(Data Doll MKII | Art by Tatiana Trubnikova)

Everyone’s Favorite Automaton

Data Doll MKII has been a pet deck of many Flesh and Blood Blitz players since she came out in Crucible of War. For some, it’s the love of robots that draws them to her. For others, they want the feeling of dropping tons of items. The final group that likes Doll just like the challenge of having only three cards.

No matter why you play Data Doll, she is one of the most unique and interesting heroes in the game.

Standard Operating Procedure

Doll decks tend to be all about turbo-banishing cards from your deck to get as many items onto the board as possible. She’s a big fan of using the boost mechanic to achieve this.

If you can manage one item on board per turn, it offsets the disadvantage of having three cards in hand. Because of her hand size and appreciation for items, this hero is kind of locked into being an aggressive strategy. If you were to try blocking heavily in Data Doll, you would likely leak more damage than you can withstand or end up with a multi-item hand and just outright die. Doll plays a lot like Dash in the first turn or two of the game because of this. When she has a good start, she’s hoping to boost two or three times on her first turn and get an item or two onto the board.

Diving further into archetypes, there are two main ways I’ve seen Data Doll being built. There’s a build that plays mostly damage prevention items and uses them to offset not having a four-card hand to block with. The other common build is one that mostly dumps buffs on board. Both have seen decent success and have different advantages. The prevention build is really good into arcane decks for its ability to deal with them mainboard. The damage builds can be better into fatigue because of their ability to drop big and awkward numbers.

Components

The cards in a Data Doll deck are pretty unique. She gets away with playing items that can be more difficult for other Mech heroes. Here are some of them and their uses.

Micro-processor

This is her only specialization card, and it’s a powerful one. Processor hits the board and smooths your draws and banishes for the rest of the game. It’s run as a two-of in all Data Doll decks. Having only three cards doesn’t matter if they’re always three good cards.

Optekal Monocle

I’ve never seen Monocle outside of Data Doll, but I’ve also never seen a Data Doll list without it. Being able to control the top of the deck is crucial when part of your strategy is banishing items from the top of your deck for value. This item typically finds the Data Doll player whatever they’re looking for in the situation. It’s a great card and another I would consider always at a two-of.

Teklo Foundry Heart

While this is a general all-star equipment for the Mechanologist class, it has more utility when playing Data Doll. Heart helps make up for being one card down by making more resources, and it’s another way to banish cards.

Teklo Pounder

Pounder has been the centerpiece to one of the top level Dash decks for a while. In the background it’s also been popular for DD. She fixes a lot of the clunk of Pounder when she gets them on board for free without using an action point. Pounder makes a lot of easily blocked attacks a lot more awkward for opponents to mitigate by putting them on break points.

The Prevention Items

The prevention items all serve approximately the same purpose: they help keep damage off of you so you can keep more cards and do more things. The builds that run a ton of these can be surprisingly tanky. Dissipation Shield has been a common card in DD for a long time but has gained a few new friends over time. Most Data Doll decks run some amount of Dissolving Shields to help with Runechants and breakpoints.

The Crank Items

These items have changed the way that Data Doll plays the game. When she manages to boost one of these items, she can crank them to gain an action point and then use them for their value that turn. This leaves DD with a pile of action points, which give sufficient resources for a lot of Teklo Plasma Pistol shots. This basically creates the old High Octane interaction that Dash would play often and puts it in her kit with extra value.

They also have good textboxes. Boom Grenade forces the opponent to respect your attacks, Hadron Collider makes a chonkier bonk, and Backup Protocol: RED helps you play your good cards multiple times.

The Pistol Items

While not as popular in the deck as they used to be, DD has access to the pistol items to loop the pistol at the opponent while not losing cards in deck. These can be really helpful into decks that are trying to fatigue.

Some Attacks

While most of DD’s deck is about the items, there are some attacks worth noting as well. First is Expedite, which can help get awkward items onto board without using an action point or having to crank them. The next relevant attack is Sprocket Rocket. With the number of items in the deck, this is the place that this is most likely to get its damage buff.

The Save File

Data Doll is a fun and unique deck to bring to a Flesh and Blood Blitz event. While she isn’t the most powerful thing you’ll see, she has plenty of tricks to stay relevant. Bright Lights brought her plenty of new toys, but DD players are looking timidly at the impending Living Legend ascension of Dash in the format if she takes Teklo Plasma Pistol with her.

If Pistol is still legal when you’re reading this, definitely get your fill of the current Data Doll build sooner rather than later.

Further reading:

Meepables – Bright Lights Mechanologist Items

The Identity of Blitz

The Commoner Club – Is Data Doll MKII Viable?

Jo O'Brien

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