Welcome to Pitch It to Me podcast, a show about the
subjective past, present, and potential future of Fletch and
Blood design. In this episode, we'll talk
about the latest band and restricted announcement, as well
as how Legend Story Studios handles the game.
Having a variety of formats, You can find us across all socials
such as Blue Sky and Instagram at Pitch It to Me Podcast.
I'm Clark. I'm Buzzy and I'm Joel.
So an apartment update. We still don't have a dining
room, but we do now have a functional kitchen.
Yeah, we have. Forks.
We have forks. We have spoons, we have knives,
we have a cutting board. I did see a pan in there
somewhere. Too, we do have three pole pans.
Well, I mean. And how old are you guys again?
Look, it's been. Low blow, man.
What the fuck? It's.
Been a long fucking week my guy. Like, OK, OK, never mind.
Forget. I asked.
You know what? Also, Crucible has been a little
fun this this time around, I'm not going to lie.
I I picked a good format this month, yeah.
I didn't think this was going to be as good as it was.
So it's you have to run 10 copies of each card that you put
in the deck. Yeah, all of the same color.
Yes, so you could run 10 blue copies of disable I best know
for random card to pick. So like in one of my decks I'm
running 10 channel like frigids and I'm running 10 blue windows
by looking channel. Like frigids every single red
line deck that was like oh good I can have consistent red line
deck just immediately shit their pants.
That's part of the fun of the format is like your six card
idea is going to have strengths and weaknesses and you can
exploit those strengths. You can fall to your bad
matchups. You know, it's it can feel very
rock paper scissory, but just is really fun to be able to say
like look, I've always wanted to build a deck around these 4
cards and I'm really mad I have to throw other cards into my
deck already. With this format you don't have
to worry about that. You just run the cards you want
to run. It is.
It is the essence of the play. Yeah, in case you have no idea
what we're talking about, Crucible is our monthly rotating
changing format that I put on every month as part of our
Patreon rewards, but we also post the format publicly so
anybody can build a deck and jam games on our Discord if they
want. Yeah, we've also already played
the first round and all three hosts won their first round.
I mean, what can I say? Guess we're just go to like
that. It it also sort of feels like,
and maybe this isn't always the case, but I feel like with like
video game developers, they're always really good at the games
that they design. The deck that I was playing was
fine, but the decks that I've done the best on were the ones
that I ripped straight from Clark, so I feel like it's
really. Funny how you're like, oh, we're
playing the same hero. Oh yeah, that card's just way
better. Oh yeah, that shit card's just
way better. Like at first I was trying to
have fun with it. I like I built Embolden.
Like I think last week I talked about how I really wanted to
play Embolden in CC Embolden. It's the aura that draws a card
if you have an aura out already. And I figured it'd be really
good in this format. And it was OK.
It was like a fun deck to test against other people who were
like, oh, I don't think my deck is very good.
And I'm like, well, let's see if it can beat this, you know, and
it's much better to do like Oakenold.
Much better to just throw Oakenold for 9 off of the same
crumble six turns in a row. Yeah, much, much better.
Joel, do you want to tell us what you've been playing in
Crucible? No, I figured that would be your
answer. I have a record to protect.
I have screenshots of Joel giving us his record at an RTN
and it's a draft RTN so there's only so much you can do as far
as secret sauces. But his discord messages are one
O on Secret Hero 2O on secret hero 3 O on secret hero because
at that. Point.
We're not in his. Pod Yeah, like once you have
three wins, that that information doesn't do anything
for you, right. But it's still a secret like you
never. I still don't know why Hero he
was playing that event. I'm not gonna give you access to
data like that. An old place for keeps.
Dude. He's he's all fucking around
here. So funny.
Crucible monthly rotating format with you get nothing for
winning. That'll be, that'll be and
you're like, no. No, I won't tell you what I'm.
Playing the Captain America mean no, I don't think it will.
I had fun screenshotting those messages.
So for today's episode, we're going we've we've given you a
month now of like hard hitting intelligent dev conversation
because we're just talking about the BNR in the upcoming skirmish
season. So we just had to ban and
restrict an announcement. Typically whenever those come
out, we like to at least work it into something that we talked
about. And with skirmish season on the
horizon, there were no CC changes, but there were blitz
and living legend changes. And so we're going to talk about
that and we're going to talk about how LSS sort of handles
doing dev work for multiple different formats and we are
going to talk about why you should play in Skirmish season.
So with that in mind, Joel, why don't you take it away?
Why don't you lead us through red pitch with the ban and
restricted announcement? Yeah.
So I I really don't think this is a surprise to anybody, but
there are no changes in CCI feel like whenever a hero LLS, that
in itself is a very big change to the meta game.
We already talked about Viceroy a 72 living legend status last
episode. So I'm not going to dive into
that too much. So obviously the no changes to
CC are basically to see what happens, who's taking advantage
of this extra space in the meta game.
So you guys have any other thoughts about why we did not
see any changes in CC? I don't think there's like a
demon of CC. Yeah, right.
There's no one for the community to very easily point their ire
at other than like individual play styles and things that
players don't like. Right, Right.
I play aggro. I don't like new, I play
guardian. I don't like Enigma, you know,
like, but outside of that, it didn't feel like there was a
universally like, man, fuck this strategy.
Yeah, going on. Cyb wasn't dominating the meta
but it still got banned right? Yeah, so because there was so
many people complaining about it.
And on top of that, I think they were come back complaining came
from somewhere legitimate, which is that there isn't enough tools
to deal with this strategy or the tools that exist don't do a
good enough job, right? And but I don't feel like that's
the case right now in this meta. I think Syndra could have very
easily been a deck that felt like nobody could really be.
And yet we see plenty of heroes that have been above and have
remained above her in terms of RTN wins globally.
So it's not like she has become some overwhelming force.
Yeah, I think the next best I can format is going to be
Aurora. And I don't think that Aurora is
like, at an unhealthy level of strength.
Yeah. She's annoying because
everything swings for four, but it's not like game breaking.
They're still slink below. Yeah, and there's still clear
weaknesses, yeah and in the decks and strategies like Aurora
runs 0 poppers, so Prism is just this like really solid anti meta
strategy, but then Aurora. But then Prism also has 32
health so Aurora can like really threaten that life total.
Yeah. Aside from that though, Blitz
got a lot of really unprecedented changes #1 Crown
of Seeds got unbanned, and Traverse the Universe and Zephyr
Needle were both banned. Yeah.
So those were the. Changes like I do and don't
understand the Crown of Seeds unbanning because it was very
strong when Oldham used it and there's like three people that
can use it now as compared to two the last time it was legal.
So it just seems like it's going to be a very interesting meta
game for sure. Yarl can't be played in blitz.
No, he cannot. There's no baby yarl.
That is silly. Well.
I would like to see a baby yarl. Do you think we're going to see
his face? No no, we'll probably have like
a smaller mask. Traverse, Traverse the universe
and Zephyr needle. I understand why they were
banned though. Zephyr Needle was also banned
before the release of the Haunted because of.
I mean they're they're. If you have been paying
attention to CC at all you already know why Brian Go does
not like that card specifically. But Traversal Universe is
interesting to me because they unbanned Zen and increased the
amount of living legend points and banned A.
Few of his key cards in blitz and they thought like, let's
take it a step further so that he doesn't elegant.
I don't think it's not just a step further.
I think it's also to slow down Enigma.
Like I think just the ability to tutor out a chi does way more in
blitz than it does in CC maybe. Yeah, sort of in the way of like
any equipment that says this is now a power turn is going to be
more powerful in blitz than in CC, because in CC you have twice
the life to absorb that power turn, Yeah, than in blitz.
And you know one thing they mentioned in the article is that
you have a higher density of chi cards when you can only run one
copy of each one and your deck is. 60.
Like 40 instead of 60. Then you're gonna have like way
more control over the ratio of cheat cards do you want to have
in your deck. And you can like transcend turn
0 or turn one way more commonly in blitz than in CC.
True, and it means a lot more in blitz since you're already at 20
live. Yeah, notably Mask of the
Pouncing Links was banned a long time ago when Benji and Phi were
around. So Zen basically has like Mask
of Momentum and like the the mask of recurring whiskers or
what's the the one where you put a pop combo card on the bottom
of? Your that is Whiskers.
Yeah, Mask of Whiskers. Why isn't whiskers?
So yeah, I'm really interested to see how much that traverse
specifically impacts the meta, but Tara seems like he's gonna
be fucking insane. Also Living Legend.
I mean, my eyes always kind of glaze over it whenever I see
Living Legend changes, but I think this is a pretty big one.
The electromagnetic somersault has been restricted, which is
the one that lets you return action cards on the combat chain
to your hand at the end of the resolution step.
And with Aurora, this card's really annoying.
But like, if you're returning Crippling Crush, Starstruck or
Okanal to your hand for like a second use on the following
turn, Man, that seems absurd. Yeah, it's so interesting
because the electromagnetic somersault, that red can return
A0 cost or higher. And that yellow, it's A1 cost or
higher, and then a blue it's A2 cost or higher, which really
matters for Aurora, right? Because like you really want it
to be red so that you can get your nice red 0 for fours and
avoid pitching on your turn, right?
But Guardian just runs the Blues and is super happy.
Yeah. So there is 0 downside to Starvo
running 3 blue electromagnetic somersaults.
So now he can block 6 and return them both to his hand with a
blue. Yeah, Starvo got a lot of really
good and I don't think this is something we talked about in the
pod yet, but he got a lot of really good.
Sorry, I don't think we've talked about this on the pod at
all, but he Starbuck got a lot of really good upgrades in
Rosetta because Electro all the like lightning Blues were super
bad when he was relevant. So the fact that he got current
funnel and electromagnetic electromagnetic somersault just
skyrocketing back to like the same power level that he entered
a living legend with. For sure and it's so funny to me
every time like a card gets banned and or restricted in
living legend, it's always like other heroes that are catching
the catching the heat. Like Aurora is just like excited
to play Art of War and Tomo Fine Doll in Living Legend, I assume.
But like suddenly she can't play like electromagnetic Somersault
because Starvo's taking it. And because Starvo has so many
talents that like, if you look at the roster, there's like 10
heroes on that list out of the 45 that you can run other than
Starvo that might get cards banned just because they share a
talent with the strongest hero in the format.
And that's a really funny dynamic.
It's like this little like subcategory of like people of
like heroes that might lose cards has nothing to do with
them being like unfair necessarily.
Yeah, that's so funny. And there's only like 2 cards on
the band list that have nothing to do with Starvo.
It's Bonds of Ancestry and Open the Floodgates.
It's almost like Starvo wants a really broken overpowered hero.
I can't wait for the day we finally get the next like, well,
I mean, I can't wait. But it would be really funny if
we saw a hero that was stronger than Starvo in some way.
Like, oh. My gosh, I guess you could
technically say that like Shane has that.
Capability. Yeah, but he's not winning the
same way he is, but the same way Starvo is.
Yeah, At least not yet. I mean, Monarch 3 point.
I might have something to say about that.
I should also mention Kraken's Ether Vane.
You're right, you're right. There are three cars.
I misspoke a little bit earlier and.
Arguably, Cracker's aether vein was the most broken.
Yeah, yeah, that was pretty bad. That was pretty bad.
So. Funny. 31 Draw 30.
Also a commoner got a ban and restricted update which is not
all that common. Wink wink.
They lost, or they So in that format, Waning Moon, Zephyr
Needle and Rosetta Thorne were all banned and Ball Lightning
was unbanned. Holy shit, that's.
Fucking wild. They took the weapons from three
of the top heroes, namely Chain, Icelander and Ira.
And those heroes will probably still be pretty viable without
their weapons. But like the weapon is the game
plan and commoner like you. Just when you have the best
weapons in the format, you build your deck around those weapons,
you know? And they're gone now.
And surely there are better options, but it's a big meta
shake up. Yeah, it really, really is.
And also, Fuzzy and I were talking before the pod, we're
sort of talking about how enigma and reality fracture with like
the big ward attacks are the best deck in the format.
And comparing that to like what was banned, it seems like she's
only going to get stronger because Waning Moon can at
instant speed get, you know, threatened damage to destroy
these spectral Shields while they're talking now they can't.
Zephyr Needle also just insanely aggressive option and Rosetta
Thorne having the two into arcane.
That's like usually unless you have AB three, you're usually
destroying the wards. Yeah.
And also, so with these changes, I think not only does Enigma get
a lot stronger, but I think it opens up the door for more
heroes to like, find more aggressive options.
Because like, if you're like a ninja, you can probably deal
with Enigma pretty well. But if you're also getting
hammered by Icelander and Chain, I don't think you're getting
anywhere close to the top tables, you know?
Yeah, one of the reasons why I've stayed away from commoner
in the past is because I feel like it's just a few decks.
It doesn't feel like actually an open meta where I can play lots
of different decks and experiment and be flexible.
It's like dash boost is just better numbers than everybody
and you either need the like high roll potential of Chain or
the disruption of Icelander or the consistent grind value of
IRA to beat them. And if you're not doing that,
then why are you playing this format?
Which is wrong. It was a wrong assumption, and
if I actually bothered to play the format, I'd probably learned
that, but it kept me away from it.
Like I saw these decks just having way better numbers and
everybody else. And so it's like, well, why
would I want to try to make my Enigma brew work if these decks
are just going to run over me every single game?
Yeah, and these sort of changes do make me want to play
commoner. It just seems more accessible
because like now I'm like, OK, well, the worst for worst, the
worst offenders are out of the way.
So maybe it opens the line up for like Kasai or Bolton or
whatever, yeah. And you know, the price to enter
the format is really low because it's just Commons.
Yeah, I love that. And then we also got one big
shake up recently with the Blade Beckon airline that was printed
in the Haunted because those are like rare equipment.
They're playable in common air and the fact that they block for
two actually makes them better than many, many, many equipment
that already exist. So as long as they're still
swinging weapons, at some point, you're going to get 2 value out
of your equipment. And it's actually like pretty
Dang good. So like a lot of heroes are
running those now. It's not like a huge shake up,
but it's kind of interesting how commoner like we'll get the most
random tools sometimes and you're like, oh, I guess that is
strictly better than all the random equipment we've already
been running. And like where else are you
going to use like the cold foil Commons from?
Like the boxes you are, the packs you Rep?
I legitimately love commoner for that.
Yeah, I I've had a commoner Betsy list that's been sitting
in my back pocket for a while and I've been slowly getting the
cold foil because I'm like, I'll be flipping through someone's
binder and I'm like old foil vigor, if you say.
Yeah, like you're. So much for that.
They're like, I do not give a fuck about that card and I'm
like. Like how much did it cost you to
get Max rarity on your commoner deck Like.
Like 5 old dollar. Yeah, Max rarity and commoners
like peak masculinity. Don't have me.
Oh yeah. So that's pretty much all the
updates. They're pretty boilerplate.
I just wanted to go over them and sort of get our thoughts on
there. I personally am very excited to
play Blitz and Commodore, but I want to talk about how LSS
approaches design and balances in these different formats.
So let's go to our yellow pitch with Fuzzy.
What do you got for? Us Oh hey, that's me.
So I think it's really interesting that LSS has the
duty not just to make one awesome game, but really like 6
nice, well balanced ish, like fun creative games.
But it's the same cards that are in all these games, which seems
like a very challenging proposition.
And I just want to talk about how hard that can be or how LSS
has chose to handle it. And yeah, I want to point out
that it's always been Legend Story Studios Intent for Flesh
and would be played in multiple different ways with the same
cards being printed. Which is why ever since Welcome
to Wraith, heroes were printed as young versions and normal
versions. They're not called young and
old, they're young and blank. And for most heroes across the
entire like history of the game up until Rosetta, they had
exactly the same hero text, they just had half the life total.
Because young heroes are meant to be played for shorter games
of flesh and blood. And also notably it took a long
time before those adult heroes had any other format other than
classic constructed that was recommended for play.
You know, we had Blitz since I assumed the early days and I.
Want to say Crucible was when Blitz happened, right?
It wasn't there from Welcome to Wraith, was it?
Were they just for draft then? Well, they had the blitz decks
for Welcome Wreath, so there was blitz even back then.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the IRA, Welcome deck
is also blitz. Yeah, like Blitz was before CC.
Technically. Yeah, cuz the IRA welcome decks
were like the prototype. So this has always been the
intention of LSS and it's a little bit bold because there
are clearly some strategies or cards or even heroes that are
stronger in one format compared to the other.
It's a challenging task to design your cards for them to be
balanced in both of those formats.
And we've seen them in sometimes like sort of fail to design then
in a way that's balanced for one format and not the other.
Yeah, the only like saving grace is some of the power cards that
they've been designing lately requires some sort of quest to
be met. Like for instance, failing at
the crown would be insane if it said like each player put a card
from the hand on the bottom when you decompose.
But the fact that you need a threshold of earth cards to be
able to get the power buff too makes it a lot less overbearing.
But they haven't always done that.
Yeah, you have to read your engines a bit before you get the
full power of your cards or the full power of your hero.
That's a pretty easy way to do it.
You know, It's something that I'm not surprised.
LSS like utilizes very often. So one thing I want to discuss
today, and we might not be able to get any conclusive answers
because none of us actually work at Legend Story Studios yet yet.
But how much work do we think they put into designing and
practicing and balancing for each of these different formats?
Because we know they have classic instructed.
That's their favorite format. We know they put a lot of time
and concern into Classic Constructed, but they also have
Blitz, Living, Legend, Commoner, Ultimate, Pit Fight, as well as
Draft and Sealed for each of their limited environments.
I think they put a lot of effort into draft because I think so
much of their dev work has to go into balancing for draft and
creating the cards for draft in limited environments.
And then probably classic constructed is their second one
that they spend the most dev time on.
I actually I would say that was that is my hot take.
I think they spend more time designing for limited than they
do for classic constructed. You know, I think that's
actually kind of Fair only because draft takes a lot of
time to get it the balance just right, right?
I think also like the shape and resource curves and the amounts
of everything, like I think they're just way more goes into
it because Designing Limited is designing the set.
Well, like, I mostly I agree with that list that I think
there are formats that LSS has chosen to not worry about when
it comes to like what cards they print.
However, I wouldn't put Blitz on that list if only because we
have seen LSS specifically print heroes only meant for Blitz.
You know, when they print young only heroes, I have to assume
that they're testing those heroes, they're building decks
with those heroes before they're released and then seeing what
they can do in at least Blitz before they like, put it out
into the main world. To be fair, I think they are
moving away from that, as we've seen by their push to try to
print all those young only heroes with adult versions.
That's true. I think the last one we saw was,
was it Arachne solitary confinement?
Yeah, which would have been like a lot.
That was a while ago. Outsiders.
There is that one slipped through the cracks as the quote
UN quote adult version even though they have slightly
different text boxes. But it's so far as they talked
about wanting to put Benji in part that miss failed and
wanting to put data doll and bright lights.
The fact that we saw Kasai got an adult version like just
consistently. I think they are trying to
replace young only heroes with and give them adult versions.
So I don't know how much they're still designing solely for
Blitz, but I think what is actually good about all of these
decks sharing the same card pool is that the same guiding
principles of card design will keep things balanced across all
the formats. Like as long as your red Commons
with no go again can only generate 4 points of offensive
value by playing it, it is an OK card right?
Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of overlap between
what makes a card balanced and constructed and what makes a
card balanced and blitz, you know?
So I think they only really need to pay attention when there is
something about the format that would break the parody.
So I think that was the Earth heroes and their decomposed
limit, right? They had to actually take a look
at and test, well, what number should this be?
How quickly should this be happening in the faster blitz
format? Right, that was kind of a
radical when they decided Florian Inverdants only need 4
cards in banish for their young hero versions, but the adult
heroes need 8. It's literally the only time
we've seen heroes printed in young and old together have
different texts. I was also going to say, look at
one of the unbannings that they did.
They did end up undoing it, but one of the unbannings in the
past that was very interesting to me was drone brutality in
blitz. Because they're like, look, if
blitz is just this incredibly fast format where aggro
dominates, can we reintroduce this thing that causes longer
games? Can this actually be OK in a
blitz format that's way faster and way more aggro oriented
then, say, CC, where Drone of Brutality is an absolute fucking
monster? That would ruin the game.
Yeah. And they gave it a season and
turns out, yeah, it was still pretty rough, but they tested
it. So I do think that they give
some attention to blitz. I think they'd certainly word
some cards so that it is more UPF playable right?
By being able to target any heroes or however many heroes
lost life this turn. Think about Vincent's hero
ability actually scales really nicely.
If you can throw an attack at the player at your right and the
left and if they and if everyone takes damage, then you're
deathly whales. Make 3 room chants and you're
deathly delight gains you three. Life now like that is fun.
It is fun to see that interaction and then take it
into UPF because the wording works for it.
So I think they maybe have like a team member who's like tasked
with keeping their eye open and it's like, hey, if we change
that wording to this, it can actually be better for UPF and
more interesting there. And it doesn't change how it
works in classic constructed at all.
And then they go make that change.
Hey oh Jimmy, do you like UPF? Would this be cool?
Yeah, Jimmy, do your UPF check and for a week he just like
reads all the cards. I definitely want to talk about
UPF, but I actually want to pivot a little bit back to what
you're saying about the balance overlap between Woods and CCI.
Think you're really on to something there because if you
look at the ban list from CC and Blitz, a lot of the cards banned
and Blitz like we just saw Zephyr needle, right?
Are there cards that have either been talked about banned in CC
or already were banned in C previously and they just decided
to wait in Blitz for whatever reason to see if it's OK because
there is a little bit of difference.
But like it happens multiple times where they're like, look,
this was bad in CC and Blitz wasn't like churning through
this meta. Game was still trying to figure
it out because there aren't as many players and they eventually
figured out it's it's broken there.
Yep, just like it was broken in CC, you know, and there's a
couple of cards that like are abandoned Blitz, but not CC For
the most part. It's like the same list.
You know they have the same balancing.
The very, very similar balancing, yes.
Like when they did the book burnings, they're just like,
look guys, we've decided we want the entire fucking game to move
away from these cards, so we're taking them away from both
banned lists. A Cilio with Toma Fine doll, my
beloved, gone too soon. So we've talked about the cost
and time and resources for a company to design around
multiple formats, but now I kind of want to shift it in the other
side of the coin, the benefit of having multiple formats in the
game. Yeah, because like if this is
taking a bunch more time and a bunch more money, then why do
it? Yeah.
Is it worth it? Everyone plays CC anyway right?
Like here in Socal all the armories are CC armories, right?
Basically, yeah, we don't have a lot of blitz players or commoner
players in our local meta. I mean, we can play online, of
course, but 1 I think the first reason why I think it's really
good to have these alternate formats is because CC is not the
most approachable format for newer players.
I think it's good to have these stepping stone formats like
blitz and commoner, especially where you can introduce players
to the game in a lower stakes environment.
And that way they can decide that they actually love the game
and they're willing to invest in ACC deck because to play classic
constructed kind of it costs like probably at least 100 or
$200 even to play more casually. And if you wanted to have a
really like top tier deck, it might cost more like 4 or $500
if you haven't like made any of the initial investments off the
bat. Would you guys agree with that
kind of investment? Whereas like a blitz deck might
cost like $50 or common or would cost much less than that even.
It also depends on the class. Like there's just a lot of
nuance with the price of decks. I know people like saying, oh,
Nu was a $2000 deck. I'm like, yeah, if you shove
every, you know, generic majestic that's good in the game
and codex of Frailty and stuff. But if you play casually, you
can get it down pretty low, Yeah.
Yeah, like sink blows instead of shelters.
Right, exactly. I would also say that in blitz
it is easier to play at a slightly lower power level and
probably get away with it in muscle metas.
Because a lot of times the numbers do just a good job as
the powerful disruption effects you'd find on CNC or whatever.
Yeah, And certainly if you're going to say a Battle hardened,
a blitz Battle Hardened, yeah, you want the top tier deck.
But if you're just playing at your armories, you don't need
all that jazz. I mean, I, I've, I myself when I
take long breaks from flesh and blood or when I see new players
return from breaks, I always say just bring an Armory deck for a
few weeks. Like you don't need to start
buying the the latest staples that just came out.
Just play, you know, get back to the foundations of flesh and
blood. You're going to lose if you buy
all the expensive shit anyway, so you might as well lose and
not have as much capital invested upfront.
So yeah, I just really encourage people picking up like the Bree
Cons. I think the Armory decks have
helped to make the game approachable and maybe that's
why we've seen even less players playing like blitz and commoner
because the way to get invested into the game is like there's a
different ladder other than these alternative.
Formats, Yeah, very successful marketing campaign for sure.
I still think that blitz and commoner do have the appeal of
like you can make an extra deck for your buddy to get them into
the game a lot easier with blitz and commoner.
Oh yeah. What was it?
We just had two new players show up at Spell Hold this week, and
they're talking about how they were playing with a bunch of
blitz stacks, and that's how they were getting ready to show
up to an Armory for the first time.
And when they showed up to the Armory, they bought the Armory
deck, they sleeved up and left. So they played with that week
and it was great. They had a great time.
I also specifically always bring an Armory deck so that when I
pair into one of those players, I don't crush them with my $1000
Aurora deck. I'm like, yeah, I'll also play
with a $50 starter deck and like, you know, then we're
balanced. But Dennis goes, oh, you like
blitz decks? Give me a second.
And he walks outside and carries in a crate of blitz decks that
he made just from chaff. Wow.
All of them individually sealed and wrapped up and said, go
through that. Take however many you want.
That's also How I Met Dennis when I first arrived at Finch.
I in addition to the three other people that were there, Dennis
was one of the ones who was just passing a blitz decks.
So he's been doing that for a while.
He's a, he's a really good community leader in that sense.
So it's very easy to put together Blitz 6 and use it as
an entry point, and that's why it's important.
I think one other thing that I really like about say, commoner
and definitely to an extent Blitz that I don't think I have,
I see as much in this classic instructed would be that it's a
little bit more Wild West of a format.
You could probably say this about Ultimate Pit Fight 2, but
with classic constructed, I think LSS knows what is strong
and knows what they want to be strong.
You know, like they've done this twice in the last year where the
community gets a hold of the new set and they start building
decks and they have the like, oh, Zephyr Neil is really strong
with pick up, pick up sticks and run.
And then the community's like sharing it all and LSS goes, we
already knew about that. We already knew it was strong
and now it's banned. You know, like they've already
done the testing. They can tell us like which
decks are good. They just don't want to tell us
because that's part of the fun, right?
But I think like the fact that LSS has their thumb on the pulse
of the format is both good for the format, but also it can be
like, I don't want to say stifling, but it's nice to be
able to play commoner where I think LSS that does not have
their eyes on it. And every time you come up with
a new strong deck idea, it can feel like it's yours.
You know I. Mean, I think they're, they have
their eyes on it. It's just, they know you're not
going to get in that much trouble, you know, and but if
they hear a vase shattering, they're, they're going to run
into the room and say, what have you been doing in here?
That's a good metaphor. Yeah, it's a mom with a lot of
kids, and there's a problem kid, and the problem kid is classic
instructed. But they also just gave us a
vase when they when they unprint Unbanned ball lightning in
commoner. And when you give the kid a new
toy, you watch him for a little bit.
They're going to be safe and responsible with that.
That's so fucking funny. We are the children and James
Light is the tired dad just desperately begging us to not
hurt each other. I think there's been at least we
talked about on the pot is if there's a problem with a lack of
brewing in flesh and blood that because it's so competitively
minded, people don't feel brave enough to reach out and try new
strategies, new combos, because there is like a really big hoop
you have to jump through for a deck to be good.
You know, you have to be able to bring your opponent from 40 life
to 0, even if they're blocking you a bunch.
You have to have consistent strategies.
And with the lower life totals, that's less important.
You can like leak some games with your random like 2 card
combos lining up together and you can also lose in the same
way by not finding them. You know, it's, it's a little
bit more forgiving for you to, to build around.
So Brewer is being attracted to Blitzer commoner.
And you also want to try your ideas really quickly, right?
Like if you're like, OK, I think I have this really fun idea.
I pulled it together in like 10 minutes on a whim.
I'm not going to sit down for an hour to play it out.
You know, it'd be more fun to just like, play a few games for
1015 minutes. The very last thing that I want
to point out is that I do know that LSS does not ultimately put
that much effort into curating the way that blitz and commoner
and UPF run. And I know this because, well,
to be honest, we don't know what is happening behind the scenes.
But when I typically hear about interesting blitz and commoner
ideas, it's from the YouTube channel DICE Commando.
It's from people in the community who are dedicated to
those formats and who care about those formats.
DICE Commando recently put out a video in terms of when this
episode will come be coming out. Maybe it was 2 or so weeks ago,
two or three weeks ago that said that Blitz should actually
increase its card pool. Not deck size, but the available
card pool so that there can be more tech options to deal with
different strategies because of the increasing hero pool.
And that was a fascinating idea. He had solid arguments to back
it up and I would not be surprised if at the end of this
skirmish season or before next skirmish season those rules are
incorporated. And I think that's because the
community has a better idea of what's going on in blitz.
You mean the size of the deck list?
Like yes you still bring in 40 cards, but you can have like a
60 card list instead of 52. I think his specific number was
56 instead of 52 or something along those lines.
OK. But yes.
Cool. That makes a lot of sense to me.
And we've seen in the past that LSS is willing to change the
rules set for Blitz, you know, like it used to be you couldn't
have any sideboard cards. Main deck.
And they're like, OK, we need a sideboard.
Yes, that's about all I got for my pitch.
I think next and Blue Pitch Clerk's gonna talk about
skirmish season and why you should sign up for your local
skirmish. Yeah, so skirmish seasons
definitely feel like the competitive season of flesh and
blood. That is the weird cousin at the
party, right? I'm going with a lot of family
metaphors today in that, yeah, he's there and you'll like hang
out with him at dinner, but you're not like going to spend a
bunch of time with him, right? It's just kind of odd.
He can he can go over there and play by himself.
And I would say I don't know a ton of people who play in
skirmish season, right? Skirmish events are typically a
lot smaller and I don't always hear about my local stores
getting a skirmish, but skirmish seasons are actually very very
healthy for the game and very important to take part in one
the rewards are fucking. Cool.
Yeah. Cold foil channel, like frigid.
Come on. Come, come.
Like everybody's going to want that card.
I was. I was really happy to get my
cold foil channel on that heroic.
Yeah, I think also the young art, like I'm no shade to any of
the artists who have done any of the work on Flesh and Blood Hero
cards. Sometimes the young art is just
better. It's just better sometimes.
Do you have an example? Tara.
Tara only has young. Yeah, it's a fucking guy.
He does. He does have good art.
I'm not gonna lie. Tara does have insanely good
art. Very flavorful tree.
Daddy's cool, but. It makes me think of Marcus
Brown local who really likes Betsy's young hero art cuz in
the young art she's smiling and also she's like leaning on a
beast that. She's just sat down.
Yeah, the Betsy young art's so much better.
I also think that young old him is a better art than then old
him. Grandfather of eternity. 100%
agree. Old him, grandfather of
eternity. I'm like that man's about to
die. Yeah.
He's he looks like he doesn't complete sentences anymore.
Family metaphor. Also, skirmishes are a little
bit more easygoing in terms of competition.
They're less mentally fatiguing. This is typically things that
people also just say about blitz in general.
But if you are someone who's trying to take that next step in
your play, right, if you think of the tears of play as like
there's kitchen table, sometimes you're messing up rules a bunch.
Then you go to armories and like one of the players there will be
a judge. So they'll like remind you of
like, hey, make sure you're showing your resources, hey, and
make sure that that's not actually how that card resolves.
So there's that going on at armories.
So you're getting a little bit more serious rather than jumping
right up to like RTNS and PQS. I think Skirmish season is
actually a way better next step. Absolutely from the Armory
level. Yeah, yeah, I feel like Flesh
and Blood just kind of needs more weekend events, yeah that
aren't like qualifiers or. Yeah, it's one of the reasons
why I love the age so much, right, Because it's a place to
go compete. But it feels a little bit lower
stakes and I don't have to get first.
There's not as much pressure on going to top four.
I can get 16th and get some points.
Yeah, skirmish season feels very similar, right?
You can go and compete and be in the competitive environment, but
it's blitz. The games are over quicker.
You can just be like, yeah, he drew the nuts and just, you
know, brush off bad games. You can go to an event and have
it end by 4:00 PM. You can have a whole other part
of your day. Yeah, imagine having dinner at a
reasonable time, bro. I could not be me.
The ability to eat dinner, to have evening plans on the same
day that you're going to a flesh and blood tournament
unparalleled. If you have not had the
experience of competing in Flesh and Blood and having the rest of
your day available, play in your skirmish season.
I also want to point out. That right now the meta game for
Blitz, like the meta game for CC, is pretty open.
There's not huge dominant forces that are just completely
steamrolling everybody now. I suppose we'll truly find that
out in the skirmish season, right?
Because Haunted just came out. Maybe Arachne Marionettes just
fucking cracked? Or Slippy.
Slippy was already strong before Haunted, maybe now Slippy is
just insane. Fang was also extremely strong
in draft because attack reactions with lower life totals
is very strong combination. So maybe he, but I think the
larger point that I think you're alluding to Clark is like
there's no more Kano, there's no more Ryanar, Briar or Dash.
And those I feel like we're some of the biggest offenders for the
format. I played a lot of Ryanar.
That was basically the only thing I played in Blitz for like
a year. Because whenever there's
skirmish season and I want those promos, I'm gonna kill you at
turn one, turn 2. I don't want to play that long,
you know? And I think Kano was something
similar like like the realist skilled Kano players will just
kill you really quickly get it done, but at least you don't
have objectively strong heroes doing objectively broken things.
Yeah, Reinhard's like quad intimidate deal 20 damage is not
in the game anymore. Kano just randomly hitting the
nuts off the top is not in the game anymore.
Yep, there are still ridiculously powerful agro
heroes I know, like flicker, wisp combo.
Aurora can very much just be like, I got Arsenal and you
didn't disrupt me, Flicker wisp, arc lightning, break all my
equipment. Here's a 30 damage turn that you
can't reasonably survive through.
That can still happen, but it's still fairly rare or it comes
with big downsides, right? It's not quite the same level
and I think defensive decks have started getting a little bit
stronger talking back to our red pitch or circling back to our
red pitch. Crown of Seeds getting unbanned.
The Earth heroes are going to be really, really good at stalling
out the game with that. Absolutely.
And I think that could make a very big difference in the speed
of the blitz format, which I think typically if we're going
from like hyper aggro rules to now we need to all be a little
bit more mid rangey soup. Oh baby, how fucking back are
we? Soup is when most heroes end up
being viable. It isn't the best meta to
probably exist forever. Like we like having meta shake
UPS where like there is a dominant deck that we all need
to play against and and alternating back and forth.
But it's good to have a nice soupy meta where everyone's just
getting along in the bra. Not to go off on a tangent, but
I also like the fact that chronic seeds are being
unabandoned Blitz because maybe it's a testing period for LSS to
see if it could exist in CC very soon.
Oh. You know, that's something we
didn't talk about in yellow pitch, how blitz can oftentimes
be a proving ground for classic constructed.
It's kind of not unlike the drone of brutality.
Yeah, I don't. Know I don't think that.
Like that kind of can never exist in CC, but maybe ground of
C they did once already. Yeah.
The final point that I'm going to make for why you should play
in your skirmish season is that in a very important part of
enjoying a game like Flesh and Blood is giving yourself new
experiences. If you play one deck all the
time for every event at 2:00 to 3:00 armories a week and every
single competitive event, you are going to burn out on that
experience. Sorry, most people are going to
burn out on that experience. Some people are just built deaf
but. Yeah, like, I know Talon really
enjoyed playing Riptide in blitz because there's like ways to
play Riptide that you just can't do in constructed, But he got to
experience his favorite hero, but in a completely new context
and kind of like fall in love with it all over again.
Yeah, you got to mix it up. You got to give yourself new and
different experiences. For example, I play Assassin in
blitz, but I don't play it in classic constructed one.
I got to spend a little bit less money and only get the the two
playsets of Bonds and Persuasive Prognosis and Justinic.
Yeah, you saved like 33% of your full price.
I I saved a surprising amount of money by by playing in blitz
instead of CC. Also two codexes instead of
three codexes. Yeah I I saved a good amount of
money by just saying Assassin is my blitz deck.
But also, when I play Assassin in Blitz, that's when I get the
experience of playing Assassin. Yeah, I don't get it in Classic
Constructed. So I get to play Assassin in a
lower stakes, nicer, easier way. And that means it's going to be
more refreshing to me when I do get to play the rune blades that
I love in Classic constructed. It's kind of like, I know that
when I think about new formats, I'm like, do I really want to,
like, learn a whole another format?
It feels like I'm learning a whole another card game, you
know? Yeah, I don't need a whole
another card game. But what if I told you this card
game is just as fun as flesh and blood because it is flesh and
blood? Yeah.
It's just is refreshing. And it gives you that feeling of
newness that can like make you go back with a new set of eyes,
a fresh perspective, and a fresh like palette for going back to
CC. Yeah, Especially if like the
meta in CC is just terrible and you're like, I want to go back
to simpler times, so I'll play. I don't know, Zen or not Zen?
Zen. Bad choice.
What's a derpy hero? I'll play dated doll and Blade.
So let's switch it up a little bit.
Play my little wacky 3 card 3 card.
Hero. I'm gonna boost micropressor off
the top and be fucking broken. And that kind of Speaking of
nostalgia, Living Legend is one of the formats in the skirmish
this time and there are lots of heroes and individual cards that
we have seen leave the classic constructed game that you might
have fond memories over. You know, Art of War was fun to
slam on the field and you can go back and play Art of War in
living Legend format and it was strong in classic constructed.
It's still strong in living Legend.
And they're combinations of cards that have never existed in
classic Constructed like Aurora and Toma.
Find all that you can play with in Living Legend, Even the
heroes that you have already played before but you haven't
had a chance to because they rotate it out.
You can go back and play them. I know that deck that you used
to play is still in your house somewhere.
You just have to find it. Sleeve it up and let them know
like you've always loved her and you miss her every day and you
can't wait to play her again. It's a skirmish.
Go, go. Run to the airport, my taxi flow
through the red. Light.
You mean I can play my explosive growth Briar?
You're loose now. Absolutely.
Yeah, with dust blade. Yeah.
Wait, is that legal? It's legal.
Living what? Yeah.
Oh shit dude, it's. Also not that good.
That's why it's legal. Warmongers got printed like
warmongers is restricted in the living legend, never mind dust.
Blade is back room. Blade is back, baby.
They only get one copy of the fuck you dust blade car I.
Think Crucible might set me up to win a Living Legend skirmish?
Hell yeah, that's pretty cool. I also want one more thing on
the side of why Living Legend is fresh and wonderful.
If you played those old heroes and you're wondering what they
could look like with new cards, The chain list that is all about
the room gate cards and like destroying the soul shackles
using your Deadwood dirt. Oh my God.
It's such a cool fucking list. Yeah, I have never.
I have really not liked chain. I like the idea of chain and
then every single time that I like think about sitting down to
play them, I'm like actually, no, fuck this shit like I don't
want to have to worry about my pitch stack like that.
I don't want to have to worry about like milling 6 cards off
the top. All that sounds like a nightmare
to me, but like creating a token for free go again and then
destroying that token for three rune champs that lets me throw a
three for seven for free for my bandage zone.
That sounds so sick and like so much fun to set up, and I love
that. I love how new cards can make
old heroes who have already hit Living Legend get completely
reimagined. Also, I just lost Viscerai.
Well, I'm sure I won't be on Viscerai and care about playing
him in the Living Legend format right now.
Maybe later this year. I'm going to be like, you know
what, I'm going to sleep up my Viscerai again.
Yeah, I can't wait for the cause.
One thing IA little bit of drool or here.
One thing I really like about Magic the Gathering still is I
believe it's called Legacy, where everything's broken.
Like there's a lot of power in the format and in that way a lot
of stuff is viable. Like the playing field is
surprisingly wide. Mind you, I haven't paid
attention to it in a while, but when I used to watch it
religiously, that's what it felt like.
And I think living in Legend could be that way, assuming we
find the right amount of cards we can give Starvo without
giving everyone else specifically like Moment.
That we finally just decided that Starvo was a mistake, even
in living legend. I mean, I, I think LSS needs to
get comfortable with the idea of like choice banning, where like
if you play Starval, you cannot play these cards and just call
it a day. But overall, I am excited to see
like, you know, eventually Bolton when he gets asked here
and being able to play against all these other heroes that he
was getting stomped by previously.
But with these new cards like that might be fun down the line.
Yeah. This is what I could have been.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
All right, that is why you should play in Skirmish season.
It is fun, it's refreshing, it's lower stakes, and there's some
really wonderful rewards that you can get and community that
you can find. Absolutely.
It's the kind of thing where, like, there's a little hump to
get over where you actually have to build a deck for it, but
you're going to have fun. Once you actually decide to put
that little time and energy, you're going to get what you get
out of it. Yeah.
Definitely. OK, I think it is now time to
move on to our arsenal. Zone.
I'll do that. And listeners, if this is the
first time you're joining us for the podcast ever, the Arsenal
Zone is where we pick a card, a card that we like, a card that
we hate, a card that we like to hate.
Either way, we're going to talk about it right now, and we're
going to start it off with a Patreon submission.
That's right, we're going to give a shout out to a Patreon
member every episode. Even if, like, God forbid,
someday we don't have an Arsenal zone, we'll still give it a
Patreon shout out even if that happens.
Yep, and not that we would ever do that for any reason.
Arsenal Zone is one of the best parts of our podcast.
When we did Arsenal Zone the episode, it performed great.
We should totally do another one of those.
You should. So without further ado.
Let's make our selection. We have put all of the names of
the $5 and $10 subscribers who have given us a card and their
little snippets. We have put them into a big
list. We have assigned them a number
and now we will roll the dice to the side.
Natural noise, and it's Henny. Ha, fun fact, he's been
submitting null time zone for I think the past four or five
episodes. Yeah, I got to say Han love you
buddy. Little annoying that you kept,
you kept. There are other.
Cars that exist. Partially because.
We got that AT and was like I don't have to think of a new
card copy paste. Well, also like.
We love Han. Han is the artist who has done.
He did the Crucible logo, he did our logo, he's done our banner.
So if you see like any Pidim branded art, it is Han who has
has done that work. Yeah, so shout out to Han for
the art. He also wins all of our local
armories. So he submitted a few blurbs so
I'm going to read all of them. The 1st relevant 1 he says
stopping a person from playing what you think their biggest
threat against you for two to three turns feels great.
And acro matchups deal only needs the opponent to falter
once. And for teclo stopping an
opponent gives set up time. Also super fair because Mex
can't target Arsenal if the opponent stores the named card
and they all say that nine turns of back-to-back coverage.
Enough said. And I want to also highlight the
fact that Ben Friedman, who is also part of the Pitchatumu
family, played all three null time zones against me as Zen.
And I think that's the first time he's beat me as tag low
against my Zen. Yeah, so it's it is more
impactful than I thought it was. I still think it's like a really
really niche hate piece, but it can be used to great effect if
you like have a really good understanding of your decks, of
your opponent's deck and and strategy.
It's very similar to like Censor, right?
Like it's the if you know what the opponent is playing, you can
definitely get a big reward off by pulling this off.
Do remember that you can still play the card from Arsenal.
Yeah, I was playing a Crucible game against Daniel and he
played this as one of his Crucible cards, which means he
had 10 copies of it and. The if the only for the other
person only has 6 cards, so you can name one card and just take
out a 6th of the opponent's deck.
That's funny and. He's playing system reset for a
permanent lock. Oh wow so I could I was locked
out of my entire deck. I could only play from arsenal
and I lost that game. I kind of like threw it because
it actually takes a long ass time to win this way because
he's just swinging with his symbiosis shot and I'm blocking
with my cards because I can't play them.
But he also doesn't have a lot of blocking cards you just had
like. Oh yeah.
It was a really weird deck, but like it was working really well
and you have to like type the names of all the cards and you
have to keep track of which cards which you've already named
off of null time zone. That's funny.
Yeah, multiple copies of Null Time Zone actually seems like a
bit of a nightmare. Yeah, I like how Han gave a
mention of why this card is great for Dash IO right in the
aggro deck. Just getting that extra little
bit of space is all she really needs.
Tecla with the setup time. I also want to suggest that this
card is great for Max if you're playing Banksy, because if
you're on Banksy baby, Oh no, just keep that in old time zone
up forever. Hey, one for three, you still
can't play your card. One for three, you still can't
play your card. Bong bong, bong bong.
And it's soon going to be a one for five wrench.
Oh yeah. Though Banksy can only protect
one of your two things. But I like that, right?
Like the moment that you start getting multiple items out that
you want to sit on the board for a while and then the opponent's
like like, I really don't want that one to stick around, but
I'm fine with that one. And like you can, you can flex
based on the plan. It seems really, really cool.
I like it. So thank you Han for the shout
out. I know you were really wanting
us to talk about this card, so I'm glad we got out of the way
and you can make a new suggestion.
Yeah, I can't wait to see what new suggestion he's gonna put in
there. I can't wait to see what other
mechanologist majestic item that you.
Submit for the He also plays Victor that's.
True. Victor Maine over here and thank
you everyone else who submitted. Please keep submitting your
ideas. We will get to yours at some
points and we're excited to see what else you guys come up with.
I normally try to stay away from cards that we've already talked
about on our episode, but today I'm talking about Rosetta
Thorne. Oh, I think it's so funny that
it's been years since this card was printed.
We've all known that it's been busted this entire time, and
it's still getting banned out of format.
What's next? Are they going to like
restricted in Living Legend now because it's already rotated out
of Classic instructions and Blitz, and now it's banned from
commoner because this weapon is so good?
It's one for four and it's split damage unprecedented for
weapons. It's fucking crazy and I love
this card and now I can't even play it in commoner.
Yeah. That's so funny.
One of the things that I heard is that Rosetta Thorne is the
reason why they incorporated rotating out weapons with heroes
with signature weapons. I don't know if that's true or
not, but it makes sense. So true.
Aren't we glad that we don't have to worry about Rosetta
Thorn anymore? So I brought a copy to sign, and
I'm going to give one to each of you.
Here you go. Thank you, Fuzzy.
For my card I'm talking about snatch.
It's a red 04 that says on hit draw card.
I'm talking about Snatch because I haven't had a copy of it to
run at the past few armories in my room.
Snatch list. Yeah, I have been Snatch list.
I have been without snatch. Wow.
And I really love this card. I love how it's one of the few
common generics that's really, really good for an aggro deck.
It's almost like a Ponder token in a way when it hits.
Because very rarely will this have go again for you to
actually play the card that you draw, but it's really nice for
simply giving you an Arsenal card.
I kind of love that because I think that is what Agradex need
to start leaning towards with their card draw is consistency,
turn over turn and giving them a little bit more flexibility to
block and deal with disruption. So I think Snatch is a really,
really cool card. I'm going to try to incorporate
into more Agradex. I know that like I've seen some
bang lists running it. Wow.
I know that I've seen like even some inset lists running it.
It's weird. Snatch is just sort of making
its way into more lists because I think people are realizing how
important it is to have an arsenal.
Well, yeah, fucking Codex of Frailty is running every deck,
yeah. And actually Codex of Frailty
for a snatch? No, that'd be bad because Ponder
and Snatch overlap. Yeah, that's my card.
I don't give cards away so I'm just going to pass it over to.
Dole. Y'all can get your own fucking
snatches. I need mine.
So for my card I'm choosing push forward which is A1 cost non
attack action the blocks for three and it says your next
weapon attack this turn gains +3 and if you have attacked with a
weapon this turn your next attack this turn gains dominates
with go again. And this was probably my
favorite card on all of 2022 because I ran it in my Kasai
Blitz list and with Kasai's reduction of her second sword
attack, you would just use that extra resource for One Cause
pumps. And this was my favorite card to
pair it with. So I'd go like Centauri Sabre
with Blade Runner into push forward for like a three card
A10, but the second attack was always for 8 dominate which in
blitz it's pretty good. And it helps you guarantee that
copper. Exactly, especially on like a
spoils of war turn super gas card.
So just wanted to shout it out. It's one of my favorite comments
and I'm still trying to figure out how to incorporate it in CC
because I love playing with the card.
But yeah, that's pretty much it for me.
Awesome, great shout outs. With all that being said, I
think that's the end of today's episode.
Thanks for listening everybody. Yeah, be sure to join the
Patreon. We have Crucible pairings going
live. I'm sure you can get added if
you want to play with us. Otherwise, we have some live.
Hangout dates that we've now scheduled where that's true if
you want to test certain decks out, if you want to place in a
draft with if you want to do like a draftmancer pod, right
where like you actually know somebody in there and can talk
to them like yeah or. If you want to play Crucible
with us, that would be a good time to do it.
Yeah, if you're like interested in Crucible.
And these are for our $10 patrons.
Yeah, I've really been enjoying that, the little bubble of
Patreon people, just a, you know, closer or close knit group
of people who are passionate about game design, which I love
and. If you want to interact with us
regularly, you can always join our discord for free.
All right, and tell nursing guys bye.
Bye Picture Jimmy Podcast is hosted
by Fuzzy Dope, Clark Moore and Joel Racinos, executive producer
Talon Stradley, logistics coordinator John Farkas, music
by Dylan Holtz, logo by Han V, sound mixing, Christopher Moore
and last but not least, you. Thank you for listening.
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at Pidge to Me podcast.