The new Rosetta heroes have finally debuted in Flesh and Blood and with good timing — the Blitz meta has just been refreshed, with three heroes, namely, Zen, Briar, and Dash, reaching Living Legend status just last month. While this leaves the meta open to be solved, it also means a more unknown pool to face during Blitz tournaments.

Today, we’re looking at Florian, the Elemental Runeblade hero who specializes in Earth cards. With this rather unique combo, we’re looking to focus on beefy Earth attacks and defenses, all while filling up the banished zone to get him online. After that, we also have Runechant generating options to slowly grind out the game, especially when we just need a little bit of reach to close it out.

What’s in the Florian Precon Deck?

The Florian precon adopts a tiny aura subtheme, which makes it seem like we’re trying to balance too many effects all at once. However, it contains a lot of the core cards to get us up and running.

Let’s look at the decklist first:

Power Cards

Our Runechant generators come in the form of Malefic Incantation and Arcane Seeds // Life. Both of them lean towards a slower game plan, which suits the deck’s strategy – one provides a slow trickle of Runechant tokens, while the other can restore our life.

Fruits of the Forest is a flexible card, as we can attack, block, or simply discard it according to our needs. To reiterate: we’re aiming to fill up our graveyard early with Earth cards so we can banish them as soon as possible.

We get Florian online through cards such as Cadaverous Tilling, and Rootbound Carapace. Decompose is the main mechanic we’re looking at to fill up the ‘yard.

Condemn to Slaughter might be a great sideboard card still. We’d keep it depending on the meta. We’re keeping Rotwood Reaper over other weapon options, especially since Nebula Blade and Rosetta Thorn (either the best or worst day for you when it reached Living Legend status) are both not legal in Blitz.

Initial Upgrades for Florian

We’re upping our Earth card count through heavy-hitting options such as Autumn's Touch and Summer's Fall. We’re also throwing in a Blossoming Decay as another Earth option, though we’re usually pitching it.

Fruits of the Forest is likewise great, just for redundancy purposes.

The purpose of running several Earth and Decompose cards is two-pronged: the sheer density allows us to attack with most of these cards per turn, while also allowing us to banish those that have already hit the ‘yard. By doubling down on these instead of waiting for a low count of banish effects, we’re essentially getting a meaningful banish every turn.

Since great Runeblade cards are notorious for only having two block, we’re opting for those that have three but are still efficient. After all, we’re quickly shifting between defensive and offensive stances with the deck, kinda like how a Guardian can launch a huge attack and then still full block an alpha strike the following turn.

Spellblade Assault red and blue and Shrill of Skullform are aggressive options which don’t compromise our defenses.

Sink Below and Fate Foreseen are go-to options for almost any deck, so they’re worth considering over something like Reduce to Runechant.

Sutcliffe’s Suede Hides, while narrow in application, is still the best we can do to generate an action point in the leg slot. Otherwise, look into options like Ironrot Legs.

This is what the deck looks like after the initial upgrades:

Mid-Term Upgrades

We can amplify the deck’s power through more aggressive options such as Channel the Millennium Tree, Felling of the Crown, and Plow Under, though we may not have enough cards to pay for the channel cost since we’re banishing so many.

Thistle Bloom // Life has some synergy with our deck’s defensive options, so we’re opting to include it. Swarming Gloomveil is just an efficient attack; you can’t go wrong with it, though it might be a tad too pricey for a mid-term upgrade.

Succumb to Temptation is a great way to strip the opponents off of their hands if they go for a greedy setup. Since we can play it at instant speed, this means we get a go again effect for free – great for our attacks with no innate action point generation. This is the best part about Runeblade, in my opinion!

Germinate and Dread Triptych are both ways to maximize Florian’s ability, allowing for multiple procs off of a single card.

Seeds of Tomorrow and Tome of Harvests feel like extremely powerful cards, though I feel they made be more suited for Classic Constructed.

In terms of gear, we can pick up some cheap Arcane Barrier options such as Crown of Dichotomy and Vexing Quillhand.

Long-Term Upgrades

The usual upgrades include Command and Conquer and Enlightened Strike, plus Erase Face as a tech card.

Other higher-end equipments include Grasp of the Arknight, Face Purgatory, and Barkskin of the Millennium Tree, which all add a few more life points to our total, all while providing some massive tempo-changing effects.

Dyadic Carapace is a great defensive card for both regular and arcane damage, so this should be a pickup for anyone serious about Runeblades.

This wraps up our discussion about how Florian can be played in a heavy-Earth style, with an inevitable endgame. As the meta slows down without the presence of the new Living Legend inductees, this means we don’t have to rush or be rushed into executing our game plan. There’s also a lot of space to explore with Embodiment of Earth, though I feel like we’re stretching ourselves too thin that way if we include it in the deck.

We’ll continue our Rosetta discussion in the next installment. Until then, happy shuffling!