(Singularity| Art by Mariusz Gandzel)

Hi everybody! I hope every single one of you had a great time over the holidays. I for one ate roughly my entire collection’s weight in chocolate and have been hard at work trying to get my motivation up to throw away the wrapping paper of an estimated gazillion presents. So today, I would like to draw the focus back on the really big picture stuff and conveniently forget about any actual practical concerns. Like sensible nutrition or being responsible with your time.

And what better occasion to do so than the very end of the year? The time where every blog on the internet overflows with many a writer’s personal preferences crammed into lists with dubious justification – so let’s just do that!

These are the New Year’s resolutions I believe Flesh and Blood and Legend Story Studios should adhere to in 2024. Ideally with more resolve than my own resolution to not spend all my disposable income on trading cards and wargaming miniatures every month. Or to throw out the paper trash.

But first, let’s do the other thing every blog does at this time of year and take a look back at everything FAB has achieved this year!

2023 has been a great year for Flesh and Blood. It saw drastic evolution in terms of product design as well as set design, with Round the Table introducing droves of new players to Flesh and Blood in general and the Ultimate Pit Fight format in particular, and Outsiders and Bright Lights raising the bar for draft far beyond the standard of previous sets.

Resolution No. 1: Make the Greatest Draft Set of All Time

With that in mind, the first resolution Flesh and Blood should take to heart in the coming year is a continued focus on innovating for draft. While Welcome to Rathe limited is undoubtedly a lot of fun, there’s no denying that – in general – drafting has historically been just a smidge less engaging in FAB compared to other games. This is mainly down to the fact that, because of the class structure of the game, most sets literally could be drafted on rails.

Before the advent of Outsiders it was usually fairly obvious which hero you were supposed to be drafting and you could get punished pretty bad if you tried to fight your seat or stay open too long. This applies to many sets, but I’m mainly giving the stink-eye to Uprising here.

Outsiders tackled this problem with the introduction of hybrid cards and by featuring multiple playable heroes with different playstyles for the same class. This somewhat alleviated the issue of being forced into just drafting your seat straight away. You might have picked a strong generic card pack one and followed it up with a great arrow in pack two, but there is still some way to go in the draft before you decide whether you’re drafting Azalea or Riptide (unless you’re me, then it’s Riptide every time, baby).

Bright Lights took the lazy, but arguably even more effective route of just being an all-Mechanologist set. And while a single-class set isn’t exactly great for the part of your playerbase that doesn’t like playing that particular class, it definitely made draft that much more engaging. Now you could conceivably pivot from drafting Maxx Nitro to Dash, Database if you saw some sweet items in pack two – a later pivot possibility than in any previous FAB set. This is to say nothing of the great three-pack sealed format that LSS introduced with Bright Lights (and I’m literally not saying anything about that format because I still haven’t played it) – but obviously, more ways for players to enjoy a game is a good thing!

Lest we only sing the praises of the hard-working folks at LSS, we need to temper all this praise with the smug qualification of a teacher handing you your report card at the end of the year going “I believe you can do better,” even though you’ve had straight Bs for most subjects this year! Thanks a lot, Mrs. Kloppot. But look at me now! I’m writing my own report cards this year. And I didn’t even have to get any qualifications to do this gig. Who’s laughing now?

Where were we? Oh yeah, designing for draft. While it is true that draft hasn’t really ever been this good in FAB, it’s definitely still got some room to grow. And I’m glad that Heavy Hitters is looking to try and be a fun draft and engaging draft format without resorting to just being one class. I’m excited for the return of hybrid cards, but I’m hoping to see some more subtle neutral card designs this time around that offer more modality and thereby become playable in multiple different heroes.

Think of the way that Razor Reflex and Pummel functioned in Welcome to Rathe: they were pretty clearly split down the middle for the hero pools. In general, Dorinthea and Katsu wanted Razor Reflex, while Rhinar and Bravo wanted Pummel. This gets you almost the same flexibility as hybrid cards and two heroes per class do, but with some added spice.

Say, for sake of argument, that your Katsu deck is really defensive with Flic Flak, Drone of Brutality, and lots of blues. Then you might pick up a Pummel just to disrupt your opponent on an off-turn. Or you could use it to force through an Open the Center or a Surging Strike if you just draft straight nuts. See what I mean? This kind of limited design goes beyond just sticking two classes on a card and instead relies on the way the cards play off of each other.

I hope that we can see some more of that – with the added spice of hybrid and multiple heroes per class.

Resolution No. 2: Get Literally Everybody to Buy Into the Game

Earlier in this rambling manifesto, I praised the three-pack sealed format without actually having played any of it myself. This isn’t because I’m a hypocrite (not just because of that, anyway). It’s because I believe, and have for a while, that FAB is in dire need of some branching out. The game has so far been doing fantastic by capitalizing on other TCGs neglecting their competitive demographic. And while I still believe that FAB should keep this as its core tenet, I also believe that this game is big enough for more ways to play. The sooner products like Round the Table become regular features of the game’s release schedule, the better.

While it can’t be overstated how important it is for a TCG to get people hooked on their game, this approach to product design would help the game not just by onboarding more new players. It would carve out more niches to introduce cards needed for constructed without disrupting limited. And by extension, since many cards that have so far been needed for constructed but threatened to disrupt limited were printed at majestic rarity or higher, it’ll drive down the prices on these cards as well, since you don’t have to make them scarce.

Alternatively, it would open the game up for more playstyles: Sure, your favorite hero/card/strategy might suck in straight one-on-one constructed matches, but different products can offer all kinds of incentives! With any different take on the game that a new product might bring with it, literally the entire backlog of cards is open for re-evaluation.

The most obvious way to deliver on this would be to release a way to play PVE in 2024. It’s the big thing waiting in the wings that we know of. And by ostensibly flipping the competitive incentives of traditional Flesh and Blood (even in UPF, they aren’t that different in multiplayer), PVE is poised to uproot the entire way we’ve been playing the game so far. With that, it has the greatest potential to really push the envelope of what the game can be.

Resolution No. 3: Stick to Your Guns

This list/free-associative nightmare wouldn’t be what you’ve come to expect from me if it didn’t wrap around into undermining itself by the end. And for my final resolution for 2024, I hope Flesh and Blood stays true to its principles. This goes beyond the meme of playing in the flesh and blood, though this game has taught me that nothing beats the actual brick-and-mortar LGS experience.

To me, FAB exemplifies an indie spirit that has been sorely missing from the TCG landscape for far too long, and it so far succeeded by boldly ignoring or outright contradicting many tired tropes of the genre, opting instead to create something truly unique. For example, the game is largely anti-setup and anti-board state. You start off as strong as you’re gonna get (unless you’re playing Teklovossen, Esteemed Magnate, but why would you do that?) And the game has almost no board state to speak of. Unless you’re playing Illusionist. Or Mechanologist. Or Boltyn.

Okay, fair enough, there are a couple exceptions to the rule. But in a way, that only goes to show how strong the design of the underlying gameplay mechanics really is. And I’m not just saying that because I’d have to revise my argument otherwise. The core gameplay of FAB is so unique and innovative, that it can weather these kinds of experiments and incorporate crazy ideas without that spark getting lost in the process.

In 2023, we’ve seen the designers really flex their creativity by introducing demi-heroes, new card types, and incredibly specific designs like Spirit of Eirina, Adaptive Plating or Dimenxxional Vortex. In any other TCG, these kind of experiments would feel like the designers have run out of ideas. But somehow, everything that seemed out there or strange just ended up folding seamlessly into the core gameplay of FAB, because it’s just that damn engaging.

Wrapping Up

As the release of Heavy Hitters looms, Flesh and Blood promises a renewed focus on what makes it unique: tight, visceral gameplay that rewards smart thinking and creative play. Everything we’ve seen of the set so far seems to continue the trend that Flesh and Blood has thankfully been following for the past year: getting better and better with each set released. I for one can’t wait for 2024 and to finally see how the good folks at LSS will top their draft innovation and crazy, mind-bending designs this time. And I hope that when they do, they don’t lose sight of what makes this game so special – outside of the great community of course.

And with that, happy New Year, folks!

Further Reading:

The Future of Fatigue in Flesh and Blood

Make Every Flesh and Blood Game Count!

How to Improve Your Flesh and Blood Decision Making

Jonah Lara

Raised on a steady diet of fantasy storys and video games, Jonah discovered trading card games at the impressionable age of 12 and has since spent over half his life and about the same percentage of each monthly salary on card games. If he's not brewing new decks or catching up on the latest FaB news, he's probably dead - or painting a new Warhammer mini.