Skirmish season has come to an end. That means a lot of people are going to be putting their 40-card decks away, despite Blitz having had some of the biggest shakeups in the history of the format. Like I talked about in my last article, the format has lost multiple heroes to the LL system. LSS released one of the largest and strongest ban lists it ever has. Then on top of those things we have arcane damage heroes being added to the format when arcane is at it’s strongest.

Skirmish season may be over, but the format might be more interesting than ever.

Living Legends

Rhinar

I went in to detail on three of the LL’d heroes two weeks ago but since then we had one more sneak his way into LL. Rhinar has finally had his last first-turn-kill in Blitz. Rhinar was one of the decks that could put a lot of strain on the control decks in the format. Removing blocking agency would oftentimes leave control players feeling hopeless and lost. His damage output combined with his equipment suite gave him the ability to race to beat aggro decks as well. Overall, Rhinar has been a competitive deck for a long time and it’s surprising that he didn’t LL sooner.

The Other LL’d Friends (or Foes)

Three other heroes have LL’d since the start of Skirmish season: Dash, Briar, and Zen. Dash has been one of the old reliable aggro decks for Blitz since she came out. She steadily racked up points and her LL is no surprise. With her, Teklo Plasma Pistol is also leaving. This removes Mechanologist’s main fallback weapon, leaving some heroes in a weird spot.

Briar was poised to be the best deck in the format before people solved Zen, and he continued to to be strong even with Zen in the format, and actually had some better matchups. Split damage is very good in the 20-life format, as evidenced by the three Runeblades sitting in LL in Blitz. Zen was a mess. That deck had all kinds of balance issues. Destroying your opponent on turn two made the game boring for both players and left very little room to play around it when you needed to rip cards from hand on turn one. I’m very glad to see Zen go away. It felt like he was holding the format for ransom.

The New Bans

The Books

LSS released one of the most surprising and healthy ban announcements I’ve seen. The short version of what they did is ban most of the card advantage engines in the game. In most TCGs it’s very well known that card advantage is king, and FAB is no different on this front. Filtering and potentially having resources floating creates massive advantage in decks that are looking to find pieces or to play as many cards as possible. These draw engines have historically led to some of the most degenerate and powerful play patterns.

Art of War

One of the most notable cards to be removed from both Blitz and CC is Art of War. AoW has been a powerhouse enabler in a bunch of strategies from when I started in Monarch till its recent banning. The problem with AoW is that it can filter for you while leaving up resources and you get to choose another upside after that. Ninjas were notorious for taking the card and putting it on draw and +1 all of their attacks. This combined with Bonds would create a giant turn that could end the game right there. This style of gameplay has proven way too explosive for a format like Blitz.

Rosetta

The newest Flesh and Blood set adds more arcane heroes to the format. Arcane has proven to be one of the most powerful mechanics in Blitz. Any opponent that doesn’t prepare for arcane decks is required to find a way to kill them before they can count to 20. Even when the opponent brings Arcane Barrier 1 it’s pretty easy for Wizard to whittle them down to zero. Runeblade doesn’t have as much power to push through arcane damage every turn, but they can put the opponent in the weird spot where they have to decide if they want to pitch to arcane or have cards to block the physical. Adding this dynamic to Blitz tends to keep highly aggressive decks under control as they won’t pitch to arcane barrier unless they’re going to die. The life gain theme in Earth also promises to slow down the format some. It can also counteract the other arcane heroes by sort of pre-blocking their damage before.

What Does Blitz Look Like Now?

Honestly, I’m really not sure what Blitz will look like at this point. SO many things have changed and it leaves a lot of room for the meta to change and shift. There’s a lot to be seen and that makes me excited for the next Skirmish season at the end of the year.

Further Reading:

What to Expect at a Flesh and Blood Skirmish

What to Do When the Blitz Meta Sucks

Let’s Meet the Teams of Flesh and Blood

Jo O'Brien

Jo is an avid Flesh and Blood player, judge and, writer. She is one of the blitz specialists here at FABREC. Jo has played a lot of classes and heroes but, she has an affinity for two heroes in particular, Enigma and Valda. When not playing FaB, Jo is typically filling her free time playing guitar, playing Apex Legends, or building their next Rube Goldberg machine of a deck.