Hello there, it's Clark, your favorite host #2 back with another re release episode this week. I wanted to feature an episode we did pretty early on in our podcast when our community was a bit smaller. I pushed for this episode after getting tilted at an Armory that week and discussing why with some friends afterwards. Re listening to this episode, I'm reminded of how important it is to have a healthy mindset when going into an Armory.
Fuzzy and Joel also absolutely killed their sections discussing how flesh and blood engages with the problem of variance in card games. Fuzzy also did an incredible job on his turn 0, so even if you don't listen to the rest of the episode, just listen to that section. It is truly hilarious. We could not stop laughing when recording this episode. With all that being said, I'm going to get out of here and leave you with the episode.
Thank you and see you in 2025. Welcome to Pitch It to Me podcast, a show about the subjective past, present, and potential future of flesh and blood design, where we're consistently bringing you the best flesh and blood podcast on the market. User experience may vary. On Red Pitch, Clark will opine about the eternal struggle that trading card game players face every time they sit down to play. On Yellow Pitch, Fuzzy will go over the ways that variance is handled in the fundamental
design of the game. On Blue Pitch, Joel will give you some tips for how you can make choices that increase consistency and variants. You can find us across all socials such as TikTok and Instagram at Pitch It to Me podcast. Very hands. It was a cruel mistress, her soft, velvety hands caressing you as you draw the most cracked hand in the world to take the tempo, only to suddenly strike you across your face as you draw 4 Blues in the very next turn. Say Lovey.
That worked away better. That was crazy, you know that? Worked way. Better than I worked up and it seems fuzzy. I just saw an 1840s French maiden. He was smoking a cigarette to. Cockle page in the middle of the night. That's crazy. In the wrong career. No stutter whatsoever, just fucking nailed it. Had the accent up too for yeah that's what I'm saying. That was crazy. Thank God we don't have any listeners in France. I want to shout out my dad for
listening to our podcast. He doesn't play flesh and blood but he loves me so he listened to a few episodes and you might listen to more. So Papa Dope, if you're watching, I love you too. That's sweet. That's sweet as hell. I don't have any special shout outs. I don't think any of my, I mean my brother listens because he mixes the podcast every week. He doesn't have to listen to Mix It. I mean, I think he does because like every so often he'll text
me about it, so, you know. He listens by choice. Chris, thank you. He's a real 1. He is honestly. Our podcast episode today is about variance and consistency. And in order to perfectly frame the subject of variance and consistency, I'm going to hand things off to Clark for Red Pitch. He's going to talk about the omnipresent chaos of card games. Yes. So for red pitch today, I want to talk about how card games are very capricious. They're just, they're so random inherently by nature.
Like it is a random thing in In the Flesh and Blood. Ever since Gregorian Tome did his video on fighting games, I think, and even a little bit before that, people love the fighting game analogy for Flesh and Blood. Yes, but fighting games you can control every single thing that you do at every point in the game. That's true you. Cannot do that in flesh and blood. As much as you want to.
Yeah, you, but it's crazy because Flesh and Blood is one of the lowest variance card games, but it's still a card game. You still need to draw random cards from your deck to play the game. And because of that, there is always going to be variance in
every single game. And so I wanted to talk about that element of variance and consistency because you're never going to escape it. It's it's going to happen and I think a lot of players maybe have a different frame of reference when they come to flesh and blood. They come from some other game that felt higher variance and so they go, well I love flesh and blood, it's such a low variance
game. But I still find myself having the same feelings in a game of flesh and blood when I draw 4 Reds as I did in magic when I was mana droughted. Sometimes I even feel worse about it because when I play Flesh and Blood I'm thinking, oh this game is super consistent, this shouldn't be happening to me. Well in Magic the Gathering it's like, yeah, sometimes you just
get 7 lands buddy. Sometimes you just RIP nothing but lands off the top and you're used to it because you expect it. You feel better about it. I feel like I'm going to give you a counterpoint and then a counterpoint to that counterpoint. And magic, If you Magic the Gathering, if you start the game with 7 lands in your hand, you do have a Mulligan, but like a Mulligan feels bad in its own way, right?
So let's just say like you are not able to find lands in your opening hand despite mulliganing whatever, and you lose that game because you aren't able to play much of anything, right? You're so out of the game you're not able to get a foothold and you lose, and that sucks. It's a little bit tempered by the best of three aspect where you're not running ruining your entire match, you're just ruining one game.
In Flesh and Blood, when you draw a bad hand, you can block out with it and it's just one bad hand. You're not ruining your entire game. Except Flesh and Blood can be really tight because these games can be so close. Every game of Flesh and Blood can feel very close, and when you have one bad hand, that's the one that you're going to look back at and you're going to be like, man, I lost with and he had one life. If I had one better hand, I probably could have taken it.
And there's a lot more in the game that goes on than that often. Like a lot of different things would have changed if you had drawn a better hand at that point. Like they would have played more defensively and maybe they could have played defensively and came back, but it can feel really punishing because it's a best of one format and every hand feels like it matters so much in flesh
and blood. Yeah, seeing less of the OR seeing less variance in a game can also make you pigeonhole on the few instances where variance like really screwed you out of a game or like created so many like different paths of decision making that there's so many wrong ones and you're more likely to choose the wrong one. Or a wrong one and get punished for it. Yeah. And ultimately, that's sort of that leads really well into like my main point, which is we have a really hard time as humans
dealing with probabilities. If you guys don't actually know, I was a math tutor, specifically a statistics tutor for multiple years while I was. That was my job up through college. It's also a job that Fuzzy did as well. So we've like talked a lot about statistics and probabilities. The hardest chapter in statistics was probabilities. Like that's the one I always saw the most students struggling with.
And even students who were very good at math always struggled with probabilities, I think because our brains are. So it's not designed for it. Sure. I've always said to my students that the human brain is designed for lines, not numbers. Like we are designed to understand spaces, not numerical representations of things. And so reality often doesn't make sense when it comes to
things like probabilities. And I just want to remind everyone that like as long as there are 4 red cards in your deck that you don't know where they are, you can draw 4 red cards or Blues or Blues. Like unless you know for a fact what your pitch stack looks like and that is the rest of your deck, there is a chance that you draw bad hands and that is always going to be present in every single game.
There is a really fascinating experience actually that happened when in the trading card game world that I want to talk about here, which is when Magic Arena came out. So when Magic Arena came out, it was probably one of the biggest online card game playing platforms I feel like. Definitely a big deal. And so a lot of people will say that it mana screws you or mana droughts you way more often than IRL play. I haven't heard that before.
And I've heard similar things about Teloshar actually. Like Teloshar will roll you way more sixes and way more ones than in real life. But The thing is that they're using actual real random number generators. No it isn't. There is no skew in Teloshar or Magic Arena for these things. They are. Usually not true in Magic Arena when you're playing a best of one format. Oh, I did forget that they
added. That yeah, it'll actually give draw two hands and it'll present to you the one where you had a better balance of lands versus cards, so you're less likely to draw on all 7 in hand of all lands or all non land cards. Because Magic Arena does actually like it favors you. It gives you slightly better draws than you normally would. And yet colloquially when you look online, people will still talk about be like getting more mana flood or mana drought based
off of these things. It's led to conversations like, should we be changing shuffling rules to make sure that like these cards are actually random? Stuff like that, 'cause if you think about it, we're not doing like casino level random shuffles. We're doing push shuffles most of the time, sometimes pile shuffles. These are not the most accurate ways of shuffling a deck to make it properly random. And are those even like optimized for 60 card decks? What about 65 card decks?
70 card decks that we can end up with in flesh and blood, right? Like it's so weird that the variance is both very high and also not perfectly random in these ways. Yeah, we we like to think of our shuffling as being random, but really it's just random enough, you know? I've heard when I first started, I was or when I first started card games in general, I didn't know how to shuffle properly. And this is something I've gone with like new players who are
new to TCGS as well. They just don't matter. Like they'll power shuffle or pile shuffle, excuse me, or they'll just kind of like do this number. I don't know how to. It's the it's for me. I was introduced to that shuffle as the Yu-gi-oh Shuffle 'cause it's what they would do in the Yu-gi-oh anime. They. Would take them, they would cut out the middle of the deck and then they would play essentially small cuts of that larger portion on top of their other
hand. Yeah, that's a really good way of explaining it. Not great, but. What it's better than what I had in mind because I was just doing a hand motion. They didn't say anything.
Yeah. So with that in mind, I've, I've heard like you have to shuffle a minimum of like 7 or 10 times, like taking like splitting it in half and like combining them together, making sure that, you know, it's kind of evenly distributed across the piles, 7 to 10 of those, like make it like more random than just like one or two. And they're still like really good chunks of power cards with Blues or, or whatever the case may be.
Like I don't, I seriously doubt there's a lot of stacking going on in in Flesh and Blood. But that can't happen, you know, Especially if you are drawing 4 cards a turn. Like eventually you're going to have like these big clumps. So I've heard 7 or 10 is the magic number. Yeah. But like we've just heard that, right versus what, what the reality of what we think things should be, what we hear and then what the actual probabilities show are so wildly different sometimes.
Like have you guys heard of the Monty Hall problem? I. Don't think so. Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar. Fuzzy, do you want to explain the Monty Hall problem? OK, I'm gonna do my best. I feel like you do a very good job of it. If you can hear this, it means that Fuzzy, while editing, took the multi hall problem and put it at the very end of the
episode after the credits. If you want if you want to hear our explanation of the Monty Hall problem, you can either wait till the end or skip over to the end and hear Fuzzy describe it. Or you can pause right now and look it up on Wikipedia. One of the two.
All right, back to our episode. A lot of the times people will get very upset about the Monty Hall problem, like they'll either get either statisticians will get pissed off that people like don't understand the reality of the probability, or people will be like, no, that's dumb and wrong. It's 5050 and people will get very emotional about it. And if you've ever played at a flesh and Blood event, you've probably seen people get very emotional about things not going
their way. The car, the hand's not working out. So I think that's something that every flesh and blood player is going to have to struggle with, is going to have to manage. How do you behave when you have shit luck? It's a great question and it's something that like we all kind of need to be thinking about,
right? I don't want to use the word responsibility because we're all just trading card players, and if you enjoy the game or don't enjoy aspects of the game, that's entirely your prerogative. I'm not going to say you have to have the emotional labor of handling variants, but I do kind of feel like it's almost something you have the responsibility for. Because you can't put that on your opponent every single time.
Absolutely. We've also sat across the table from people who have gotten really pissed off because I happen to have a good hand. Why is that my responsibility? I drew good and you're getting pissed at me about it. Bro, I didn't do anything. I shuffled. I drew. I played the hands that I drew. But you're upset about it. And I don't want you to be upset, fuzzy, because you're my friend and I love you and I want
you to keep playing. I want you to keep showing up to Armories. I enjoy your company. But when you're getting upset because I got lucky, I'm now at least somewhat responsible for that as the person sitting across the table from you. So we should be thinking about how can we manage our own emotions to not put that onto our fellow flesh and blood. Player so that speaks to two
interesting points. Number one, just like the emotional maturity of players, I think in Flesh and MUD as a whole, there's a lot less of that than what I've experienced in other trading current games with more variants. Like it seems like the more variance a game, the more people that are attracted to it that don't have that same level of maturity in my opinion. Are you saying that people complain about variance more in high variance games?
Yes, because they they kind of use it to their advantage and then they're just going to be more affected by, I guess in my opinion. Whereas in Flesh and Blood, because it's on a lower scale and if you play a lot of games like especially these pro players, like you'll see their mental state like unfazed by these stupid turns and still win because they just buckle down. Like OK, they don't tell.
They don't tell, right. So if you play thousands of games, like probably 10% or more are gonna be insane. And those are just have the outliers. And as a regular player, as a casual player, you might go against these insane draws like, man, you're just gonna feel a lot differently about it than the average pro player would because you don't see the regular games as often.
One way to impact your mental ability to affect these things is to change your mindset and thinking long term or thinking about moments when the variance went another way is a very good way of doing that right Thinking. If you are so focused on that one bad hand that you drew that game, think about well, what was a very good hand that I drew that game and it'll help emotionally balance you.
You may also view things maybe a little inconsistently with your deck, like maybe you do need to be thinking, oh, is my deck too high variance? Is it? So like there's still a little bit of be careful not to get in the way of your objective accuracy, but in terms of managing emotion, just automatically thinking of a counter. So what you're thinking is a is a good way of managing it. Clark, you're.
Talking about how you can emotionally react to variants and by thinking more about variants and IA 100% stand by everything you said. But as an alternative, I also want to mention you can also just focus on the things that were in your control. Focus on the plays that you
could have made yes. I just lost this game when I drew a bad hand and they were at one life was there maybe somewhere else in the game I could have squeezed out a point to value that was in my control That way I could have won the game before I drew into this bad hand and I think that's what a lot of pro players get their reputation for. They focus on what's in their control and things are in your
control. Might be making deck choices that lead to you having these low rolls less often, or putting cards in your deck that are specifically for this matchup. Things that you can do before the game starts, as well as things that you can do during the game, lines of play, etcetera. Choosing to block instead of play a card. Expand. Expanding your mindset outside of that one turn I think is a great strategy. Think about could I have?
How can I change my strategy on turn 0 and turn 5:00 so that when I draw a super bad hand on turn 12 it doesn't mean as much? Exactly. I think that's a great point because flesh and blood, more so than any other TCG that exists right now, has more opportunities for you to look back and this micro decision makes a huge impact later on. It's just like a domino effect. And there's so many of those you can find and discover just waiting for you in the game.
That's part of why we love the game so much, right? And I want to want to specify on the word focus. Focus on the things that are in your control. Focus on the decisions you can make, focus on what you like about the game. If we if you like that word focus, you could say that anytime you spend too much time thinking about how luck screwed you over, that is a distraction.
A distraction from the things that you like about the game, A distraction from you being able to make better choices and improve. And if you think about bad luck as a distraction, it might be able to help you focus in the future. And because I don't want you to get gotten, I don't want you to. Don't get gotten. I don't want Lady Luck to come over here and distract you from being a good, healthy player. Love that.
The final thing that I'm going to to say about this is that I do kind of want to return to that. Like, how do we behave? Let's take this moment to actually reflect listeners and us here recording today. Let's take a moment and reflect on how can we behave better when faced with these moments. I think so much about improving your behavior is actually being able to think about it when you're in an emotionally stable state before you reach the
actual emotional state. Or we're getting deep therapy today, boys. I'm a psycho major. I'm going to do it. So think about it now. Think about it when you have downtime. Think about it as you're driving to your Armory. Hey, when things go wrong, what do I want to do? What do I think is the right thing to do? And also think about what is the right thing to do when you are looking at a player across the table who is having that hard time, right? Chastising them is probably not
going to help. Telling them that they're that they shouldn't be emotional about it is probably not going to help. I have noticed that I've done a lot better at managing my emotions in flesh and blood because there are very nice people sitting across the table from me who will commiserate. Yeah, that hand was super rough, man. You lost the tempo, and then that just led to a snowball and you just lost the game. I'm sorry that that happened to you and that helps so much.
Rather than lamau get good, lamau get good. Well, correct doesn't help the situation that the person is currently in. They can think about how to get good later. Focus on your community. If you are playing a high variance hero and you're losing a lot, or if you're just having bad armories week after week after week, talking about improving is nice because you think oh I get to win more, but guess what? Someone's going to go 04 at your Armory.
You might be that person. When you are that person, try to get something out of the game that isn't the victory, that isn't the like super good game. If you are getting value out of going to your card shop and talking to friends and doing trades and having fun, I think that it will bother you less when those big moments of variance happen. That was beautiful. The community, man, It's about the community. It's about the people that we're playing with. The cards are secondary in my
personal opinion. Yeah, I've said similar things and I 100% agree with that sentiment. And I'll, I'm already thinking of like ways I can use that advice too, because I have the tendency to roll scabs or do a risky play with too many misses and graveyard for my deck or whatever and get punished for it. And then I can see how it would sour the experience for the other people. So you know. Yeah, it's something that we can all improve on.
So now that we've talked about our capricious mistress of Variance, Fuzzy, can you talk about how I'm going to hand it off to Fuzzy for our yellow pitch? So I wanted to talk in yellow Pitch today about the decisions that Legend Story Studios has made to reduce variance in their game and maybe talk a little bit about how they allow or increased variance compared to other trading card games.
To start off with, I think the most obvious one is the resource system coming from Magic the Gathering. You had cards that were lands and cards that were not lands and you needed the lands in order to play the not lands. And if you do all of one type, uh oh. In a game like Hearthstone, at least when it comes to the resource system, is much less variance. Because in Hearthstone, you always get your resource every turn. Turn 1 you have one resource,
turn 5 you have 5 resources. You can rely on that. Hearthstone has less variance than Magic the Gathering in that sense. In this game, Flesh and Blood, the resource system is baked into the cards and you don't need to rely on drawing expensive cards late in the game and cheap cards early in the game because it's all depends on what else you draw. So this can have a lot of variance to it. If I draw like an expensive card and all Reds, I can't cast the expensive card.
If I draw all Blues and 0 cost cards like 0 cost Blues, I don't really have A use for the Blues so I can't get a whole lot of value out of them. Because each card can be used in multiple ways, I would say it has lower variance because you always have something to be able to play or block. Do you guys agree? I do agree. I really agree with that last point. I almost take not issue, but I almost disagree with the fact that the resource system is what reduces the variance.
OK, I feel like that's almost higher variance than something like Hearthstone or Legends of Room Terra where the resources are this very consistent crawl up. Because it's going to be the exact same way every single game. I think I agree with that, except like in Hearthstone or Legends of Rune Terra, on the first turn after Mulligan's you can sometimes wind up with really expensive cards and nothing to play.
In those games you have cards that are really expensive that you don't want to draw early, and you don't want to draw the cheap cards late game unless they're really good cheap cards that are flexible. But it leads to a higher variance game because you're still dependent very much on the single card draws and hoping that it's relevant to that situation. I suppose I still feel like it's more consistent because you literally game one mana every
single turn. Sure, and that feels more consistent to me. Sure, definitely less agency. Yes, yeah, I was just going to bring that up like it's more consistent in that it's built into the game and you have no control over it. So eventually you're going to have an off mana. The issues lie with what you draw as you're building up that mana.
Like if you draw a bunch of cheap stuff, then you're never going to be able to make full use of the like mid game, I guess because you have these cheap spells. Whereas flesh and blood, it combines the fact that you're always going to have some type of resource in hand and that you have a lot of agency over what you do with it.
And you can even go over what like let's say you compare it to Hearthstone. On the first turn, you can have access to a lot of resources to do a big spell or big card. And in the mid game maybe you want to trim down your hand block a little bit more and focus on these smaller stuff. And you have that agency, I think is what makes it more consistent than just saying Oh yeah, Hearthstone gives you a man at every turn and therefore is the most consistent game.
Like that's technically true, but in practice it's way different in. My opinion yeah for me I would say flesh and blood is the drawing at end of turn and always drawing a new hand every single turn. That that is what is the main driving thing that increases its consistency above every other card game.
Sure. And drawing, drawing 4 cards like always, drawing a brand new hand like in these other card games that we mentioned, there's one drive for single turn and that is higher variance than drawing 4 cards. Drawing 4 cards, there's a higher chance of you getting a playable card. And because there's multiple, there's consistency in that too, right? Any variance card to card is going to be reduced when you draw four of them at the same time.
But that's also that consistency is mitigated by the fact that you only have one card in your arsenal by default that allows you to carry over any momentum from the last turn. Like if I have 4 cards that don't work very well in magic on their own. Like with Magic, you have a board state and you draw cards into the context that you set up previously and that can help with the variance.
Like if I have something that like a creature, when I attack with it, I discard a card and draw a new one, that helps with my variance because I can use the context on the board to improve future draws. And Flesh and Blood doesn't have that as much. You're really just stuck with whatever you draw other than having your arsenal down.
Which is why, like in Briar, it would be a really good play to leave a ravenous rabble in your arsenal because you can always if you draw nothing but pumps, you can pump the ravenous rabble. Or if you want to be able to swing with Rosetta Thorne, having one attack is a lot better than having zero. You can't have 0 if you leave one in arsenal and drawing at the end of turn.
Like you were saying, Clark, it allows you to look at all of your options and decide whether you're blocking or playing cards at the beginning of your turn cycle in a way, and make all those decisions at the front so you can see it all play out in front of you instead of like relying on what your opponent does after. Yeah, I also really like that you brought up the arsenal of creating turn to turn consistency, because that is something I've noticed about
flesh and blood. And like, when Viscera doesn't work, it's because I was running well and then I drew a bad hand and I lost all my tempo. And it's hard to gain that tempo back without sacrificing something, equipment, health, whatever. But with Arsenal, you're able to increase that consistency turn by turn by turn and try to keep it rolling together. But you still have to make a sacrifice of not playing all four cards that you drew. You need to always leave one back.
I want to talk a little bit more about how cards can be used in multiple different ways. They can be pitched, played, or blocked by default with some exceptions of course. And I think that can lead to consistency in your game plan. Because if I block with like Command and Conquer Versus, if I block with like Sift, both of these parts block for three. One of these doesn't cost anything. The other cost $80.00, but both of them block for three.
And when you have that block 3 mode on lots of your cards, your game plan can be really consistent. And the way that you interface with your opponent can be consistent because you have a lot of different cards that basically do the exact same thing blocking for three. Or you have a bunch of Blues in your deck that I'll pitch for
the exact same amount. And until you see them a second cycle, in a way, the difference of like what text is actually printed on that card has not affected that game at all. If you're pitching it, I mean, it might affect your decisions and such. Like I pitched the card that has worse text, but the actual text on that card hasn't had a direct impact on the game. Wouldn't you guys agree? So when you pitch a card or when you block with a card, the text on it has not actually mattered yet.
And in a way that improves the consistency, because so many cards are doing these like, for lack of a better word, generic interactions within the game. I agree up until you get into these slower matchups with which with pitch stacking, yeah, with. Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah. With pitch stacking, yeah, I think that's where it gets or where the text means a lot more because it can matter. Again, I may want this later on for a specific turn by turn
cycle, but. It gets another opportunity to have a direct impact on the game, but even then it might not. If I have a blue that I pitch 1st and then I block with second cycle, the text still hasn't mattered directly. But all of them have the opportunity to. And I think that actually can
increase game to game variance. When I have one game where I blocked with my Command and Conquer and another game where I swung with it. Now this Command and Conquer has done 2 completely different things in two different games. And that makes every game of Flesh and Blood feel unique. That's kind of why we want variance in games, right? Variance makes game to games feel very different. You want it to go differently every time you sit down to play.
That's the whole point of a trading card game, right? So true. One thing that I think really increases the consistency of your games is how you start with equipment on the board. Flesh and Blood doesn't really have a board state outside of your equipment, and that board state is there at the beginning every game. It's there because you chose for it to be there. You there's no card right now that's like you start the game
with a random equipment, right? And imagine if you were playing Magic the Gathering and you just got to pick a 2 drop. Just start on the board every game. That would be absurd. It would get a little degenerate, right? It'd. Get so degenerate. And in flesh and blood, it kind of is. Lexi gets to start with New Horizons. That's true, she should have to draw and play it. Voltaire. You just always have access to Voltaire every game all the
time. Like this equipment provides so much strength and consistency to your game plan, and that's why some games with Flesh and Blood can feel really similar all the time. And it's something that definitely works in Flesh and Blood. I'm not actually complaining about it. I love the equipment and it allows you a lot of skill expression in your deck building and how you use this equipment.
I get the most value out of it, but I wanted to draw that comparison of like we do have a little bit of a board state. It's sitting right there ready for us to use whenever. Sometimes it's stuff that helps like every turn, like making a Seismic Search every turn or getting a third sort of a resource with with tunic. Flesh and blood allows you to have up to three copies of a card in your deck in classic instructed and two of in blitz. I would actually say this number
is fairly low. In Magic the Gathering, you can have four of a card for your 60 card deck. In Yu-gi-oh for which is a 40 card deck game, you can have up to three copies of that card. Ratio wise that's a lot more consistent than Flesh and Blood where that majestic you have to find one of your 3 copies in order to pull it. It makes up for the fact that you're drawing 4 cards every turn. And in Flesh and Blood you often do see your entire deck in a game, or a large portion of your
deck through the game. Compared to Magic where I'd probably say the average is maybe half your deck with lots of give and take there. Yeah, even even that I would be like, wow, that was a nice grindy game. I saw most of the cards that I. Saw that in my deck. I saw the top 20 cards in my deck. That was a doozy. Yeah when you see the top 20 cards and you still don't draw your like 4 of insane crack card that your deck is built around, you can be like this game was
fucking bullshit. So in Flesh and Blood, you have fewer copies of each card to increase variance, but you see more of your deck, which I would say increases consistency. You get to you have a much higher chance of seeing any card that you put in your deck. Although there's a little Asterix there because for a Majestic, you literally only get to see 3 copies of that card. But for comments that could actually be like 6 or 9 copies of that card, they're just in
different colors. Yeah, I I mean Mavri and Sky is I think is the perfect example for Rune blades. We want to give our cards go again and we want to play non attack action cards. Wait a minute, this does. Bold even in blue. Even in blue. So you can run all 9 copies because you want 9 copies of something that gives your room blade cards go again and that improves the consistency of this or I because nine of your cards in your deck do almost the same thing. Yeah. I like the design.
Too, if the effect really matters to you, then you get to run those full 9 copies, right? So whether that's give an attack action card go again, or like go tutor out a minimalism with your belittle, you want to run nine of those because that effect is so strong that you want to see it very, very regularly, and that's what makes it so powerful.
And when we talk about seeing your entire deck, right, in some games, maybe most of your games, if you really dedicate yourself to this plan, you can pitch stack your deck. So like the whole idea of trading card games is the cards you draw is random, right? That's like feels like the whole premise is, look, you can pick what cards you might draw, but you don't know what order you'll draw them. You don't know when you're going to draw them.
But at a certain point in Flesh and blood, even that goes out the window and you can start drawing cards that you pitched and put there. And you did decide the order intentionally or not, whether you've been paying attention to it. You decided the order of the cards that you drew. Even that gets less random and it starts to be everything is potentially inside the control or at least awareness of the players and it the game stops
being random at all. And it continues to be such an amazing analogy of like a real fight because number one, you start at your healthiest, your strongest. At the beginning of a fight, you have all your armor, like assuming it gets knocked off or broken in combat, right? And the more time or the longer the fight goes on, you start to learn your opponent, OK, I know what he's gonna do.
I know what I'm gonna do. And then so the more the longer the game goes on in the Flesh and Blood game, the more information you have about what decks, what cards are left in their deck and what cards are left in your deck. And then you kind of figure out, OK, I need to like parry this attack or dodge this attack and then go in with this one to finish off or, or or whatever. It's just, there's so much flavor there. It's really appealing to me,
like the pitch tagging aspect. And that's how Flesh and Blood feels like a much more consistent game. Do you 2 think there are any ways that Flesh and blood particularly increases variance that I have made me missed? I think there's higher variance in limited for flesh and blood in other card games. Definitely interesting you really want to find certain cards in booster packs and you just might not. I say again about about the Monarch draft that we ran. I mentioned this in the in the
nationals episode. We did a practice draft to prepare for nationals. I didn't get my hopes as Leviah, but three prisons got their entire perfect suite. I think Monarch especially is a high variance draft. Yeah, I call it swingy. I think that's a good word for it. Or like Soul Reaping versus Soul Harvest, right? Like are there enough Soul Reaping is to go around for the chain players? There's there's variance in that too. It's just what ends up being in your pool.
And you're like, well, I'm the one person in Leviah. Oh, but there aren't any good Leviah cards in the packs. Or like how much it matters that other people are in your same heroes. Yeah, whereas like with Magic, you can have other people in the same colours and it's not that big of a deal because you have two colors. But like in flesh and blood, you're almost at the whim of what the other players decide to draft. You can send signals perfectly and they just completely ignore
them. My God, it's time for us to go on to blue pitch. Joel, what do you got for us for Blue Pitch? OK, so we've talked a lot about variance and consistency, how much 1 sucks and how much 1 is good. And we've talked about how we can't avoid it. That's true. So is there ever a point where you lean into variance or you try to dumb it down, like down to the one percentile? Like what would you say would be the the correct decision? Is there ever a moment? Like how much consistency versus
how much variance in our decks? Yeah, like as. A player or as a game designer. Because it's different, isn't it? I'm. Going to need more context. Because as a player, we want consistency, don't we? We want to be like My Deck does the same thing every single game. But a game designer is like, people aren't going to play my game if it's the same. No, because it's so. Boring. Exactly. Like we say that we want consistency, but we don't actually want consistency. It's like.
I'm surprised you didn't bring that up in your section, Clark. But I didn't even think about it. This episode could have been longer listeners, that's all I'm saying. It's a big. Topic Yeah, Fuzzy, you had a really good point in one of our previous episodes about why you chose Briar for your like competitive hero, which I really liked. So if you wanted to reiterate it. Yeah, it was basically the first hero that I ever chose to play
competitively. I never played competitive Magic because I didn't think I was man enough because I literally was a teenager and I couldn't afford it. I know. And now here I do feel like I am an adult playing Flesh and Blood and I have this opportunity to get into the competitive scene for the first time in any game. And I picked Briar as my first hero because I really like her ability to have explosive damage. She was a really solid hero at the time.
And one thing about Briar is she has a high variance hero that I can get lucky and draw. Chenamen Heroic and a bunch of 0 cost attacks take the agency away from my opponent and really myself as well. Because when I sit down against a player who is better than me that it basically means they're making better decisions. So I'm like, OK, neither of us are really making decisions here.
I'm going to play Channel Heroic and a bunch of 0 cost attacks and win just from the insane value there that I can luck into because luck can be something of an asset. But the downside to that is I also have turns where games where I don't draw it at all right? Like I leave myself open to drawing really badly.
Because I'm making these deck building decisions to that could go in my favor sometimes and I was just hoping to get lucky and not find the downsides, not find the low rolls, so to speak. So that's how variance helped me as a competitive player. And eventually I got tired of it because I want to play a more like agency hero in the future, but that was the idea. Now that you're good enough. I like to think so. And Clark, you had a similar point.
I'm thinking I'm just gonna steal it from you. Yeah, I do. But you mentioned how when you're a new player or you have a bad deck that you really like, you can use variance to your advantage. Sometimes you can get so absurdly lucky, set up a huge cache in turn or some other power card, and just blow the other person out of the water. Even if they've made objectively smarter deck decisions or objectively better plays, sometimes you just leak so much damage it's impossible for them
to come back. Not sex to suck buddy. I high rolled you. Yeah. And so I wanted to highlight those two examples because they really exemplify how you can use variance to your advantage, because variance has a pretty bad content, a pretty negative connotation to it, rightfully so. But sometimes you can use it to your advantage. Even the way we're describing it, it's like the worst player one, yeah, like, and that's like, if you are the worst
player, it can be an asset. But if you're the skilled player and you're like, damn it, I fucking lost because he high rolled me. I shouldn't be losing this game, but. But I also think that like, it's cool because when it comes to playing, you can play for higher variants. You can make the plays that say, look, I know I'm going to be down in life, but I'm going to be chipping you down to my kill range.
Yeah, so true. And then you can try to pivot later on and take the game away from somebody. And then also recognizing the opportunities for it, recognizing when you should combo off, maybe when you should slower play. Like I think there's still a lot of skill for sure in playing into variants, right? So you can still get better. You don't have to be like I'm a bad player and I'm gonna play the cheap strategy. Don't let people tell you. No, if you get the dub, you get
the dub buddy. You take that W and you go to the bank, get your packs. So at the beginning of this year, I had a terrible, like, Proquest season because I tried so hard to lean into the variance. And I was like, man, why am I losing so bad? And my confidant at the time, Del Taco, he was like, dude, you're playing. The man, the missile legend, not the restaurant. Right. The man, the missile legend. Excuse me, let me reiterate. That's a person, the. Nicest asshole I've ever met.
Yeah. Yeah, he was like, dude, you're playing the worst decks, not playing at all prior and leaning into a very, very like the best people playing right now are playing non variance heroes. So I was like, OK, let me switch it up. So I I made a lot of really good decisions on how to play better, how to deck build a little bit better. It got to where I am now where I feel like I'm like definitely a contender at any event. I'm not like out from the get go like I used to be.
That being said, there are some ways you can increase consistency in your deck, help you understand the fundamentals of the game, and then later on you can either make hero choices that are skewed to be more consistent, or you can try to use variants in unique ways to steal wins or steal like Tier 2
events. Whatever the case may be, starting off, what I really like about Flesh and Blood is the limited but very specific use tutors, which means cards that can search for other cards at any given point. Yeah, cards like less than the lava, which I think says it's a one for three arcane and whatever damage a deal you can search for a card which is less the amount you dealt and put on the top. And then there's cards like Mugenci Release, which on hit searches any number of Lord of
Winds from your deck. These are just ways to get exactly what you need at the time, and I think they're very unique. So if you're able to utilize these cards in one of your favorite heroes, do so. They take a lot out of the legwork of Oh, I need to I need this exact card or I need I really need a spike turn right now. These are ways to get closer to those turns. Tutors is a very powerful
effect. We see that in like Magic the Gathering it and like Commander, specifically how powerful tutors are, because the larger your deck is, the more you just want to find what you need at any given point so you can get your game off to a strong start instead of having to deal with the variance of drawing into it. Yeah actually straight up competitive Sri lists often times run one of read the runes only one read the runes so that on turn 0 you can become the Ark
knight. Find your, read the runes, start the game with fiver and chance. And then you never have to worry about drawing it when you need a go again card or an attack action. Yep, it's it never makes the rest of your hands awkward ever because you get it out turn zero with your become the arc knight which is the best turn to play. Read the runes. Right, that's really cool because it's it's kind of like you have 4 of read the runes until you don't need them anymore.
Exactly. Yes. Thinking of it that way really, really dumbs down your variants in a deck. So I just wanted to bring that up, and we talked about it a little bit already, but finding your perfect ratio of pitch values in your deck is extremely important too. Like ideally you want a lot of Reds because it's going to give you the most offensive value, and you want a good amount of Blues to support paying for
those Reds throughout a turn. So that off of 1 blue you can do several attacks or several activated abilities, whatever, whatever the case may be. But I've noticed in my own list, like playing with the via in this competitive season, I have like a 402040 split where it's like I have a lot more yellows, Blues and Reds. So it's a really good pitch curve. And all of my power cards are like in yellow. So if I'm not ready to use them yet, I pitch them away. And I find that flexibility to
be really nice. Fuzzy, you already mentioned it like having more yellows increases the flexibility and therefore the consistency of your deck. And that might be bad advice, but I'm going to keep giving it. I also want to shout out February here. There's a little tab on the deck builder titled Stats. When you go to stats, it can show you how likely it is for you to end up with 0123 or four of any given color.
So you can see what your probability distribution is for your deck of getting how many Reds, how many Blues. Sometimes that's bad because you're like 0.17 chance of getting 4 Reds. That'll never happen. It's going to happen. Yeah. Well, when you're drawing so many hands a game and then you're playing so many games, like those tiny chances add up
to inevitability, you know? Yeah. So just keep that in mind when you're when you're brewing like there's always a non zero chance of drawing four of the absolute worst case scenario. I get lazy. I'm like, well, no matter what I do, I can still drop that hand. So what am I doing? Trying to optimize? I'm just not gonna worry about the ratios.
And I'm so glad you said that Fuzzy, because that goes into my next point, which is having consistent costs in your deck like you prop like it's not a good idea to just shove a bunch of these tall attacks or these attacks with Gogan for 0 like. I feel. Attacked. Well, you shouldn't, because I've seen your list. Just kidding. I'm just kidding, Laverne. Just kidding. Joel. Joel. Like anything that costs above 2 is just disrespectful in an. Aggro attack like.
What are you doing? So he's a pitcher's earth. Blues. Because like ice exists, do you not? Understand like. When you build your deck, have a plan for like when you get discarded from like a pummel effect or something, or if you get a frostbite, or if you're blocking the prior turn. Like if they have an insane turn on their hand. Like your dream hand is still probably worse.
You may want to block to conserve life and then still come out you with come out your opponent with your best two or three card hand. Yeah. And I think that's what's lost on a lot of people. Like they're thinking about their best, juiciest hand and like that's gonna happen like maybe your first four turns and then you get below 20 or you get disrupted and you're like, oh wait, my deck sucks without the exact perfect five card hand. Yeah, this is what I. We're going to do an Iraqi
episode eventually. I, I'm like, man, I know exactly what I want my hand to look like when I have a 0 cost attack, when I have A1 cost attack, when I have A2 cost attack, when I have a zero and A1 cost a zero. And like, if you know what you want your hand to look like and how to play a version of your hand with every single cost in your deck, with every single resource possibility in your deck, then you have a very good idea of what to do every single turn.
And that's going to make you feel more consistent through the variance. Yeah, and that comes with reps, but I also think like paying attention to how often you're able to utilize your full hands. Like like let's say for instance, there's this really nice like 3 cost attack or whatever and you really like it, but it ends up being a block 3
most of the time. Like across 1020 or 30 games you might be like, this card kind of sucks, maybe there's another three block that does that's actually playable in more hands than not. So understanding like when to drop your pet cards or these more expensive attacks is also a good sign of discipline on your end as a deck builder. Drop your pet cards. Yep, you got to do it. That's that's growing up, baby. I will run eradicate and you can't. Stop. Drop your pet. Cards.
Yep, no more meeps. Joel's laying down the hard facts. Today, these are the lessons that I've had hammered into me already that I want to offload onto you as well so you grow more as a player. My last way, probably the most important way, is as you get into the competitive scene, don't tech for everything. That's that's targeted. Oh, that was the one. That's when you that's when you turned your faces towards Fuzzy and you went and you and you pointed them at me.
Because it's so easy to do like you well. I want to plan for. Everything. Yeah, you'd love to win every matchup because of the the three key cards you add in for that specific matchup, but it just muddles everything up it really. You just have sideboard the deck. Yeah, seriously, you have like like you can't, you know, wish board into everything. Like you don't have enough tutors for that just yet, so
definitely avoid that. I mostly agree, so many of these feel like they both improve your consistency in some ways and hurt it in others. It's true that you can't have a plan for every matchup, you have to choose if you want your deck to be consistent. Except now you're rolling for who you get paired up against in the tournament. If you're like, well, I have a plan for Dromi. Let's cross our fingers and hope that I've prepared against Dromi and not the matchup that I didn't Tech for well.
I wanna I wanna respond to that and say there is building for your game plan and building for others game plan. But it's a game where you have to fight against other opponents, you know? Yes, there's always going to be some of it, but I would still say focusing on your game plan is going to make you more consistent than focusing on others game plan. Probably, yeah. And so saying what is the most optimal version of my deck is not going to be a bunch of sideboard cards into all these
different matchups. And I totally agree with the message that like, focus on your game plan. How much can you deviate? How much can you afford to deviate before your deck starts getting whack? Yeah, if you have a 40 card main board and a 30 card sideboard, something is wrong. Go back to the drawing board. I will follow up with two points and then we'll move on to variances. So number one, there are certain matchups or certain decks in the meta game that will always take
a sideboard space. For instance, any deck that has Phantasm, you're going to run like maybe. We need to have. Six power cards, Yeah, three to six cards to deal specifically with auras or allies or Phantasm. One of those three you're going to have some cards of those just don't make it like so much that you're just having these like big chunky 6 powers that mess up
the rest of your turns. Secondly, there are some matchups that are so bad that no matter how much teching you do, it's gonna suck no matter what, so you might as well. Just like Clark said, make your deck as optimized as possible and try your best and see if you can stick to your explosiveness of your main deck and blow over the traditionally bad matchup or whatever once. Again, there's that high variance actually being valuable.
Absolutely. With that being said, Clark, would you like to take us into our Arsenal zone? Sure. So our Arsenal Zone is the section of our podcast where you like to shout out cards that we've been thinking about, maybe playing a lot, brewing with, or just have an appreciation for. And I'm going to talk about a card that I have a brand new appreciation for.
We've mentioned on this podcast how we aren't the happiest with the storytelling in flesh and blood cards, especially when compared to Magic the Gathering, which I think is the gold standard for storytelling in in trading card games. I want to talk about a card that I think does a much better job of this, and I want to acknowledge that. I think that Legend Story Studios is getting better at this. Visit the Imperial Forge. Visit the Imperial Forge is not a good card.
It gives your sword and dagger attacks piercing it's rainbow 321 and it blocks for three and it has go again. It costs nothing. You're spending a card to give yourself value if they block with equipment and you're also doing it before the attack. So they get to then make the choice of whether or not they block with equipment and even give you value for that card. Like, it's not a great card, but when you look at this card, like really look at the card, I think
it's incredible. I think there's so much storytelling happening here. And I know at first glance you're like, no, it isn't because it's a guy working on the forge, but like, look at what the forge is made of. Look at what the background is. Look at how there's running lava
and then read the flavor text. The sharpest blades of Wraith are forged within molten rivers that flow through the heart of Mount Volcor. The Imperial Forge is in Mount Volcor. It's telling you where something is. It's showing you the type of people that work in this forge. Common average citizens in the world of Wraith. It's showing you also the kind of weapons that they make. Yes, you see the sword there, but you also see glaze. You see hilts, you see people
working in the background. You can imagine what it's like to be here. You can see the sparks flying off of the sword. There is some action in this, as well as a lot of environmental storytelling. There's like even a little chain hanging down from the ceiling in the upper leftover by the pitch tack. And those are the little details I think people can miss a lot of when they're looking at these cards. But I think that this is good world building on a card.
Is it great? No, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. I love to see the Legend Story Studios is doing more of this rather than just showing character doing an action, character doing an action, character doing an action. With the whole lore of Flesh and Blood being a fight between 2 heroes who encounter each other, there's a tendency for, I think, for a lot of cards to look like that and I think it's very boring. This is way more interesting to me.
This tells more of a story to me and so I I like it. I really like this card. I completely agree because when I first saw that card and I think it's everfest right? Dynasty Dynasty. Dynasty I thought it sucked. I'm like wow, OK, another card that word can't play move to the next. So you seeing that world building aspect of it is exactly the change in mindset that we I'd like to see more of in LS S s design and not reserving these bad cards for. Storytelling.
Yeah, for my card shout out today I want to talk about a card that I don't think is very good. I don't even know if it'll ever be good, and that's Tome of AO. Tome of AO is a blue Majestic from Dynasty. It says at the beginning of your action phase, destroy Tome of AO and then draw a card. It has ward one. It does not have go again. It costs one resource. So it's kind of like a really long term ponder token that you can't plan around. It costs a card and a resource.
It only blocks for two. Wait at end of term. At the beginning of your action phase at the. Beginning of your action phase. That's better than Ponder. You're right because it allows you to like have a six card hand and I suppose that's not bad, but if you take any damage this card goes away because that is ward one. Maybe you can stack it with your other ward effects to make it like you get rid of your other ward effects first.
Like I just don't quite understand how you're preserving this card and keeping it up. Maybe it's supposed to synergize with like other cards? Like isn't there like a kimono that like gives you extra spectral Shields or something if your words go away? But is this good enough to warrant paying a resource and your action point in order to drop this aura down? Well, you see, I think that's the thing, Fuzzy. I think that this card is designed for because. And what class is it for
Illusionist? Yeah, I think this is for an Illusionist build that just nobody's running right now. I just have a hard time seeing this card ever being good. And you know, I love tomes. It says draw a card on it. I'm there. Well. Fuzzy here's Here's where it's good and it may seem weird but like I've I have thrown this in a brew or two I've been doing.
OK, I'm. Doing a lot of brewing, if you throw a bunch of go again attacks to strip all the cards from their hand, then you play this at the end of your chain and you start your next turn with A5, maybe 6 card hand. That is what it is for now. We don't think of Illusionists as the deck that does that, so we don't see this card being very good, but I think it's surprisingly good. I think you can. Also if you can do some action point shenanigans with Lead the charge you can end up.
I know, I know, but red and yellow Lead the charge. Both trigger on this to give you an action point, and you can then chain it into throwing something like Miraging Phantasm where if they destroy it, if they pop it, you get to create a copy of this. OK. There there are worlds where this is playable. Is it good? I'm skeptical you could call me a non believer Tom of a yo. I like your name. I like saying a yo. But I brought 2 copies to sign and give to you. You know what?
Thanks for giving me a copy, Fuzzy, because I like. This so you can each own a copy of Tom of a YO. Here you go, You too. Thank you Fuzzy, I can't wait to put this in that can beat you with it and then be like. My fuzzy I'd be so impressed. My fuzzy card binder is slowly growing. What about you, Joel? So I already talked about it a little bit and I'm going to talk
about it some more. I'm shouting out the original 4 tutors for the Welcome to Raith Heroes Being Sand, Sketch Plan, Showtime, Singing, Steel Blade, and Mugenchi release. Because tutors are so strong in other card games it really makes me excited that they were included now. They're so the first 10 heroes of the game got them. The Welcome Wraith heroes, the Arcane Rising heroes, and Bolton and Leviah all got one, and then we kind of stopped seeing them.
You know, actually I've noticed something. It's when they brought in talents. Yeah, like the larger a carpool a hero has, like maybe they need less support in a way, or maybe they decided that these searchable effects are really powerful. But either way, I'd like to see more of them. I think it's a really good way of expressing more of a personality with these heroes and their play style. They're all very tuned and none of them are outrageously
powerful. It's just really good consistency pieces, especially with Levi and Bolton. Like they're they're like a necessary evil. Like Beacon Victory is like really good Shadow Blobsfed being really like mid and the original. They can go into any build with these heroes and just be really solid cards. So this design, I really like it. I wanna see more of it in feature sets. Just wanted to shout it out.
Yeah, tutors are great. I think it makes sense that they're printed in the first couple sets, especially because the card pool was so low, right? You want the tutors in order to help you have a more consistent deck when you're working with a far less card pool. That's a great. Point, which is why I'm not sure we'll see a lot of tutors in the future, but I would be really excited. Tutors get more and more powerful the more things that
you have to search with that's. True, I don't think they'll ever be banned because of their silo design, but I would like to see like more of them as specializations. Yeah, again, she released only finds Lord of Wind. It did kind of get a little bit stronger because of the surging strike line having like a new branch kind of all. Right, with that, we're going to close out our episode. Thank you guys so much for listening and we'll catch you next week. OK, bye.
Have a great one. Pitch It to Me podcast is hosted by Fuzzy Dope, Clark Moore and Joel Racinos, executive producer Talon Stradley, logistics coordinator John Farkas music by Dylan Holtz logo by on V sound mixing, Christopher Moore Last but not least, you Thank you for listening. Please give us a follow on your favorite social media platform at Pitch It to Me Podcast. So I want you to imagine that and you as the audience can play along here.
I have 3 doors, AB and C. I've hidden the keys to a shiny new car in one of these 3 doors. I've even picked a letter. OK, so I have imagining one of these doors as having the key. OK. Behind the other two doors are useless donkeys. You don't want a donkey. That's a lot of responsibility. You want keys to a shiny new car? Joel, can you pick one of these 3 doors? You say it out loud A awesome. I can tell you Joel that I did not pick C to have the keys.
I'm I'm I'm opening door C and it has a donkey. OK, OK, now I will give you the chance to switch your answer to door B knowing that there is a donkey in door C. Do you hold with A or do you swap to B? Yeah. Do you think you were correct the first time or do you think you have maybe a better chance if you switched doors to door B? Good question. I don't know if it changes a whole lot because there's still a donkey and so it's a 5050, so I'd rather stick with my
original, right? And that's the paradox I see. So I will tell you just for the sake of the thought experiment, OK, I had shows in door A. So in this case, switching would have LED you to another donkey. But the chances, if we played this experiment out many times, the chances are actually not 5050 anymore. And that's because if I always reveal a door with a donkey, then it consolidated the probabilities. So if you pick door A, you have a one third chance of being correct, right?
But if I say I will always reveal a door with a donkey, then like let's say there was a donkey, let's go back a little bit and say that there was the keys in the car was in door C and you had still picked AI would have revealed B, right, Right. So if I'm always revealing a door with a donkey one of the wrong answers, and you had a one third before, it kind of means that Like if the keys were in any door other than the one that you picked, then the only door
that's left for you to switch to will be one with the car. And since you have a one third chance of being correct at the beginning, it means you have a 2/3 chance of the only remaining door having keys. That's my best explanation for the multi hall problem. Yeah. And again, we are people who like have had to explain probabilities before and we're still not great at it, right? Like probability is just so hard to understand. So it's 66. Percent, yeah.
If you switch you have a 60, you have a 2/3 chance of getting the prize, and if you stay it ends up being 1/3. Really. Yeah. Not 5050, which is what everyone would think. 5050 is such a natural instinct. You're like, OK, you got rid of one of the chances, now there's 25050. But. Kind of bum because now I know I'm like thinking like the rest of people, but that makes a lot
of sense and it's also very. Super logical to think of it as A50 50. I would say that the most logical way that it's been explained to me is that your first selection has a 2/3 chance of being wrong, so why wouldn't you want to switch the moment that you're given a chance? I think it's kind of interesting too, because the core of the problem is whoever is controlling what doors are opened is making an influence on the probability, right?
Like he's opening the wrong door and kind of influencing your decision there. Yep. Right. Instead of it being like a one and three or 5050. That's why it's not 5050, right? Yeah, got it. Because we'll never reveal the correct door that you didn't pick. Got it. Now that doesn't have a direct relationship to flesh and blood other than hey, probabilities fucking hard to understand. Yeah, I'm certainly confused. Yeah.