(Bravo, Showstopper | Art by Alexander Mokhov)

James White bursts into a room of developers in 2015, “I’ve an idea for a new hero.”

“What?!” They all shout in equal parts surprise and excitement. He holds up a crude drawing with She-Ra and the Princesses of Power‘s Sea Hawk, Fullmetal Alchemist‘s Alex Louis Armstrong, and Beauty and the Beast’s Gaston, all with an alchemic circle surrounding them all.

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So now that we’ve covered the 100% true, completely historically accurate birth of Bravo, Showstopper, let’s talk about how you can take him to the top at your local events!

This is Rhys, back with another edition of Evergreen, a series focused on helping you unlock the power deep within the heroes of Flesh and Blood in the Classic Constructed format. Together we’ll look at an individual hero for each part of this series. We’ll go beyond what just appears on the text of the card and discuss how to release a hero’s full potential, a required skill as Flesh and Blood continues to grow.

Show Time

One of the first heroes to see print in the game, this Welcome to Rathe hero focuses on a straightforward, albeit disruptive, approach to the game. With such a simplistic approach, how can we beat other decks doing unfair things?

The fundamental approach to a turn over turn is ensuring we present an equal or greater amount of damage than we take each turn. This can be changed by card effects, but how we evaluate that will make all of the difference between winning and losing with Bravo.

Anothos means we’ll always have access to a reasonable damage output, so difficult blocks can be smoothed over a little bit. Bravo can struggle to catch up if we fall behind, but a well timed Spinal Crush or Crippling Crush can sometimes be just what the doctor ordered. These are also cards that can be worth hidden damage values in certain matchups, offering more value with the Crush effect than just the damage itself.

With Dusk Till Dawn adding a piece of disruptive support for Bravo’s card pool with Star Struck, paired with Oldhim, Grandfather of Eternity reaching Living Legend status, new excitement has been generated for this Guardian. Let’s look at a deck and talk about how we’d play it! We’ll be referencing Pablo Pintor’s decklist from the most recent Calling in Birmingham, which finished at an impressive second place!

Instead of referencing a sample hand, we’ll just look at the deck in sections. Guardian is a consistent class with many similar cards and effects, so we’ll see the decks constructed almost entirely of cards that block for three, a heavy bias for blues over reds or yellows, and armor primarily selected for blocking.

Power Cards

If it has a red color strip in this deck, its primary purpose is to turn our opponent into a crater. With the exception of Zealous Belting, used for hunting Dromai, Ash Artist‘s dragons, or presenting multiple attacks in the mirror, every red attack in this deck has an on-hit or Crush effect that disrupts the opponent’s turn. Chokeslam can keep Rangers from going big with arrows, Command and Conquer stops opponents from setting up hands that go wide, but the rest stop our opponent dead in their tracks. Spinal Crush, Star Struck, and Crippling Crush can all simply take an opponent’s turn away, so presenting these consistently will get us ahead quickly in games. If we draw multiples of these effects, they’re fantastic to arsenal, or put into our pitch rotation.

Bravo, Showstopper is one of the best second cycle decks in the game, so as you play your games, pay careful attention to where your power cards go. If you find yourself struggling in the late game, reflect on where you might have lost access to a big attack that you didn’t have to. Don’t marry them, meaning don’t take fifteen damage in a turn to give them ten back because you committed to playing it when you saw it.

Patience is rewarded with this deck, and when we turn the corner, our opponent will find themselves emergency blocking until it simply doesn’t matter what they do anymore. Bravo’s hero ability is a great closing ability in the late turns as well, just be careful when using it in the early and mid game, as you can pull your opponent into a race if the Crush effects don’t connect, and racing can be a struggle sometimes. Bravo wants to take as many of the opponent’s cards away as possible so their return volleys are blocked easily.

An exception would be something like Ser Boltyn, Breaker of Dawn, where he may want to block you for a while, setting up a combo turn. Playing this hero is like playing an all-rounder in a fighting game; adapt to what our opponent is doing effectively, and we’ll be in control of every turn.

As one plays Bravo, Showstopper, there are some games where he just “does the thing.” There will be three blue cards and a power attack, and we get to dominate Spinal Crush, throw Crippling Crush, and dominate Star Struck at our opponent every turn until they stop moving. That’s a good reason to play the deck, to be sure, but we can’t pick the order of our deck before the game starts.

That being the case, what if we find ourselves with a hand that doesn’t grind our opponent into a fine paste? Pummel is here to help! This can sit in our arsenal, waiting to make an otherwise off-turn to present a surprise on-hit that both sneaks in extra damage and takes an entire extra card from the opponent. Playing the red Pummel means that if they block for exactly enough, a Crush effect can also trigger!

Some of the blues in this deck have relevant damage effects, such as Cranial Crush, or Tear Asunder, giving our weapon a formidable on-hit. Be mindful when using Bravo’s ability to give the blue attacks dominate in the early game, as their total damage output is low, so a solitary three block can turn off the Crush effect. It’s likely that that hand can be used differently to greater effect, even if it’s just blocking with that extra card.

This brings us to the topic of defense. Fate Foreseen and Sink Below are powerful defense reactions against Ranger and other heroes that present detrimental on-hits, and Staunch Response can stop a lot of damage other Guardians or Brutes present. Unmovable can be stashed away in arsenal as an on-rate defense reaction, but can meet the damage bonus requirements for Anothos or Titan’s Fist when pitching as well. Be mindful you don’t overload on these in any one matchup and dilute your game plan. Rather, pick the ones that best suit your needs against the hero you’re facing. Sigil of Solace is a defensive card, but is at its best as a turn zero play, since you draw back up anyway. It can have you start the game above forty life, a frightening proposition for a Guardian.

Common Pitfalls

Every new Bravo, Showstopper player does each of these things, and it usually ends in losing the game, so keep these things in mind.

• Don’t heave Thunder Quake. There are situations where we could get the Seismic Surge tokens with it and put it on the bottom of our deck with Crown of Providence; but that means we’re planning on that, and it’s generally going to be wrong to force ourselves into a suboptimal play pattern.
• Show Time! is fantastic on turn zero to get the ball rolling with those haymaker effects, but should generally be treated as a blue block three most of the rest of the time. It doesn’t have go again, so that means we’re taking an entire turn off of attacking and making ourselves vulnerable to a heavy attack, where the extra card it draws isn’t likely to help. This is especially true if a heavy block is required on the return volley.
• As before, don’t use Bravo’s dominate ability on weak attacks unless it’s going to present lethal to our opponent.
• Pummeling a strong attack might feel awesome, but is likely using too many resources on an effect that our opponent would have lost their turn from anyway. Measure twice, cut once.

The Fridge

Guardian armor really is the embodiment of the term “Fridge.” It’s almost entirely for blocking, but there are some things to keep in mind. Crown of Providence can help fix a hand that would otherwise have lost our impetus, so walk a careful balance between holding the armor for late turns and losing tempo because we overvalued the block it offers. It’s good practice to make a Tectonic Plating Seismic Surge as often as is reasonable, but it can be dangerous to give an entire card just to it. Inversely, it’s a great way to put a red on the bottom of our deck for second cycle if the hand is clunky. We’ll likely never activate Crater Fist, but if the stars align, it’s late in the game, and it’s needed, it’s there. As an anecdote, I’ve only activated it once, ever. And while I did win the game because of it, it was almost certainly because I played incorrectly and found myself in that situation in the first place.

This was previously considered meme tech, but seeing it in action, it really does seem that Bravo, Showstopper can play a solid fatigue game, especially with the addition of Sigil of Solace and the bigger defense reactions. It also helps to increase the quantity of blocking you can do against go-wide decks like Ninjas and Runeblades. Be mindful to only bring it in where we want to block more, since our damage output can decrease with some significance.

That wraps up this installment of Evergreen! I hope you gained something from this, and I’d love to hear if there’s a specific hero you want to read about next! For now, I hope you get to experience the joy of Pummeling a Command and Conquer.

Rhys

Rhys (she/they) is a long-time Magic: the Gathering fan, having started in Seventh Edition. She played Legacy until around 2018, and now mostly plays EDH. She Transitioned to competitive play with Flesh and Blood at the release of Tales of Aria, where she was quickly enamored with the skill expression, seeking constant self-improvement. When not obsessing over cards, Rhys can be found consuming speedrunning content, or fawning over literature like The Witcher, or Sherlock Holmes.