Today, Precon Progression shifts its attention to Flesh and Blood‘s newest Armory Deck, featuring none other than our knight in shining armor, Ser Boltyn, Breaker of Dawn.

While not the most popular hero, he continues to amass a steady number of loyal followers who will charge to war with him.

These Armory Decks are meant to be played in Classic Constructed, Flesh and Blood‘s main competitive format. It comes with 60 maindeck cards plus equipment, which gears you up for a quick Armory run or two if you’re new to the game. However, for even seasoned veterans who wish to try out a new hero, it’s also a reasonable pickup for $40 SRP.

What’s in the Boltyn Armory Precon Deck?

As it stands, the deck already comes with a playset of all cards, which makes it so much easier from an upgrade perspective, as we just need to swap out entire playsets for newer cards we acquire along the way. The deck does contain some notable majestics too, which makes it so much more powerful in an Armory setting.

Let’s look at the deck list first:

Power Cards

Ser Boltyn uses a unique mechanic called charge. Whenever an effect instructs you to charge, you may put a card from your hand face up under your hero. While this may come across as steep, most of Ser Boltyn’s attacks are lower resource-costed. Treat the soul charges as pitching, except the cards don’t go back to your deck at the end of the turn. We’ll be using these soul charges to fuel more powerful attacks in the later stage of the game.

It wouldn’t be right to not talk about Ser Boltyn’s trusty companion, Raydn, Duskbane. This majestic sword lets us attack for zero cost, although we need to charge before it gains any power. As long as we’re charging and we have go again, we can use the blade hit as a free turn ender on a cheaper turn.

Raydn, Duskbane also allows us to run lower-to-the-ground red attack actions, over just the usual yellow card deck, due to its attack cost of zero. This will become more evident as we discuss more power cards below.

Lumina Ascension is one of Ser Boltyn’s most powerful cards. It lets us buff our weapon and even serves as another way to fill up the soul, or just filter the deck. More importantly, it allows us to attack with the weapon one more time.

This can be paired with V of the Vanguard, which begins the combat chain. We typically charge the soul and unleash a flurry of attack actions, plus Raydn hits, all fueled by Ser Boltyn’s ability to keep on giving go again. This amounts to a huge swing turn most opponents might not expect.

Bolt of Courage is a cheap way to end the turn, all while threatening a card draw to arsenal, a la Snatch. Engulfing Light and Light the Way are other on hit effects, which demands a block.

Beaming Bravado is another cost-effective attack, which just sets us up for future turns. Express Lightning and Take Flight are also good tempo attacks, and more aggressive in nature, which allows us to chip away at their life totals.

Though these are commons and rares, they’re used until the endgame builds of Ser Boltyn.

The deck also includes Saving Grace, which is a neat defense reaction on low-tempo and setup turns. Think of it perhaps as an inferior Soul Shield, purely damage mitigation-wise. We also get a set of Sink Below, which is just essential for most decks in the format.

The majestic equipment suite is nothing to scoff at — it serves as a better defensive option over commons while we save up for higher-tier equipment, which are typically the final upgrades of a deck.

The deck is already strong as it is, with core cards and packages available from the get go.

Initial Upgrades for Ser Boltyn

Bolt of Courage blue, Engulfing Light yellow and blue complete our package of basic attack actions in all colors. Illuminate red is also another on hit effect which sets us up for the big turn.

We can pick up Radiant Flow in games where we just want to race, while Nullrune Gloves and Halo of Illumination buy us time to close out the game against Wizards and Runeblades.

Steelblade Shunt is another defensive option which can even be used to close out a tight game.

There’s only so little we can do to upgrade the deck in this department — and that’s fine. The deck can stand on its own already. However, this leaves the deck with some spare slots in the sideboard, which can be filled up by other tech cards or more expensive upgrades in the future.

This is what the deck looks like after the initial upgrades:

Mid-Term Upgrades

The mid-term is where all the juicy pieces come from. Lumina Ascension is often comboed with Beacon of Victory, which sets up for a huge turn. We can search up a second Lumina Ascension off of this, or just any other action we need for the moment. Typically, Ser Boltyn wins off of consecutive Lumina activations in a single turn — we just need to survive until that turn. However, we can still utilize smaller combo packages such as the V of the Vanguard play mentioned earlier.

Celestial Cataclysm is just a casual seven for zero with go again, which can just blindside opponents out of nowhere. In the same vein, Bolting Blade is another discounted attack for seven. Notice a pattern here?

Banneret of Courage and Banneret of Gallantry may be used to upgrade our rare bannerets, as these effects are much more powerful.

Soul Shield is still worth picking up despite us already packing decent defense reactions. Some players also like toying around with a combination of That All You Got? and Warmonger’s Diplomacy as more defensive tools, though the latter is rather pricey.

Long-Term Upgrades

Command and Conquer is mandatory for decks that can utilize generic cards. Other than that, we have the usual Fyendal’s Spring Tunic.

We can also look into Light Warrior-specific gear such as Soulbond Resolve and Warband of Bellona. Ironsong Versus is also a great pickup later on, but is more expensive that the former two due to it being available to all Warriors.

Spirit of Eirina is a cheap legendary which really bolsters the deck up a notch, though I would pick up the equipment pieces first.

These should gear up Ser Boltyn fully to finally lead the charge with no reservations.

For a look at an endgame build, check out Isaac Ward’s Battle Hardened: Bali deck, which placed in the Top 8 just this month! Earlier on in the year, Roger Bodee also placed second in a field of 132 players at Battle Hardened: Cincinnati with a Cintari Saber build, only losing to Michael Hamilton’s Bravo, Showstopper in the finals. We can use these lists as reference on how to best upgrade the deck.

The deck has legs, so you should swear fealty to Ser Boltyn.

Until next installment, happy shuffling!

Further Reading:

Building Boltyn on a Budget

How to Play Boltyn in Commoner

The Power of Unknown Information in Flesh and Blood