Hello everyone and welcome back to what may be my most topical article yet! With the Kayo Armory deck revealed, and everyone losing their collective minds on the new cards within it (which will apparently turn him into the most broken hero in the game since Starvo, depending on who you ask), it just so happens that my article this week will also feature everyone’s favorite one-armed hero. With that being said, let’s get right into the list!:

One-Armed Bandit by Daniel Yam

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Hero (1) 1 Kayo Weapons (1) 1 Ball Breaker Equipment (4) 1 Knucklehead 1 Heartened Cross Strap 1 Goliath Gauntlet 1 Beaten Trackers Main (40) 2 Assault and Battery red 2 Assault and Battery blue 2 Bare Fangs red 2 Bonebreaker Bellow red 2 Madcap Charger red 2 Pack Hunt red 2 Pound Town red 2 Madcap Muscle red 1 Primeval Bellow red 2 Pummel red 2 Savage Swing blue 2 Wage Agility red 2 Smash Instinct yellow 2 Smash Instinct blue 2 Wild Ride red 2 Riled Up blue 2 Wrecker Romp red 2 Wrecker Romp blue 2 Zealous Belting red 1 Raging Onslaught blue 2 Pound Town blue Inventory (3) 1 Mandible Claw 1 Nullrune Hood 1 Nullrune Boots

Core Game Plan for Kayo

Kayo’s game plan is like an in-between of Rhinar and Levia, with the capability to play the midrange plan of sending one or two respectably-sized attacks and holding up enough cards to defend against their turn, as well as the potential for larger multi-attack turns due to the extra ways to gain go again in this list. I consider this specific list, especially in terms of the attacks, to be extremely clean as far as it gets, with every card blocking for three except for Pummel, attacks that get go again, and Bare Fangs which, as before, gets included on pure rate.

Equipment for Kayo

Not much to speak about here, as most of the gear will be the same from my last two articles. Knucklehead here functions exclusively as a specialization three-block over two turns, and anytime I’m testing fate by activating it means I’m probably in dire straits. Similarly, Ball Breaker is simply the best weapon on rate, though I could see a case for the singular Mandible Claw being the primary weapon; the awkwardness of blocking four power outweighs any potential upside of the Claw’s go again which would only come up in hands that line up the amount of resources needed perfectly.

SIXES

One of the biggest advantages to this deck is in leveraging Kayo’s ability to turn every attack in the deck into six power. This means that his blue lineup is a pristine, beautiful spread of pseudo-sixes that block for three.

I’ve opted to play literally ever single five-power blue that blocks for three in Brute, with a miser’s Raging Onslaughtfor good measure (and I can’t help but love including a generic attack from Welcome to Rathe). This means that the entire deck is a hit outside of the Bellows and Pummels, and is honestly a strong case to not even play them just to have that 100% success rate on random discards. This also means that every attack in the deck is fuel for beat chest, and every random discard of an attack can potentially enable Beaten Trackers, as well as Kayo’s own ability to generate Might tokens, continuing the beatdown in the future turns.

Go Again!

While I’ve mentioned in my Rhinar article that cards like Madcap Muscle and Madcap Charger are poor performers due to their worst case scenario, that was in a deck with a much higher fail rate in terms of hitting a six. When effectively the whole deck is sixes, it starts to make more sense to view them with their upsides enabled at baseline. This means that the deck has many more ways to generate go again in comparison to Rhinar’s only option in Wild Ride, and Levia’s conditional go again in Dread Screamer.

Additionally, Kayo’s ability is worded in such a way that the buff is persistent even in the pitch zone, allowing for Zealous Belting's go again to always be active since the lowest base power of any attack in the deck is five, Kayo’s passive will always take it above Belting’s base power. I’ve included Wage Agility just as a potential way to generate slightly more go again in the form of the Agility token, though it is one of the few attacks that I can see getting cut pretty quickly with new cards being printed.

As was the case in Rhinar, Assault and Battery puts in overtime in this deck, triggering Kayo with beat chest, being a functional attack at blue for all the discard, creating the Agility, all wrapped up neatly in the package of a reasonably costed attack.

Ok, But Seriously, Why Bellows?

One aspect of this deck list that I feel would be a point of contention amongst the Brute enthusiasts is whether to include the Bellows to begin with. After all, Kayo’s ability turns every card online for what Brute wants to be doing: discarding sixes. So why dilute that game plan with three Bellows and two Pummels, and if so, why such a strange number?

In my deckbuilding process for Commoner (though the same can be largely applied to other formats with some tweaking of the numbers), I’m operating from a baseline of around 11-12 blues, in a deck that reasonably also runs yellows in some quantities. Due to Kayo (and Brute in general) having attacks that predominantly cost two to three, it makes more sense to eschew the yellows that I would normally run in order to hit a critical mass of sixes with more blues so I can fuel these attacks while still meeting the same amount of sixes. So I’ve upped the blue count to 13, 15 if you count the two yellow Smash Instincts which leaves me with fewer slots left over after adding in the attacks that definitely make the cut.

The hypergeometric calculator, while flawed in regards to how Flesh and Blood works in some aspects, is still good for establishing some rough numbers of the likelihood in drawing X copies of a card in a fresh hand of four. I’m 35.8% to have drawn one of the five non-attacks, and a much lower 6.9% to have drawn two. While this is not a hard and fast rule nor a stunning demonstration of statistics, the ~7% odds to draw two “bricks” in one hand is a risk I’m willing to take given their huge tempo gain when resolved.

Concluding Thoughts on Kayo in Commoner

This deck is a strange one, since I got the inspiration when he was revealed from his ability’s interaction with Zealous Belting, a card I’ve always wanted to make work in Commoner. Any hero that can have a clean and smooth blue line is always immediately appealing to me, and Kayo is a deck that I’ve assembled in paper at all times to have in the personal rotation alongside Oldhim and Ira due to how consistent the cards are from each other. I really had a lot of fun diving deeper into Brute this series, and hoped that it was useful to any of you readers in some way.

Next time I’m back, I’ll be reviewing Part the Mistveil and any potential cards that might make a splash in the format. Katsu was my first hero, so I’ve got some hopes for this set.

Further Reading:

How to Play Kayo, Armed and Dangerous in Classic Constructed

How to Build Kayo in Blitz

Get More Involved in Your Flesh and Blood Community!

Daniel Yam

Daniel is a competitive psychopath who has relegated himself into playing the most casual format of Commoner. Starting Magic at the onset of Shards block, he jumped into Flesh and Blood when the Ira demo decks were being given out to Australian stores and is a proud holder of a 4-digit GEM ID. In his spare time, he enjoys trying to convince his friends to play increasingly worse cards, going to museums, and playing Guild Wars.