Images courtesy of Legend Story Studios
I feel bad for Fang, Dracai of Blades. He’s almost entirely overshadowed by his fellow The Hunted alumn, Cindra, Dracai of Retribution. Just think about it: not only is his whole thing attacking with his daggers multiple times – which is arguably just microwaved leftovers from the Ninja game plan – his actual card pool is screaming for him to be a combo deck. And yet, that deck never really materialized. Why? We’re gonna find out together.
Comparing the Game Plans of Cindra and Fang
While Cindra is flying high on the back of a strong, efficient aggro deck with the possibility of strong pop-off turns, Fang has been left to the wayside. And I believe that these circumstances give us the perfect environment to find out why such similar hero designs are performing so differently.
On the surface, both heroes have fairly similar goals, going just by their hero abilities. Cindra and Fang both want to set up certain conditions to make free and frequent use of their weapons.
That’s not really how their respective decks shake out, though. As we found out when looking at the Pitchless Cindra deck, Cindra uses her hero ability, class equipment, and weapons more as a way to start long chain links and make use of efficient, under-costed cards. Fang, being confined to the Warrior card pool, doesn’t have access to some of the same efficient aggro cards.
What does Fang have access to instead? Well, the Warrior card pool is lousy with attack reactions that provide a similar going rate; just compare the likes of Blade Flurry to Art of the Dragon: Blood. The difference is, you always need something else to make use of these attack reactions – weapon attacks, generally – and your opponent can play around them. Consequently, playing Fang the way you would Cindra just means you’re being less efficient, leaving potential off the table.
The other thing that The Hunted introduced to differentiate Fang’s game plan from Cindra’s is Stances (Agility Stance, Flurry Stance, Power Stance). These are theoretically meant to provide Fang with the opportunity of being a combo deck, setting up for one big popoff turn that decimates your opponent.
These cards have magical christmasland written all over them. Sure, if you somehow manage to get two or three of these Stances out and have three Fealty tokens handy and draw into some other cards to further pressure your opponent, hello Oath of Steel, you’re in for a good time. The problem is that usually your opponent won’t just let you do that – and if they do, you could probably manage a win with any other hero as well.
What Makes a Good Flesh and Blood Combo Deck?
A good combo deck is one that has tools to work towards its combo, ideally by having some way to filter cards. Think of the Kano, Dracai of Aether combo decks that sometimes terrorize the meta. Alternatively, the deck should have a way to work towards winning the game that isn’t a combo. This is where Pitchless Cindra shines.
Fang doesn’t really have either of these things. If you play his deck the way you would a typical Cindra deck, you’re just hamstringing yourself. And the only thing a Fang combo deck can do is block, which, granted, he does very well (more on that later), until you’ve got the combo set up. And in that case, you’re at the mercy of your draw and your opponent.
So, did Legend Story Studios fail when designing Fang? Do they hate the Warrior class? I don’t think so. The problem with the Warrior class is at a more fundamental level, and it’s one that not just Fang has suffered from.
Why Warrior Class Design is Hard
First off, Warriors are fair. They tend to not get “unfair” amounts of value out of their cards, or they have to work really hard to get there, while other classes have access to cards that easily go over rate – think of the many trivially easily achieved four-power attacks with go again that cost no resources. Warriors tend to get closer to the average value of three damage out of their cards.
When they do get more than three damage, it’s by some technicality or edge-case, usually punishing their opponent for blocking incorrectly, or by giving their attacks go again. The other thing that Warriors have going for them is attack reactions – it’s kind of their whole thing (though I’d argue that both Assassins and Ninjas do it better than them).
A Warrior deck’s true gameplay happens during the reaction step, but if the opponent reads your hand correctly and plans accordingly, they can typically play around your reaction in a way that punishes you. The classic example is Dorinthea Ironsong and iconic Warrior cards like Glint the Quicksilver and Singing Steelblade.
These strengths sound a whole lot like downsides so far, but the class is the way it is because it has a lot of the same play as more aggressive classes while being much more durable: almost all Warrior cards block for three, and the class is second only to Guardians in the amount of extra life they get out of their blocking equipment.
So when we put the pieces together, Warriors are halfway between wanting to be aggressive and on guard, biding their time and trading blows, waiting for the perfect opportunity to present itself and punish an opponent’s critical misstep. It’s a cool and resonant image, but in practice it usually means that the class is never reaching the highs of other classes – and that designing cards for them is really hard.
Think about it, if a class can do it all – and does so at a level close to or above other classes in efficiency – then what point is there in playing anything else? It’s the midrange dilemma that plagues most if not all TCGs out there. Theoretically, midrange decks are meant to out-trade aggro decks and fold to combo decks, who in turn get raced to death by the aggro decks or hard-checked by control decks, forming a perfect rock-paper-scissors meta.
In practice, this kind of balance is hard to strike. What if one of the deck archetypes is too good? The combo deck might be too fast for the aggro deck or the midrange deck too fast for the combo deck to kill it before it gets killed in return. And that’s before we consider other factors, such as what a player base considers too good or unfun.
Conclusion
This all boils down to one thing: Warriors kind of get the short end of the stick a lot in Flesh and Blood card design – or at least it feels like it. They’re so close to having it all, being efficient on offense and defense with the option to combo off, but the deck that does it all at a level that’s competitive never quite materializes. So while it’s perfectly possible to take a Fang deck to an Armory or even a tournament, you’ll be hard-pressed for the class to ever sport a metagame defining deck. And if it did, you can bet anything that the meta would be miserable.
Looking to get into Flesh and Blood for a low cost? Pick up on of the preconstructed Armory decks, like Aurora.
