We Predict the Next Armory Deck

Welcome to Pitch It to Me podcast, a show about the subjective past, present, and potential future of flesh and blood design. Calling all D tier hero specialists. We have a fake LSS product just for you. That's right. In today's episode, we'll speculate on which Armory deck is next and what it might look like. On Red Pitch, Droll will get some skin in the game. On Yellow Pitch, Clark will connect us to the data stream, and on Blue Pitch, Fuzzy will wonder about The Wanderer.

You can find us across all socials such as TikTok and Instagram at Pitch to Me podcast. I'm Clark. I'm Joel. And I'm fuzzy. This is a good episode idea.

You're excited for it? Yeah. Why don't you tell the audience about what we're doing? So we were all sort of sitting around looking at the the KO Armory deck and the Bolton Armory deck and this upcoming Azalea Armory deck. And we thought, what's going to be after these? Are they going to keep going through new classes and new heroes? What are some of the design philosophies that we've seen come out of the Armory decks now that we've seen the deck list

for multiple different ones? And so we wanted to sort of take a whole episode and give each of our little ideas about what's next in line for this product. Yeah, You might hear us talk about how cool the Armory decks are as a resource for newer players. You might hear us talk about ways that we think that Armory decks might be able to improve. I think it'll also be evident as it comes out through our

designs, right, Clark? Like I know, like I for instance have a couple sideboard cards in my Armory deck because I think it's bullshit that they don't have sideboard cards in the Armory decks for these newer players, you know? Yeah. And it's, I mean, that's especially going to be really important once Rosetta comes out. Yeah, that like new players have access Arcane Barrier for these new heroes that are coming out at the same time. So I'm going to love to see what

you did there. But it's also one of the big features of Armory decks are the brand new cards that they introduced to the game through them, right? So rather than going through the expansion slot or releasing it in a supplemental set, they release brand new cards for a hero or a class through the Armory deck for them. So yeah, we just got a really big custom card episode the other day, but we're going to do it again this week.

Yeah. So we're all going to have at least two or three custom cards that we're showcasing today to hopefully get you excited about the potential future of the game. Joel, do you have any updates for us? Anything you wanted to talk about today? Not really. I am not recording in that hot ass garage for today. I'm still in LA. I've been spending a lot of time here lately just because it's hard to go from LA to anywhere in a meaningful time frame. Yeah, so we've got you on

distance once again. Yeah. Well, hopefully next time, our next recording I'll, I'll be back in Long Beach. Should we just go ahead and jump into it? Sure. All right. As we're doing these potential Armory deck deck lists we're having, we're gonna have links in the description to each and every one of them so you can see them on February. The custom cards that we're mentioning won't be on the February deck list, but every other card that we intend to be used for our Armory decks will

be there. And you will be able to see the cards that we designed on our custom card, a Google folder, Yes, Google Drive folder. There will be a link for that in the description as well, yeah. So you can see all the cards that we'll talk about, but we probably won't go over every single card that we included in our lists. Yeah. So if you do want to see the full deck list and how we expect everything to play together, you

can always go there. And now with all that being said, let's go ahead and jump into our red pitch. Joel, take us away. Sure. So. The next hero that I would

really love to see get an Armory deck is Betsy. There's a few reasons for this. Number one, she's been often referred to as like limited hero filler. At least in our podcast, Clark brought up some really good points about how they may have dumped down her power levels. That's so that she could be good and limited, but hasn't seen very much success outside of limited, and she's currently the

weakest Guardian of the game. Even with Bravo being as bad as he is, Betsy's worse than that because she just has so many missing pieces from her kit, and I think that's because she suffers this curse of being released as quote UN quote incomplete. By that I mean she has very few relevant core mechanics. She didn't have a lot of payouts for her wager abilities or overpower for that matter.

She doesn't have a signature weapon, a lot of things that are very readily apparent if you have thought about playing Betsy in the in the past. She also features two very weak mechanics with underweight power levels and mainly on hits with the wager mechanic and all of the wager cars being two blocks outside of her specialization. No arguments there. So Joel, you're really going like the Bolton route for this,

right? Because LSS has sort of talked about when they printed KO, it was because they knew KO was going to be meta relevant and they wanted to give a strong meta hero to brand new players. Then in our next Armory deck, we see Bolton. Bolton's not meta relevant at all and so it felt more like they were targeting him because they knew they were going to be giving him support soon. That could make him meta relevant and he just needs the

support right now. Yeah, I think like I, I initially had problems with the KO Armory deck, but as time has gone on, I understand why they did, why they chose KO as their inaugural Armory deck. Because like you said, Clark, they want a meta relevant hero so that people will actually buy the product and they want a hero that new players will feel good about playing because it's like an objectively strong hero

basically. I do want to give her the Bolton treatment, just give her some support, because I think with Flesh and Blood still figuring out its product releases, it can be hard to figure out where and when to give support to these heroes. And I'm not sure that the expansion slot has a wide enough berth of space to give support to all the heroes that they need to. So something more focused, like an Armory deck might be what

Betsy could use the most. Until they do, we're just going to go over some stuff that I think she could use based on some feedback I've heard from like actual Betsy players. My my list is pretty simple, it just has all the wager cards like the wage figure and agility, her specialization, and some solid reprints of all the cards. You're welcome to look at the deck list for those.

I've also included some majestics and more rares, mostly because I've heard people complain about the value that people are getting from the Armory deck. And so I wanted to give a decent bump to the rarity and therefore the playability and the like, economic like investment you're making into the deck. So I just included a bit more power than maybe we've seen in the previous ones. I also included a sideboard with very clear use cases for newer players. So I have like a full no room

set. So you have AB 3 into the arcane heroes. I have sync below playsets and movable playsets. I've just included those so far. I don't know how expansive LSS would want those to be if they included a sideboard because they haven't just yet, but that's kind of what I would give them as a starting point. And then I think this is probably the most like pushed part of it. I included a legendary chess piece for Betsy, mainly because I think she really needs it.

But I also think if they do give like legendary equipment or anything really, they should also spoil it or release it alongside a main set release. Because I think a lot of us really do not like when cards are exclusive, similar to how like round the table, how some like very expensive majestics or like civic steps, for instance, or you know, exclusive releases of heroes with the skirmishes and whatnot.

So I just wanted that coffee out there like I do have a legendary but I and if I were to release this as LSSI would do it along set of main set. So this is so interesting. So Armory decks so far have never put a legendary card in in their deck lists right? All the equipment has been majestic rarity or lower. I also think, like, is anyone going to really argue that Betsy doesn't need like a legendary

that she can use? Like I think she has enough stuff going terribly for her that not many people would bat an eyed it, especially when LSS has been pretty heavy-handed in giving Bolton a legendary piece of equipment for all of his slots so far. That's just something I wanted to experiment with. I think this could be a Majestic to be completely honest with you. The legendary might just be flavor sake, but I'll let you guys decide after I go over the actual card.

So now I want to get into the quote UN quote science of it. Like why I included what I wanted to and sort of my thought

process behind the deck. I am very much going with the design space of her being aggressive with big numbers and being able to use larger hands same way that other the other guardians do. But with wagers like you, you can't really use a four or five card hand as Betsy as well as you can with Victor or Bravo outside of adding like Zealous Belting or some other go again card. So I wanted something that she could use that could put her in

this aggressive design space. I also tried to make a very silo design, like very specific to Betsy, so that the other Guardians can't really cannibalize, which I don't think is something that was super relevant for the Kale or the Bolton Armory deck. Yeah, or even the Azalea one that we've seen so far, because the Azalea cards are very aim counter focused and the people who I've heard get excited about the Azalea deck are the Riptide players, so.

Yeah, exactly, exactly I. Think because Azalea players are very happy with where they're heroes at right now. I don't. I don't think they're looking to get more cards. They're like we're towards the top. We're pretty happy with this. Yeah, they got what they needed in Outsiders. They're fine. Also, I think some of the mechanics that new players might get good practice with is pitch stacking, mostly because it's Guardian.

And if you include anything with four costs and above, I think you can reliably pitch stack with Guardian cards. And I think some of these cards require quite a bit of setup. So I think there's a lot of good ways to practice pitch stacking and threat management. Like you have to really be cognizant of how many large attacks or how many wager cards you have so that you're not running out by the time you run into the rest of your Oros or your buffs or whatever.

And then one last honorable mention. I did not include the log in this list because I actually don't think it exists anymore. What's the log? Joel, could you explain? Yeah, so there's a lot of speculation on Betsy's reveal that she had a signature weapon. She just didn't release with it. And people refer to it as the log. And if you have time, go to her

hero art. And there's like this big piece of wood with like some metal studs and strappings, like attached to it. And a lot of people think that's the log. But as some Betsy players have told me, they think it's a bench or something that's just like tipped over and now it's kind of gone like out of control. And Alice's doesn't know how to tell everybody that's it's not the log. So I didn't include it for that reason. All right, now for the custom cards. OK, so I'll start off with the

legendary equipment. It's called Maid of the Mystical Beast. It's a legendary guardian chest equipment. It's Betsy's specialization and it says when this defense create a bigger token and your attack action charts with wager have plus one defense this turn and it itself has two defense with temper. So the idea behind this is wager cards. You can't really use more than one of them, obviously, because you're a guardian, but you can't really block with them either.

So unless you're saving one for your arsenal, like cashing it in for two block is usually really bad value. So I wanted some way to if you need to block a a powerful on hit or maybe just conserve some life, you can cash this in plus a use of your chest equipment so that you have an actual full

blocking card. But because it also takes away from how much you can pay for on your turn, I wanted to still give you a bigger token so that you can still continue your turn, maybe help pay for Betsy's here ability if you're short or something. But yeah, that's that's kind of the use case for this. It's supposed to be variable, supposed to be defensive and help your offense. Unless it's like a really drawn out match, they're going to use

their armor aggressively. So this is a way to be able to cash it in but not be as absurd as some of the other equipment that in the value you get from blocking with those like Traverse the Universe or something like that. I really like this card. If you think of it as you only block with this when you can maximize the value out of it AKA hands where you can use the vigor that it creates and you have the extra wage card to block with.

Then you are getting 4 value out of it on the first block and then three value out of it on the second block, which is pretty reasonable all things considered. Yeah, for a legendary specialization chess piece, especially one that's supposed to try to bring Betsy back into the limelight, I think it's pretty fair, honestly. Yeah, I think I like where it's at specifically just to even just to give the wager plus one defense because. The. Fact that alone, yeah.

So the fact that Victor's like flash fodder like Wallop and Thunk are both three blocks and none of Betsy's cards are three blocks is? Like 3 specs are three blocks. Yeah, the awesome cards that let you do the cool things that you want to do. Yeah, like that big. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's like bare minimum, but yeah. So that's the legendary chess piece. Betsy and Joyers let me know if this vibes with you at all. And next I have a call in a favor. It's a majestic guardian non

attack action card. It's an aura. It's a 3 cost 3 block blue pitch card and it says whenever you lose a wager, you may destroy this aura to play your next aura at instant speed and without paying the resource. Cost so. So notably, the chest piece won't buff any of the non attack actions that Betsy likes to play to give her a wager on the following turn. So those will still be two blocks and they cost an action point because you're probably going to lose wages a lot.

Like it's not a very good mechanic. Overpower, it's not a very good mechanic. So when you spend a turn setting in aura and you do a wager attack for like 13 power and and it gets blocked out. As it does, yes. Yeah, as it does. There's not really a lot of ways for you to like punish that at all or like come back from that and unless you take another turn of setup. So I wanted there to be a way to just not completely lose all your tempo.

And even if you play another aura out for free, you've already paid the three costs with this aura that doesn't it doesn't have an action point and it doesn't buff anything. So it's kind of like a fail safe. At worst case, it's just another three block to supplement like all the two blocks that you have in hand. So I don't know, what do you guys think? Do you think? Do you guys think this messes with the action point and economy too much?

No, I like it how you still have to pay 3 to get it on the field. I feel like this is one of those like really killer turn zeros that guardians have. Like imagine just like playing this and arsenaling and how like safe you are for the rest of the game. You lose your next wager and then you're dropping a big aura and there's some really flashy auras you could put down here, like towering Titan like you. Oh my God, I didn't even think about.

Towering Titan. But with towering Titan, you're losing a wager and then you're telling your opponent, OK, I just literally gave you something. It could have been a gold, a mite token, a bigger token. You have your hand. I guess they had to block it out, right? So if you lost a wager, there's no way they have an entire hands worth of cards to come at you with. So maybe it'd be really easy to like have a towering Titan and then like keep an attack for

next turn. Towering Titan is the thing that breaks this card, but I think looking at this with the wager auras and even some of the defensive auras that we've seen, it's pretty fair. And you know, if they're really that scared of towering Titan, they can just not lose a wager. They can just let you win all your wagers. Also like if you're including Towering Titan and some of the other auras for this card specifically, you have so many dead cards. At least towering Titan blocks

for three, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I've seen towering Titan actually in some lists nowadays just to run a blue block 3 that's harder for new to use. Oh, sure. It it can get wacky, but again, I I do like instant speeding out an aura specifically because I really feel like they're just so impossible to use. I mean, flesh and blood just doesn't reward this guardian strategy of set up and pay off that we've seen.

Like they really printed a pushed one in earth floor empowerment, which cost 3, but it gave +5 and reduced something by a resource. Yeah, like that should have been the keystone aura for this, like set up pay off strategy. But I've noticed that a lot of them actually just end up with the rune blade problem, which is, oh, I have to play this and then I have to draw my card and I'm losing the tempo to make it happen. Like it just doesn't work in

good fair flesh and blood. So to make the cards work, can't be playing good Fair flesh and blood. Yeah, you got a call in a favor, you know what I mean? So the flavor on this card is like, I imagine like Betsy, either through intimidation or just sketchy connections, can just like call a bookie and like rig a bet or something. I like how she went from like raucous party girl who happens to always win her bets to like mafia member who like is cooking

for books. I mean, hey, I wouldn't have to, you know, color it up if LSS would release some more books every once in a while. So I don't know, but yeah, so that those were my philosophies and my custom cards. I really hope that Betsy gets the the love that she deserves and that the Betsy and Joyers get the cards that she deserves within, you know, whenever the next Armory deck comes through. Let me know if you guys think this is like way off the mark of

what Betsy needs. But I just wanted some really powerful and flashy stuff for for her to be able to utilize in the future. Cool, Joel. Thanks for sharing. So with that being said, I think it's time to go over to Clark. What do you got for us? Yeah, so I'm taking yellow pitch and I wanted to talk about what

I think is going to be the next Armory deck, which is mechanologist. Mechanologist is a great class to start new players out on. Guys, I don't know if you've been looking at the price of deck lists, but Mechanologist is really affordable and it has some really big fans too, so I think it's a great choice for the Armory deck. But then I had a problem. Which hero do I select? OK, I could do Dash, inventor extraordinaire, but she's on her way out. I mean, 800 living legend points

gonna LL pretty soon. Probably don't want to be making an Armory deck for her. That's so true. Max is good, but he's so based around the Construct Nitromechanoid plan that it feels really hard to design for the hero when there's just this giant power baked into one singular card, one singular play style. Teclovossen. And that's why I chose Dash. IO Mecanologist is a simple class built around a singular core concept of Boost. All these cards do almost the

exact same thing. This is a perfect class to build a deck for brand new players around in my opinion. I think Dash specifically explains what makes a good aggro hero to new players. Good aggro heroes have high rated attacks and cards that break the rules of the game. Dash has a 0 for four with go again A1 for 5A2 for six. These are overrated things, and the drawback is what emphasizes the weakness of aggro decks, which is deck damage and running

out of gas. You boost your big red attacks and your power cards, you won't have the damage to win the game anymore. And so I think it's so awesome that we can have a product that provides a very simple, easy to understand, and very indicative of the larger aggro archetype and what it means in Flesh and Blood. But at the exact same time, Dash IO is an incredibly complex hero. You're constantly needing to check the top of your deck to see if you want to boost the

card or not. If it's an item you constantly need to be checking it like Dash IO does actually put a very high level of thought on the player. It puts a big demand on the player of the deck to keep up with this constant stream of extra information. So I designed the deck to be as streamlined as possible. All of the fancy stuff that the Deck does actually only does one thing, which is that it says you

gain an extra action point. Whether that is instant speeding out a crank item on your turn, activating high octane, or breaking Achilles accelerator. It is just about gaining extra action points so that you can attack multiple times with your pistol. That is all the Deck is trying to do. So even though there's complexity, it all ends up in the same end point of swinging

multiple times with your pistol. And then there are no, I put in no attacks that gain power if you banish an item because I do not want a player to boost a card. And let's say they get rid of like a blue zipper hit and they look at the top of their deck and it's a yellow boom grenade and they go, wait a minute, I have the I have dumpster dive. Do I want to boost this so I'm attacking for five power or do I want to play the boom grenade off the top?

Which is better? I don't want that thought process to enter their head. I don't want them to have to make that decision. The only way you can interact with items on top of your deck is by playing them, and you can only do it once a turn. That's interesting. Why? Why don't you want the player to be thinking about things like that? Because this is a new player deck.

I like that a lot because like, I can imagine someone bringing this to an Armory and just taking 75 minutes trying to figure out how to play this deck, you know? Which is still like a possibility, right? Definitely, definitely. Just by the fact that like you can always look at the top of your deck, it's a possibility. So I wanted the card selected in the deck to just make it as easy

as possible. I also made it so that all items cost 0, so that streams the process of them evaluating the resource need of every single hand. If there's an item on top, it will cost 0, which means it costs one to play at an instant speed. They just need to check to see that's an item.

They don't even need to worry about what the cost of the item is. And it's another way of again, streamlining that decision making process, reducing the amount of cognitive load that's being put on this brand new player. The next thing I want to talk about is some of the card decisions I've made. I'm not going to talk about every single card that I put in this deck. You can go ahead and check the deck list in the description, but I want to discuss some

notable inclusions. So for one, ratios are extremely similar to Dash IO decks that have won nationals this season. So they have 15 items and about 15 zero cost boost cards. That was something that I really paid a lot of attention to to make sure that the resource curve was flowing nicely. I also reprinted zero to 60 zipper hit and Throttle because they should have fucking done it in bright lights and they didn't. So I'm doing it now.

We have a rainbow zero to 60 and zipper hit but only red and blue throttle because yellow throttle is a very bad card and it really messed with the resource curve. I like this fantasy where like Clark's first day getting hired at LSS, they're like welcome aboard Mr. Moore. And he's like, thanks. Shakes hand starts walking off in a direction. Where are you going to the printer? Original boost cards? I did include some opt in the deck list, most notably drive through data and optical

monocle. So optical monocle was a weird inclusion for me. It's the one item that doesn't have crank, which kind of goes against the point that I made not a couple minutes ago, right? Of like I'm trying to streamline the process, but opting is just so important for the deck. The ability to go digging for the item when you really need that extra pistol shot, the ability to go digging for a boom grenade. The Oh my God, that's my high octane on top. I'm going to put it to the

bottom of the deck. Like it's just so so necessary in my opinion to to have OPT built into the 60. And I think it's fun while also being fair and like manageable. Yeah, and if it's the only one without crank, I'm hoping that like, that's a small adjustment rather than a big adjustment for the player. And then finally, boom grenade. Course we got boom Grenade baby at Reds and yellows, not at Blues because of one of my custom cards took that slot.

But if you like wanted to play with it with like legal cards right now blue boom grenade works and because we are running boom grenades, I wanted to make sure I was giving players a way to get these boom grenades to hit. So normally the way that it generally works in dash IO list nowadays is that you just overwhelm them with a boost attacks like mechanologists are want to do, and if you are able to find a boom grenade off the top, you flash that in for

essentially extra damage. But in a lower powered Armory deck environment, I think it needs a little bit more help to guarantee those boom grenades are hitting, especially if you have to play the boom boom grenades from hand and you have to crank them to keep going on your turn. It's it's awkward. So I've added overload script and payload as two ways of helping guarantee those on hits while still giving opponents plenty of ways of playing around it. Bolton can use his D reacts, KO

can use his armor. They have a ways of working around the evasion, but the evasion is always going to be there and it's always going to be a risk. Finally, what was the Majestic that I reprinted? It was high octane. I've said it a couple times so far, but just to make a bullet point of it, I'm reprinting high octane. High octane is a little bit more expensive, but I think only Teclovossin's like the only hero that doesn't run high octane. It's always going to be a

valuable card. It feels like the Evergreen card. I think it deserves to be reprinted and it's the way that allows you to get multiple pistol shots off. Absolutely. Now into my custom cards. I'm going to start with finishing off my 60 by talking about Surge Diverter. This is a mechanologist action item card. It is a blue Majestic Xcost. Spicy. You can let us do the reaction, clerk. We're ready for it. No, no, no, no. There'd still be oohs and ahs even if you didn't supply them

yourself. It has crank. This enters the arena with X + 1 steam counters on it at the start of your turn. Destroy this unless you remove a steam counter from it. That is pretty much the exact same line of text that's on every other Bright Lights crank item, except it gains X + 1 steam counter. So you can put more than one steam counter on this card. Whenever you remove a steam counter from Surge Diverter, target weapon gains plus one power until end of turn.

No attack value, no block value, just like all the other items. So my intention for this was to give an anthem effect on the extra action points that you're using on your pistol. So for dash, this is acting as an anthem on your big high octane turn, or on a turn where you pop Achilles accelerator and you crank this out so you have 3 action points, this item is giving 3 value. That's actually not all that

good. See the the value that surge diverter gets is when you're able to put all the extra resources into it and you get to keep it around for multiple turns and you get to maybe even get multiple out on your high octane turn on a turn where you attack multiple times with your weapon. That's sort of what it's for. But for dash IO, it is there for the anthem effect when you attack multiple times with your pistol.

But that's not all because I designed this card to be very, very good in Max. So for Max this actually does a very similar thing. It cranks and then it lets you attack with Banksy for four. So Banksy finally gets the break point that Banksy needs to actually be chosen over pistol. Let's. Go.

Yeah, I really like this card. I love the fantasy of like just having this out it giving your weapon plus one and then being able to have a high octane turn where instead of like spending four resources to attack for eight with my charged up symbiosis shot, I'm able to like make it 12 and like get incredible value out of those four resources and saying. Yeah, and honestly, I was very worried about this deck just running into people who blocked 12:00 every single turn.

Again, it's a lower powered deck. There's no Max velocity in here or like big Shot, there's no big finisher cards that we often times expect out of mechanologists. It was like OK, either I add Max velocity to this deck or I find a way of giving this blue item slot with crank the ability to let this deck beat people who just blocked 12 against them every single round. The next thing I want to talk about is the equipment.

The only equipment that I'm using that has already been printed is Achilles accelerator and that's because mech equipment is in a God awful state right now. It is just such a mess. So much of the design space 4 mechanologists equipment has been taken up by evos which clutter and complicate deck design.

They're bad in multiples, but you can't leave them in singletons because if you boost it you just lose the value off of it. They very often either don't block if you they have good effects that you want, or they block for really low amounts so it hurts the block value that mechanologists rely on. I mean that evos are just so messy. If you're trying to put in a high density of items and boost attacks, you can't then also find room for evos. Like, it's just rough, you know?

And that's why you've chosen not to bother with evos for this design. I haven't bothered with Evos at all. Designed one equipment here for the episode. I have some other ideas for the other two slots, but honestly I'm kind of leaving it as a blank, empty space. Maybe in the future I'll get around to designing some, especially because we've kind of talked internally a little bit about maybe filming some gameplay videos of us pitting these decks against each other.

Oh yeah, you'd have to have some equipment there. So the equipment that I designed, I call it the ICCS, which stands for the intracranial cooling system. It's a Mechanologist Headpiece Equipment at Majestic that says at the end of your turn, if this has less than three steam counters on it and you've boosted this turn, put a steam counter on the Iccs. As an action.

You can remove 3 steam counters to banish the top two cards of your Deck. Select a Mechanologist action card in your banish zone and shuffle that back into your Deck. So the idea here is that new players especially will struggle with boosting away their one big power card. And I think that again, big issue with lower powered mechanologist decks is that if you just have some unfortunate boosts, you can just lose the game. And that sucks.

I wanted to create a headpiece that can save the powerful card that you had to boost away for a good turn earlier. I don't think it's fair that like because you boosted away a card, all of a sudden now you can lose the game. Like that just sucks by putting something that lets you save the

card that you boosted away. I think it's wonderful for being able to give mechanologists some more resiliency in the new meta that we found them in. One thing I like about this card is it lets you shuffle and banish the top two. So if you have a card on the top that you don't want and you're desperate to find an item, you could use this just for the sake of refreshing the top of your deck.

And having lots of effects like that can really like help you get the value out of your hero ability as dash IOI. Didn't give this action go again. So if you want to continue so this either ends your turn or to continue your turn you have to do some action point shenanigans. Yeah, maybe if you high octane, but you're like, I don't have a lot of counters on my pistol. Well, maybe this is something you can use that extra action

point for. Yeah, it was another issue I had while I was goldfishing the deck was I would play high octane and I would be like, oh, I only have one counter on my pistol. What am I doing with all these action points? This is something to do with that extra action point, and it's also A1 block battle warn so that it can be used by Max. And what's the name of the card clerk? The ICS, yes, I chose. It's the X, it's the X, it's the X In my mind, this is a helmet that like literally cools down

those racers. So like the the girl on Rev up, right? She's on her cyberpunk motorcycle racing through the streets of metrics. And she just does that for hours and hours on end because we're a cyberpunk baby. Human limits are nothing to us but to like stay cool. They like have this helmet that like injects like freon through these tubes through their skulls to keep their head cool. Oh my God, yeah. That's what they use for refrigerators.

And the world of rate doesn't have climate change, right? That's not a problem that they're dealing with. The inks gave me climate change. Those are my cards. That's my pitch to LSS as to why Dash should be the next Armory deck and what it could look like. Fuzzy. What class? What hero did you choose for the Armory deck? All right, in a move that might not surprise anyone, I've

decided to build my prospective future Armory deck around Katsu. What now? Here is my elevator pitch for why I think Katsu would be an ideal next Armory deck for LSS to explore. First of all, Katsu has always been an appealing hero to newer players. He was one of the first heroes I built. Joel, Wasn't Katsu one of the first heroes that you've played? Sure was, it was the very first CC hero I built.

Like when you're finding new players, I think an above average number of times they like to start on Katsu because he has a really cool look, he has a cool gameplay pattern and like aggro decks are fun. He's also one of those first four heroes slash 8 heroes that I think LSS has always intended to be fall back options for newer players approaching the game like Bravo, Durinthia, Katsu, Rhinar.

All of these are decks that, power level aside, are ones that I think are purposely appealing to newer players. And I think there's a reason they haven't LL D and it's literally that LSS doesn't want them to LL for as long as they can because they're make a really good foundation to the game. Now of course they're going to get there eventually, but in the meantime, Katsu is one that is also relatively viable. Katsu is not necessarily top of

the meta. He's been kind of close, kind of maybe like lower A or higher B tier sometimes. Heavy hitters. He put up some really, really great runs. What was it putting Tam from Team Blue Pitch? I want to say Yeah, yeah, yeah. He went on an insane run on Katsu when everyone was counting Katsu out of that. He top eighted worlds. I think Katsu has definitely been around, even if he hasn't been necessarily been asked here at the top of the meta. That's one of his strengths, right?

With this list I wanted to expand on some potential Ninja design space that's always been lingering because Ninja has very clear clusters of cards in their card pool around these combo lines. Like you could build a whole deck based off of Bonds of Ancestry because that combo line is so powerful, but there are other combo lines that aren't as powerful that LSS could breathe new life into in the future. They did this in Outsiders with the Twin Twisters line and the

Hedge Jab line. Twin Twisters literally wasn't a combo line until Outsiders Hedge Jab got extra support and I'm giving the Hedge Jab line specifically a little bit more support in my custom Armory deck as well as trying to lay a foundation if you wanted to build this deck without the custom cards for just a really solid beginner friendly list. Because I think the head jab cards are really easy to understand and use compared to some of the other combo lines.

And I know Joel's a fan of the head jab line because the last time we did decks like this, he had a Zen head jab list. Head jab I'm. Going to talk a little bit about the card inclusions before I get into my custom cards. I have red and blue head jabs, red and yellow open the centers. If you don't know what these cards do, I want to go through them really quickly, so I suggest you go to my fiburia link in the description. I have the red pounding gales.

I have red fluster fists and blue fluster fists. So there's a lots of cards in this deck that care specifically about those combo lines. I'm really focusing on the one I also included be Like Waters because they pretend to be duplicates of head jabs. We need as many copies of these combo cards as we want if the entire deck is based around them. I also included some Razor Reflexes because I think they do a really good job of ensuring

these on hits. It also combos kind of really well with like Pounding Gale for instance. If I give a new player this deck, he might play a few armories and at least one game for one of those armories. I'm sure he's going to be able to land Pounding Gale with Razor Reflex to deal like 16 damage, and it's going to be the best moment that that player's ever had in training cards.

Oh yeah. I also like how Razor Reflex helps be like water hit, so you're helping guarantee that you're able to line up to your other combo pieces. And if I'm putting Razor Reflex in, I might as well throw in Snatch. I have red and blue snatches. That combo's just so good. I also have Red Take the Tempo. It's a Majestic from Uprising that didn't super get meta popular, but with Razor Reflex on the list, it's basically like a very slow snatch that blocks for three.

It lets you banish the top card of your deck and play it on your next turn if you've hit three more times this combat chain. So I'm a big fan of the card in general. I was looking for cheap budget cards because I'm getting the impression from LSS that they don't want to print any card that's actually worth anything more than like a dollar in their lists. They're not trying to use these Armory decks to do any reprinting of valuable cards.

I don't necessarily agree with that, but I've decided to follow along with that for the sake of picking cards to go into my list. If I was going to ignore that rule, I would put in Ancestral Empowerment. It's a $5 Majestic from Welcome to Wraith that I think is really strong and elegant, easy for a new player to understand, and works really well with the break points in the list. Or red bittering thorns again, like being able to give your next attack plus one would be really good.

Red Bittering Thorns was only printed in the round the table like UPF decks, so that one is also like $5.00, but I would include those if either you didn't want to use my custom cards or you are willing to put in a little bit of extra cash for this beginner friendly deck. I also threw in some red spinning wheel kicks and red flick flax just because they're solid cards and I also put in the recoils, red recoil and blue recoil. That's the zero for three combo off of head jab. When it hits.

They put a card from their hand on top of their deck. That's basically my entire deck list for equipment. I have Snapdragon scalers, I have mask of many faces because it's a common and I didn't want to make another majestic headpiece for Katsu. I think mask is also great. I talked a little bit. I talked actually a fair amount in my pitch about how I was trying to streamline the process

for brand new players. I think Katsu is also very similar to Dash IO in that the ability to tutor for any card on an on hit is like a very high cognitive load for a brand new player. And it leads to a lot of discovery moments too. Yes, Mask of Mini Faces is cool because if you're like, wait, I kind of want to get this card, it's like, oh, I can just give it a name that I want, right?

Yeah. And so they can sort of like set up their own combo lines without having to feel like they're so reliant on knowing how all of them work and then having to hit and having to go tutor them out. You can just be like, well, I don't care if this card hits, I can just name it this other card. Exactly. It's really good at saving your hand and removing the interactivity that your opponent can do to disrupt your plan.

Yeah, so I was looking at the deck and I have a lot of cards that are 0 for threes, the head jabs that be like waters and these cards need to hit in order to get the rest of your turn going. I wanted to give you the option of being able to buff them kind of like breaking scales, but I wanted something repeatable. So I knew it was going to have to like be relatively expensive for its effect.

This is a Ninja Arms equipment. It's a majestic that I call hardened Fists. It has an instant ability where you can pay two resources to give your next ninja attack plus one power. You could do that multiple times in a turn if you want. You can do it multiple times over the course of the game. You just have to pay two and you have to call your shot. It's not an attack reaction, so

you're it's telegraphed. Your opponent is knowing that you're activating it, but it gives you more flexibility. Maybe you have a lot of Blues in hand and you can spend those extra Blues not just on Kodachi's but also on buffing your ninja attacks to make them harder to block, or throwing it on your open the center with dominate to push some extra damage through. I'm also intentionally letting

you target Kodachi's with this. It can reinforce your Kodachi lock, but if you only have one blue in hand, you have to Telegraph it, right? So you would still probably just swing with two Kodachi's. This is if you have like multiple Blues in your hand. I like how it's an instant so that you can use it in the middle of a chain. I think that's really important, being able to give plus one to something in the middle or towards the end of a combo line.

Yeah, that's really the only way it would work with open the center or pounding Gale, which is something I wanted. Yeah. And I give it Blade Break 2, so once you block with it for two if you have to in a pinch, you lose the ability to use it for the rest of the game, but it still gives you that blockability. It really resonates with what I like about Ninja. I like that they care so much about sequencing and not

breaking the combat chain. So adding a strict upgrade to breaking scales I think adds a lot more complexity to Katsu's line of play. Because plus you and I have played a lot during heavy hitters meta as we were practicing for like some of the Proquest and RTNS and whatnot. And I noticed like really, I want to be over blocking, breaking scales until you use it or make use on a on a bad exchange. And then once it's gone, it's

gone. Like I don't really have to worry about cots of hero ability as much as I used to, right? Especially now that you lost yellow and blue bonds event history. So the fact that you give a bit more threat density to every card that I have to now overblock by a little bit, I think it makes virtually every line that much better. Well this one is telegraphed. I had an original design where it was an attack reaction. This one gives your next ninja attack plus one.

So you have to activate this before you do the attack. Well, even if it's an instant that you declare beforehand, you still have things like Artifor, You still have ancestral power. That's true. There's a lot of other combat tricks that, in tandem with this effect, make Katsu that much more threatening and make all the other combolence that much more usable. Yeah, well, I'm glad you like it. The other equipment I designed is called Breath of Life because Katsu is the wind guy and it's

your chest. I'm like, there's got to be some flavor synergy between wind and the chest. I think it's incredibly clever. And I was really trying to rack my brain, like I really wanted to make a chest piece for a Ninja that gives resources for a couple different reasons. Like, first of all, every Armory deck has a weird chest piece that gives you resources so far. And Ninja has a really mediocre one we're running right now called Heart and Cross Trap.

Heart and Cross Trap is not that good of a card in classic constructed unless you have like this really crazy aggro meta where like there's only three or four turns in the game. So I really wanted something that's better than this common that I've been running in most matchups for a long time. And I couldn't think of one because I didn't want it to be busted. And a lot of my cards cost 0 anyway. I can't do the savage stash route where I just make all my attack actions cost 1 less

because I'm playing zeros. What am I going to do with that? And I wanted it to work in this deck where like I start with head jab, which is a 0 cost anyway. So this is what I came up with. I have it say when you make a second dagger attack each turn, put an energy counter on this card. Kind of like Final Spring Tunic, except you have to swing with your daggers and when an attack action new control hits, you may remove three energy counters to

gain 2 resources. So you're gaining twice as much as findles. You're gaining it about as fast as findles as long as you swing with daggers every turn, and you have to hit with an attack action to get those resources. So if you hit with head jab, you can make open the center basically free and then follow up with whatever else you wanna do. You could also maybe if you're using this in tandem with the arms piece I made, you can use those two resources to immediately give you next thing

plus one. They kind of work really well together and it blocks for one, just like Findles. I was really close to calling this Breath of Findl and I was like wait, all cards that reference Findl in the game right now are generic so I don't think I can reference Findl

specifically on a ninja card. So I really like this design because even though you've designed it specifically around head jab and open the center, it also kind of works with like surging strike because it refunds the surging strike cost. Oh, sure, yeah. And lets you play fucking what's it called? Mugenchi release and Lord of wind. It lets you pay at least one into Lord of wind. But also leg tap also requires I

think at least three resources. So if you do, if you do double dagger and then leg tap and hit with leg tap, you basically get a few more resources to continue with the rest of your leg tap line. So it's actually pretty multifunctional. I really like that about this card so far. Yeah, the fact that this puts the resources at the end of or like after an on hit rather than at the start of the turn, it kind of pulls it away from the Surging Gust wave line, which I'm really happy about.

I'm honestly very sick of that combo line and I want to see other combo lines come in. I think it does a great job of that honestly. Sweetie, I'm glad you guys like this design. This was the hardest one for me, I think, out of the cards I've designed, like I said, because of those challenges I was talking about earlier.

I think it also just opens up the ninja design space, like if this is the legendary that they start building around instead of fine dolls then like they can start printing combo cards in the middle and the end of chains that have a higher resource demand. It even gets easier to play like razor reflex and attack action card like things that cost resources in the middle of the chain.

Even like Art of War gets a little bit easier to be played, but like a lot of combo lines, they try to make it so that you can pitch 1 blue and play the entire chain, but then that doesn't leave you room for other stuff if that entire combo line costs three. And these head jab lines like Pounding Gale cost one and Open the Center cost 2. Having extra resources means I can guarantee on hits with Razor

Reflex or what have you. So I am pretty happy with where I ended up. And it's also gated behind having two daggers. If you don't have two daggers, you can't play this. So it doesn't work with Kakara. It's hard to wink work with needles. They destroy a needle, then you suddenly lose it. Right now you basically have to play it with Karachi's, but I would love to see better Ninja daggers in the future. There's another thing I could have explored with this deck,

right? Ninja has so many open branches ready to be expanded on. It's one of the reasons I love the class. Yeah. So let's get into my main deck, custom cards. I've got two. I noticed with this deck I imagined a new player like losing their head jabs and open the centers and not having the opportunities to play their final combo cards. Especially because there's nine cards in my deck that combo off of open the center but only 6

copies of open the center. So I wanted some way for the player to recoup some of those other than like literally remembrance. This card is called Wins of Honor. It's A1 cost red attack action that swings for five blocks for three. When this hits, you may put another Ninja attack action card from the combat chain on the bottom of your deck.

So you could maybe go like Head Jab into open the Center into Wins of Honor and you're threatening to be able to put a open the center or a Head Jab back on the bottom of your deck to get better use out of it later. Yeah, it's sort of the idea of like if you have an off turn where like you can't really make your hand work and they blocked your three power card so you didn't get the tutor. So like you're not really making the combo line flow.

Winds of Honor can kind of be here to just say, you know what, it's OK. You can still get that starter back in your deck. You can still get that finisher back in your deck. You'll be OK. I wanted a forgiving environment for my new player that's hypothetically picking up this deck. Especially in katsu because it can be very punishing if you're not properly tracking your combo lines. I think this is also nice for long games, right? Like sure katsu games are normally over in 10 minutes, but

sometimes they go long. And when they go long you need to know what's still in your deck. It does a lot. Yeah, I just like to how it's a much better, much more usable version of Visit the Flying Dojo. Yeah, because Visit the Flying Dojo is the one that gets you a starting track and one combo card, right. No, I really like though, how you can recur because like sometimes when you're playing like blue starters, like late game, you just don't want to be

playing those. So being able to cycle those red ones like that actually makes Katsu like much more playable. And Katsu actually has two specializations that give you recursion. One of them is the visit the floating Dojo, like you said, Lord of Wind is the other. So it's like ninja has kind of had special had recursion, but only Katsu and as like these specified ways.

So I thought it was really interesting to give a generic ninja piece of recursion that is a lot more like focused on the cards that you're playing now, a little bit harder to use to just get your best cards back into your deck. And it's not a combo, so it's not like you tutor for it. Right, right. So I wanted it to be like very reasonable in power level. I think it is. I think you hit the nail on the head. My next card is called Spine Spinner. I distinctly can think of the art.

It's like a guy whose head is like, he just got punched. So his head is like wrapped around and he's like staring the other way and. They do the. The really comicy sort of ninja cards he's getting the like shit knocked out of him and so his spine is like as a result, like twisted around. Maybe his head is like spun 360° from the force of this punch. I actually. I love that because ninja cards will just randomly get really comicy, like a leg will like be 5 feet long.

Yeah, in an arc. So this is a 0 cost blue Majestic that's meant to be a capstone for our head jab combo line. So if open the center was the last attack, this combat chain, then this gains go again. And when this chain link resolves, draw a card for each attack action card that has hit this combat chain. So that would include spine spinner, but it doesn't have to hit in order to get that benefit. It is a 0 cost for two that blocks for three.

And even though it's a capstone, I wanted to be able to use the cards that you draw off of it, right? So it's not normal for the last card in a combo line to have go again, but this one does. This card's fucking gas. It punishes your opponent for not blocking it all right if they go. If you go head jab into open the center into spine spinner and all of it hits, you're drawing three cards. You get to reset your entire turn and open the center will probably hit.

It doesn't have an on hit in and of itself, but it has dominate and the red comes in for six go again. So with with open the center being really hard to block, spine spinners a lot easier to block, but you're probably drawing one because you hit with open the center. Yeah. This is the kind of stuff that I feel like this deck would need. That yeah, that is so much more interesting than welding gust wave and the the amount of which that you punish your opponent for not blocking earlier is

like, man, it is fucking huge. And the fact that like well, actually, no, I guess Cot two ability wouldn't really interact with this at all if you hit earlier. So but I still like the cart. I think it's really strong. Clearly the big pressure point is open the Center for this because you have 3 finishers in the deck and pounding Gale, flush Surface and now Spine spinner.

But if you see any of those in your hand, you can feel comfortable of all right, I just got to find a way to get open the center and then I can do everything else that I need. Really, really great way of approaching the game. And so I like this because it's saying, hey, you have lots of

different ending. Maybe they're good into different situations or good into different heroes certain matchups, but now the pressure point is on the middle, so you have to find a way of really making that first one or two attacks hit. You could absolutely take out some of these finishers as you're trying to upgrade the deck by putting in those Command and Conquerors and those Art of Wars, etc. Yeah, that as well that I think that's a great point to make. So that's what I've got for my

pitch. I hope you guys like that. Yeah. Yeah, that was awesome. A reminder to everybody, cart links to the deck lists can be found in the description of this episode. Links to the custom cards that we discussed about will be in the description of the episode. And you can always go to YouTube, where in our video edit, we will put up all of the cards that we talk about so that you can follow along a little

bit better. So if you want to see what these necklace are, maybe you have someone that you're trying to get into the game and you want to see if like this could maybe be a cheaper way than like buying an Armory deck. Maybe making these Armory decks would be a little bit cheaper. That was a good reminder, thank you. Clark. Are we about ready to move into our Arsenal zone? I believe so, yeah. Listeners, our Arsenal Zone is the part of the podcast where we

all shouted a card that we've been thinking about lately, be it good, bad, or whatever reason we want. I shall start. So I've been playing Zen lately. I had the deck built for my boyfriend already and I wanted to go to some events so I'm like, might as well play best deck in format, am I right? Yeah, and one card that kind of surprised me just at how strong and reliable it is, is Aspect of Tiger Body. Yeah. That's the card that I'm going to be signing and giving to each

of you, my lovely hosts. Let's go. If you have this or chase the tail, the two card combo that it makes, like if you have a cheat and one of those cards that's 10 damage. Yeah, like if you have a blue, you can play the Chase, the Tail and Kakara, and that's like 7 + 3 plus another 313 damage off of three cards easy. Don't forget your shoot go. You're right, if I don't forget

my shoot go, it's 14 damage. And if you have one transcend card that you're able to transcend that turn with the rest of your turn and aspect of tiger body, then you can use the extra resource from the Kakara from the Kasaya in order to play the chase the tail. I just realized how flexible and reliable that combo is and it is something that I was really enjoying exploring as I was playing the deck.

And the fact that this gives you two different attack action cards from 1 means it works really well with art of war. So I was really happy with this card as a rare that I was kind of sleeping on in the season. Remember spoiler season where we're like, wow, these crouching Tiger cards seem really low value. I don't anticipate Zen crouching Tigers being a really reliable game plan.

We were like half right because he still has a lot of other like above rate ninja cards he was able to rely on, but he's still playing a lot of these parts of mystical cards. So. Yeah, I'm really happy to see it too. I would say this card is part of this changing mindset that I've had around the hero in the last month or so, and I'm going to sign a copy and give it to each of you. This is like the first fuzzy

card I can actually. Play. It's because I'm actually playing CC Clark, do you want to go next? Sure. The card that I want to talk about for today is Construct Nitromechanoid. Bright Lights was like the first set that came out where I had the money to participate in it and I was excited. I know I've talked about like Dynasty and like Outsiders a little bit, but I did not really care for those sets. Bright Lights was the one where I was like, I'm making a podcast about this game.

Bright Lights is coming out. I'm all about it, baby. And I saw Max and went This is My Hero from the set. Like I love the cyberpunk aesthetic, yes, it doesn't really jive with the rest of the world, a race, but I think it was so special and unique. I think his play style was so much fun. I loved what he represented in

the story. I felt like LSS was taking a really big swing by giving us a hero who was an anarchist, like someone who literally wanted to burn down the system and like rebel and revolt and like that being a big driving factor. And it's not just against some evil empire, it's like against capitalist society. Like Wattsy could literally fucking never. If they ever printed a hero, like printed any character any more like that, I feel like it

would fall apart instantly. Like Wattsy is like, you're telling them that capitalism is bad. You know we want them to spend $700.00 on our new booster products. So you talk about Wizards of the Coast, right? Yeah. The creators of Magic the Gathering. Yes, thank you for the context. So. But then contract Nitromechanoid just became the way to build Max and he became the most boring dull hero ever.

Where you boost once you make the hyperdriver token and you pass, you have resources going to waste every single turn from all these hyperdrivers you have sitting around and you're just waiting to find the moment where like you lucky banish a crankshaft or something to like keep him around and then you mechanoid and then you just play more really boring, plain, very mid rangey, low efficiency flesh and blood until you hit a high octane turn and then you high octane and you swing for like 38

in a turn and it feels awesome. I've done it. It feels incredible. I love that it's a valid play style. I don't like how it's his play style and I think it's one of these cards where I look at and I say this is awesome. I hate what it's done to my hero though. Wow. Damn. Joe, what do you got? Yeah, follow that bitch. Why is it that I always do like my most eloquent like proselytizing about mechanologists right from Technocor and contract Nitro

mechanoid dude? I just I don't know man that can make that makes me feel a certain way. Amen brother. So my card is a solar plexus, which if you know me at all, or if you listen to the past couple episodes, you know that I've really been upset with LS s s approach to balancing Bolton and the most recent Armory deck. I've kind of been changing my mind about that Armory deck. Wow. OK, I think, I think, I think

it's kind of gas. So shout out to my friend Garrett, who's been like relentlessly lobbying this fucking card to me for God knows why he's been telling you about him. Like, you know, this is kind of gas because he was telling me about, you know, how you can do like multiple Valiant Thrusts, Art of War. And I was like, why are you fucking playing Art of War in Bolton? And then he was like, well, I'm

just playing one. So whenever you see Art of War, you crack the solar Lexus and I'm like, OK, I can see that. And then he told me he did like 20s plus damage and I'm like, OK, that's kind of cool, I guess. And then I got to thinking, this is actually on rate with most double Lumina turns. Yeah, with the full combo, because with the Lumina combo, you're waiting for two copies of Lumina or a Lumina and Beacon, a charge card and something you could charge with. And then you need three pieces

of equipment. Your current blade hold your gallantry gold and your Snapdragon scalers. But this with this, a new equipment suite, if you just wait for Art of War and you play like at least one or two Valiant Thrusts, that's 14 damage right there, not including Raiden, which is like 3. So that's 17. And then if you have at least two other attack actions, that's like 8 value minimum. So that's like what, like 25

damage? And if you throw even 1 Lumina in there, that's like what, 10 more points of value, 4 for each wing and one for each life game. So I think the math is there, I'm not going to lie. So yeah, just wanted to say solar plexus might be kind of gas. I'm going to be trying it once I start playing Flush and Blood again, So we'll see. Awesome. Yeah. I love it. Minds changed. We grow as people through this game. All. Right boys, I think that about wraps our show.

Thank you everyone for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. We want to know what Armory deck do you think you could see happening in the future? What's the most likely target for LS S S next Armory deck? Yeah, get in the comments. Get in there. Next time, guys, bye. So long

Pitcher to Me podcast is hosted by Fuzzy Delt, Clark Moore and Joel Racinos, Executive producer, Talent Stradley, 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 Wichita ME Podcast.