Hi everyone, it's Joel, your second favorite host.
For this week's re released episode, I chose Meta Bottom
Feeders featuring Anthony Pham. I picked this episode because
it's our first guest with a non pigeon tuning member and because
Meta Bottom feeders are near and dear to all hearts at the
podcast. Anthony is a great player,
community leader and friend that perfectly exemplifies the type
of guest we want for the podcast.
It makes me so excited thinking about all the guests that we
have in store for you in 2025. See you there.
Welcome to Pitch It to Me podcast, a show about subjective
past, present and potential future of flesh and blood
design. Why did intoxicating shot cross
the road? Why?
To get to the other side for today's episode, we'll be
talking about all the bottom feeders, the low tier heroes
that have won our hearts without winning any events.
On red pitch, we'll discuss how the community engages with poor
performing heroes. On yellow pitch, we'll talk
about which heroes are chumming it up at the bottom tier bucket.
And on blue pitch, we'll round out our conversation with what
can be added to help the bottom feeder heroes.
You can find us across all socials such as TikTok and
Instagram at Pitcher to Me podcast.
I'm Clark. I'm Joel.
And I'm fuzzy. And we have a guest.
Please welcome to the podcast, Anthony Pham.
Hello everybody, I'm Anthony Pham, resident Riptide Enjoyer.
So Anthony, I want to ask all of our guests who come on the show,
what do you think is your like proudest achievement as a member
of the flesh and blood community?
Yeah, my proudest achievement definitely, I think, would be
community engagement. I put a lot of work into trying
to make sure the armies fire and that everyone gets the cards
they need to. So I always joke around that,
hey, if you want a card from me, come play the first round of my
Armory. So that's a huge thing that I
like to do just to get people in the seats, people playing in the
game. So I think Flesh and Blood
should be played in the flesh and blood.
But also, I'm really proud of this Riptide deck that I've made
recently, the red liner Riptide, literally red liner.
It feels like the first deck I've made that I've made from
scratch from zero to 80 cards, and it's just something that I
really enjoy playing at the moment.
And what card shop do you work at?
Where? Where can we catch you?
Yeah, I work currently at Kingsterry Games.
We have 3 locations right now. I work at the one mainly in
Fountain Valley. I'm the manager there.
We also have locations in Oceanside, CA and Lake Forest,
CA. Nice.
Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast.
We also want to take a moment here in our Turn 0 to shout out
our executive producer, Town Stradley, who just wrote up and
released an article at a time of recording.
He just released an article on rate times all about his
fatigue. Riptide lists, right?
And I know that you, Anthony and him, just met up at APQ and
talked about your different approaches.
Yep, Yep, that was a lot of fun. It is.
It is cool to see Riptide built in so many different ways and
the the way people react to it too.
There was actually a funny part where someone thought I was on
Talons list so they were like, I'm dredging another fatigue
game and I'm like here with my 60 card clean 60 aggro Riptide.
So it's pretty fun to see all the different reactions to
Riptide. Yeah, not only that you brought
Riptide to APQ, but the polar opposites that your decks are so
funny. It's good.
It was good, for me at least, that Talon was so notorious in
that area with this Riptide bill.
All right, let's go ahead and jump into our red pitch.
We wanted to start off our red pitch by talking about community
engagement, sort of like how does the community engage with a
lot of these bottom tier heroes and really just with getting
into the game. Yeah, it's, it's funny you say
that Clark, because a lot of the community engagement with Flesh
and Blood often is has nothing to do with our topic for today.
It usually has to do with net decking, which means just taking
whatever performs really well in the Flesh and Blood meta and
copying that list either card for card or changing a few cards
that suit their specific metas or their tastes, whatever.
Flesh and Blood players are total net deckers.
It's like, I think all trading card games are pretty net decky.
I I don't, I think it's because everyone who plays a trading
card game generally wants to win and so we're always looking at
what is winning. I think that's mostly true.
I think with Magic the Gathering, like Commander is a
very forgiving format where you can have whatever deck you
wanted. You can bring your random brew
up to a commander table and do reasonably well with it.
I think the difference would be like Magic the Gathering.
Modern or Standard is usually a lot of net deckers, yeah.
On the topic, I think Flesh and Blood is a newer game and net
decking is specifically prevalent in here because the
carpool is very small, so it's not there's not that much room
for innovation. So when people look up decks or
try to build something from scratch, they're like why not
just copy an 80 that's already successful and just play that.
There's not a lot of variance between decks right now,
especially when there are heroes that don't have talents.
Because now these heroes only have their class cards and their
generic cards. Whereas heroes that are
elemental have all these ice cards, you know, earth cards,
lightning cards, that they have availability available to them
and they can use that however they'd like.
Especially with he was like Breyer who can use generic cards
very well as well. Yeah, right.
A word that you just made me think of is expression.
Like a lot of the times when people talk about commander in
Magic Gathering and like, why did that format pop off as hard
as it did? It's because it gave players a
lot of expression. They could put pet cards in
their deck, right? And they can do weird
strategies, rares that they just had lying around.
And so each deck felt uniquely theirs.
Flesh and Blood isn't there yet, but I think you do start to see
it in some of those elemental heroes where they have the big
expanded card lists. I've seen so many different Lexi
lists and a lot of people who express themselves through the
little choices that they make in their Lexi lists in a way that I
don't quite see with other heroes.
I've also noticed the inverse. Like Anthony, you brought this
up previously in in our prep, but Michael Hamilton with his
bowl in your list, he, even though he has a really catered
cardpool of ice, ice wizard and just wizard, chose to have these
really well stated like generic cards like famous fighting
spirits and wounded bowl to use them in a way that no other hero
has been able to do in the past. And it kind of like shocked
literally the world because he ended up winning worlds with it
with how innovative play can be rewarded if you, you know, take
the time to really test like the full card list you have access
to, as shallow as it might be, right?
Yeah, and we see also see the perils of net decking too,
because a lot of people they will copy these very aggressive
lists because aggro is very easy to play.
And then Charles Dunn comes out of nowhere with this very
fatigue heavy Briar list that everyone expects will be playing
snatch and all these aggro cards, right.
And he just fatigues everyone. So it can be at your own peril
too, because that means if you're net decking, you might
have know all the insurance and outs of your deck and you're not
ready for, you know, on the fly strategies like playing against
fatigue Briar or all arcane Iceland even.
Yeah. And you know, The funny thing
about that is how baked into the game it is.
You know, if you sit down across from Charles Dunn, who has not,
who's about to win nationals but hasn't yet, you don't really
have any way of knowing that he's about to play a fatigue
list unless like you maybe scout scouted it out from other
tables, right? Like if he's already been doing
well, to be able to play something that's so different
than the norm can really give you an advantage in a game like
Flesh and Blood because it's a best of one format.
Other games best of three format, they allow you to get a
taste of their deck before you make all their final decisions
for what goes into your deck. Right?
Because best of one is the way that we play Flesh and Blood.
It can actually like, fundamentally lead to innovative
decks performing better because they're different than
everything else, and they trip people up with their sideboard,
for better or for worse. Or even decks with lower play
rates and heroes with lower play rates.
I know that when I was preparing for The Calling, I was slamming
games against all the top deck lists and then I ended up
playing against a Rhinar and a Durinthia and I was like
dropping these games. And it's like, why am I dropping
against Rhinar and Durinthia? Because I never tested my deck
against them. I didn't know the insurance and
outs of that match up. And that's just going to get
worse as time goes on for. Sure, for sure.
So many more new heroes are coming.
Yeah, it's going to become a lot harder to keep track of them all
because didn't they announce that like there's gonna be 15
new heroes in the next year, in 2024?
So we're going to get a lot of new heroes entering our formats.
15 plus was the number that was floated out there.
We don't know if James White in that article is saying, oh, the
blitz hero and the adult hero, That's two unique heroes.
We don't know if that's what's happening.
True. So it could just be 7.
I, I don't think that's the case.
We don't know how many of those are blitz specific, but if
that's CC, that is close to nearly doubling the amount of
playable heroes in the meta over the course of one year.
Not all of those heroes are going to be at the top of the
meta. They are not all going to be
competing for world slot. So I think there's a really big
conversation that we need to have as a community of how do we
as a community manage a flood of new heroes coming in when we
know that a vast majority of them are not going to be
competing for those top slots, they're not going to be the most
competitively viable heroes. How do we we accept that new
players are going to want to play them?
How do we accept that we're going to want to play them and
then bring them to tournaments and lose on them?
No. Never could be me, but it
couldn't be me. I think the bottom two hills,
when they 1st come out, they I think most of them are just
going to be unsolved. It's sort of like this puzzle
that comes out. LSS always says that, you know,
they have a specific kind of archetype in mind when heroes
come out, and they said it with Prism, how Prism was a little
bit underpowered and what they're testing, but they think
Vincet is really strong. So I think LSS on release always
has an idea for these heroes and it's up to players to kind of
put the jigsaw puzzle together to see if they can solve it in
time. And I think that that will be a
never ending solution until they retire because there's always
new cards that are entering the card pool, new generics.
Sometimes the generics work really well with some classes,
sometimes they don't. Like Snatch works really well in
aggro decks, whereas, you know, sync blow works really well in
mid range decks or tank decks. And that's just going to be the
case for all these heroes, right?
What's to say another hero just uses Snatch really well and then
now they can just exploit that in some way?
Yeah, that's interesting because with like when you double the
the the amount of heroes, like a lot of them might not even get
touched until some of them like prove we've mentioned in a
previous episode that aggro kind of like pushes the meta to see
like where everything else falls like controlled eggs are very
reactive in that way. So we're going to probably see
the aggressive heroes that come out in the following year, how
well they use the current generics, how they use their
card pool that they come out with, but also how they
revitalize the class cards that they share with the older
heroes. And I could definitely see like,
you know, them like similar to how Lexi came out and
cannibalized Azaleas cards and even cannibalize Riptide's
cards, you know, with the new Brute warrior and Guardian, like
there's going to be a non zero chance of that happening.
And when you have more heroes than you can kind of like
reliably test in a given pro season, you know Vincette and
Prism are probably going to move from like 2 unused hero to like,
maybe. Like 10, like maybe only 5 are,
are really that good and can compete in a, in a competitive
landscape. Yeah.
And I think you bring up something great, which is
there's only so many players like in flesh and blood and only
so many players at these events. Sample size is a big thing to
consider here. We're like, we're only really
going to know if a hero is good or bad the moment that there is
a mass of players playing them. There's always going to be, you
know, 1 tricks or small dedicated player bases who may
they even get results on these heroes, but it doesn't
necessarily mean they're good. Yeah, I think sample size is
very important too. Like obviously the people that
are serious about winning and competitive, all all the
competitive reasons they're going to play what they think is
the best deck and more than not, that's the most played deck.
Whereas, you know, if the pro of a professional picks up Riptide
or Vincet, they might have a different angle or different
mentality than, you know, someone that is A1 trick or
someone that's just starting out.
So I feel like there's this lack of sort of the competitive side
to these bottom tier heroes because they don't want to play
them for tournaments. They don't want to use them for,
you know, practice or bring them to these big these big
tournaments that are behind paywalls.
You know, like it takes like $70.00 to play like at a
calling. So like they don't want to spend
70 bucks just to play Riptide and lose, you know, three games
out of nowhere. So I think we're lacking this
sort of innovation from the competitive players in terms of
these bottom tier decks, just because they want to win, they
want to play the best deck, they're going to play whatever
they think is, yeah. That's such a good point.
Yeah, Yeah, really interesting because you know, we've already
talked about a little bit how the innovators can find really
great success with the element of surprise and having very
unique play styles into a very specific meta like Michael
Hamilton and Charles Dunn, like we've, you know, mentioned
before. But not everyone is incentivized
to do that like you said, because Riptide on paper
probably doesn't have the greatest shot at winning until
the one tricks team up with the pro players and have this insane
strategy come out of it. But that's how often is that
gonna happen? It takes a very unique set of
circumstances to really pull off.
And even one of those decks that we talked about, Michael
Hamilton Bowl Lander list, Icelander is a good hero, Right?
And I think Bolander was pretty early on in Icelander's history.
Correct. Yes.
Yeah. So even before the wider
community understood how good Icelander was as a hero, a pro
player had already picked her up as being one of the better
heroes and then designed the deck and surprised everyone.
It's going to be a lot that's a little bit different than
Riptide, where Riptide wasn't immediately sort of picked out
by pro players as a hero to invest time into.
So they're not. And all of their skill and
expertise both in deck building and flexible play patterns and
meta sniping, all of that just got all that effort and
expertise that they have got focused on two other heroes and
left Riptide by the wayside. Maybe if that energy was focused
on to Riptide, Riptide would be getting way more results for
sure. Yeah, you can see that exactly
in the current in the current Joe my list.
I think a lot of people now are running cadaverous contraband to
be able to hit a dragon, kill like a big Uvia and now put rake
on their top of their deck, put as well on the top of their
deck. So like if that amount of, you
know, manpower went into building something that Riptide
can use, maybe Riptide would be in a better place.
But we'll probably never see that for the time being just
because there's more competitive heroes out there that these
people that are are travelling all across the world they're
playing in events for. And Clark, I feel like we're
kind of nearing the end of this conversation, but I remember you
saying that you've had some rather unpleasant experiences
when trying to find alternatives to deckless that you see pro
players use and trying to adapt it to either your own meta or
own budget even, and having some really, you know, interesting
backlash. I'll say, say with nice words.
So when we move into a meta with 15 new heroes, like how like,
you know, how do we encourage innovation not not just from a
necessity standpoint to target a certain meta, but also just to
promote brewing? Yeah, we we've talked a little
bit before the episode started and I mentioned some of the
experiences I've been having in the online official Flesh and
Blood Discord channels for specific heroes, most notably
the Max and the Viscera ones, because that's just what I'm
focusing a lot of my time on right now.
But I feel like you can see it as this general online sentiment
of being negative towards people who are trying really different
unique builds. And I think that there's, you
know, a little bit of give and take.
I think if you're someone who maybe has some prestige in the
community, you're given a bit more space to do that and talk
about it in these spaces. I think if you are someone who
has 1 results elsewhere, people are going to give you more
benefit of the doubt. You know, it's one thing when a
random Andy pops into the chats. Like guys, no Riptide's going to
be #1 this season. Trust me, I got the crazy new
tech scar for scar and it's like no buddy like we've.
That's me, everybody. Yeah, but it's.
It's definitely a general negative sentiment.
Like literally just the other day we were talking that a tweet
came out where someone's like, oh, it's so annoying when some
random person hops into the Discord and talks about how
they've been brewing with Riptide and it's like, why?
Why is that annoying to you? If if anything, it should be
generally encouraged. But the same time, I also see
why people don't like it if we're trying to find as a
community, if we're trying to find just that one or two cards
to change to make our hero good, It's really frustrating when
people are coming in and rehashing a conversation that we
had three weeks ago about a card.
Like we, we already agreed, like I'm not saying this is true for
a riptide, but as using that example, dude, we've already
agreed scoffers are not great. Let's not use it.
We've we're like, we're here now catch up, right?
So there's definitely that conversation.
But I agree with where you're coming from.
Like not everyone is going to be joining the community at the
same time. Other people have while they're
having these conversations about a more competitive landscape.
Like if I first joined, like the Bolton chat for for instance,
I'd go in there like once in a blue moon and I'm like, hey,
this guy came out with the hatchets.
Is he using the hatchets? And everyone's like, no, use red
and use Centauri Sabres. Not in that same tone.
But, you know, just trying to relate it to more than just
Riptide because Bolton has seen a bit more play.
But there's that same, you know, negative sentiment, like whether
or not it's like has good intentions behind it.
There's going to be like that, that backlash between a new
player and an entrenched player. I feel like maybe this is like
the anthropology major in me, but I keep wanting to like
explain this as like a trend because of the way that people
communicate. Like you're on a Discord server
where like you pop in with a quick question and you kind of
expect a quick answer. And the people trying to supply
that quick answer are gonna try to give you like the common
knowledge, you know, call it like the cultural knowledge of
like this is what people in general think about Riptide
right now. And it's like, do it this way or
like this is like what we as a group know.
And it becomes a lot less about like individual experience.
You know, like, imagine if someone came and like, this is,
I have personally tested that. And this is what I found, right.
Like you're not gonna get that kind of answer on Discord
because the people that are able to respond immediately is not
necessarily the people that have specifically the perfect answer
to your question, right. Yeah.
The best they can do is like, this is what we know as a group.
And that's gonna be very limited.
You know, it's gonna be snappy. And I'm not saying that like.
I don't know what I'm trying to say here.
Something about like how Discord, a Discord server is
going to lend itself to answers like that.
Yeah. And if you want a nuanced
answer, you probably will not find it on a Discord server or
on Twitter. But it gets really rough when,
like, that's the main ways that we engage with the community
right now, right? Or new.
Players, I mean the thing that really triggered this for me was
that someone came into the Max chat and said I do not have the
money to buy Nitromechanoid. What other lists are there?
And people said, then you're just going, going to lose.
It's like, how is that the correct response?
How is the response? Oh, you don't have the money
lose, fucking give up. Like, how is that the response?
It's such a Dick thing to say. And like you it it that is
what's frustrating. It feels like a lot of the time
in these chats, and just in flesh and blood in general,
there's such a high emphasis on winning that it overrides
creativity. But then like, in order for
someone to come up with a different, better answer to that
question, they'd have to have like testing experience, right?
And so far, like, we've only had like a month of pro quests and
people were probably testing Nitromechanoid, you know?
And it's hard to like invest money in a deck list, even a
cheap deck list, and then bring it to a tournament, like for all
these reasons that we've been mentioning before.
So like, it is a shame to see that the attitudes can really
quickly be dismissive in Discord or whatever, insert online forum
here, but and I'd definitely like be excited to see things
move in a different direction where we're able to foster new
ideas in a different way. Yeah, it's funny how we reward
such creativity, just like the Ray Adams list or the bull
lender list from Michael Hamilton.
But we are also ridiculing these people for trying out new decks,
new heroes, new cards and these already established decks like
Promise of Plenty and Dromi say, for example, like we would
ridicule that deck because it's not Snatch, it's not dust up,
right? So little story I played.
I played Icelander at the Age Players Championship with crazy
brew and gamblers gloves. And you won that event.
I did. I.
Did end up winning that event. Both of those were kind of use
cases for several different decks and I kind of posted the
deck list online after that and there were some some feedback, I
guess I could say. Towards.
Gamblers, bells and crazy brew, you know, Icelanders, this sort
of hyper efficient deck that like winds turn cycles over and
over and over. And anytime you kind of stray
away from that with these rolling sort of mechanics or
like equipment that doesn't block and has a weird effect,
people kind of ridicule you for that.
So it's just kind of funny how there's always and the people
trying to innovate the game, but then when it's not successful,
it's kind of too weird. People will ridicule you for
doing so. If you were LSS or if you were
like a community head, like how would you promote this
innovation for new strategies with testing teams, for
instance, they would be mostly focusing on the top list and
maybe debating on like one or two card choices, like maybe
less of XYZ card to add 1 of this card that will be good for
a specific matchup. I would say seldom would they
say, let's try, you know, fatigue Briar, like that's a
very specific situation that that needs to go down.
So like, how, how would you promote something like that in
a, in a community? Yeah, I, I think there's two
trains of thought there. I think there's the first train
of thought where you take, what do you think is the going to be
the most successful deck into the field?
And then kind of tecking that however, which way you want,
like say you really want, you think Dromi is going to be the
best deck coming up, right? You want to detect this Dromi
deck for, you know, other Dromi is the mirror or whatever else
you think will be very popular. And then there's the other train
of thought, which is my personal favorite train of thought, which
is playing the anti meta where you know that Dromi will be the
most favored hero. So that you build a hero to kind
of counter that. And whenever you see a Dromi pop
up, you know they pretty much ought to win.
Yeah. And that could be like Phi or if
you can hunt, you can even go deeper than that.
You can go anti anti meta where you predict that there will be a
lot of Phi because of Dromi. So you play Riptide which has a
line 95% win rate into into Phi in my history.
Or you can go anti anti anti meta.
Just play drum. Just destroy riptide.
Yeah, and then and then when you lose as riptide like I can't
believe you detect for me with that anti.
The meta is just an oroboros. This is a snake.
Eating its own. Oh my God, that's so funny.
Oh you're a meta chaser? No, I'm an anti anti anti.
I knew you'd be playing. We've talked a little bit about
how the community engages with low tier heroes in general, but
let's get into some more specifics for yellow pitch.
Let's hear some more about like what heroes right now we would
consider to be those bottom feeders, those Chum Bucket
heroes. Anthony, what do you think?
What is what sticks out in your mind?
Well, the bottom of the bear unfortunately at everyone's
competitive tier lists, all the videos coming out and also the
living legend point system is my personal favorite Riptide.
He's just kind of in this weird in between position between Lexi
and Azalea where you kind of are.
I feel like his hero mechanics kind of support you playing buff
so that you can load arrows in the arsenal.
But then again, that's just the worst Azalea and then you don't
have a neat go again. So then again, you're just the
worst Voltaire. So I think he's kind of in this
weird position where not all the traps are applicable to every
hero, so you kind of have to find this kind of weird in
between spot. Ted is such a weird example too
because you read that hero card, free uninteractable damage and
like I get to reload for free. I don't even need to like use my
bow. Like it seems like a really
awesome hero ability, but then in practice for whatever reason
it just like isn't. It's so super interesting to me.
Yeah, and also heroes have like, usually, like heroes that have
less starting health are kind of, you know, on this radar of
kind of more broken because they do damage outside of their turn,
right? But it just feels like Riptide,
the one damage ping isn't enough to kind of push him over the
edge. Yeah, like like you know,
playing traps throughout the game, depending on the matchup,
you might go and we you see this in talents article as well.
You can go anywhere from like 0 damage all game or two or even
like upwards of 10 if you just like really see them at all the
right times, right. It's so match up dependent of.
And situational. And situational, yeah, you can.
You can have the right match up and just not have it line up on
the turn where it happens to be relevant, right?
Yeah, I feel like Riptide is kind of like this blowout hero
where his traps can be overwhelming, but it happens
like a very small amount of the time.
Like if collapsing trap happens the right time, if buzz saw
happens at the right time, it can be a turn ender.
But there's times where, you know, you draw and they throw a
CNC at you and now you either have to trench it away or don't
block it all or use it to for your quiver or whatever.
So now you're not seeing that for the rest of the game, right.
So like there's very it's a very difficult hero.
I feel like to get all the factors that make him win lineup
and that's why he probably doesn't see as much.
You know, kind of talking about another low tier hero, or at
least pretty low in terms of living legend points is me and
Joe's favorite Lavaya. They're.
Going to say Iraqi. I'm like, don't you dare.
No, I would never associate you with Iraq.
Thank you. I appreciate that the.
First time I was like, Arachne has good hero design.
You literally laughed at me. I'm never gonna associate you
with Arachne. I don't care how much you grow
to love. Him love them.
That's a very Joel comment. I just.
Said you're not allowed to sit at my table.
No, you're not. You bullied me for years.
Go sit with the cool kids, Arachne and I.
We don't need you. I love how Leviath's the cool
kids. That's crazy.
But Leviah, Leviah Leviah is pretty cool now, but Leviah is
also considered one of the like higher variance heroes,
Especially with using scab skins to like really try to explode
out your turns. Do we think this is what leads
to a hero being low tier is being too reliant on higher
variation to make them powerful? Yeah, because every every
trading card game and every hero will have some level of variance
and you can exploit that variance for really insane
amount of resources or power. But with Leviah, like literally
every card in her kit will say random or like draw to which you
know implies more randomness, right?
Like banish 3 random cards from graveyard.
Now with brute in general, like for instance blood rush spells
like the premier brute card, it says discard a random card from
hand. But the way you play your turn
by turn, most times when you play it, you're going to have
only other sixes minus your pitch card after you, you know,
choose to play that card. But it's, you know, still random
and all of her blood deck cards that are supposedly overstated
and don't require a day's card from hand in exchange for other
benefits like go again or buffs on the card itself still says 3
random cards from graveyard. And the longer the game goes,
the wider your graveyard gets and the randomness starts to
feel like way more overwhelming than just having like only sixes
in graveyard and having more quote UN quote misses, right so.
So Oviah does have a lot of randomness for sure.
Is the randomness the thing that makes her low tier?
I think it is, yes, because when people say low tier, it means
consistency and winning. You know, these big events and
these big events have 14 rounds, 15 rounds that you have to play.
And there's going to be a game where you get wrecked by
scabskins. There's going to be a game where
you just didn't banish something off.
Dread screaming, right? Right.
Heroes like brutes have more susceptibility to randomness.
So, you know, the more you expose yourself to this sort of
dice rolling mechanic, the more you're gonna get burned by it.
And you know, it could happen in game one, It could happen in
game 14. You can run hot all day and just
not have that happen. But a hero like, you know, a
more consistent hero like Lexi that just has arrows every hand.
I mean, being able to use Voltaire to load everything,
that's going to be more consistent throughout a long
tournament day as compared to Ryanar who's going to be rolling
scabskins going to be discarding a random card blood rush bellow
might hit your blue instead of your red.
So like there's a lot of factors that come with brute and these
low tier heroes and a lot more has to go right for them.
Whereas these top tier heroes have a sort of a form of
consistency where they can kind of replicate the same powerful
play over and over and over. Whereas these lower tier heroes
can do that, but at a very lower of much lower rate than for sure
top of the meta. Yeah, cuz you know, I've heard
it put in a way from, you know, a barraging Blake.
You know, scabskin rolls. Like whenever you choose to roll
it, there's a 5050 chance that you get 2 action points and a
one in 36 chance that you get either A1 or A6.
And eventually when enough brutes go to events, there's
going to be Reiner's and Levy is a place really high or God
forbid, win something. And that's because they are
quite literally the one in 36 and the other 5050 or the other
like side of the spectrum. They're me having like 03 games
or three 3, whatever. And so it can be kind of hard to
measure the power level of the cards at face value when you're,
like you said, Anthony, when you're tied to this like
inherently random and prone to bad luck mechanic.
Yeah I agree. Like most of the bottom 2 heroes
like Arachne, Riptide and Levy even, they can all blow out a
hero. Like if Arachne finds a good
double cut to the chase, eradicate turn, then just hit
all of your art of wars is fine you might win that game.
But that's not going to happen every game because you got
insanely lucky there, right? So there are these power plays
built into these lower tier heroes that can happen, but they
happen way less often than these top here.
For sure. See, that's interesting because
I was going to bring up how Arachne I almost feel is counter
to this because Arachne is so consistent turn by turn, but
there's still something holding Arachne back from being a good
hero in terms of competitive results.
Because I've played against Arachne's, we have a couple
people who just slam assassins at our locals.
I've played against a good amount of games.
I've even played a lot of Arachne and Blitz and I have
found turns are very consistent, right, based on how much I'm
allowed to keep. I know what my turn is looking
like. I know that I'm if I have a
blue, I'm going to be throwing a dagger and then if I have A1
cost attack, I'm going to throw that or that one cost could
represent my razor reflex or it, or I can add a find also throw
my other, right? There's so much I can do that I
know generally what my turn is going to look like just based on
how much I need to block. So Arachne is very consistent,
but then Arachne still doesn't win anything.
So why is that? I think that might be to a fault
too, in terms of Arachne's consistency.
If he's this hype kind of consistent hero that can do
like, you know, turn out to turn X amount of damage.
Other heroes might be able to expect that, you know, there's
not a sort of like randomness to the turns like blood rush bellow
or, you know, three of a kind rain razors where you know, you
don't know what they drew. You don't know how to prepare
Arachna. You can kind of like he's going
to dagger into contract card or he's just going to contract card
like 044. So you kind of know how to
prepare yourself, you know, say with sink below or or stuff like
that. You can kind of prepare for what
he's about to throw at you. And also I think his mechanic is
innately just kind of almost RNG ish where you kind of look at
the top of the deck, you get info, but say it's not a good
card to banish. Now you put it at the bottom and
then the next card you don't know anything.
So if that's a good card, you might, you know, hedge some
points towards your matchup in that way.
Say you hit like a a codex from a Ranger right?
That's gonna be a really big hit cuz now they're -1 codex right?
Let's say you just hit a random card like a blue steering shot.
Like that's probably not gonna help your game plan at all.
So you're still like getting closer to this like fatigue game
plan, but the randomness is like after you bought them, after you
resolve your cut to taste is like what else do they still
have the deck? And based on what you banish,
you might just get them even closer to their power cards
even, which is another consideration.
Yeah, yeah, I. Think it's also just sometimes
it is literally what the ability is and whether or not that is
good for winning games. Lexi's ability is very good for
winning games. Free frostbite or free go again.
Great, wonderful, beautiful. Banishing a card off the top of
the opponent's deck is not going to do as much for you.
Like, it's not a bad ability per SE, but the fact that it doesn't
do anything to quote UN quote impact the board I think really
hurts Arachne. And it's why Arachne is all the
way down there. It's an incredibly cool ability.
It is so much fun to think about, but it just isn't
actually a design that is competitive.
Yeah, it's a very macro ability, like it's going to impact the
game definitely, if the game lasts that long, to get to that
point where you can take advantage of the work you've
been doing turn by turn, but like you said, doesn't do.
Anything to the board state currently you're kind of just
like love to or leave them to their own devices.
And that's why his best cards are either Eradicate, which lets
Arachne banish a lot more cards, Surgical Extraction, which takes
a card out of their hand, or leave no Witnesses, which takes
a card out of their arsenal. All of those are the best
Arachne cards because they all impact the board state in some
way or in terms of Eradicate, it does so much more towards
Arachne's game plan. But I think we just also see
there's this other assassin hero that does it better.
Yeah. I think.
I think comparing Arachne to Azuri kind of states how flesh
and blood is designed. I think flesh and blood, you
know, as a tempo based game where you kind of back and forth
against the other hero. You want to be a Zurich kind of
shines because she can do all this disruptive stuff that
limits how well you can do on your turn.
And then again, you're winning these turn cycles back and
forth, back and forth. Whereas Arachne is kind of
having his own mini game in itself where he's like, you
know, I'm going to make you mill and mill might not be a good
Strat in flesh and blood because you get to keep your entire
hand. You get to still all do all this
damn that you damage that you want, whereas Zuri, you know,
can hit you with a shakedown and just choose the best red in your
hand. So it's kind of tough, I feel
like to compare the two because it feels like Arachne is almost
kind of like a magic hero, like a some sort of alternative
wincon hero, whereas Zuri is kind of built for flesh and
blood where she's like back and forth.
She's winning these, you know, 2 card hands, one card hands even
with codex and and leave no witnesses.
And whereas Arachne kind of is to the sort of the back end
because he's playing kind of his own game plan, not not flesh and
blood. Something you just said kind of
like makes me think the mini game aspect listeners in our
notes, you can't see it, but we have like Levia slash Bolton
because those are both my favorite heroes.
But all these heroes, Arachne, Levaya, Bolton and Riptide, they
have mini games in their hero ability.
While they're very flavorful, very fun to play with, they're
just not impactful to the game. Like Leviah having blood deck
cards like you can play from banished like at some point,
maybe not immediately, which means like you're having to
manage a lot more resources that if you don't see them right at
the right time or set up just the right way, you get blown
out. Arachne much longer game plan.
You're going to be banished with a contract using your silver
throughout the game. Riptide.
You want to be leaking in as much damage with your hero
ability, which doesn't necessarily equate to anything
in the middle of the game until like it's it's that really tight
knit end game. And then Bolton has like the
storage mechanic that he banks for later, which again, unless
you find a really great turn that you set up to take
advantage of like multiple cards in the soul, then often times
you're going to be like probably dead or dying when you're able
to capitalize on these mini games.
I like how you bring up this idea in mini games Joel, but I
don't think I quite agree that it's only like a low tier hero
thing. I feel like all kinds of flesh
and blood heroes. There are little mini games
going on. Yeah, like what?
I feel like the worst one is Dromi.
I would call like her little Dragons that she sets up like a
mini game. Like you have to like, do your
game plan, but also I'm giving you a new game plan that you
have to take care of and that's attack my Dragons.
I mean, I will point out just right there, it is a mini game
that requires the opponent to respond in some way.
Yeah, yeah. Which is a little bit different
than what Lavaya and Iraqi and Bolton have going on, where it
almost let's the other player have more room to breathe while
Dromy's Dragons put more pressure onto the opponent.
I would also count like ninja and mascot momentum like the 123
mini game. OK, but but again, that's
putting pressure on those moments.
On you to react to this sort of mini.
Game, yeah, but you're right that mini games do exist in
other heroes. But how that mini game?
Actually, both of the examples you just brought up gave us that
revelation of is it a mini game that makes the opponent respond
or can the opponent ignore it and keep blowing past them?
Right, right. You can definitely ignore mascot
momentum. No, you.
Can he's No. You can't.
He's psyopsing you so we can play kotsu at locals.
I mean, if you're just like making like go again or attack
reactions, whatever, and like triggering Riptide traps
basically without thinking about it, like you probably won't go
that well for you because all of the stuff that Riptide does can
like really screw over your turn, right?
It is something you really have to play around, otherwise you'll
probably lose. Yeah, I think Riptide's mini
game is situational as well. Whereas Katsu and Dromi, your
two examples are kind of, you know what's coming, right?
You know that Dromi is going to play a billion Dragons.
You know that, Katsu, if you don't block this card, I'm going
to draw a card. Proactive versus reactive.
Exactly. So yeah, I think the the mini
games differ in a lot of ways. And so it's very flavorful that,
you know, Flesh and blood has these heroes that have mini
games. That's really cool.
Yeah, but different kind of win cons are treated different ways
in sort of flesh and bloods back and forth tempo based game where
it's kind of you want to your opponent to do less while you
are doing more. Some of these mini games and
these heroes aren't contributing toward that, towards that, and
some of them are contributing very heavily.
Right. Now actually that's let's talk
about intoxicating shot then, because we're talking about
proactive versus reactive pressure on the opponent versus
pressure on yourself as the player around these mini games.
So in terms of like the quadrant here, the worst quadrant to be
in is a reactive game plan that does not put pressure on the
opponent, which is how riptides traps feel.
A lot of the time you don't have the ability to really play
around your opponent. So it's a very, very reactive.
And then unless you're getting at least four points of value
off on the turn, which is the difference in starting life
total, it's also not really putting a lot of pressure on
your opponent. So isn't it intoxicating Shot
great because it gives you some proactivity in the mini game.
It turns on so many of your traps.
I think theoretically it does because it does turn on your
traps, but there is also some sort of deck building aspect
that goes into the toxicating shot.
You have to have some sort of critical mass of traps for it to
work. And then again, like is the the
value of the trap triggering going to help you out right?
Is this inertia token going to help?
Is this frailty going to help? Sometimes it doesn't, sometimes
it does. Sometimes you give them a
courage and an agility token or whatever it may be and they hit
you for CNC for seven, go again and you can't do anything.
Just. Your defense reactions and
sometimes they you don't draw the inertia trap, you draw the
frailty trap. But now you give them a break
point on their three go again. Made of four go again, right?
Yeah. And they like play it from hand
or something. See frailty won't even affect
them. So there's sort of this like RNG
aspect behind intoxicating shot where the traps are so
situational and you are now giving them, you know this plus
one this go again. So traps that do trigger, but
then again, even if they do trigger, do they help you out
right? And I think the legendary traps
are are very good for this because they triggering them
will have bigger effects like discarding your hand or the
attack goes back down to its base.
But these sort of like traps that you just put in the deck
just to get one damage off, like, you know, frailty trap,
inertia trap. Sometimes it won't even matter
because you know, say they hit you with an arrow for five.
Now it becomes 4. But then you it's it's still a
break point. It has to go again and they get
a ponder anyway to negate the inertia trap you just played?
But do we? Do we like this design of taking
a reactive game plan and giving some proactivity to it?
I think it's a step in the in the direction.
It's not obviously for every deck and it's catered towards
Trap Riptide especially. So I think Alice S did make a
successful card overall, kind of introducing this new archetype
of Trap Riptide and try to play more towards this second portion
of his hero ability. But I think eventually there
might be a card in the future that plays more towards his
first ability, which is the reload mechanic.
I feel like he has kind of this dual aspect of a defensive
mechanic and an offensive mechanic, similar to how Briar
plays. How Briar has this, you know,
offensive mechanic with Embodiment of Lightning, but she
also has this defensive mechanic with Embodiment of Earth.
So I think Riptide can kind of emulate that and with maybe more
support he can get there. Yeah, So it seems almost like a
really great like base design, but he just hasn't been around a
long enough to see like multiple sets of like these expansion
slots because this is the first expansion slot that we're
getting from Flesh and Blood. So maybe a few more sets down
the line. He does like, you know,
capitalize more on the reload aspect because that in itself,
like not breaking the combat chain, could be extremely
relevant for future Riptide cards.
So we just like can't see because it's there's still an R.
And D or whatever. Now, is that kind of circling
back a little bit to our red pitch here.
Do we think that that is a healthy mindset for us to have
as players of these Lower 2 heroes?
Just wait, we're going to get our cards printed one of these
days and then we're going to be top of the pack.
Is that is that the right attitude that players should
have? I mean, I'll start off because
this was me for like 2 months leading a dust hold on, hold on
and my I. Think more like years.
No, no, no, no. Literally since the inception of
my about flesh and blood career, I'm like just you fucking wait,
boys, every Armory not save. Trust me, stay away from him.
And then it just kind of didn't happen.
Like, you know, Levia got like quote UN quote fixed, like you
just don't straight up die at 13 life.
But what did what did it really do for the hero?
Like again, with my previous example, the one in 36 Levias
one or placed really high at these calling or Proquest.
But overall, the conversion rate for Leviah didn't change all
that much. So it, you know, similar to
circling back to what you said, Clark, are what we've been
talking about as a whole. We have to kind of go back to
the drawing board to see like, OK, is there something we're
missing in the original release of Leviah's cards or the cards
that were released like in supplemental sets?
Is there something in Dusseldon we're just not, you know,
combining in the right way with like the past cards.
There's a lot to it, and I think as a whole, waiting for a new
set to fix your hero, like you're just gonna set yourself
up for a lot of frustration, which is what I've been
experiencing in the past couple of months.
I think you are not. Only setting yourself up for
failure, but you're creating a conflict relationship with LSS.
Yeah. When is LSS going to fix my
hero? When is LSS going to do this
thing for me? And ultimately it's not their
job to. At the end of the day, the only
time we are going to have a perfectly balanced Flesh and
Blood game is when two people are playing the same hero with
the same equipment, the same weapon, and the same cards and
deck. That is the only time you will
have a perfectly fair game of Flesh and Blood.
I recognize this analogy. You're talking about Fox Final
Destination. No items only.
Yeah, that is exactly what I'm talking about.
Until everything is exactly the same every single time and you
run it over and over and over again.
That's when you're going to remove all these extra
variations and all this randomness and all this.
That's what it's really going to be, only skill, right?
And that's not the game that we're playing.
As long as you sit down with a different hero than the other
person, it's going to be unbalanced.
Right, that's so true. Yeah, I think success is, you
know, also measured by what tools you're given to, right?
Like how do you perform under these specific circumstances,
like back against the wall and you with CNC in a really
difficult spot, like how do you react?
And you know, the better players will make the better decisions
at that time for sure. And me personally, I think, you
know, going back to what you said about the lower hero, like,
should we just sit and wait? I, I recognize that Riptide is,
you know, not as strong as some other heroes in the format
currently. And he's kind of like my pet
deck. Would I bring him to say, worlds
if I was going? Probably not just because I want
to be able to play a more powerful deck that can, you
know, live up to standards against the majority of the
meta, right. But I'm not going to sit here
and kind of like, you know, complain that, you know, LSS,
you should have given us a better specialization card.
You could have done all this stuff.
It is kind of weird though, right, That, you know, Dromi,
for example, was this kind of weird example of a hero that was
really bad into Phi when Phi was really strong.
And then that sort of, you know, all the Dromi specialist kept
playing her, stayed threw her all this time.
Phi gets nerfed and now she becomes super popular because
she counters the best Lexi or has the best time to Lexi, and
then now she gets her rewarded with a really good
specialization card in Tome. So we've seen the other side of
that coin where you can kind of like wait on this sort of new
set to come out and you get rewarded with it too.
So I think there's not a right answer for it in the end.
I think, like, I think flesh and bud should just be played the
way you enjoy playing it. Say, if you you like, you know,
a lower tier hero, you shouldn't be measured by how well you do
with that hero. Say, for example, you should be
measured by how much, how fun you're having.
Same way goes for a successful hero with, you know, a
competitive person. So say you're playing Lexi to
win, you should be measured not by how well you're doing, but
because of how much fun you're having.
And if winning is why you're having fun, then so be it,
right? But you shouldn't be be dogging
on someone because they're having fun trying out a lower
tier hero. And not winning.
I feel. So true.
And that kind of circles back to our previous conversation about
how to get more players into the game.
I think if we sort of stop like like inherently dogging on these
lower tier heroes and like that people want to play them, like I
think every hero is going to have a community that just like
loves this fucking hero. Like, you know, they're Lexi and
Joy is far, far before she was top of the meta for seven
months. They'd like ice Lexi, they liked
her control, like mid range play style and they had to adapt
because their ice version was far outclassed by this more
aggressive art of war, like three of a kind version.
And so, you know, for instance, when I'm playing Leviah, I I
can't wait for LSS to make this hero broken, because the only
thing that's going to do is make the top players abuse the new
power of this hero and probably get them LL quicker or probably
get a card band. Because like, if you were to get
like your fear, like quote UN quote fixed.
You have this really big power spike with these like over
pushed cards. The only thing it's really going
to contribute to is more pro players picking picking up your
specific hero and getting them LL quicker or getting them, you
know, specific cards banned. So really what your focus should
be is like you said, Anthony, have more fun with it.
You should be like, you know, putting reps into this here
because it's your favorite hero and not because you're like on
this weird binge of like, you know, OK, go down the list of
heroes that could be like anti meta.
Because what I really enjoy about flesh and blood and we see
it time and time again is specialists are rewarded.
Like if you like really put in the time, figure out why this
hero is good into XYZ and either wait for like one or two push
cards to really help the strategy you're going for, or
just figure out a way you can pivot in a way that for this
specific meta, you have a really good shot at winning your
armories, winning your proquest, whatever the case may be.
That way you have a bit more fun with the game and not don't get
like really frustrated or really like shut down when the support
that was supposed to save your hero just doesn't pan out that
way. And I think that was a really
great point. Something that I always think
about is when my heroes aren't doing well, that is an
opportunity. It's an opportunity to try
looking at the hero in a completely different way, right.
So like I've been testing OTK viscera and go tall viscera
because without Rosetta Thorne, the really nice go wide strategy
that we had been doing for months, it's not as good
anymore. And I don't want to play the
same Visser I that isn't as good and wasn't doing well in the
meta right before we lost it. So why not try something new?
Why not go way off the beaten path and try something new,
right? Bring it to your Armory, give it
a shot. Oh, it didn't work out well?
You had fun playing your hero in a new way.
Like I think that's a great way of approaching having a hero
that isn't doing well in the meta.
For sure. I think there's also the case of
a hero maybe getting too much support or going too far too.
I know Yuki, who's a prolific Lexi player in our community.
She's been talking about how she kind of misses Lexi, and she's
also quoted that, you know, when Lexi got her outsiders arrows
and you know, started straying away from these elemental cards
and just played straight arrows, rain razors, three of a kind.
It kind of got away from the flavor and how she enjoyed Lexi
herself, right? So I feel like sometimes the
support that makes your hero good and viable can kind of
stray away from what you like your hero to be, right?
Maybe like Riptide or whatever here, Levia because of her
flavor or her lore or her ability to do this X thing.
And now they've introduced a new way to play Levia that's just
like, more generic or a different way than you like.
Right. And then everyone's playing her
because she's good. And it's just kind of, you know,
straying away. Yeah.
Far away. You like.
Exactly. Yeah.
So there's like another flip side to that.
Right. Yeah that's so true.
I haven't had the pleasure of people wanting to play my hero
in masses cause all of my favorite heroes suck, but we'll
get to a point I'm sure. We have tried though.
I think they have for sure once when when Dustin came out.
I think Levia redeemed was like one of the coolest cards we've
ever for sure. Ohhh yeah, yeah.
And a lot of people did try that one.
That first event right after the Dusseldon, a lot of people
played Levia. Levia was one of the most played
decks and people realized she sucks like she uses to herself
so often. Yeah.
And people just, like, saw it.
See, that's what happens when a new card gets introduced.
People think that she they're good or people kind of go
towards it because it's the new craziest thing.
And then now they realize, you know, there's a fundamental flaw
with this hero. There's a fundamental flaw in
how she plays. And they just scrap it right
away and they go back to whatever they're playing.
Yeah, right. I think it's about time for us
to move on to another topic for Blue Pitch.
We were going to talk about like what can be added to the game as
well as what underutilized cards specifically exist already.
Moving away from like heroes and deck archetypes that perhaps
could see more play and going into specific cards that maybe
haven't found the right home or do have the right home, we just
don't know about it. Yeah, this kind of ties into
what we briefly mentioned in red pitch, which was LSS every so
often going you guys haven't solved been set yet, you haven't
figured her out. You don't.
You don't know. What she can.
Do, but like, hasn't James White said the same thing about like
the potions in Everfest or something?
Like who's saying this earlier? Was that you, Anthony?
No, that was me. Wasn't that you, Joel?
Yeah, I, I've, I've heard at least once or twice from devs
that like, you know, we haven't fully explored or like a, a
specific set of cards or to pay attention to a specific type of
card. Like I remember not only with
Everfest, like all the items or like, you know, I feel like
every class kind of incorporated whatever support they got.
Like I think Dash got T-bone and like pulse wave harpoon, instant
slot in right swing, big over set to card.
Sweet. I'll take it.
Swarming Gloomvale. Swarming Gloomvale.
Yes, Thank you. Gloom blood and Revel and room
blood. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, you know, when a dev says like, oh, you guys haven't
really figured out everything in Everfest yet, I'm like, doesn't
that leave just like the talismans or the potions?
Like how do we look at this in the scope of like all the heroes
of flushing, but like how can each one individually use these
items in a like, for instance, you know, Briar ran one of them
for like a brief amount of time, like Talisman of Warfare, which
says if you, you know, deal exactly to damage, you destroy
both arsenals, which is like another CNC on your Rosetta
Thorn, which I thought was an insane tech from the person who
brought it. And I haven't really seen like
much more of that in other like top deck cliffs other than, you
know, Anthony with his crazy brew tech.
And another example I can think of before I pass it off to you
guys is when Dusseldon was coming out, another dev I think
was talking to Mansant and said pay attention to skull crack.
And me, I'm like skull crack. But most of the support had
nothing to do with discard effects.
So I, you know, think comments like that make me curious.
Like, man, there really is a lot of layers to this game that I'm
just not seeing that the devs have, like, you know, they have
full access to everything. So they're like, OK, just maybe
I should pay attention to this card.
Let's go back to the drawing board.
Pay attention to, you know, stuff that we haven't tried yet.
I think it's interesting because I think that whatever play
testing they're doing over there in New Zealand, I think they're
just trying to have fun with the game.
I think that they are trying. They like look at these cards
that aren't being played and then say, well, how can I build
a deck with this? And then they start from there
and it's a lot more creative. It's a lot more interesting and
exciting and I think it draws out more of the power of these
underutilized cards while we out here in the rest of the world at
our local armories, we're thinking, how do we get that
cold foil? How do I, how do I get that four
O on the weekend? That's what we care more about.
And so we're not looking to utilize these random tech cards.
We're looking to win games. And a lot of the times that
means that we can't invest a bunch of time in trying to spec
for these tech options. They're probably decent, but
also we're not. It's just not something that I
think we care about, really. Yeah.
I think like going back to the mini game thing, I think a lot
of cards out there are like supporting the sort of mini game
aspect. Like say I've got the name of
the card, but it's the one where if you pitch like a non attack
action and an attack action X effect happens.
Right, a cryptic crossing. There we go, a yellow 3 for six.
If you pitch a non attack action card and an attack action card,
it gains. When this hits, your opponent
discards a card and you draw a card.
There you go and then see if you do that in sort of a vacuum,
that seems really good, right? You're spending the all these
resources to be able to gain so many effects.
But then again, it's just easier to do damage.
It's easier to play this math game of instead of doing, you
know, three card, I draw a card potentially if you don't block
it and you also discard a card. I could also just give my Marvin
my shirtless skull form, go again and swing my weapon after
and make any chance right? Both both 3 cards.
Hard hands, but one of them's better, yeah.
Yeah, so I think that's just like this sort of simplified
math version of the game where you're just trying to pump out
the biggest numbers turn to turn to turn.
Whereas there's cards in the game that kind of kind of
support this mini game aspect of, hey, if you don't do this,
this this thing will happen. And then maybe that might
benefit me, maybe it might not. But I think for like general
deck building, general gameplay, people will always stray towards
like the easier line because it'll always work.
It'll always present X amount of damage rather than rely flying
on opponent blocking opponent variance to be able to do
something. For sure.
And there's an argument to be said like that time spent
testing these random items from Everfest or these cards that
nobody uses for good reason. And then you, you know, waste,
not wasted. But also, yeah, you wasted all
this time testing this card when you could be getting reps with
what is proven to be the better strategy.
Yeah, like a similar potion inside Everfest.
I'm not sure if it's a Talisman or a potion.
It's the one where if 2 cards have been played with the same
name, you can target hero discards. 2 cards I believe is
what the effect is. Amulet of Echoes.
Amulet of echoes There you go like that seems like an insanely
strong card, but like making it work is literally impossible
because like if you play it now, you you kind of represent this
like discard 2 in a certain moment of the game.
But say like the five has a brand with cinder claw, a red
and a blue. He's like, OK, I'll just instead
of playing the other brand, I'll just.
To searing Ember Blade you like opponents can play around these
potions down too. So I feel like there's there's
always like cool little things with these potions, but them
being like literal items on the arena public info and not
instant speed sort of shenanigans allows for them to
kind of play around it too. And that's such a situational
item too. Like not a lot of heroes play 2
cards of the same name and still have cards in their hand after.
At least it's blue, it has go again and the ability is an
instant so you don't have to spend any action points on this
card at all. Yeah.
Yeah, we did see some innovation from Talisman of Tights though
in the chain versus old, the meta where they were attempting
to counter a crown of seeds with Talisman of Tights to be able
to, you know, kind of have the static item on the board and
prevent the next time they crown seeds, they won't be able to
draw that card from Crown of Seeds.
So there is like some potential and it was kind of like showed
showcased in chain with Talisman of Tights.
But I feel like most of the items are kind of hyper
situational. Yeah.
Whereas you know that that card is also hyper situational, but
it had that sort of static effect on a very popular hill at
the time with Crannys Seed Oldham.
Right. And so Anthony, would you say
that like, would it be better or worse if that effect on an item
was made into either a generic equipment or an instantly you
could play from hand as a response?
Like does that become more like counterspell or like hand trap
from Yu-gi-oh? Or does that become just like an
overly like oppressive hate card for this specific strategy in an
equipment? Like where?
Where's the middle ground here, if there is any?
Yeah, I think sort of this sort of mini game like Counterspell,
like you were mentioning, Joel is the card, Blizzard of the ice
card that you have to pay 2 or you lose, go again on a specific
attack. It's sort of this like instant
speed. You don't really, your opponent
doesn't really know you have it. You can just kind of play it out
there. So it's kind of this like
finicky tool. It doesn't work in all
scenarios, right? Sometimes Bravo just throws a
big attack at you. Blizzard doesn't do anything.
It doesn't block, do anything. It's sort of like an Everfest
potion in itself where you kind of play at a specific moment and
it has specific matchup cases. Like, it's really good against
Ninja, it's really good against Room Blade, but it's not good
against all decks that swing just once.
Right, that's interesting you say that that, you know, it is
already an example of how these items can be turned into hand
traps. So maybe they're not as
oppressive or as like unhealthy to the game as we originally
thought because, you know, Blizzard has shut down many of
turns of mine. But still, you know, like you
said, other decks will just like completely, completely ignore it
and will punish you for having said card because it doesn't
block. At least it pitches, you know,
for for blue, right? Yeah, It also being an ice card,
it also being a blue and especially with how much our ice
heroes cared about blue ice cards, I think it just the fact
that all of that was going for it gave it the ubiquitousness
that I think could be concerned about.
But also just the fact that it has the the counter play to it.
You can pay to to ignore the effect.
I think that's good. I think LSS also just cares a
little bit or they just see more value in being able to set up
for something like I just a trend that I've noticed across
cards is that they seem to highly value the ability to set
up and then take back the tempo, while players don't like that as
much because setting up doesn't affect the board state.
Going back to what we were saying with our acne, if I'm not
impacting your hand, if I'm not pressuring your life total,
making you want to block, making you want to use your equipment
on defense, then I am not getting closer to winning, even
if setting up could help me do that on a later turn.
And I think that's where maybe there's a disconnect between
what LSS is saying and what the community is feeling in our
games. We don't want to set up because
setting up doesn't do anything that turn.
We're thinking more turn by turn.
And when we talk about how good Lexi was competitively, it was
because Lexi was pumping out 1516 damage every single turn.
And if you can do that every single turn, you're going to win
the game. And I, I think Anthony also
touched on it a little bit earlier.
He was saying, you know, this flushing butt is a very tempo
centric game and setting up often means I'm going to give up
a little bit of tempo to maybe steal it back later.
But you're still giving your opponent a chance to open up the
game completely and, and change its hide.
And also with flushing butt, they really do like this setup
mechanic or like this setup strategy in the in the form of
these like storage mechanics. But again, I think it's really
counterintuitive because you're giving up a lot of tempo.
And the more pushed card we get, the more that aggregates tools
to like push the meta or mid range deck or control deck get
like some sort of footing in the game.
Then it kind of like, you know, befuddles everything you were
trying to do with, you know, setting up this like power play
later. And yet we have seen archetypes
succeed with it, most notably Kano and OTK Visserai with
skeleton, right? Both of them being, oh, I'm just
going to set up the entire game and then I'm going to have one
turn where I deal 50 plus damage and I'm going to win.
So that's when it's good for us. But we've also seen that be
toxic gameplay. So I think that's going to have
to be something else is going to have to solve for sure.
Yeah, I think like also mentioned that like the the
weaker side of setting up to like all these guardian sort of
non attack actions that say, hey, I'm going to play this and
it ends my turn. But next year and I'm going to
get +8 like 10 + 10 like towering Titan to my to my
whatever attack, right. Like Crippling Quest for 21
sounds really good in a vacuum, but you have to pitch 3 Blues
the term before you're not hitting your opponent, and then
you also have to have the Blues after to swing crippling crush
and completely try to ignore what your opponent's trying to
do in the middle stage of whatever's happening.
Right. So any disruption?
Yeah, it's like the CNC and it's.
Yeah, the towering Titan pops and you go cool, cool, Arsenal.
Pass yeah, not only did you waste if the like the
disruption, the disruption happens like you say, not only
did you just waste one turn, you just wasted two turns Yeah,
right. So there's definitely storage
mechanics and kind of set up mechanics that definitely
backfire more often. But there's easier ones to do,
like K&O with E pots and just like waiting for that opportune
time when an opponent taps out, or Viscera with the old skeleton
building up rune chance, sort of making this critical mass of
damage that you can't block at all.
Yeah. So I think there's definitely
toxic ways to store like sort of like resources, but there's also
really, really bad ways to store resources like guardians non
attack actions. For sure, and I think that's
why, you know, Guardian has often strayed away from this
game plan. Like they're very like focus on
the math, focus on getting your, you know, a no, those swings to
make sure that you're spending the least amount of cards in
deck and then play towards your larger like disruptive terms
with the correct amount of Blues to disrupt.
And yeah. So we we don't see a lot of like
those non attacks unless it's like the very first turn to set
up like something really disgusting once you have the the
tempo again. And yet there are some really
fascinating auras out there that provide you some really intense
abilities, like plus one intellect or gaining lots of
life for giving all of your equipment plus one block.
Like there are some really strong auras out there, but
because they don't quite fit the way that we think the hero
should be played, we're like not using.
And LSS, one thing I do like about this LSS play where
they're like constantly looking at the underutilized cards, it
means that when they print new things, they're thinking, does
it bring these old cards into the spotlight in a way that
might be toxic and unhealthy? And I think that that is very
good. I am happy that LSS thinks about
that. There is a card in the game
where I'm was really excited about.
It's called Life of the party. As you know, one of my favorite
cards of all time is crazy Brew and they printed this sort of
card that interacts with crazy Brew where, you know, you get
all these stats of crazy brew built into the cart.
So I feel like that's just an example of, you know, Alice's
looking at older cards and being like, hey, let's print out this
thing that might, you know, affect this potion or this sort
of permanent or item. So I think it could be, you
know, a sign that things might be headed that way, where
something might interact with Potion of Ironhide, for example,
say, say, yeah, a guardian might like, hey, if you have Potion of
Ironhide out, you can fuse it with your shield and now you
block with like +2 and on all your guardian attack action
cards. So I mean, there's future design
space that could be had with these potions, right?
They're all generic too. So that means that's a very
important part in my opinion, because every hero can use them,
right? Yeah.
And I think that's why they're intentionally weak at the
moment, because they kind of want to keep this design space
open to be, you know, kind of applicable to multiple heroes
down the line. Right.
You want to savor it and spread it out over years of gameplay
and not have like, and I feel that way about like the first
two sets being Monarch in Tales of Aria.
I wonder how well they would perform if we had quicker
releases or or less time in between sets so that these like,
you know, decks interact with each other longer and maybe find
like counter strategies across multiple different decks.
Maybe starvote like doesn't do as well if it's like chain is
like blowing them out, right, or vice versa or prism like deals
with both of them pretty cleanly.
And there's a strategy that deals like, you know, that that
stuff I would have liked to see. But again, they were just coming
out of a pandemic. And like you said, Anthony, I
think they're moving in a really good direction where the we're,
we're getting more options and kind of revitalizing the old
card pool so that when these 15 new heroes come out, not one of
them are going to be like super oppressive that we don't have
the tools to to deal with them. Yeah, I want to shift us into
probably the last big topic that we're going to have for this
episode. What aspects of the game could
we add to improve playing these lower tier heroes?
What can we do structurally, maybe even like card wise?
What can we do to make playing lower tier heroes more fun, more
accessible, Help them win a little bit more without just
straight handing them a zero for 10?
But are we above that? I'm above that.
I would never sign on to printing a zero for 10, even in
our little crazy little custom card world.
Never, Fucking never. I would not live with.
I could not How? About a six for a 13 Shannon, is
that what Shannon? Yeah, Oath of the Ninth Blade
or. Whatever.
Yeah, Yeah. Isn't that a zero for 13?
Yeah. No that.
For nine times. Zero for 9 ninth blade.
I should have done that, but actually not quite a zero for
10. My bad.
Surely it's a nine for 9:00. True, Yeah, I think an
interesting way to do it would be adding more games per match.
I know that classic constructor does take 55 minutes, sometimes
even more and untimed matches in in Final cut, but sort of this
best of three, best of X format where you kind of play an
initial game to kind of feel out your opponent and then now you
get to re hit the same, you know, deck with different
sideboard strategies. I think that's a a very integral
way of kind of introducing more counter play in terms of like
deck building and just kind of sideboarding.
Like Riptide would probably benefit from that a little bit
just because you don't know what version of the deck your
opponent's playing. And after kind of sussing it out
a little bit, kind of figuring it out, Oh, I figured out that
they play a lot of buffs. So now inertia trap is good,
buzz saw trap is good. These are definite cards that
I'll run in my deck. I'll take out, you know, the non
relevant trap. So I think like in a way, we
were able to add a best of X format without making matches
take three hours. That would be a very good way to
implement the game maybe. Yeah, I totally agree.
There are heroes that seem to have a defensive like idea built
in. Like take like Arachne for
example, who like doesn't feel like he was designed to play a
full 5 card hand. He was designed to have like
some defensive components built in.
And like Riptide being a probably even a better example
of this, where if you know what you're going up against, you
know what you're sideboarding against, it really helps a lot
if you're planning on playing defence.
What D reacts are they bringing in?
How many of them you know? Now, would this also come with
an increased inventory? Space, it probably would like
you would probably see a little bit more of a Cyborg strategy.
Maybe I like the the old blitz or is it yeah, the old Blitz
idea where you had X amount of inventory that could be that
could be like implemented in CC where you kind of, you know,
have X amount of playable cards that you can play under your
deck, but you can only have these many equipments.
So maybe we implement some sort of strategy there, say like a
best of three CC where you have, you know, 80 cards or, you know,
some arbitrary number of cards in your main deck and but you
only can have like 10 equipment and that's it.
And you can sideboard that however you'd like.
And then now you're opening up so much, you know, card play and
say like, I'm playing Riptide and you're not presenting a lot
of go again. I take out all my frailty traps,
my my collapsing trap. I put in all my buff traps
because you're playing a lot of nimble isms, minimalism, stuff
like that. Yeah, And you know, something
that I've read in a few of the LSS articles as well is that I
think they're shifting the design space away from like
fatigue as a hero design and more so as like specific
strategy against a hero. Like for instance, against dash,
I'm if I can't out damage them, there's a good chance that I can
probably fatigue them while they're trying to boost their
their deck away. And so that might help with the
like overall time of CC matches. Like maybe we see a world where
it gets dumbed down to like, you know, 35 to 45 minutes per game.
And so that we can squeeze in these best of three matches and
see more hero expression and get that second chance, like in case
you get like blown out or like as a Leviah player, that sounds
sick. Because now I'm rolling more
dice per game. And the changes of me like when
I'm forced to roll scabskin Leathers that I don't get
absolutely boned and lose my only shot at, you know, winning
the match. Even though like because I've
lost many games where I'm fucking steamrolling, I'm making
these plays, I'm pitch stacking. I got 2 recklesses right?
And I am forced to play, I'm forced to roll scabs in the
Leathers because like, I don't know, I have to clear like an
aura with Spectra or something and I hit that fucking one or I
get no action points. I'm like, OK, whatever, I'll
just like continue. But you know, things like that I
think would help with a lot of the randomness and variance that
is so present in TCGS and like more damning in Flesh and Blood
more so than other games. Yeah, I think also like it's a
we we do talk about this best of three format, but I think Flesh
and Blood is actually one of the lowest variance card games out
there and actually feels pretty decent to play in this one best
of one format because it feels like a such a fair game.
Whereas in other games like Magic and Pokémon, it's best of
three because these one V1 games don't feel very consistent.
You draw different cards, you can hit your land, you don't hit
your energies. Whereas in Flesh and Blood it
just feels like a consistent game because of the pitch system
and the way the cards cycle through your deck faster and you
can see more of your power cards.
So it feels like best of 1 is a pretty, pretty good spot for
this. But maybe we can introduce it in
some sort of blitz format where blitz is kind of like faster
game mode, 20 health. There's more variance because if
you hit a power turn, you probably killing your opponent.
So maybe we introduce it in blitz where you play a best
three of blitz, you get the sideboard in between matches as
well, and it's just faster gameplay.
So it doesn't feel so stale. Going back to the idea of like,
you know, an unfair advantage in terms of deck building.
You can make these armies draft events and then draft events
really help the game because everyone's kind of at this sort
of level playing field where they have, you know, draft
decks, you know, 40 cards, say for bright lights, for example,
everyone has 40 cards full of MEC cards.
And I really like bright lights because if you're new to deck
building, it doesn't matter because you have 40 MEC cards.
So it doesn't matter if your deck's bad or good, you're still
a MEC, you can still play a MEC. So I think that's cool, a really
cool story. He is one of our locals at King
Slayer. He came in playing Flesh and
Blood for the first time ever, and he came to draft and he went
2-1 in his pod and he was really ecstatic about it.
He's really happy. He's like, yeah, this game is
really cool. Like he had a lot of magic
experience, but he kind of like took all he knew about card
games, put it into draft and like he was able to play.
Opponents of, you know, that have played Flesh and Blood
longer than him, but now they're on the sort of equal playing
field where, you know, everyone's drafting and playing
the same sort of level deck instead of, you know, winning by
just having C and CS. And then now he was able to
apply his own knowledge and go to one in that Armory.
So I think draft it might be a step in the right direction
where, you know, you don't have to build a deck, you don't have
to pay all this money to come play.
You can just come pay for the packs and then just have a good
time. Yeah, yeah.
And this might be like a really like logistical nightmare, which
is like my Forte. I love coming up with
complicated ideas. But if like Kingsler games also
had like, you know, CC decks like for rent, like if you if
you come in like maybe like a limit of like 8 or 16, right?
And at the beginning you each get like a random CC deck.
No legendary is like common equipment.
Like maybe it's just commoner right?
They pass out commoner decks, but CC more so than blitz, cuz
I'm always going to say CC is a great tool to learn because you
have more pivot turns and just longer times to make decisions
that impact the game. And, and not like blitz were
like three turns and it's over, right.
Yeah. So if there's something like
that where you could like, you know, either rent a deck or just
pass out random deck. So like there's no like onus on
the player to like, you know, attack for the like Armory
killers or there's no like pressure on the new player to
like make a heavy investment. They can just come here, play.
And Kingslayer actually was my very first store that I played
at and I actually went to a draft to welcome to race draft.
And I that was like one of the best experiences I had, you
know, starting out with flash and blood.
And I think that's what kept me playing for a long time.
Like I remember I was playing the worst Darinthia deck I've
ever drafted but was still having fun cuz everyone there
was really nice. They were teaching me how to
play things like that. So exposing that side of the LGS
and the Armory experience is gonna make this game explode for
capital players. And I do, I do like that
suggestion of like the decks for rent.
I actually think that'd be a pretty cool thing for LG s s to
do. But then it's still on the LG s
s to put those decks together and put them out.
And you know, there's going to be that one guy that's like, Oh
yeah, I know that you're playing the drone my deck.
So I'm so like, I specifically brought Phi to like beat you so
I could at least get a pack back.
And it's like, dude, why are you?
Why are you being a killer to the guy who just joined?
But I that it, that's all great doesn't help me.
I want to bring my fancy little brews, my shitty little decks
that I'm designing and I want to bring those to tournaments and
possibly do well. And maybe that's just me asking
for too much. I would.
I would like to be able to play my B tier and C tier heroes and
still possibly when in Armory and just having an event where
we're like, hey, don't bring your killer decks.
I think that would still be nice to have in the way that Friday
Night Magic is like, yeah, you don't bring your Tier 1 stuff,
man. This is just for us to get
together and hang out. Sweet, yeah I agree.
Like I think a casual night would be very fun.
Kind of like a night where only X amount of heroes are allowed.
That would be pretty cool. Going back to your idea, Joe, I
know it's not technically announced yet, but we are
working on some sort of system to kind of, we realized in
Magic, one of our best selling Magic products is precons
because it's super easy. Commander precons especially
people come in and say, hey, my friend told me about commander.
I played it one time with his deck.
I want to make my own. I want to, you know, buy my own.
So commander precons are cool because it lists like, you know,
the commander on top and then all they do and then kind of
like you can look up the deck list and stuff like that.
So we realized the success it has in Magic.
So we're kind of starting. To curate products from our own
bulk in terms of constructed classic constructed precons.
Oh wow. That aren't blitz because it's
hard to kind of, at least in Socal.
This is totally a Socal problem. Say like hey you want to get
into the game? Buy one of these blitz precons
that no one will ever host events for because all we care
about here is classic constructed and sometimes draft
when skirmishes come around and sometimes blitz.
You know those decks are also so bad.
My first experience playing this game was the Bolton precon deck
and I remember going OK I play this card and then I charge OK
and then it has go again. No, it only has go again if I
block with an attack action card.
Oh OK, so take three. Yeah, present 12.
And it's like, what the fuck am I doing?
How do I win this game? Yeah, and it is like, you know,
they're super like beginner friendly, but I feel like I also
made some pre cons in the store for Blitz just so that people
can kind of feel what get a taste of what it feels like to
play a more higher power game. So I made Dromi and Phi with
more rares in the deck. So more Dragons for for Dromi,
right, And more like go again, cards that have lava bursts in
there, salt the wound in there. So those cards, I, I always
recommend those to like players that are kind of more
competitive because they want to kind of feel like the power
levels of, you know, flesh and blood back and forth.
Right, right. It also helps them play against
the people at the store who have the established decks.
Yeah, which is super good. The Tulare Community College
YouTube channel, the professor has talked about this in Magic
forever and he lauded the magic product of the pioneer deck
because he goes you're putting full play sets of good mythic
rares. That is so important for the
game. And when he collaborated with
LSS, they came out with around the table and people are going,
whoa, full play sets of good rares and majestics and people
love that product and they ended up and they bought a bunch.
So hopefully that's a big lesson for LSS and that they start to
produce beginner. Products at a much higher power
level than what we've seen so far.
Yeah, I love that and that that's really exciting about,
you know, Kingsley doing the pre cons.
I think a lot of people have been bringing new players to
Kingsley recently. So this like new attempt to get
people a taste of like the CC power, the blitz power is really
exciting. And I think I would even go just
to like, you know, like Clark said, just to play with
something different that's not completely worried about about
the meta. Yeah, and that's pretty cool
too, because it opens avenues to like maybe you know, with the
sealed blitz deck events, maybe we do just like a Class A pre
con CC deck where you can only use our decks.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that'd be fun.
Yeah, and then you can only use like these lower power level
decks, but everyone's on the same playing field.
So maybe you're not having these crazy 30 damage turns, but you
know, you're all on the same level playing field.
You're kind of having equal amounts of power, so it might be
a little bit more fair than the guy that doesn't have the money
for 3E strikes 3 CNCS yet. For sure, for sure.
You know those those preconstructed decks offered by
LGS is another incredible thing about them is I swear this isn't
an ad for King Slayer games. King Slayer games is great.
I love the shop, but just I'm legitimately just thinking of
why that would be an awesome product for me.
I don't really like eviscerate right now in the meta.
I haven't really put together a Max deck, and so I haven't
really been going to Armories. If there's a deck for me to play
at the shop that I could rent for just an extra 5-10 bucks,
whatever the cost is, I would totally be going to more Armory.
Fuck yeah. Because, oh, there's a deck I
can play. And because I don't have one for
myself right now that would always be there.
It would always be an option. That is, that is a killer idea.
We got a link up, man. Get some marketing going.
Yeah, I'll put. The name in there.
We're about ready to move on to our Arsenal zone.
Yeah, you want to introduce it, Fuzzy?
Sure. Our Arsenal Zone is the section
of our podcast where we just each shout out a card that we've
been thinking about lately for a positive or negative reasons.
Whatever has got our mind running, you know?
And with my Arsenal Zone, I always like to hand sign a copy
of the card and give it each of my fellow hosts.
Since we have a guest here today, Anthony, you're going to
get a copy too. I brought one for each of y'all.
So I was looking through like my collection, like what do I want
to talk about today? And I saw the perfect card.
Right when I tell you this card is legendary, it's a legendary
specialization card you know I'm bringing up.
The big guns, right? Only one of.
Wow, this it's the one copy I'm going to put in the deck.
I've basically given you a playset of this legendary
specialization, right? Wow, that's right, I'm talking
about Regis side. I actually needed a regicide.
The perfect thing for for Crown, Crown Dominion, dromine.
It's you're right. It's even good right now.
So with with Regicide, I feel like this card gets a lot of
Flack for being bad, but it's really kind of a groundbreaking
card. This is the first card to ever
introduce an alternate win condition to the game where when
it hits a hero, if they are royal, they lose, period, full
stop. This is the first time we've
ever seen an effect like that in Flesh and Blood and I've always
loved those effects in Magic the Gathering.
Just like the idea of like, oh how can I do that?
How can I make my my game plan around this single card?
The drawback is really high here.
When the combat chain closes with regicide, assuming you did
not kill them before the combat chain ended, you lose the game.
So it also gives your opponent an alternate win con as well.
Just block the regicide, just stop the damage.
It also like can't be defended by cards with the same name as
cards in the defending heroes bandage zone, so it has a little
bit of evasion tacked onto it. It's also a blue block 3, so
that's your floor. You don't have to play this card
and it can still contribute to your deck in a couple of
different ways. I feel like this card is a big
old meme. Yeah, Everybody's always, like,
loving to laugh at this card. But also occasionally you'll see
it pop up in tournaments and actually do well.
And part of the reason it works is because it doesn't work.
That's the paradoxical nature of a lot of the bottom tier stuff
that we've been talking about today.
So I have a copy for each of you.
Thank you. Just to bring up a little
theoretical, you know, part of this game.
Yeah, a theoretical part of regicide too.
I think it has a decent place in a Droma.
I mean Droma, if she resolves any burn in the malls, she can.
She's vanishing. Parts from a graveyard into her
vantage zone. So when you finally play this
registration, she might not have a hand that can even block
because all those cards are already in the Vantage zone.
I do want to also note though, when the combat chain closes you
lose the game. You can just die by playing this
card. That's what I said.
Don't play it turn 0 if you have a bunch I.
Just want to what if you mention that if you're like Aiden Owen
the calling, right, and you're like, I need to eat.
Just play this card. Looks at you with three sigils.
Shit. You don't need to play a card in
order to lose like. You can just lose.
The fastest I can see you can just conceive.
Pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch conceit.
Thank you Fuzzy for the card. Yeah, thank you, Fuzzy.
I'll go ahead and go next. The card that I've been thinking
about is Moon Shot. So I mentioned I've been brewing
a lot with Max recently and you know, someone popped into the
Max Shot and they're like, hey, what does Max Blitz look like?
And it's like Nitromechanoid is like the best version of Max.
And you can't really do that in Blitz because it takes too long
to get your 3 hyper drivers a transform.
And they're like oh OK. And I was like, well what could
we do in Blitz? Moon Shot, Like Moon Shot is not
a very good cart in CC, but I think it can provide a really
interesting niche in Blitz by simply being a consistent big
finisher that you are adding next to your Max of velocity.
And simply by adding two more big damage finishers, you can
take mechanologists just that little step further.
And so like I'm thinking you know with with a red GW you only
need to destroy 1 hyper driver with moon shot to get to 10
power for the. Overpowering.
That's not a lot of hyper drivers.
There's not a lot of hyper drivers you can do that very
early on into the game. You could also like if you have
a penetration script out, you only need to destroy 2 hyper
drivers. If you break your Goliath
gauntlet you only need 2 hyper drivers.
And all that makes it so much easier to do the moon shot
thing. And because that's so much
easier. It has its IT has a place.
Is it good? I have no idea, but I think it
is the testing that we should be.
Doing for blitz Max I'll go next cuz I kind of want to save the
best for last. I didn't really have a card yet,
but I was kind of thinking about I, I, I can't believe I didn't
bring this up earlier, but I think the card I was thinking
about the most recently is Blasphemite.
Levi consumed and Levi redeemed. Yeah, just because, I mean,
we've already talked about it a little bit before.
We did a whole episode on that. We did a whole episode and not
only in this episode, like how it was supposed to fix Levi and
it technically did, but her power level really didn't
change. I think this is like one of the
coolest cards in in the game like it first revealed this new
card type Demi hero before tek Levasan kind of over shouted it
pretty pissed off about that, but it has one of the sickest
marvels I've ever seen and I still think it's one of the best
marvels. Better marvel than the tek
Levasan one. It is a better marvel, I'm not
going to lie, than than Tek Levasan.
And it just like as I've been like trying to figure out if I
should keep going with Levi and my competitive fab career.
I just like keep looking back at this card like man, what is what
else does this card unlock? Like how much does it really do
for Leviah? Or am I just like overestimating
how much this card really gives us?
So that's just the card I've been thinking about just because
like Levi is just so near and dear to my heart, even though I
have like 0 like results with this hero.
But we'll, we'll see what what what, what the future holds.
Yeah. Yeah, I think Levi consume, like
I think I said it before, I think that card is like kind of
LS s s. Hey, we recognize Rat Levi has a
problem. Here's a very, very good
possible solution. You guys got to figure it out
though. I think it's a really strong
card too. So I think it's a step in the
right direction and it shows that LSS cares about, you know,
people that are specialists and one tricks of these bad quote,
UN quote, bad heroes. Right.
For sure. Sweet, awesome.
I guess I'll go onto my card. Yeah, so I'm a man of
theoretical value. That's why every card I enjoy
starts with if this so my there's a lot of cards I really
like crazy brew cooks commotion. But the one I want to talk about
today is a promise of plenty. So I've played this card a lot.
I actually used to run it in my Briar deck, my channel, my
heroic Briar deck, and it is a card of theoretical value.
It states that it gets go again if you play it from Arsenal, it
swings for three blocks for two cost 0.
If it hits each person that each hero that has an empty arsenal
zone gets to put the top card of their deck into their arsenal.
And I've, I've specifically built Riptide to kind of work
around this card because I, I think he's the, he's technically
the only hero currently that can play it with go again without
any added effects from the turn that he draws it because he can
load it off his hero ability. So I wanted to play around with
that and I wanted to build a Redliner deck because I wanted
to play towards the theoretical value of the top part of my deck
on average or most of the time will be better than the top part
of your deck, right. And he also has these cool
little niche things where like if you play a Lace with inertia
or a Lace with frailty, it'll buff the arrow that you play,
but it won't buff Promise of plenty.
So you can play that load promise of plenty and then play
the promise for three. And it presents this weird kind
of conundrum for the opponent. Like, do I block this promise of
Plenty and not give them a card? Or do I save my blocks for the
arrow that's going to destroy me later on, Right.
And then with Redliner, if they'd end up blocking the
Promise of plenty, you can use the Redliner just to load the
arrow for free without pitching anything.
So there's like some gameplay aspect to promise of plenty.
My personal favorite story ever was me playing on Briar.
I was playing against Andrew Rooney in a tournament and he
let it hit 'cause he's like screw it, I'll get an arsenal
too. And he had 0 cards and sold his
prism and his arsenal card was Celestial Cataclysm.
So. Did not have an arsenal for the
rest of the game and I was able to win that game.
IP locked himself. Essentially so funny.
Yeah. And it's, it's just a really fun
card. It it's a lot of Crucible cards
like that. It's super cool and it's
personal is one of my personal favorite combos of the card of
all time. I can talk endless days about
this is a not legal card called shitty Xmas gift.
So if you if that card was able to be used, what you could do is
you could play rune blade present promise of plenty from
wherever. Say the opponent doesn't block,
you can instant speed in shitty Xmas gift to put a cracked
bottle on the top of their deck and then now it's and then they
put. A cracked bottle in the.
Arsenal for the rest of the game.
That's so funny so. That's one of my.
Favorite can play that UPS yeah so.
That's one of my favorite combos of all time.
Unfortunately it's not legal in any format that I've tried out
yet. I've yet to try UPF but yeah,
it's just endless possibilities with the Arsenal targets.
Limitless power. Yeah, man, I'm into it.
Yeah. All right.
I think that's all we got for today guys.
Anthony, do you have any like socials or handles that you want
to shout out if people want to get a hold of you or?
Yeah, well, I work at King so. So if you're in the soul calc
community, feel free to stop by one of our shops.
We have 3 shops open so feel free to stop by.
I work at the Fountain Valley one, but all of them are
awesome, so stop by. We welcome you if you play flesh
and blood, magic, whatever you want to play.
And then also I have a Twitter handle if you want to follow me.
It's real fox main. I post a lot of memes, a lot of
dreams, and hopefully one day I can post a winning Riptide list.
Yeah. I'm so excited for that day.
I can smell it all right. Anthony, thank you so much for
coming on to the podcast. Yeah.
Thank you so much man. And thank you, listeners, for
tuning in. We appreciate you.
Goodbye. Bye Eaters.
Pitch It to Me podcast is hosted by Fuzzy Delp, Clark Moore,
Angel Rosinos. Our executive producer is Talon
Stradley, logistics coordinator John Farkas, music by Dylan
Holtz, logo by Han V and sound mixing by Christopher Moore.
Last but not least, we'd like to thank you, the listener.
Thank you for tuning in. Please give us a follow on your
favorite social media platform at Pitch It to Me Podcast.
Stay tuned for Smile Tennis. Completely agree, I think saying
LSX come fix my hero is entirely the wrong attitude.
Waiting for the card. You're right there, fuzzy that.
Is a funny voice. I felt like your complainer was
gay. I don't know.
I'm like why is the guy whining about Ellis?
That's like fixing his hero. Like why does he have gay?
You want to take 2. I like it just the way it is.
How is he playing too late? It's not your fault.
We're attuned to it. There are natural predators.
And are non in in Fuzzy's garage man too.
I think next year we're definitely getting Tales of Arya
2 Electric boogaloo. Well, hopefully Electric Earth
ice boogaloo. You were waiting your whole life
for that dude I. Set up that pun months ago.
That's funny. Dude, Ricochet.
That'd be a great name for a card that deals with allies.
Because the attack. Just ricochet.
Boom, yeah, I would play the. Fuck out of a ricochet.
The next warrior is going to be a boomerang warrior.
It'll be fine because then you better like deal.
With Warrior the spear Warrior. Fuck that shit boomerang.
Freaking Crocodile Dundee, that's so funny.