's design.
You can find us across all socials such as Blue Sky
Instagram at Pitch to Me podcast.
I'm Clark. I'm Joel.
And I'm. Fuzzy, hello everybody.
Welcome to this week's episode of Pitch to Me pot.
Hey, we've we've recorded a lot of episodes in preparation for
April. This is probably coming out in
April, might come out early May. We'll see.
We'll see where all the episode lands, but.
Yeah, Clark and Joel are leaving us to go do London things.
Our recording schedule is a little bit all over the place.
We've been so good at releasing every single week of 2025.
We're going to try to keep it up even though we're going on
vacations. Yeah, I'm going to.
I'm going to be doing a whole extra week in Italy after PT
London. Yep.
And I'm not going to be available to record or edit the
podcast. I will be in the middle of
nowhere. Hell yeah brother.
I'll be here though, chilling. Speaking of work stuff, though,
Joel. Yeah, I just came back from a
six day trip to Vegas, which might sound cool, but I don't.
Does sound cool? But I, but I, I don't cheat,
gamble or drink. So this is like the worst place
for me to be. And I was also like sick for the
first four days of my trip. But it was, it was for this like
basically career defining event that I was helping prepare since
I got hired and it went swimmingly.
I think I, the hours that I put in to make sure all the details
were worked out went really smoothly.
And then even the stuff that was starting to go a little bit bad
or just some hiccups along the way, I handled really well.
I was just on my game. So in flesh and blood terms, you
sunk, you're winning in, and now you're going on to Day 2.
This is like 46 O against like Michael Hamilton and my winning
in and yeah, so that that's how the event went, yeah.
I'm so excited. You're Day 2 in your career.
Yeah. Can't believe you resolved 2
sigils all since I didn't think you'd run those.
Yeah. God, he had extra room and tempo
for the sigil of silences. This guy just smoked it.
Yeah. That was pretty on top of it.
And or he played CYB. Combo.
OK, that's disgusting. But yeah, my bosses are happy
and we got some really good leads from the event, so I'm
pretty excited about the next few weeks.
Nice. Well sweet.
We love hearing about everyone doing well.
Yeah, Speaking of doing well, I've been doing pretty well at
the AGEI not only made that semi final finish back in February,
but then I proceeded to get points the next two months.
Your boy is a mid gamer. I can.
Get points. I'm sure you've like more than
doubled the amount of points I've gotten in the AG ES at this
point. Yeah maybe.
And I also think it's not official yet.
I gotta wait for them to make the post, but I'm pretty sure
I'm in the left column of the top 16.
He's totally getting invited. Maybe you'll see.
I definitely don't feel great about Victor as a hero in this
meta, especially with Enigmas rising presence.
I think by the time this episode comes out we'll be in the middle
of a big PQ season and Enigma is probably running that shit in
terms of how she's been rising in meta share right now.
So yeah. I don't love Victor as a choice,
but I've been having a lot of fun building Ira recently.
I'd love to see her get some meta share and get some play in.
I really don't see her doing well in Aurora meta or Enigma
meta, but I did see like when I played at my last RTN one of our
locals Thomas beat an enigma in the top 8.
So I don't know, maybe I don't know what to talk.
About I mean, Kodachi's can threaten the big wards very
efficiently, right? So it's definitely, it's, it's
an option that's out there. I'm exploring my decks.
So true bestie fun. I love this free spirited girly
arrow of yours. Yeah.
I'm not, I'm not locked into Room Blade anymore.
It's like it's like a whole new world.
Yeah, bro, yeah. Play the field.
So everyone, before we jump into today's episode, we want to hear
from you. How?
What did you guys think of Bright Lights as a fab player
and how do you think they're going to return to some of the
designs in high seas? All right, so for this episode
today, we're going to be just talking about different cards
that we've selected for discussion from the set Bright
Lights. It's fun to talk about these
older sets a little bit, do these kind of retrospective
episodes where we get to talk about how has this set impacted
flesh and blood design and the meta and the way we think about
the game for the last year or so, especially as we look to the
future with the new set High Seas coming up.
We've got a new mechanologist. It doesn't get happened that
often that we see a new mechanologist.
Who knows, maybe we'll do another episode like this for
Ranger somehow, But we're going to talk about some cards from
Bright Lights, and that's basically how it's going to go.
Red pitch, yellow pitch blue pitch.
Bright lights, cards, Bright lights, cards, Bright lights,
cards. Yeah.
I think I'll go ahead and take the mic then and jump in with
red pitch. I'm talking about evos because
evos were a really core part to bright lights.
I mean they even gave it the set name of EVO right?
Like Evos are a big part of bright lights.
I think if there was one thing we were going to talk about, it
should be evos for sure. Definitely, yeah.
One of the main inspiring parts of why we're doing this episode
was also the fact that, like, there's not a lot of excitement
around mechanologists right now in high seas.
No one's like, what crazy things are they going to do with
mechanologists? Everyone's like, Oh yeah, it's
mech. They're going to like crank some
items and then attack for 0 for fours over and over again.
OK, yeah, we've seen it all before.
But the fact of the matter is that we are getting a new
mechanologists set and Bright Lights was not super well liked.
I don't think LSS is going to return to the exact same well
and give us a lot of the exact same designs in math in the same
way, because people didn't like the math that was presented in
bright lights. People didn't really show a lot
of enthusiasm for that set, Maybe because it was just Macs,
but even MEC players were not super hot on bright lights and
bright lights design. So they're probably going to mix
it up and do some exciting things, and I think evos are a
great place to do that. If you look at Puffin's art, you
will see that Puffin is a bird, but their human companion is
Hightail is hightail and she has some missing body parts and has
some mechanical. You know, it's that like pirate
peg leg idea. I think we could totally see a
return to Evo's. OK.
And. T Batty yeah.
And people, I don't think they're expecting that, right.
And because they don't need to make Evo's as central of an
idea, they can get to focus it. Maybe like on the leg slot for
her she has that mechanical peg leg.
I would love to play like a pirate that has a hook for hand,
but you can replace the hook with whatever random gadget you
need to. This is kind of what I'm getting
at, so let's talk a little bit about how they did Evos to maybe
help us understand what was wrong then and what they might
do now. So the first card I want to talk
about is EVO Smooth Bore. What is EVO Smooth bore?
Evo Smooth Bore is a yellow 3 cost mechanologist action
equipment Evo arms. Yes that is a lot of text.
I think when bright lights came out we were even like wow they
had to change the bottom of the cards to fit all this text down.
There I think there were other ancillary benefits, but for the
purposes of that joke, yeah, it's 100% true.
They had to like yeah, it says if you have a base arms
equipped, transform it into this, then equip this, putting
the base arms under the Evo smooth bore in your arm zone.
Then once per turn instant, you can destroy a card under Evo
smoothbore to give your next weapon attack this turn plus
one. It is a blade break 3 block
equipment, and this is a rare one.
Why am I getting 4 value for three resources at yellow?
Let's compare the value of this card to a yellow 3 cost attack.
A yellow 3 cost attack is expected to give 6 power, right?
Three costs at red give 7 power, so at yellow we would presume it
gives 6 power, and this does not match that value at all.
This is 3 resources at action with no go again, right?
Because you do have to play this as an action card for for
conceivable value and not even on the turn that you play it,
right? If you like half the block with
this, immediately you don't get that 4th value.
You can only get free value from this.
So it's a really, really low rate as an individual card that
you need to play from your deck using an action, right?
So if we compare it to other items, because we've talked in
the past about like anything that's going to give you delayed
value, they want to stymie, they want to give you less value
later than you would normally get upfront.
A card like Truce is a blue that costs two, that is probably
going to give you one card of value.
This card costs three more, it pitches for less, and it blocks
for three, which is kind of comparable and maybe giving you
one point on the back end. But there are other costs
associated with it that Truce doesn't ask of you, So it seems
weird that this card is a worse rate than Truce, you know?
Yeah, there is this massive downside to Evos of not being
able to start with real equipment, right?
You have to be starting with these base equipment, which
typically do not have a reasonable battle war and block
value, and cannot typically give you reliable value until you
equip these Evos on top of them. And then there's the issue of
this is not a base EVO. So once you play EVO Smooth Bore
into your arm slot, you no longer have access to playing
any other Arms card, including other copies of EVO Smooth Bore.
This means that you cannot replace that value.
So the moment that you play 1 EVO Smooth Bore, the other EVO
Smooth Bore become cracked bobbles that can block for three
I guess. And blocking for three is, I
think, OK for a card that could be totally useless at a certain
point in the game, you would want them to have a nice block
value. There are other evos in the game
that if you're running 3 copies of them, you play the first and
the others have no block value, they're extra dead in your hand.
This card is interesting because it's one of the Evos that is
less dead after you play the first one and it's still not
great. Yeah, I mean, some people joke
about running Titanium bubble, but I still don't see Titanium
bubble making it to any lists. Well, not anymore.
Yeah, the cardpool has advanced beyond that point, right?
They'll run a war mongers because like, well, at least it
has text on it, but in a similar way.
Like this is a cracked bubble titanium bubble thingy, right?
Like it's even worse than a titanium.
Bubble one. Metal bubble.
Yeah. Stainless steel.
Eva Smooth bubble. Smooth bubble.
And that makes it really, really frustrating.
Now, in mechanologists, you can boost them away, right?
But here's the thing, if you boost it away, you can't play it
anymore. Yeah, if I run 3 copies, it's
OK. If I boost extra ones away, I'll
still have one to grab. I run the risk of some of them
getting useless after I play the first one right?
But if I run one copy and it gets boosted away, now my
equipment that I was planning on transforming won't get any
value. It's risky no matter how many
copies of the card you run. There doesn't seem to be an
ideal. Exactly.
And that is bad design in my opinion.
I think that evos were bad designed in this way.
And then there is the ultimate pitfall.
Being able to start and play with equipment is a major value
piece. We talk about how important
things like dyadic carapis is just for being having battle
worn value, right? Having that inherent block value
in your equipment slot is important, and it's something
that every other hero start with, except for mechanologists
who decide to run evos. They don't get that value, so
they start weaker than everybody else and then have to play under
rate cards to get to a slightly buffed version of what everyone
else gets for free at the start of the game.
That's rough. Yeah.
Not just the cost of not running normal equipments because
equipments are gas, but also you have to pay a lot of tempo just
to get the equipments out there. And the benefit that you get
from those two major costs doesn't seem to be worth it.
Joel, what have you thought about evos and evo design?
See, I really like them, even though I think mechanologists as
a whole just doesn't blend flavour wise with the rest of
flesh and blood. But if I'm looking at just
mechanologists and evos, they they're really cool.
I like totally the fact that you're sort of building this
arsenal, the smooth bore line or the smooth whatever's.
Yeah, I really like this line in particular because it reminds me
of like the MEX that appear in like, Fallout, like some of the
power suits of armor that you can wear.
Yeah, I know Evos really are badass flavor.
They're such an opportunity for LSS because they are one of the
coolest designs at face value aesthetically, and I really hope
that they find a way to implement them back into the
game in a way that's balanced a little bit better.
And I kind of get why they're a little bit underpowered because
even if you spend the tempo to equip one of these on your
equipment zones, you're still getting a one time use of three
block which is already overrate for any equipment.
And that's why people gravitate towards like the Steel Soul
series because it's 3 temper, but even 3 battle break can have
its use cases, especially if the abilities on these equipments
are aggressively slanted. So getting for value on each of
them is a little bit like drawing cards, not directly, but
that's sort of how I'm thinking about it.
Like they are being careful on the way that you're able to
store resources stored this defensive overlap.
And so for that reason, I kind of see why it's a little bit
under rate as compared to like anything else you'd be spending
three resources and an action point on.
But overall, I think they really pulled their punches on like.
The most of the Evo's because all the aggressive options that
you have are just they have no chance of translating in the
same way that you can with the steel sole series.
I completely agree. They definitely do need to be
careful about allowing for a massive amount of defensive
overlap and I think we have seen some decks utilize that in some
not quite unhealthy ways, but definitely in ways where we have
seen that power with Evo's steel sole legs in Pistol Dash.
Yes. Yes, and also there it was a
brief moment when Max's were running that for some block
value in their legs. It's just a way of helping delay
the game until they could transform into mechanoid.
Now there is another part to the EVO equation which I want to
discuss in my next card, Demolition Protocol.
Demolition Protocol is a Majestic Red 3 cost
mechanologist attack action. It has Evo upgrade.
When this attacks a hero remove all steam counters from up to X
equipment, items and or weapons they control where X is the
number of evos you have equipped.
So this introduces us to the evo upgrade mechanic, which I
believe is actually a part of the equation for running evos,
which is you get these attack actions, which can become
overrate if you get to play your evos out.
And I think that's really really it's a very necessary aspect to
the equation for evos because just looking at evos alone, they
are completely non functional. But once you start including
some of these other evo upgrade cards, now you're starting to
see where they try to provide that actual value.
Right, right. It you know a yellow 43 cost 4
value card is nowhere near good enough, but when you're adding a
card that can go over rate like this a three for seven that can
remove like 4 steam counters just completely take away a
weapon right like dashes weapon just no you don't get any more
pistol shots that's really strong.
But The thing is is that why does this only hit steam
counters Yeah why couldn't this hit any counters right?
Imagine if this could hit find dolls counters, right?
Energy counters, energy counters.
There's so many like, oh, what did this just hit other things?
Yeah, Mechanologists has always seemed to me like the class with
the most unique amounts of disruption.
And I'm thinking here specifically of T-bone and how
you can target people's really fragile equipment suite.
Like like if someone was using New Horizons and you boost
certain amount of times the evos and grab either their tunic or
the New Horizons or whatever. And like pulse wave harpoon
being able to forcibly grab cards from your opponents hand.
Demolition protocols seem like one of those cards where it
could have just said, hey, your deck that cares about counters
in some way. I'm going to remove them and
give a little bit more play, a little bit more viability to evo
users. And it was just.
Unnecessarily sandbagged. Yeah, I think the main issue was
that this is such a narrow slice that only impacts other
mechanologists. Now is this a dope ass limited
Majestic? Yes, for sure.
And this is such a design choice that we see actually throughout
bright lights where there are so many interesting majestics and
rares that only care about destroying items or removing
steam counters or attacking evos specifically.
Like it's so insular to just bright lights.
Yeah, I think it's cool when they print counter play to the
cards that they provide in the set because it makes it a little
bit easier for them to be OK with printing like higher power
level stuff when the counter play is also available.
However, it's just given to mechanologists, so only
mechanologists can check itself, you know?
Yeah, when compared to say how Weakest Link was printed in
Misfail. Now I'm probably not the
happiest about how much money Weakest Link is worth, but I am
very happy at the fact that they printed a generic 2 cost
Majestic that attacked the core fundamental strategy that those
heroes were playing. Yeah, and I think this was the
main issue of this being a single class set.
Mecanologists got too many tech pieces for mecanologists.
So if mecanologists was ever at the top of the meta, they just
end up cannibalizing themselves. I don't think that is good
widespread design, right? It's it was OK in the set
itself, but the fact that it had no wider meta implications I
think brought it down. Yeah, I think this card is
unfortunately been reduced to a three for seven.
I've literally heard conversations between Han V and
Dennis Pham about like, yeah, run Demolition protocol over Big
Shot because it's always a three for seven.
Period. Period, Mark.
It's like, that's so sad, yeah. And this is also because so many
evo upgrade cards have a line that makes their effect worse
and are under rate if you don't have at least 2 Evos.
So let's take a look at some of our other Evo upgrade cards.
We have mechanical strength a three for five.
You know that really great rate of three for five.
But it has Evo upgrade that gets plus X, where X is the number of
Evos. So it could be a three for 9:00.
That'd be cool. That's great, but Leviah just
gets at the moment. I have 3 cards in the sixth, one
of which is a six in my graveyard right?
Why does it have to take playing 4 evos for them to get that sort
of rate? Or let's take a look at heavy
artillery. The defending a hero can't
defend this with attack action cards with costs less than X,
where X is the number of heroes you have equipped.
Holy shit, that's some really good evasion, right?
No no no, read that again. Defending hero can't defend this
with attack action cards. Non attack action cards can
block this regardless. Reactions can block this
regardless. There it just allies.
I don't know if allies can block, but like allies could
conceivably block this so again it has like.
Just adding that word attack makes this card so much worse.
I feel like this would be run in a lot more decks with evos if it
didn't say attack action cards. Right there they also have lots
of options for evo upgrade cards too, so the worser upgrade evo
upgrade cards have a harder time seeing play.
Yeah, I know immediately there aren't that many of these cards.
And I think that in high seas, we could see a return to evo
upgrades and a return to evos where, you know, maybe you only
need one or two evos for it to become overrate.
And as long as it's not a puffin specialization card, that
couldn't really see the floodgates open for the rest of
mechanologists in running Evo cards.
I think it's interesting how the EVO upgrade cards, they give you
the exact same reward curve based on the evos themselves,
because evos want you to have a shit early game in order to get
good rewards late game. Evo upgrade cards also are shit
early game to give you a reward late game.
And I wonder if there's some design space that could open up
in the future where they flip the curve a little bit.
Because what if there were just EVO support cards that made it
easier for you to get the evos on the board?
I don't think they explored that space too much in the original
bright light set. I think like that's the kind of
stuff that EVO cards need. They need you to be able to to
get your evos out sooner. Those are the kind of cards that
I want to put in my deck if I'm planning on running evos or have
control over what I do with evos after they're already played.
Something to do with those like useless evo cards after.
Yes, giving all the evos an effect that occurs when they are
played. And then if you have a base
equipment then it becomes the equipment right?
So it can almost act as a non attack action card that after
resolving can become the can go on top of the base, but you can
always get that initial value of the non attack action card that
you're playing. Or like a loyalty beyond the
grave effect for mechanologists to search those you know.
Which also then rewards it for having blade break or temper and
letting it break and go to the graveyard.
Because before they are a lot of mechanologists are terrified of
actually letting those equipment break because they rely on them
to provide the evo upgrade value for their late game so they can
never really get rid of it. And by allowing it to break and
go to graveyard for these loyalty beyond the grave
effects, where maybe you can banish it or do something else
with it. That's a really, really cool
idea. Plus, Tekwilvasin loves it,
right? Right.
Block with it and then I can like self scrap it without
having to run scrap cards. I'm sure Tekwilvasins would love
that card. But yeah, Evos, I really hope
that we see a return to them in high seas with, you know,
pirates replacing their hook hands or their peg legs.
I'm really excited to see how they try to solve this problem
of how much value is lost in the early game and how they can help
balance that out a little bit. That's all I have for red pitch.
I think I'm going to pass it off to yellow pitch, which is fuzzy.
All right, so I want to talk about two specific cards For
different reasons. I'm thinking a little bit less
on the perspective of of Evos and what we might see in high
seas and more like broad strokes, some design patterns
and mechanologists that I want to talk about.
The first card I want to use to highlight that is Singularity.
Whoa, the the single splashiest. Card from Bright Lights.
I would say it's one of the splashiest cards in the game.
I don't think there's many more cards that have such an
explosive effect as to completely rearrange your entire
board state into one super robot that you use to demolish your
opponents. Like, well, fuzzy.
I can think of at least one other.
What construct? Metro Mecanoid.
Even OK, Great Mecanoid Mecanoid is also a very flashy card.
Well, it's a like you set it up for you.
Like describe construct Nitro mecanoid.
Technically, singularity eats up.
One more card than construct mecanoid I think, right?
Maybe. Actually no, cuz you do.
Mechanoid needs 3 hyper drivers, yeah.
Singularity doesn't just needs 4 evos.
And your hero? Well, yeah, yeah, but
Singularity has like it's a lot more foreboding cuz they made
them a macropotent, a shadow mechanologist for some reason
with a soul bro. Yeah, it's crazy good shit, and
I think the word extreme defines it really well.
And FAB has to be really careful with extreme strategies because
FAB tends to not be a game of extremes.
We don't have infinite combos every game like Magic the
Gathering does, and we don't have like as much variance in
other games. It's a pretty disciplined game
where you have cards that have similar value depending on the
different ways that you use them.
You know, Singularity offers to break the game, break the
fundamental math of the game in a way that LSS generally has to
be really careful about, and there's a reason why they don't
do it very often. So would you guys agree that
like Singularity promotes a play style where all I have to do is
play Singularity to win the game?
Oh this is hard because we have a teclo local and for me
specifically, all the locals I play at he plays at.
So like I know Ben, I love Ben, I love how dedicated Ben is to
Teclovossen. I think he does not actually
resolve singularity all that often and I have seen him be
very comfortable blocking with singularity.
So I almost want to say no, but also as a design, yes.
He's Ben has also told me on a few occasions where he will
change his strategy based on what his opponents doing.
So I've actually seen him cast it twice and we've played many
times where he's not cast it. So I think overall I would say
no, that it's not the like ultimate goal of the deck.
I think it's really the most win more card there is in Flesh and
Blood. OK, I love that perspective.
It's a little bit counter to at least my intuition about the
card. I'm not going to sit here and
say that I have more experience than a Tec Levosin player, so
I'm really glad that that my assumption is being challenged a
bit. But the amount of value you get
from casting this one card does seem like it could be enough to
completely run away with the game, even if you're down by 30
life, even if you have only swung a couple of attacks before
that up in until this point. Because the amount of aggressive
pressure that you can get from casting this card and setting up
your deck with these amazing disruptive 3 for nines that are
going to have go again. You know, the amount of
offensive pressure that you get for the rest of the game is
incredible. I, I, I do want to check one
thing fuzzy, which is when you think about playing Singularity,
do you think about playing Singularity on a full Evo steel
sole board where you are getting the five intellect, where you
are getting those 3 for nines on top of your deck where you're
getting the extra action points when you play this card?
Or are you more thinking about like playing it on a board of, I
don't know, the zip line series right?
Those like little yellow 0 cost instant evos.
I think there's a design intention embedded into the game
that if you play it with all the Steel Soul series out, it's
going to be full power for sure. And that might be enough to
single handedly win the game in some circumstances, right?
But. Is that value attributed to the
evos or to singularity? That's true.
Like how much of that design credit can we give to
singularity? How much is it like dispersed
across across the pieces of the set?
That's a good question because it isn't necessarily just
singularity winning the game at that point.
It's in tandem with these other set of Majestic.
So I acknowledge that. But I do think the play style is
what I want to focus in on. The play style is ultra
defensive until you flip. I think maybe even the most
defensive play styles save for fatigue.
And I know fatigue is a very wide umbrella too, but
considering that the goal is not necessarily for your opponent to
simply stop providing threats, it's the most defensive play
style that does have an actual end game.
Because it is pretty much one card.
Everything else is defensive. Playing Evo Steel Souls does not
require me to attack. I can if I want to.
Sometimes the scrap cards make it easier, but I don't really
have to attack to play those. I don't really have to put on
actual pressure. I just play Singularity and the
pressure comes after I'm done wading through the defense and
setting up my game. I think that is true.
So with that assumption, we've I'm so glad you guys poked a
couple of holes in it. But for the purposes of this
discussion, I want to talk about how healthy play styles like
that are for the game, because I think FAB has a little bit of a
polarization issue. When you're designing cards for
a game, especially new heroes, new classes, you want to be able
to create new axes that you can iterate upon.
They did this really early when they made Arcane Damage.
They're like, hey, let's introduce a completely new
damage type to the game as part of the fundamental like way that
they set up the game, right? Arcane Rising is, I assume, like
pretty much in the works before they even printed Welcome to
Rate. It was something they always
intended to be in the game for the purposes of this discussion.
Yeah, a lot of the times when it the alpha part and, and correct
me if I'm wrong on this troll because you played closer to
this period than I did. Welcome to Wraith and Arcane
Rising were considered the alpha of Flesh and Blood, and when
they put those sets forward they were intended as this is the
baseline for the game. That that's how it was explained
to me. I would say it's like the alpha
and the beta, but the origin of the game is like probably the
most accurate way you could describe flesh and blood.
Yeah, and James White often times talks about the original 8
heroes and that being separate from what comes after.
So arcane damage is a completely separate axis from regular
attacking and blocking. And they have Rune Blade, which
tends to do lots of small bursts of arcane and Wizard that does
one big burst of arcane and how the different heroes and players
can interact with those mechanics.
So by introducing a whole nother axis to play, you need the
players to be able to have tools to respond to it, right?
Very polarizing strategies have a very delicate balance to
strike for them to be healthy for the game.
I think Teclovosin and Singularity as a strategy, while
again, that's an umbrella for I'm sure a lot of different
iterations you can make within. I think they fit that criteria
for something that can either be completely overpowering or very
underpowered. And it's very hard to find
yourself in the middle where it's a upper B tier, lower A
tier deck. Right.
And right now Tech Lovosin is sitting in the F tier.
Part of that curve where he is not, he does not have the tools
to fight off a lot of decks. Either you can handle Teclovosin
or you can't. He has a few good matchups,
right? But like he's able to beat
slower decks because he has an ultimate end game tool that any
slower deck is going to have a really hard time fighting
against. Or he gets walled out and he's
not able to protect himself. Very much so.
And I would say any really polarizing play styles like
these are going to have that struggle where they just feel
bad. Stack Kano also kind of felt
like this, even though a lot of people and especially Kano
players refer to it as probably the healthiest that Kano has
ever felt in the meta, still kind of feels like, well, do you
kill me before I hit my stack or else Drug and Singularity can
feel like that. I think Kasai's Raisin army can
feel like that in certain matchups.
I I would argue any deck that uses allies is polarizing in and
of itself. Yes, not just Kasai.
I like that you. That was really funny they
decided Kasai was the problem. I've been I've been talking
with. Colin about the Kasai Victor
matchup specifically. Colin Erickson.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's been saying, like, you
know, Victor's probably the one of the ones I struggle with the
most 'cause you can actually deal damage to me.
And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, but if I ever
just play Raisin Army with like 3 or 4 allies, like I, I will
win that game. And it's like, yeah, I don't
know how much I like that. I don't know if that's entirely
healthy for the game to have any of these like late game trump
cards, but I think a lot of people love playing the decks
where there are these big late game trump cards.
So I think they kind of should exist in Flesh and Blood, but
they present this inherent design problem that's always
going to be a little toxic. I think if I were to rephrase
what I love your saying, it's that if you want to produce
really cool, really fun effects, they probably have to be some
level of really powerful in a way.
And you have to put powerful effects at the end of the game
in order for them to feel fair at all.
You know? Like raising an army in Kasai is
really badass. And in order to make it fair,
you have to sacrifice a bunch of gold tokens, which means you
have to wait some time to build it up.
And then you get 3 or 4 of these soldiers.
And that's a really powerful effect.
Like how are you going to let the player have three or four
soldiers from a single card in a way that feels fair?
You kind of have to gate keep it behind.
Like this end game goal, this long term quest that you have to
fulfill. I think I want to move on to
talking about another card that I think is a hallmark of
mechanologist design. That's.
Twin Drive? You mean the most expensive card
in bright lights? And why is this the most
expensive card in bright lights? It literally has 2 words of
text. Boost Boost.
No, no, no. It has a lot more than two words
of text. Because they felt the need to
put the reminder types for boost on each instance of boost.
Give me flavor text you fucks. Boost as an additional cost to
play this. You may pass the top card of
your deck if it's a Technologist card.
This kids go again Boost as an additional cost of.
It makes me so angry. It is a 2 for five that blocks
for three. It's a worse rate compared to
Throttle which is a 2 for six. But throttle only boosts once
even though Go again doesn't stack right.
You can boost twice with Twin Drive, but you're only going to
be able to get Go again once. So if you're playing the card in
isolated like event, Twin Drive is a worse card than Throttle,
which is a common from Arcane Rising.
And somehow which way modern fab player $30 boost twice for -1
value or $0.20 two for six would go again so.
I'm being a little glip here. The reason Twin Drive is a good
card is because of synergy. Synergy is the only reason why
you would consider Twin Drive a good card.
I suppose there's a floor of like I can always just boost
once and get a 2 for five go again and A2 for five go again
isn't that bad, especially one that blocks for three.
Ninjas run it. Yeah, but Surging Strike has a
lot of synergy. Stupid.
You're the Guardian player running zealous belting that
literally. Is just a 2 for five go again.
Hey, could drive blocks for three, Zealous Belting and
Surging Strike only block for two.
So there's a little bit of an edge over that, probably not
enough to make it majestic. The real power is in synergy,
and that's a design pattern we see over and over and over again
in Bright Lights. They give you a card that could
only be considered good when you take into account synergy.
Yeah. And I think that shows that LSS
is afraid of something. They're afraid of that synergy
because you can only get the value if the synergy is even
better than the deficit that you had in the 1st place just for
playing an underrated card. Oh, that is not the framing that
I would use because Afraid kind of puts it into a negative
context. I think it's really positive
because I think they're saying, look, this is an interesting
special effect that makes you want to work around it.
You want to find ways of getting value out of boosting twice when
you see something like Twin Drive.
Or maybe it's more like you see all these cards that care about
you boosting things away like Hyper X3 and being if you manage
to boost away a hyper driver, you can like start drawing
cards. Sure, that's pretty fucking
good. Or maximum velocity, right?
Like do for five, go again, draw a card.
It's pretty fucking insane, right?
Or like getting to that 2 for 10 easier.
That's really, really good. So I think it's less of they're
afraid of that synergy, but they know that there is a value in
that synergy and so they are evaluating that second line of
boost properly by giving it -1 value.
Interesting. I think that I have the little
bit of an advantage here because we know that Bright Lights was
not very well received it it didn't sell that well.
This card was. Very well received by
mechanologists immediately, because every single
mechanologist is running maximum velocity, and this is really
good with maximum velocity. It's true that twin Drive does
make Max velocity a lot easier to run.
You know, like that synergy is very much there.
Being able to boost twice is good for playing 2 for 10.
And also high octane when high octane was legal.
That's true. Getting 2 action points.
I just have this distinct memory of our friend Han V, who was a
dash inventor extraordinaire, like truther believer.
It was his main hero and he was like, guys, they're printing an
all mechanologist set. I am so excited.
And then a few months later the set is out.
He's looking over the list and he's like, I think the only card
in this entire set that I care about is Twin Drive.
Yeah. If I'm going to play dash IE I
think Twin drive is the only card that makes my deck any
better. And he's not on the pistol dash,
so he wasn't even looking at steel sole legs at all.
Yeah, so literally just the one card for a dash.
I don't know, maybe some of that is healthy.
It's OK to iterate on the design because we you know that dash
IO, the new dash hero was playing plenty of these cards
from bright lights, right? Yeah Boom grenade is really
good. That's a common.
Heist. Yeah, there were like plenty of
other good options. I also remember him playing
cards like Junkyard Dog at blue, which is a three for 4:00.
That becomes a three for five blue if you scrap a card, and
again, this is one of those cards.
It's like I have to scrap in order for this to be on a three
for seven block 3, which is what all other classes get, including
technologists because it exists in generic with no effects. 3
for seven block 3 is not something that I need to work to
get to normally normally. And the scrapping I kind of
argue is only good if you're playing Teclovosin where he can
play Evos from banish. I might just be like missing
something obvious here, but are there any other synergies for
scrapping cards that really exist?
I think it is heist because heist lets you put a card from
banish into the arena for free. If it hits right.
Yeah, on hit, but that is one reason.
So this really muted synergy based design I think is part of
why everyone had such underwhelmed reactions to the
set. You know, if I have to scrap in
order to play a three for seven, what are we doing?
You know, especially with the payoff for scrap not doing that
much. Or if I have to boost twice to
get nothing and I have to find ways to make the boost twice
interesting again, like there are cards out there.
I totally see your argument, Clark, about making it really
fun for Brewers. But I think the fat community at
large, we like to evaluate things at face value 1st and
then evaluate synergy. I think at a competitive game,
that's a really good floor to have.
Like what am I getting and what can I get if I work for it?
Yeah. I mean, I think another great
example of this is Big Shot, right?
It's a 3 for six that if you boost two or more times, it
gains +2. Very, very fair and limited.
But you're never going to see this in a real deck because 3 is
simply too high of a cost to put at the end of a chain where
you're boosting other cards. Sure, you could do if you have a
lot of 0 costs and like hyper drivers out, but like, is that
really what you're doing to get a three for 8?
Is that really the reward in all of this?
Either that or you're activating like Technical Foundry Heart and
then you're burning two more cards for two points of damage.
It just doesn't seem like that good of a trade off.
And to to get one overrate value is simply not enough, right?
Maximum velocity 2 for 10 for just boosting one more time is
actually just so much better of a pay off.
I would anyone ever play this? And you know what, a three for
eight that also blocks 3 is a little bit unprecedented, but
the just we want something a little bit more, right?
But it's not even like a popper at 8, right?
Like it's base is 6. So like it doesn't even have
that additional utility of like being the higher costed power
for like clash, being able to like fuck over Victor's clashes
or like being able to be a good popper against prism and and
prisms like power reducer effects.
Like it really just feels like, oh wow, this was like fine and
limited and this was fun and limited, but this is never
making it into a constructed environment.
And I feel that way about a lot of the cards, but that's okay.
There are a lot of fun cards. I think a lot of people really
enjoy some of these designs. And maybe we'll get to see a lot
of this iterated upon and actually maybe we'll go back to
Bright Lights and be like, hey, with this new context being the
future, some of these cards are actually playable and the
synergy does work. So especially a lot of these
items. I'm going to step off of my
pitch here and hand the mic over to Joel.
Joel, what do you have for us for Blue Pitch?
So for Blue Pitch, I wanted to talk about some cards that I
think, well, one of them is already a good card.
The second one is like certified drill pipe dream.
And the first one I'll talk about is adaptive plating.
For those of you who don't know, adaptive plating is A1 block
mechanologist equipment that says modular or this may be
equipped to any equipment zone. It has a subtype of the zone
it's equipped to and as an action, you can pay 0 to equip
this to another equipment zone and it has galvanized.
When this defends, you may destroy an item in control.
If you do this gets +2 defense until the end of turn and it has
blade break. The reason why I like this card
because it has a lot of text and it's very versatile and outside
of adaptive dissolver, this modular mechanic hasn't really
been used to great effect, but I really like it.
It's it seems very versatile and the reason I've been thinking
about this card is because not only are we getting
mechanologies in this new set, but I also have this like weird
prediction that Marlin. Oh yeah, Marlin fish Marlon the
Ranger would get a modular equipment because of some of her
Texas says cannon. And I didn't really know where
cannon would show up. So I was like, maybe it's an
equipment piece and maybe you can put a cannon wherever you
want, much like you would a ship.
Like you put it on the side you put on the the front of the ship
or the back of the ship, whatever.
But that doesn't really make sense because why would you wear
a cannon or why would you put it in lieu of a bow?
So if it wasn't going to fit in Marlins of kit, it might be like
maybe this Pirate Ranger mechanologist hybrid card.
I don't really know. We don't know if there's going
to be any hybrid stuff, any hybrid stuff in this new set.
So that's kind of why I wanted to talk about adaptive plating.
Also with the reveal of Puffin Hightail and some of her cards
that she cares about, none of them say boost yet only
galvanized. So that makes me think that this
new mechanologist isn't going to care about a wide range of or
like having a deck full of mechanologist cards as much as
the previous mix. So maybe Galvanized is going to
be a larger focus than boost is. And with that being said, you're
going to want more ways to galvanized if it's not going to
be like a core of your 60 cards. So maybe having redundancy in
your equipment zone to galvanized is going to be the
move. I don't know if it's going to
get reprinted or not, but I think adaptive plating is going
to play a big part in this. I love that you chose this card
because there's so many things that I want to talk about.
Literally every single line of text I want to discuss on this.
Yeah, it it's, it's got a lot going for it for sure.
What? Right, just 'cause you were
mentioning galvanized just now. I really like how this design
lets you pick up like random cards that you didn't quite get
full value for, like. Yeah.
A boom grenade just kind of wasn't able to land 'cause they
blocked you out. Mm, hmm.
OK. If they're attacking you, you
can just turn that boom grenade into enabling your equipment to
block for three. Like you're probably going to
find a space, or you can block for three with this card for
free. It feels like you're giving
something up because it's an item, but it's an item that was
probably about to be destroyed as soon as you get to your turn
anyway, right? Yeah.
We talked in our Alchemist custom class one we talked about
what were the issues with items and it was typically they don't
have go again, they don't have block value, and Crank fixed the
issue of go again by essentially always being able to remove one
value from the card to give a go again and Galvanized fixed the
block value issue where you were able to generate 2 block from
your item provided you were blocking with another card and
gave up the item. While honoring the reasons why
the cards don't usually do that in the first place.
Yes, but the thing that's super weird to me about this card is
like, why can you move it right, right.
Like when is the use case that you would ever want to move
this? I literally think just for tech
Lavalin wanting to equip something but even then that
seems weird. I don't know.
Well, actually for adaptive plating, it's not a base, right?
So you couldn't even equip something on top of it.
Like, oh, I destroyed my arm slot, but now I want to play my
other arm slot, so let me just modular this over and then equip
it. It's also an action without go
again, implying that there's actually a pretty big value to
this, right? Like moving equipment slots is
supposed to be a full action. Take your whole action point.
Is this worth taking a whole action point?
Yeah, I think, I think they were playing the long game with this
line of tag. So I'm not really sure what this
is supposed to be. I think it makes sense that they
would want it to be there like you're saying, Joel, if it ever
matters, a modular piece of equipment should be able to
move. Why not?
Now, one thing I do want to mention is that in bright
lights, lots of designs fell flat.
And maybe that's because they had designed other things and
went, let's wait a little bit on this, which they've done before.
They've said that they've done it with chaos cards, where they
designed a bunch of chaos cards. Then they were like, we don't
like how this works in this limited environment, so we're
just going to put them on the shelf.
Yeah, maybe these like special little galvanized things and
like this modular idea. They were ideas that they were
playing around with, but went, let's not put it in bright
lights and save it for the next, next set.
Pisces is coming out. It's the next, next set.
Maybe we're getting these cool ideas that ended up not making
it into bright lights. I think you're phrasing this as
radical because it's a little radical.
It's always exciting to think about, but I think it's very
common for LSS to chill the fuck out a little bit and save it for
another set. We see it repeatedly.
Yeah. And then sometimes they don't
and we get miss fail. Sometimes they're like, what
have we just printed anyway? Like Arachne was supposed to be
an Arcane Rising. Arachne from Dynasty was
supposed to be in Arcane Rising. Yeah, but they just waited
forever. It's so cool when they like,
reveal what's behind the curtain.
You know what? I mean, I think that's just
common in trading card design too.
I feel like Mark Rosewater for Magic the Gathering talked about
like, oh, we had this design for this set, but it wasn't quite
working. So we tried it out in this set
and it worked really well. Woo.
Yeah. Or they like just tweak it a
little bit, right. They're like it's there, but
it's not quite all there. So we're going to wait and tweak
it. I think modular could be that
being able to equip it anywhere. Because one thing that has been
talked about recently in the fab scene, at least at the time of
recording, this is a Roger that came out with a video where he
discussed the problems with fab limited, right?
Which are what are his main concerns with how limited works
in flesh and blood? And one of his big complaints
was equipment and having to draft equipment because do you
take this equipment now or are you going to see two more arms
pieces later? You never really know sometimes
because it's all dependent on what gets opened in the packs
and what other people are prioritizing at your table.
It's really hard to evaluate that.
But what if your equipment had modular?
I think modular could make the return and be this fix for a
limited issue of, you know, this equipment, it's an arms piece.
But like, am I going to see are there arms pieces or other chess
pieces? But what if it's modular and it
doesn't matter where it goes? And and now, admittedly, this
would probably be on something really, really simple, something
similar to like the blade beckoner, right where like maybe
it's like a 2 block blade break or like A1 block blade break and
it's modular. So it can go anywhere, but it's
still good to pick up because then it can go anywhere and you
can pick up other pieces and feel more confident in picking
up non modular equipment slots because you know that the one
that you did have can just get moved to another slot.
Now it can go from being what you thought was your arm slot to
now being your leg slot. I love it.
The last thing I want to talk about adaptive plating.
The fact that Mech already has a lot of armor identity or a lot
of identity in general for Evos and boosting Evos being the
identity themselves. And basically every other piece
of equipment for mechanologist has been about boosting or
caring about a critical threshold of mechanologist cards
in your deck, which is like cohesive with boosting.
But there isn't a lot of stuff with Galvanized specifically
outside of Adaptive plating. And so that's why I wanted to
talk about this card because I think we're going to see a lot
more galvanized text appear on I guess non traditional cards just
because we've only seen on equipment and a few attack
actions. And then I think like 2 block
cards or one block card. Excuse me?
Yeah, I really like that shout because you're saying there
isn't enough item synergy in the EVO equipment.
I think with the Max Armory deck we're getting a little bit more,
but that's very hyper driver focused, right?
It'd be cool to see some stuff that just cares about.
Like maybe it builds up counters and once you have 3 counters you
can remove a counter when you play an item to put an extra
steam counter on it. Something like that.
Either that or just equipment that just straight up cares
about having an item in play or that has extra galvanized text
to some extent, like a legendary piece.
So I think that's what Puffin would really want to stick to.
Oh, like a temper that also has galvanized?
That would be sick. Something to sort of
differentiate her play style from other mechs.
Because I think Mech is the class that cannibalizes their
classes more so than other classes.
Yeah, and you know they've been willing to shift archetypes in
the class, right? Like Florian is a mid range room
blade when room blade has kind of always existed as like an
aggro class right? Why not having a mid range
mechanologist that's less centered around boost?
I think it's totally something that LSS likes to do.
Yeah, so I do hope there's a lot more galvanized support and item
support in general. The last card I want to talk
about is Steel St. Hoons, which I still think is a
little stupid that they didn't just call it goons because
there's no card what called Steel St. goons.
So for now on, gooning is the new gooning for all you.
For all you gooners out there, No.
I hate that. And Steele St.
Hoons says it's a 3 for three blue pitch 2 block Majestic.
It says boost if an item you control has been destroyed this
turn and gets +2 and it has galvanized and it says 1 of this
defends you may destroy an item you control if you do it against
+2 defense. And I think every galvanized
card in Bright lights had the same text of you may destroy an
item you control if you do you get +2 defense.
That's been the baseline until Golden Skyward and came along.
Yeah, they also all have two block which is consistent with
Golden Skywire. Actually not cognitive field
that has a three block that goes to five good which like good
call you. This guy did his research.
Yeah, well, he. Totally beat my ass there.
And the reason why I like this card is because 345 is like
pretty bad, right? But it's out of blue, it's on
right? Which makes it pretty decent.
And so that means for fatigue matchups, it would be a pretty
decent attack in the late game. And I also like galvanized on
versatile attack actions. I think that's generally a good
thing because I think soup up. There's a whole like, cycle of
them. Yeah.
There's a whole cycle of them up to the three for seven.
Yeah. It's like 0 is soup up.
The one cost is A1 for five, that if an item has been
destroyed, it makes blocking worse.
And then another one get the 2 for six has overpower I believe,
Yeah. And so I like that they're
starting to explore more with galvanized having separate text
because golden sky Warden says when this defends, you may
destroy an item in control. If you do this gets plus one.
And if a golden cog is destroyed this way, create a gold and
repeat this process, which is technically different, but it
equates to getting +2 like the original galvanized.
But my hope is that in high seas, they explore a little bit
more with the galvanized mechanic and have other effects
like maybe dealing direct damage or getting life in some way or I
don't know, just adding other effects.
So it's a little bit more interesting of a mechanic to
play with other than just turning stuff into four O block.
I also think this card could be good for Max.
I think hyper drivers, unless there's a lot of new synergy to
just add a shit ton of steam counters on all your hyper
drivers. I think Supercell does that, I'm
not 100% sure. Supercell definitely does that.
Supercell can get really exponential value because if you
have 3 hyper drivers out and then you do X3, then they all
get 3 counters and you get a third, right?
Yeah. But if you only have one hyper
driver, then you're kind of locked into X being 1.
So like your X can increase for every other hyper driver you
have, which then means each hyper driver you have gets that
much more value. And vice versa, if you're racing
as Max versus another hero and you're not able to resolve a
really big Super Cell, I think Steel St.
Hoons is a really good card to think about, including because
it can still be a boost card to activate your hero ability as
well as be a galvanized card for the hybrid driver that's going
to be destroyed on your next boost attack.
It might not be the most tuned play a Max player can do, but
it's at least an interesting thought.
Cool card. Yeah, it's definitely one of
those cards that every single time I make a Max list, I'm
like, can I find room for it? Can I put it in there?
I'd like to. Yeah, there.
I think as a whole, Bright Lights had a lot of really
interesting majestics that just don't see play right now, and
I'm really excited for High Seas to iterate on a lot of that
stuff and make some of those things playable.
Yeah, give us some overrate steel St. hoons, you know.
Yeah, dude. But that's pretty much all I got
for right now. These are the cards that I
wanted to see their design flourish in high seas and maybe
iterated upon. But I think now we should just
move on to our Arsenal zone. Yeah.
Listeners, our Arsenal Zone is the part of the podcast where we
all shouted a card that we've been thinking about lately for
whatever reason we want. We're going to start off with a
suggestion from our Patreon members.
Yeah, so if you join our Patreon at the $5 or $10 tier, you get
to offer a card suggestion whenever we're recording for a
Arsenal Zone card. We keep track of them over week
to week, so you can just throw them in there whenever you feel
like it. And then we randomly decide
which card gets shouted out. So let's go ahead and get ready
to roll that dies that's. Always.
Hey, we got #2 which is whippy, whippy.
Mr. Corn dogs himself. So Whippy has been consistently
submitting cards, and I think we've already done Rapid Fire,
so this time we'll do Crazy Brew and this is what he has to say.
Hell yeah. You want an easy way to turn on
Gravy bones? Drop this shit early on and you
can choose to activate it, roll the dice and baby, you got a
blue card going to the graveyard that turn.
So true. Bestie on.
Ironically, I really like crazy brewing gravy bones.
Just the fact that you can high roll the two resources and two
action points in like an ally centric list seems really really
strong. Are we be running the gamblers
gloves? Crazy brew combo gamblers gloves
and gravy bones. Hold on, I got something spicy
for you. Life of the party in gravy bones
because you need to. Life of the part.
So crazy brew is a 0 block blue item that caused zero and it
says action destroy crazy brew roll A6 sided die and on one and
two you lose 2 life and go again.
Argh. On three and four you gain 2
life Go again or woohoo and and on five and six you gain 2
resources, 2 action points, and your next attack at this turn
gains 2. That's to be a lot of booty for
a 5 and 6. So true bestie.
I think there's not a lot of downside.
Like even paying two life to discard this car, like that's
not a huge 22. Two life just to put it in
graveyard from field. And you get your action Point
back, baby. Action back, boy, baby.
The upsides on this card is pretty cool, especially if like
the alley attacks don't have go again or play.
Playing the alley doesn't have go again like this is a great
option to sort of hire all your opponents and establish a board
if your gravy bones. Life of the party putting a blue
in your graveyard. Hello.
Yeah, Life of the Party is definitely like the right way to
use Crazy Brew. But wonderful local Anthony Pham
loves shoving Crazy Brew into some decks.
I know that he was running a one of in Aurora not too long ago.
I know that when he won The Players Championship in the
First Age Open Series. Icelander.
Yeah, he. Ran in Icelander.
Like he fucking magistered that shit.
And you know, life of the party and he won.
Life of the Party says you can discard the crazy brew as a
instead of paying like for the party's resource cost.
Discard it from hand. Yeah, you may discard or.
Destroy or destroy. So you could just discard the
crazy brew, get the go again from playing life of the party
that way, and then you're attacking for a six, go again on
it, gain to life and then you can like follow up with allies
or whatever. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't like discarding it. But it's the same value, except
you don't have to pay the cost. Of the difference is having the
extra card in hand. Like I like the idea of playing
a crazy brew and then arsenaling life of the party and then
attacking with life of the party destroying the crazy.
You could do that too. I have a hard time imagining
that. You have a hard time, you'll
start. So sorry you have a hard time.
Imagining A potion being on the field when I play another card,
then having them both appear in the same hand together.
You. Were right, Clark.
I did not phrase that correctly at all.
I have a hard time imagining myself having the discipline in
order to have those two cards in my hand and not just play them
together on the same turn. It's it's a personal thing, it's
an indulgent thing. It's not AI have a hard time
imagining Clark doing it. Clark would do that shit.
Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Sure, Clark would wait and get a
second marshmallow in an hour or two, you know?
Wait, what? Yes, camp thing, Delayed
gratification. No, it's the delayed
gratification. That's the social studies.
Last thing I'm encounters camp thing.
Anyways, thank you Blippi for making this suggestion.
If you didn't hear your card shout it out.
Feel free to keep submitting, we will get to yours eventually.
We roll them Mandalay, so it's kind of hard to pick them out.
And we love just hearing about what cards you've been thinking
about. Yeah, I think we're going to go
to our shout outs. Clark, do you want to start?
Sure, I'll start by shouting out Flourish.
Hey, remember in turn 0 when I said that I was playing around
with Ira? Well I've also been playing
around with Florian and recently I bit the bullet and bought some
first Strike decks. I have been notoriously avoiding
them because I hate the fact that the Commons in the Aurora
first strike deck are worth 10 plus dollars.
I think that is utter fucking bullshit and I think they should
never do that ever again. Thank God they got reprinted in
the Armory deck so that they can drop in cost, but that pissed me
off that there was a beginner specific product with a really
expensive Commons and rares. Flourish was one of these cards,
but not as much because it didn't see the same play that
Sizzle and Static Shock did. And you're about to argue why
Flourish actually should be $10. Comment I.
Think Flourish is a lot better than people giving you credit
for it? Flourish currently has only been
printed at yellow or blue. It is a 0 cost earth action, 2
block, 2 block that says the next time an attack would gain
power this turn it gains that much +3.
So if it would gain plus one instead it gains +4.
Yeah, they put that example right on the card.
It's almost like I read it off the card and it has go again.
It is a proactive Earth card to play when Earth doesn't have a
lot of proactive Earth cards. So if you're early in the game
and you're just hunting for good decomposed cards, Flourish is a
great card to play for that. Like it's an Earth card that you
can get offensive value from and it's also just a good rate.
Like a yellow 0 for three pump is solid.
Like I think I talked fairly recently about how nimbleism
feels real strong as a 0 for +3 for low cost index.
Hey, guess what? This does the same thing but
it's yellow. You just have to make sure that
your card is already gaining power.
But a lot of the decomposed cards that we're already looking
to run felling plow under in sunless, cadaverous tilling, all
of them already gained power by decomposing.
So if you only have one earth card and action card and you go,
Oh no, I need to decompose this turn to have a good offensive
turn, don't block, play flourish and then decompose with your
tilling. Now you have a three card 11 and
you got to decompose. Yeah, it does fulfill a certain
niche. There's not a lot of Earth 0
cost cards. Like looking at the list that I
would run in Florian, you have like Arcane Seeds Life, which is
great. No one's questioning that.
It's also only really able to be played in Florian and like
Briar, I guess. And then there's a lot of Blues
that are giving you like very minute value, maybe because
they're an item or a sigil. Yeah.
And then there's defensive 0 costs, which are really what
we're looking for here. And then Weave Earth.
Weave Earth is the only other one.
And Weave Earth is like OK you know what if it was yellow
instead of red and still gave you 3 value?
It was just a little more conditional.
Exactly. And I think that Earth does have
the tools to make it fairly turned on a lot of the time, or
it's just another Earth card that you can pitch, say, for
helping keeping your channels around.
I think this card has a lot of utility and I think it's very
underutilized include in Florian.
And as I work on figuring out what deck I'm going to be
bringing to the May AGE, I'm going to be messing around with
it. Yeah, that's it.
That's it. That's what I got.
Awesome, shout Clark. Fuzzy, what about you?
So the card that I'm shouting out today is Mandible Claw.
What? I'm sure this card already got
talked a lot about probably I bet like Joel shouted out this
card before. But I just, I've been craving
some brute. I got to play our friend
Valerio's brute list just on our kitchen table and we played two
games and I won both of them. So I think I'm a brute expert.
You know, I think I'm potentially maybe even the best
player to ever play brute because I have 100% win rate.
True. True, I definitely don't
remember when you rolled knuckle bones and got A1.
Did I do that on stream? No, you knucklehead,
knucklehead, knucklehead. And you rolled it in our unseen.
Yeah, I also have rolled knuckle bones knucklehead on stream in a
CC game. Yeah, Agee, that was pretty fun.
I don't know if you got a one there.
I think you got like a three or a four.
It was like, yeah, like a two or three.
It was bad. But anyway, I've been like
wanting to play Rhinar and this is mostly, I'm going to be
honest, it comes from like losing a lot of games of CC
lately at armories at tournaments like the last like
month and a half. I've just been like having like
50% win rates are worse at like every event I go to say for like
one or two armories where I did get like a three one win, you
know, like those are kind of like my best events lately.
So I've been like, look, if I am trying to win and I'm not
winning, why not try to play a deck that I think can still win
while also looks like a blast to play?
And Reiner, I'm going to be honest, it just looks really
fun, you know, and mandible claws.
You know, one of those reasons why Reiner's so good.
You play blood brush bellows, you swing with both claws, 2 for
five, go again, 2 for five, go again into whatever other bridge
attack you want. It's great.
And it always works out that way.
Yeah, it never doesn't work out. I saw that guy on stream that
was like losing a game against Florian.
I think his name is Eugene. Yeah.
And he played sand sketched plan to grab a second blood rush
bellows after playing one and because he didn't discard that
blood rush bellows immediately, he intimidated like the Florians
entire hand and dealt 24 damage and won the game and like to.
Be fair, that was a 25% chance loss like he had.
He had four cards in hand when he went for that blood rush.
And he was already down like 12 life against De Florian.
So, like, I like the idea of a hero that like, look, if you're
already losing, you have a Hail Mary that can sometimes cinch
the game. Sometimes Joel's shaking his
head because I think Joel doesn't have the mental to
handle playing a chaotic hero like that look.
It is what? Good.
Did you? I don't have shit.
To say it's, it's the it's the meme of the fucking bell curve.
And it's like the stupid side is like always rule your scab
skins. And then the middle is like
never roll scab skins ever. And then the truly enlightened
are like always roll scab. It's like there are definitely
very intelligent times to go for that play and Eugene is a master
at finding them. I give a ton of credit to him in
that blood rush play, but also I feel like it's batted I used to
give to every new brute player cuz every new brute player will
be like, well I have tempo and four cards in hand, I guess I'll
roll scabskins. It's like, no, don't do it.
Cuz it's always the one in 36 brute that's on fucking stream
that embarrasses every other season to brute player.
It's like I'm a new player. I'll I'll get into Bruin.
I'll just. Roll scabs and no, no, no Joel.
He sat there and thought about it for a while before he began
to play. Gene found the exact moment to
take that risk. It was.
Good. So maybe I'll just come back in
a month and be like, I think I want to play this other hero.
And I'll be waiting. Literally, literally next week,
yeah. Honestly, that's funny.
So I brought a copy of Mandible Claw to sign and give to each of
you today. Nice fuzzy, you can't wait to
run that, honest to God. One for you and one for you.
Thank you, Fuzzy. So what do you got?
So my card is Skyward Serenade which is a yellow tube block
lightning rubled action that costs zero and says choose to
create an embodiment of lightning token.
Search your deck for a physics banish it then shuffle and you
may play it this turn. Your next attack gets plus one
and it has go again. And this card is good for a lot
of reasons. If you've listened to the
podcast or been in a discord, you know that Clark is a staunch
hater of Arc Lightning. And I wasn't so convinced.
I thought Arc lightning was pretty mid.
It has like good ceiling potential but overall wasn't
that great of a card. And when Skyward Serenade got
printed it sort of just broke that card beyond recognition.
It's so easy to arc lightning and then play Skyward serenade
didn't get like easily like 5 arcane damage from that one
card. It grabs you a 0 for four and
turns on every one of your like synergistic pieces.
I mean it's not surprising because LSS has done this before
where they take an already winning aggro deck, gives them
an Armory deck with really good piece of kale and it doesn't
really make sense as an Armory deck.
It doesn't really make sense as like a meta fixing move or
whatever because Aurora is already going to be the next
best room blade and they sort of just like turn it up to 11 and
now she's on her way to LL within the year.
Yeah. And it's just a little puzzling
to me. I have some more choice words,
but I'm not going to say that on the podcast.
So I just wanted to shout it out and let you guys voice your
grievances. I really feel like Aurora right
now is in a similar place to where Lexi was a couple a year
back or so. Like Lexi was just kind of like
the top tier aggro deck and everyone had to deal with Lexi
and even the decks that kind of had game into Lexi, like she was
just so good of an aggro deck that you there's only so much
you could do, you know? Yeah, at least like, I don't
know, was Dromite beating Lexi back then?
Like you had like bullshit allies to deal with that could
kind of sort aggro. Yeah, kind of sort of like, not
in a way that would like stop Lexi from doing her thing
because she's still Endless Arrow, Art of War, Brain razors,
Like, like Lexi was still really strong and the best aggro deck,
but Dromite would still just like, win sometimes because
like, Illusionist, Yeah. Like Aurora right now is just
very dominant, very dominant. And I think she's, she's at the
point where I think she could use some bands.
But I could also see LSS being like, Nope, not quite there.
We want to be really sure. I mean, one thing that LSS has
said about their strong heroes is that they want all heroes to
last at least one year. So the Miss Veil heroes say it
looks like some of them may not make a full year, but Aurora I
think would make a full year. It really depends on how many
points she gets this PK season. I think this scenario is a
little bit more frustrating for me because it's literally just a
0 for four deck. And it seems to me that even
though Lightning I think in general was a success in terms
of redesigning the identity so that it's away from like the
like blink in twine lightning bullshit that we had in Tales of
Arya, but now it's sort of being like flattened again because of
it. It's just easier to make the
most refined lightning deck and just do every zero for four that
you can shove in there. And I don't know, to me it just
seems like a a flavor loss, but still very strong card.
I'm glad that the LL ING of Viscera has made it so that
other Aggra decks can sort of compete and find their own ways
in the competitive meta. I'm just a little annoyed that
it happened to be with another aggressive hero that got an
Armory deck. Anyways, that's my card, yeah.
Glad we could end on an upper. Thank you so much for podcasting
with me, boys. Yeah, and if you have an Arsenal
card that you think we should have talked about, feel free to
join our Patreon and let us know in the Arsenal Zones suggestion
channel. We roll randomly every single
episode, so eventually you'll get picked.
And remember, as High Seas continues to get more spoilers,
our Discord is the only place where you can see them.
So feel free to join our discord and I think we'll see you next
time. Yeah, make sure you're getting
your vitamin C. Scurvy's out.
Scurvy's real out there, so. True.
I really hope Captain Hornswoggle is getting plenty of
vitamin C while he's on the high seas.
Yeah. He's got to live long enough for
us to see him at our pitch and prediction or set release
episode. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Bye.
Bye everybody. Some guys, bye.
Pitcher to Me podcast is hosted by Fuzzy Dope, Clark Moore and
Joel Racinos, Executive Producer Talon Stradley, Logistics
Coordinator John Farkas, music by Dylan Holtz, logo by on V
sound mixing, Christopher Moore and last but not least, you.
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