Hero Specializations

Welcome to Pichitumi Podcast, a show about the subjective past, present and potential future of flesh and blood design. Where every card is special in its own way. Today's episode will be about hero specializations on red pitch. Clark asks why is this a specialization on yellow pitch? Joel will read between the lines on specializations and on blue pitch. Fuzzy analyzes why some heroes get special treatment.

You can find us across all socials such as Blue Sky, TikTok and Instagram at Pitch It to Me podcast. I'm fuzzy. I'm Joel. And I am Sparta. And that's Clark.

So this is our first banked episode, quote UN quote, recorded in January and released whenever we feel like it being released. Probably the first time we got busy and didn't record an episode for this week. Yeah, we've discovered after a year and a half of being flesh and blood podcasters that sometimes there's a big event that us flesh and blood players want to go participate in and that makes it hard to do. Flesh and blood podcasts, or even like a wedding. Or like a vacation?

Or like literally not podcasting every single week. So part of our 2025 New Year's resolution for the podcast has been like actually record some episodes in advance. So that way they're ready to go when we get them out. You know, something we've talked about doing for a long time and something we're hopefully actually doing now. So the farther away from January 4th you hear this, the better

this has been in practice. For this episode, we want to return to a lot of the origin of why we started this podcast talking about those base design elements that flesh and blood does differently and special from other TC GS. And so we sort of took a look at some of the fundamental design elements of the game. And one that we sort of never really talked about before and I don't see a lot of people talking about are hero specializations. So we dedicate an entire episode to it.

Yeah, imagine you're making a trading card game and you have to structure what cards are allowed in what decks. Specializations are key to that structure, to how flesh and blood works. So we can talk for it about an entire episode. So Hero specializations are cards that only a named hero can use. For instance, Arc, like Sentinel, has prison specializations so that only heroes named Prism can use that card. Yeah, it doesn't matter if they are the OG Prism or the new Prism either.

Prism hero, even though they have different card texts, are both Prism heroes and therefore both can play Arclight Sentinel. Let's jump into my red pitch. Why is this a specialization?

When we talk about why specific cards get the specialization treatment, it's a hard conversation because a lot of the times it barely matters that it's a specialization. A lot of the time, at least a lot of the time, it feels that way. Like in the in the example we brought up in turn 0, Prism's the only Light illusionist, so she's the only one that can play Arclight Sentinel even though it says they're on the card. Only Prism can play it.

There's no other contenders. There's no other people that are like ah Dang, it says Prism specialization so I can't use it if anything. Sorry that was about to jump topics to Shiana for a second. We're gonna talk about Shiana at all. I think we at least have to mention her at some point, and it's going to be a tangent that completely derailed the. Episode I was about to do it on. The first bullet point, it's gonna extend the extend the

pitch by like 5 minutes. A lot of the times it barely matters. And then also when people use online deck builders like February or they look at things like fabric, it's only going to include the cards that you can play in your deck. So you don't think about the cards that like, could have been playable if they didn't have this one line of text on it, right?

Yeah. Like, is it worth it to think about playing Crippling Crush in Victor if you can never play Crippling Crush in Victor to begin with? Yeah, stop thinking about it. Yeah, listener, stop thinking about crippling crush in Victor. But one thing that I believe specializations do is that they help create clear definitions of

play patterns for heroes. Ellie Bird actually just put out a really great tweet in January where she said like one of the best things about flesh and blood is how invested people get into heroes and hero designs and they become, they identify with the hero designs. Specializations are all about helping define the hero and give them a unique mechanical identity that is just for them, that is special for them. And I think that's really important, right?

Dory uses Dawn Blade because a lot of Dory specializations say the word Dawn Blade on them. I want to play Dory. So you go to the little search bar and you type in Dory and you see cards that pop up that say Dory on it. And then some of those Dory cards say Dawn Blade. And you go, oh, I should run Dawn Blade. And Dory becomes the Dawn Blade hero in that moment, right? It's a very clear, linear way, saying this is the core identity of the hero and how we intend to build and play her.

You can find other strategies, right? Hatchet's story is still strong, but Dom Blade is the identity for Dory. And at the risk of bringing this up, for every bullet point, there are also like counter examples. It's like specializations have a lot of ways they can be used, a lot of ways they can add to the game, even though they're like very hard structured way of organizing the game. You know, like there's certainly specializations that can think of that do not give you a game

plan. You can build your plan around, you know, Oh. Yeah, like there are other ways that they have learned to use specializations, but I think that was especially how they designed early specializations. So it's a signal to players, play this card, this card is good. This card is for your hero. Play it. We designed it specifically for them. It is all special and neat and

gift wrapped for them. So it's actually I think a really good idea that when you first start building a new hero, to look at what the specializations for that hero are and really start to get an idea of what is strong about this hero. What is this hero trying to do? Like plan A? Yes. But you're right, fuzzy, there's lots of different reasons why things are made specializations. I think one of them is cycles.

So something that I've noticed recently is that when they give a specialization in a way to one hero in a set, it's also given to other heroes in the headset the same way. LSS really enjoys making these cycles and these patterns, and I love it too, right? Like my little ADHD brain goes, Oh yes, pattern recognition. And I think that it's important for things to be a part of a cycle because it helps give them all shared identity, and it helps with set identity as well,

right? A great example of this is in heavy hitters. All of the heroes got a uncommon headpiece specialization. Which was also kind of unique in and of itself because I don't think we saw specializations. Well, we had the a couple rare ones from Monarch, right? Yes, salt harvests is a rare and herald of judgement. Once they all got one. Yeah, but they're not like equipment slots, I think is what Clark is trying to get at, Yeah.

Well, no, no, no, I mean like it, it's good, right, like, but the point is that I see them regularly do cycles. I mean, even the Monarch 1 is a great shout to this, right? They all got a rare cycle of specialization cards. And so I think that that is actually I don't is Bolton's a rare B is via specialization. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they they like all got a rare specialization and. Like when you have three kids, you have to give them all a Christmas present. Very much so.

Yep. Going to the origin of the game, we can look at the Welcome to Rate specializations and how they're all tutors. Actually, I'm so sorry, technically the 1st two sets all have tutor specializations. Yeah, so the first two sets, right. It's not even welcome to Ray. It's also includes Arcane Rising. Like specializations were the tutors for those heroes originally. And it's interesting because we talked about tutors in an episode way, way back when in 2024.

And we were like, yeah, so cool. Like all the classes got a got a tutor. We didn't even talk about how all those tutors are technically hero specializations. I think that's really, really fascinating, right? The idea of creating these things in cycles is something that has been foundational to flesh and blood. Why do you guys think that is? Well, basically my answer is 2 parts. One, because it's kind of cool. We love the patterns. You mentioned this before.

I think literally it gives trading card players a little bit of a :) on the inside. When they see that they recognize the pattern. They're like, oh, they all got one at rare or they all got a funny hat. It's. Cute. 2nd to that, I think it's also about favoritism. Trading card players, especially in flesh and blood, get attached to their certain hero. So when a new hero, even if it's the first time they got seen in that set right, they're excited to play with that card.

If your hero didn't get one, you better believe that the other heroes didn't get one either, or else you're the kid who didn't get a Christmas present even though everyone else did. Yeah, even in Heavy, a set where we talk about there being winners and losers in the hero releases. Yeah, very much so. Still, the vein of like, well, everyone got this, a headpiece specialization. Where's my hat? Yeah, you don't want to be the

guy without a hat. And interestingly enough, I think Victor got the worst hat, but that's because Victor also got the legendary shield arm Aegis. Yeah, he got a bonus spec. He is the favorite. He he was the favorite from that set, but they made his shared specialization the worst. Well, did everyone get a a specialization outside the headpiece? Because. They all got a majestic specialization. As well. So maybe he's not like Onoz is legendary, right?

Armagus is legendary, but then he also got the four costs that can sack of gold for the +3 and overpowered golden son. Man. So he also got golden Son. So he got 3 specializations. Everyone else in heavy only got 2. But his headpiece specialization is objectively the worst. No one runs that fucking card. Like I don't even think in Commodore people run that card maybe as A2 block but like the effect is really bad.

I would I would wager that Kasai or you would wager I would I would get wager Kasai. RKO have some of the worst ones cuz what is golden glow? You block with one yellow card, get a gold. If you block with two yellows, get a gold. You have to have two yellows in hand when you want to block with the headpiece as well. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty rough. Like I've I've seen Kasai's run the the hood I've I even in budget lists I've never seen a Victor run the run Golden glare.

The last reason why I think LSS makes things specializations is because James White in his infinite wisdom said so. Like I, I think there is something to be said for like a specialization being just for a specific hero of a specific name. And then when they LL they may not want that strategy or that ability around anymore. And I think that is actually something that only really James

knows. Like I don't even think the rest of the dev team is really aware of the like 20 year plan that James White had when he first made this game. For me it's less about power level right? And it's more about saying, well, next time we print Light warrior, we might want to build it around different mechanics or we might want to shift the perspective.

And this is me specifically thinking about what they just did in Rosetta with Briar and how they then split Briar into an earth room blade and a lightning room blade. That neither of them really existing in Briar's space as it were doing the same things that Briar did. Both of them feel very distinctly different, even though they were supposed to be the print, right? So I think specializations can be a way to say, well, here's

this play pattern. And then in the future, if we return to it and don't go down that route, we can print other things for them. And this won't have to be a carryover or a holdover in that regard. We've never had one of the original 8 heroes LL, but there is a chance that when they LL, they print a different hero with a different name back into that slot.

And it's important that they then don't get access to things like Lesson in Lava, Knock the Death Whistle, become the Ark Knight. Those are really, really powerful effects that maybe they don't want on those future heroes. And while I was doing research for this, I found something out in the release set. For every single CC hero, they have had a specialization. Every CC hero has been released with a specialization except Mist Veil. What the fuck happened with Mist

Veil? Why did they not get any specializations? That's weird, right? Like even Arachne in Dynasty got regicide. Even Arachne got a specialization. What is going on in this veil? Yeah, I I was thinking about that too. And one of the thoughts that came to mind was I wonder if some specializations are like so obvious that they don't need to be specializations.

And I'll talk a bit more about that in my pitch, but like all of them are very centered around, you know, it's the sacred with like the crouching tiger fucking Fang strike and slither specific new and spectral Shields for enigma. And I don't think Mystic is a class that they like necessarily have to return to in general, But I also think like we could see completely different classes because they're so and they share so many different cards in that same card pool.

Like the sacred arts could just be like they don't have to be specializations because it'll there's no worry about using them in other classes in the future. Yeah, sure. I mean, the counter to that is that they've put specialization on things like that in the past, right? A lot of these talented heroes, Arclight Sentinel was the example we started this pitch off with. They would exist almost in the

same space. And also Joel, what you're suggesting I don't think LSS would do because they promised that every card will always be playable, they will always reprint something. So even if these 3 Mystic heroes LL, they will print another Mystic ninja war ninja assassin illusionist. I got there, I remembered. I don't know. I want to agree with what Joel

is saying. You know that it's possible that they have no intention to ever return to the Mystic talent, at least for these specific classes. I could see it being like, it was really strong the last time we returned. It'll be really hard for us to honor that design space as we returned again, and these heroes will always be playable in Living Legend. I think one thing that's true now that wasn't true in the past is that Living Legend has a lot more players on it.

It has a lot more presence in the community. So it's a lot more reasonable to say like your collection is not useless. You just have to go play a different format. You know, we know you invested in this hero, you love this hero, you want to play this hero, but you can't anymore. Well, you can still go to Living Legend. You don't have to like wait for your hero to be reprinted again because it might not happen. Like I think that could be a reasonable shift in their

stance. For my last point here, I think that certain cards are also specializations because it allows them to print cards for specific formats. This was most apparent with young heroes and when they first printed young heroes with specializations. These are our Benji's, our KO Berserker Runt, these are our

Kasai, right? They've since printed adult heroes, I think because they looked at that print strategy of young only heroes and didn't like it, and they saw a big push from the community to bring those heroes into CC. So they did, but it's caused problems. Twice now we've had LSS confirmed that they wanted to give a hero design a different name, but couldn't because of the specialization that they had.

A-IO was supposed to be Data Doll originally, but Microprocessor was just way too strong of a card in CC. Similarly, Zen was supposed to be Benji, but they were struggling designing around Wander with Purpose and Spring Tidings, so that seems rough. If it's getting in the way of design to print these heroes into other formats, why not just ban those specialization cards in the specific format?

Why not just ban microprocessor when dated all comes out and give her a new specialization in the set? Yeah, they've certainly done preemptive bands before, like Stubby Hammers with Phi specifically in Blitz and then later in CC because it was just so absurdly broken. Paired with Art of War, I could see them doing the same thing for some of these specializations that they find so hard to build around. They've done it before, they can

do it again. Yeah, but I think they don't want to because, back to my original point, specializations are supposed to be core to how you play a hero. I think they really, really want to avoid banning specialization cards because they are supposed to be how the hero plays. And by saying well we made it a little too strong or overpowered is actually not really something that they want to be signaling I think to the player base or community.

I think they want to deliver on the fantasy of the Hero of the Class slash class talent combo through the specialization cards, and when you have to ban one to do that, it's not a good look. So I think LSS is really going to have to struggle to get their adult date at all and their adult Benji into CC while still maintaining these cards that they designed to only be good when everyone has 20 life.

But if they're able to figure it out, then I think that the game will be healthier and better for it because these specializations didn't get banned. All right. Thanks, Clark. Joe, what do you have for yellow pitch? So my section is titled

Specializations are the future. And obviously like whatever the specialization has printed will give information about like what the hero's primary intended archetype is. Clark's talked about like your identity and how specializations sort of lock these heroes into those identities.

But what I find interesting about specialization is like what they don't tell you what's not on the card and what archetype they're maybe saving for another hero down the line or in the same like talent slash or the same talent slash class combo. And my first example is Luminous Ascension with Bolton. And it got me thinking because I've heard a lot of discourse about like.

Bolton's being held back specifically because of Luminous Ascension and should just be banned along with like Beacon and Victory which is not a spec but just a good card. And it makes me think like the next Light Warrior will either be a Bolton 2 point O or it could be a completely different

one. Because they won't have access to Luminous ascension, they would be relegated towards like attack Action focus rather than weapon focus like Bolton is with Raiden. Yeah, I would love to see a future where there's another Light Warrior printed and we get to see the interplay between the new Light Warrior as well as what old support Bolton can get from the new set. Kind of like how we're seeing with Florian and Aurora right now and Viscerae, you know, like Viscerae getting the extra

support. It feels like not only have we have 4 new heroes, but also we get to have extra play with the previous ones, and Bolton as a very siloed talented hero is getting a lot less opportunities to see new cards. So it feels like if we want to see the light Warrior space expand, it's got to specifically be Light Warrior. That's what you were saying? Just made me think of Joel. And it also feels like the specializations are a promise

right? That there will be no reason to silo these behind the specialization keyword unless we were going to see more Light Warrior in the future, you know? Yeah. And I think one of the biggest issues with Bolton specifically is he's the 1st Warrior to incorporate attack actions within the Warrior class.

And because of that, you're kind of contending with both weapon synergy and attacks attack action synergy that we won't get to see iterated on very much until Bolton LLS and, you know, after he gets to a point where you can get LL points. They've shown both strategies where they are willing to print the hero with the exact same name Prism, and they want to print someone with a completely different name chain and

vincette. Right? So I guess what are you guys are saying is because so much of Bolton's power level is in his specializations, but the general carpool needs so much help and a reimagining that they would specifically not reprint Bolton so to allow themselves the design space to play with light warrior.

Yeah, kinda. I think that's one rap that could go with it. Yeah, I think in order to reiterate on the like attack, attack action side of Bolton, because his here ability specifically says charge, we're gonna be stuck on charge until he's gone. And then if he LLS, the next light warrior will either have to go back into the same place as Bolton or a new light

warrior. And then we can reiterate on attack actions what it means to get value from charging, if there is gonna be charging, things like that. There's just a lot of open ending questions with Bolton specifically that I think. And that's what makes his specialization interesting to me.

Yeah. The next combination I was thinking of when typing out the notes was rise up and red Hot with Droma and Phi. And this might be a little bit of ground fruit because we know what the next iteration of Draconic is. And with red Hot specifically, like we've talked about how Draconic has very, very weak class identity or talent identity. And that's part of why red hot specifically says if you reveal

Draconic car to deal damage. Conversely, with is it Rise Up, that Rise Up does Phoenix Flames OK, but with Rise Up, it's specifically it says Phoenix Flames. So we can kind of assume that through looking at this specialization with Phi and with Dromi, Phoenix Flames won't appear in the next Draconic set. And we see that now with Syndra and Fang with no mention of Phoenix Flames whatsoever. We can kind of assume that neither neither one of them will

use Phoenix flames. But that's sort of like the deductions that I would make from specializations, especially when the talented heroes of LL and we're sort of waiting on the next iteration. Rise Up and Red Hot are also fascinating because they are Dromi and five specializations. They are shared between the two heroes, and you can see arguments for why you know one of them might be better than the other. I think that's cool.

Definitely and then lastly, you know, stick with me on this one. I think Doomsday and blasted fed like Levi consume slash Levi redeemed is another example of what we can expect out of the future of flesh and blood because based on these specializations, I think we could never see another shadow brute. Like it might just be iterations of Leviah down the line. Yeah. And that's because Doomsday is also like a moment in the lore and her specialization, you know, Blasafed, Leviah consumed

and Leviah redeemed. While it is a great card, I think there's a lot more lower implications that make it a Leviah specialization and not a shadow brute like card. Like similar to Shadow realm horror. That makes me think that, you know, there's a lot more lore to be unlocked with this card and also locks down what's possible for the evolution of shadow brew as a whole.

Especially because mechanically these cards care about stacking blood dent and that might not be a play pattern they want to return to at a later date. You know, it could just be Levi specific. It's so interesting because I mentioned in Red Pitch about how a lot of the times it is about hero identity. That identity is not just mechanical identity, it's also lore and storytelling identity.

And So what you're sort of pointing out here is like these specializations are telling the story of the hero as it progresses. I think Visserie had something very similar happened throughout in 2024 where we were getting these expansion slot cards that sort of showed Visserie going through Eraphiel and just being like, oh, pretty landscape. Oh, pretty landscape, what's going on over here? What's going on over there? And it's like, what are you doing? Where are you going, my God?

But it, it helps tell their story, right? Specifically for the hero. Yeah, and in that way, some play patterns are I feel like are just going to be hero locked, like the way that Dory wields the Dom blade after she LLS.

You know, it's kind of interesting, something I didn't say in your pitch, Clark, but the way that they silo these designs, it could be to strengthen the lore behind the heroes, but it also could be like, they saw what this archetype did in the meta and they're like, OK, now we have the freedom to kind of move away from this.

And we know that these specific cards, especially if they're specializations, will never be abused again if we don't want it to. And that way they can print like the next line of warriors that wield the Dom blade or go in a completely different direction with like axes or whatever. And they can't really use like, you know, Steel Blade Supremacy to draw a card after every like dagger hit for instance. I actually have something interesting here.

I kind of want to combine what you're saying about Bolton and what we were just saying here about Durinthia in terms of like storytelling moving forward. Could you ever see a world where like Durinthia becomes the new Light warrior and like the Dawn blade truly becomes the Dawn blade and becomes the light Warrior weapon? It's sort of giving an evolution and letting these specializations follow Dawnblade into a light warrior space even though they are warrior only

cards. I think there's like, there's so much like tension between Bolton being the light hero and Durinthia being like the next like obvious pick for a light hero that you could like cut it with a knife, like how obvious it is, you know what I mean? So I could definitely see Durinthia being the new Light Warrior and how the Durinthia specializations paired with like the light worry cards and. Could you also imagine Lumina ascension on a Dawn Blade build?

I could, and I'm glad that it's a Bolton specialization because that would be stupid, yeah. Like I, I think that really sort of nicely shows maybe why some of these specializations are landing where they're landing and how they can give us signals into future design spaces and story beats as LSS moves

forward. This is a little off topic here but it's interesting that you mentioned Dory becoming the new next Light warrior because like that design space is going to be intention for like all the original 4 heroes. They feel like they could be they would be talented if they were printed today. You know like Bravo in lore is from Arya which is why he's the one that got reprinted as Bravo star of the show. You know, like he's one with the flow that like gives them the element to energy.

This right is very connected to. Erathiel the the Ratherly Monastery like in lore, like he is shadow but he's not in because when they were printing them they weren't printing talents at that time. You know, Dory's the same way with the Monarch, like dudes right now. OK, so that's much fun. But but Katsu is. From He's from Mysterio. He's green.

The green talent. But Katsu is from Mysteria, you know, he could easily be Mystic if you're yeah, I guess I'm in my head this or I was in welcome to rage and Radar wasn't. I'm like, I count 4. That means welcome. Yeah. So my last point for this pitch, I think conversely, while we're doing this analysis of specializations, I could, I think it could also be like as simple as I forgot to put it on there, but you get the idea.

And this sort of example is like the number one is Spirit of Arena. Like it's not a bolted specialization, but on the text it says you can play luminous ascension at instant speed and luminous ascension is a bolted. Yeah. So it's like, why wasn't this a specialization? Could it be like a logistical flaw? I don't know. But like there are there are cars where I'm like, what, what happened here if there's so much flavor everywhere else?

Yeah, that's kind of like Lord of Wind is a Katsu specialization, and it only works if you play it with another Katsu specialization against you release, you know, so they didn't really have to make Lord of Wind a specialization because there would be no reason to put it in your deck. Right, right. So there's like a little, you know, a lot of examples of redundancy. Also with Reelin and Plan for the Worst, those are not Riptide specializations.

But I cannot see a world where other heroes would be playing that to great effect if you're not Riptide. Unless we see like the Ranger design go somewhere else where like it can be a bit more mid rangey and like use traps as like their defensive cards. Yeah, could be interesting. Definitely. I think there's a lot of iteration left for Rangers, so I could see that being the case. So yeah, that's my two cents on, you know, the implications. Reading between lines of specializations.

That's stuff I think about, in case you're wondering, Like what goes on in my mind. I thought that your pitch was really fun, Joel, because it pretends that we can understand what LSS is thinking based on like which cards are made specializations or not. Because really, I don't think we have that much of A clue. Like, who knows what they're going to print in the future? I think it's whatever they want.

If we're getting another Ninja Assassin set like right after Outsiders, like they can print whatever they want, you know? Absolutely, yeah. One last thing that that I do want to mention for your pitch, Joel, is I, I think it's really cool that specializations can kind of tell us the future of the hero and like if they'll stay a certain way or if they'll change or where they might change to whilst keeping a

certain core identity. Because like at the end of my pitch, I sort of brought up Benji and Data Doll. It was almost an afterthought. It was like the last thought I had while doing the notes. But it does tell us what would these heroes look like in CC, Sort of similarly to how we could have looked at how blood on her hands works mechanically.

And that could have given us a very strong idea of what Kasai looks like in CC. And it did the idea of like building up money and then sacrificing it for power. Sure, they went for the gold route rather than the copper route, but it's the same general play style of building a resource to sacrifice for power turns. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

I actually disagree. I think they thought copper generation was too strong, so they added and this is like my tinfoil hat there really, but I think they thought that copper generation in CC was too powerful because of blooded her

hands. And for that reason they decided to change the lore and make it gold oriented so that you know, you still there was like still this quest to get copper because it was very easy in blitz and I could very easily see that card being broken in CC. But still a similar pay play pattern. So maybe if now we're looking at Benji and Data Doll and what they might look like, OK, this card needs to be legal and useful, but maybe in just a

different way than what? What might be expected, right? Yeah, I too am excited for a Crucible 2 point O Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, no, 3 point O because technically Eberfest was like 2 point O anyways. But yeah, that's my pitch. Do we want to go to blue? Maybe. All right, so for Blue Pitch

today I want to talk about why some heroes have more specializations than others, and I'm going to link it to a theory about the original 8 heroes in the game and why they're still here and why there's some of LSS favorites. Okay, okay, we were doing a little bit of like cursory research for this project, right?

Clark was over there looking up like which heroes have the most specializations, and there's definitely a pattern in the game where untalented heroes have more specializations than talented ones. And this makes a lot of sense to me for a couple different reasons. I'm going to start with two simpler ones and then a more radical reason, which is the focus of my pitch.

OK, first of all, untalented heroes are going to have more specializations because LSS needs those heroes to have the cards that are special to them because they don't have talents. Literally, they're untalented, right? Think like Azalea and Riptide need to have cards that are special to them, otherwise their entire card pool would be eclipsed by heroes like Lexi. Lexi can play all of Azaleas cards plus the lightning ones and the and the frost ones and

elemental ones, right? So you need to give those heroes specializations in order for them to be able to have their own unique cards that are not abused by Lexi. And I don't think that's very controversial, right? Like, you want them to have something special, that way they're that one little word at the bottom of the hero isn't like, making it so much more special, you know? Yeah, but you also want them to be able to separate from themselves, like Azalea and Riptide.

You want them to have different hero identities. That's literally the only way you can do it right. Riptide gets his special traps because he's the trap Ranger. It like you were saying, Clark, it helps them cement their own identity. Secondly, I think untalented heroes are more likely to get specializations because they're in the game for longer and because they are weaker than talented heroes. And these two points kind of

feed into each other. If a hero is weaker, it's going to be in the game longer, and if a hero is in the game longer, it's going to get more support because it has more opportunities. Like when you're looking at the roster, your LSS, you're designing cards for the expansion slot, you're like who gets specializations?

If I just pick at random and use no other metric, then the heroes that are around to get picked more are eventually going to get more specializations than the ones that are only around for like three sets for like a year, you know what I'm saying? So not just because weaker heroes tend to be around longer and have more opportunities, but also like Clark, if I gave you one dedicated expansion slot that you could print for any hero you wanted. Yeah.

What hero would it be? Would it be a strong hero like Viscera or Zen? Or would it be a weak hero like Betsy or? Yeah, it'd be a weak hero, right? Yeah. I think the community kind of has this expectation that the heroes that get support are the ones that are weaker. Typically they are at least, especially in the expansion slot. We have seen that they have used those spaces to print support for weaker heroes sometimes. They definitely done other things with the expansion slot.

Yes, they use that space for a lot of things, but that is one of them. They're not going to print. Let me put it this way, Aurora's doing really good right now. I don't think we're going to get an Aurora specialization in the expansion slot that's going to like suddenly make her that much stronger. I would agree, and I don't think we're necessarily going to see a viscera one either, even though

he's untalented. Or if we do, it's going to be one that doesn't really move the needle like Phantasmia. And even that one came out before Rosetta, right? Like now that Rosetta's out, he doesn't really need it. So the heroes that need support are generally weaker ones. So naturally they keep printing Riptide specializations because he's not that strong and they feel like they need to keep

pushing him, right? And when they print support for that are directed at untalented heroes like Azalea got judged jury executioner, right? It's very targeted support. She's the only one that gets it. You have to be specific with untalented heroes because otherwise the talented people are going to umm NUM NUM NUM NUM eat up all the support as well.

Yes, I think one thing that's really dangerous here is if like they reprint a hero before an older weaker version has LL D and now that hero is really left in the dust. I say this because Arachne Marionette could be pretty good in the Haunted set and could end up doing very well, and then Arachne Huntsman really has no way of getting any support.

Yeah. Like you can't print an Arachne specialization card anymore to support Arachne Huntsman because that will also just seek to benefit Arachne Marionette when they're in the game at the same time. This is a tangent, but it's a good one. Specializations don't can no longer be that way of directing support. I could see a world in the far future where they do want to direct support specifically at Arachne Huntsman, so they rework how specializations work.

They could literally make an Arachne Huntsman specialization, which is kind of a little bit of a messy way of doing it, but it would get what they wanted if they wanted to specifically target for a specific iteration of a hero. The thing that I really want to talk about for my pitch is that I think there's another reason why older heroes especially are getting more specializations. And that's because I think they provide a backbone for the game that LSS doesn't necessarily

want to go anywhere. And when they keep printing specializations for these heroes, it's to keep them interesting and fun and relevant even though these heroes aren't seeing huge competitive results. Fuzzy. That's not what's written here in the notes. Right. In my notes I said old heroes are kind of bad on purpose. Whoa.

Because we've established that like the heroes that are getting specializations are the ones that are generally weaker, partially because they simply don't have talents and talented heroes I think are generally stronger. But also like, OK, look, Alice has has made a game that has a one foot in one foot out rotation system. They are half assing the rotation and it's in the name of doing something unique and cool and interesting for the game.

And I like the rotation system. But I think we can agree that like they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want a game that's interesting and changes regularly. So people are always looking to like it's constantly evolving, right? But also your cards are worth something and their value is static. They want a dynamic experience. That still has that like static foothold for people to to grasp

onto. That's a really challenging thing to do. And so far I think they're doing a pretty good job of it. And one of the big reasons that I think it works is they have these original 8 heroes that are reliable and have been in the game for the entire duration of it, right? We just hit our five year anniversary. We have heroes that have been legal for those five years without getting enough living legend points in order to leave the game. So when a hero's really good, it rotates out.

Not every player wants to play a hero that is going to win every event, and sometimes they want heroes that are going to stick around for a while. But a player's never going to look at you and say I want a hero that's going to lose games. Yeah. All of the original 8 are able to provide you a gameplay experience that is approachable. They have a game plan that's easy to follow.

You don't have to worry about talents, something that a newer player can understand while it's still being challenging enough for them to be interested in the game and get a lot out of it. But they also hit a sweet spot for power. If these heroes were too strong, then this fundamental like backbone of the game would no longer be there and the whole game would feel more volatile. If they were weaker, then there'd be a lot less interest in playing them at all, right?

Like who wants to bring Betsy to an event right now where Betsy doesn't have a strong identity? She doesn't get to win any results, so it doesn't make any sense to play her when you could rather play like Victor or Bravo even. At least Bravo has a pretty strong identity, some really cool specializations that you can be attached to. And a big part of how these heroes exist in that fundamental space in the game is these specializations. They have really strong identities because you have

these specialization cards. Crippling Crash. What's the the Reiner stack? Alpha Rampage Alpha. Rampage, right? These specializations are strong enough to lead you to want to play the hero. They tell you what the hero is supposed to be doing. I also kind of feel like every time we get a new one, it's like an advertisement to direct players back to these original 8, reconceptualize them, and help them stay relevant in the

meta over and over again. I I get what you're saying with the like half in half out but I don't know how invested LSS are in being like these heroes will never LL. Like if I think if you went to AQ and A and asked any of the devs do you want Katsu to LL they'd be like if he's strong enough and the players perform well enough on him, sure.

Like I don't think that LSS is really designing their game around making certain heroes LL or not making them LLI don't think that's what they're trying to go for when they designed the game. But I do think that when they designed the 1st 2 sets, you're right in saying that they really wanted to provide this like restrained simple yet with depth and complexity in the designs. And they put a ton of effort

into that. And that's resulted in, once they started maybe getting a little bit more loosey goosey with these talented heroes, and they started letting themselves print more powerful cards because it won't affect those guys over there, so it's okay. It'll just be this one hero. Once that started leaking in, it became clear that they were getting outpaced by the rest of the field. And I guess part of my picture is that. I see Viscera going very, very soon.

I see Dash IE going very, very soon. Just grab a couple of wins at a procrest, grab a couple wins at RTN and she's gone. Yeah, she. Doesn't need a big win. Yeah, she's already Dash inventor extraordinaire is already at 940 out of 1000. She is like the closest to Elling Elling out of all the heroes in the game right now. But also, that would make her the first untalented hero to hit living Legend, you know? And I think Visserie might overtake her.

Has might have already overtaken her, right? They're both right there. They either just need the last couple of wins or the one big win to get them there. And Kano isn't isn't close enough. Yeah, pack your AB. Folks, it's part of the system, right? Like all heroes hit living legend eventually. That's part of the promise, you know, But I think having those heroes in particular take so long has been beneficial to the game up until this point, you know? Yeah, because now we're dealing

with the hero blow. And I think it's like you were saying, the longer the heroes in a game and the worse they are, the more specializations they get. So when you're in the game for a really long time and you're not doing good for a long period of that time, you can end up with like a ridiculous amount of hero specializations. We could almost use hero specializations as a way of tracking how old a hero in the game is at this point.

It's not perfect, but we could. So assuming you guys kind of agree with this idea, my follow up would kind of be like, do other untalented heroes other than the original 8 follow this idea of being just powerful enough to bring players to get players interested in them and excited to play them even though they're not super competitive. And I think Riptide actually also really fits this definition.

He keeps getting specializations printed in the expansion slots, partially because he kind of needs them to help fill out his identity, but also he's not super strong, but he also has a lot of people who are really attracted to the identity that he does have. So he is something that I've seen a lot of newer players get interested in. And maybe that's my bias because I happen to know talent and any new player that gets into Riptide, I've heard about them.

Joel, what do you think? I think specifically off of heavy hitters and warrior, I feel like we saw 2 brand new untalented heroes enter the warrior space. I mean cuz I was massively popular in blitz right? Yeah, I think a lot of people really fell in love with that dual wielding sword fantasy, myself included. Kasai Centauri sell sword is one of my favorite heroes in the game and I think Dice Commando also really likes site Hero and a bunch of other people. So yeah.

And people like Kasai. But when heavy hitters came out and we saw those new untalented hero designs, did you feel like they were really harkening back to the ages of welcome to Wraith with how restrained they were? I think my bias around Warrior is really influencing how I feel about the Olympia and Kasai specifically. And I, we've spoken, we've spoke extensively about how heroes are released with less than their full care. I think Olympia suffers from

that the most. I think Asai was sandbagged as well because her specialization would have been too powerful if she created coppers through her hero ability in CC as well. So I think there's a lot more factors with those two heroes than some other untalented heroes. I do feel like Victor, while not having a talent, has felt strong enough that he competes with the other talented heroes and doesn't have that like stability where I expect him to be in the format for years to come, you know?

Yeah, I guess KO is also sort of up there, right? KO Armed and dangerous, the CC version of the hero, both of them fell like the quote UN quote push version, sort of like how Kasai was the pushed version. We've talked about this in heavy hitters. They were like the three heroes that were like seen as the strong ones in the class and the three heroes who were seen as the weak ones in the class for that set.

And as it's shaken out, Kasai has gotten a decent amount of living Legend points, but not too many. But I think it's definitely something to be said for the fact that they want to be restrained when they print talentless sets, because they know that that card pool will

influence the talented heroes. And if they make those cards too strong, then the talented heroes are just going to gobble them up. But I think that that's a bit of a weird heuristic to take, because we've seen in Rosetta how a lot of the brand new Roomblade cards actually did way more for Visserie than they ever did for Aurora OR Florian. I think if they actually just get better at siloing talented designs from untalented designs then it's going to get a lot

healthier. I think that's all I got for blue pitch. Do you guys want to move on to Arsenal zone? Yeah, The Arsenal Zone is the

part of our podcast where we talk about cards we love, cards we hate, cards we love to hate, or cards that just kind of exist. Joel, why don't you start us off I. Actually want to change mine. I'm sorry. So the car that I want to talk about for the Arsenal Zone is Banksy, which is Max's only specialization, which I think is stupid. That's crazy. Yeah, I love the idea of signature weapons, but I don't like the idea of your signature weapon being your only specialization.

To me, it just feels lazy. Bright lights in general I have a lot of issues with, but Banksy is just one of those cards where it's really cool and I think they could have really iterated it upon that cranking design for Max specifically because it seems like Dash IO at this time is the item hero and the crank hero. So in the future I really would like some more Max cards. That's probably the only way I would ever approach Mechanologist in the future just

because Banksy is a cool card. Great card. I remember picking up a cold foil Banksy off you for like. A little cheap, not not like super cheap. I think it was still like 20-30 bucks. But like I was like, oh, I got a good deal on this. One of these days, Banksy's gonna be a good guy. I know we're trying to shout out Banksy and not just dunk on Max, but I think it's kind of funny that, like, the card that I associate the most with Max right now is Nitro Mechanoid,

which has dash on the art. Yeah. Right. It's also interesting. Symbiosis Shot is a dash specialization, Banksy is a Max specialization, but the Evil Weapon is not Teclo. Yeah, Teclo Leveler is not a Teclo Boston specialization. His specialization in the set was Singularity. Yeah. Whack. It's funny because Teklu has the best identity out of all the mechanologists, but the worst playability and. I think those go hand in hand. Yeah, definitely, yeah.

Cuz he's so specific as to what he wants to do. You gots to do evos. It's really, really cool though I ultimately really like Banksy has a card. It's a good shout. But that's it for me. How about y'all? For my card I chose Angelic Wrath after the Tomb of Divinity ban. Prism sort of filled by the wayside. But we have a lot of Prism mains at our locals and people who like playing Prism and they've started running this card and I hate this card. This.

Card is so annoying. This card annoys me so much. I also just am not a big fan of incense that pump power because like they're just not attack reactions but they're played exactly like attack reactions. That bothers me somewhere deep down. Inside and it's a yellow for three. And it's a yellow for bullshit three. Yeah, Like it's really, really strong. And it's just I'm just like, what is this? But I blocked but I did the thing. And it's always on heritable

triumph or fucking arrow. Shown out so many times by this card, I I think it's a surprisingly solid card. I think even as Prism grows and gets support again, no. I think this card made stick around just because it's actually really efficient, especially into heroes who don't have a lot of poppers. Yeah, that whole sentence just ruined my day. Yeah. Like like a room blade meta. Yeah. Oh yeah, that. One's even worse than the

previous sentence. Prism's been pretty solid into a room blade meta where we don't have a lot of sixes. The card Angelic Wrath really double s down on the like. Have popper or die. Yeah. Because like, if, if you pop it, Angelic Wrath isn't going to do shit, you know? Yeah. We should get an Missouri that as AD react. Can swap a blocking card with a blocking card. Surprise phantasm. Yeah, so it's like a blocking. 3 fantasm. Good luck.

All right, so the card that I'm going to shout out today is Ticket Puncher. It's the card from Heavy Hitters. It's the arms piece. It gives you extra block depending on the number of opponents you have with more life. Oh oh. Like that was a fun little cycle. Like a bloodied Oval and all that shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ticket Puncher is the arms piece, and I think it's my favorite name out of the cycle because you know, when you imagine a ticket puncher, it's like a little machine.

You press like a hole, punch right, and you just hit your little ticket. But the art is a guy raising his first in the air. He's like literally punching something. Not a ticket. Right. Like maybe he's punching your ticket to sleep. OK. Or he's punching your face, which is the proverbial ticket. Yeah. So sort of like not my face, it's my meal ticket kind of thing. So it's a funny name to me anyway. Yeah, I'm doing a good job of selling the comedy of this.

So I like this cycle of cards because it's something that is playable in A1V1 game of limited and it is also extra cool in a UPF game of limited. And it's an example of like how they're able to design A multi purpose card, not even just for like limited versus constructed, but like multiple different

limited formats in the same set. And that's really elegant and hard to do. So perhaps to LSS for that, even if the design like would never be played in constructed, I think it's a cool design for limited. I mean, bloodied Oval is like surprisingly playable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of these days, I want to sit down as a guardian at a UPF table and just flip over the entire suite. I just watch the players be like, if we kill them, we like have to gang up on them, right?

Like, like we have to be like, OK, now's the turn, now's the turn, now's the turn. Everyone go for it. And I'm also hoping that tomorrow we get to play UPF heavy hitters. We're all gonna draft. I haven't decided what format yet, but that's the one that I'm hoping for. No one's told me no yet, except Joel. That was a staunch no, yeah. So that's my card and I brought one to sign, one for you and one for you. Thank you, Fuzzy. Thank you guys for podding with me. Thanks. Yeah.

This was fun. I liked returning to the sort of OG design sort of episodes that we did at the at the very beginning. We we have a few more that we're hopefully recording soon that'll be they'll be released throughout the month. So look forward to it. So stay. Tuned. Bye bye everyone. Until next time, guys, bye.

Pitch It to Me podcast is hosted by Joel Rosinos, Clark Moore and Fuzzy Delp. Our executive producer is Talon Stradley, our logistics coordinator is John Farkas, Music is produced by Dylan Hulse, logo is designed by Han V and our sound mixing is done by Christopher Moore. Last but not least, thank you, the listener for taking the time to listen to our podcast. Be sure to give us a follow on your favorite social media platform at Pichitomi Podcast.

That was a good one. That was Co wispy. Our listeners just cringed right now, it was that good. No no dude, they fucking love that shit. That was a good cringe it. Was a good cringe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's not a cringe. That's just like, it's like just above his knees, right? It's like like a sneeze is like an eighth of an orgasm that was like a six. It was like an exerted. I think this. Is more than an eighth, you said

above a sneeze. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, the lines up. I know how fractions work fuzzy. I heard it wrong. Glad someone on this podcast does.