Today I’ll be giving my thoughts on the new heroes and their weapons from the upcoming set Bright Lights. Let’s start with the hero I’m most excited to start brewing with.

I_n With the New/O_ut With the Old

Much like her counterpart from Arcane Rising, Dash I/O has an item focused game plan. Instead of trying to set up a hyper late-game engine though, she’s looking to play a value oriented game plan where she gets free advantage off the top of her deck and with her signature weapon. You do need to keep in mind your lower starting life total and the amount of items in your deck that don’t block, or else you might get run over before you can leverage all the raw advantage she can generate.

One thing to look for in deck building is ways to see additional cards from the top of our deck to play more items off the top. Card filtering effects like opt can help facilitate this. Boost also perfectly fits the style of the deck, since you’ll know what the top card of your deck is before boosting, in case it’s a card you don’t want to boost, and it also gives us more opportunities to dig for items. You can also surprise your opponent with cards off the top of the deck with cards like Boom Grenade or Mini Forcefield for even more value. Or go for big value plays with cards like Penetration Script and Polarity Reversal Script. You might even want to consider the cycle of items that go back to your deck, like Medkit, so you never run out of items in the end game.

If you want to go even deeper, Bios Update will pull double duty, letting you truly play the item for free. Bios Update was always a good card but a bit high variance, since it was a bit of a non-bo in deck building, but Dash I/O breathes new life into it. We want to play a mix of items and boost cards in our core strategy, so it’ll be much easier to get value off Bios Update. The only card that can generate more value on its own than Bios Update is both of Dash’s old specializations combined. The classic play of Spark of Genius to search for Teklo Core is even better now since it will also give us an additional two damage with Symbiosis Shot.

I don’t think we can talk about Dash I/O without talking about her signature weapon, Symbiosis Shot. This weapon is going to be integral to your core gameplay loop, and might be the most powerful weapon ever printed in Flesh and Blood. I realize that’s a bold claim, but it’s functionally a zero cost for two damage every time you play an item, which is pretty crazy. When figuring out the value of every item, you now get to add on two damage to whatever else the item is doing. Let’s not forget that we’re putting items into play “for free” off the top of our deck using our hero ability, adding on even more value to the equation. Symbiosis Shot and how it interacts with a couple cards is the biggest thing pulling me into Dash I/O.

Much like Teklo Plasma Pistol, it’s not a once-per-turn action to attack with Symbiosis Shot. But this is a gun, not a pistol, so it won’t work with Induction Chamber or Plasma Purifier. Because of this we’ll need to look to other methods to create big rounds with multiple weapon attacks. Cranking an item will not only give us a steam counter for Symbiosis Shot, but will also generate an action point. If we’re playing it as an instant with our hero ability or putting it into play with another method, this will generate an extra action point so we can attack with Symbiosis Shot more than once this turn. Another way to do this is with System Reset, since it will re-trigger crank on every item that re-enters and also give Symbiosis Shot a steam counter for each. High Octane will also do the job, while requiring much less setup and also fitting our core boost game plan. It’s very easy to have a turn where you play High Octane with multiple boost attacks and then unload all the Symbiosis Shots you’ve had stocked up.

Finding ways to generate extra action points will be key to getting max value out of Dash I/O.

Speaking of Max Value

If Dash I/O is the item focused side, then Maxx ‘The Hype’ Nitro is the boost focused side. Boost Aggro is a hyper consistent and powerful strategy that can present significantly above rate damage at the cost of your deck size. What boost typically lacks in on-hits it makes up for in the raw damage. Historically most decks can’t keep up in a race with boost decks, meaning their only counter play is to block with their whole hand from the start of the game. It’s also an excellent deck for getting into the game due to how straightforward this strategy is.

So long as we’re going to be making some Hyper Drivers, we might want to consider adding some cards to our deck that synergize with them. Crankshaft and Big Bertha can help keep them around for longer. Jump Start and other cards like this that get extra bonuses for Hyper Drivers in play can help add more total damage to your deck.

Before adding these cards to your deck, consider how often you actually end up with Hyper Drivers in play. If you find that you don’t have a Hyper Driver in play often enough, then maybe the payoff cards aren’t worth including in the deck. The Evo Breaker cycle might have potential in the deck too.

Maxx has some pretty big shoes to fill with Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire. Both decks can enact the same boost game plan, but Dash is able to do a few things that Maxx can’t. For one she gets to start with a Teklo Pounder in play, starting the game with six damage on board. Or she can start the game with an Induction Chamber, letting her convert the first blue in your hand every turn into four damage. Access to the pistol items also gives her another axis to lean into versus fatigue decks. You also lose out on two very powerful cards in Spark of Genius and Teklo Core, which are power cards in the deck. We’re going to need to find reasons to be in Maxx over Dash, otherwise he might be in the waiting room for Dash to Living Legend.

A big weakness of the boost strategy is fatigue, since boosting will burn through cards in your deck very fast. Maxx has a few tools to deal with this though. One way is to have turns that present damage above the blocking value of the fatigue deck. Maxx is able to carry forward resources into future rounds with the Hyper Drivers he creates, letting him have access to more resources than he normally should. This can let him go significantly above rate where he can present 20 or so damage in a turn. The idea here is that you try to alternate between big damage turns and setup turns where you build some items and get a high value arsenal. He can also lean into high synergy payoff cards such as Moonshot and Maximum Velocity. The nice part about most of this is that these are all cards you would normally want to play in your deck anyways, so it’s more of a matter of playing differently when you realize your opponent is trying to fatigue you. The tools are there to deal with fatigue.

You can also take a different approach to the deck by trying to take advantage of Construct Nitro Mechanoid. Surprisingly this isn’t a Dash specialization, so it’s fair game for Maxx, and he might be the best user of this card with his on-demand access to creating Hyper Drivers. We can utilize cards that put extra steam counters on our Hyper Drivers or cards that put them directly into play like Gas Up or Blessing of Ingenuity, combined with our hero ability to get all the Hyper Drivers we need. The raw value of Construct Nitro is insane. If you attack with it all eight times, it’s 47 damage if you have Galvanic Bender under it. Plus the 15 block value you get out of it. But there are also some crazy things we can do with it beyond raw value. This is another weapon that doesn’t have a once-per-turn clause on it for attacking, so once it’s in play we can look to have some crazy rounds that might be impossible for the opponent to block out. If you play two High Octane and four boost cards you’ll be able to attack eight times with Nitro, and that isn’t counting any damage from your boost cards. You can also go for a more reasonable single High Octane with four to five boost cards and still present far too much damage to stop.

Maxx also has access to a lot of great weapons. His signature weapon Banksy fits his boost and Hyper Driver game plan perfectly. One key element about Banksy that I would like to highlight is the importance of efficiency compared to the raw value of a weapon like Hanabi Blaster. Hanabi Blaster presents more value in a vacuum, but the game doesn’t always play out perfectly. You might end up with turns that you don’t get a counter on either because you didn’t draw enough boost cards or it made more sense for you to block on that turn. Even if we’re in perfect conditions where we get to attack with Hanabi Blaster every other turn, we’re getting 2.5 damage out of our weapon every turn, versus if we attack with Banksy every turn for three damage. Granted, Hanabi Blaster doesn’t cost anything to use but that can also present an efficiency issue to the deck. Hanabi Blaster doesn’t give you a resource sink for turns where you draw too many blues. If you want to play Hanabi, I recommend keeping track of how many times you attack with it every game to see if it was worth using. The combination of these factors prices you into a playstyle where you have to block very little and play all the cards in your hand regardless of their value.

Having a resource sink and flexibility in your weapon is important for this style of deck and due to the nature of how Maxx works. Normally when you build a deck you try to make the cost curve work off a blue, but in the case of Maxx the number of resources we have access to will fluctuate because of Hyper Drivers. This makes it very hard to account for this in deck building. The combination of Banksy and Maxx’s hero power gives you the flexibility to never end a turn with extra resources. If you just have one resource you can swing Banksy. If you have two you can activate Maxx and make a Hyper Driver. If you have three then you can do both by cranking the Hyper Driver you make and attacking with Banksy after. To my own point though, it might still be better to use Teklo Plasma Pistol because you don’t need to meet any conditions to use it and you can load it and activate your hero ability on the same turn without having to crank.

Flesh and Blood Steel and Oil

Teklovossen, Esteemed Magnate is a fresh take on Mechanologist, so it’s a little more unclear which direction this deck is going to end up. He introduces a new card type and mechanic in Evos, which are ways to upgrade your armor over the course of the game. This plays very differently than traditional Flesh and Blood decks. Normally you start the game off at full strength and get weaker over time through using up cards in your deck and by using up your armor. Teklovossen on the other hand starts off weak and gets stronger as the game progresses. To play Evos you must play them over “base” equipment, and for the most part they’re all of a lower power level than what you would expect out of equipment. And a lot of the power in his cards and weapon is realized only once he starts getting Evos into play.

As far as I can see there are two distinct build paths for Teklovossen. You can play towards a hyper late-game where you play the Evo Steel Soul cycle and Singularity. This style reminds me of what it’s like playing Pistol Dash where you’re setting up for a late-game win condition. Or you try to speed run getting Evos into play using the cheaper cost Evos so you can take advantage of your Evo payoff cards that care about how many Evos you have in play. You’re either getting to throw two-card nines with an on hit or doing some crazy Ultron shenanigans. There might be some mix of the two strategies also. 

All of his payoffs for getting Evos into play are very above rate, it’s just a matter of getting there. You can just play the Evos from hand, but there are two better options since Teklovossen lets you play Evos from banish. The first is adding boost cards to your deck and hoping you banish them. The other is by utilizing the new scrap mechanic to banish an Evo after blocking with it. Boosting is more effective if you’re playing the Evos with low to no block value since you’re going to have a hard time getting them into the graveyard for scrap without making bad blocks, while scrapping will be more effective with the higher block value Evos.

Teklo Leveler fits both game plans perfectly as a very efficient weapon once you’ve assembled Exodia. Even after one Evo it’s perfectly reasonable at the same rate as Teklo Plasma Pistol. I don’t have as much to say on this weapon as the other two since it’s a far more straightforward weapon. The biggest thing is going to be finding ways to get it to fit the cost curve of your deck since most of the cards you want to play cost three. All I’m gonna say is that Reaping Blade took down a Nationals, so Reaping Blade with go again must be pretty good right? 🙃

Other Bright Lights reviews:

Equipment by Peter Buddensiek

Items by Tyler Horspool

Blocks, Instants, and Non-Attack Actions by Ethan Van Sant

Attack Actions Pt 1 by Valera

Attack Actions Pt 2 by Kenny Suzuki

Non-Mechanologist Cards by Jonah Lara

Pheano Black

Pheano is a Magic: The Gathering boomer, having started playing in seventh edition. He explored different formats and became a passionate Commander player, but has since transitioned to become a professional Flesh and Blood player with a deep understanding of the game. Pheano enjoys exploring new strategies and building unique decks in Flesh and Blood, and is always eager to share his insights and experiences with the community. When not competing, Pheano can be found making YouTube videos and playing Final Fantasy XIV.