Welcome to Pitch It to Me podcast, a show about the
subjective past, present and potential future of flesh and
blood design. Today's episode will be about
the complex relationship between players and the living legend
system. You can find us across all
socials such as Blue Sky and Instagram at Pitch It to Me
podcast. I'm fuzzy.
I'm Clark and I'm Joel. Wait, why am I last?
Because you're the best. OK.
Post #2. Guys, I'm back.
Wait, who is this guy? I know where I haven't seen you
in. Forever.
This guy just pulls up in my apartment some random Tuesday
evening. What the fuck?
It's funny because I haven't seen Clark in like.
Yeah, much, much longer. And he's gotten a snazzy haircut
since I last saw. Hell yeah, baby.
Long hair Clark is gone. That is what's new about you.
I was like, I couldn't put my finger on it.
Like I, I, I Yeah, this is the first time I noticed.
Wow, we live together. To be fair.
Yeah, to be fair, you're a guy, you don't pay attention to
things like cutting off 6 inches of hair.
Well, I guess like I'm not really examining your hair per
se. Like I all the information I get
from your face. You know this guy calls me
Hands. I think you look more like your
Pitum logo version of you now, yeah, than you did before.
Yeah, 'cause I had the, I had the long hair.
It was like down to my shoulders nearly.
Yeah, yeah, now you look a lot like your logo.
Down to your shoulders. Just about, yeah.
Like, really? Yeah.
Like at least down to like. It would it would curl but like
if I if I like straightened it, it would hit my shoulder.
Oh, OK, so if I see your hair in a way I've never seen it before,
yeah, it'd be to your, to your shoulders.
All right, buddy. All right, buddy.
Well, so she'd be gone so long. Clark, you, you went to London?
I didn't get a chance to ask Joel last episode how London
went for him, but how did London slash Europe go for you?
I came, I saw, I commanded. Fucking conquered baby.
I played nothing but side events.
I spent a lot of money to play in those side events, but I made
a lot of money mostly through tickets, which I turned around
into a cold foil gold token for my victor.
We're so back, A. Little bit of preparation for
high seas too. And the oversized extended art.
New command and conquer. The big oversized command and
conquer. If you were watching the live
stream, this was the one. The guy behind the counter told
me that this was the oversized card that they took onto the
stage to celebrate Pablo Pintour winning.
Like when all of Team Sunflower jumped onto the stage and one of
them was jumping around with the big C and CI have that C&C card.
That's kind of insane. Right.
Oh, I really wanted to get Pablo to sign it, but he left before I
could catch him. Dude go celebrate your fucking
win. Like, massive, massive
accomplishment. The goat does goat things.
He does not need to consult with us totally.
I understand why he is the final boss in the Knight of the
Armory. Yeah, London was absolutely
wonderful. Everyone has already said it's a
lot of fun to travel. It's especially fun to travel to
a place that has a different culture that is close enough to
your own that you don't feel super out of place.
You know? It's nice.
Everyone was speaking English, but at PT London it just felt
like one big giant Armory. Wow.
Like I was constantly meeting new people from new places.
I want to give a couple of shout outs to some people I met.
Omar was an awesome opponent I met at the end of the event.
He was my third round in the final sink below sealed event
right before everything ended on Sunday.
Extremely kind dude. Weird fucking deck.
He had like 6D reacts in haunted sealed as Arachne and I'm like
how do you have so many fucking D reacts?
How did you open this mini? And he goes, I have one attack
reaction. I'm like you're fucking insane
dude. Steve was an awesome Aurora
player. I played on the very first day
we had a crazy close victor Aurora game that I won through
some really bad gold breaks and then I just threw like E strike
for seven and he goes well I have 3 instance in hand guess I
lose and I'm like no that's such a sad way for this game to end.
He was an awesome opponent though, so great to play
against. Antonis was a Greek player who I
think was living in London, so talking to him was super
awesome. Paige was this exceptionally
gregarious British girl who was so welcoming and wonderful, said
hello to me every single time she saw me.
Her and her whole friend group, her partner, exceptionally kind
people really, really made me feel welcomed and, and I think
that's awesome. I want to try to have her energy
the next time there's a really big event in SoCal.
Just the way that it's constantly recognizing people
and saying hello. And finally, the biggest shout
out goes to Martin on the very last day.
I am standing in line to get some cards signed and someone
starts sort of hovering around and I'm chatting with the people
in line. And then this very nervous guy
kind of walks up to me and he goes, excuse me, are you from
the famous podcast? I recognize your voice.
And my heart fucking melted, dude.
This guy was so shy to come up and say hello to me.
Martin, you don't need to be shy, man.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast.
One of our OG listeners back in the days when we were getting
like 20 views, he was like I remember when you guys designed
The Alchemist class. Wow, right.
And I was thinking about it a little bit more.
We were really excited about having an international
listener. I think that was Martin.
I think like from way back, like we're like, Oh my God, we have a
viewer in. I think it was London and also
Australia. But yeah, I'm pretty sure one of
them was Martin. Absolutely.
Martin was also like, I'm a really big competitive player,
but for some reason I love your podcast and like engaging in the
game in a different way. It absolutely melted.
My Martin was so shy and so sweet and absolutely a highlight
of my trip and my tournament. Martin, you're awesome.
Massive fucking shout outs to you, buddy.
And if you're listening to this on your shitty train ride, I
hope you get off and it's not raining wherever you are.
Yeah, I hope. I hope it is.
Clear skies and a nice night. That sounds so fun.
Yeah. He called our podcast famous, I
don't think. So, right, I don't think so
either. I don't think anyone told Barton
the moment we start putting our faces on our videos, right.
Like the moment that we get a video camera in here, I feel
like that's the next step. Yeah.
I'll be so famous in Socal. Yeah.
LSS will finally be like, oh, these people are humans.
Maybe they should get we're not really good AI.
We're people, Yeah. I think I do want to mention one
thing about one of my life updates.
It's just that I've started working again.
I've got a long term sub assignment.
I've talked about this on the podcast before, I think so for
some reason. Because, you know, it's been
coming up for a while. Yeah, so so.
Like April, Joel was super busy with his work and while that was
all going on, we were recording all these early episodes.
Fuzzy was like. So guess what?
Like I'm going to be working full time and then also tutoring
and then because I'm doing like teaching, basically, even though
it's a substitute teaching, I'm gonna be grading during the my
free time. So I'm not gonna have any free
time. I'm not gonna be playing much
fab. I'll try to go to some
tournaments on the weekends, but it's gonna be hard for me to go
to armories and it's gonna be hard for me to edit podcasts.
So you 2 are gonna have to pick up the slack.
You're gonna see a lot of Clark and Joel in the bottom of our
description. And I learned how to video edit
finally. Yeah.
So I'm really excited about that.
Gonna start, you know, stepping up to the plate.
We learn in life skills over here.
So true in the apocalypse, no one's going to see me coming
with my video editor. And I'm going to be doing this
long term substitute teaching right up until Nats.
So if you see me at Nats, you could say, hey Fuzzy, Congrats
on not having to work every day anymore.
Yeah. So for today's episode, we
described it as the complex relationship between players and
the Living Legends system, which is a whole lot of nothing.
But some really big stuff happened in the FAB scene
recently, most notably Zen and Enigma LLD.
We just last episode we did the Zen Living Legend episode with
Aurora. Also, Aurora, thank you so much
for filling in and doing the episode.
Yeah, Aurora the player. Yeah, on our last episode.
Yeah, not Aurora, the. Hero.
Yeah, Aurora from flesh and bad. Yeah, cuz I like Aurora the the
person. Aurora the hero?
Not so much. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
So we've already talked about that, but and these
conversations about these two heroes Elling about Aurora's
impending Living Legend has brought up a lot of other
conversations about like constructed products about the
competitive scene and like how quickly heroes should be hitting
Living Legend. And there's just so, so much to
talk about that this is almost like a smorgasbord episode with
all the different aspects that we're trying to bring in.
This is a really multi faceted issue that we want to look at
from a lot of different angles. It's not as simple as well.
Zoom was really broken. It'd be a little too fast.
It like it it doesn't get into it nearly enough.
So over the course of this episode, hopefully we will be
able to dive into those different facets and try to give
you guys a nice multi angled view of this discussion, but it
brings up conversations of a lot of other things.
So for our red pitch, we're going to be talking about
constructed products and how that ties into this.
And yellow pitch we're going to be going over the competitive
scene in general and sort of how that ties and connects all this
together. And in Blue Pitch, we're going
to be very explicitly tackling living legend speed and how
quickly that should be happening and what are the different
factors that go into it. So let's go ahead, not waste any
more time, jump into Red Pitch with Joel.
Joel, what do you have for us? All right, for red pitch, I
wanted to talk about the constructed products and how
they are some of the biggest proponents in how fast heroes
can LL. We're also going to be covering
the concept of the product pipeline, which is the first
strike decks and the Armory decks that release in tandem
with Rosetta and how that's impacting not only Aurora's LL
speed but also heroes in the future.
And one example of a hero that was on the same path as Aurora
Once Upon a time. So for the first strike deck,
these are the introductory products that include Aurora and
Terra as the main heroes. And it's basically 2 blitz
decks, and it's designed to be able to introduce new players
really easily. Like sort of like blitz decks,
but like blitz decks plus I guess.
Yeah, they're not really that different from the Blitz decks
at all. They just were marketed as like
the best new player experience in Flesh and Blood.
Yeah, they definitely have some differences.
Mainly I think they're better designed than the blitz decks
personally, and they have brand new cards in them.
These products highlights the brand new heroes with unique
card inclusions and I'll start up with like the Lightning Flow
cards. These are all cards that benefit
from you playing a Lightning card ahead of time to get a
bonus effect. And I think Sizzle is probably
the most remarkable one. That was I think one of the few
cards that saw in addition to Static Shock that saw pro play.
And I think Clark, you specifically mentioned how this
is actually problematic for a little bit because the only way
you could get this card was through the 1st strike decks and
that created this weird supply issue of people wanting to play
full Power Aurora for a moment. Yeah, I mean, Aurora right out
the gate was the strong aggro hero and Rosetta and strong
aggro room Blades. People want to play those.
It's a very popular archetype and so there was a lot of
interest in Aurora. A lot of people wanted to play
Aurora. To play Aurora, you needed
Sizzle and or Static Shock and that meant that you needed to
buy the first strike deck. Specifically, you needed to buy
at least two first strike decks to get your play set of three
for classic constructed, and that means established players
are buying not 1-2 of the starter decks and then stripping
them for parts in a way that renders that deck no longer
capable of fulfilling its purpose as a learner deck.
It probably really helped to move those products in a way
that LSS I'm sure wanted because learner products typically don't
always sell great. So I understand why they wanted
to put something in there to help move the product off the
shelves, but I think it created a really big supply issue from
the early bits. Yeah, I think we're already
seeing that tension in how hard it is to design products
specifically for new players. And by already, I mean in the
episode like this is like our first bullet point and it's hard
for LSS to say, hey, like we only want new players to buy
this because why would they make a product literally for people
who have never bought fab before?
Doesn't that seem kind of risky? You know, like by definition.
So it makes sense that they'd want some reason for established
players to buy it. But it always feels weird.
And like, why do I have to go out and buy this pre con and
specifically pay 20 bucks for a pre con that might not exist a
year from now when I want to pick up the hero?
You know, like I had this issue with Florian.
Nobody has the tarot decks anymore because those decks came
out like months ago and and I want the Florian cards because
no one was really caring about them before.
So it's already a little bit controversial just to print
these very playable cards in these first strike decks.
Yeah. And we've talked about how
Aurora and her popularity has directly impacted the
availability of the Aurora first strike deck.
But Tara also released with some really good Earth cards, not so
much the Earth Bond cards. I don't think any of those have
seen really big play patterns and CC yet, but thrive and
flourish I think our cards that we'll maybe see play in the
future when we get more earth heroes that care about buffing
attacks in a unique way. So far fluorine, inadvertence
have been more arcane focused and Yarl I think only cares
about like felling of the crown and plow under.
So those cards I don't think are seeing their full potential yet.
But even just Canopy shelter, the two block blue card that
generates a might token on defense.
That card, I know for a fact was used in very early Florian
builds. And now that there's been talks
about him being one of the best decks in format, you can already
imagine people are going to be fighting for these first strike
decks if they're even still around.
And more so the canopy shelters that come in these first strike
decks. Definitely Next I want to talk
about the Armory decks, which again, it's a great upgrade path
for Aurora specifically because if you're a new player, you go
for a first strike to the to the Armory deck.
You get all the specializations, you get some new armor and you
get to combine all these powerful cards into one deck.
It's a useful stand alone product for new players because
you also get you can go directly into the Armory deck if for some
reason you weren't able to get the first strike deck, and
there's probably better inclusions in the Armory deck
than just the first strike deck. Yeah, classic CC staples like
Snatch just alone right or full three card play sets right of
Sizzle and Static Shock, making it much better for experienced
players to grab, which I did. I was like, I'm not going to buy
the first right deck for Aurora, but the moment the Armory deck
came out, I go, I go in, there we go.
That's what I want. And with some powerful reprints
like art like Arc Lightning, Burn Up Shock, and also the new
card Skyward Serenade and Skizzics like this was a pretty
strong product for CC players as well.
However, not all Armory decks are created equal like this.
I think the strength of the heroes that are being printed in
the Armory decks is still being figured out.
I think the use case scenarios for these Armory decks are still
being figured out. Like we've seen both KO and
Aurora were already strong in the meta and in popular and
probably the best decks in the format when they got their
Armory deck and this Armory deck product pushed them over the the
edge. And I think skyrocket KO to like
600 living legend points. And I think Aurora is about to
speed run this living legend process as well.
So we know how powerful these decks can be.
Conversely, with Bolton and Max, Bolton was released around the
same time as K OS and Max was released around the same time as
Aurora, and so far I don't think either of those products really
made a big splash in playability or viability for any of those
heroes. Yeah, back when we talked about
Armory decks when they were first announced, we mentioned
how the kale one was kind of a gamble and how we've seen the
Armory deck sort of used as two different things. 1 is the new
player situation with the KO and the Aurora.
Hey, let's give the new players a good strong hero who's good in
the meta right now. Or a way of printing support
when they when it's awkward to find another way of giving
support to the hero. Yeah, and with KO's Armory deck,
we saw how with the inclusion of Savage Sash, his aggressive
capabilities were a lot better. And that made his legality come
into question because we are worried.
Oh, if there's no set that comes in and releases heroes to deal
with this hero, we could easily see Kale living Legend within
six months. And that wasn't the case because
a more powerful set, more powerful heroes came into the
format and sort of dwarfed him in power.
But we're not seeing the same way or that same impact with
Aurora. See, she seems like she's going
to take this Armory deck and make it all the way, which would
make it the first Armory deck that is no longer legal to use
in in CC. Yeah, it's kind of a nightmare
situation, right? We have these Aurora decks that
are probably like, there's probably still some on the shelf
somewhere and. Probably.
Almost definitely, yeah. And if a player wants like comes
up to the count and like, hey, I'm interested in this deck,
maybe even it's a store where they don't know that much about
Fab because Fab is still kind of a dark horse a little bit where
like a lot of LGSS don't know that much about the game.
And they're like, Oh yeah, sure, here's a copy of the deck and
then they open set up and then they go with an Armory and
everyone's like, that hero is not legal in the format that
that deck is meant to be printed into.
You cannot play that hero. You just spend 50 bucks on
nothing. Or like, I guess a little bit
more ideal quote UN quote situation is the store just
can't sell copies of this deck, you know?
Yeah, ideal. Essentially, they would have to
strip it for parts and hope that Aurora is a force in living
legend. And they can, they can move
those singles, right, Right. Yeah.
So it creates this weird dynamic with LSS and its LGS because LGS
is be able to sell these products, especially when early
on like KO Armory decks were going for like 7080, even $100
now for these staples in the deck.
And also it's scarcity. And now this Armory deck for
Aurora is just going to be completely useless.
And LSS has to sort of deal with the fact that these LG s s are
going to be hurting in terms of like the revenue that they've
sunk into buying these decks. Yeah.
And to focus on the new player thing, it's even worse for the
first strike deck because those are meant to be paired.
You can only buy them in pairs. You can't buy just the Terra
deck and just the Aurora deck from the as an LGS.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have to buy them
together, but now the Tara deck is the only one that's going to
continue. I guess Aurora is still legal in
Blitz, which probably helps that a little bit, but the classic
constructed is the premier format and there now there is
nowhere to go with that Aurora first rank deck outside of
Blitz. Then you have to make the
massive jump to Living Legend and all the legendaries that you
need to be spending to compete in that, and all the banned
cards that you need to be buying to compete in that.
Yeah. So they're I think the formula
for the regular army decks is still being tweaked.
And just to, like, state it really directly, because this is
the theme of the episode. The problem is printing Armory
decks for heroes that have a risk of hitting Living Legend.
Yeah, that's the tension. The last thing I want to talk
about is the Living Legend Armory deck that was just
spoiled at the Pro Tour London. I was there literally, and I
think the biggest question I have is like just how many
reprints can you add to a product like this before it
becomes unreasonable? I would say not only in terms of
how much you're going to make the product cost, but how much
you're going to tank the value of of the cards that you're
reprinting or if you have any reprints at all, then what's the
point of the product? Yeah, if you print a bunch of
brand new cards, we've already seen the Helms.
I don't know exactly if they've stated that those are the only
brand new cards, those two head pieces, but I know that they've
said that those two at least will be appearing in the next
season of gem packs, which will help players get ahold of it.
But yeah, are they going to put Grasp in this deck?
Spellbound Creepers. That's like hundreds of dollars
worth of card value. I guess it's a convention only
product so it's going to be hard for people to get a hold of.
I could see them do Bloodsheath Scaletta and kind of leave it at
that. I think like if you're going to
do LL Viscerae, you know you need the scaletta, yeah.
But like is it going to have Vexing Quilham then?
And is that good enough to take to like a living legend Armory
or skirmish? The I think the biggest factor
here is like LSS has to infer sort of what's relevant in the
in legend meta. So you have to not only include
reprints of like cards that Versar even wants to play, but
the specific place I live in legend because it was much
different than what Viceroy was when he LLD in the Rosetta
season or in the Haunted season. Excuse me?
And not only that, but like Clark was saying, because this
is only available at conventions, this probably means
you're never going to be able to use it at a Armory level.
Like I don't think anybody even runs like regular Living Legend
armories except in preparation for a skirmish season or maybe
like the one of Living Legend calling that happens.
You know what I mean? So already you have less use
cases for this product. And I think I'm really worried
about the number of repents, if any, in in this deck.
Just a lot of floating factors here.
Yeah, it's it's a cool product. And by them making it convention
only, it definitely makes me less concerned about it, like
having an impact in the wider meta, which kind of makes this a
little tangential to the overall episode.
But it's important to bring up because now these Living Legend
Armory decks kind of creates another step on that pathway.
Yeah, right. If they create an Aurora Living
Legend Armory deck and then like, OK, now like that, there's
a complete pipeline. It's like, here's your beginner
First Strike Blitz deck, here's your classic Constructed Armory
deck, and now here's your Living Legend deck.
Yeah, which also like I'm it makes me wonder if they're gonna
start incorporating more living Legends format events because
why else would you make this product?
No ones asking for a prison living legend deck if it's not
like creating more cards to play specifically living Legend.
I'm sure some people are asking for it, but I don't think we
know those people and I don't. Think they're very loud in the
scene right now. Yeah.
And also like, are these cards that are going to be printed in
the Living Legend Armory deck going to be legal in CCI?
Think that's also like a point of or something that I would be
curious about. It doesn't specifically say it's
going to be for that format only, but I think it's
open-ended enough to bring it up.
One thing I want to bring up in this pitch before we move on is
that when you make recons these preconstructed products for
players, it gives them a reason to play that hero that can be an
established player, that can be a new player.
But like we've seen people pick up the Aurora Armory deck and we
have more Auroras that are locals and I'm sure that
something happening around the world, around the country.
And when you have more players playing that hero, it is going
to LL faster because you have more players bringing it and
registering it to tournaments and more players winning that
tournaments. I will grant that in Flesh and
blood, it tends to be that the best players with the best
heroes are the ones that are getting the Living Legend points
because you have to be that number one slot.
But I think there's still some factor here that like just by
printing an Armory deck, there is going to be more Living
Legend points for that hero to some extent.
I think if I'm right here, then Max will see some points across
Proquest season because he just got an Armory deck and we just
had a Proquest season. And I could easily be very
wrong. And he'll get like little to no
like. Yeah.
L points. And how much of that is due to
this narrative of people are picking up and playing the deck
simply because it's available, and how much of it is due to
Joel's point of, like, an injection of power?
Yeah. Yeah.
And it's hard to measure that. In fact, I would argue that
there is no measurement because both of them would rely on the
same metric of Armory deck sales.
If the Armory deck sells, that means that the power was well
received or the hero fantasy is well received.
Both of them would lead to more people entering into
tournaments, and both of them would lead both narratives.
Would also lead to more people winning events.
It's impossible to divorce the 2.
And part of the reason I bring this up is to show how hard it
is for LSS to decide whether it's good to print this Armory
deck. You know, because they're not
just looking at like, is Aurora going to hit Living Legend soon?
It's also like is she going to hit Living Legend once I print
this Armory deck then will it be too late You know?
Yeah, so that's pretty much everything I had to talk about
in red pitch. If you, the listener, have any
thoughts about what these Armory decks mean for either the Living
Legend speed or the availability of product, anything like that,
feel free to leave a comment in our YouTube or come to the
Discord and let us know. But I think I'm just going to
pass off the pitch to Fuzzy. What do you got for us?
Thank you, Joel. In Yellow pitch, I want to talk
about the competitive scene because this is something that
ties very directly to living legend points and how quickly
heroes hit it right. And I also want to gush a little
bit about how much I like the competitive scene in Fab, how
good it is and the steps that LSS has taken order to make sure
that it has a good competitive scene that matters and that's
enjoyable. So for a little bit of I want to
paint a background here, I played magic for years, granted,
like I was in my late teens, you know?
Yeah, so we were high schoolers. Yeah, it's a little bit of a
different vibe for sure. For college students.
But I went to a lot of Magic weeklies in stores, in multiple
stores right across my like, time as a flush, as a Magic the
Gathering player. And I don't remember a lot of
hearing people say like, oh, yeah, I'm grinding for this
like, event. The other, I'm not going to
travel to another state in order to play Magic the Gathering.
And I'm practicing. I'm trying to get my reps in for
that event. Like that was almost never a
vibe that I found at any of our local stores.
There would be like bigger tournaments, like they had game
days, you know, like they'd have like bigger tournaments at the
store. It was kind of just like a
really big Friday night Magic, but I don't remember the vibe
being that competitive. I don't remember people saying
things like, oh, the results of this tournament directly impact
our Friday night Magic in the same way that I'm going to argue
it does for flesh and blood. Yeah.
So that's the background I want to paint here, is that we have
something very special in flesh and blood.
Yeah. Now I do want to know it used to
magic scene in like the mid to mid 2000s to like early twenty
10s, very, very popular. But when we got into it in like
2014 roundabouts, Fuzzy, would you say 2014, 2015, definitely
on the downturn. The competitive scene started
being less of a priority for Wizards.
I'd be very interested to hear people talk about experiences
where Magic the Gathering had that level of competitive
integration with their regular locals that I'm going to be
talking about here. Definitely let me know in the
comments if you had this similar experiences in any other game
other than Flesh and Bled. But I want to point out that LSS
is constantly sponsoring competitive seasons around the
world that take place at local game stores as well as these big
conventions. So at your local game stores you
have like Road to Nationals, proquests, skirmishes.
These are things that are happening multiple times a year.
We had two or three skirmishes last year, multiple Proquest
seasons. Yeah, it feels like they never
end, right? It's just one after the other.
It's like, hey, we're on Road to National seasons and you're
like, wow, I grinded a lot for that.
I played in some tournaments. That was some good flesh and
blood. It's like, Oh yeah, Proquest
season, bitch, get back in there.
And the reason these are such a big deal is because when you're
playing at your local armories, you are prepping for that event.
That's relevant because when you're playing at your armories,
most lots of players are prepping for those events.
Even if I don't give a single shit about anything beyond my
local Armory, my local Armory will have players that do care
about those events and are trying to get those competitive
reps in in order to practice and get warmed up for those Tier 2
events like Road to Nationals and Pro Quests.
So the competitive vibe leaks in from those huge international
events to these local regionals like Road to Nationals and Pro
Quests and into our armories. So even a player that is just
kind of casual and looking to play once a week with their
buddies is still incentivized to play a competitively tiered deck
to have some level of strength in their deck that they can
compete with at their local armories.
And not all players are going to get swept up in that incentive.
But I think it's there in a way that that other trading card
games don't have. And that's part of what we mean
when we say that Flesh and Blood is a competitive game.
It's that that competitive spirit is there all year round
and it's happening at locals and it's bleeding into every game of
Flesh and Blood that you play. Yeah, this is tied into a lot of
the conversations people have had about the pricing issue with
Flesh and Blood, something we we've generally stayed away
from, right? But like, decks are increasing
in cost because I think more and more players are getting into
the game and more and more players want these big powerful
Majestics shelters. 80 bucks like knives is 120.
Because people want them for their decks, because the people
who are winning, their locals are playing them.
And not everybody might want to pay $80.00 for a 04 defence
reaction, but people will be pretty stoked to pull one.
And if I pull one, I might just keep it because I will want it
for my deck, you know, so when you're a new player and you're
trying to come into the game, you do really want to have a $50
Armory deck that you can buy and roll up and like start like
competing on some level with these other players that compete
at a high level. Now we had an experience
recently where part the missed fail is a set that has kind of
swept up the entire competitive format.
Zen was really strong on release.
Enigma and new are also very like top tier heroes that are
monsters at any local Armory. And we've heard where did we
hear this information, Clark? But we've heard that LSS has
wanted to make sure that this set was like powerful in some
way to make sure that it did well in the Japanese market.
It's like an open secret, like at no point in time has anyone
from LSS ever stated we made Miss Fail powerful so that
Japanese people would buy our new card game and the first set.
No one has ever said that but it is right.
Like that's why they did it. They want if they print an
underpowered thing like bright lights, that's never breaking
into the Japanese market. Hey, here's all these cards, by
the way. They're not strong and you can't
win international tournaments with them.
And that's fucking true, actually, yeah.
To your point, Joel, of flesh and blood players and
competitive players, you want to print strong cards to get people
into the game. Yeah, when you think of Japan as
a new player, like, it makes sense that they would need to
get a new player quickly into the game in order to be able to
engage with this very competitive game
internationally. And This is why a lot of people
think they chose Aurora, because Aurora was performing very well,
a strong simple agro hero and Rosetta.
So why did they build this whole pipeline around her?
Because she is a good strong beginning aggro player like.
I think like Aurora specifically is also a little bit more
nuanced because she's her play pattern lends itself really well
to a new player. She's relatively consistent and
straightforward, and that's great, you know?
But also, yeah, she's strong. They want to give new players
strong things so that they feel like they can enter in with them
and compete with them. So that's the first big way in
which Flesh and Blood has really ensured that their competitive
scene is relevant to the entire community.
The second big thing is their Living Legend system, which they
planned on having in the game on day zero.
This was their flashy way of trying to set Flesh and Blood
apart from other games in that it's rotation system is
different than others. A hero leaves the game not when
it's two years old or never leaves the game, right?
They leave when they've gotten enough tournament wins.
Which means that when I'm going to my local Armory, I care about
big tournaments and what happens at those tournaments because it
determines what heroes are legal.
Even if I don't play that hero, I don't want to know what I can
expect to play against at my local Armory because that's like
deck building, right? Like I need to know what I'm
going to play against in order to beat them.
Do I need? These weakest links because
Asilio and Aurora are dominating the meta.
Or can I not have to spend the $140.00 to get my place at a
weakest link? Exactly the context of what's
happening at World Championships, national
championships, callings, pro tours, The entire community has
their eyes on it collectively because one, they're fun to
watch. But even more than that, it
directly effects what's happening at an Armory level.
And even if I'm playing at my kitchen table, like I need to
know what's legal. So I have to have like at least
a friend that knows what's going on in the like these big
tournaments, right? I would love to find a little
community like like a commune grabbed like a few sets of flesh
and blood and they've like developed their own little meta.
They have no clue what's going on outside.
They don't get any like new cards from like one specific
set, but they do from like another set.
And it's like, what do those decks look like?
How do they play flesh and? Blood like we have our local LL
board like we just start fresh and then anytime somebody wins
like. An Armory.
Like on our kitchen table they get one point and then we can't
play that here anymore like. Yeah, I really like the the
relationship that we have with flesh and blood competitive
events because like you said, you care about them all the
time, even if you're not. Have.
To have to. But it is really exciting.
Conversely, with like Magic the Gathering, I think people are
complaining about Naidu or or whatever that stupid bird was
for how long? And you know, in flesh and
blood. I'm glad that eventually the
problematic hero will just literally correct itself.
Yeah, I like the rotation system.
Keeps it really interesting and it builds this whole narrow.
So it's not like I will wait two years until Prism's no longer in
the game. It's more like she's racing and
she gets points and then she's slowing down.
And like, like, think of Briar, who is so close to hitting
Living Legend, and she has this entire narrative built around
her just because she was on a spreadsheet.
And her amount of time that she existed on the spreadsheet is
exciting to all these players around the world.
Yeah, like it's really kind of ingenious.
And it's just goes to show how important competitive play is to
every flesh and blood player. And it makes sense that flesh,
that LSS would want to print competitively viable products,
get people into the game. And there are these weird
consequences that arise when they do that, you know.
We already talked about pricing, but then there's also sitting
down at your local Armory. One thing that I try to do is
that whenever I go to an Armory, I bring an Armory deck, a fresh,
out-of-the-box, unaltered Armory deck so that if a new player
sits down and goes, I just spent $50 on this deck, I don't slam
down my 1.3 K Aurora deck and like obliterate this poor soul
because he has no AB. No, I'm going to play this much
this like similarly costed similarly power level deck.
And it's going to be a learning experience.
And I don't like may that fuck with LS s s data because like
you know, I say I'm on one hero, but then I play another just for
this one, right? An Armory?
Surely not. They they track that data.
Like I do not mind that. Like I care more about that
player's experience of having an even match than I care about
anything else. And I would also say our local
game store, Crazy Knicks has a very flourishing community.
I think because we have players at a lot of different levels of
entering the game. We have players who are at the
top going to these Tier 2, Tier 3 events, Joel, me, Marcus, like
Dennis, we have very, very talented players trying to play
at that top echelon. But we also have players who are
just chillax and playing at their local armories, you know,
like they haven't spent all that money yet.
And then we have brand new players just getting into the
game. When you have peers at the same
skill level as you, that is when you have the best time
competitively. And I think that is
exceptionally important to creating a good environment.
But when there's all this competitive spirit, I think it
encourages people to move up that ladder a little bit too
fast and push in a way that can easily leave other people in the
dust. Yeah.
And you're touching upon, like, the unapproachability of the
game, like how hard it is to enter the scene.
And that's something that's going to arise when you have
this, like, focus on like performance and competitiveness
and being the best. And it hurts people too.
I mean, I, I had a local show up to a tournament recently in K to
me and he's like, I feel horrible.
Like I've I've not been playing well and I'm not enjoying myself
at this event. And I'm like, yeah, man, it's
your first event. Like there's some nerves and
you're going to have a hard time.
Don't worry about it. Like, like, if you end up not
liking this, then don't do it. Like you don't have to go to
competitive tournaments to enjoy this game.
Play the game that lets you enjoy it.
But I think a lot of the time for a lot of flesh and blood
players, you feel like you kind of have to.
I don't know if that's a good thing.
I think like, there is a very nice benefit to it, which is
just how fucking hype flesh and blood is, you know?
Like I don't need to convince you with that.
You know, we're people who love the game and are really
invested. And I just want to talk, wanted
to talk a bit in this pitch about why I think this game can
be as hype as it really is. And we want to really understand
this game from a holistic level. If we want to talk about like,
why people are miffed when a hero hit Living hits Living
Legend really quickly, or why it's celebrated, you know, I
think I'm going to hand things off to Clark now in Blue Pitch.
He's going to talk more about specifically how fast, how long
it takes heroes to hit Living Legend, and what a good speed
would be. Thank you, Fuzzy.
So yes, Living Legend speed, this is the big conversation
topic. We've saved it here for the end
when we have the least amount of people listening.
The Living Legend system is very dynamic and it's very volatile,
right? Players don't just invest money
into a deck. They they're investing time and
that's also tied together, right?
Typically when the hero Living Legends, a lot of those
expensive things that they had lose value because they were
good because they were in that deck that was strong and
winning, right? The demand was high and then
demand drops. Yeah, and it's part of the
reason why you don't play. You don't play, you don't pick
up a hero if they're close to hitting living legend.
Right. Like why would I right now buy
into Aurora when she's about to rotate out?
It doesn't make sense for me to drop a bunch of money on it.
Exactly. And for many players, they
identify with the heroes. Think about, you know, man,
Santa and Levaya, you know, Lexi players, They're they're they're
people who have really identified with their heroes.
And when those heroes, Living Legend, they lose that identity.
And sometimes they don't always get that identity back because
they were so attached to the name and the aesthetic, not
necessarily the class and talent.
So like when Chain got reprinted as Vincet, all the players who
identified as Chain didn't really get that identity back
because they didn't get a Chain hero, they got Vincet.
It's different. So considering how much of
yourself it takes in order to pick up a new hero, it's really
important to know how long am I going to be able to be attached
to this hero? If I'm going to learn KO right
now, it's good to know that like I'll be, if I'm going to be the
KO player and I'm going to learn this deck, it's good to know
that I'm going to be able to have some had a long
relationship with this hero and play it for like multiple
months, maybe a year or two. Yeah, that, that's been really
nice for us, Rachel. We got into heroes that that
have been around for a really long time and are going to be
around for a really long time. My my shitty collection's going
to be very low value for a long time.
Yeah, there is certainly a bit of tension in that, right?
Getting into heroes that are around for a long time is a very
good value proposition, but we're not winning a lot, and
winning is important, as Fuzzy just outlined in yellow pitch.
But what happens when you do get into a strong hero?
What if you came into the game with Rosetta and you really
liked the bright, bubbly Aurora? So you picked up Aurora and you
identified with Aurora, and then Aurora was strong.
So you bought all these cards and you bought the Armory deck
and you were competing in events.
And now she's going to Living Legend in a dev talk.
And I tried to find the dev talk.
I could not find it. I am so sorry.
I I like trying to cite my sources here but I wasn't able
to. It was communicated that they
want strong heroes to last at least one year of playability.
At least one year. Preferably longer, right?
But at least one year. Yeah, to just rephrase this,
like, all heroes are going to have some variation in how long
they're in the format, and they're hoping that the short
end of the stick is about a year.
Yes. Now based on your interpretation
and the specific word choice that of that moment and what
they said, Miss Bale has achieved this Zin's at about 11
months, Zin El Digma are about 11 months and news going to be
later, right. So they're doing it.
They were really strong heroes. They lasted about one year based
on how much wiggle room you want to give them, right?
Yeah, the bannings certainly helped them.
The banning certainly helped them.
We will talk about that. But Aurora is vastly outpacing
this. We're looking at 6-7 months.
It's only been six months since Rosetta came out.
When did? Rosetta come out.
I want to say October. Because it was Rosetta and then
haunted. Oh bro, that's crazy.
Yeah. Now, immediately, this is
because we've had like four or five CC competitive seasons in
this brief moment. It has definitely felt
compressed. 2 PQ seasons and RTN season and Worlds.
Like there's been a lot of points for Aurora to get in this
brief moment, but she's really moving through it quickly, way
faster than the Miss Veil heroes.
But would you say that Aurora has been more powerful than Zen?
More powerful than Enigma? How about is she on Starvo
levels of meta dominance? Because that's who she's
competing with, with how quickly she's moving through Living
Legend. I think in terms of
representation, yes, in terms of power level, no.
Right. And representation is partially
due to all the support that LSS have been doing, right?
Great circle back to that point, Fuzzy.
A lot of pro players have spoken up about this impending Aurora
LL during this PQ season and they said that they are fine
with Aurora being the exception to this sort of one year
benchmark. But why is that?
I think it's because there's competitive health and narrative
metrics that we use when measuring a hero.
Living Legend. With Starvo, it was this
incredible dominance where he swept a bunch of events and he
just dominated, dominated, dominated LL.
He was very clearly broken. Aurora is not clearly broken.
I don't. Know, I think she's really
fucking strong. She's really fucking strong.
I would argue Arc lightning Flicker Wisp is a little bit too
strong and removes any ability for her to have a weakness, but
she loses events all the time. Other decks were consistently
winning and competing with Aurora during these competitive
seasons and so pro players are like yeah this is fine, she was
fine. She didn't make us feel bad for
not playing Aurora right. But I think with Starvo, people
did feel bad if they weren't on Starvo, and that is that
narrative around the competitive scene I think makes a big
difference in whether or not people find it healthy.
The speed of living legend. But tying back into those new
player conversations we were having in red pitch, it's kind
of a big deal that people have bought these products, bought
into the game, spent a lot of money to get up to a competitive
level, and then in six to seven months can no longer play these
cards. That is a big deal that people
invested a lot of money in a short amount of time and did not
get enough out of it in terms of CC playability.
Does that constitute a crisis? I really like what you said
about like Aurora being the exception is OK.
Like if this is happening regularly then it's more of a
problem. And then with Zen and Zen and
Enigma rotating out pretty quickly, I think like again like
they're kind of hitting the the benchmark like a little bit
closely. If LSS hadn't stepped in, we
might have had a problem with Zen similarly.
This might be a little bit controversial, but I actually do
think it's a crisis. I think it's a problem with not
only Aggregatex getting like favorable treatment from LSS,
but also the room bleed class in general.
Because I feel like the reason why Aurora didn't LL in six
months or sooner is because Viscera was taking up that
limelight of the room Blade aggro.
Best deck in format for at least two months in the haunted meta
and then he LLD. And of course the next best deck
was then Aurora. And until we stop getting like
these overtuned aggressive room blade heroes, they're always
going to be at the top. Now there's I think 3 room
blades that were living Legend or there will be 3 room blades,
excuse me, in the living legend system.
And this was after the book burning.
This was without Art of War, without Tom Offendale, which I
think was going to be a big oppressor with Aurora
specifically. So the fact that she's still
doing this well with probably the least amount of atrociously
broken cards is a problem. Because if you look at Starvo,
if you look at prism or chain, all those decks had stuff that's
banned now and they LL that quickly or slower than Aurora.
So to me the the data is there, but it could also just be a case
of like there's not enough natural predators for Aurora
specifically. Yeah, I'm really, really happy
that you brought this point up. I'm actually going to jump a
little bit ahead in my notes here, which is Living Legend
points as a metric. Joel, I don't know if you have
seen it, but there has been some infographics floating around on
social media as well as in some discords of people doing
lifetime living Legend points by class.
I hate these. I hate these too, and I hate
these for a data reason, which is that LSS can modify the
Living Legend system and they have on multiple occasions.
One of the things that I want to say about Zen and KO.
Joel, you mentioned this in Red Pitch where KO got the Armory
deck and then he got like 506 hundred Living Legend points
back when they were giving out nearly double the amount of
Living Legend points in that season, which is crazy.
Like if you think, OK, oh, got 300 living Legend points.
That's what Aurora got before Viscera left.
Yeah, with Kayo really that meta dominant?
No, but like the Living Legend points that he got makes it so
much more when we completely ignore that the scale change or
the fact that they've been adding so many more points and
so many more events to the Living Legends system, which
then spreads out where those points are coming from.
Right. It's kind of like the Living
Legends system has this function in the game of it is our
rotation system, and it is held up to be important, but because
they tweak it so much, it's hard for us to look very critically
and specifically at these numbers and pull anything
meaningful out of it. Yeah, I really like events one
and then measuring those events by tier.
That is the metric that I would prefer to look at.
And I still think guardians and room blades and illusionists
would be at the top of that scale as well.
So it is a useful metric in so far as painting broad pictures.
But for me, as someone who has worked, who works in data
science and data analytics, it is frustrating to me because it
is a shifting metric, right? And a metric that a company can
change when they feel like it can benefit them.
The shift of LL points right as miss fail hit again.
If you I, I think I've mentioned this in a previous episode.
If you want to take a negative look at what LSS did, they said
we need to break into a new market.
We are going to print cheap, powerful cards for this new
market and then also reduce the amount of points that they win
for winning events so that it stays in the game for as long as
possible. Yeah.
I don't think that's what they did.
I don't think it was that intentional, but I do think that
that is kind of what happened. And definitely without bannings,
Zim would have gone much sooner. I'm happy you brought that up,
Fuzzy, because that brings me to the big question of this pitch,
and the question that I want you to also answer for me in the
comments. How active should LSS be in
banning and controlling the meta to control the speed in which
heroes hit Living Legend? I like this question because it
sounds like something we deal with all the time, but I think
it's good to note that it's a little bit separate from saying
like, do we ban cards or heroes when they're strong?
You know? I think Aurora is strong to the
point where I wish they would ban some small cards from her so
her deck just gets a little bit less powerful because I would
enjoy not losing to her so much, you know?
Soft bannings like what they did with Let's see banning Bullseye
Bracer. Yeah, but that's a little bit
separate from me saying I want them to ban cards from Aurora.
That way she stays in the game longer, you know?
Yeah, we've heard a lot of people say, like, don't ban
anything, just let this hero LL, let them be dominant and then
disappear so I don't have to deal with them ever again.
A lot of people were saying that about Enigma, Yeah.
For me, I think I would like LSS to be a lot more active.
I think relying on a living legend to just like sort of be
this hands off, this is how the MET is going to balance itself
type of technique is not helpful at all.
And I think in a lot of discussions about heroes that
have living legend in the past in a fast manner, such as chains
such as Starvo and Lexi, there were instances in each of those
cases where you would see cards that were very clearly
problematic and have been clearly problematic in previous
eras of flesh and blood to where it's like, why would you not ban
this? And I'm thinking of Ardor
specifically. The fact that it's taken so long
to ban that card, I think was a sort of miss on LSS because it
kept coming up. It's like, is it now the right
time to ban it? No, let's let Lexi living Lynch
and we'll let her use it. Is Zen the right time to do or
Phi the right time to do it? No, we'll let him, you know, or
whatever. And this sort of passive
approach at it just doesn't work to me.
So I think I'd like to see more action and I think when cards
aren't as explicitly abusable, like maybe flicker Whisp seems
to be like a way to, like you said, Clark, remove that
weakness of fatigue and give her like this sideboard combo.
Like that's the same issue we had with original Visceride
because he had a sideboard plan for every scenario.
So there's enough data I think to to where in the future I
think flesh and blood LSS could be more proactive in banning.
That's usually my stance. So you're saying generally?
That LSS should be a little bit more trigger happy with the ban
list. Yeah, I think if they want
heroes to LL sooner, you don't do that by letting them do
whatever, like by letting the heroes run amok.
You do that by being proactive about not only what you released
in terms of support to counteract these heroes, but
also to correct them because there are stronger.
Because believe it or not, there are heroes that are just too
strong and don't have enough predators to self regulate.
But so are you also further saying that like, if a hero
looks like they're going to L too quickly, that just in and of
itself can be a reason for them to take a toy away from them and
keep them in the game longer? Yeah, because there's, I think
LSS also has a really hard job because they have to not only
sift through the data that's being generated at all these
large events, but also the public outcry of these events.
Because even with Aurora, everyone knows she's broken.
She's not winning every event though.
Like Enigma want both The Calling and PT London.
So it's like, is it really a big of an issue?
But I think there's context that LS's can take to make these
measured, sort of like, I don't know, stop gates, I guess.
Yeah. And those are two populations I
want to be very clear. And LSS has a lot of data of
what's happening at armories and has a lot of data about what's
happening at these middle tables as well as the top tables.
And then there is the community of people who are online or who
make podcasts or who make content.
We are a separate population. We are extremely engaged
individuals, and that is different from a general
population. Absolutely.
I think LSS has a lot of data about what has happened with
Aurora's Living Legend, and I am really excited for the next dev
talk and hearing what they say about Aurora's Living Legend
journey. Yeah, sure.
Because I think it is going to be very telling about how they
saw this all go down. I kind of I was debating whether
to push us to do this episode before or after that dev talk.
Because after the dev talk, we get more quotes from LSS.
Good and useful for us to talk about.
Yeah. But at the same time, I think it
being an open question, I think people should really pay
attention to what they say on this topic.
Absolutely in that dev talk. I think people don't complain a
lot about the speed that a hero LLS.
I think they complain more about the strength of that hero.
And they use the speed as a metric to say, hey, look, the
thing that I don't like, which is Aurora is really strong and
fuck, I hate losing to Aurora. Totally.
I think they use the LL thing more as evidence, Yes.
Whereas like an actual like point of contention, you know,
Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that as well.
So I and like we as people this podcast like to pretend to they
feel like it's like to run LSS, you know, like to like imagine
ourselves in the seat and be like, is this bad for the game
that Aurora LL so quickly after printing like this new player
product, Although I would be curious how many people are
actually like complaining about that specifically.
I'm sure some people are feeling miffed about it.
I. Think we could also end up being
counter intuitive not unlike imagine the gathering situation
around universes beyond the universe is beyond is very
contentious. I'm not going to spend some time
talking about it. I I saw Joel do a little like.
Clark, no. I was just getting locked in.
I was like, oh, it's going to be a 30 minute pitch.
Yeah, just kidding. But Mark Rosewater said that a
lot of the feedback that they got is that it brings new
players into the game, and new players really like seeing their
property get printed. Yeah, and but the online outcry
was a massive Yep, two different populations and Magic has not
grown more or sold more at any other point in history.
Universe is beyond is a massively successful product and
LSS could say, look this beginner pipeline got us a lot
of sales and brought a lot of new people into the game.
And even though the hero LLD in six months and all that value
was wiped, people got invested in the game and now they're
sticking around. Now they're pivoting to Asilio,
now they're pivoting to Florian. You know, they're still in the
game. We got them in the door using
this strategy and them L elling in 6-7 months did not matter as
much as we thought it did. But I think it might be a
problem for other heroes, other situations.
And that's a dangerous game to play, right?
The moment that you start losing the support of those mega fans
as people on podcast, those people who are constantly
chirping on Twitter, that's when the community can start to shift
on those things, even if the sales and underlying numbers
support the decisions. Yeah, great point, Clark.
There's so many metrics that we can't even discuss because we
don't have all the Intel that else has access to and the sort
of surge of new players. Like I think in Rosetta alone
I've seen more new players than I have in the last like year and
a half maybe. Easily.
I sincerely hope that this has been a really fun episode.
I feel like we were a little all over the place, but only
because, like, this is a really fun topic for us to discuss and
hopefully fun to listen to as well.
Yeah. Sort of going back to what I
said at the beginning in Turn 0, it's multifaceted.
There's a lot of different ways of looking at this, and I hope
that LSS is treating it with the same level of diversity of
thought as as I think it requires game designers,
competitive new players, average players at Armories.
There's a lot of different perspectives to take into
account here, and I think we did a good job of capturing a lot of
them. All right, with all that being
said, I think that is the end of today's episode.
We're going to wrap it up here. Say goodbye to everybody.
What But Clark, What? You forgot about our Arsenal
zone. The Arsenal zone.
The Arsenal zone.
Joel, it's the Arsenal zone. What is that again?
The Arsenal zone's a part of our podcast.
Wait, no, I don't know what the Arsenal zone is.
That's a joke. Fuzzy you go.
Well, Clark and Joel, the Arsenal Zone is the part of our
podcast where we each shouted a card that we've been thinking
about lately, and we like to get our Patreon members involved.
Joel, why don't we pick a person at random from our Arsenal Zone
suggestions to talk about a card that they've been thinking
about? Sure.
All right. I'm now going to cue textural
noise and the winner is Equinox. Hey, Equinox.
Equinox is a very active member in our Discord.
They are, I think on the East Coast side of things, Maine.
Huh. I think she's from Maine.
Yeah, yeah. That's East Coast, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, works out in LGS.
Very active, always coming up with interesting custom cards in
our Discord. And Equinox's card that they
wanted to shout out, or at least the last thing they wanted to
shout out was Imperial Seal of Command and they had this to
say. Think the card is fairly slept
on. One of the major ways to make
Katsu tick. Also potentially good in Dory.
Really powerful for any hero that likes the setup turns.
And that's all while ignoring the Arsenal destruction line.
And for those of you who don't know what this card is, Imperial
Seal of Command is a 0 cost generic item.
Red pitch and it's a legendary so you can only have one in the
deck and it says as an action destroy this defence.
Reaction cards can't be played this turn.
If you are royal, the next time you hit a hero this turn destroy
all cars in the arsenal zone. So pretty fantastic hate against
those fatigue decks. You have those people that are
like, I just bring in D reacts in order to beat this hero.
Well sucker, you can't play. D Reacts when I crack my
Imperial Seal of Command. Also low key good into like New
Horizon Rangers question mark. Yeah, if you're royal,
definitely. I mean.
Anyone can be royal if you slap a crowd of dominion on your head
maybe and you get a gold token for it.
Yeah, so true. Yeah, I really like this as a
tech card. I like that as a one of tech
card. So like it isn't always
relevant, but it is an item, it's non block, it takes your
action point. There are a lot of downsides to
this card. Yeah.
I think for the 2 here is that you mentioned Equinox.
I don't think they're quite maybe in Dory I don't.
I think there's more tools that Dory has to do with defense
reactions than Katsu does. So maybe Katsu likes it more.
But I think what I'm most excited for is using it in Fang
because he is royal and everything in reaction speed
makes makes basically everything I have unblockable unless you
want to give me cards from hand and then trigger, you know, all
the other effects that I have. And then you play Tooth of the
Dragon. Yeah, you blocked play tooth.
Get fucked, nerd. And then, like Fang, also has a
lot more room for Reds. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And pitching Reds too. Yeah.
No, I think it's AI think it's a great little tech card.
I think it's always, it's going to be one of those cards that I
always sort of think to myself, is this a matter where I should
run it? And right now I'm hearing
everyone's running 6 + D reacts into a lot of decks.
So I totally see a world where you like actually taking an off
tempo turn to play this, blocking out and then saying,
all right, now I have access to this on demand.
Make half of their hand not able to block.
Like there's some really nasty turns that you can do with this
online. Yeah, great shout.
I think I'll go next. Yeah, so the card that I want to
shout out today is Smashback Alehorn.
And as a tradition, I brought a copy with me to sign and give to
each of my fellow hosts. Single bro Smashback Alehorn is
a common from heavy hitters. It's color locked at blue blocks
for two. It is a brute action, part of a
cycle of booze cards where each class got their own booze.
This one creates an agility and a might token and it has go
again doesn't cost a single resource to play and I've been
playing Rhiner lately at our armories.
I haven't had as much time to like grind the armories because
I started working again, but I picked up this list from Valerio
at another local and he really likes Blues that are easy to
convert when you are stuck with tempo.
Because when you have multiple Blues in hand and they don't
like they aren't sixes so you don't want to discard them, but
you like have to get rid of them in order to be able to pitch the
other to play the cards you actually want to play.
Cards like Smash Back Alehorn can be really clutch because you
can just dump them out of your hand, get good value out of
them, and then continue on with the rest of your turn.
And I also really enjoy having these on and off turns with
Reiner sometimes where all I do is Arsenal, make some might and
agility tokens and then pass my turn and then I just send like
2025 damage on my next turn. So I'm really enjoying Smash
Back Alehorn and I have a copy for each of you.
Thank you, Fuzzy. Thank you, Fuzzy.
One has flavor text flavor. Text.
A fierce match brings out the animal within and nothing gets
the blood pumping like a cake of fiery ale and a good old brawl
on the arena stand. So true, busty.
That's a quote from fight master Cox.
Who we now know is a little goblin man.
Oh. Yeah, I forgot about that.
Told you wanna go next? Sure I'll go next for my card.
AI chose a non warrior non brew card.
So the card I want to talk about is hammerhead harpoon cannon.
Oh wow say that five times fast this Hammerhead harpoon cannon
hammerhead harpoon cannon hammerhead harpoon cannon
hammerhead harpoon cannon yeah,
that one. So this is a pirate Ranger
weapon bow cannon 2 hander with an action that says pay 4
resources and tap. We now know that it's tap super
lame. Your next arrow attack this turn
gets plus 4 Jesus. If it has harpoon in its name,
it gets overpower. Let's go again now notably this
bow itself bow. This crossbow cannot load so you
can only really use it with Marlins hero ability which makes
it super siloed. Love it.
Also giving +4 on a crossbow, fucking sweet.
What do you call it? A crossbow.
It's a bow cannon. It's a bow.
No, it says bow cannon. It is bow cannon.
I'm sorry it looks like a crossbow.
It does, so I keep referring it to as a crossbow, but this
weapon just oozes and synergy. I really like it.
I think it's going to make Ranger very interesting to play
after they ban like Tri shot and death dealer because I combo
looks really stupid and I like that it offers this like almost
guardian ask level of play style where you're pitching 2 Blues to
pay for the arrow as well as a big costed attack.
What I really like about this weapon as well is that it is
also referenced in the 2 big ass arrows that Marlin has access
to, King Kraken Harpoon and King Shark Harpoon.
Both of them reference cannons and when you use a cannon you
get a bonus effect. So I just like the, you know,
sort of future proofing of Marlin being like this extremely
overrate Ranger that just uses all the good Ranger cards.
So yeah, really excited about this card for high seas and what
it does to Ranger. Yeah.
What do you got, Clark? For my card, I'm doing Command
and Conquer because now I have a really big extended air Command
and Conquer. Holy, I don't know, man.
Like that was a big thing for me that like I had all these
tickets and I was able to spend them on something really big and
cool. Like sounds fun.
I, I want us to put a big photo of me looking like a dope in the
apartment with me holding the big card in front of me.
I also want to use this moment as a chance of telling the story
of how did I get this home? Because I did a whole extra week
in Italy. Because after Pro Tour London, I
didn't just come home. I spent a whole other week in
Italy on vacation. So like, I had to, I had to ship
this home, right? Because it's not going to fit on
a plane. It doesn't fit in the overhead
things and I'm not going to like buy another plane ticket for it.
So I had to go to the local post office and be like, hey, can you
ship this? And they're like, no, we don't
have anything big enough for this.
It's not like, oh, OK, who else can I go to?
And they're like, don't know, buddy.
And I'm like, oh shit. So my flight is at like I need
to get on a plane to go to my flight at like noon.
So I get up at 7:30 in the morning and I am running around
London trying to find a way of shipping this and nobody has
anything available. I spend like 20 minutes on the
phone with the guy being like where can I go for someone to
help me package this? I I'll ship it, I'll spend all
the money I need to to ship it, but where can I just get this
package so that it is safe? This is in like a loose bubble
wrap right now. So I'm running around
desperately, desperately trying to find a way of packaging this
thing so I can fucking ship it home and I just cannot find
anything. And finally, I end up going to
this really, really big international shipping Royal
Post Office and this guy who just like sells things, he's
just like a counter clerk comes around and he's like, I'm going
to help you. I'm like, God fucking bless you.
And he like gets the biggest box they have.
And he goes, now if we fold this into a box, it won't fit that.
But if we leave it flat and you wrap all the corners down you
can. Oh man.
So I had to buy this box, leave it UN essentially unassembled
and then fold it fucking origami style around this oversized card
and then buy an entire thing of packing tape that says fragile
on it and just tape it down. I spend like an hour in this
post office taping this down so that no water can get in and
it's protected. And I write fragile on the front
and I big brain this shit. I big brain this shit.
I specifically run out of room riding fragile on the thing so
that it looks like a kid did it. And then I write please handle
with tears :) I'm like, they're going to think a little kid is
shipping something home and they're not going to fuck with
it. Don't fuck with my God damn
expensive oversized CNC card, please for the love of God.
And it got home. It got home safe and sound.
No big dents. They weren't fucking throwing
that shit on the plane or around.
It was nice and protected and thank you, Thank you, Royal Post
Thank you man whose name I've forgotten, who was the counter
clerk, who helped me figure out the packaging solution.
Thank you man who helped me figure out how to
internationally ship this thing safely.
Like everyone fucking came together in that moment and I
made it to my train on time and I got to my flight on time and I
got to Italy on time and it was all fine and not stressful at
all. Sounds so exhausting.
It was. Bro, I get to the train station
at noon and they're like, there's another one in 25
minutes, just go eat some lunch and I'm like thank Christ.
These strangers in London sound really nice.
They were really nice. It was a great trip.
Well, I think that's about time for us to wrap up our podcast.
Everyone, thank you so much for listening.
And be sure to join the Patreon. If you didn't hear your card
mentioned in the Arsenal zone, just submit it next week and
we'll try and get to you. It's randomly picked, so keep
sending your suggestions and we'll get to you sometime, yeah.
Thank you all so very much. We look forward to reading all
your opinions in the comments section or on our discord.
Guys, bye. Digit to Me podcast is hosted by
Fuzzy Delp, Clark Moore and Joe Racinos.
Our executive producer is Talon Stradley, Logistics coordinator
John Farkas. Music by Dylan Hulse, 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.