The Time, the Place
The World Championships in Osaka came to a close after, oh, so many blessings were counted…. Perhaps for the last time. As is the pace with Flesh and Blood, there’s always something coming around the corner. For some, it’s the next Armory Deck: Jarl; others, it’s the next set, The Hunted. For me and many other competitively minded players, it’s the banlist.
There was a mix of excitement and unease about this banlist in particular. In the Dev Talk podcast, the game’s creator James White had called out High Octane as basically being out the door already. Luckily, on stream we saw some fantastic, and, admittedly unfair, plays out of Sam Sutherland that could appropriately close that chapter of Mech’s story. The rest of the banlist, though? Players were murmuring.
Count Your Blessings (CYB) had been the target of much uproar on both sides of the debate: was it worth being in the game or not? Almost no one was calling it broken, but it was described as being out of place in a game where trading cards within a turn cycle was core to almost every strategy (never mind you, Illusionists). CYB, however, allowed for decks to carry value from one hand into the overall game state by healing your life total to extreme amounts, but it took some time to find where it excelled.
A Bit of Perspective
At first, players were adding it to every deck under the sun. It was so easy to carve out space for nine copies of a card that, if your opponent didn’t have a plan for it, meant you could gain 50+ life and play the game with life as… not so much of a resource. Tournament results showed those strategies didn’t perform, but at the highest level, competitive players were using it as a tool to pursue inevitable endgames. In World’s Top 8, we can see that with Nuu wanting more opportunities to attack deck size and Enigma with her Spectral Shields lock. To appreciate those games, however, you have to be ready to pay attention for the full 55m round.
Everyone had an opinion. Most were unenthused. Some threatened to quit the game. Others pointed to a different problem.
Was it really CYB that made these win-cons possible? Or was it the suite of other defensive generics like Sink Below and Fate Foreseen? Players were busy with this discussion across the entire World Championship weekend.
“They’re too easy to play, it’s as if you always reveal a red with Ravenous Rabble.”
“The generic defense reactions overshadow defensive options that are tied to class identity.”
I do agree that eventually Sinks and Fates will seem out of place in a game where dominate becomes overpower and block cards keep getting printed. They’re obviously what peak defense tools look like, but they’re also a much needed answer to a playstyle that we simply haven’t seen as a format defining mechanic: attack reactions. Perhaps this is coming with The Hunted… Assassin, Ninja, and Warrior are all reaction heavy classes, to be fair!
I’m willing to bet they eventually get phased out, but in the discussion of CYB vs Sinks and Fates, well, we got our answer.
The Banlist
Classic Constructed
James White wrote an ever so eloquent BnR this Monday that addressed the aforementioned High Octane ban as well as Count Your Blessings blue. In short, he was quite happy with what a pure control deck like Grzegorz Kowalski’s Worlds winning list looks like, but he was not happy with the amount of answers present in the game.
This reflects what the community felt overall. Was anyone really excited to put a Poison the Well in arsenal, just to get stuck playing four-card hands into a deck that benefits from slowing down? Gravekeeping never got its time to shine, but one-for-fives are a rare sight in any deck’s cost curve. As James says, more effective in-class answers will exist again such as Invert Existence, but until then, we can stop counting our blessings.
Losing the blues means that the reds and yellows are never egregiously above rate. Once you play all six, you will have gained 30 life (previously 54). Five value per card is still higher than normal, but now the flaws of the game plan are more clear since there’s less density of them to ramp as fast. Will players opt to still run them, or just replace those slots with Sigil of Solace and Healing Balm? Or, better yet, move on over to Jarl Vetreidi if they want to play a control deck!
Blitz
The next piece of the BnR addressed the true wild west format: Blitz. Not only is Zen back from his brief stint as a Living Legend, but ProQuest+ Hirsohima showed us Data Doll MKII and Levia are in contention for the best decks?! Levia already caught a ban with Art of War last go ‘round, but now we see Zen's Belittle and Data Doll's Hadron Collider banned for the upcoming Skirmish Season 10. My only regret here is not many people will have seen Data Doll MKII at full strength after so many years, but here’s a video that will convince you she’s basically young Starvo.
Living Legend
Lastly, Living Legend got an unexpected update. After the emergency ban of Kraken’s Aethervein, the next Living Legend events at Battle Hardened: Osaka and the Team Cup showed us a very healthy format. The Battle Hardened Top Cut was eight different heroes as well as the Team Cup winners on an additional two heroes. The one exception here was Kano, Dracai of Aether on his second LL Battle Hardened win. With so much access to draw-two effects, LSS restricted Open the Flood Gates, and deservedly so.
The truly unexpected change came with Star Struck becoming unrestricted. There have been more eyes on Living Legend as of late because of its first Calling next month. Players don’t want to face some of the degeneracy of the past like the Top Cut of eight Starvos at Battle Hardened Barcelona, so a slight buff to his power level truly came out of nowhere. I’m not sure if Star Struck alone will really launch him to new heights since it has no attached discard effects, but there are cool combos you can do with it and Electromagnetic Somersault.
There is one more Living Legend event before Chicago at Battle Hardened Columbus, so I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for that.
Until then, count your blessings… Only to six!
