Welcome to the Pichotumi Podcast, a show about the
subjective past, present, and potential future of flesh and
blood design. Today's episode will be about
permanence and their role in the game.
You can find us across, well, find them across all socials
such as Blue Sky and Instagram at Pichotumi Podcast.
I'm fuzzy. I'm Kevin.
And I'm Clark. So we've got a special guest on
the show today, Kevin Smurf Murphy.
Welcome to the podcast. Just in case somebody's living
under a rock and hasn't heard of you, Kevin, could you introduce
yourself for our audience? Yeah, I'm Kevin Murphy.
I guess now I'm a Prism main. I used to be an Icelander player
for as long as she was legal to play.
You really know how to pick them, huh Icelander?
Yeah and I've been playing Prism for about the last year and
recently picked up some decent results winning Battle Harden
top 8IN London and started putting out some some content on
YouTube, essentially A Prism guide piece by piece.
Yeah, that's been getting a lot of good attention, huh?
Yes, it has way, way more than I expected.
I have noticed that people love learning about how to play
heroes from people really good at playing those heroes.
That makes sense to me. Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I the first stuff I learned about how to play
Prism was from Rob Caton, who like made the deck and 1st
showed up with it heavy hitters release weekend.
And then Raya Adams, who like was the North American player
who really took all of that deck and took it forward.
So like I learned the basics of how to play it from them and.
Yeah, yeah. That's what got me hooked.
Some other wonderful accolades for you, Kevin. 10th in ELO in
the world. Oh my, we have a top ten player
on our podcast. I know we've always said that
we're gonna be like more of a casual podcast and we're not.
We're gonna stay away from the competitive scene a little bit.
But I mean, here we are with the one of the best players in the
world. Yeah, well, Kevin's awesome
because not only is he 10th in the world in ELO, he also is Co
host of the Table pit with Pitt against, pit against, pit
against, right? Because Table Pit is the channel
and then Pit against is the call in show that you guys do.
Yeah. Yeah, so Co host of Pit against
a call in show every single Thursday where fans of flesh and
blood can call in and give their unhinged hot takes, which you
and your Co host will then systematically disassemble over
the next 20 minutes, as I learned just a few Thursdays
ago. We we try and talk people back a
little bit, but we also get some like really interesting ones
that also will move us in certain directions.
It's it's really cool to have those discussions just because
like I, I don't love the way social media works.
And just like when you have a character limit on a message,
I'm like, that's not, that's not it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then getting to have those
like longer discussions where you actually can go through the
nuance of stuff is awesome. It's why I love it.
And it's also like, I think you could probably tell it's why all
of my content is at least 30 minutes long.
Like, like that's, that's the stuff I really enjoy.
Kevin, where can people find you?
I think you can find me on every platform is at Smurfab.
So SMURPHFAB, and I'm pretty sure that's my handle on Blue
Sky, Twitter, YouTube, all of it.
So yeah, if you want to find PRISM content and how to play
PRISM stuff, then YouTube's where to go for that.
Yeah. Awesome.
And then your call in show. That is Pit Against which is
every Thursday 8:00 PM Eastern. On the table Pit is the the
YouTube channel and I do that with William Knuckles AKA Table
and Legs. Awesome.
We'll definitely be putting all the links to that at the top of
our description. We encourage everyone to go
check out Kevin and all of his content.
He is not only an extremely talented player, he is a very
insightful player. And as far as competitive
players go, I have really appreciated how you are able to
speak to players of all skill levels.
And you're not just about what's the best thing in the game right
now, you're also about what's interesting in the design of the
game and and wider aspects. So I I highly recommend if you
enjoy our content, you will enjoy Kevin's content.
Thanks. Yeah.
So what are you doing? Click off of our show and go.
Maybe don't do that. Well, Kevin, thank you so much
for joining us for today's episode.
We're talking about the various permanence in Flesh and blood.
There are lots of different kinds of permanence.
And I think many people, when they first joined the game, they
were sold as flesh and blood as a game with no board state, no
permanence. And then we play the game.
There's a lot more permanence than we were initially sold on.
Kevin, with your recent focus on Prism, we felt like it was a
really good chance to sort of discuss all of this, especially
as it's been maybe a little bit more of a hot topic issue with
Florian and his Rinchant stacking and other similar board
state based strategies coming to prominence recently.
So we are going to break it down into 3 pitches.
In red pitch, Kevin will talk about the various different ways
that illusionists engage in building a board state and their
various permanence. In yellow pitch, Fuzzy is going
to talk about semi permanent cards, cards that stay on the
field for a while but eventually go away.
And then I'm going to talk about one time permanence.
So things that go on to the board state but then disappear
pretty quickly. These were the the three
categories that we sort of sorted out with permanence in
our notes, and I think it's going to be fun going through
the different types of them and discussing how they interact.
And if you stick around until after blue pitch, we do our
Arsenal zone. If you're new to the show, we're
each going to shout out a card from the game and that's how our
show's going to go. Kevin, do you want to leave us
off with Red pitch? Sure.
So I mean, this is for me, this is a very like there's a sing.
There's a very defining characteristic for what I think
about when they're when I look at illusion as permanence.
And I guess these are about to become also necromancer
permanence, which are they are permanents that stay on the
board until the opponent interacts with them.
The opponent has to do something to get rid of them.
And until they do, they're going to get some sort of recurring
value that the player who's casted it can will get turn over
turn. And that's how you see these
advantages from like OG prison with boards full of auras and
luminaris or drone light with a huge board of Dragons.
The opponent has to deal with it in some way.
Which is a very powerful thing to ask, you know, especially
because many classes have a really hard time dealing with
those different permanence. They kind of ask different
things of you. But like Spectra, I know you're
going to get into it, but being a classic example, I need action
points to deal with Spectra efficiently.
Otherwise, I'm giving you my entire turn.
Which like Spectra is a really flavourful illusionist mechanic
of you have you've created this thing and the opponent goes to
hit it and clear it and there's just nothing there and the
attack is wasted. And like it flavorfully makes
sense game design. It's much harder to balance.
But that also becomes like one of the things looking at each of
the illusionist that's come out, how your the their primary like
board state mechanic has changed with basically all of them.
And then how the opponent answers those mechanics.
That mechanic has also changed because Prism, it OG prism it
was Spectra and was ludicrously polarizing and also got into
like it's own weird 2 spaces between the yellow auras and the
blue auras. Because the difference between
A4 cost Spectra aura and a 0 cost Spectra aura.
I don't care if it is an action that consumes your action point.
A0 cost Spectra aura is wildly different from A4 cost Spectra
aura. And you know, I'm really happy
you brought up these 4 cost Spectra auras because one thing
that you said at the beginning here was recurring value, right?
If we look at what we kind of expect A4 cost yellow card to
give us, it's about 7 value, right, Seven offensive value.
But if we look at a lot of these auras, merciful retribution,
what else is there? There's Genesis.
But Genesis is a majestic. It's supposed to break the mouth
a little bit. Parable and Ode would be the
other two rares. Looking at these rare 4 cost
auras, Parable, Ode and Merciful Retribution, none of them really
generate 7 value. When you play them, you really
are being asked to get a lot of their value turn over turn.
You need that recurring value for it to be a worthwhile value
proposition, right? If it depends a little bit on
how they get played out and how you map it, because the other
half of that is how do you value Spectra?
But like if you're going to play an ODE with two ORS on the board
that are swinging and you have OG Luminaris, do you suddenly
just immediately have 4 value off it because you're getting 2
on hits plus the swing and an on hit?
And then they have to deal with spectrum, but it and then
merciful is like in response to something breaking, you play the
merciful, you get the trigger from them hitting a Genesis or
whatever, but the spectral shield is still there to also
ping. Like the math gets really hard
to, it's really hard to have concrete math for these auras
because also all of the auras are multiplicative with each
other. Yeah, you know that that also
seems like a very interesting thing for Illusionist
specifically, is that they have that multiplicative synergy.
With each other I. Think basically all of them have
some sort of multiplicative increasing value just because
like ODE is it's own thing. Then dromae is not necessarily
as multiplicative, but. There's like burn them all,
which is. Sort of Bolana putting counters
and then still still pretty enigma with her counters, yeah.
Yeah, I think it's pretty critical to illusionist design
too, how these Spectra auras can buff with each other, because
you want to have that pressure on your opponent to deal with it
soon, right? Like, that's part of the design.
Like if I want to make my opponent afraid of this board
state, if I want to give them a reason to deal with it, that
multiplicative values, one way that you can really, like,
punish players for not respecting your cards.
You know, I want to present this challenge that like, hey, you
got to deal with this early, and if you do, it's probably OK.
But if you ignore it for even a little bit, that's when it gets
out of hand. Yes.
Yeah, and that's what makes it so annoying.
Yes, against. Yeah, yeah, because to be
honest, I'm always scared of prison.
Like I'll be playing Victor. I am up like 30 plus live.
I have all this tempo but they have one card in soul.
Kevin's shaking his head like, yeah, you're basically dead at
that point. Life totals don't matter.
I don't like no, it's illusions. Matter like all.
I can swing like red macho Grande and they're like, ha,
you've fallen into my trap gun. Block 3 soul shield swing my
angels again. Yeah, Soul shield pitching a
blue pop Halo, go get Soraya. And it's like, oh, you know,
that one carton soul that's now a draw to oh, that's now an ALS.
And I'm like, what the fuck just happened?
Yeah. So it's like Spectra was an
interesting place for them to start because that's like that
is the way that the opponent interacts with it, which is very
taxing. By like, yeah, like turning off
their turn. Yeah, which is the is very
taxing for a lot of decks. And they try to change that when
they go to Dromi and they have allies that have Phantasm, which
is trying to give those decks agency again, but they still
have that kind of snowball effect.
And Illusionist retained at least some of it's like weakness
to aggro decks where it's like Illusionist takes time to build
up that advantage. Especially the defensive dromide
decks would want to play that longer game.
You could see red line aggro or Empress Dromide try and just
match them for raw numbers and they could, but it was still not
Phi with Mask. Momentum still does pretty well
into that. So like they tried to change it,
but like there was still this thing of you can make way more
allies than the opponent can reasonably deal with.
Then they can clear every turn for those for the decks that
struggle with Spectra also couldn't clear that many allies
every turn. So then they still like they
tweaked it a little bit more and also the the number of Dragons
that were in the deck, because that's like the other side of
it. And that was also the big
difference when it whenever fest came out with the blue Spectra
is like suddenly you just had double the auras in your deck as
prism, which just completely changed the way that deck
played. And then draw my having 30
Dragons in the deck built that entire deck.
And then you go to new Prism and you have 7 allies in your deck
basically total. Yeah, Yeah.
That's a really limited. Number and they they also have
ward so they can attack you and deal with your board at the
same. Time yeah, that was something
that we discussed way back in the early days of the podcast
pretty much when we started we like talked about Dusk till Dawn
because the this that had just come out when we started the
podcast and we were very excited actually about printing Ward on
allies. It fell proper to us as a way of
like, oh, this is a far more interactable thing that every
single deck can do. Every single deck wants to and
intends to deal damage to their opponent.
And obviously ninjas still had good match up because Ward 4
still pops off of Kodachi for one.
Yes it does. And so it was great because it
was. You can still get your
guaranteed value as an Illusionist player.
People on the other side of the table from illusionists can
still deal damage to those decks and destroy their ward, but the
illusionist has a slightly better match up because they get
more guaranteed value out of it. Yes, we get like more guaranteed
value out of it, but then it also the flip side of that that
they made the mechanic of actually getting these allies
into play is so much more restrictive than any than the
previous two because it was you don't playing in a figment from
your hand is miserable. I've done it.
It's miserable. Whenever Prism plays a figment
from hand I'm like I got a chance this game.
Yeah, like it's it, it is drastically different from the
other ones because they there's significantly fewer of them in
the deck. It's easier for most opponents
to answer, and it's harder to get your permanent into play to
start getting value out of it. Yeah, which really feels like
the distinction between Prism's ward allies and Enigma's ward,
quote, UN quote allies. They're not allies, but they're
allies. Yeah, Enigma went back to that
like Droma density of of permanence in your deck.
And also it's even easier to deploy them I think than it is
for Droma. Sure.
At least in general, you don't have to worry about at the Ash
mechanic at all. It's just you play the card,
it's an instant or it's an action, you play it and that's
it. Now also very differently with
Enigma allies, we were talking earlier about how the prism
cards need the reoccurring value to get to a good value
proposition, but they were very multiplicative so it was kind of
hard to track. Enigma's ward spells feel a lot
more linear but are way more spect up.
So taking a look at waxing Specter, it's a 2 for ward four
and then when you or sorry ward 3, but you can get a plus one
counter on it if you cast the blue and if you spin that one
floating resource, you have to attack with it.
It comes in 4/4. Assuming you're using the the
scroll. Yes, assuming you're using the
scroll that is three ward value and four offensive value.
That is 7 value on a red for three resources.
That is just straight linear math for what we expect.
It's just split between offense and defense.
Yes yeah, like the there are some cards in the name of his
deck that are just on rate or really good rate 3 for seven go
again is very good in flesh and blood 2 card 7 go again is very
good. Rage Spectre is a blue three
block that is A2 card 7. Pretty good.
Which is kind of crazy. Spectral manifestations by
itself is not great, but as soon as you put a restless
coalescence in that hand it's a three card 13 that covers 3
break points basically. Yeah, it can get really out of
hand really fast. And I think that was so
interesting because again, when Enigma came out, we were excited
to see more Ward again, but it's functioning very differently
than how Ward functioned in Prism.
Do you think that is entirely due to, as you're saying, ease
of deployment and density? Or do you think that the numbers
play a larger role in that and how they're evaluated?
I think it's a mix of both. The thing that the density plays
a very large role in it because you're much happier as an enigma
to just cash in that word value basically every turn.
In some matchups, in prisms, new prisms, aggro matchups, you have
to be willing to cash in the ward value every turn.
But in your longer matchups, you have to very strategically use
your resources because you have so few of them.
And Enigma still in those matchups is just very happy to
like is fine caching in that ward value.
But then because of the ease of deployment, you also then get to
run a bunch of D reacts as Enigma to help cover the word
value you do have. Now the other half of this is
we've been calling them allies for Enigma.
They're not allies. Prisms you can just target with
attacks. So Victor can just hammer an
Angel, he gets that choice. He doesn't get that choice into
Enigma, which also gives the agency to back to Enigma.
In terms of defending it which you just like set up turn cycles
which are deploy mirror guy, send CNC arsenal AD react and
it's so hard for dex to deal with that turn cycle and prism.
The only comparable turn that Prism has is like flip an Angel
and play an Arclight Sentinel. Yeah, which is like the big
Soraya turn, right? That's what every single Prism
player is chasing the high of. It's flip Soraya swing, a draw
to resolve ALS. Yeah.
The the difference between just like Arsenal and D react and
play A6 cost aura is insane. It's massive.
It's just night and day the way that Ward has interacted with
these two decks, like they they went from allies, they started
swinging back towards the middle by putting Ward on them and they
swung all the way to the other side with Enigma just having
Ward on all their stuff. And it's it's done really funky
things to the game as a result. Could you say more about that
like you're talking about the meta implications that Enigma
brought? I mean it just the problem
becomes Enigma is just a, and people have said this since she
came out. Enigma is just a stat check
deck. She's a damage check where if
you can't present, if you can't convert your hands to like 12
damage on offense, she will just snowball basically infinitely
because she starts getting to use ward to cover all your break
points and any weird stuff that would happen.
Any reactions you might have just get covered by ward to
protect the bigger stuff. And then I think Enigma probably
had more 40 O games than any other deck we've seen.
I do think the stat check is intentional, you know, like they
were like in order to make sure that you can, that any hero kind
of has a shot into the style of game plan, we're going to make
it all based on how much damage you can present.
You know, they're trying to balance around that.
So if you have tempo, you should be OK.
But then it just kind of turned out that like Enigma was
actually pretty good at just keeping that defensive value
like around all game and keeping her wards around forever.
Because once she has like a single ward on it's it's no
longer like, can you deal 12? Because if I can block your 12,
then actually I still get my aura and I'm still getting value
long term. You know you have to have more
offensive value than she can defend.
Yes, it really felt like they were punishing you for blocking
her attacks, right? Oh yeah.
Like I think that was the unintended consequence of the
strategy. I think it is fine to demand a
stack check and to have a deck that says you need to be able to
deal enough damage to kill me. Because I think all good flesh
and blood decks need to be able to convert A5 card hand into
offense or A0 or A5 card hand into defense.
I think the best decks can do both, but with Enigma it was
well, you have to give me 5 cards on offense every single
turn and if you don't, you're fucked.
And so that meant that any and all damage that Enigma ended up
throwing was unblockable almost in a way, because the moment
that you start giving cards to block that damage, then you're
attacking with less value. And that just plays into
Enigma's win condition. So it it almost stopped
promoting the back and forth that flesh and blood is known
for. Oh, definitely.
Whereas Dromi's Phantasm on her Dragons did promote that a
little bit more. You were encouraged to block
with a popper, and still encouraged to attack back, but
now you had this choice of attacking the player or the
ally, and that gave a nice new axis of engagement.
Which we did. We do see a little bit of this
getting punished for blocking thing when new Prism is really
doing her thing. Like I'm basically never happier
than when somebody is blocking an Angel attack.
Like if I get the choice of defending for an Angel, if you
give me that opportunity, I'm probably going to take it.
And it's it is less punishing still because you can just like
send a hammer for four at the Angel after you like 2 card
block heralds. Like that's fine.
But there, there is still a bit of that in new Prism where if
you start blocking angels, you're going to fall behind.
Like you don't have that choice. Yeah, I don't know if that's
totally healthy for the game, that aspect of Allied design.
It it might not be, but I think it has to do with the way I
mean, I think the Phantasm thing is a good example of like what
that looks like when you can interact with it in a meaning, a
sort of meaningful way. And I think it's also part of
why, like Victor into Enigma wasn't the worst.
He was by far the best guardian into Enigma because he could
test of strength and he could trounce.
So he gets value back out of blocking and it's not good.
He doesn't like it but he could block and not just lose out
completely for it as long as he won the clash.
I think what we we used to say was we take those.
Yeah. But then of course, you know
they flip their their red Enigma Chimera and we're just like
fuck. Yeah, but no, it it becomes a
weird thing when you have these permits because you can't just
let them sit on the board forever.
That's them getting sort of like pseudo infinite value if they
never get cleared. And that's like one of the big
things in new Prism as well as like I need to make more threats
than you can answer. That's that's how it works.
If if I can't just if you're Victor with 45 poppers, I need
to do something else and I need to make more threats than you
can answer. And that's between angels and
heralds and auras. And it's like I have to find
something that I can do with that.
But it becomes it's always, I'm not sure if it or combo is
harder to balance in this game, but it's definitely one of the
hardest things for them to balance.
And I've I liked where they went with new Prism and I think they
swung back. They swung a little too far in
the other direction with Enigma, and I think they're coming back
a bit with Gravy Bones. Yeah, Speaking of Gravy Bones,
we've been given a glimpse into the future of Allies and where
LSS thinks they might be able to go next.
And we are recording this at the day where we don't know very
much about the set, but that will change like tomorrow.
So by the time this episode comes out, you the listeners
know a lot more about the set than we do.
You probably have seen like more of Gravy Bones's allies.
We only know like Chum the ALS dupe as well as the rigor
mortis. Rigor mortis.
The six one ally. And there's one other.
There is one other. Saw Bones?
Yes, saw bones. The Doctor Who can tap and
prevent one damage to the next ally.
Yes, the prevention one. Yeah, Yep.
So just looking at what we've seen so far, I think I'm a
little worried actually that these allies are going to be
like too much of a pain in the ass to play against.
Like with Droma, you had the phantasm, so you're like, OK, I
can put a six in front of this dragon and it will die.
I don't have to waste an entire attack because spending an
attack to kill an ally is often awful.
Like hopefully I have an attack with go again that also is the
exact same attack value as the life that I'm trying to hit.
But let's say like I'm trying to attack A4 ally and I only have
threes in hand. What the fuck am I going to do?
I waste 2 cards on it, suddenly I'm giving 6 value to kill this
ally? Or like it has two life but I
only have 4 go again, it's the same thing.
Like it's hard sometimes it's really hard to kill them
efficiently. And with effects like saw bones,
you can prevent one damage and you can like screw over your
opponent by making the break point bad for them, like forcing
it to be a bad inefficient break point.
Yeah. However, it looks like they are
doing other healthy things. The ally cards cannot block,
which means that there's no easy way of getting them into your
graveyard unless you lean on discard synergies.
So there's an extra hoop to jump through to be able to play these
allies though. You can play them normally
straight from hand, but then they won't have Go Again I do
not believe. I believe they only have Go
Again in terms of casting them when you cast them from.
Graveyard with the compass specifically and only the first
one, yes. Yes, but it also looks like
they're trying to get action points.
So no more of these dragon storms or ward storms that we've
seen coming from Enigma and Dromi or even Angel or aura
storms that we see coming from Prism.
It seems like it's going to be like they're going to have to
work a lot harder to be able to throw multiple attacks and in a
given turn with their allies. It's like they're saying,
instead of making it really difficult for our opponent,
let's make it difficult for the player playing the allies, you
know? Yeah, yeah, good.
One thing I've loved about Illusionist design is that
you've been able to see LSS improve their design process as
the games continued. And we kind of did that in this
pitch, right? We started talking about old
Prism and Spectra, then we moved to allies with Dromi, and then
like the introduction of Ward with new Prism, and then like
how that manifested in Enigma. And now we're talking about
returning to allies again in Gravy Bones, which is also
probably going to be a signal for like what allies are going
to look like with new Dromi. Like there's a really cool
aspect where LSS has printed really strong, really powerful
things with with illusionists, but we've been able to see them
develop and get better and find more and more healthier ways of
expressing the same mechanical ideas of permanence on the board
that give you recurring value all.
Right, so with everything in red pitch wrapped up and discussed
Fuzzy, what do you have for yellow?
So I'm going to be talking about semi permanence.
What's a semi permanent? You know, those things that are
like they're like permanence, but they have an expiration
date. You know, they're not that long
for this world, but they're still very much things that like
help you develop a board state. They make you feel like you have
more on the board. They break turn parody like any
of your other like permanence and they could potentially give
you reoccurring value. Maybe that's what I want to talk
about on my pitch. I think the first example I want
to talk about is Crank item. When Mechanologist as a class
was first created in Arcane Rising, it was having a clear
emphasis on these items, right? It was, is it like the first
board state class? Because Aleutians didn't come
out till Monarch, right? So the first time we saw like
these cards being put into your board state was Dash and they
gave her like the pistol package, you know, where you
could slowly assemble like Zodia over time and then have this
value that you could pump resources into that'd be way
more efficient than anything anyone could handle.
So we had this like slow amassing of efficient items.
In terms of like a full game plan, I'd say so.
They also had items like tech locore or tech Apple Pounder
wasn't the game yet. They had items like techno core
that gave you resources for the next couple turns and
supercharged you for the next couple.
So they already had this idea of like some items stick around for
indefinitely. Some items are going to give you
short term value for the next couple turns.
However, when they revisited mechanologist in bright lights,
they were like, OK, items are weird because they don't block
and they don't necessarily give you an action point.
But they found a happy medium with crank where you can choose
to have your item around for less time, fewer turns, but you
get your action point back because that's a really
different balancing point. An item that gives you your
action point back with go again is a lot easier to use than one
that doesn't. So being able to like, imagine
if all your items cost that action point, they didn't have
go again, but then you draw a hand of three of them.
What are you going to do? Play 1 Arsenal one pitch to
another maybe, but like being able to play them all and crank
them out one after another. Actually using your whole hand
is something that is probably pretty important if you want to
build a game plan around items. Yeah, crank was also great
because very often they attached, they were able to math
out the value that the card would generate to the amount of
steam counters on it. So look at Hadron Collider.
Hadron Collider is one of my favorite examples of a good
crank item. It is A1 cost that enters with
four steam counters on it. You can crank it down to three
steam counters and then the next time you boost it destroys
itself and gives plus power equal to the amount of counters
on it. So if you somehow were able to
get an extra action point it could come in as a one for four
non tac action pump which is way overrate.
But if you wanted it to have go again, you would have to crank
it down to three and then it's just like come to fight, you're
just running a one 4 + 3 pump in your deck.
Smurf, do you have a favorite crank item?
I mean, boom grenade is boom grenade.
Yeah, Yeah, it's hard to argue with that.
Grenade's pretty solid. I like Boom Grenade because it
is always for value when you get it off.
Like the amount of damage that it's dealing has nothing to do
with the steam counters, but the way that you use it.
Whether you're calling your shot on the next turn or trying to
line something up immediately, that's what you would want to
crank for. So I kind of feel like it's
almost better to not crank it a lot of the time because then you
get to use a full hand to push that boom grenade in the future,
you know? But also like sending it off the
top with dash IO, getting a free action point without diminishing
your damage. And then if you're able to sync
the group, boom grenade like that can be really powerful.
I love Arsenal ING a boom grenade and then like doing a
big chain and then they're like ready for the last attack and
then I just go boom grenade, no crank pass.
That is a lot of fun. I do want to point out
Cerebellum Processor in Null time zone because those are our
most recent crank cards delivered to us via the
expansion slot, and they feature 2 steam counters by default, one
if you crank, which is different than a lot of the bright lights
items that started with one steam counter.
So being able to keep it around for a whole turn cycle even if
you crank it like really changes the math of the card.
Makes them a lot stronger a lot of the time.
And they also happen to print them on Blues, which is how you
get to see them in lists. They were like, let's make a
good crank card for all of our mechanologist players.
Yeah, well, I think also people really liked blue for items
because items can't block and often times you want to pitch a
blue anyway. So it was like, oh, I can't play
this item, but it's my pitch outlet.
And so I still feel like I'm it's, it's a good card in my
hand. Yep.
Yeah, one of the worst things in Dash IO was items in your hand
felt terrible. Items on top of your deck were
insane. Yeah, they were the best cards
ever. Like as soon as you drew them,
it was like, oh, I don't want this in my hand.
It's like reaping what you sow You're like, I'm going to put 30
items in my deck. Hell yeah, I'm getting all these
items off the top. What are all these items doing
in my hand? Do you think in high seas we're
going to see more crank items with two steam counters, or do
you think that's too too dangerous for limited play?
It'd be a little spooky. I mean it depends on how they
balance them of course. But like the two, the two steam
counter thing got me like thinking where it's like if you
had quantum processor with two steam counters, the one that
lets you just instant speed put items into play and that has two
steam counters at the start, that really feels like a very
different card. Yeah, like I hate playing one
item to potentially play 2 items from hand.
It just doesn't seem like good value to me.
But like give me the least the possibility that I can maybe get
4 items out of it. But putting an extra Steam
counter on, now we're talking. Yeah, like that I was, I was
very surprised when processor had two steam counters on it
because I was like the cerebellum processor.
Yeah, Cerebellum processor. Sorry, that is just way, way
more impactful because you get 2 full turns of trying to set up
for it. Yeah, for it to be good.
Like it's, it's insane. So crank items are kind of a way
for the to power up the next turn or two.
I also want to highlight channel cards like Channel not Heroic,
Channel, Lightning Valley, Channel Lake, Friendship, you
know all the good ones. The fact that it's a, an aura,
some of them even like cost something.
So you're already like spending a card, maybe 2 cards to put
them down, but they give you that reoccurring value over
time. The longer you can keep them
around, the better it is. And they've balanced it with
this channel mechanic where every turn I keep it around is
more difficult. You have to sync a little bit
more of your investment plan a little bit more of your turn in
order to make that happen. And sometimes you're like not
able to keep it around. You only have one Earth card in
hand. You don't get another turn of
Channel Mountain Heroic. But it also, I think it's very
interesting how these cards don't actually have a higher
resource cost to keep around. You can still use those three
resources, 6 resources, 9 resources however you like.
You just actually have to find a way to spend them, otherwise you
might not get the opportunity to pitch those cards.
Yeah. One thing that I, I, I really
like now that we've gotten to channel cards, because I kind of
want to see if we can define sort of what this pitch is
trying to talk about, which is cards that don't give endless
reoccurring value, but they can give continual value over the
turns that they exist, right? You could even say that like
crank cards and channel cards have this common thread where
the next each turn that you want to keep it around is going to be
harder than the last. You know keeping a crank item
for like an extra turn is going to be more difficult than
keeping around for the turn prior.
Yes, right. I, I, I see what you're saying.
It's hard because I don't think about keeping them around.
I want I'm focusing on like value per turn, right.
So like boom grenade with a steam counter on it can threaten
for value on an on hit over two turns and that's very strong,
but you may have to crank it. And when you do now it only
provides it for one turn. Yeah, yeah.
That on head is only active for one turn, even though in both
instances it only provides for value, which is slightly
different than the channel cards where let's look at like channel
the Millennium tree. The first turn you play it, it
amps 3, and then if you keep it around, it amps 3 again.
And then if you keep it around again, it amps 3 again.
That's 9 value. But there's a chance that you
only keep it around for one turn, and you only get the three
value out of that card. Sure.
I definitely remember like introducing myself to
competitive play through Briar and just loving that feeling of
like sticking a mountain on the field and trying to get as much
value out of that mountain as I can.
You know, if I can pitch a red to keep it around another turn,
I might be willing to do that because I'm getting my value
from my cards, not from the pitch value, but just from being
able to maintain the board state and giving +3 to all my attacks.
You know, I also find it to be a really enticing design.
Like regardless of how strong the card really is, I think it's
a really enticing quest to ask a player to go through like, hey,
can you pitch cards? Because you might get crazy
value by doing that. How long can you keep me around,
huh? How long do you think you can
give value out of me? It makes people want to like go
to their deck builder and like how much value can I get out of
Channel Thunder Step? It's really hard because there's
only so many cards that are used.
It's not a good game plan. Do you have a favorite channel
card Smurf? I mean, I mean it's channel like
friendship. Oh yeah, channel like
friendship. Yeah, Icelander player over here
like. I was, I was an Icelander
player. Like that card was just so good.
It did like everything the deck wanted and it worked with every
other card just beautifully. And like it was when you got to
like play it on their turn and then send like a wounded bowl
pitching an ice card and you arsenaled a Nathan ice vein for
the next turn so that you had the pitch outlet plus the waning
moon pitch outlet to keep channel round.
It was fantastic. And if you ever hit like ice
eternal with triple blue ice cards the turn after then you
were just like. And being able so good to play
it on your opponent's turn, basically like you get to have
value out of it on the turn 0 that you play, yeah.
You get. You get like the two turns of
value while only having to pitch.
Once Icelander is pretty clever, I guess for being able to do
that. One thing I also like about the
channel design is how it it tells your opponent like hey,
like if you put enough pressure on me, it's going to be harder
for me to use this. Like if Fryer plays channel mat
heroic, that's when you want to try to use CNC or erase face to
stop them from being able to use it anymore.
You know, it's a lot harder to really use channel mat heroic
when you're destroying the arsenal to so she can't use A5
card hand or a race case. So she literally either has to
give you 2 of her cards which all of her cards are now higher
value than normal because of having a channel out.
You know, but giving up two of those cards just to keep it
around it makes the value proposition a lot worse.
Yeah. And it's also like it's a very,
very clear signal, right? Like it's not ambiguous.
It's like, I'm going to be trying to do a lot.
So if you can push through right now, it'll be better for you to
do it now than later, yeah. Also very very notably with
these semi permanent cards is that you can't interact with
them in the same way as you can with illusionists.
Right? With the illusionist designs we
were saying war just destroys itself like allies you can
attack, Spectra you can target and destroy.
These don't have that. You need cards that specifically
say like destroy an aura or like put an aura to the bottom of
their deck, return to their hand, whatever the case may be.
You need things that specifically interact with that
card type and those aren't always well distributed right
now. I remember when Dash IO was
looking a little scary in the Rosetta meta that like Aurora's
were running smashing good time as their generic like anti item
tech. Oh yeah, I think I'd be pretty
happy if there was more counter play options just kind of
scattered throughout the game, be it like many classes having
different counter play cards or hate cards or maybe a couple
generic options even. I think it'd generally be like
better if there was less polarizing matchups in the game.
That's my take. I think they're always going to
be there, and that's OK, but I think like, it's not a healthy
thing to strive for to have those polarizing match ups where
you just don't have the tools to win.
So if this hero's good right now, he should probably just not
play a hero that sucks into that match up, you know?
I mean, I think we're going to be seeing some of that as well
with like there we're going to have a graveyard base deck and
there's already a decent number of graveyard hate options even
at generic so. Yeah, yeah.
I think there's. Run gamekeeping, right?
Yeah, great. Gravekeeping's the solution.
I mean, I think it's not nothing.
Yeah, yeah. When they can't play their stuff
as instance like. When necromancer has like an
entire dude in his graveyard ready to go, like banishing with
gravekeeping is pretty real. This set is so interesting
because we're going to get a gold base set, a graveyard base
set, and like allies, there are. And items.
Oh yeah, and just items.
So like there's about 3 to 4 axes in which we could just see
more hate cards be printed for classes.
And I wonder if they're going to go for it.
They might not, you know, they may want, because at the end of
the day, you also don't want a deck that's just like 20 hate
cards. As a Guardian player, that's how
sometimes I have to feel like I construct my deck.
It's just like, well, everybody's annoying and I have
really good hate cards. So I guess I just need to run
all of my really good hate cards.
And like, then I just have to shuffle.
And sometimes I end up in a matchup where it's like, well, I
guess I have to run Weakest Link into Slippy because I just want
a card. This does nothing against you,
but like, I need 60. Yeah.
How do we feel about these semi permanent designs?
I kind of feel like it's a really healthy spot.
If you're going to have a board state, it should be tough to
maintain. You have to do effort to
maintain it and you want to get that repeated value that breaks
the math of the game. You got to feel really good for
it. You got to go through that quest
in order to like give you that sense of pride and
accomplishment, you know? What do you guys think?
Yeah. I mean, I think it is one of the
ways they get to balance it, especially when there are things
that are much harder to interact with.
Like they for the first set of stuff they that is basically
would stay around indefinitely. They have to have a way to
interact with it otherwise it doesn't work.
But when you give these things that are going to last two or
three turns or one or two turns even, like if there's, if they,
if they're hard to interact with, that can be fine as long
as the effect isn't too crazy. Like channel like frigid can
definitely be oppressive for some stuff, but you know,
there's an expiration date on it.
You know it's going to disappear and that you can bide your time
until it does. So I, I think I think they've
learned a lot and they've kind of shown that where it's like
channel Lightning Valley compared to channel like Frigid
in its most powerful heroes are still drastically different in
their impact levels, where Lightning Valley does not feel
nearly as bad to play against as channel like Frigid from
Icelander. I love that as an example.
I think they're very skill expressive cards and that's
probably my favorite aspect of. Oh yeah, both.
Playing into and against these things.
Yeah, awesome. So I think that's about all I
wanted to say for yellow pitch. Clark, I think you've got a cool
blue pitch lined up for us. I certainly hope it's cool for
blue pitch. I'm talking about one time use
permanence. So this is interesting because
I'm going to be talking about things like rune chance.
Whoa whoa whoa, Mark, I just played against rune sack
Florian. Those rune chants didn't go
fucking anywhere. And yes, you are correct, but
they didn't give any value until the turn that they activate.
So that's really the thing that I'm focusing on here, right?
Even if it can stay on the board for a really really long time,
it only gives you value once. And this is different from the
illusionist auras which are a small amount of constantly
recurring value turn over turn. Or the semi permanence that
Fuzzy was talking about where every turn you keep it around
there's you either guarantee or get a chance of getting that
value out of the card. Here it's you don't really get
the value out of the card sitting there until you do
something with it. So I think rune chants are a
great example of sort of what I'm talking about here.
They stay on the board, but they need to be consumed to generate
value. A lot of early items were also
like this, not mechanologist items but generic items.
Things like energy potion and time snap potion.
Where because with energy potion and time snap potion you have to
spend your whole action point to play them, but then you get no
value until later you finally activate them for your value.
Well, Clark, I do want to put a little bit of a caveat there.
Rune Chants can give you value passively as they stay on the
field without popping. In the case of cost reduction
cards like reduced to rune Chant or if you're an LL player, you
can use the chess piece. Let's see pledge sheets
Scaletta. Yeah, the scaletta so that
you're getting value out of having a lot of runechants in
order to reduce things like Sonata arcanics.
Or you could play like Sonata Galaxia.
Yeah, the the non attack action cards that can get cost reduced
definitely break the mold on this as is reduced runechants.
I was definitely more thinking of the attack action cards and
even like Runic Reckoning to get the value out of playing it, you
still need to throw an attack afterwards, which would then
consume the Rin chance. But you're right, you you can
definitely double up on the value.
It's not just the one arcane from them.
It's also this reduction in resources.
But a lot of those cards are under rate, right?
Three for four go again. So you're kind of asking to have
one on the it's it's OK, you're right.
It's a it's a very good counterpoint here.
Some other cards that I think fit into this are start of turn
auras. We mostly see these in tokens,
things like mite agilities and seismic surges where they are an
aura that you generate. So it's a permanent, it goes on
to the field, but at the start of turn it destroys itself and
goes to give you your value. It's a temporary.
It's very temporary, right? But it still provides some
carryover by creating something on the board state which the
opponent can then interact with, right?
If I'm KO and I play Cast Bones to get 6 mites in an agility
token, but then you play Summer's Fall in response to get
rid of my agility token, that's a really good interaction in my
opinion. Right.
Yeah, but if you're relying on that in the matchup, it's not as
good because it's only around for one turn.
This is very different than, say, being able to, say, target
a channel card with your Aura Destruction because you have at
least a couple of turns to find it and throw it at the opponent.
Or even like a Mara guy. The the either maraud guy the
dragon. Well you can't bottom a dragon
but the the spooky Mystic one. Yeah, anything that stays out
running the hate cards is better into those things because you
have a better chance of actually getting it to line up when you
want it. And against things that are only
around for one turn, it's it's not as good.
And these cannot stay on the board, right?
They are only existing for a single turn.
And a lot of crank items also exist in this realm, right?
Fuzzy we were talking about, oh, Kevin, you mentioned this card
in the previous bit. It's the card that lets you put
items into the field directly at instant speed.
Quantum. Processor.
Quantum processor. Thank you.
That's a card that really feels like it's only really probably
getting one activation right most of the time.
Sometimes it might not, though. You could get one on the turn
you play it and one on your opponent's turn, yeah.
But it's it's less of that like big carry over.
It feels like it's very restricted to just one turn.
Yeah, because because you're also having to play out Quantum
Processor and then activate it and then like try and cash in an
action point from this item that you're bringing as an instant.
Like if you get a full extra turn of that, it lets you use
that so much more fluidly within that within a hand of four
cards. So like the the difference
between 1:00 and 2:00 steam counters there is huge.
Definitely. I'm so, so happy you brought
that up. I also want to note that there
is another bit of weirdness. So when we look at Might and
Agility, it also has its counterparts in Courage and
Quicken tokens. Right now these do not pop at
the start of turn, but they do like rune chance, trigger the
moment that you fulfill their condition.
So once again, sits on the field, can sit on the field for
a long time and can really lead to a punishment, for example.
But like, clash of agility, be careful, yeah.
Clash clash of agility into Necromancer with that seven
power pirate ship. Definitely not something we're
looking to to rush into. Or a six power ally off the top.
Yeah, yeah, definitely don't want to give them those those
agilities. But Quickens are very
frustrating because when they can sit on an opponent who is
looking to block and wait for their moment to go extra wide,
it's a very powerful extra tool for them, right?
And that's sort of what makes Quicken more dangerous than say,
Agility. With Agility, you have to use it
on that next turn, you have to find yourself in a position to
take advantage of it. But with Quicken it can last
turn over turn until they can get that value.
Yeah, that was like a huge part of playing heavy hitters limited
was if you just played a wage agility and you wagered the
agility and they had to give you 2 cards to stop it plus an
armor. Like can they even use that
agility on the next turn or are they just stopping you from
getting it like. I liked how it was less of a
free agility, a free wager when it came to a Warrior because
Warrior could pitch one card and swing for four that you just
gave them the ability to do that, you know, But against
Brute when they, when they don't have an arsenal or against
Guardian in general, like, yeah, I don't care.
You're not going to be doing anything with this agility.
So I kind of want to ask you guys, how do we feel about these
one time use cards? I think they've traditionally
been seen as less powerful than the flashier Illusionist auras
and perhaps the more synergistic Illusionist auras in board
states. But at the same time, they have
the ability to be quite toxic, right?
Because they have a permanent board state without the ability
to directly interact with them. Very often these things don't
have Ward, they don't have Spectra, so you can't destroy
them like you would the same way with an illusionist, but you can
only get the value out of them once.
But that's led to these like toxic OTK style strategies or
turtle burst strategies that we've seen come out with
Visserai last meta and Florian this meta that a lot of people
have sort of rallied against. But harkening back to one of the
talking points in red pitch with Enigma, where it felt like you
were never in a position to actually block Enigma's wards
because you had to convert every hand to offense.
Is this doing a similar thing? I've never thought about it that
way, but it seems like a cogent comparison, you know?
Yeah, I can't really block OTK Florian, just like I can't block
Enigma. Hey, good $10 word there for me.
And Florian is kind of like less value.
You know, like read the runes is only coming in for three, right.
You know, I and I don't have go again on it.
I know read the runes isn't like necessarily the best rune chance
stacking card. The best one is channel the
Millennium tree. Actually, it is one.
Of the best. Yeah, yeah.
It's a good one to think about for the equation, but I think
Florian's really using like channel the Millennium tree to
make it a winning strategy. If it's going to be toxic,
that's where it's going to be. Sure.
Yeah. And using those semi permanent.
So it's not the rune chance that are the problem, it's the
channel that's the problem. Thank you, Fuzzy.
And you know, at least with Enigma I can run whatever
equipment I want I want. I don't have to take out my
gamblers gloves in order to put in arcane barrier.
All I want to do is run gamblers gloves, let me run gamblers
gloves. But no, I have to take it out
and run my AB1 and against Florian, like with the channel,
the Millennium tree. I even have to take out my cool
headpiece and put in like Schoolhorn.
And so I'm running AB three. You know, I've I've been a brute
maid for the past month. So those are the only examples
I'm gonna use. So this is good because now
we're sort of comparing the two different aura types, right, or
the two different board state types of semi permanent versus
one time permanent. The semi permanents sort of have
a fade out point. Well, these one time permanence
very often don't have a fade out point, but the semi permanence
probably generate more value, have the ability to be more
broken, have the ability to break the math of the game.
Whereas the one time permanence are very tied to the math of the
game and it's more about creating offensive or defensive
overlaps when you finally activate them.
So what do you guys think about the comparison between the two
and what do you think is generally healthier for the game
as it currently stands? And what do you think?
We need to start addressing what you think is probably more toxic
about them. I think it's funny to compare
the two because they, I think they serve very different
functions in the game. You know, channel, not heroic,
Channel Lightning Valley and Channel Lake Frigid are all
build arounds where like they can kind of become your game
plan to an extent, at least for the terms that they're around.
Whereas I guess rune chance technically are your game plan,
but a lot of the other examples of these one time permanence are
supposed to be like little gravy bonuses that you get to keep
around. Like do not put your whole game
plan around them. You know, they are not a win
con, but they're just going to kind of help like grease the
wheel and give you some way of breaking the turn parody a
little bit. And they're not meant to be
broken because they're not meant to be really strong.
You know, they're just kind of going to help your game plan a
little bit. Sure.
And again, room chance also like break that because they are
pretty solid and a lot of room blades really do build around
them when all these Rosetta cards in limited are like if
you've dealt arcane damage and like for enchants are one of the
only ways you can do that arcane damage in limited.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I think the the piece that I come back to with this
that you said is the one time permanence basically never break
the math because they're one time.
We can pretty easily face up say what the value of a Reed the
runes is. Yeah, it's usually 3IN everyone
and then in viscera is probably 4.
But then the semi permanent ones, like they start to break
the math a little bit based on how many terms you can keep it.
And the better your deck is at keeping it, the more powerful
that card is. And then we see like we go that
step further into the illusionist ones that like just
fully break the math because that's what they're there for.
So like I, I think that's like the big distinction that I come
down to with these is like how is like the the semi permanent,
like just starting to break the math a little bit and it's how
much? And then the one times like.
It's generally very easy to to line it up with to to give it a
reasonable or. I'm trying to think of a word
for it like a justifiable mathematical value.
So here at the end of blue pitch, I feel like I have to
bring up Gravy Bones because we did that in the other two
pitches, so why not do it here? And I want to tell everyone,
hey, keep an eye on those early blue potion items because Gravy
Bones needs a blue to go to the graveyard to be able to play his
cards. And these potions seem like they
are perfectly positioned to just when you need it, send that blue
to graveyard and get you either action points.
Which, hey, it's looking like Gravy Bones might need action
points to be able to use everything really efficiently
and resources because some of these allies cost a lot.
What I've really appreciated about this pitch is that we've
talked through moments where all three of these permanent types
have sort of demonstrated an ability of running the meta
because of set up right and that long term perspective of flesh
and blood. I know I definitely fell in love
with evaluating the hand by hand math of flesh and blood, but I
think that it's this longer term perspective, this idea of
setting up and being able to properly evaluate how to
generate those overlaps. Offensive and defensive in such
a way that lets you actually win the game.
The days are gone where you are winning the game by throwing 8
would dominate. That is just not really how most
games end anymore. It's by throwing 20 on a turn
and just overwhelming anything the opponent could conceivably
block. Sure, and permanence are how you
do that. I think everyone can learn from
watching decks how they use permanence, how they play around
permanence, and how they are able to generate these turns.
Awesome. Well said Clark.
Yeah, I think that's all I have for blue pitch.
I think it's time to move to our arse.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, Fuzzy.
It's pronounced Arsenal zone. No, I think we just say Arsenal.
Arsenal Arsenal The Arsenal zone.
The Arsenal zone is the part of our show where we shout out a
card and then we've been thinking about lately for
whatever reason we want. Yeah, this can be a card you
love, a card you hate, a card you love to hate.
We like to start off the Arsenal Zone by shouting out a card
selected by one of our patrons. That's right, if you subscribe
to our Patreon, you too can be a part of our show by giving us
cards to shout out right here in the Arsenal Zone.
And for today's episode, the winner is Thanks for All noise,
Draken. Draken wanted to shout out
Frailty Trap because quote because it's a really good card
and because it dot dot dot it's good into Ranger.
Frailty trap is a red 0 cost assassin Ranger defense reaction
subtype trap. It blocks 3 and says When this
defends an attack with go again create a frailty token under the
attacking heroes control. This is a very very strong trap.
I really enjoyed this set of trap designs because back in the
back at this time we didn't have a lot of 0 for three defense
reactions. It was all sync blows and fate
for scenes, and so when frailty trap, it was a 0 for three that
could give for value if they end up attacking with that card with
go again from Arsenal or a weapon with go again or even
something with go again into one of those two things, right.
The frailty trap would then give the -1 value.
Sometimes it wouldn't though, And so it felt very nicely match
up dependent and I it's, it's a really, really great design.
And of course as Riptide you get an extra ping damage so you
could even get more value. 5 value off of a trap.
God damn did. You want to say anything about
this card, Smurf? I mean, it's just a really solid
card and as long as we have heroes that use a pair of one
handed weapon, it's going to it's going to be good because
they have to be able to give those weapons go again to use
both of them. And then you're going to get
double value on it. Like it's a card you're pretty
much always going to see in any deck that wants to run traps.
It's just solid sneaky interaction.
The block of insets go again rungate card with this and then
the frailty trap means that they can't attack with the flail
anymore cuz it only comes in for one.
Yeah, cuz the flail will be 0, yeah.
Yep. Yeah, they still might swing out
if they wanted. To.
Yeah, they'll probably do that for the synergy.
They they might. Pay one deal 0.
That'd be funny, yeah. But I, I love how this just hits
a lot of matchups, right? So many decks have go again and
so many decks are looking to follow up that go again with
their weapons or a card from Arsenal, right?
I do it all the time. Like I've had a lot of turns
into a into assassins where I've like zealous belting from
Arsenal into a hammer swing. And when they block that zealous
belting with the frailty trap, I'm like buck buck.
They got so much value out of this one card.
It's probably one of the best, probably the best common trap
from the cycle. There was blood rot trap and
inertia trap, an inertia trap triggering on the greater
greater powers. And Blood Ross on reactions.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great shadow it was.
Definitely the most, definitely the most consistent.
Awesome. Yeah, thank you for your card
suggestion, Drigven. A reminder to everyone at our
Patreon at the $5 tier, you can suggest a card to be mentioned
here in the Arsenal zone. And once you submit your
suggestion, we keep it. It does.
It doesn't reset every single week.
We hold on to these. I think this one was suggested
like a month or so ago. They don't go anywhere.
They don't go anywhere, we keep them around and so the more
cards you put in, the longer you're with us, the better
chance that you'll get a card in.
With all that being said, let's move on to our Arsenal Zone
cards. Fuzzy.
A little birdie told me that you wanted to go.
First, I think that Birdie literally was Clark.
I think Clark wanted me to go first.
Because I said it just now so. I have a tradition on the show
of whenever I shout out a card, I also sign a copy and give it
to each of the other people on the episode.
So Smurf the card that I'm shouting out.
I will give a copy to you the next time I see you with my
signature on it. To make it worse, you know.
Worse. Hey I'm just able to up charge
for one of these. The card that I really want to
talk about today is Thick Hide Hunter Majestic.
Thick Hide Hunter I think is real.
I've been shouting out Reiner cards for the last like 3 weeks
and I'm not done. But I think Thick hide hunter is
really interesting because it's a way for them to give a
defensive tool to what is inherently an aggressive
concept. Like if you're saying hey brute
run as many cards with six power as you can, that has to be
aggressive at like most and mid range at least, you know, Like
how am I supposed to run 6 powered attacks as many as I
possibly can and then still keep my defense up?
You know, the six powered attacks probably aren't going to
block for more than three. Every time I run a defense
reaction, every time I run like like No Fear that instant that
banishes cards in order to like that's another defensive tool
that plays with sixes, but it's not literally a six power
defense card. Thick Height Hunter is a yellow
2 cost, 6 power 6 block brute attack action, and when this
attacks or defends, discard a random card as a triggered
ability, not as a cost. So if you're able to dump your
hand on something and then block with this card, you're blocking
for six with one card with no downside other than, you know,
you have to get rid of your hand.
It's also nice because if you attack with your whole hand and
then attack with this, you can't attack for six without needing
that other card. Or if you need this to be your
one attack on the turn and you're looking for the discard
synergies, then you can also attack with this, get your
discard off of it, and get your synergy there.
It's a really flexible utility piece and because it's a yellow
2 cost that is. Nice.
When I first saw this card spoiled, I was like, isn't it
awkward? Like isn't it weird to have this
card that you can't use unless you either pitch it for two or
you have to discard a card you it feels like you'd have to
fumble around it to you make good use of it.
But I've been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is.
You know, on a blood rush bellows turn, I can pitch it to
claw or I can play it as the last attack.
If somebody is attacking me with dominate or overpower, I can
just block for six and this card, a card and I'm effectively
blocking with two cards on something where I normally
wouldn't be able to. You know, I'm still able to get
value just by getting around evasion.
And you know, I hate Azalea. I will lose to Azalea most of
the time, but being able to throw a six block in front of
one of Azalea's cards, even with a card, again, it is a six
powered card. I don't have to run a lower
density of sixes in order to get around this evasion.
You know, it's a defensive tool with a stat line that is really
hard to make defensive tools for, and that's what I
appreciate about this card. Yeah, it's also one of the first
action cards that doesn't have 3-2 or zero printed in the
bottom right, which opens up a really interesting design space.
Yep. So I'm excited to see if Brute
gets more of these kind of tools in the future, and I'm going to
sign a copy and give to each of you.
It's also a card that like the Brute discord on the the brute
channel on the purple discord has all been like really happy
with it at 2 copies, you know, like running 3 copies is a lot
easier for them to clump up together and like you're like,
oh, what do I do with two thick kite hunters but like pitch one
to attack with. The other one.
I guess, but then like you have to get something to get rid of
the other two cards somehow. Yeah, Block.
I'm sure some people are happy with three.
I've been running two and I've been really happy with it.
You know, some cards are just really nice at 2 copies.
You know they can be perfect for 2 copies you're really happy to
have, but you don't want a third copy.
You know, like that one friend that you like, love to death,
but you're like, you know what, 2 copies of this brand is
enough. What do I feel like you're
talking about me? No, no, no.
Clark, you are three copies, maybe even 4 copies of In My
Life. We have a podcast together for
crying out loud. I'm running at least 5 copies of
Clark. Kevin, what do you think of
Thick Eyed Hunter? Or if you don't have a lot of
thoughts about Thick Eyed Hunter, what do you think about
action cards getting bigger block values than just three?
I mean, I thought it was a really cool design when I saw
it. It was like, that's a really
flexible card and it has all the things on it that Brute wants,
which doesn't necessarily mean it would fit.
We've seen a lot of cards where there's a lot of words on it and
all the words look good and then they don't combine well.
But I I was very curious to see where that card ended up because
it was just. It was interesting.
Yeah. Like, it kind of broke the
rules, but not in the way where it looked like it would break
the game. Yeah.
So I, I, I hadn't played against it or seen it really, but I know
that Dex had been really happy with it.
Dex fan he he really liked it and I think he was it too as
well. Like the the card is just like
really cool design where it's not pushed, it's not broken, but
it's just like interesting and it makes you like, it doesn't
really make you like work for it, but like, I don't know, it
just does something that other card that no other card does.
I've had really fun turns where like Florian will play like
felling of the crown at me with like some rune chants on it and
they're like surely I'm leaking damage.
It's three rune chants on felling of the crown and I'm
like pitch to failing bottom of card like block 9 I get to with
the thick kite hunter so I'm not taking any damage.
You thought you could leak some and then I still lose the game
because they have the tempo. But you know, awesome.
Clark, what card do you wanna shout out today?
I wanna shout out Deadwood Dirge.
I'm pretty sure I've already done this card because I'm kind
of a Room Blade fanatic, but Deadwood Dirge is a card that I
kind of consistently return to and go God, this is so fucking
cool. Like they made a read the runes
with a go again, right? You have to destroy an aura.
If that aura is a rune chant, then you only net two other rune
chants. But there's all these fringe
cases where you can get the three rune chants out of it.
It feels really, really nice if I'm destroying like a disease
token that was given to me by a by a nasty little frailty trap
or, you know, I'm destroying my room blood incantation, which is
worded in such a weird way that it just like has one turn where
it's sitting with no counters on it.
So I can target it with my Deadwood urge then.
So there's all sorts of little fringe cases where I or soul
shackles. So I guess the card I'm actually
talking about is Soul Shackles, because I really want them to
like give soul shackles to Vincet.
I don't want to give soul shackles to Vincent.
But like, she kind of needs a way to fill up great, fill up
her vanish zone more consistently, she does.
Soul. Shackles are not it, but it's
random and the soul shackle isn't the one that gives Go
again too. Much.
It's too much. But it's also like, it'd be a
really cool thing to be able to target with Deadwood dirt.
So like I could control the rate of which I'm fatiguing myself.
Like I'm giving up the ability to feel fill my blood debt, but
like I get an extra rune chant out of it.
It's cool. Yeah, Chain would agree with
you. In LL you start doing that a
lot. But he can get so many right?
Like. Yes.
Like I think it's definitely one of those effects where like it
should be gated and clearly LSS is terrified of this interaction
because they banned Deadwood dirge in Project Blue but it's
not banning commoner yet. I think because they're scared
of the rares specifically and like how much extra value those
generate. But God I just really love the
interactions with Deadwood dirge but LSS seems really scared of
it generating 3 value in any consistent way so it's going to
be interesting to see. I've even heard some people call
for banning it and living legend.
Wow, I. Know my silly little rare?
Also, the art's dope. Look at that guy banging away at
the keyboards screaming his heart out.
I think they're also like other there's a couple other
interactions that are really funny with that card, which is
you can dirge a hypothermia. Yeah.
Oh man, has any? Affliction aura which?
So if Icelander comes back, you can also dirge a frost hex.
Oh man, hell yeah. Really cool interactions.
Yeah, no, the Deb Deborah Durge is such a sick card.
Like when they when they spoiled that in Rosetta Season.
We're just looking at it like this.
This card's nuts. This card is so good for Vincet
because it is read the runes with go again for Vincet because
you get the one from Vincet and you turn that into 3 and that's
your real chance for the turn. And then you're just on like A2
card 9 for that turn cycle. And it's just is the
interactions that are so cool without it, the numbers on it
being busted. Kind of a theme.
Let's see if we can keep it going.
Kevin, what do you got? So I I've picked Invoke Shariah,
never mind it's and it really came back on my radar when we
got war cry of feminists. Oh.
Because Invoke Shrya is A2 cost light illusionist action
invocation. Cast it targeting A spectral
shield and transform it into Shrya Archangel of Knowledge
which is the standard 4/4 with ward 4.
Paid 2 to attack with it. Yeah, this was the first Angel
that we ever saw, right? This was the.
First yeah, this was the first Angel and like ward ally the of
the four four set that we would see it would be in dynasty like
2 sets before new prison would come out.
And it has the text of whenever Sharia deals damage, you gain
that much life once return action pay to to attack whenever
it's tax. You may banish a light card from
your hero's soul if you do deal one arcane to any target, which
is also going to be nifty. Maybe for gravy bones.
You can also bolt the. Bird.
You can bolt the bird. I think there's better
interactions for that for the bird though.
But this gets really funny when you just play a war cry in front
of its attack and suddenly it's attacking for eight with life
Link. Oh Gee.
Oh my God, yeah. Yeah, that was like the
interaction for me where it's like that's where a war cry gets
really interesting. And it's because Shreya has this
text that interacts with other stuff in the same way that like
this is the same text that Scepter has and Krakens Aether
Vane had, where it's like it's just set up to when you can buff
this one day, it's it can do really crazy stuff.
And Shreya by itself is you pay, you have the Shreya card, you
pay 2 to flip and you pay 2 to attack.
And you're getting, you're threatening A3 card 12, we'll
call it -1 because you have to give up a spectral shield.
But you're attacking for four, you're life linking for four.
And then you have word for. Oh yeah, yeah.
It's an Angel attack that you have to block.
And we talked about how people don't want to be blocking
angels. Now add 1 more card and add 8.
Oh my goodness. I don't wanna.
This like it's this card has been so close to going back into
my prism deck for since Haunted came out because War Cry is so
interesting and war Cry by itself is a crazy card.
It's a 0 for four go again three block light yellow.
Yeah, those are. That's a really good stat line.
That sounds really good. Illusionist gets a like. 0 for
four pump on a yellow on a block 3 just because angels are hard
to get out I guess. Yes, yeah, like that's and it
still doesn't make the deck. Like it's that good and it
doesn't make the deck. But no, I invoke Soraya is
really cool because as soon as you put on hit text for an
Angel, it's. Yeah, I will say Soraya being
Invoke, Soraya being a legendary probably hurts its viability
because you just can't consistently get it in the same
way that you can consistently get the other angels.
In a way, yeah. You don't have a way to fetch
this out of your deck. Yeah, but I mean it being an
Angel means it still works with your weapon to give it go again.
So like I've even looked at like if you have the invoke and war
cry in your hand and you or like one of them is in arsenal, you
can Halo and grab figment of protection, which makes your
spectral shield and then you can go Sharia into also free flip
with rapture on figment of protection.
Yeah, especially if you pitch a blue right?
Because that leaves you with the 2 floating to play.
Invoke Soraya. Yeah.
So there's there's some I think the math ended up being it was a
5 card 30 and 10 of that is Ward.
Oh boy howdy, I sure do like the fact that I'm up 30 Life on this
prism. Wait, what are you doing?
I mean, if they haven't popped headpiece, you're not winning
yet. Yeah.
Mood. So, you know, invoke, invoke Shy
is really cool and I wish. I don't think we're going to get
any more allies from new Prism just because it won't work.
But I mean, you know what, Kevin?
I want to play Prism now. Wow.
You. You've convinced me.
This is a cool enough turn. Kevin, I want to play Prism.
Why did we invite Smurf on our pod if he was just going to
convert our hosts? Our dearest?
I'm running 5 copies of Clark. I can't but to bear him playing
Prism. Just wait until I start bringing
up Illusionist every single episode in a pod.
It's going to be like the old Leviah days.
You know, we're not that far from it just because illusionist
is like such a design rich topic, you know?
Sure, sure, sure. But right now I'm like
illusionist agnostic. Like I talk about how they're
annoying but also like the strengths in the game.
But now. Oh, it's all over for you guys.
Yeah, because when you get to run Soraya combo, combo like I
could see it. Yeah, All right.
I think that is the episode. It's funny that we didn't talk
about equipment. I feel like we could have
equipment or like the permits in the game, you know?
Yeah, I guess we just have to save that for another episode.
Let us know if you what this episode has made you think
about. Have you started looking at
permanence differently? Have you started thinking about
how illusionists actually have a space in the meta game that's
healthy? Let us know if you want to see
that episode on equipment. Let us know if you want to see
Kevin back on the podcast. I know that Joel couldn't be
here today, so hopefully we're able to get you on again, get
you talking with Joel. Sure.
Yeah. All right, Yeah, It's been a
pleasure, Kevin. I'm looking forward to seeing
you at Vegas. Thank you, everyone, for
listening. Have a great day, Night,
whatever. Have a great.
Day and night, afternoon, whatever time it is for you.
All right, bye. Bye peace.
Pitch to Me podcast is hosted by Fuzzy Delt, Clark Moore and Joel
Racinos, executive producer Talon Stradley, logistics
coordinator John Farkas, music by Dylan Holtz, logo by on V
Sound mixing, Christopher Moore and last but not least, you.
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