Stay tuned for some outtakes. Welcome to Pichitumi Podcast, a
show about the subjective past, present, and potential future of
flesh and blood design where we make like a phoenix and fucking
die before coming back in the blaze of glory.
In today's episode, we will analyze a curated selection of
cards from the set Uprising. On red pitch, Joel looks over
some power cards from uprisings past.
On yellow pitch, Clark tries to salvage the rupture keyword.
And on Blue Pitch, Fuzzy poops the party by mentioning ice in
2025. You can find us across all
socials such as Blue Sky and Instagram at Pitch It to Me
podcast. I'm Jolie Joel.
I'm Clarky Clark. And I'm fuzzy fuzzy.
Well, it doesn't really work with that one.
You set me up for disaster. Hello audience, welcome back.
For this episode, we're trying out a new series called Pick a
Card, where we're going to each pick a card or two from a
previous set and talk about them in depth.
It's kind of like an extended Arsenal zone for today.
We decided to do it on the set Uprising because we thought
that's going to be interesting going into the next season with
the release of The Haunted. Our goal was to find a way to
discuss the Haunted without actually knowing all the
spoilers. We're recording this before the
big spoiler week because of just how our schedules are lining up,
so we don't have all the information you guys do, but
hopefully we're able to keep things relevant by talking about
cards that are going to be impactful for these heroes and
play patterns. That's the great tension on our
podcast is talking about things happening now but two weeks in
advance. For reference, we just had the
three daggers revealed for Syndra, Fang and Arachne.
That's all we know. So if you're like, you know,
waving your fist angrily at the screen in front of you, put it
down. Calm down.
Yeah, we don't know. About the Majestic Majestic.
We will talk about the bomb Majestic later, yeah.
That that's going to be in our pitching predictions recap
probably. I don't know.
I don't feel like we get enough hate mail.
True, because right now we're getting basically zero.
Yeah, because we're so small. It's like 100% likes on all of
our YouTube videos. Yeah, yeah, let's get some
dislikes in there. Just kidding.
Yeah, please don't actually do that.
So we're picking cards from Uprising today and I feel like
Uprising is a little bit special, at least for me,
because I remember signing up for Uprising pre release and it
was like the first. I might have gone to an Armory
before Uprising pre release maybe.
I think it was like at least one of the first Flesh and blood
events I ever went to. Was going to uprising pre
release pulling my first ever legendary.
I got a coronet peak bitch. Yeah, my first ever event was an
Uprising draft that you hosted at your place, Fuzzy.
It was. I remember you guys invited me
over and you were like, learn to play with the starter decks.
And I hated them. And you were like, OK, but you
can get your own cards and play a different hero by doing this
draft. And I really need an eighth
Clark. And I'm like.
OK, we looked at me. And I remember sitting across
from Fuzzy as he pulled the cornet peak.
And that's where I first met Fuzzy.
It's that new player luck, right it.
Was like you bastard. They gotta do that specifically
to hook you. Yeah, it's real.
It really is real. So, Joel, what card did you pick
from the Uprising set to talk about?
Oh, actually, I realize I'm a little bit on the nose about
this one 'cause I chose the card Uprising.
Wow. Yeah, I know, I know.
Boo. Fuck that guy.
But like what card from Uprising?
Oh, oh, see it. Yeah.
Uprising. You believe what card from.
You have to pick one card, you can't pick the whole set.
When is this bit over just so I can?
Now the bit is over. Now I already met a reference
that it's a bit. Got it, Got it.
OK, Yeah. So I chose Uprising.
I wanted to look at Uprising a little bit closer because it was
a really underutilized card in the set that it came out.
And I think with Syndra and Fang it's gonna function a little bit
better, assuming like we get more cards to enable those wider
chain links. And listeners, if you've never
seen Uprising, I wouldn't blame you.
Uprising says it's a three block red pitch 0 cost non attack
action card that says your next 4 drag draconic attacks this
turn game plus one with Go again.
So what this essentially equates to is another zero for four.
But I wanted to look at it a bit more closely because it's a card
that Phi, who's known for white chain links, didn't really use
to great effect. And I think it's going to be a
little bit different for Fang and Syndra.
And I think Phi really struggled to use this card because number
one, it didn't count itself as a chain link.
And ending your turn on the 4th chain link, like with a rupture
card, for instance, was a lot easier than ending a chain link
on your 5th or 6th card. So the chances that this was
getting more value than any one of your other attacks was pretty
low. And especially as Feing added
more generics in the deck, he was obviously Art of War
belittle minimalism deck with Kodachi's and fucking double
strike. There's a lot of iterations, but
for the most part very much a generic deck like generic ninja
aggro deck. It was it was very interesting
because if I was the first blitz deck I ever made and I really
liked Uprising because it was a cheap power card I could buy
back when I didn't really have the money to spend stuff on like
Double Strike mask, a momentum Tiger Strike Shoot.
So those cards were just that build was unavailable to me.
So Uprising was my power card, but as a power card it really
asks that you draw a nice hand that let's you go for wide.
Otherwise it really is just being another head jab.
It had the exact same issue that Mordred had Mordred Tide had for
Viscera back in the day. Like, it's good, it's an
enabler, it helps, but it's very rarely actually getting that
power card value that you expect.
And that's an interesting comparison too, because Uprising
caps out at giving you 4 points of value and more Drew tag can
go a lot higher than that. Yeah, especially nowadays.
But back then it definitely didn't, right?
And I feel like actually if anything.
Uprising was the way that they sort of like future proofed
their kind of design by limiting it to four.
Definitely. Because it could have easily
said all draconic attacks game plus one.
Yeah, and then we'd be in the same position we are now.
But this card is banned alongside Art of War.
Yeah, for Fang specifically, 3 chain links seems kind of hard
or like 3 plus like every weapon swing with his daggers requires
another draconic card as a reaction or a reaction that can
be made to draconic via field T tokens.
So you really need a wide hand to get more than two dagger
swings. And so the power fantasy of like
swinging, you know, 3 or 4 * a turn with uprising you get more
out of those swings if you're able to do so is is why I was so
interested by it. And on the flip side with Syndra
especially since her daggers have natural go again and it
seems like she's going to be flicking her daggers and
recurring them in the same turn, possibly to attack 3 or 4 times
similar to Fang. He can.
She can kind of get the same value or more with Uprising more
consistently, which is why I think it's going to make a
comeback for the haunted season. Yeah, with that and Spreading
Flames, it feels like Syndra has access to like 2 conceivable
anthems by having her two daggers.
I guess the question is really like, how reliable is it going
to be for her to have her daggers up and how reliable is
she going to be able to align those turns with this, right?
Because you still need 4 chain links with this.
So you're still asking for a three card hand even if one of
those cards turns your daggers into two chain links.
Yeah, and the issue with both Fang and Syndra is they can't
really have off turns or like completely dead turns.
They always need to have at least one draconic card or
create a filthy token to keep this like massive tokens around.
And I think Uprising just it being like a a starter that
doesn't really care about the rest of your hand.
Like it turns on a lot of the old Uprising cards that care
about playing other red cards like Blaze headlong, for
instance. Yeah, just being able to, even
if you're only able to throw your weapons or maybe a weak
attack, you keep your fielding tokens around as a bonus.
Especially because all of Cindra's cards that have been
revealed so far care about being, but they're not Draconic
themselves. So it seems like there's going
to be more work involved to have the same amount of Draconic
chain links that Phi had. Yeah, Syndrome might end up in a
very similar space as Phi, where they're a little bit heavier on
the ninja side. And so once again, that
restricts the ability to have the four Draconic chain links.
But at the same time, the field T token synergy means that maybe
it is still possible that even with the heavy Ninja build or a
heavier Ninja presence in the decklist that they're still able
to get the four chain links wide Aldraconic that would give this
the best value. Right.
Especially considering that Syndra does not care about a
threshold of filthy tokens in the same way Fang does.
So when she has three filthy tokens, she can use three filthy
tokens versus like, I need four and five to use them with Fang.
So it just seems like a much easier card to include in Syndra
than it does Fang. So far, yeah.
Yeah, definitely. I would agree with that.
Now does filty token make the card draconic or does it make
the attack draconic? The card, it's the next card.
The card? Draconic.
That's why it works with Fang. So do you think that works with
double strike? Like do you think you could like
play double strike, banish double strike, play double
strike again because it's the same double strike, right?
It does banish itself. I don't really know how it works
with like last known information.
You're the judge. I don't know.
I would imagine it doesn't because once it manages itself
it's considered a new card. That makes a lot of sense.
It makes a lot of sense. And last note about Uprising,
like I know for the most part it's probably like a lore
building card. It's kind of like like it's
literally need uprising. Like, I think it tells a lot of
the story for more so than it's supposed to be like a good car.
That's probably why they limited it to four because they don't
want to like have the namesake card be banned or whatever.
But I still think like, especially now that they're
reiterating a lot of what makes Draconic draconic, Like it's
going to be much more playable, hopefully in the Hunted.
You know, one thing about this card is I forgot it blocked for
three. You know, like when you're
looking at your zero for fours, why not a zero for four that
happens to also block for three? That's going to be a little bit
hard to come by, you know, because this card does not cost
you any action points. In talented aggro decks, we know
how hard that is to come by because like Aurora, her deck
lists are currently struggling with that right of being able to
block super efficiently. Yeah, true.
And then the other card, I want to talk about what did not come
out in Uprising, but I think it's been a name stay in at
least Dromi when when she was around Tome of Imperial Flame.
And obviously like this card was spiking initially and had a lot
of hype surrounding it because it's royal and it's a royal set.
And honestly, I think the hype is real.
Like it looks very, very strong. In these two new Draconic
heroes, Yeah, if we think about the power cards coming from
Uprising into the new set, it was like Toma Firebrand and
Uprising. Yeah, Toma Firebrand got banned,
and so people sort of looked at this card, especially the moment
that we learned Syndra and Feng were both naturally royal
heroes. Everyone goes, well, what about
the card that says royal printed on it?
Is that going to be good? You're so it is $70.00 for a
reason. So this card wasn't printed in
Uprising? No, no.
Oh that that's the disclaimer is that it was not printed in
Uprising, but I think it's relevant enough because the
heroes from Uprising might benefit from it.
Tobam Imperial flame is a no block draconic non attack action
that cost 0 and it's a red pip or red pitch.
Excuse me. And it says draw a card.
If you're royal draw 2 cards instead.
You may pitch 2 red cards and if you don't you banish your hand.
And you also gain resources for each card pitched this way.
So it's basically filtering 2 cards.
You get 2 resources and it has go again.
So again, this is a not a link per SE, but it is a draconic
starter. And the reason why I think it's
relevant is because as a Draconic hero, especially if
you're royal, it seems like while you're building filthy
tokens, you don't want to be on the back foot.
Otherwise you're risking losing the tokens you built up thus
far. And in that way you can't really
capitalize on no card or one card hands as easily.
However, Tone of Imperial Flame kind of solves that problem
because like I said earlier, you filter and gain resources, and
on larger hands it's great because you filter away the
shitty cars and use the rest of the cars to be aggressive.
If you want to be getting like the full value from three plus
dagger swings from each of the heroes, whether it be like
redundant attack actions or attack reactions that you can't
use, it's a good way to just completely fix your hand and get
the resources for those cards. And I could definitely see
Syndra using this alongside alongside flame scale furnace
because you know, a flame scale furnace, it's basically a blue,
right, Right. You just got 2 resources.
You pay 1 into the flame scale. Thin scale gives you 2 back.
You end up with 3 floating, you know, and being able to like
play the tome and then have three resources after it.
So you're literally like pitching a blue and then also
getting the filtering of drawing 2 cards and pitching your two
worst Reds. It feels like it could be pretty
powerful, not like crazy powerful in the same way that
like drew my got 2 sort of the equation, right?
Yeah, like she was like abusing this card.
It was like made for her. But I feel like there could be a
lot of value gained from Syndra, you know, kind of depending on
how important is it for you to get that filtering?
Probably not that important because acro decks typically are
just playing the same things over and over again, right?
It's it's also a matter of how many Reds are they allowed to
run right? How, how deeply does Syndra feel
like she needs to invest in Blues?
How deeply does Fang feel like he needs to invest in Blues or
yellows? Because at the end of the day,
Fang could be conceivably pitch less right?
I mean like his ability is literally making the weapons
cost nothing and then you just run a bunch of 0 cost attack
reactions. Tome of the Imperial Flame to me
feels the most viable when Fang has 3 fealty out and he is in
that I do not need to pitch anything.
I get to convert my entire hand into offense.
Let me play this Tome of Imperial Flame and find the best
offensive hand. Yeah, there's definitely a lot
of potential in the the way that it depending on the way Fang
wants to be aggressive. Like if he has a ton of like 0
cost plus threes or whatever, I think we're gaming.
Otherwise he might be cursed to play a non zero amount of Blues
because, you know, drama had completely 0 Blues, maybe 3 for
like passing mirage and certain matchups.
But warrior consistently, especially with like dual
wielding swords. Like you need those Blues to pay
for a Blade Runner historically. But I think all that's going to
change, like you said, Clark in The Hunted.
Yeah. And it depends how much
disruption there is, you know, like, I'll talk a little bit
later about how there's ice in the meta.
You know, if you go up against a Yarl, you don't want to lose to
Yarl just because you didn't put Blues in your deck, you know
what I'm saying? Definitely.
Or other forms of disruption. Yeah, notably, tone of Imperial
Flame was really hitting its peak in terms of its impact on
the meta after all the Ice heroes had rotated out.
Yeah. And so like that, that's not
something to scoff at. And I think that it's possible
that this card wouldn't have even made waves then if we still
had an Ice Lexi or an Icelander floating around.
Yeah, true. So those are the two cards I
wanted to talk about. Just some things that I'm going
to be tinkering with Fang because I think he has a lot of
explosive potential. And depending on what cards come
out, he could be really gassed because Draconic Warrior is a
new feel, is a new design space, and there's just a lot of work
to be done for war in general. But now I want to hear from you,
Clark, about your Rupture cards and how that might affect some
of these heroes. What do you have for us?
Yeah. So for Yellow Pitch, I wanted to
talk about a card that was pretty much unseen of in
Uprising, but I think it's an interesting card to look at and
do a deep dive on. So rather than like looking at a
card that I think is going to be relevant, which is what you did,
Joel, I want to talk about a card that I think can give us a
lot of insight as to where LSS was looking at Draconic in
Uprising and comparing that to sort of where they are now with
Haunted. And I want to talk about
Breaking Point. So Breaking Point, if you
haven't seen it, and once again, we do not blame you.
This card was not really played. It is A1 for five red three
block. It is an attack action, a
draconic attack action that says rupture.
If this is played on chain link 4 or higher, it gains on hit.
Destroy all cards in target players arsenal.
All cards in the arsenal. I was doing this from memory.
So Rupture as a mechanic is pretty fascinating to me because
it's essentially all Draconic was built around back in the
day. The idea is you want to use your
Dragons and your phoenix flames and your weapon attacks to
create these long chain links and then end on a nice big
finisher card. And the finisher card can do a
bunch of damage and really punish your opponent, right?
So there were a lot of these. Breaking Point was just one of
them. It was a common, and notably,
this was a talented card that is also a three block and is on
rate. This card is pretty decent.
I feel particularly interested by the fact that it's a three
block because as we've seen in Tales of Aria, in Uprising and
even now in Rosetta, whenever they seem to do these talented
sets, they don't like making the talented cards block for three
very often. I think like it also depends on
the talent. I think Draconic gets a little
bit of a pass because it all depends on what you're doing
with it. You know, like for ice cards or
earth cards you did not have or lightning cards, I guess to a
much lesser extent, you did not have to play the card in order
for you to get extra jazz from the card.
You know like Oldham was literally just playing blue ice
cards in order to fuel channel like Frigid or his hero ability,
right? None of that has to do with the
way that the card is played. So if it the card is going to
like be just as good on defense with blocking and when pitching
and it's enabling extra effects in the meantime, you are going
to have to balance it some other way, right?
And with the talented cards, they were like, if it's going to
be a three block, it's not going to have any effects.
That was kind of the rule. And I think they broke that with
some Majestics as well, you know, like Majestics kind of.
Cheat. Yeah, Majestics are intended to
right? Because you can only run three
of them. They're color locked.
They're supposed to be the power card.
I think with Draconic, they recognize nice that like we're
not fusing with Draconic, we're not revealing Draconic cards
from our hand in order to like get any extra benefits.
We're not flipping them from our arsenal.
So if Draconic talent doesn't do anything unless it's played,
then it's OK to make one with no go again, A3 block.
I think that's kind of what their metric is.
At least maybe it was back then. I think we've seen since then
they've moved away from that. I would say just look at things
like the recent set of Mystic attacks that are costed 0 at
droplet all the way up through three where if they're played if
you've played another blue card they end up going to red rates
of attack I think. I think that's fair.
I think you're right that this card does fit.
Like it could have easily been A2 block and we wouldn't have
batted to die, you know? Yeah.
It also, yeah, I think what you
just said, Clark, with the whole Droplet series is a lot of
cards, at least in the past year have been sort of dumbed down to
two blocks, mostly for the limited environment.
I think a lot of their focus has been on like you can't have like
30 card, 40 card pile with three blocks.
And so a card like this where it's in a little bit of an older
set, maybe that would have been A2 block if it was printed
today. But I think it's going to be a
really good tool in this upcoming set because 4 Chan
links is going to be like so easy to pull off.
Having that effect plus the three blocks is, yeah, it's
going to be super solid. Yeah, but I don't think we're
going to see it in the new set, right?
Because instead we have seen three cards that have taken
effects from other Rupture cards from Uprising and are doing them
better with an easier to accomplish quest.
Now admittedly, these are not Draconic cards, they are base
Ninja cards, the Art of the Dragon series.
OK, well, hold on. I don't know that I would call
turning a card Draconic an easier quest than having 4 chain
links. And that's very dependent on the
fact that we haven't seen a lot of the set at the time we're
making this video. Yeah, it really depends how easy
marked is, right? I mean just being completely
upfront. Fuzzy brand with cinder claw.
Yeah, Brand with cinder claw like does make it really easy,
but brand with cinder claw also makes it easy to get 4 chain
links. I don't know like everyone's
talked about so. So let's talk about the art of
the dragon. So in the Haunted, we have seen
that they have printed 3 new cards that I think have an
easier quest to turn on the effects, but they're the exact
same effects as these rupture cards.
It is the Art of the Dragon. There are three of them that I'm
specifically talking about. It's claw, fire, and scale.
Each of them have an effect of one of the rupture cards from
Uprising. So Art of the Dragon Claw is the
one that is the parallel to breaking point.
It is ninja rather than just draconic and but it also is A1
for five attack. It also blocks for three, but if
it is made draconic, then it gains the effect, which is
different than on rupture. It gains this effect.
And I think this is powerful for a very notable reason, which is
that I don't really like arsenal disruption at the end of a
really, really long chain a lot of the time, especially going
against an aggro deck, which I know feels weird because we've
all played against the Zen that's gone like little attack,
little attack weapon CNC, and you're like, Oh my God, blocked
too much at the beginning of the chain.
Like, I'm getting fucked by the C&C.
But at the exact same time, it's also so easy to get blown out by
a D react. Yeah, like when it's CNC, you
can't get blown out by that D react.
But with these cards, it's so easy to get blown out by AD.
React. Are you saying it's balanced?
I'm saying that I prefer so so this is the point that I'm
getting to putting Arsenal disruption at the end of a
really long chain means that players are encouraged to sort
of use that D reactant Arsenal early on in the attack and you
completely lose the value of this Rupture card.
OK. And whenever you're playing
around Rupture, you are typically taking damage or
taking some detrimental effect to be able to pull off the long
chain link and get this effect. When you compare that to the
ability to play on really lean, like 2 card hands, like if I
just go brand with cinder claw, find all's this, I am feeling
God like right, like OK, they still throw the D react at me.
I still got blown out, but I'm still feeling good because I
presented A2 card 8 and like that effect still threatens
something. It made them use that D react
now on this five power attack that isn't really doing anything
else versus maybe on a later turn where I really want a 0 for
four to hit. Yeah, yeah.
And I also love how we're sprinkling Arsenal disruption
into all classes rather than making it dependent on CNC.
You know, that's part of, right, why CNC Command and Conquer is
so prevalent in the flesh and blood meta and has been for so
long. Because Arsenal disruption, kill
your Arsenal is good, you know, And I hope that we can get to a
day where we're not so reliant on Command and Conquer, but it
has a really important place in our game.
And that place becomes less important the more cards there
are in the game that destroy Arsenal, you know?
Very much so, yeah. But but there's definitely
enough shifts happening here that I think it's interesting,
right? Because clearly they want this
effect present not just in the limited format, but present in
this class talent combo. They want this effect here.
And they said they looked at Breaking Point and they looked
at why people weren't running Breaking Point and decided to
make these specific shifts into this card.
And similarly they did that for the other two as well.
Art of the Dragon Fire is just fucking nutso when you compare
it to the Uprising counterpart. The Uprising counterpart is
Searing Touch which is A1 for three that unruptured deals too
damage to any target and Art of the Dragon fire is A1 for five
that if you can turn draconic deals too damaged. 01 for seven
at rare. Sheesh, chase the tails of the
justing. Chase the tail eyes go again
this. Is so true.
Best team? This is also direct damage like
unstoppable. Hopefully they print some
prevention effects. Card that's good, surely?
Prevention effects right audience.
Reckless swing, except I'm attacking.
Not so. I mean, also just for me.
I'm just imagining the one cartoon of well I'm going to
lose my fealty anyway, might as well just throw 7 at you by
destroying this fealty. Yeah.
Find Find All's One card 7 not so yeah, not so world Yep.
So like there's some stuff happening here that like I'm a
little it's just I'm really wondering why did they feel like
they felt this necessary? Like because the quest feels
easier to me because of brand with cinder claw and fealty
tokens. Again, it's all dependent, but
these could have been 4 power, right?
Yeah, these could have been two blocks, right?
A lot of ninja attacks are two blocks.
Don't get right fuzzy. Back me up on that.
Any Yeah, yeah. It's like the starters are but
the combo cards are three. If it naturally has go again,
it's gonna block for. It's gonna have block for two,
yeah. OK, and this doesn't have go
again, so it gets the block for three.
That's in line with Ninja's designs.
I also am wondering like and this is me taking a shot of the
dark. Spoilers might.
Would be completely wrong, sure, but because Draconic Ninja can
make other things draconic by way of Brain of Silly Claw, LSS
probably assumes we're going to run 6 at least, not or at least
6 up to 9 of this card. Maybe the quest to mark and get
Field E tokens is a bit harder in Syndrome for that reason.
We don't know yet. I really doubt that LSS will
make it asymmetrical like that, but there are more ways to make
things draconic. Currently a Ninja, so maybe
they're making a little bit harder and that's why these
cards seem a little pushed at rare that that could be my only
guess really, yeah. Cuz I mean mainly just the fact
that like it couldn't be just that efficient off of like a
filthy token makes it really scary in my eyes.
I think it's a big card to keep your eye on part of the dragon
fire. And just sort of as a closing
point for this pitch, I kind of want to bring up the last of the
Art of the Dragon cards. And it's contemporary in
Uprising. So in Uprising we got Liquefy,
which has the same effect as Art of the Dragon scale, which is
when this hits a hero put in -1 counter on an equipment they
control, and then if that equipment has zero, destroy it.
Now Liquify is a reaction that costs one that needs to be put
on the 4th chain link. That's kind of a big ask, right?
It also gives it an on hit. You're not even guaranteed the
equipment destruction. And it doesn't give any extra
power either. So like it's it's really, really
hard to pull off liquefy. I don't think I I've seen
uprising in a few lists, right? I've seen breaking points played
in limited. I don't think I've ever seen
anyone ever run this car. It's like in 2022-2023, they
were like, we don't we want to be really careful and judicious
about destroying other people's tunics.
Yeah. And now in 2025, they're like,
kill the tunic. Yeah, they're like we power
crept equipment, so now we're printing more shit to deal with
equipment. They printed a whole here.
To counter equipment. So yeah, now I think they're
gonna be a bit more liberal with how we interact with armor in
this game for sure. Definitely, which I love
personally, and I think moving it from the power of the
reaction step to an attack action, two block to three block
and putting it on the attack right, the one for five, once
again, the slightly easier quest in my mind, in my opinion.
I think it's going to be really interesting to see if that sees
any particular play because I think it's a little bit
different, right? Because remember what I was
thinking about Arsenal disruption of like maybe they
just don't have an Arsenal. Maybe they have the D reactant
Arsenal, They're always going to have an equipment baby.
You're always going to find. Like if you do the big long
chain link and you throw this at the end of it, it's going to be
doing a lot more. Yeah.
And even on leaner turns, again, you are demanding cards because
if that hits it can completely ruin a person's turn or even
gain. Yeah, because, yeah, we're
seeing a lot of like really key pieces of equipment that people
want to hang onto. Tunic, for one, you know,
obviously like Traverse for the Mystic heroes, like maybe they
haven't transcended yet and you're threatening this.
I mean, notably it has to be a one block.
It has to be on one block because it can only give a
single -1 block counter and then if it has zero, destroy.
I see. Got it.
So so the two block. Blade brakes are safe for now.
You could destroy pouncing paws. No, yeah, I don't even have a
cold spoil yet. What do you mean?
Yeah. So those were the three cards
and their parallels that I wanted to talk about sort of
draw attention to where we saw these similar effects, but how
they were printed in different ways between the two sets.
And hopefully we see some other cards that sort of evolved
Draconic and what a Draconic is trying to do, because I think
it's really interesting. Got it.
So Joel cheated by choosing a card that wasn't actually from
Uprising. You cheated by choosing a whole
suite of cards from Uprising that are also a whole suite of
cards in the Haunted. I mean, what can I say I mean.
I'm gonna cheat in Blue Pitch by picking a card that doesn't
directly relate to anything in the haunted, but instead the
haunted meta that we're going to be going in can't.
Trust these fucking podcasters man.
We, it's like we set up the premise of the episode that we
just like, slapped it out of our own.
Hands. Not in my house.
You're in your own house. Why didn't they just do what
they said or something? If we had commenters, they'd be
like. Why did they say this and then
not even talk about it? Firstly, Arctic incarceration.
Let's talk about Arctic incarceration.
So I really just chose this card as a representative for ice.
You know, it does the most straightforward ice thing.
I'll read you Arctic incarceration.
Arctic incarceration is a common uprising, 144 through 146.
The red pitch. Sorry.
So specific. Here's the second.
Are you fucking nerd? It's an ice non attack action
that blocks for two. The red Arctic incarceration
creates 3 frostbites under target heroes control all the
way to the blue Arctic incarceration will only make one
frostbite. Who knows what the yellow 1
does. Not really relevant, no one ever
played that one. I don't need to know what the
yellow one does, so no. But the people did play the
yellow one in limited. That's why you like limited.
Oh yeah, limited. Yeah, they made two frostbites
in limited. Not sure what it did in CC.
Did nothing in CC because they went man in CC.
And I feel like Arctic incarceration has two kind of
modes. You're either like playing the
red one and giving someone like the closest thing you have to a
shit ton of frostbites because three frostbites is basically an
entire card out of your hand that they have to pitch if they
have a blue. If they don't have a blue, then
they're really mad at you for playing red.
Arctic Incarceration. I don't see it in your notes, so
I'm also going to bring up that Lexi could also flip it with the
hero ability. Oh yeah, Give one frostbite and
then give them three more. So that's a blue.
Plus another card. It's definitely something I
wanted to talk about with this pitch where with all ice cards,
especially the ones who use them to like great effect, you know,
like think of Lexi with Arctic incarceration.
She did this all the time, but especially Icelander playing
these ice cards got you extra value on top of it.
So Arctic Incarceration was spending your entire action
point, you know, you're saying no more aggression for this turn
and I'm going to make some frostbites and probably put a
little bit of extra value on top.
Lexi could flip it to give you an extra frostbite.
So you could give 4 frostbites with one card.
And at that point, the parody becomes like a little bit more
skewed towards more value that your opponent has to give you or
overcome compared to the value that you get from the card
itself and. Also similarly, I just won't
point out Yarl, also in a similar vein to Lexi, can play
it and create an extra frostbite provided the opponent has an
empty equipment. Right, right.
Yeah. And I think that's part of what
makes the ice card seem a little bit, I don't want to say
unbalanced yet, but when you're looking at the face value of
Arctic incarceration, it's card for card.
I play a card, you have to pitch a card.
And it almost feels a little bit skewed for the opponent's favor,
because if I'm pitching a card and you're playing a card, then
I'm going to win on fatigue, you know?
So you're giving me cards to do this defensive maneuver, to do
this disruption, but if I have enough Blues to compensate, then
you're actually going to lose in the long run because you can't,
like, just play cards like this and expect to win eventually,
you know? Yeah, but.
It puts a pressure on the Blues in their hand, right?
Yeah. Something that I've learned a
lot playing Viscera is like what makes Ruin Chance strong is the
fact that you have to give me the Blues, which you want to
keep to attack me back. Ice more than any other class or
talent in my opinion. OK, except me for maybe wizard.
It fights you at a deck building basis.
Normally if I put Blues in my deck, I have a plan for them.
I picked a number of Blues to go in because I want to draw
exactly this many in order to make my game plan work.
You know, maybe I only wanted to draw 1 blue pair turn and I
wanted to pitch that blue for my three Reds.
But Icelanders, like you're gonna have to give me a little
bit more than that. You're gonna hope you have the
wrong number of Blues in order to have it become the right
number. And that's the deck building
question that you have to have an answer to.
And I hated it. Yeah.
That was rough. I feel like I flunked that test
every time. Yeah, and, and sort of harkening
to what Joel was saying in his red pitch with Tome of Imperial
Flame, right? Like if there's any ice in this
meta, a red line list that's trying to generate Rinchant
through playing a card, you're never gonna get the chance.
Yeah, because those frostbites are gonna stop you from ever
generating them. Yeah, while we're in flashback
mode. I played Briar at the time that
Icelander was popular, and I'm playing 0 cost cards, right?
I wanted my cards to cost zero. I didn't want my cards to cost
extra. What?
Or two or three? The fuzzy got to picture Earth
Blues to keep channeling out her.
Yeah, that's synergy, baby. I guess a little bit of a
question I have for you guys is like, oh, do you think that
what's the worst number of frostbites to get?
Like obviously more frostbites is worse, right?
But which frostbite think do you think slows you down the most?
Is it the first one? The second one?
The third one? The second one really pisses me
off. Yeah, 1 frostbite.
Sometimes he feels like I can deal with.
It I'm like you you silly bitch, I'll pay for it 2.
Oh God, yeah, 'cause with one frostbite you can still like
blue into CNC, right, Right. And that's like, I'm still
playing flesh and blood, but once it's two frostbites, then
like, what are you doing? Like pitching a blue to play A1
cost and that feels a little bit more even, or you're gonna have
to like, somehow like, do the math to spread that cost out
across like 2 Blues into a really complex hand.
Yeah. And then you're not blocking
like at all, right? Yeah, I mean, 4 is the worst,
right? Oh my God.
Four. 4 is like the you got it. You got my turn.
Thank you. Yeah.
At that point it's way more worth for your cards just to
like block, yeah. Yeah, but at the same time, I
guess it's also so matchup dependent because if I'm a
guardian and you give me 4 Blues, I go cool.
Or 4 frostbites, I go cool. I'm going to like pitch my
rednecks to two Blues and I'm going to like throw anathos for
six. And like, yes, you took away my
crippling turn, my dominated crippling turn.
That sucks, but I just got to put it at the bottom of my deck
and we're getting there, baby. We know we're getting there and
you just let me pitch stack that.
That's true. Which is almost kind of nice
when you have that main frostbite, but when it's just
one frostbite, you're like, bitch, I wanted to dominate
crippling you and now I can. Do you think at the time that
Arctic incarceration was printed, it was a measured print
by LSS? Because ice is like the hardest
control that we've gotten, right?
Arctic incarceration is a control card, right?
You cannot push aggression with Arctic unless maybe you have
like frost. Text from Icelander.
Or your Lexi and you just get to do all this aggro and then play.
It well, even if you're playing it right, it's to cover your
aggression to stop them from fighting back.
It's still controlling what the opponent can do in order to make
sure your game plan works. Do you feel like this is a
conservative design from LSS? Do you think like they thought
that three frostbites was going to be like, really good?
Do you think like. I think they knew it was going
to be good. I think they just saw it as like
well, this takes their action point.
The way that I'm looking at it is it's the parallel of this
card versus winter's bite, which is the same rate like it says 0
cost non attack action. But this one has go again and it
instead of giving frostbite take taxes.
So I blew it taxes for one resource or discard a card.
Yellow is 2 and then red is 3 so that's demanding an entire card
as well yeah. But I think the frost bites
because you know, it's your only action, like whenever your
opponent has one card, you're kind of like, OK, what can they
possibly do? Are they just arsenally D react?
Oh, it's Arctic incarceration. I kind of have to like deal with
that now and I don't really have agency winners.
By is also really impactful because you can do it at the
start of return with the rest of my cards in hand.
And now I have to like do a lot of planning ahead of time.
So Arctic incarceration seems like the least annoying of the
cards, but like more definitive, whereas frostbite is like
there's a lot more skills expression in how you use it.
Winter's bite. What did I say?
Frostbite. Yeah, Winter's bite.
Sorry. I think that Arctic
incarceration is 100% more powerful.
That's why it doesn't have go again, right?
Because they can see that like, yes, there is a world where
Arctic incarceration, just like winter's bite, only takes three
resources. Whether that's three resources
now or three resources when they try to play their first card, it
doesn't matter because it's just another blue, right?
It says have a blue in hand, whereas Martic Incarceration,
unlike Winter's Bite, has the ability to stop the opponent
from ever playing any of their cards because they do not have
that blue. Or the player can choose to
retain their blue and get rid of one of the Reds they were going
to play and maybe instead swing their weapon or dump that into a
Grasp of the Ark Knight. Right.
That that distinct difference of being of like sometimes
literally just full stopping their turn, I think makes a
difference between whether or not it had go again or not.
And you know, I'm not sure because like you said, it
doesn't create any real proactive value.
It doesn't generate anything to further their game plan of
winning. It just gives tempo.
Yeah. So again, part of the reason why
I chose this card for my pitch today, Arctic Incarceration, is
that ice is going to be coming back into the meta.
Actually, it's already here. We've gotten a new Armory deck,
Yarl, and this new season might be his chance to shine because
Draconic Heroes, especially if they're trying to play only
Reds, are going to be really weak to disruption in the form
of resource taxing. You know that these frostbites
might be like really good ways of catching a thing or a Syndra
off guard, and we could maybe see Yarl get a little bit more
presence in the meta. I do kind of think he's a little
bit held back right now because he has a really bad match up
into Pollutionists, you know? Well, you see, that's actually
interesting. Fuzzy because he just has a bad
match up into Enigma. His Prism match up is apparently
fantastic because Prism no longer has the ability to use
Tomb of Divinity to like vomit a bunch of auras onto the field
and like take over from there. So it's actually just Enigma and
New, because I think a lot of Guardians really hate the fact
that like New exists and she can steal their good powerful Blues,
which has always been an inherent strength in the
Guardian class. But even with him being held
back, I think we should be prepared for him to be a part of
the meta, and I think Yarl could be a great way for us to see
what LSS thinks the future of ice design should look like.
Yeah, right now every aggro player is just Squidward in the
Chrome. They're in that Chrome world.
Because I think we've heard statements from LSS that
basically they thought that ice was a little bit toxic where the
frostbites were able to get too much value out of controlling
your opponent, and they were looking for ways that they can
do ice differently in the future.
And sort of like loosely, we all kind of agree that Spectra
wasn't a good design and they're going to move away from that,
but to a much lesser extent. And I think I actually like
where they landed with URL, where you have to do some kind
of quest, maybe something that your opponent was going to do
anyway. But you're telling your
opponent, hey, like I have to do these things before I can really
get my ice value out, get these frostbites going and I can still
get like some of them. But it's not like Icelander
where she was able to play a blue Arctic Incarceration and
give you 2 frostbites without even spending an action point,
you know? Yeah, that's crazy Just for
Arsenal, England. Too.
Yeah, like just which was the easiest thing in the world.
To do, yeah. Or like Lexi who could give you
4 frostbites off of 1 red Arctic incarceration.
You know Yarl can still do that if you have an empty equipment
zone and you can't do it much more than like once or twice per
turn. Yeah, and I know this pitch is
not about Yarl, but I love that it is.
Playing into Yarl is like there's this sort of mini game,
especially with him. It's like, OK, I need to be
really conservative about my armor blocks.
Can't be Willy nilly just because it's a guardian, because
as soon as I do, I turn on. Yeah.
So that agency that it gives players or opponents of the ice
hero is such a unique interaction and it makes me like
look back on their promised about frostbites not returning
in the same way they've printed it in the past.
And Yaros are really good embodiment of that because even
though it's like still frostbites and in its own, so
it's technically different, there's also that extra layer of
I need to make not bad decisions, but decisions in the
game that result in me, like leaving myself open to
disruption. Yeah.
To look a little bit wider in terms of scope, right?
We had Tales of Arya as the first set where ice was
introduced, and then we have Uprising where we get the second
set of ice being introduced. Presumably there's going to be a
third set in the future where we're going to get ice again,
right? So we can really see the
evolution of ice as it's come by.
And I think counter play to ice is one of the clearest things
that they've decided needs to be more present.
Or Icelanders simply did not feel like she had the counter
play. Not only did you have to play
into her wizard and that had to change everything that you were
doing, you also had to play into ice and that was changing
everything that you were doing and simply saying run 8 more
Blues because Wizard, arcane Barrier and ice, it didn't make
enough of a difference. Yeah.
So it it's going to be, I think
really, really interesting the next time that we see ice.
I'm also really just just talking because this whole pitch
was supposed to be about Uprising, right?
It was weird that Ice was in Uprising.
Yeah. Like thematically?
Yeah. Yeah, technically like.
Slander just in the lore got sort of teleported there because
a big tree said so. OK, I was about to give you a
lore explanation, but even that was more than I know.
Yeah, she went to a big tree and the tree was like, you need to
be in Volcor. And then she was like, what the
fuck? I kind of liked the ice and fire
like aesthetic of the set, you know?
Yeah, it was just like all fire all the time.
I probably would have gotten bored quickly even as is.
Like, I don't think there's enough aesthetically going on in
Uprising. I wish there was more, you know,
because like over half the set. Is this like fire motif, you
know? Yeah, and I think it's one of
the reasons why, you know, they went to Chaos and Assassin here
in the Haunted. Like, I think because they
recognize that Vocord is a very large place that they've decided
to not give a lot of, or at least not too much diversity
too, at least as we've seen so far, yeah.
Yeah, Clark, I would agree. Like, I am really excited to see
like, what happens when we see ice for the third time.
I don't like outright hate the talent.
I think it has a cool place and it's fun to play with every once
in a while. So I'm excited to see if it's
going to be something where it feels healthy and a nice
addition to the game, you know? All right, I think I'm ready to
move on to our Arsenal zone. Yeah.
Well, let's do it. Wait, what's the Arsenal zone
again? Joel, thank you for asking.
The Arsenal Zone is the part of our podcast where we talk about
a card we love, a card we hate, a card we love to hate, or a
card that just kind of fucking is there in our chaff pile.
Let's start off with Fuzzy. I have a card that's in my
draft, my chaff pile. You personally were calling me
out on that one and I'm aiming to deliver.
I do it too. We had a Tales of Arya draft at
my house recently. Oh, oh, wait.
This past Sunday. Yeah.
Yeah, OK, OK. You could have been there.
I thought you talked about it. You would have.
Been our eighth, Yeah, we literally needed an eighth, but.
Why didn't you say anything? I think you got an eighth.
No, I never told you I got an eighth, bro.
You said no, so we respected that, yeah.
Well I assumed you would get 8 because you want a UPR draft.
I did want a UPF draft. So you, you led with that.
If we had eight, if we had eight, I would have pushed
harder for. You to get one.
What's that? What's I call it Catch 22?
Yeah, So anyway, I was drafting and I drafted in a way, I've
drafted Telesavario like a half dozen times, which is kind of a
lot considering that it came out way before I started playing,
you know. But the boxes are so cheap that
I like to buy them for cheap and then draft them here.
You know, it's like a cheap draft.
It's great. I drafted a hero Briar and I
drafted Briar in a way that I've never really drafted her before
where I really focused on the arcane damage.
You know, I actually don't think I've been able to draft Briar
Intel Zavaria at all because usually Han takes every ball
lightning. It's a thing.
He takes every ball lightning
and he cuts everyone out of ball lightning.
We. Stopped them this time baby.
I've got two of the red ball lightnings.
I. Opened both of those ball
lightnings and I passed them away from Han.
To me, and that's fine because I fed you back with the sting of
sorcery. Yeah, it was great.
We were colluding Han that really at the end of the draft
he goes where were off the ball lightnings.
It was great. But I'm drafting this very
arcane centric build where I pack one, picked 1 to flicker
wisp your arcane does extra. And then I started grabbing
inspire lightnings. Inspire lightning is the card
that I'm shouting at today for arsenal zone.
It is A1 cost non attack elemental rune blade action.
It has A2 block which becomes three if you got your embodiment
of earth. It's got lightning fusion and if
you have fused the red will deal 3 arcane damage to target hero.
It has to fuse to deal any damage, which makes the hardest
lightning replacement that we got in the 1st strike Aurora
deck better. What did you get?
What was it like in the? That's Lightning Flow, Lightning
3, Arcane OH. OK.
Yeah, that's a lot easier. Yeah.
So my draft is really fun. These are like unblockable
damage. It's very similar to Rosetta
Draft where there's no arcane barrier running around.
So this is just like 3 damage to the face.
And if you can get enough of these going, then like if you
play them on turn 03, damage to the face.
If you can get them near the end, yeah.
They think they're safe because they have three life, 3 damage
to the face. So true.
Knock them out, yeah. That's how Fuzzy beat me.
So Inspire Lightning, thank you for making my last draft really
spicy. I also went 30 that draft and I
was not really expecting that because I was looking at these
arcane damage cards and I'm like one for three damage, no go
again arcane. Damage in a set with no AVS?
Pretty fucking good. Who defunct it?
Pretty solid and. I brought a copy for each of you
to own. I will sign it and give it to
you as my present because you are my fellow hosts and I like
you. One for you and one for.
You. Thank you, Fuzzy.
OK, I think I'm up next. Yeah, sure.
For my card I want to talk about Lightning Press.
Oh God yeah, I've been thinking about lightning Press a lot
lately for sure. Yeah, so Aurora's fucking
annoying and lightning press is annoying.
It's crazy that she gets to have lightning press in every hand.
04. Why am I trying to block you?
Just just give me the damage. Tell me how low my life needs to
go. We need to, we need to make a
meme image of like Fuzzy declaring no blocks and Hans
looking over his shoulder with a lightning press going he doesn't
know. Or he goes and this is a secret
tool we'll use for later. Lightning Press is really,
really strong, but I also kind of really dislike one element of
its design, which is that everyone just plays it in the
reaction step. Yeah, yeah.
Like why is this an instant? It's an instant for synergy
reasons. Except there's also anti
synergy. At least when this was printed
there was no reason for this to be an instant in my personal
opinion. Right.
It made it horrible to Arsenal even if it was a reaction.
It would have been horrible to Arsenal, but like it wasn't a
good Arsenal target because as Lexi, if you put it in Arsenal,
you know, no longer have an Arsenal slot to load an arrow
into to then put this on top of. So like it's not good to like
Arsenal. I guess it's good because you
confuse with it and then play it on that card, but then you're
revealing it. So like you got rid of the
instant nature of the card. Yeah, and you could do all that
with an attack reaction. Yeah, so it just bothered me so
much that this was an instant. Obviously now they have printed
things like Fluttering Charge and Blast to Oblivion which now
have this energy and do reward it for being an instant even
though you still just play it as an attack reaction 9 times out
of 10. Like it could it be possibly
used to like trigger phantasm? Yeah, you can.
OK, so like. Which like should it be like,
yeah, why not just make it an attack reaction that like blocks
for two come? On I think also like the flavor
of lightning being. Yeah, I totally get that and I
was about to bring it up too. Lightning should be instance.
Yeah, yeah, nothing in Lightning should block, I agree.
But it's it was a card that really, really bothered me for
the longest time because I remember being like, oh, I can
declare this after you pass on defense reactions.
Then it's like, no, no, you can't do that.
And I'm like, oh then what the fuck is that instant?
Yeah, that's I have. So I have a lot of new players
asking me that. They're like, so it's like an
attack reaction. Why was it different child?
Let's pretend it's not for now. Yeah.
And and then also just plus 3 is so awkward on the 0 for fours
from Aurora because you want to give the 0 for four block
because if you give a three block and they're over by one,
they just won't play lightning press.
They'll just be like, OK, take one eye and get all my on hits.
Yeah, but if you give them the zero for 4D react, then they're
like cool lightning press on top of it and you're like, Oh my
God, I don't have another D React to give to this and it's
frustrating. Yeah, yeah, fuck that card,
Lightning. Press annoying.
Good. I'm happy that they gave it more
use cases for it to actually be an instant.
I couldn't even use it back when I was playing Briar because it
doesn't. It's not an attack or a non
attack and she's just like so greedy to do those other.
Things You're a thug and you're using twine lightning like a.
Freak. Yeah, I guess people were
playing Lightning press on Briar and it was, it was put it in
some work. I didn't like it that much.
That was my card, Jill, what about you?
So for my card, I just wanted to highlight the fact that Warrior
finally got a 04 attack action card with Go again.
Wow, Blaze headlong and you might recognize this because it
was already printed in uprising. Blaze headlong is a 0 cost 2
block for a power attack action and it says if you played
another red card, this gets go again, which is like gas.
It's better than every other Bolton card and in terms of
warrior attack reactions pretty solid.
And I think it's going to see a lot of good use cases in Fang
because especially with long whisker loyalty, Clark was
saying that you need at least three chain links.
And I was like, oh, it kind of does, huh?
So this is a really good way of extending your turn without
needing any other requirements to get go again, you just need
to play red card and boom, you're good to go.
So I'm really looking forward to playing this card, being more
aggressive as a Warrior and whatever other equivalent we get
in the Haunted that is specifically Draconic Warrior,
yeah. It's going to be so so cool to
see if like this can final if Fang can finally be Viagra
warrior with Blaze headlong. Yeah, yeah.
Like if you're adding Draconic to it, it's got to be pretty
good, right? I finally have my red 0 for
four. You guys had to fight so long to
get your blade flurry. It's still conditioned for.
Real. For real.
But now you have Blaze headlong baby.
Yeah, you have your zero for four or I guess 20 of, but you
got this one we're so. Back.
We just need one and we'll take over the world.
Well, Congrats, Joel. Thanks.
Yeah, that's my card. Short and sweet.
Yeah, sweet. Thank you guys for potting with
me and hype for the Haunted. Oh yeah, remember, you can only
get spoilers at Pitch It to be there.
You know the spoilers, they've been on our Discord, getting all
the spoilers at our Discord, but.
If you really want to talk with the community that probably
cares a lot about card design, like I honestly think that we're
one of the best discords out there for that.
True, So true. Best team.
All right, intellectual guys. Bye.
Digit to Me podcast is hosted by Fuzzy Delt, Clark Moore and Joel
Racinos. Our executive producer is Talon
Stradley, Logistics Coordinator John Farkas.
Music by Dylan Halls, Logo by Han V and sound mixing by
Christopher Moore. Last but not least, we'd like to
thank you, the listener. Thank you for tuning in.
Please give us a follow on your favorite social media platform
at Pitch It to Me podcast. Joel, thank you for asking too
much. Too much against final tablets.
Bring it to A10.