Welcome to the Budget Builder!
Greetings and salutations my fabulous FAB folks! Welcome to the very first installment of a new Flesh and Blood budget deck series here on Card Gamer! My name is Donnie K, and I think I need to take a moment to reintroduce myself since I’m coming to you from a new platform.
Let’s Keep the Intro Brief Though, Shall We?
Yeah, yeah, we’ve all got better things to do, I know. The short and sweet of it is that I’m a nerd and I’ve been a nerd my whole life. Anime, video games, Dungeons & Dragons, the whole shebang. I’ve been playing card games for the better part of the last 20+ years, starting with the original Pokémon Base Set. (Yeah, first edition. No, I don’t still have any of them. Yes, I still cry about it sometimes.)
I picked up Flesh and Blood around November of 2022 after nearly two decades of playing Magic the Gathering. Literally, after one evening of learning the game, I fell in love and dropped Magic like a bad habit. Eventually, I had traded in all of my old shiny shiny cardboard for new shiny shiny cardboard. Honestly, I haven’t had a single moment of regret since I made the jump.
Cool, So What Are We Doing Here Today?
You clicked the link because you’re interested in some direction on how to get into Flesh and Blood. Or, you want to know what a cheap Flesh and Blood deck looks like. Or, maybe you have a precon, want to know what your first pick-ups should be, and liked my stunning profile pic. You decide and let me know.
The reason I’m here is to tell you about this sweet new series and then give you some of that guidance you’re craving. Fair warning, I’m no Sam Sutherland or Michael Hamilton. But, I am passionate about Flesh and Blood. I’m hoping that I can share that passion with you through building affordable decks and being mildly entertaining.
What’s the Game Plan?
The game plan right now is to build entire Classic Constructed decks for cheap. Preferably, as close to $100 as possible using the “Cheapest Printing” screen on Fabrary. We’re going to build the best decks we can within that budget.
My goal is for you to be able to take the decks here and go have fun at your local Armory without an issue. However, you’re not likely to win a rated event with them, unless you’re just that good. The series may evolve and include more over time, but for now, let’s talk about our first hero.
Coming to us from the (as of time of writing) most recent Armory Deck, let’s talk about Dash I/O!
More Than Human!
For the whole time I’ve been playing FAB, Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire has been one of the best intro heroes to the game. Mechanologist cards are usually pretty cheap and do really powerful things. Unfortunately, the OG Dash is sitting really high on the Living Legend leaderboard and may not be legal for much longer. Therefore, we’re looking at Dash I/O – or as a large portion of the community calls her, DIO – as our new budget queen.
The Armory Deck products are a great place to start playing Flesh and Blood. For this tune-up, the majority of the cost is going to come from purchasing that starter deck. But, where should we take it from there?
The three cards shown above – Heist red, Pulsewave Harpoon red, and Twin Drive red – are some of the upgrades you’ll want to look at later. For now though, we can’t acquire them and still stay within the $100 budget we’re aiming for.
Budget Equipment for Dash I/O
That being said, let’s first take a look at some of the equipment pieces we can upgrade without breaking the bank. First things first, we’re keeping Heavy Industry Gear Shift and Heavy Industry Surveillance from the Armory Deck. The rest of the gear is getting some upgrades though.
Achilles Accelerator and Heavy Industry Gear Shift do similar things, but for different opponents. Achilles has Arcane Barrier and is an easy swap when you need to prevent arcane damage. Most of the time you’ll want the point of block on Gear Shift and extra action points though.
For now, we’re only running Goliath Gauntlet in the hand slot. Honestly, because of the budget, there’s not a lot of other good options available. Fortunately, since we’re going for an all gas, no brakes build Goliath Gauntlet suits us just fine.
Now, here’s where we get to our first “pricey” cards.
These two are Mechanologist staples and, fortunately, have been reprinted enough times that they’re not going to break our budget. Right now, the cheapest printing of Teklo Foundry Heart that I see is less than $20 and Viziertronic Model i is less than $10.
In terms of what they do for the deck, Foundry Heart provides three points of block value and extra resources on command. Viziertronic is just a useful sideboard card for the Wizard match up, but it’s literally the best card for that slot. Easy slam dunk picks here.
Equipment is one of the biggest financial hurdles for newer players getting into Flesh and Blood, so getting an actually competitive set so cheap is awesome. Next, let’s upgrade some of the items.
Budget Items for Dash I/O
Here we’re going to spend some money again. Teklo Core is a fundamental card for Dash. It’s her specialization and it’s extremely powerful (same thing applies to Spark of Genius; they’re both too powerful to pass up).
As of now, the cheapest copy of Teklo Core that’s available is a little under $8, but we need three copies. Spending a quarter of the budget on one playset feels rough, but it really is necessary. Fortunately, the Teklo Pounder and blue Boom Grenade are relatively cheap though.
Next, we’re going to add a few Hyper Scrappers and Signal Jammers. The Scrappers synergize really well in the end game with our Convection Amplifier. Send a few cards off to the banish zone and send a big attack with dominate to close it out.
Signal Jammer is another piece of sideboard tech. It’s most useful against Wizards to keep them honest and Azalea to keep her from effectively racing us.
Cool! So, Now What’s Left?
We start blastin’! *insert Danny DeVito meme here*
We’re going with pure unfiltered aggression. Either we’re going to run our opponents over quickly, or we’re going to run out of gas trying! Either way, it’s sure to be a great time and give us plenty of time to snack between rounds.
I’ll say up front that T-Bone isn’t as relevant as it was in the last meta. During the Part the Mistveil season of Classic Constructed there were more equipment pieces you’d want to remove from the opponent. However, it’s still really powerful and forces your opponent to use their equipment differently a lot of the time.
Out Pace is another good aggressive card that can be awkward for the opponent to block once their life total starts to drop. Because it can’t be blocked by equipment, they have to give up two cards in order to stop the breakpoint. Often, those break points will pull extra cards out of people’s hands due to the threat of a Boom Grenade off the top. Sprocket Rocket acts like extra copies of Zero to Sixty often enough that it’s worth the include.
Finally, after we add a few more bits and baubles here and there, we have our first Flesh and Blood budget deck list. (With a link to the list on Fabrary so you can try it out on Talishar!)
The Final List for Dash I/O On a Budget
Final Thoughts
The total cost for the above list (again, as of time of writing) is right at $90 at TCG Player low prices. Cue the celebrational noises! I think we’ve actually got a really good, cheap Flesh and Blood deck!
While this list is going to struggle with fatigue, it’s going to be quick enough to catch a lot of opponents off guard. This is definitely a deck that I wouldn’t mind running at my locals for the heck of it and at that price point, why not have a spare for a new player to try out?
Are there any features you’d like to see in this series? Test games, increase/decrease the budget, budget counter, etc? What do you think of the list? Do you want to listen to me and my nerd friends yap about Flesh and Blood on my podcast?
Hit me up on Discord, Blue Sky, or Twitter as Dracohominis87 and let me know!
