FaB is a Multi-Format Game

Welcome to Pitch It to Me podcast, a show about the subjective past, present, and potential future of Fletch and Blood design. In this episode, we'll talk about the latest band and restricted announcement, as well as how Legend Story Studios handles the game. Having a variety of formats, You can find us across all socials such as Blue Sky and Instagram at Pitch It to Me Podcast. I'm Clark. I'm Buzzy and I'm Joel. So an apartment update. We still don't have a dining

room, but we do now have a functional kitchen. Yeah, we have. Forks. We have forks. We have spoons, we have knives, we have a cutting board. I did see a pan in there somewhere. Too, we do have three pole pans. Well, I mean. And how old are you guys again? Look, it's been. Low blow, man. What the fuck? It's. Been a long fucking week my guy. Like, OK, OK, never mind. Forget. I asked. You know what? Also, Crucible has been a little fun this this time around, I'm not going to lie.

I I picked a good format this month, yeah. I didn't think this was going to be as good as it was. So it's you have to run 10 copies of each card that you put in the deck. Yeah, all of the same color. Yes, so you could run 10 blue copies of disable I best know for random card to pick. So like in one of my decks I'm running 10 channel like frigids and I'm running 10 blue windows

by looking channel. Like frigids every single red line deck that was like oh good I can have consistent red line deck just immediately shit their pants. That's part of the fun of the format is like your six card idea is going to have strengths and weaknesses and you can exploit those strengths. You can fall to your bad

matchups. You know, it's it can feel very rock paper scissory, but just is really fun to be able to say like look, I've always wanted to build a deck around these 4 cards and I'm really mad I have to throw other cards into my deck already. With this format you don't have to worry about that. You just run the cards you want to run. It is.

It is the essence of the play. Yeah, in case you have no idea what we're talking about, Crucible is our monthly rotating changing format that I put on every month as part of our Patreon rewards, but we also post the format publicly so anybody can build a deck and jam games on our Discord if they want. Yeah, we've also already played the first round and all three hosts won their first round. I mean, what can I say? Guess we're just go to like

that. It it also sort of feels like, and maybe this isn't always the case, but I feel like with like video game developers, they're always really good at the games that they design. The deck that I was playing was fine, but the decks that I've done the best on were the ones that I ripped straight from Clark, so I feel like it's really. Funny how you're like, oh, we're playing the same hero. Oh yeah, that card's just way better. Oh yeah, that shit card's just

way better. Like at first I was trying to have fun with it. I like I built Embolden. Like I think last week I talked about how I really wanted to play Embolden in CC Embolden. It's the aura that draws a card if you have an aura out already. And I figured it'd be really good in this format. And it was OK. It was like a fun deck to test against other people who were like, oh, I don't think my deck is very good.

And I'm like, well, let's see if it can beat this, you know, and it's much better to do like Oakenold. Much better to just throw Oakenold for 9 off of the same crumble six turns in a row. Yeah, much, much better. Joel, do you want to tell us what you've been playing in Crucible? No, I figured that would be your answer. I have a record to protect. I have screenshots of Joel giving us his record at an RTN and it's a draft RTN so there's only so much you can do as far

as secret sauces. But his discord messages are one O on Secret Hero 2O on secret hero 3 O on secret hero because at that. Point. We're not in his. Pod Yeah, like once you have three wins, that that information doesn't do anything for you, right. But it's still a secret like you never. I still don't know why Hero he was playing that event. I'm not gonna give you access to data like that. An old place for keeps. Dude. He's he's all fucking around here. So funny.

Crucible monthly rotating format with you get nothing for winning. That'll be, that'll be and you're like, no. No, I won't tell you what I'm. Playing the Captain America mean no, I don't think it will. I had fun screenshotting those messages. So for today's episode, we're going we've we've given you a month now of like hard hitting intelligent dev conversation because we're just talking about the BNR in the upcoming skirmish season. So we just had to ban and

restrict an announcement. Typically whenever those come out, we like to at least work it into something that we talked about. And with skirmish season on the horizon, there were no CC changes, but there were blitz and living legend changes. And so we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about how LSS sort of handles doing dev work for multiple different formats and we are going to talk about why you should play in Skirmish season.

So with that in mind, Joel, why don't you take it away? Why don't you lead us through red pitch with the ban and restricted announcement? Yeah.

So I I really don't think this is a surprise to anybody, but there are no changes in CCI feel like whenever a hero LLS, that in itself is a very big change to the meta game. We already talked about Viceroy a 72 living legend status last episode. So I'm not going to dive into that too much. So obviously the no changes to CC are basically to see what happens, who's taking advantage of this extra space in the meta game. So you guys have any other thoughts about why we did not

see any changes in CC? I don't think there's like a demon of CC. Yeah, right. There's no one for the community to very easily point their ire at other than like individual play styles and things that players don't like. Right, Right. I play aggro. I don't like new, I play guardian. I don't like Enigma, you know, like, but outside of that, it didn't feel like there was a universally like, man, fuck this strategy. Yeah, going on. Cyb wasn't dominating the meta

but it still got banned right? Yeah, so because there was so many people complaining about it. And on top of that, I think they were come back complaining came from somewhere legitimate, which is that there isn't enough tools to deal with this strategy or the tools that exist don't do a good enough job, right? And but I don't feel like that's the case right now in this meta. I think Syndra could have very easily been a deck that felt like nobody could really be.

And yet we see plenty of heroes that have been above and have remained above her in terms of RTN wins globally. So it's not like she has become some overwhelming force. Yeah, I think the next best I can format is going to be Aurora. And I don't think that Aurora is like, at an unhealthy level of strength. Yeah. She's annoying because everything swings for four, but it's not like game breaking.

They're still slink below. Yeah, and there's still clear weaknesses, yeah and in the decks and strategies like Aurora runs 0 poppers, so Prism is just this like really solid anti meta strategy, but then Aurora. But then Prism also has 32 health so Aurora can like really threaten that life total. Yeah. Aside from that though, Blitz got a lot of really unprecedented changes #1 Crown of Seeds got unbanned, and Traverse the Universe and Zephyr Needle were both banned. Yeah.

So those were the. Changes like I do and don't understand the Crown of Seeds unbanning because it was very strong when Oldham used it and there's like three people that can use it now as compared to two the last time it was legal. So it just seems like it's going to be a very interesting meta game for sure. Yarl can't be played in blitz. No, he cannot. There's no baby yarl. That is silly. Well. I would like to see a baby yarl. Do you think we're going to see

his face? No no, we'll probably have like a smaller mask. Traverse, Traverse the universe and Zephyr needle. I understand why they were banned though. Zephyr Needle was also banned before the release of the Haunted because of. I mean they're they're. If you have been paying attention to CC at all you already know why Brian Go does

not like that card specifically. But Traversal Universe is interesting to me because they unbanned Zen and increased the amount of living legend points and banned A. Few of his key cards in blitz and they thought like, let's take it a step further so that he doesn't elegant. I don't think it's not just a step further. I think it's also to slow down Enigma. Like I think just the ability to tutor out a chi does way more in

blitz than it does in CC maybe. Yeah, sort of in the way of like any equipment that says this is now a power turn is going to be more powerful in blitz than in CC, because in CC you have twice the life to absorb that power turn, Yeah, than in blitz. And you know one thing they mentioned in the article is that you have a higher density of chi cards when you can only run one copy of each one and your deck is. 60.

Like 40 instead of 60. Then you're gonna have like way more control over the ratio of cheat cards do you want to have in your deck. And you can like transcend turn 0 or turn one way more commonly in blitz than in CC. True, and it means a lot more in blitz since you're already at 20 live. Yeah, notably Mask of the Pouncing Links was banned a long time ago when Benji and Phi were

around. So Zen basically has like Mask of Momentum and like the the mask of recurring whiskers or what's the the one where you put a pop combo card on the bottom of? Your that is Whiskers. Yeah, Mask of Whiskers. Why isn't whiskers? So yeah, I'm really interested to see how much that traverse specifically impacts the meta, but Tara seems like he's gonna be fucking insane. Also Living Legend.

I mean, my eyes always kind of glaze over it whenever I see Living Legend changes, but I think this is a pretty big one. The electromagnetic somersault has been restricted, which is the one that lets you return action cards on the combat chain to your hand at the end of the resolution step. And with Aurora, this card's really annoying. But like, if you're returning Crippling Crush, Starstruck or Okanal to your hand for like a second use on the following

turn, Man, that seems absurd. Yeah, it's so interesting because the electromagnetic somersault, that red can return A0 cost or higher. And that yellow, it's A1 cost or higher, and then a blue it's A2 cost or higher, which really matters for Aurora, right? Because like you really want it to be red so that you can get your nice red 0 for fours and avoid pitching on your turn, right? But Guardian just runs the Blues and is super happy.

Yeah. So there is 0 downside to Starvo running 3 blue electromagnetic somersaults. So now he can block 6 and return them both to his hand with a blue. Yeah, Starvo got a lot of really good and I don't think this is something we talked about in the pod yet, but he got a lot of really good. Sorry, I don't think we've talked about this on the pod at all, but he Starbuck got a lot of really good upgrades in Rosetta because Electro all the like lightning Blues were super

bad when he was relevant. So the fact that he got current funnel and electromagnetic electromagnetic somersault just skyrocketing back to like the same power level that he entered a living legend with. For sure and it's so funny to me every time like a card gets banned and or restricted in living legend, it's always like other heroes that are catching the catching the heat. Like Aurora is just like excited to play Art of War and Tomo Fine Doll in Living Legend, I assume.

But like suddenly she can't play like electromagnetic Somersault because Starvo's taking it. And because Starvo has so many talents that like, if you look at the roster, there's like 10 heroes on that list out of the 45 that you can run other than Starvo that might get cards banned just because they share a talent with the strongest hero in the format. And that's a really funny dynamic.

It's like this little like subcategory of like people of like heroes that might lose cards has nothing to do with them being like unfair necessarily. Yeah, that's so funny. And there's only like 2 cards on the band list that have nothing to do with Starvo. It's Bonds of Ancestry and Open the Floodgates. It's almost like Starvo wants a really broken overpowered hero. I can't wait for the day we finally get the next like, well,

I mean, I can't wait. But it would be really funny if we saw a hero that was stronger than Starvo in some way. Like, oh. My gosh, I guess you could technically say that like Shane has that. Capability. Yeah, but he's not winning the same way he is, but the same way Starvo is. Yeah, At least not yet. I mean, Monarch 3 point. I might have something to say about that. I should also mention Kraken's Ether Vane. You're right, you're right. There are three cars.

I misspoke a little bit earlier and. Arguably, Cracker's aether vein was the most broken. Yeah, yeah, that was pretty bad. That was pretty bad. So. Funny. 31 Draw 30. Also a commoner got a ban and restricted update which is not all that common. Wink wink. They lost, or they So in that format, Waning Moon, Zephyr Needle and Rosetta Thorne were all banned and Ball Lightning was unbanned. Holy shit, that's.

Fucking wild. They took the weapons from three of the top heroes, namely Chain, Icelander and Ira. And those heroes will probably still be pretty viable without their weapons. But like the weapon is the game plan and commoner like you. Just when you have the best weapons in the format, you build your deck around those weapons, you know? And they're gone now. And surely there are better options, but it's a big meta shake up. Yeah, it really, really is.

And also, Fuzzy and I were talking before the pod, we're sort of talking about how enigma and reality fracture with like the big ward attacks are the best deck in the format. And comparing that to like what was banned, it seems like she's only going to get stronger because Waning Moon can at instant speed get, you know, threatened damage to destroy these spectral Shields while they're talking now they can't.

Zephyr Needle also just insanely aggressive option and Rosetta Thorne having the two into arcane. That's like usually unless you have AB three, you're usually destroying the wards. Yeah. And also, so with these changes, I think not only does Enigma get a lot stronger, but I think it opens up the door for more heroes to like, find more aggressive options. Because like, if you're like a ninja, you can probably deal

with Enigma pretty well. But if you're also getting hammered by Icelander and Chain, I don't think you're getting anywhere close to the top tables, you know? Yeah, one of the reasons why I've stayed away from commoner in the past is because I feel like it's just a few decks. It doesn't feel like actually an open meta where I can play lots of different decks and experiment and be flexible.

It's like dash boost is just better numbers than everybody and you either need the like high roll potential of Chain or the disruption of Icelander or the consistent grind value of IRA to beat them. And if you're not doing that, then why are you playing this format? Which is wrong. It was a wrong assumption, and if I actually bothered to play the format, I'd probably learned that, but it kept me away from it. Like I saw these decks just having way better numbers and

everybody else. And so it's like, well, why would I want to try to make my Enigma brew work if these decks are just going to run over me every single game? Yeah, and these sort of changes do make me want to play commoner. It just seems more accessible because like now I'm like, OK, well, the worst for worst, the worst offenders are out of the way. So maybe it opens the line up for like Kasai or Bolton or

whatever, yeah. And you know, the price to enter the format is really low because it's just Commons. Yeah, I love that. And then we also got one big shake up recently with the Blade Beckon airline that was printed in the Haunted because those are like rare equipment. They're playable in common air and the fact that they block for two actually makes them better than many, many, many equipment

that already exist. So as long as they're still swinging weapons, at some point, you're going to get 2 value out of your equipment. And it's actually like pretty Dang good. So like a lot of heroes are running those now. It's not like a huge shake up, but it's kind of interesting how commoner like we'll get the most random tools sometimes and you're like, oh, I guess that is strictly better than all the random equipment we've already

been running. And like where else are you going to use like the cold foil Commons from? Like the boxes you are, the packs you Rep? I legitimately love commoner for that. Yeah, I I've had a commoner Betsy list that's been sitting in my back pocket for a while and I've been slowly getting the cold foil because I'm like, I'll be flipping through someone's binder and I'm like old foil vigor, if you say. Yeah, like you're. So much for that.

They're like, I do not give a fuck about that card and I'm like. Like how much did it cost you to get Max rarity on your commoner deck Like. Like 5 old dollar. Yeah, Max rarity and commoners like peak masculinity. Don't have me. Oh yeah. So that's pretty much all the updates. They're pretty boilerplate. I just wanted to go over them and sort of get our thoughts on

there. I personally am very excited to play Blitz and Commodore, but I want to talk about how LSS approaches design and balances in these different formats. So let's go to our yellow pitch with Fuzzy. What do you got for? Us Oh hey, that's me. So I think it's really interesting that LSS has the

duty not just to make one awesome game, but really like 6 nice, well balanced ish, like fun creative games. But it's the same cards that are in all these games, which seems like a very challenging proposition. And I just want to talk about how hard that can be or how LSS has chose to handle it. And yeah, I want to point out that it's always been Legend Story Studios Intent for Flesh and would be played in multiple different ways with the same

cards being printed. Which is why ever since Welcome to Wraith, heroes were printed as young versions and normal versions. They're not called young and old, they're young and blank. And for most heroes across the entire like history of the game up until Rosetta, they had exactly the same hero text, they just had half the life total. Because young heroes are meant to be played for shorter games

of flesh and blood. And also notably it took a long time before those adult heroes had any other format other than classic constructed that was recommended for play. You know, we had Blitz since I assumed the early days and I. Want to say Crucible was when Blitz happened, right? It wasn't there from Welcome to Wraith, was it? Were they just for draft then? Well, they had the blitz decks for Welcome Wreath, so there was blitz even back then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the IRA, Welcome deck is also blitz. Yeah, like Blitz was before CC. Technically. Yeah, cuz the IRA welcome decks were like the prototype. So this has always been the intention of LSS and it's a little bit bold because there are clearly some strategies or cards or even heroes that are stronger in one format compared to the other. It's a challenging task to design your cards for them to be balanced in both of those formats.

And we've seen them in sometimes like sort of fail to design then in a way that's balanced for one format and not the other. Yeah, the only like saving grace is some of the power cards that they've been designing lately requires some sort of quest to be met. Like for instance, failing at the crown would be insane if it said like each player put a card from the hand on the bottom when you decompose.

But the fact that you need a threshold of earth cards to be able to get the power buff too makes it a lot less overbearing. But they haven't always done that. Yeah, you have to read your engines a bit before you get the full power of your cards or the full power of your hero. That's a pretty easy way to do it. You know, It's something that I'm not surprised.

LSS like utilizes very often. So one thing I want to discuss today, and we might not be able to get any conclusive answers because none of us actually work at Legend Story Studios yet yet. But how much work do we think they put into designing and practicing and balancing for each of these different formats? Because we know they have classic instructed.

That's their favorite format. We know they put a lot of time and concern into Classic Constructed, but they also have Blitz, Living, Legend, Commoner, Ultimate, Pit Fight, as well as Draft and Sealed for each of their limited environments. I think they put a lot of effort into draft because I think so much of their dev work has to go into balancing for draft and creating the cards for draft in limited environments.

And then probably classic constructed is their second one that they spend the most dev time on. I actually I would say that was that is my hot take. I think they spend more time designing for limited than they do for classic constructed. You know, I think that's actually kind of Fair only because draft takes a lot of time to get it the balance just right, right?

I think also like the shape and resource curves and the amounts of everything, like I think they're just way more goes into it because Designing Limited is designing the set. Well, like, I mostly I agree with that list that I think there are formats that LSS has chosen to not worry about when it comes to like what cards they print. However, I wouldn't put Blitz on that list if only because we have seen LSS specifically print heroes only meant for Blitz.

You know, when they print young only heroes, I have to assume that they're testing those heroes, they're building decks with those heroes before they're released and then seeing what they can do in at least Blitz before they like, put it out into the main world. To be fair, I think they are moving away from that, as we've seen by their push to try to print all those young only heroes with adult versions. That's true. I think the last one we saw was, was it Arachne solitary confinement?

Yeah, which would have been like a lot. That was a while ago. Outsiders. There is that one slipped through the cracks as the quote UN quote adult version even though they have slightly different text boxes. But it's so far as they talked about wanting to put Benji in part that miss failed and wanting to put data doll and bright lights. The fact that we saw Kasai got an adult version like just

consistently. I think they are trying to replace young only heroes with and give them adult versions. So I don't know how much they're still designing solely for Blitz, but I think what is actually good about all of these decks sharing the same card pool is that the same guiding principles of card design will keep things balanced across all the formats. Like as long as your red Commons with no go again can only generate 4 points of offensive value by playing it, it is an OK card right?

Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of overlap between what makes a card balanced and constructed and what makes a card balanced and blitz, you know? So I think they only really need to pay attention when there is something about the format that would break the parody. So I think that was the Earth heroes and their decomposed limit, right? They had to actually take a look at and test, well, what number should this be? How quickly should this be happening in the faster blitz

format? Right, that was kind of a radical when they decided Florian Inverdants only need 4 cards in banish for their young hero versions, but the adult heroes need 8. It's literally the only time we've seen heroes printed in young and old together have different texts. I was also going to say, look at one of the unbannings that they did. They did end up undoing it, but one of the unbannings in the past that was very interesting to me was drone brutality in

blitz. Because they're like, look, if blitz is just this incredibly fast format where aggro dominates, can we reintroduce this thing that causes longer games? Can this actually be OK in a blitz format that's way faster and way more aggro oriented then, say, CC, where Drone of Brutality is an absolute fucking monster? That would ruin the game. Yeah. And they gave it a season and turns out, yeah, it was still pretty rough, but they tested it. So I do think that they give

some attention to blitz. I think they'd certainly word some cards so that it is more UPF playable right? By being able to target any heroes or however many heroes lost life this turn. Think about Vincent's hero ability actually scales really nicely. If you can throw an attack at the player at your right and the left and if they and if everyone takes damage, then you're deathly whales. Make 3 room chants and you're deathly delight gains you three. Life now like that is fun.

It is fun to see that interaction and then take it into UPF because the wording works for it. So I think they maybe have like a team member who's like tasked with keeping their eye open and it's like, hey, if we change that wording to this, it can actually be better for UPF and more interesting there. And it doesn't change how it works in classic constructed at all. And then they go make that change. Hey oh Jimmy, do you like UPF? Would this be cool?

Yeah, Jimmy, do your UPF check and for a week he just like reads all the cards. I definitely want to talk about UPF, but I actually want to pivot a little bit back to what you're saying about the balance overlap between Woods and CCI. Think you're really on to something there because if you look at the ban list from CC and Blitz, a lot of the cards banned and Blitz like we just saw Zephyr needle, right?

Are there cards that have either been talked about banned in CC or already were banned in C previously and they just decided to wait in Blitz for whatever reason to see if it's OK because there is a little bit of difference. But like it happens multiple times where they're like, look, this was bad in CC and Blitz wasn't like churning through this meta. Game was still trying to figure it out because there aren't as many players and they eventually figured out it's it's broken there.

Yep, just like it was broken in CC, you know, and there's a couple of cards that like are abandoned Blitz, but not CC For the most part. It's like the same list. You know they have the same balancing. The very, very similar balancing, yes. Like when they did the book burnings, they're just like, look guys, we've decided we want the entire fucking game to move away from these cards, so we're taking them away from both banned lists. A Cilio with Toma Fine doll, my

beloved, gone too soon. So we've talked about the cost and time and resources for a company to design around multiple formats, but now I kind of want to shift it in the other side of the coin, the benefit of having multiple formats in the game. Yeah, because like if this is taking a bunch more time and a bunch more money, then why do it? Yeah. Is it worth it? Everyone plays CC anyway right? Like here in Socal all the armories are CC armories, right?

Basically, yeah, we don't have a lot of blitz players or commoner players in our local meta. I mean, we can play online, of course, but 1 I think the first reason why I think it's really good to have these alternate formats is because CC is not the most approachable format for newer players. I think it's good to have these stepping stone formats like blitz and commoner, especially where you can introduce players to the game in a lower stakes environment.

And that way they can decide that they actually love the game and they're willing to invest in ACC deck because to play classic constructed kind of it costs like probably at least 100 or $200 even to play more casually. And if you wanted to have a really like top tier deck, it might cost more like 4 or $500 if you haven't like made any of the initial investments off the bat. Would you guys agree with that

kind of investment? Whereas like a blitz deck might cost like $50 or common or would cost much less than that even. It also depends on the class. Like there's just a lot of nuance with the price of decks. I know people like saying, oh, Nu was a $2000 deck. I'm like, yeah, if you shove every, you know, generic majestic that's good in the game and codex of Frailty and stuff. But if you play casually, you can get it down pretty low, Yeah. Yeah, like sink blows instead of shelters.

Right, exactly. I would also say that in blitz it is easier to play at a slightly lower power level and probably get away with it in muscle metas. Because a lot of times the numbers do just a good job as the powerful disruption effects you'd find on CNC or whatever. Yeah, And certainly if you're going to say a Battle hardened, a blitz Battle Hardened, yeah, you want the top tier deck. But if you're just playing at your armories, you don't need

all that jazz. I mean, I, I've, I myself when I take long breaks from flesh and blood or when I see new players return from breaks, I always say just bring an Armory deck for a few weeks. Like you don't need to start buying the the latest staples that just came out. Just play, you know, get back to the foundations of flesh and blood. You're going to lose if you buy all the expensive shit anyway, so you might as well lose and not have as much capital invested upfront.

So yeah, I just really encourage people picking up like the Bree Cons. I think the Armory decks have helped to make the game approachable and maybe that's why we've seen even less players playing like blitz and commoner because the way to get invested into the game is like there's a different ladder other than these alternative. Formats, Yeah, very successful marketing campaign for sure.

I still think that blitz and commoner do have the appeal of like you can make an extra deck for your buddy to get them into the game a lot easier with blitz and commoner. Oh yeah. What was it? We just had two new players show up at Spell Hold this week, and they're talking about how they were playing with a bunch of blitz stacks, and that's how they were getting ready to show up to an Armory for the first time. And when they showed up to the Armory, they bought the Armory

deck, they sleeved up and left. So they played with that week and it was great. They had a great time. I also specifically always bring an Armory deck so that when I pair into one of those players, I don't crush them with my $1000 Aurora deck. I'm like, yeah, I'll also play with a $50 starter deck and like, you know, then we're balanced. But Dennis goes, oh, you like blitz decks? Give me a second. And he walks outside and carries in a crate of blitz decks that

he made just from chaff. Wow. All of them individually sealed and wrapped up and said, go through that. Take however many you want. That's also How I Met Dennis when I first arrived at Finch. I in addition to the three other people that were there, Dennis was one of the ones who was just passing a blitz decks. So he's been doing that for a while. He's a, he's a really good community leader in that sense.

So it's very easy to put together Blitz 6 and use it as an entry point, and that's why it's important. I think one other thing that I really like about say, commoner and definitely to an extent Blitz that I don't think I have, I see as much in this classic instructed would be that it's a little bit more Wild West of a format. You could probably say this about Ultimate Pit Fight 2, but with classic constructed, I think LSS knows what is strong and knows what they want to be strong.

You know, like they've done this twice in the last year where the community gets a hold of the new set and they start building decks and they have the like, oh, Zephyr Neil is really strong with pick up, pick up sticks and run. And then the community's like sharing it all and LSS goes, we already knew about that. We already knew it was strong and now it's banned. You know, like they've already done the testing. They can tell us like which

decks are good. They just don't want to tell us because that's part of the fun, right? But I think like the fact that LSS has their thumb on the pulse of the format is both good for the format, but also it can be like, I don't want to say stifling, but it's nice to be able to play commoner where I think LSS that does not have their eyes on it. And every time you come up with a new strong deck idea, it can feel like it's yours.

You know I. Mean, I think they're, they have their eyes on it. It's just, they know you're not going to get in that much trouble, you know, and but if they hear a vase shattering, they're, they're going to run into the room and say, what have you been doing in here? That's a good metaphor. Yeah, it's a mom with a lot of kids, and there's a problem kid, and the problem kid is classic instructed. But they also just gave us a vase when they when they unprint Unbanned ball lightning in

commoner. And when you give the kid a new toy, you watch him for a little bit. They're going to be safe and responsible with that. That's so fucking funny. We are the children and James Light is the tired dad just desperately begging us to not

hurt each other. I think there's been at least we talked about on the pot is if there's a problem with a lack of brewing in flesh and blood that because it's so competitively minded, people don't feel brave enough to reach out and try new strategies, new combos, because there is like a really big hoop you have to jump through for a deck to be good. You know, you have to be able to bring your opponent from 40 life to 0, even if they're blocking you a bunch.

You have to have consistent strategies. And with the lower life totals, that's less important. You can like leak some games with your random like 2 card combos lining up together and you can also lose in the same way by not finding them. You know, it's, it's a little bit more forgiving for you to, to build around. So Brewer is being attracted to Blitzer commoner. And you also want to try your ideas really quickly, right? Like if you're like, OK, I think I have this really fun idea.

I pulled it together in like 10 minutes on a whim. I'm not going to sit down for an hour to play it out. You know, it'd be more fun to just like, play a few games for 1015 minutes. The very last thing that I want to point out is that I do know that LSS does not ultimately put that much effort into curating the way that blitz and commoner and UPF run. And I know this because, well, to be honest, we don't know what is happening behind the scenes.

But when I typically hear about interesting blitz and commoner ideas, it's from the YouTube channel DICE Commando. It's from people in the community who are dedicated to those formats and who care about those formats. DICE Commando recently put out a video in terms of when this episode will come be coming out. Maybe it was 2 or so weeks ago, two or three weeks ago that said that Blitz should actually

increase its card pool. Not deck size, but the available card pool so that there can be more tech options to deal with different strategies because of the increasing hero pool. And that was a fascinating idea. He had solid arguments to back it up and I would not be surprised if at the end of this skirmish season or before next skirmish season those rules are incorporated. And I think that's because the community has a better idea of what's going on in blitz.

You mean the size of the deck list? Like yes you still bring in 40 cards, but you can have like a 60 card list instead of 52. I think his specific number was 56 instead of 52 or something along those lines. OK. But yes. Cool. That makes a lot of sense to me. And we've seen in the past that LSS is willing to change the rules set for Blitz, you know, like it used to be you couldn't have any sideboard cards. Main deck. And they're like, OK, we need a sideboard.

Yes, that's about all I got for my pitch. I think next and Blue Pitch Clerk's gonna talk about skirmish season and why you should sign up for your local skirmish. Yeah, so skirmish seasons

definitely feel like the competitive season of flesh and blood. That is the weird cousin at the party, right? I'm going with a lot of family metaphors today in that, yeah, he's there and you'll like hang out with him at dinner, but you're not like going to spend a bunch of time with him, right? It's just kind of odd. He can he can go over there and play by himself. And I would say I don't know a ton of people who play in

skirmish season, right? Skirmish events are typically a lot smaller and I don't always hear about my local stores getting a skirmish, but skirmish seasons are actually very very healthy for the game and very important to take part in one the rewards are fucking. Cool. Yeah. Cold foil channel, like frigid. Come on. Come, come. Like everybody's going to want that card. I was. I was really happy to get my cold foil channel on that heroic.

Yeah, I think also the young art, like I'm no shade to any of the artists who have done any of the work on Flesh and Blood Hero cards. Sometimes the young art is just better. It's just better sometimes. Do you have an example? Tara. Tara only has young. Yeah, it's a fucking guy. He does. He does have good art. I'm not gonna lie. Tara does have insanely good art. Very flavorful tree.

Daddy's cool, but. It makes me think of Marcus Brown local who really likes Betsy's young hero art cuz in the young art she's smiling and also she's like leaning on a beast that. She's just sat down. Yeah, the Betsy young art's so much better. I also think that young old him is a better art than then old him. Grandfather of eternity. 100% agree. Old him, grandfather of eternity. I'm like that man's about to die. Yeah. He's he looks like he doesn't complete sentences anymore.

Family metaphor. Also, skirmishes are a little bit more easygoing in terms of competition. They're less mentally fatiguing. This is typically things that people also just say about blitz in general. But if you are someone who's trying to take that next step in your play, right, if you think of the tears of play as like there's kitchen table, sometimes you're messing up rules a bunch. Then you go to armories and like one of the players there will be

a judge. So they'll like remind you of like, hey, make sure you're showing your resources, hey, and make sure that that's not actually how that card resolves. So there's that going on at armories. So you're getting a little bit more serious rather than jumping right up to like RTNS and PQS. I think Skirmish season is actually a way better next step. Absolutely from the Armory

level. Yeah, yeah, I feel like Flesh and Blood just kind of needs more weekend events, yeah that aren't like qualifiers or. Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I love the age so much, right, Because it's a place to go compete. But it feels a little bit lower stakes and I don't have to get first. There's not as much pressure on going to top four. I can get 16th and get some points. Yeah, skirmish season feels very similar, right?

You can go and compete and be in the competitive environment, but it's blitz. The games are over quicker. You can just be like, yeah, he drew the nuts and just, you know, brush off bad games. You can go to an event and have it end by 4:00 PM. You can have a whole other part of your day. Yeah, imagine having dinner at a reasonable time, bro. I could not be me. The ability to eat dinner, to have evening plans on the same day that you're going to a flesh and blood tournament

unparalleled. If you have not had the experience of competing in Flesh and Blood and having the rest of your day available, play in your skirmish season. I also want to point out. That right now the meta game for Blitz, like the meta game for CC, is pretty open. There's not huge dominant forces that are just completely steamrolling everybody now. I suppose we'll truly find that out in the skirmish season, right? Because Haunted just came out. Maybe Arachne Marionettes just

fucking cracked? Or Slippy. Slippy was already strong before Haunted, maybe now Slippy is just insane. Fang was also extremely strong in draft because attack reactions with lower life totals is very strong combination. So maybe he, but I think the larger point that I think you're alluding to Clark is like there's no more Kano, there's no more Ryanar, Briar or Dash. And those I feel like we're some of the biggest offenders for the format. I played a lot of Ryanar.

That was basically the only thing I played in Blitz for like a year. Because whenever there's skirmish season and I want those promos, I'm gonna kill you at turn one, turn 2. I don't want to play that long, you know? And I think Kano was something similar like like the realist skilled Kano players will just kill you really quickly get it done, but at least you don't have objectively strong heroes doing objectively broken things. Yeah, Reinhard's like quad intimidate deal 20 damage is not

in the game anymore. Kano just randomly hitting the nuts off the top is not in the game anymore. Yep, there are still ridiculously powerful agro heroes I know, like flicker, wisp combo. Aurora can very much just be like, I got Arsenal and you didn't disrupt me, Flicker wisp, arc lightning, break all my equipment. Here's a 30 damage turn that you can't reasonably survive through. That can still happen, but it's still fairly rare or it comes

with big downsides, right? It's not quite the same level and I think defensive decks have started getting a little bit stronger talking back to our red pitch or circling back to our red pitch. Crown of Seeds getting unbanned. The Earth heroes are going to be really, really good at stalling out the game with that. Absolutely.

And I think that could make a very big difference in the speed of the blitz format, which I think typically if we're going from like hyper aggro rules to now we need to all be a little bit more mid rangey soup. Oh baby, how fucking back are we? Soup is when most heroes end up being viable. It isn't the best meta to probably exist forever. Like we like having meta shake UPS where like there is a dominant deck that we all need to play against and and alternating back and forth.

But it's good to have a nice soupy meta where everyone's just getting along in the bra. Not to go off on a tangent, but I also like the fact that chronic seeds are being unabandoned Blitz because maybe it's a testing period for LSS to see if it could exist in CC very soon. Oh. You know, that's something we didn't talk about in yellow pitch, how blitz can oftentimes be a proving ground for classic constructed. It's kind of not unlike the drone of brutality.

Yeah, I don't. Know I don't think that. Like that kind of can never exist in CC, but maybe ground of C they did once already. Yeah. The final point that I'm going to make for why you should play in your skirmish season is that in a very important part of enjoying a game like Flesh and Blood is giving yourself new experiences. If you play one deck all the time for every event at 2:00 to 3:00 armories a week and every single competitive event, you are going to burn out on that

experience. Sorry, most people are going to burn out on that experience. Some people are just built deaf but. Yeah, like, I know Talon really enjoyed playing Riptide in blitz because there's like ways to play Riptide that you just can't do in constructed, But he got to experience his favorite hero, but in a completely new context and kind of like fall in love with it all over again. Yeah, you got to mix it up. You got to give yourself new and

different experiences. For example, I play Assassin in blitz, but I don't play it in classic constructed one. I got to spend a little bit less money and only get the the two playsets of Bonds and Persuasive Prognosis and Justinic. Yeah, you saved like 33% of your full price. I I saved a surprising amount of money by by playing in blitz instead of CC. Also two codexes instead of three codexes. Yeah I I saved a good amount of money by just saying Assassin is my blitz deck.

But also, when I play Assassin in Blitz, that's when I get the experience of playing Assassin. Yeah, I don't get it in Classic Constructed. So I get to play Assassin in a lower stakes, nicer, easier way. And that means it's going to be more refreshing to me when I do get to play the rune blades that I love in Classic constructed. It's kind of like, I know that when I think about new formats, I'm like, do I really want to, like, learn a whole another format?

It feels like I'm learning a whole another card game, you know? Yeah, I don't need a whole another card game. But what if I told you this card game is just as fun as flesh and blood because it is flesh and blood? Yeah.

It's just is refreshing. And it gives you that feeling of newness that can like make you go back with a new set of eyes, a fresh perspective, and a fresh like palette for going back to CC. Yeah, Especially if like the meta in CC is just terrible and you're like, I want to go back to simpler times, so I'll play. I don't know, Zen or not Zen? Zen. Bad choice. What's a derpy hero? I'll play dated doll and Blade. So let's switch it up a little bit. Play my little wacky 3 card 3 card.

Hero. I'm gonna boost micropressor off the top and be fucking broken. And that kind of Speaking of nostalgia, Living Legend is one of the formats in the skirmish this time and there are lots of heroes and individual cards that we have seen leave the classic constructed game that you might have fond memories over. You know, Art of War was fun to slam on the field and you can go back and play Art of War in living Legend format and it was strong in classic constructed.

It's still strong in living Legend. And they're combinations of cards that have never existed in classic Constructed like Aurora and Toma. Find all that you can play with in Living Legend, Even the heroes that you have already played before but you haven't had a chance to because they rotate it out. You can go back and play them. I know that deck that you used to play is still in your house somewhere.

You just have to find it. Sleeve it up and let them know like you've always loved her and you miss her every day and you can't wait to play her again. It's a skirmish. Go, go. Run to the airport, my taxi flow through the red. Light. You mean I can play my explosive growth Briar? You're loose now. Absolutely. Yeah, with dust blade. Yeah. Wait, is that legal? It's legal. Living what? Yeah. Oh shit dude, it's. Also not that good.

That's why it's legal. Warmongers got printed like warmongers is restricted in the living legend, never mind dust. Blade is back room. Blade is back, baby. They only get one copy of the fuck you dust blade car I. Think Crucible might set me up to win a Living Legend skirmish? Hell yeah, that's pretty cool. I also want one more thing on the side of why Living Legend is fresh and wonderful.

If you played those old heroes and you're wondering what they could look like with new cards, The chain list that is all about the room gate cards and like destroying the soul shackles using your Deadwood dirt. Oh my God. It's such a cool fucking list. Yeah, I have never.

I have really not liked chain. I like the idea of chain and then every single time that I like think about sitting down to play them, I'm like actually, no, fuck this shit like I don't want to have to worry about my pitch stack like that. I don't want to have to worry about like milling 6 cards off

the top. All that sounds like a nightmare to me, but like creating a token for free go again and then destroying that token for three rune champs that lets me throw a three for seven for free for my bandage zone. That sounds so sick and like so much fun to set up, and I love that. I love how new cards can make old heroes who have already hit Living Legend get completely reimagined. Also, I just lost Viscerai.

Well, I'm sure I won't be on Viscerai and care about playing him in the Living Legend format right now. Maybe later this year. I'm going to be like, you know what, I'm going to sleep up my Viscerai again. Yeah, I can't wait for the cause. One thing IA little bit of drool or here. One thing I really like about Magic the Gathering still is I believe it's called Legacy, where everything's broken. Like there's a lot of power in the format and in that way a lot

of stuff is viable. Like the playing field is surprisingly wide. Mind you, I haven't paid attention to it in a while, but when I used to watch it religiously, that's what it felt like. And I think living in Legend could be that way, assuming we find the right amount of cards we can give Starvo without giving everyone else specifically like Moment. That we finally just decided that Starvo was a mistake, even

in living legend. I mean, I, I think LSS needs to get comfortable with the idea of like choice banning, where like if you play Starval, you cannot play these cards and just call it a day. But overall, I am excited to see like, you know, eventually Bolton when he gets asked here and being able to play against all these other heroes that he was getting stomped by previously. But with these new cards like that might be fun down the line. Yeah. This is what I could have been.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right, that is why you should play in Skirmish season. It is fun, it's refreshing, it's lower stakes, and there's some really wonderful rewards that you can get and community that you can find. Absolutely. It's the kind of thing where, like, there's a little hump to get over where you actually have to build a deck for it, but you're going to have fun. Once you actually decide to put that little time and energy, you're going to get what you get out of it. Yeah.

Definitely. OK, I think it is now time to move on to our arsenal. Zone. I'll do that. And listeners, if this is the first time you're joining us for the podcast ever, the Arsenal Zone is where we pick a card, a card that we like, a card that we hate, a card that we like to hate.

Either way, we're going to talk about it right now, and we're going to start it off with a Patreon submission. That's right, we're going to give a shout out to a Patreon member every episode. Even if, like, God forbid, someday we don't have an Arsenal zone, we'll still give it a Patreon shout out even if that happens. Yep, and not that we would ever do that for any reason. Arsenal Zone is one of the best parts of our podcast. When we did Arsenal Zone the episode, it performed great.

We should totally do another one of those. You should. So without further ado. Let's make our selection. We have put all of the names of the $5 and $10 subscribers who have given us a card and their little snippets. We have put them into a big list. We have assigned them a number and now we will roll the dice to the side. Natural noise, and it's Henny. Ha, fun fact, he's been submitting null time zone for I think the past four or five episodes. Yeah, I got to say Han love you

buddy. Little annoying that you kept, you kept. There are other. Cars that exist. Partially because. We got that AT and was like I don't have to think of a new card copy paste. Well, also like. We love Han. Han is the artist who has done. He did the Crucible logo, he did our logo, he's done our banner. So if you see like any Pidim branded art, it is Han who has has done that work. Yeah, so shout out to Han for the art. He also wins all of our local

armories. So he submitted a few blurbs so I'm going to read all of them. The 1st relevant 1 he says stopping a person from playing what you think their biggest threat against you for two to three turns feels great. And acro matchups deal only needs the opponent to falter once. And for teclo stopping an opponent gives set up time. Also super fair because Mex can't target Arsenal if the opponent stores the named card and they all say that nine turns of back-to-back coverage.

Enough said. And I want to also highlight the fact that Ben Friedman, who is also part of the Pitchatumu family, played all three null time zones against me as Zen. And I think that's the first time he's beat me as tag low against my Zen. Yeah, so it's it is more impactful than I thought it was. I still think it's like a really really niche hate piece, but it can be used to great effect if you like have a really good understanding of your decks, of your opponent's deck and and strategy.

It's very similar to like Censor, right? Like it's the if you know what the opponent is playing, you can definitely get a big reward off by pulling this off. Do remember that you can still play the card from Arsenal. Yeah, I was playing a Crucible game against Daniel and he played this as one of his Crucible cards, which means he had 10 copies of it and. The if the only for the other person only has 6 cards, so you can name one card and just take out a 6th of the opponent's deck.

That's funny and. He's playing system reset for a permanent lock. Oh wow so I could I was locked out of my entire deck. I could only play from arsenal and I lost that game. I kind of like threw it because it actually takes a long ass time to win this way because he's just swinging with his symbiosis shot and I'm blocking with my cards because I can't play them. But he also doesn't have a lot of blocking cards you just had like. Oh yeah.

It was a really weird deck, but like it was working really well and you have to like type the names of all the cards and you have to keep track of which cards which you've already named off of null time zone. That's funny. Yeah, multiple copies of Null Time Zone actually seems like a bit of a nightmare. Yeah, I like how Han gave a mention of why this card is great for Dash IO right in the aggro deck. Just getting that extra little bit of space is all she really needs.

Tecla with the setup time. I also want to suggest that this card is great for Max if you're playing Banksy, because if you're on Banksy baby, Oh no, just keep that in old time zone up forever. Hey, one for three, you still can't play your card. One for three, you still can't play your card. Bong bong, bong bong. And it's soon going to be a one for five wrench. Oh yeah. Though Banksy can only protect one of your two things. But I like that, right?

Like the moment that you start getting multiple items out that you want to sit on the board for a while and then the opponent's like like, I really don't want that one to stick around, but I'm fine with that one. And like you can, you can flex based on the plan. It seems really, really cool. I like it. So thank you Han for the shout out. I know you were really wanting us to talk about this card, so I'm glad we got out of the way and you can make a new suggestion.

Yeah, I can't wait to see what new suggestion he's gonna put in there. I can't wait to see what other mechanologist majestic item that you. Submit for the He also plays Victor that's. True. Victor Maine over here and thank you everyone else who submitted. Please keep submitting your ideas. We will get to yours at some points and we're excited to see what else you guys come up with.

I normally try to stay away from cards that we've already talked about on our episode, but today I'm talking about Rosetta Thorne. Oh, I think it's so funny that it's been years since this card was printed. We've all known that it's been busted this entire time, and it's still getting banned out of format.

What's next? Are they going to like restricted in Living Legend now because it's already rotated out of Classic instructions and Blitz, and now it's banned from commoner because this weapon is so good? It's one for four and it's split damage unprecedented for weapons. It's fucking crazy and I love this card and now I can't even play it in commoner. Yeah. That's so funny.

One of the things that I heard is that Rosetta Thorne is the reason why they incorporated rotating out weapons with heroes with signature weapons. I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes sense. So true. Aren't we glad that we don't have to worry about Rosetta Thorn anymore? So I brought a copy to sign, and I'm going to give one to each of you. Here you go. Thank you, Fuzzy. For my card I'm talking about snatch. It's a red 04 that says on hit draw card.

I'm talking about Snatch because I haven't had a copy of it to run at the past few armories in my room. Snatch list. Yeah, I have been Snatch list. I have been without snatch. Wow. And I really love this card. I love how it's one of the few common generics that's really, really good for an aggro deck. It's almost like a Ponder token in a way when it hits.

Because very rarely will this have go again for you to actually play the card that you draw, but it's really nice for simply giving you an Arsenal card. I kind of love that because I think that is what Agradex need to start leaning towards with their card draw is consistency, turn over turn and giving them a little bit more flexibility to block and deal with disruption. So I think Snatch is a really,

really cool card. I'm going to try to incorporate into more Agradex. I know that like I've seen some bang lists running it. Wow. I know that I've seen like even some inset lists running it. It's weird. Snatch is just sort of making its way into more lists because I think people are realizing how important it is to have an arsenal. Well, yeah, fucking Codex of Frailty is running every deck, yeah. And actually Codex of Frailty for a snatch? No, that'd be bad because Ponder

and Snatch overlap. Yeah, that's my card. I don't give cards away so I'm just going to pass it over to. Dole. Y'all can get your own fucking snatches. I need mine. So for my card I'm choosing push forward which is A1 cost non attack action the blocks for three and it says your next weapon attack this turn gains +3 and if you have attacked with a weapon this turn your next attack this turn gains dominates

with go again. And this was probably my favorite card on all of 2022 because I ran it in my Kasai Blitz list and with Kasai's reduction of her second sword attack, you would just use that extra resource for One Cause pumps. And this was my favorite card to pair it with. So I'd go like Centauri Sabre with Blade Runner into push forward for like a three card A10, but the second attack was always for 8 dominate which in blitz it's pretty good. And it helps you guarantee that

copper. Exactly, especially on like a spoils of war turn super gas card. So just wanted to shout it out. It's one of my favorite comments and I'm still trying to figure out how to incorporate it in CC because I love playing with the card. But yeah, that's pretty much it for me. Awesome, great shout outs. With all that being said, I

think that's the end of today's episode. Thanks for listening everybody. Yeah, be sure to join the Patreon. We have Crucible pairings going live. I'm sure you can get added if you want to play with us. Otherwise, we have some live.

Hangout dates that we've now scheduled where that's true if you want to test certain decks out, if you want to place in a draft with if you want to do like a draftmancer pod, right where like you actually know somebody in there and can talk to them like yeah or. If you want to play Crucible with us, that would be a good time to do it. Yeah, if you're like interested in Crucible. And these are for our $10 patrons.

Yeah, I've really been enjoying that, the little bubble of Patreon people, just a, you know, closer or close knit group of people who are passionate about game design, which I love and. If you want to interact with us regularly, you can always join our discord for free. All right, and tell nursing guys bye.

Bye Picture Jimmy Podcast is hosted by Fuzzy Dope, Clark Moore and Joel Racinos, executive producer Talon Stradley, logistics coordinator John Farkas, music by Dylan Holtz, logo by Han V, sound mixing, Christopher Moore and last but not least, you. Thank you for listening. Please give us a follow on your favorite social media platform at Pidge to Me podcast.