If you’ve been a part of gaming spaces for any amount of time, you’ve likely already heard of player psychographics. What sounds like an incredibly rancid marketing term is, in fact, well – just that. Popularized by TCG design guru Mark Rosewater, head designer for Magic: The Gathering, player psychographics are a way to exemplify the motivations with which players approach a game.

Player psychographics are broadly divided into three categories: Timmy/Tammy, Johnny/Jenny and Spike. Today, we’ll dive into what drives these player archetypes and how they relate to Flesh and Blood card design.

The One You Likely Already Know About: Timmy/Tammy

As the heading says, if you’re not deep into reading design theory articles, you most likely still know about Timmy/Tammy. They are the psychographic that is perhaps most misunderstood, which is why you may have heard of them: really entrenched players with an attitude problem like to bandy this demographic about as a synonym for “casual” (with the implied qualifier being “filthy”).

And if we examine what makes a Timmy/Tammy, it’s somewhat obvious where that confusion comes from. Timmy/Tammy is the psychographic that is motivated by the experience of playing games. They play games to feel something; for their exciting moments, which is most commonly boiled down to “Timmy/Tammy likes it when big, exciting stuff is happening in a game.” Timmy/Tammy likes dragons, dinosaurs, and building terrible decks with cards that are fun – but bad.

Note, however, that this crucially doesn’t mean they are exclusively motivated by big moments – in fact, no player really fits solely in one of these categories. These archetypes are a way to break down the complex motivations of fleshy humans into marketable demographics, hence the term “psychographic.”

For Timmy/Tammy this means that they lean more towards exciting things happening in game, because they value the emotional experience of playing. They have a good time if a game is memorable and filled with big emotional moments – that random top deck that decided the game, that crucial card played at the right time, and yes, that huge blowout with a big card.

Pictured above are a number of cards that would commonly be perceived as Timmy/Tammy cards by their sheer hugeness. But I beg to differ, like the smug contrarian that I am.

For the Flesh and Blood card that best caters to the Timmy/Tammy psychographic, I nominate Ten Foot Tall and Bulletproof. Not because it has large numbers on it, even though it does, but because it’s more fun than the likes of Crippling Crush, Pulverize, or Shaden Death Hydra.

It’s not a puzzle to be solved or a card that gets by on sheer efficiency, but it tells a story, and it makes for memorable games: “Remember when I had that Ten Foot Tall and Bulletproof to block out your Crippling Crush?” is something a Timmy/Tammy would say, gleefully ignoring the fact that they would still be down to cards next turn from their own card’s effect, which mathematically is like not having blocked the crush effect. But it doesn’t feel like that, does it? Even if you imagine the scenario yourself. What counts is the feeling of blocking 10 with a single card, or swinging for 10 with just two.

Takeaways for FAB design: Dude, Where’s My Dragon?

This is what gave me the idea for this entire article. There is a reason why many games follow in the mold of Magic: The Gathering, with summoned creatures battling it out on some kind of implied arena: Timmy/Tammy really enjoys having their thing around to experience it all the time. Here is my big dragon. No matter how expensive it is, once it’s down and doing its thing, it feels powerful. And it feels powerful the whole time that it’s in play.

I don’t think that I’m the only one who’s thinking that the big cards of FAB don’t really feel like that. Yes, there are dragons and summonable creatures. Blasmophet, the Soul Harvester, Invoke Dracona Optimai, and any of Prism, Awakener of Sol‘s angels all kinda fit the bill. But they don’t really compare in a big numbers kind of way with, say, a Cosmic Awakening.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that FAB has a bit of a Timmy/Tammy problem. I’ve kind of played around with this thought in some previous articles, and I still believe that much of the reason why FAB has introduced the Illusionist class and Dromai, Ash Artist in particular is to secure the dragon demographic.

Big attack actions are exciting and definitely a Timmy/Tammy moment, but they feel, for lack of a better word, fleeting. Once they’re played and blocked or otherwise resolved, they go to the graveyard and you don’t really get the experience of warping the entire game around your big beater.

Now, I think there are players out there, myself among them, who actually enjoy the fact that FAB largely isn’t like Magic and the games it inspired. I enjoy FAB for its unique play experience and its relative lack of snowballing; you’re not just ruined if you don’t draw a way to remove that big beater for one or two turns.

But I also believe that there is a sweet spot between these competing desires, and one that would open FAB up to more people, which I think is undeniably a good goal for Legend Story Studios to strive towards. Dromai’s dragons are a good first step and proof of concept, but I believe the design of dragons still has a ways to go before it really captures a Timmy/Tammy’s imagination.

My advice for LSS: Don’t be scared of making future ally designs bigger. Much bigger. Dracona Optimai is big, sure, but he lives more on his trigger and slowly accruing ash to summon him and setting up auras to protect him isn’t really the kind of efficient, long-term planning gameplay that Timmy/Tammy is looking for.

All About That Ace: Johnny/Jenny in Flesh and Blood

Johnny/Jenny are the combo players. This doesn’t mean that they’re motivated by finding a combo to win with; we’ll get to that next. What Johnny/Jenny values is expressing themselves through deckbuilding. They want to show off how smart and/or creative they are by building around synergies that nobody else has used so far, or used in the same way.

In contrast with Timmy/Tammy, FAB is rife with Johnny/Jenny design. So much so, that I find it legitimately hard to settle for just a handful of cards to best exemplify Johnny/Jenny design in FAB. But if I have to – and I do – I would nominate Cosmic Awakening.

It’s incredibly setup intensive. So much so that it’s likely never the best thing you can do in FAB, generally. But it offers enough conditional power to win you the game if you found a way to build your deck to support pitching three Chi somewhat reliably.

Takeaways for FAB design: a Misunderstood Player Base

I’m tempted to say that FAB generally misunderstands Timmy/Tammy, opting instead to cater their big, exciting cards more toward a Johnny/Jenny mindset.

The design of Dromai’s dragons and big cards like Crippling Crush that are more about efficiency than splashiness points to an inherent bias of the Johnny/Jenny and Spike psychographic in FAB, one that originates with some core design philosophies of the game, that heavily favor some players over others.

Keep in mind that this isn’t good or bad necessarily. These terms don’t really apply here. But it is something to keep in mind as we engage with the game as players and try to grow our community.

In it to Win it: Is Flesh and Blood a Spike’s dream?

Chances are, if you’ve played Flesh and Blood for a long time, this is you. Spikes are the players that play games to prove something. To prove that they are the best deckbuilders (different from Johnny/Jenny’s goal of being the most creative deckbuilder), the best pilots or the best “tuners” of decks. If this is you, it might be because FAB‘s core design philosophies spoke to you – maximizing skill expression while minimizing variance through its unique resource system.

But as I’ve alluded to before, I think that FAB so far has leaned away from Timmy/Tammy and towards Johnny/Jenny (a little) and Spikes (a lot), best exemplified by perhaps the most spikiest of FAB card: everybody’s favorite overprized (or correctly prized) staple, Command and Conquer!

Even more so than its peers Enlightened Strike, Crown of Providence, and Balance of Justice, the decks that wouldn’t be improved by a playset of Command and Conquers are few and far between. FAB rewards efficiency, making the most out of any given situation, and what that leads to – the fact that there is always a way to eek out a win if you play optimally – is beautiful.

Takeaways for FAB design: a Noble Goal with Mixed Results

On the flipside, it leads to some designs that are almost unbearably dry. It’s honestly a little embarrassing that one of the best cards in the game is this absolutely generic value machine, a card that gets by on its sheer under-costed efficiency, rather than anything exciting.

While other games (I’m looking at Magic: The Gathering again, here) had their fair share of powerful staples, the likes of the infamous Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall at least managed to appeal through their panache. Command and Conquer, in comparison, is like that time when Siege Rhino ruled Standard, a thing that just happens to do more for less than anything else that’s around.

And if you understand that reference without looking it up: remember to set aside some time to work out a retirement plan, gramps.

Parting Thoughts

With all that being said, LSS has been making moves to make FAB a bit less spike-y, introducing cards and whole mechanics that increase variance and setting aside valuable space in their sets for Johnny/Jenny cards that are more aspirational than truly good. Remember Prismatic Leyline?

I believe it’s always good to check your biases and be mindful of where your design goals lead you. FAB did well for itself with its incredibly rewarding competitive core, and I believe the worst thing LSS could do would be to sacrifice that core value the game has for cards that are splashy for splashiness’ sake.

But I also believe that there is always a third way, and so far, FAB seems to be doing many things right. And I can’t wait to see what they’ll get right next!

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.