Images courtesy of Legend Story Studios
Welcome to the Card Gamer guide to developing sideboards in Flesh and Blood. Like other games, having an effective game plan and deck is the first step towards any win. Having a pool of 80 cards for your deck gives you a wealth of options on how to set yourself up for success.
Join me as I break down every choice and consideration there is for sideboarding.
Sideboarding Equipment for Flesh and Blood
The most jarring difference between Flesh and Blood and the other traditional TCGs are equipment. Equipment is important as they’re permanent tools available for you to use throughout the game, and likely have more influence over how the game plays out over any singular card in your deck. Thus, your equipment choice is critical, and bringing certain pieces of equipment is a surefire way to improve certain target matchups.
Arcane Barrier and Spellvoid Equipment
The obvious example is anti-magic equipment, with Arcane Barrier and Spellvoid, in order to interact with arcane damage. However, adding Arcane Barrier is not a catch-all answer for defeating arcane-heavy decks. It’s also important for your deck to have sufficient blues to consistently block out arcane damage, otherwise it might just be better to use Spellvoid to shake off the most critical spells that Wizards love to sling.
It’s also important to have an answer to the Wizard’s alternative plans: for Kano, Dracai of Aether, his pitch stack combo; and for Verdance, Thorn of the Rose, her Healing Potion + Rampant Growth // Life combo. Answers to these plans involve prevention effects such as Seeds of Tomorrow and Oasis Respite to a fast enough clock to end them before they can set up.
Equipment for Short vs Long Games
Apart from anti-arcane options, bringing equipment that’s most relevant to each matchup is critical. Aggressive decks threatening several breakpoints, such as Aurora, Shooting Star and Cindra, Dracai of Retribution, could warrant the use of equipment that offers more block value over generating value, as blocking breakpoints often equate to value far more than the one damage that it would have blocked.
Common examples are Courage of Bladehold versus Fyendal’s Spring Tunic, or Blacktek Whisperers over Snapdragon Scalers.
Single-use effects are often more valuable in shorter games as well, as pushing your opponent onto single life digits is of paramount importance, being able to draw value from forcing blocks earlier rather than later by creating over-rate turns.
Savage Sash and Beaten Trackers come to mind over their counterparts Fyendal’s Spring Tunic and Scabskin Leathers, alongside plenty of other options across the classes, like Redback Shroud, Heartened Cross Strap, and Mask of the Pouncing Lynx, among many many others.
On the other end of the spectrum, equipment that generates value over a longer game rather than a powerful one-time use might be more effective against decks that like to play longer games.
Florian, Rotwood Harbinger and Nuu, Alluring Desire often play long grindy games against their opponent, and repeatable effects that generate value can often make the difference. Fyendal’s Spring Tunic is the large standout, providing a free point of pitch every three turns. Other examples include Scabskin Leathers, which makes its value pronounced over longer games as opposed to Beaten Trackers, and Mask of Perdition’s recurring block value over the one-time use effect of Crown of Providence.
Equipment pieces to answer specific threats are worth considering when planning out a matchup. Illusionists are often the demand for such cards, with Prism, Awakener of Sol previously goading players to use Time Skippers to generate extra action points to deal with critical auras, such as Arc Light Sentinel or Genesis, and Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry seeking anti-prevention effects off of Vambrace of Determination.
There’s also Balance of Justice, which keeps powerful draw effects in check by equalizing the field with your draw. And Quickdodge Flexors is the newest addition to handle an overwhelmingly wide offence by turning blue pitches to six-blocks for a turn, if your opponent is presenting a wide enough attack.
Is 60 Cards Even Right in Flesh and Blood?
There needs to be a minimum of 60 cards in your deck, with no limitations on how many cards you can go above this threshold. In my opinion, it’s far too popular to present over 60 cards, and here’s why.
First of all, think of the best card in your deck. That could be anything from Bloodrush Bellow to Codex of Frailty to Manifestation of Miragai. Every time you add a card in your deck above 60, you get one card draw further away from the next drawing of that card. That extra turn you’ve waited might have been the difference maker, especially in a shorter game.
Another downside is it screws with the finely tuned ratios of each deck. Often decklists are tuned to draw an exact number of blues a certain percentage of the time or hit a crucial ratio piece, be it stealth attacks, six-power cards, or cards with go again, in each hand. Adding cards above 60 strains these ratios to be less reliable, or requires even more math to ensure your deck runs smoothly, such as sideboarding blues when going above 60.
However, for some decks, it might not be all too bad. If the deck is largely homogenous and much of its power comes from either the hero or equipment, going above 60 might be less bad. The problem of ratios is less pronounced due to the similarity between the cards, and the lack of standout cards means drawing your more powerful cards matters less. Regardless, in aggressive matchups where a larger deck size is unlikely to matter, it’s generally good deck hygiene to keep it to 60.
That said, going above 60 is at times necessary. Certain matchups often try to use your deck size as a win condition and run you out of threats or cards. Decks such as Nuu, Alluring Desire, Riptide, Lurker of the Deep, and Count Your Blessings often run their opponents dry of cards, removing or surviving their threats.
However, a distinction must be made that there are different types of fatigue in Flesh and Blood, and as such, sideboard plans differ between them.
Active fatigue involves an opponent hitting you out of cards, threatening both your life total and your deck size simultaneously, hurting you whether you block too much or too little. Dawnblade Dorinthea Ironsong and Assassins can wield active fatigue as a tool, and your plan against these decks often involves your normal game plan, while possibly considering a few extra cards to pad out the deck in case the game goes too long.
Passive fatigue involves running you out of threats and outliving what you present. Certain Count Your Blessings decks or Riptide, Lurker of the Deep excel at this. For these matchups, you have two options: kill them quickly and cleanly before they have time to properly set up their survival tools to outlast you, or outlast them by maximizing your deck count. This choice must be made at the start of the game, as for the former, a tight 60 is far better at rushing down your opponent over a clunkier 72. Your opponent will be ready for either plan, so weigh your choice wisely!
Lastly, a consideration for going above 60 is that certain decks are more prone to fatigue. Brutes are one example, due to discarding cards as a cost to fuel their powerful attacks. But the most obvious example is Mechanologists, who use the Boost mechanic to chew through their decks as a resource. For these decks, a careful balance between deck quality and deck size is necessary, and adapting your plan on the fly based on your opponent is part of their skill expression.
What are Good Sideboard Cards for Flesh and Blood?
So what cards are “sideboard” cards then? These are often more or less effective against certain opponents, from anywhere to a mild edge over another card choice to silver bullets that are necessary to counteract an opponent’s game plan.
As for cards that provide slight edges, they could be tools such as defense reactions, like Sink Below or Shelter from the Storm, that grant you agency against decks that rely on attack reactions to mix up their attacks, to decks that often present four breakpoints that call to be defended efficiently.
Another example is cards that increase hand activity against more defensive decks, forcing you to take the proactive role in the matchup, despite your deck not initially being designed for aggression. Cards such as Looking for a Scrap, Scar for a Scar and Runerager Swarm are examples of cards that can be used in larger hands that force decks like Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry or Verdance, Thorn of the Rose to be pressured, and are sideboarded in place of defensive tools.
Lastly, silver bullets are cards that directly target an opponent’s game plan and vary greatly based on what kind of decks you’re preparing for. Prevention effects for arcane, anti-prevention effects for Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry, six- or seven-power attacks to trigger Phantasm for Prism, Awakener of Sol, and Warmonger’s Diplomacy for non-attack action-heavy decks are some examples.
The key thing to keep in mind when choosing these tools is whether your deck can effectively utilize them. Not every deck can use Warmonger’s Diplomacy equally well, as some depend on non-attack actions themselves or lack the action points to play it out fluidly. Some of these tools also cost an excessive amount of pitch that not all decks can pay. It’s often better to use a weaker tool that works better with your deck’s game plan than a more powerful tool that your deck can’t use effectively.
I need to highlight that while denying your opponent their game plan is important, employing your own is key as well. There’s no point in blocking out all of your opponent’s threats when you’re incapable of threatening them back yourselves. This is important to keep in mind when sideboarding in any sort of tool, as certain decks fall apart without a certain threshold of important cards.
Designing a Flesh and Blood Sideboard
Now to the difficult part: designing a sideboard that accommodates all of these concepts. The sideboard style you use should be dependent on what kind of deck you’re making, so here are some approaches I’ve seen for designing the deck and sideboard based on the style.
45 Main + 15 Side
A very small main deck (around 40 ish), with a massive sideboard that gets added to the core. These decks often have a powerful core, with many strong cards to adapt their decklist and game plan around. While the ratios of the deck might be under pressure with that many cards moved around, with careful planning it can definitely work.
Some examples are Ira, Scarlet Revenger decks, or my own midrange Rhinar, Reckless Rampage deck where my six-powers change based on matchups. This might also be the case for decks that have entirely different plans for certain matchups and need to change a whole host of cards to accommodate for each plan. The poster child for this type of deck is Ser Boltyn, Breaker of Dawn.
54 Main + 6 Side
A larger core of 54-ish, where certain cards are sideboarded in based on matchup. This is my favorite style of deckbuilding, where you have a powerful core and side in several specialized tools to handle specific matchups. Occasionally I disrupt the core for very specific reasons, such as siding out defense reactions against Wizards or non-blockers against hyper-aggressive decks.
I’ve run this style of sideboard with Arakni, Marionette as well as Nuu, Alluring Desire.
60 Main
Next is a main deck 60, whereby certain cards are taken out or put in based on matchup. This is most commonly used with decks with extremely efficient and powerful proactive plans, which only change the plan to answer very specific threats.
Some examples of decks that would utilize this strategy of sideboarding are Aurora, Shooting Star or Cindra, Dracai of Retribution. It’s also notable that due to the linearity of these decks, they can often run more equipment in their sideboard to gain an edge across matchups.
72 Main – 12 Side
Lastly is a massive 72 chunk of a deck, with cards removed based on matchup. These are decks that more often than not present above 60 cards, for various reasons.
Riptide, Lurker of the Deep is vulnerable to fatigue, and as such often has to view his full decklist as a cohesive piece, removing cards such as Remembrance in extremely fast matchups. Dash I/O is another example, often utilizing her deck size as a resource for her powerful attacks, only going to a thinner deck size against decks that absolutely cannot threaten fatigue against her.
Conclusion
This topic is immensely complex and is interwoven with other aspects of performing well in Flesh and Blood, such as developing solid game plans and planning around turn cycles, which are too complex to be covered in this article. Many players have their personal preferences when it comes to sideboarding as well, but I hope I’ve given you a great jump start.
I’ve recently started coaching, so if you’re interested in a more personal approach to learning, do feel free to drop me a message. Until you next hear from me, good luck at your events!
Looking for more FAB content? Take a look at our feature on why the game is so expensive to play competitively.
