(Stasis Cell | Art by Saad Irfan)

With the glare of lights from Metrix dimming down, the purple-haired thief and her meep companion slipped into a warehouse. The doors clanged shut behind her and the lock clicked. She dropped her hood and sat in a corner, looking over her bag of spoils and acquisitions.

Welcome back to Meepables. Or if this is your first time, welcome anyways! This article is all about the items contained in Bright Lights, the latest set of Flesh and Blood. If you’re interested in prior Mech items, you can find that here.

As always, beware of our fuzzy friends.

Out With a Bang

Beginning with an explosive start, we have Boom Grenade. It’s an all-important new item for decks that enjoy going fast, such as Dash I/O, whose diminished life total creates a need for speed. And with her ability to flash cards into play from the top of the deck, Grenade can heap on plenty of extra damage when it’s least expected.

Following that is Hadron Collider, once more with crank available to provide a spare action point or keep the turn going. While Boom Grenade threatens damage if an attack hits, Collider increases the power of an attack when you boost. Both cards provide an offensive turn with added pressure.

Just short of lethal damage? Backup Protocol: RED has your back. While the yellow and blue versions have their uses, the red one has the best offensive option, although the blue one can ramp your resources. If your attacks need to push break points for a turn or two, as well as a defensive option that allows your five-power attacks into six-attack cards to destroy phantasm cards, Penetration Script is here to lend you a hand for this very situation. It pushes past typical block numbers by adding one to all of your attacks until it blows up.

Polarity Reversal Script goes even further by stripping block from your opponent. While adding power to your attacks tends to be more useful, stripping block from the opponent can prove useful as well, by disincentivizing poor blocks and pushing through attacks.

Pierce Through the Heavens

Continuing on with scripts! Overload Script overpowers all of your attack actions, leaking extra damage through by restricting the number of action cards that can block. MHz Script continues turns where boosting your deck isn’t as viable if needing to deal with large turns for you to send but preserving your deck. However, cards that care about boost, such as Pulsewave Harpoon won’t be as effective.

To keep with preserving your deck while putting on pressure, we have Autosave Script, which acts as a different but equally powerful Cognition Nodes for the purpose of returning cards to the deck. When dealing with a board state of angels or dragons, returning the attack to the deck after they hit an ally or hero can be crucial.

Slowing down the game a bit is something you need to do from time to time. So Security Script is here to help keep your blocks effective while giving your attacks a bump in defense. While it’s not the most effective method of prevention, increasing your attack block to four means you only need to spend one card on things such as Snatch and Pulsewave Harpoon.

If that doesn’t fit your defensive fancy, then there are a few more options available, starting with Mini Forcefield. The tiny robot mushroom friends are here to provide a rather simple ward that’s equal to its counters and offers the opportunity to crank it. Ward is rather straightforward, just preventing a certain amount of damage before it explodes. For more prevention and defense against the arcane, there’s also Dissolving Shield. While offering the same crank as most of these items, you can remove counters from Dissolving Shield to prevent that much damage, and this effect stacks. One neat thing about this item in particular is preventing two and then sacrificing it to Adaptive Plating to virtually block four.

Activated equipment abilities and a large fridge got you down? Stasis Cell has your back, disabling equipment like Tectonic Plating or Courage of Bladehold from using their effects. Additionally you can put Stasis Cell back in the deck to prevent blocks and disable another activated ability.

Scrap Trading

Last are the cards from the scrap trader. They have their own uses and unique effects, but may not see the spotlight as often. A good example of that is Prismatic Lens, which, if the colors align properly, allows you to potentially stack your deck for Dash I/O to play off of. Quantum Processor can dump an item into play for free from your hand and potentially crank it to resume your turn. Grinding Gears can clear the top of you or your opponent’s deck and can potentially lead to a loop of possible fatigue, if you really want to. Tick Tock Clock is here for a bit of extra damage and piercing the Mech mirror by destroying your opponent’s items if you hit.

Like a specific crank item and want it to stick around? Steam Canister is here to lend some juice. While it lacks any innate way to go again itself, the ability is instant to add a steam counter to any item that can be cranked, extending its time on board. And while Steam Canister can prolong items, Medkit puts itself back into the deck to heal two as a full action without go again; at least it recycles itself. Resources are the large name of the game and in theory, Fuel Injector can help make a resource similar to Energy Potion, though it returns to the deck if you do so.

Between all of the new tools Bright Lights has brought and those from before, there has likely never been a better time to try out Mechanologist. So take a moment to look at everything new, old, or forgotten, and see if it fits your fancy. If it’s not in a typical list, take some time and experiment, because if you never experiment, you’ll never uncover something new.

Forever and as always, if you brew, may they ever and always be interesting.

Further reading:

The Alchemist’s Coffer – Amp Dash Building, Post Bright Lights

Bright Lights Set Review – Items

CnC (Casual and Competitive) – Dash

Mari Groh

Mari is a Flesh and Blood player who enjoys a good session of deckbuilding more than playing the actual game at times, though both sides of the game are her passion. A former Azalea main she has put her bow away in favor of concocting odd brews, having yet to find a true favorite deck again. Coming from a slew of different card games including Magic The Gathering the resident jank specialist is here to brew and jam games... so long as she isn't distracted by other games or creative writing.