How FaB Designs Permanents feat. Kevin "Smurph" Murphy

Welcome to the Pichotumi Podcast, a show about the subjective past, present, and potential future of flesh and blood design. Today's episode will be about permanence and their role in the game. You can find us across, well, find them across all socials such as Blue Sky and Instagram at Pichotumi Podcast. I'm fuzzy. I'm Kevin. And I'm Clark. So we've got a special guest on

the show today, Kevin Smurf Murphy. Welcome to the podcast. Just in case somebody's living under a rock and hasn't heard of you, Kevin, could you introduce yourself for our audience? Yeah, I'm Kevin Murphy. I guess now I'm a Prism main. I used to be an Icelander player for as long as she was legal to play. You really know how to pick them, huh Icelander?

Yeah and I've been playing Prism for about the last year and recently picked up some decent results winning Battle Harden top 8IN London and started putting out some some content on YouTube, essentially A Prism guide piece by piece. Yeah, that's been getting a lot of good attention, huh? Yes, it has way, way more than I expected. I have noticed that people love learning about how to play heroes from people really good at playing those heroes. That makes sense to me. Oh yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I the first stuff I learned about how to play Prism was from Rob Caton, who like made the deck and 1st showed up with it heavy hitters release weekend. And then Raya Adams, who like was the North American player who really took all of that deck and took it forward. So like I learned the basics of how to play it from them and. Yeah, yeah. That's what got me hooked. Some other wonderful accolades for you, Kevin. 10th in ELO in the world. Oh my, we have a top ten player

on our podcast. I know we've always said that we're gonna be like more of a casual podcast and we're not. We're gonna stay away from the competitive scene a little bit. But I mean, here we are with the one of the best players in the world. Yeah, well, Kevin's awesome because not only is he 10th in the world in ELO, he also is Co host of the Table pit with Pitt against, pit against, pit

against, right? Because Table Pit is the channel and then Pit against is the call in show that you guys do. Yeah. Yeah, so Co host of Pit against a call in show every single Thursday where fans of flesh and blood can call in and give their unhinged hot takes, which you and your Co host will then systematically disassemble over the next 20 minutes, as I learned just a few Thursdays

ago. We we try and talk people back a little bit, but we also get some like really interesting ones that also will move us in certain directions. It's it's really cool to have those discussions just because like I, I don't love the way social media works. And just like when you have a character limit on a message, I'm like, that's not, that's not it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then getting to have those like longer discussions where you actually can go through the

nuance of stuff is awesome. It's why I love it. And it's also like, I think you could probably tell it's why all of my content is at least 30 minutes long. Like, like that's, that's the stuff I really enjoy. Kevin, where can people find you? I think you can find me on every platform is at Smurfab. So SMURPHFAB, and I'm pretty sure that's my handle on Blue Sky, Twitter, YouTube, all of it.

So yeah, if you want to find PRISM content and how to play PRISM stuff, then YouTube's where to go for that. Yeah. Awesome. And then your call in show. That is Pit Against which is every Thursday 8:00 PM Eastern. On the table Pit is the the YouTube channel and I do that with William Knuckles AKA Table and Legs. Awesome. We'll definitely be putting all the links to that at the top of our description. We encourage everyone to go check out Kevin and all of his content.

He is not only an extremely talented player, he is a very insightful player. And as far as competitive players go, I have really appreciated how you are able to speak to players of all skill levels. And you're not just about what's the best thing in the game right now, you're also about what's interesting in the design of the game and and wider aspects. So I I highly recommend if you enjoy our content, you will enjoy Kevin's content. Thanks. Yeah.

So what are you doing? Click off of our show and go. Maybe don't do that. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for joining us for today's episode. We're talking about the various permanence in Flesh and blood. There are lots of different kinds of permanence. And I think many people, when they first joined the game, they were sold as flesh and blood as a game with no board state, no permanence. And then we play the game. There's a lot more permanence than we were initially sold on.

Kevin, with your recent focus on Prism, we felt like it was a really good chance to sort of discuss all of this, especially as it's been maybe a little bit more of a hot topic issue with Florian and his Rinchant stacking and other similar board state based strategies coming to prominence recently. So we are going to break it down into 3 pitches. In red pitch, Kevin will talk about the various different ways that illusionists engage in building a board state and their

various permanence. In yellow pitch, Fuzzy is going to talk about semi permanent cards, cards that stay on the field for a while but eventually go away. And then I'm going to talk about one time permanence. So things that go on to the board state but then disappear pretty quickly. These were the the three categories that we sort of sorted out with permanence in our notes, and I think it's going to be fun going through the different types of them and discussing how they interact.

And if you stick around until after blue pitch, we do our Arsenal zone. If you're new to the show, we're each going to shout out a card from the game and that's how our show's going to go. Kevin, do you want to leave us

off with Red pitch? Sure. So I mean, this is for me, this is a very like there's a sing. There's a very defining characteristic for what I think about when they're when I look at illusion as permanence. And I guess these are about to become also necromancer permanence, which are they are permanents that stay on the board until the opponent interacts with them. The opponent has to do something to get rid of them.

And until they do, they're going to get some sort of recurring value that the player who's casted it can will get turn over turn. And that's how you see these advantages from like OG prison with boards full of auras and luminaris or drone light with a huge board of Dragons. The opponent has to deal with it in some way. Which is a very powerful thing to ask, you know, especially because many classes have a really hard time dealing with those different permanence. They kind of ask different

things of you. But like Spectra, I know you're going to get into it, but being a classic example, I need action points to deal with Spectra efficiently. Otherwise, I'm giving you my entire turn. Which like Spectra is a really flavourful illusionist mechanic of you have you've created this thing and the opponent goes to hit it and clear it and there's just nothing there and the attack is wasted. And like it flavorfully makes sense game design. It's much harder to balance.

But that also becomes like one of the things looking at each of the illusionist that's come out, how your the their primary like board state mechanic has changed with basically all of them. And then how the opponent answers those mechanics. That mechanic has also changed because Prism, it OG prism it was Spectra and was ludicrously polarizing and also got into like it's own weird 2 spaces between the yellow auras and the

blue auras. Because the difference between A4 cost Spectra aura and a 0 cost Spectra aura. I don't care if it is an action that consumes your action point. A0 cost Spectra aura is wildly different from A4 cost Spectra aura. And you know, I'm really happy you brought up these 4 cost Spectra auras because one thing that you said at the beginning here was recurring value, right?

If we look at what we kind of expect A4 cost yellow card to give us, it's about 7 value, right, Seven offensive value. But if we look at a lot of these auras, merciful retribution, what else is there? There's Genesis. But Genesis is a majestic. It's supposed to break the mouth a little bit. Parable and Ode would be the other two rares. Looking at these rare 4 cost auras, Parable, Ode and Merciful Retribution, none of them really

generate 7 value. When you play them, you really are being asked to get a lot of their value turn over turn. You need that recurring value for it to be a worthwhile value proposition, right? If it depends a little bit on how they get played out and how you map it, because the other half of that is how do you value Spectra?

But like if you're going to play an ODE with two ORS on the board that are swinging and you have OG Luminaris, do you suddenly just immediately have 4 value off it because you're getting 2 on hits plus the swing and an on hit? And then they have to deal with spectrum, but it and then merciful is like in response to something breaking, you play the merciful, you get the trigger from them hitting a Genesis or whatever, but the spectral shield is still there to also

ping. Like the math gets really hard to, it's really hard to have concrete math for these auras because also all of the auras are multiplicative with each other. Yeah, you know that that also seems like a very interesting thing for Illusionist specifically, is that they have that multiplicative synergy. With each other I. Think basically all of them have some sort of multiplicative increasing value just because like ODE is it's own thing. Then dromae is not necessarily

as multiplicative, but. There's like burn them all, which is. Sort of Bolana putting counters and then still still pretty enigma with her counters, yeah. Yeah, I think it's pretty critical to illusionist design too, how these Spectra auras can buff with each other, because you want to have that pressure on your opponent to deal with it soon, right? Like, that's part of the design.

Like if I want to make my opponent afraid of this board state, if I want to give them a reason to deal with it, that multiplicative values, one way that you can really, like, punish players for not respecting your cards. You know, I want to present this challenge that like, hey, you got to deal with this early, and if you do, it's probably OK. But if you ignore it for even a little bit, that's when it gets out of hand. Yes. Yeah, and that's what makes it so annoying.

Yes, against. Yeah, yeah, because to be honest, I'm always scared of prison. Like I'll be playing Victor. I am up like 30 plus live. I have all this tempo but they have one card in soul. Kevin's shaking his head like, yeah, you're basically dead at that point. Life totals don't matter. I don't like no, it's illusions. Matter like all. I can swing like red macho Grande and they're like, ha, you've fallen into my trap gun. Block 3 soul shield swing my

angels again. Yeah, Soul shield pitching a blue pop Halo, go get Soraya. And it's like, oh, you know, that one carton soul that's now a draw to oh, that's now an ALS. And I'm like, what the fuck just happened? Yeah. So it's like Spectra was an interesting place for them to start because that's like that is the way that the opponent interacts with it, which is very taxing. By like, yeah, like turning off their turn. Yeah, which is the is very

taxing for a lot of decks. And they try to change that when they go to Dromi and they have allies that have Phantasm, which is trying to give those decks agency again, but they still have that kind of snowball effect. And Illusionist retained at least some of it's like weakness to aggro decks where it's like Illusionist takes time to build up that advantage. Especially the defensive dromide decks would want to play that longer game.

You could see red line aggro or Empress Dromide try and just match them for raw numbers and they could, but it was still not Phi with Mask. Momentum still does pretty well into that. So like they tried to change it, but like there was still this thing of you can make way more allies than the opponent can reasonably deal with. Then they can clear every turn for those for the decks that struggle with Spectra also couldn't clear that many allies

every turn. So then they still like they tweaked it a little bit more and also the the number of Dragons that were in the deck, because that's like the other side of it. And that was also the big difference when it whenever fest came out with the blue Spectra is like suddenly you just had double the auras in your deck as prism, which just completely changed the way that deck played. And then draw my having 30 Dragons in the deck built that entire deck.

And then you go to new Prism and you have 7 allies in your deck basically total. Yeah, Yeah. That's a really limited. Number and they they also have ward so they can attack you and deal with your board at the same. Time yeah, that was something that we discussed way back in the early days of the podcast pretty much when we started we like talked about Dusk till Dawn because the this that had just come out when we started the podcast and we were very excited actually about printing Ward on

allies. It fell proper to us as a way of like, oh, this is a far more interactable thing that every single deck can do. Every single deck wants to and intends to deal damage to their opponent. And obviously ninjas still had good match up because Ward 4 still pops off of Kodachi for one. Yes it does. And so it was great because it was. You can still get your guaranteed value as an Illusionist player.

People on the other side of the table from illusionists can still deal damage to those decks and destroy their ward, but the illusionist has a slightly better match up because they get more guaranteed value out of it. Yes, we get like more guaranteed value out of it, but then it also the flip side of that that they made the mechanic of actually getting these allies into play is so much more restrictive than any than the previous two because it was you don't playing in a figment from

your hand is miserable. I've done it. It's miserable. Whenever Prism plays a figment from hand I'm like I got a chance this game. Yeah, like it's it, it is drastically different from the other ones because they there's significantly fewer of them in the deck. It's easier for most opponents to answer, and it's harder to get your permanent into play to start getting value out of it. Yeah, which really feels like the distinction between Prism's ward allies and Enigma's ward,

quote, UN quote allies. They're not allies, but they're allies. Yeah, Enigma went back to that like Droma density of of permanence in your deck. And also it's even easier to deploy them I think than it is for Droma. Sure. At least in general, you don't have to worry about at the Ash

mechanic at all. It's just you play the card, it's an instant or it's an action, you play it and that's it. Now also very differently with Enigma allies, we were talking earlier about how the prism cards need the reoccurring value to get to a good value proposition, but they were very multiplicative so it was kind of hard to track. Enigma's ward spells feel a lot more linear but are way more spect up.

So taking a look at waxing Specter, it's a 2 for ward four and then when you or sorry ward 3, but you can get a plus one counter on it if you cast the blue and if you spin that one floating resource, you have to attack with it. It comes in 4/4. Assuming you're using the the scroll. Yes, assuming you're using the scroll that is three ward value and four offensive value. That is 7 value on a red for three resources. That is just straight linear math for what we expect.

It's just split between offense and defense. Yes yeah, like the there are some cards in the name of his deck that are just on rate or really good rate 3 for seven go again is very good in flesh and blood 2 card 7 go again is very good. Rage Spectre is a blue three block that is A2 card 7. Pretty good. Which is kind of crazy. Spectral manifestations by itself is not great, but as soon as you put a restless coalescence in that hand it's a three card 13 that covers 3

break points basically. Yeah, it can get really out of hand really fast. And I think that was so interesting because again, when Enigma came out, we were excited to see more Ward again, but it's functioning very differently than how Ward functioned in Prism. Do you think that is entirely due to, as you're saying, ease of deployment and density? Or do you think that the numbers play a larger role in that and how they're evaluated?

I think it's a mix of both. The thing that the density plays a very large role in it because you're much happier as an enigma to just cash in that word value basically every turn. In some matchups, in prisms, new prisms, aggro matchups, you have to be willing to cash in the ward value every turn. But in your longer matchups, you have to very strategically use your resources because you have so few of them.

And Enigma still in those matchups is just very happy to like is fine caching in that ward value. But then because of the ease of deployment, you also then get to run a bunch of D reacts as Enigma to help cover the word value you do have. Now the other half of this is we've been calling them allies for Enigma. They're not allies. Prisms you can just target with attacks. So Victor can just hammer an

Angel, he gets that choice. He doesn't get that choice into Enigma, which also gives the agency to back to Enigma. In terms of defending it which you just like set up turn cycles which are deploy mirror guy, send CNC arsenal AD react and it's so hard for dex to deal with that turn cycle and prism. The only comparable turn that Prism has is like flip an Angel and play an Arclight Sentinel. Yeah, which is like the big

Soraya turn, right? That's what every single Prism player is chasing the high of. It's flip Soraya swing, a draw to resolve ALS. Yeah. The the difference between just like Arsenal and D react and play A6 cost aura is insane. It's massive. It's just night and day the way that Ward has interacted with these two decks, like they they went from allies, they started swinging back towards the middle by putting Ward on them and they swung all the way to the other side with Enigma just having

Ward on all their stuff. And it's it's done really funky things to the game as a result. Could you say more about that like you're talking about the meta implications that Enigma brought? I mean it just the problem becomes Enigma is just a, and people have said this since she came out. Enigma is just a stat check

deck. She's a damage check where if you can't present, if you can't convert your hands to like 12 damage on offense, she will just snowball basically infinitely because she starts getting to use ward to cover all your break points and any weird stuff that would happen. Any reactions you might have just get covered by ward to protect the bigger stuff. And then I think Enigma probably had more 40 O games than any other deck we've seen.

I do think the stat check is intentional, you know, like they were like in order to make sure that you can, that any hero kind of has a shot into the style of game plan, we're going to make it all based on how much damage you can present. You know, they're trying to balance around that. So if you have tempo, you should be OK.

But then it just kind of turned out that like Enigma was actually pretty good at just keeping that defensive value like around all game and keeping her wards around forever. Because once she has like a single ward on it's it's no longer like, can you deal 12? Because if I can block your 12, then actually I still get my aura and I'm still getting value long term. You know you have to have more offensive value than she can defend.

Yes, it really felt like they were punishing you for blocking her attacks, right? Oh yeah. Like I think that was the unintended consequence of the strategy. I think it is fine to demand a stack check and to have a deck that says you need to be able to deal enough damage to kill me. Because I think all good flesh and blood decks need to be able to convert A5 card hand into offense or A0 or A5 card hand into defense.

I think the best decks can do both, but with Enigma it was well, you have to give me 5 cards on offense every single turn and if you don't, you're fucked. And so that meant that any and all damage that Enigma ended up throwing was unblockable almost in a way, because the moment that you start giving cards to block that damage, then you're attacking with less value. And that just plays into

Enigma's win condition. So it it almost stopped promoting the back and forth that flesh and blood is known for. Oh, definitely. Whereas Dromi's Phantasm on her Dragons did promote that a little bit more. You were encouraged to block with a popper, and still encouraged to attack back, but now you had this choice of attacking the player or the ally, and that gave a nice new axis of engagement.

Which we did. We do see a little bit of this getting punished for blocking thing when new Prism is really doing her thing. Like I'm basically never happier than when somebody is blocking an Angel attack. Like if I get the choice of defending for an Angel, if you give me that opportunity, I'm probably going to take it. And it's it is less punishing still because you can just like send a hammer for four at the Angel after you like 2 card block heralds. Like that's fine.

But there, there is still a bit of that in new Prism where if you start blocking angels, you're going to fall behind. Like you don't have that choice. Yeah, I don't know if that's totally healthy for the game, that aspect of Allied design. It it might not be, but I think it has to do with the way I mean, I think the Phantasm thing is a good example of like what that looks like when you can interact with it in a meaning, a

sort of meaningful way. And I think it's also part of why, like Victor into Enigma wasn't the worst. He was by far the best guardian into Enigma because he could test of strength and he could trounce. So he gets value back out of blocking and it's not good. He doesn't like it but he could block and not just lose out completely for it as long as he won the clash. I think what we we used to say was we take those.

Yeah. But then of course, you know they flip their their red Enigma Chimera and we're just like fuck. Yeah, but no, it it becomes a weird thing when you have these permits because you can't just let them sit on the board forever. That's them getting sort of like pseudo infinite value if they never get cleared. And that's like one of the big things in new Prism as well as like I need to make more threats than you can answer. That's that's how it works.

If if I can't just if you're Victor with 45 poppers, I need to do something else and I need to make more threats than you can answer. And that's between angels and heralds and auras. And it's like I have to find something that I can do with that. But it becomes it's always, I'm not sure if it or combo is harder to balance in this game, but it's definitely one of the hardest things for them to balance. And I've I liked where they went with new Prism and I think they

swung back. They swung a little too far in the other direction with Enigma, and I think they're coming back a bit with Gravy Bones. Yeah, Speaking of Gravy Bones, we've been given a glimpse into the future of Allies and where LSS thinks they might be able to go next. And we are recording this at the day where we don't know very much about the set, but that will change like tomorrow. So by the time this episode comes out, you the listeners know a lot more about the set than we do.

You probably have seen like more of Gravy Bones's allies. We only know like Chum the ALS dupe as well as the rigor mortis. Rigor mortis. The six one ally. And there's one other. There is one other. Saw Bones? Yes, saw bones. The Doctor Who can tap and prevent one damage to the next ally. Yes, the prevention one. Yeah, Yep.

So just looking at what we've seen so far, I think I'm a little worried actually that these allies are going to be like too much of a pain in the ass to play against. Like with Droma, you had the phantasm, so you're like, OK, I can put a six in front of this dragon and it will die. I don't have to waste an entire attack because spending an attack to kill an ally is often awful.

Like hopefully I have an attack with go again that also is the exact same attack value as the life that I'm trying to hit. But let's say like I'm trying to attack A4 ally and I only have threes in hand. What the fuck am I going to do? I waste 2 cards on it, suddenly I'm giving 6 value to kill this ally? Or like it has two life but I only have 4 go again, it's the same thing. Like it's hard sometimes it's really hard to kill them

efficiently. And with effects like saw bones, you can prevent one damage and you can like screw over your opponent by making the break point bad for them, like forcing it to be a bad inefficient break point. Yeah. However, it looks like they are doing other healthy things. The ally cards cannot block, which means that there's no easy way of getting them into your graveyard unless you lean on discard synergies. So there's an extra hoop to jump through to be able to play these

allies though. You can play them normally straight from hand, but then they won't have Go Again I do not believe. I believe they only have Go Again in terms of casting them when you cast them from. Graveyard with the compass specifically and only the first one, yes. Yes, but it also looks like they're trying to get action points. So no more of these dragon storms or ward storms that we've seen coming from Enigma and Dromi or even Angel or aura storms that we see coming from Prism.

It seems like it's going to be like they're going to have to work a lot harder to be able to throw multiple attacks and in a given turn with their allies. It's like they're saying, instead of making it really difficult for our opponent, let's make it difficult for the player playing the allies, you know? Yeah, yeah, good. One thing I've loved about Illusionist design is that you've been able to see LSS improve their design process as the games continued. And we kind of did that in this

pitch, right? We started talking about old Prism and Spectra, then we moved to allies with Dromi, and then like the introduction of Ward with new Prism, and then like how that manifested in Enigma. And now we're talking about returning to allies again in Gravy Bones, which is also probably going to be a signal for like what allies are going to look like with new Dromi. Like there's a really cool aspect where LSS has printed really strong, really powerful

things with with illusionists, but we've been able to see them develop and get better and find more and more healthier ways of expressing the same mechanical ideas of permanence on the board that give you recurring value all. Right, so with everything in red pitch wrapped up and discussed

Fuzzy, what do you have for yellow? So I'm going to be talking about semi permanence. What's a semi permanent? You know, those things that are like they're like permanence, but they have an expiration date. You know, they're not that long for this world, but they're still very much things that like help you develop a board state. They make you feel like you have more on the board. They break turn parody like any of your other like permanence and they could potentially give

you reoccurring value. Maybe that's what I want to talk about on my pitch. I think the first example I want to talk about is Crank item. When Mechanologist as a class was first created in Arcane Rising, it was having a clear emphasis on these items, right? It was, is it like the first board state class? Because Aleutians didn't come

out till Monarch, right? So the first time we saw like these cards being put into your board state was Dash and they gave her like the pistol package, you know, where you could slowly assemble like Zodia over time and then have this value that you could pump resources into that'd be way more efficient than anything anyone could handle. So we had this like slow amassing of efficient items. In terms of like a full game plan, I'd say so.

They also had items like tech locore or tech Apple Pounder wasn't the game yet. They had items like techno core that gave you resources for the next couple turns and supercharged you for the next couple. So they already had this idea of like some items stick around for indefinitely. Some items are going to give you short term value for the next couple turns.

However, when they revisited mechanologist in bright lights, they were like, OK, items are weird because they don't block and they don't necessarily give you an action point. But they found a happy medium with crank where you can choose to have your item around for less time, fewer turns, but you get your action point back because that's a really different balancing point. An item that gives you your action point back with go again is a lot easier to use than one

that doesn't. So being able to like, imagine if all your items cost that action point, they didn't have go again, but then you draw a hand of three of them. What are you going to do? Play 1 Arsenal one pitch to another maybe, but like being able to play them all and crank them out one after another. Actually using your whole hand is something that is probably pretty important if you want to

build a game plan around items. Yeah, crank was also great because very often they attached, they were able to math out the value that the card would generate to the amount of steam counters on it. So look at Hadron Collider. Hadron Collider is one of my favorite examples of a good

crank item. It is A1 cost that enters with four steam counters on it. You can crank it down to three steam counters and then the next time you boost it destroys itself and gives plus power equal to the amount of counters on it. So if you somehow were able to get an extra action point it could come in as a one for four non tac action pump which is way overrate.

But if you wanted it to have go again, you would have to crank it down to three and then it's just like come to fight, you're just running a one 4 + 3 pump in your deck. Smurf, do you have a favorite crank item? I mean, boom grenade is boom grenade. Yeah, Yeah, it's hard to argue with that. Grenade's pretty solid. I like Boom Grenade because it is always for value when you get it off.

Like the amount of damage that it's dealing has nothing to do with the steam counters, but the way that you use it. Whether you're calling your shot on the next turn or trying to line something up immediately, that's what you would want to crank for. So I kind of feel like it's almost better to not crank it a lot of the time because then you get to use a full hand to push that boom grenade in the future,

you know? But also like sending it off the top with dash IO, getting a free action point without diminishing your damage. And then if you're able to sync the group, boom grenade like that can be really powerful. I love Arsenal ING a boom grenade and then like doing a big chain and then they're like ready for the last attack and then I just go boom grenade, no crank pass.

That is a lot of fun. I do want to point out Cerebellum Processor in Null time zone because those are our most recent crank cards delivered to us via the expansion slot, and they feature 2 steam counters by default, one if you crank, which is different than a lot of the bright lights items that started with one steam counter. So being able to keep it around for a whole turn cycle even if you crank it like really changes the math of the card. Makes them a lot stronger a lot of the time.

And they also happen to print them on Blues, which is how you get to see them in lists. They were like, let's make a good crank card for all of our mechanologist players. Yeah, well, I think also people really liked blue for items because items can't block and often times you want to pitch a blue anyway. So it was like, oh, I can't play this item, but it's my pitch outlet. And so I still feel like I'm it's, it's a good card in my

hand. Yep. Yeah, one of the worst things in Dash IO was items in your hand felt terrible. Items on top of your deck were insane. Yeah, they were the best cards ever. Like as soon as you drew them, it was like, oh, I don't want this in my hand. It's like reaping what you sow You're like, I'm going to put 30 items in my deck. Hell yeah, I'm getting all these items off the top. What are all these items doing

in my hand? Do you think in high seas we're going to see more crank items with two steam counters, or do you think that's too too dangerous for limited play? It'd be a little spooky. I mean it depends on how they

balance them of course. But like the two, the two steam counter thing got me like thinking where it's like if you had quantum processor with two steam counters, the one that lets you just instant speed put items into play and that has two steam counters at the start, that really feels like a very different card. Yeah, like I hate playing one item to potentially play 2 items from hand. It just doesn't seem like good value to me.

But like give me the least the possibility that I can maybe get 4 items out of it. But putting an extra Steam counter on, now we're talking. Yeah, like that I was, I was very surprised when processor had two steam counters on it because I was like the cerebellum processor. Yeah, Cerebellum processor. Sorry, that is just way, way more impactful because you get 2 full turns of trying to set up for it. Yeah, for it to be good.

Like it's, it's insane. So crank items are kind of a way for the to power up the next turn or two. I also want to highlight channel cards like Channel not Heroic, Channel, Lightning Valley, Channel Lake, Friendship, you know all the good ones. The fact that it's a, an aura, some of them even like cost something. So you're already like spending a card, maybe 2 cards to put them down, but they give you that reoccurring value over

time. The longer you can keep them around, the better it is. And they've balanced it with this channel mechanic where every turn I keep it around is more difficult. You have to sync a little bit more of your investment plan a little bit more of your turn in order to make that happen. And sometimes you're like not able to keep it around. You only have one Earth card in

hand. You don't get another turn of Channel Mountain Heroic. But it also, I think it's very interesting how these cards don't actually have a higher resource cost to keep around. You can still use those three resources, 6 resources, 9 resources however you like. You just actually have to find a way to spend them, otherwise you might not get the opportunity to pitch those cards.

Yeah. One thing that I, I, I really like now that we've gotten to channel cards, because I kind of want to see if we can define sort of what this pitch is trying to talk about, which is cards that don't give endless reoccurring value, but they can give continual value over the turns that they exist, right? You could even say that like crank cards and channel cards have this common thread where the next each turn that you want to keep it around is going to be

harder than the last. You know keeping a crank item for like an extra turn is going to be more difficult than keeping around for the turn prior. Yes, right. I, I, I see what you're saying. It's hard because I don't think about keeping them around. I want I'm focusing on like value per turn, right. So like boom grenade with a steam counter on it can threaten for value on an on hit over two turns and that's very strong, but you may have to crank it. And when you do now it only

provides it for one turn. Yeah, yeah. That on head is only active for one turn, even though in both instances it only provides for value, which is slightly different than the channel cards where let's look at like channel the Millennium tree. The first turn you play it, it amps 3, and then if you keep it around, it amps 3 again. And then if you keep it around again, it amps 3 again. That's 9 value. But there's a chance that you only keep it around for one turn, and you only get the three

value out of that card. Sure. I definitely remember like introducing myself to competitive play through Briar and just loving that feeling of like sticking a mountain on the field and trying to get as much value out of that mountain as I can. You know, if I can pitch a red to keep it around another turn, I might be willing to do that because I'm getting my value from my cards, not from the pitch value, but just from being able to maintain the board state and giving +3 to all my attacks.

You know, I also find it to be a really enticing design. Like regardless of how strong the card really is, I think it's a really enticing quest to ask a player to go through like, hey, can you pitch cards? Because you might get crazy value by doing that. How long can you keep me around, huh? How long do you think you can give value out of me? It makes people want to like go to their deck builder and like how much value can I get out of

Channel Thunder Step? It's really hard because there's only so many cards that are used. It's not a good game plan. Do you have a favorite channel card Smurf? I mean, I mean it's channel like friendship. Oh yeah, channel like friendship. Yeah, Icelander player over here like. I was, I was an Icelander player. Like that card was just so good. It did like everything the deck wanted and it worked with every

other card just beautifully. And like it was when you got to like play it on their turn and then send like a wounded bowl pitching an ice card and you arsenaled a Nathan ice vein for the next turn so that you had the pitch outlet plus the waning moon pitch outlet to keep channel round. It was fantastic. And if you ever hit like ice eternal with triple blue ice cards the turn after then you

were just like. And being able so good to play it on your opponent's turn, basically like you get to have value out of it on the turn 0 that you play, yeah. You get. You get like the two turns of value while only having to pitch. Once Icelander is pretty clever, I guess for being able to do that. One thing I also like about the channel design is how it it tells your opponent like hey, like if you put enough pressure on me, it's going to be harder

for me to use this. Like if Fryer plays channel mat heroic, that's when you want to try to use CNC or erase face to stop them from being able to use it anymore. You know, it's a lot harder to really use channel mat heroic when you're destroying the arsenal to so she can't use A5 card hand or a race case. So she literally either has to give you 2 of her cards which all of her cards are now higher value than normal because of having a channel out.

You know, but giving up two of those cards just to keep it around it makes the value proposition a lot worse. Yeah. And it's also like it's a very, very clear signal, right? Like it's not ambiguous. It's like, I'm going to be trying to do a lot. So if you can push through right now, it'll be better for you to do it now than later, yeah. Also very very notably with these semi permanent cards is that you can't interact with them in the same way as you can with illusionists.

Right? With the illusionist designs we were saying war just destroys itself like allies you can attack, Spectra you can target and destroy. These don't have that. You need cards that specifically say like destroy an aura or like put an aura to the bottom of their deck, return to their hand, whatever the case may be. You need things that specifically interact with that card type and those aren't always well distributed right

now. I remember when Dash IO was looking a little scary in the Rosetta meta that like Aurora's were running smashing good time as their generic like anti item tech. Oh yeah, I think I'd be pretty happy if there was more counter play options just kind of scattered throughout the game, be it like many classes having different counter play cards or hate cards or maybe a couple generic options even. I think it'd generally be like better if there was less polarizing matchups in the game.

That's my take. I think they're always going to be there, and that's OK, but I think like, it's not a healthy thing to strive for to have those polarizing match ups where you just don't have the tools to win. So if this hero's good right now, he should probably just not play a hero that sucks into that match up, you know?

I mean, I think we're going to be seeing some of that as well with like there we're going to have a graveyard base deck and there's already a decent number of graveyard hate options even at generic so. Yeah, yeah. I think there's. Run gamekeeping, right? Yeah, great. Gravekeeping's the solution. I mean, I think it's not nothing. Yeah, yeah. When they can't play their stuff as instance like. When necromancer has like an entire dude in his graveyard ready to go, like banishing with

gravekeeping is pretty real. This set is so interesting because we're going to get a gold base set, a graveyard base set, and like allies, there are. And items. And items. Oh yeah, and just items. So like there's about 3 to 4 axes in which we could just see more hate cards be printed for classes. And I wonder if they're going to go for it. They might not, you know, they may want, because at the end of the day, you also don't want a deck that's just like 20 hate

cards. As a Guardian player, that's how sometimes I have to feel like I construct my deck. It's just like, well, everybody's annoying and I have really good hate cards. So I guess I just need to run all of my really good hate cards. And like, then I just have to shuffle. And sometimes I end up in a matchup where it's like, well, I guess I have to run Weakest Link into Slippy because I just want a card. This does nothing against you, but like, I need 60. Yeah.

How do we feel about these semi permanent designs? I kind of feel like it's a really healthy spot. If you're going to have a board state, it should be tough to maintain. You have to do effort to maintain it and you want to get that repeated value that breaks the math of the game. You got to feel really good for it. You got to go through that quest in order to like give you that sense of pride and accomplishment, you know? What do you guys think?

Yeah. I mean, I think it is one of the ways they get to balance it, especially when there are things that are much harder to interact with. Like they for the first set of stuff they that is basically would stay around indefinitely. They have to have a way to interact with it otherwise it doesn't work. But when you give these things that are going to last two or three turns or one or two turns even, like if there's, if they, if they're hard to interact with, that can be fine as long

as the effect isn't too crazy. Like channel like frigid can definitely be oppressive for some stuff, but you know, there's an expiration date on it. You know it's going to disappear and that you can bide your time

until it does. So I, I think I think they've learned a lot and they've kind of shown that where it's like channel Lightning Valley compared to channel like Frigid in its most powerful heroes are still drastically different in their impact levels, where Lightning Valley does not feel nearly as bad to play against as channel like Frigid from Icelander. I love that as an example. I think they're very skill expressive cards and that's probably my favorite aspect of. Oh yeah, both.

Playing into and against these things. Yeah, awesome. So I think that's about all I wanted to say for yellow pitch. Clark, I think you've got a cool blue pitch lined up for us. I certainly hope it's cool for

blue pitch. I'm talking about one time use permanence. So this is interesting because I'm going to be talking about things like rune chance. Whoa whoa whoa, Mark, I just played against rune sack Florian. Those rune chants didn't go fucking anywhere. And yes, you are correct, but they didn't give any value until the turn that they activate. So that's really the thing that I'm focusing on here, right? Even if it can stay on the board for a really really long time,

it only gives you value once. And this is different from the illusionist auras which are a small amount of constantly recurring value turn over turn. Or the semi permanence that Fuzzy was talking about where every turn you keep it around there's you either guarantee or get a chance of getting that

value out of the card. Here it's you don't really get the value out of the card sitting there until you do something with it. So I think rune chants are a great example of sort of what I'm talking about here. They stay on the board, but they need to be consumed to generate value. A lot of early items were also like this, not mechanologist items but generic items. Things like energy potion and time snap potion.

Where because with energy potion and time snap potion you have to spend your whole action point to play them, but then you get no value until later you finally activate them for your value. Well, Clark, I do want to put a little bit of a caveat there. Rune Chants can give you value passively as they stay on the field without popping. In the case of cost reduction cards like reduced to rune Chant or if you're an LL player, you

can use the chess piece. Let's see pledge sheets Scaletta. Yeah, the scaletta so that you're getting value out of having a lot of runechants in order to reduce things like Sonata arcanics. Or you could play like Sonata Galaxia. Yeah, the the non attack action cards that can get cost reduced definitely break the mold on this as is reduced runechants.

I was definitely more thinking of the attack action cards and even like Runic Reckoning to get the value out of playing it, you still need to throw an attack afterwards, which would then consume the Rin chance. But you're right, you you can definitely double up on the value. It's not just the one arcane from them. It's also this reduction in resources. But a lot of those cards are under rate, right?

Three for four go again. So you're kind of asking to have one on the it's it's OK, you're right. It's a it's a very good counterpoint here. Some other cards that I think fit into this are start of turn auras. We mostly see these in tokens, things like mite agilities and seismic surges where they are an aura that you generate. So it's a permanent, it goes on to the field, but at the start of turn it destroys itself and goes to give you your value. It's a temporary.

It's very temporary, right? But it still provides some carryover by creating something on the board state which the opponent can then interact with, right? If I'm KO and I play Cast Bones to get 6 mites in an agility token, but then you play Summer's Fall in response to get rid of my agility token, that's a really good interaction in my opinion. Right. Yeah, but if you're relying on that in the matchup, it's not as good because it's only around for one turn.

This is very different than, say, being able to, say, target a channel card with your Aura Destruction because you have at least a couple of turns to find it and throw it at the opponent. Or even like a Mara guy. The the either maraud guy the dragon. Well you can't bottom a dragon

but the the spooky Mystic one. Yeah, anything that stays out running the hate cards is better into those things because you have a better chance of actually getting it to line up when you want it. And against things that are only around for one turn, it's it's not as good. And these cannot stay on the board, right? They are only existing for a single turn. And a lot of crank items also exist in this realm, right? Fuzzy we were talking about, oh, Kevin, you mentioned this card

in the previous bit. It's the card that lets you put items into the field directly at instant speed. Quantum. Processor. Quantum processor. Thank you. That's a card that really feels like it's only really probably getting one activation right most of the time. Sometimes it might not, though. You could get one on the turn you play it and one on your opponent's turn, yeah. But it's it's less of that like big carry over. It feels like it's very restricted to just one turn.

Yeah, because because you're also having to play out Quantum Processor and then activate it and then like try and cash in an action point from this item that you're bringing as an instant. Like if you get a full extra turn of that, it lets you use that so much more fluidly within that within a hand of four cards. So like the the difference between 1:00 and 2:00 steam counters there is huge. Definitely. I'm so, so happy you brought that up. I also want to note that there

is another bit of weirdness. So when we look at Might and Agility, it also has its counterparts in Courage and Quicken tokens. Right now these do not pop at the start of turn, but they do like rune chance, trigger the moment that you fulfill their condition. So once again, sits on the field, can sit on the field for a long time and can really lead to a punishment, for example. But like, clash of agility, be careful, yeah. Clash clash of agility into Necromancer with that seven

power pirate ship. Definitely not something we're looking to to rush into. Or a six power ally off the top. Yeah, yeah, definitely don't want to give them those those agilities. But Quickens are very frustrating because when they can sit on an opponent who is looking to block and wait for their moment to go extra wide, it's a very powerful extra tool for them, right?

And that's sort of what makes Quicken more dangerous than say, Agility. With Agility, you have to use it on that next turn, you have to find yourself in a position to take advantage of it. But with Quicken it can last turn over turn until they can get that value. Yeah, that was like a huge part of playing heavy hitters limited was if you just played a wage agility and you wagered the agility and they had to give you 2 cards to stop it plus an

armor. Like can they even use that agility on the next turn or are they just stopping you from getting it like. I liked how it was less of a free agility, a free wager when it came to a Warrior because Warrior could pitch one card and swing for four that you just gave them the ability to do that, you know, But against Brute when they, when they don't have an arsenal or against Guardian in general, like, yeah, I don't care. You're not going to be doing anything with this agility.

So I kind of want to ask you guys, how do we feel about these one time use cards? I think they've traditionally been seen as less powerful than the flashier Illusionist auras and perhaps the more synergistic Illusionist auras in board states. But at the same time, they have the ability to be quite toxic, right? Because they have a permanent board state without the ability

to directly interact with them. Very often these things don't have Ward, they don't have Spectra, so you can't destroy them like you would the same way with an illusionist, but you can only get the value out of them once. But that's led to these like toxic OTK style strategies or turtle burst strategies that we've seen come out with Visserai last meta and Florian this meta that a lot of people

have sort of rallied against. But harkening back to one of the talking points in red pitch with Enigma, where it felt like you were never in a position to actually block Enigma's wards because you had to convert every hand to offense. Is this doing a similar thing? I've never thought about it that way, but it seems like a cogent comparison, you know? Yeah, I can't really block OTK Florian, just like I can't block Enigma. Hey, good $10 word there for me.

And Florian is kind of like less value. You know, like read the runes is only coming in for three, right. You know, I and I don't have go again on it. I know read the runes isn't like necessarily the best rune chance stacking card. The best one is channel the Millennium tree. Actually, it is one. Of the best. Yeah, yeah. It's a good one to think about for the equation, but I think Florian's really using like channel the Millennium tree to

make it a winning strategy. If it's going to be toxic, that's where it's going to be. Sure. Yeah. And using those semi permanent. So it's not the rune chance that are the problem, it's the channel that's the problem. Thank you, Fuzzy. And you know, at least with Enigma I can run whatever equipment I want I want. I don't have to take out my gamblers gloves in order to put in arcane barrier. All I want to do is run gamblers gloves, let me run gamblers

gloves. But no, I have to take it out and run my AB1 and against Florian, like with the channel, the Millennium tree. I even have to take out my cool headpiece and put in like Schoolhorn. And so I'm running AB three. You know, I've I've been a brute maid for the past month. So those are the only examples I'm gonna use. So this is good because now we're sort of comparing the two different aura types, right, or the two different board state types of semi permanent versus

one time permanent. The semi permanents sort of have a fade out point. Well, these one time permanence very often don't have a fade out point, but the semi permanence probably generate more value, have the ability to be more broken, have the ability to break the math of the game. Whereas the one time permanence are very tied to the math of the game and it's more about creating offensive or defensive overlaps when you finally activate them.

So what do you guys think about the comparison between the two and what do you think is generally healthier for the game as it currently stands? And what do you think? We need to start addressing what you think is probably more toxic about them. I think it's funny to compare the two because they, I think they serve very different

functions in the game. You know, channel, not heroic, Channel Lightning Valley and Channel Lake Frigid are all build arounds where like they can kind of become your game plan to an extent, at least for the terms that they're around. Whereas I guess rune chance technically are your game plan, but a lot of the other examples of these one time permanence are supposed to be like little gravy bonuses that you get to keep around. Like do not put your whole game

plan around them. You know, they are not a win con, but they're just going to kind of help like grease the wheel and give you some way of breaking the turn parody a little bit. And they're not meant to be broken because they're not meant to be really strong. You know, they're just kind of going to help your game plan a

little bit. Sure. And again, room chance also like break that because they are pretty solid and a lot of room blades really do build around them when all these Rosetta cards in limited are like if you've dealt arcane damage and like for enchants are one of the only ways you can do that arcane damage in limited. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the the piece that I come back to with this that you said is the one time permanence basically never break the math because they're one time.

We can pretty easily face up say what the value of a Reed the runes is. Yeah, it's usually 3IN everyone and then in viscera is probably 4. But then the semi permanent ones, like they start to break the math a little bit based on how many terms you can keep it. And the better your deck is at keeping it, the more powerful that card is. And then we see like we go that step further into the illusionist ones that like just fully break the math because that's what they're there for.

So like I, I think that's like the big distinction that I come down to with these is like how is like the the semi permanent, like just starting to break the math a little bit and it's how much? And then the one times like. It's generally very easy to to line it up with to to give it a reasonable or. I'm trying to think of a word for it like a justifiable mathematical value. So here at the end of blue pitch, I feel like I have to bring up Gravy Bones because we did that in the other two

pitches, so why not do it here? And I want to tell everyone, hey, keep an eye on those early blue potion items because Gravy Bones needs a blue to go to the graveyard to be able to play his cards. And these potions seem like they are perfectly positioned to just when you need it, send that blue to graveyard and get you either action points.

Which, hey, it's looking like Gravy Bones might need action points to be able to use everything really efficiently and resources because some of these allies cost a lot. What I've really appreciated about this pitch is that we've talked through moments where all three of these permanent types have sort of demonstrated an ability of running the meta because of set up right and that long term perspective of flesh

and blood. I know I definitely fell in love with evaluating the hand by hand math of flesh and blood, but I think that it's this longer term perspective, this idea of setting up and being able to properly evaluate how to generate those overlaps. Offensive and defensive in such a way that lets you actually win the game. The days are gone where you are winning the game by throwing 8 would dominate. That is just not really how most

games end anymore. It's by throwing 20 on a turn and just overwhelming anything the opponent could conceivably block. Sure, and permanence are how you do that. I think everyone can learn from watching decks how they use permanence, how they play around permanence, and how they are able to generate these turns. Awesome. Well said Clark. Yeah, I think that's all I have for blue pitch. I think it's time to move to our arse. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Fuzzy.

It's pronounced Arsenal zone. No, I think we just say Arsenal. Arsenal Arsenal The Arsenal zone. The Arsenal zone is the part of our show where we shout out a card and then we've been thinking about lately for whatever reason we want. Yeah, this can be a card you love, a card you hate, a card you love to hate. We like to start off the Arsenal Zone by shouting out a card

selected by one of our patrons. That's right, if you subscribe to our Patreon, you too can be a part of our show by giving us cards to shout out right here in the Arsenal Zone. And for today's episode, the winner is Thanks for All noise,

Draken. Draken wanted to shout out Frailty Trap because quote because it's a really good card and because it dot dot dot it's good into Ranger. Frailty trap is a red 0 cost assassin Ranger defense reaction subtype trap. It blocks 3 and says When this defends an attack with go again create a frailty token under the attacking heroes control. This is a very very strong trap.

I really enjoyed this set of trap designs because back in the back at this time we didn't have a lot of 0 for three defense reactions. It was all sync blows and fate for scenes, and so when frailty trap, it was a 0 for three that could give for value if they end up attacking with that card with go again from Arsenal or a weapon with go again or even something with go again into one of those two things, right. The frailty trap would then give the -1 value.

Sometimes it wouldn't though, And so it felt very nicely match up dependent and I it's, it's a really, really great design. And of course as Riptide you get an extra ping damage so you could even get more value. 5 value off of a trap. God damn did. You want to say anything about

this card, Smurf? I mean, it's just a really solid card and as long as we have heroes that use a pair of one handed weapon, it's going to it's going to be good because they have to be able to give those weapons go again to use both of them. And then you're going to get double value on it. Like it's a card you're pretty much always going to see in any deck that wants to run traps. It's just solid sneaky interaction.

The block of insets go again rungate card with this and then the frailty trap means that they can't attack with the flail anymore cuz it only comes in for one. Yeah, cuz the flail will be 0, yeah. Yep. Yeah, they still might swing out if they wanted. To. Yeah, they'll probably do that for the synergy. They they might. Pay one deal 0. That'd be funny, yeah. But I, I love how this just hits

a lot of matchups, right? So many decks have go again and so many decks are looking to follow up that go again with their weapons or a card from Arsenal, right? I do it all the time. Like I've had a lot of turns into a into assassins where I've like zealous belting from Arsenal into a hammer swing. And when they block that zealous belting with the frailty trap, I'm like buck buck. They got so much value out of this one card. It's probably one of the best, probably the best common trap

from the cycle. There was blood rot trap and inertia trap, an inertia trap triggering on the greater greater powers. And Blood Ross on reactions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great shadow it was. Definitely the most, definitely the most consistent. Awesome. Yeah, thank you for your card suggestion, Drigven. A reminder to everyone at our Patreon at the $5 tier, you can suggest a card to be mentioned here in the Arsenal zone. And once you submit your suggestion, we keep it. It does.

It doesn't reset every single week. We hold on to these. I think this one was suggested like a month or so ago. They don't go anywhere. They don't go anywhere, we keep them around and so the more cards you put in, the longer you're with us, the better chance that you'll get a card in. With all that being said, let's move on to our Arsenal Zone cards. Fuzzy. A little birdie told me that you wanted to go. First, I think that Birdie literally was Clark.

I think Clark wanted me to go first. Because I said it just now so. I have a tradition on the show of whenever I shout out a card, I also sign a copy and give it to each of the other people on the episode. So Smurf the card that I'm shouting out. I will give a copy to you the next time I see you with my signature on it. To make it worse, you know. Worse. Hey I'm just able to up charge for one of these. The card that I really want to talk about today is Thick Hide Hunter Majestic.

Thick Hide Hunter I think is real. I've been shouting out Reiner cards for the last like 3 weeks and I'm not done. But I think Thick hide hunter is really interesting because it's a way for them to give a defensive tool to what is inherently an aggressive

concept. Like if you're saying hey brute run as many cards with six power as you can, that has to be aggressive at like most and mid range at least, you know, Like how am I supposed to run 6 powered attacks as many as I possibly can and then still keep my defense up? You know, the six powered attacks probably aren't going to

block for more than three. Every time I run a defense reaction, every time I run like like No Fear that instant that banishes cards in order to like that's another defensive tool that plays with sixes, but it's not literally a six power defense card. Thick Height Hunter is a yellow 2 cost, 6 power 6 block brute attack action, and when this attacks or defends, discard a random card as a triggered

ability, not as a cost. So if you're able to dump your hand on something and then block with this card, you're blocking for six with one card with no downside other than, you know, you have to get rid of your hand. It's also nice because if you attack with your whole hand and then attack with this, you can't attack for six without needing

that other card. Or if you need this to be your one attack on the turn and you're looking for the discard synergies, then you can also attack with this, get your discard off of it, and get your synergy there. It's a really flexible utility piece and because it's a yellow 2 cost that is. Nice. When I first saw this card spoiled, I was like, isn't it

awkward? Like isn't it weird to have this card that you can't use unless you either pitch it for two or you have to discard a card you it feels like you'd have to fumble around it to you make good use of it. But I've been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is. You know, on a blood rush bellows turn, I can pitch it to claw or I can play it as the last attack.

If somebody is attacking me with dominate or overpower, I can just block for six and this card, a card and I'm effectively blocking with two cards on something where I normally wouldn't be able to. You know, I'm still able to get value just by getting around evasion. And you know, I hate Azalea. I will lose to Azalea most of the time, but being able to throw a six block in front of one of Azalea's cards, even with a card, again, it is a six

powered card. I don't have to run a lower density of sixes in order to get around this evasion. You know, it's a defensive tool with a stat line that is really hard to make defensive tools for, and that's what I appreciate about this card. Yeah, it's also one of the first action cards that doesn't have 3-2 or zero printed in the bottom right, which opens up a really interesting design space.

Yep. So I'm excited to see if Brute gets more of these kind of tools in the future, and I'm going to sign a copy and give to each of you. It's also a card that like the Brute discord on the the brute channel on the purple discord has all been like really happy with it at 2 copies, you know, like running 3 copies is a lot easier for them to clump up together and like you're like, oh, what do I do with two thick kite hunters but like pitch one to attack with. The other one.

I guess, but then like you have to get something to get rid of the other two cards somehow. Yeah, Block. I'm sure some people are happy with three. I've been running two and I've been really happy with it. You know, some cards are just really nice at 2 copies. You know they can be perfect for 2 copies you're really happy to have, but you don't want a third copy. You know, like that one friend that you like, love to death, but you're like, you know what, 2 copies of this brand is

enough. What do I feel like you're talking about me? No, no, no. Clark, you are three copies, maybe even 4 copies of In My Life. We have a podcast together for crying out loud. I'm running at least 5 copies of Clark. Kevin, what do you think of Thick Eyed Hunter? Or if you don't have a lot of thoughts about Thick Eyed Hunter, what do you think about action cards getting bigger block values than just three?

I mean, I thought it was a really cool design when I saw it. It was like, that's a really flexible card and it has all the things on it that Brute wants, which doesn't necessarily mean it would fit. We've seen a lot of cards where there's a lot of words on it and all the words look good and then they don't combine well. But I I was very curious to see where that card ended up because it was just. It was interesting.

Yeah. Like, it kind of broke the rules, but not in the way where it looked like it would break the game. Yeah. So I, I, I hadn't played against it or seen it really, but I know that Dex had been really happy with it. Dex fan he he really liked it and I think he was it too as

well. Like the the card is just like really cool design where it's not pushed, it's not broken, but it's just like interesting and it makes you like, it doesn't really make you like work for it, but like, I don't know, it just does something that other card that no other card does. I've had really fun turns where like Florian will play like felling of the crown at me with like some rune chants on it and they're like surely I'm leaking damage.

It's three rune chants on felling of the crown and I'm like pitch to failing bottom of card like block 9 I get to with the thick kite hunter so I'm not taking any damage. You thought you could leak some and then I still lose the game because they have the tempo. But you know, awesome. Clark, what card do you wanna shout out today? I wanna shout out Deadwood Dirge.

I'm pretty sure I've already done this card because I'm kind of a Room Blade fanatic, but Deadwood Dirge is a card that I kind of consistently return to and go God, this is so fucking cool. Like they made a read the runes with a go again, right? You have to destroy an aura. If that aura is a rune chant, then you only net two other rune chants. But there's all these fringe cases where you can get the three rune chants out of it.

It feels really, really nice if I'm destroying like a disease token that was given to me by a by a nasty little frailty trap or, you know, I'm destroying my room blood incantation, which is worded in such a weird way that it just like has one turn where it's sitting with no counters on it. So I can target it with my Deadwood urge then. So there's all sorts of little fringe cases where I or soul

shackles. So I guess the card I'm actually talking about is Soul Shackles, because I really want them to like give soul shackles to Vincet. I don't want to give soul shackles to Vincent. But like, she kind of needs a way to fill up great, fill up her vanish zone more consistently, she does. Soul. Shackles are not it, but it's random and the soul shackle isn't the one that gives Go again too. Much.

It's too much. But it's also like, it'd be a really cool thing to be able to target with Deadwood dirt. So like I could control the rate of which I'm fatiguing myself. Like I'm giving up the ability to feel fill my blood debt, but like I get an extra rune chant out of it. It's cool. Yeah, Chain would agree with you. In LL you start doing that a lot. But he can get so many right?

Like. Yes. Like I think it's definitely one of those effects where like it should be gated and clearly LSS is terrified of this interaction because they banned Deadwood dirge in Project Blue but it's not banning commoner yet. I think because they're scared of the rares specifically and like how much extra value those generate. But God I just really love the interactions with Deadwood dirge but LSS seems really scared of it generating 3 value in any consistent way so it's going to

be interesting to see. I've even heard some people call for banning it and living legend. Wow, I. Know my silly little rare? Also, the art's dope. Look at that guy banging away at the keyboards screaming his heart out. I think they're also like other there's a couple other interactions that are really funny with that card, which is you can dirge a hypothermia. Yeah. Oh man, has any? Affliction aura which? So if Icelander comes back, you can also dirge a frost hex.

Oh man, hell yeah. Really cool interactions. Yeah, no, the Deb Deborah Durge is such a sick card. Like when they when they spoiled that in Rosetta Season. We're just looking at it like this. This card's nuts. This card is so good for Vincet because it is read the runes with go again for Vincet because you get the one from Vincet and you turn that into 3 and that's your real chance for the turn. And then you're just on like A2

card 9 for that turn cycle. And it's just is the interactions that are so cool without it, the numbers on it being busted. Kind of a theme. Let's see if we can keep it going. Kevin, what do you got? So I I've picked Invoke Shariah, never mind it's and it really came back on my radar when we got war cry of feminists. Oh. Because Invoke Shrya is A2 cost light illusionist action

invocation. Cast it targeting A spectral shield and transform it into Shrya Archangel of Knowledge which is the standard 4/4 with ward 4. Paid 2 to attack with it. Yeah, this was the first Angel that we ever saw, right? This was the. First yeah, this was the first Angel and like ward ally the of the four four set that we would see it would be in dynasty like 2 sets before new prison would come out.

And it has the text of whenever Sharia deals damage, you gain that much life once return action pay to to attack whenever it's tax. You may banish a light card from your hero's soul if you do deal one arcane to any target, which is also going to be nifty. Maybe for gravy bones. You can also bolt the. Bird. You can bolt the bird. I think there's better interactions for that for the bird though.

But this gets really funny when you just play a war cry in front of its attack and suddenly it's attacking for eight with life Link. Oh Gee. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah, that was like the interaction for me where it's like that's where a war cry gets

really interesting. And it's because Shreya has this text that interacts with other stuff in the same way that like this is the same text that Scepter has and Krakens Aether Vane had, where it's like it's just set up to when you can buff this one day, it's it can do really crazy stuff. And Shreya by itself is you pay, you have the Shreya card, you pay 2 to flip and you pay 2 to attack.

And you're getting, you're threatening A3 card 12, we'll call it -1 because you have to give up a spectral shield. But you're attacking for four, you're life linking for four. And then you have word for. Oh yeah, yeah. It's an Angel attack that you have to block. And we talked about how people don't want to be blocking angels. Now add 1 more card and add 8. Oh my goodness. I don't wanna.

This like it's this card has been so close to going back into my prism deck for since Haunted came out because War Cry is so interesting and war Cry by itself is a crazy card. It's a 0 for four go again three block light yellow. Yeah, those are. That's a really good stat line. That sounds really good. Illusionist gets a like. 0 for four pump on a yellow on a block 3 just because angels are hard to get out I guess. Yes, yeah, like that's and it

still doesn't make the deck. Like it's that good and it doesn't make the deck. But no, I invoke Soraya is really cool because as soon as you put on hit text for an Angel, it's. Yeah, I will say Soraya being Invoke, Soraya being a legendary probably hurts its viability because you just can't consistently get it in the same way that you can consistently get the other angels. In a way, yeah. You don't have a way to fetch

this out of your deck. Yeah, but I mean it being an Angel means it still works with your weapon to give it go again. So like I've even looked at like if you have the invoke and war cry in your hand and you or like one of them is in arsenal, you can Halo and grab figment of protection, which makes your spectral shield and then you can go Sharia into also free flip with rapture on figment of protection. Yeah, especially if you pitch a blue right?

Because that leaves you with the 2 floating to play. Invoke Soraya. Yeah. So there's there's some I think the math ended up being it was a 5 card 30 and 10 of that is Ward. Oh boy howdy, I sure do like the fact that I'm up 30 Life on this prism. Wait, what are you doing? I mean, if they haven't popped headpiece, you're not winning yet. Yeah. Mood. So, you know, invoke, invoke Shy

is really cool and I wish. I don't think we're going to get any more allies from new Prism just because it won't work. But I mean, you know what, Kevin? I want to play Prism now. Wow. You. You've convinced me. This is a cool enough turn. Kevin, I want to play Prism. Why did we invite Smurf on our pod if he was just going to convert our hosts? Our dearest?

I'm running 5 copies of Clark. I can't but to bear him playing Prism. Just wait until I start bringing up Illusionist every single episode in a pod. It's going to be like the old Leviah days. You know, we're not that far from it just because illusionist is like such a design rich topic, you know? Sure, sure, sure. But right now I'm like illusionist agnostic. Like I talk about how they're annoying but also like the strengths in the game. But now. Oh, it's all over for you guys.

Yeah, because when you get to run Soraya combo, combo like I could see it. Yeah, All right. I think that is the episode. It's funny that we didn't talk

about equipment. I feel like we could have equipment or like the permits in the game, you know? Yeah, I guess we just have to save that for another episode. Let us know if you what this episode has made you think about. Have you started looking at permanence differently? Have you started thinking about how illusionists actually have a space in the meta game that's healthy? Let us know if you want to see that episode on equipment. Let us know if you want to see

Kevin back on the podcast. I know that Joel couldn't be here today, so hopefully we're able to get you on again, get you talking with Joel. Sure. Yeah. All right, Yeah, It's been a pleasure, Kevin. I'm looking forward to seeing you at Vegas. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Have a great day, Night, whatever. Have a great. Day and night, afternoon, whatever time it is for you. All right, bye. Bye peace.

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