Just a few days ago, Battle Hardened: Atlanta gave us the next hero to rotate out of the Classic Constructed format and reach Living Legend status: Dromai, Ash Artist. And with that, I have a confession to make: I used to be a bit of a Dromai simp. Perhaps more blasphemous, I did kind of a 180 on the queen of dragons for a while there, hating on the hero in quiet, seething frustration until I settled somewhere in the middle. Now the time is ripe to look back on the legacy of one of the most polarizing heroes Flesh and Blood has ever seen.

How I Became a Dromai Simp

Let’s start on a positive note, with a well-deserved roundup of everything that makes Dromai a great hero for players and the game at large, which can actually be broken down into just a single word: dragons. Every fantasy property has to grapple with dragons in some capacity. They define the genre like no other feature. If your setting doesn’t have dragons in it, it’s more than likely that their absence is some kind of crucial plot point, or at the very least a deliberate exclusion. Nobody just forgets about dragons.

So the arrival of Dromai, Ash Artist in Uprising was kind of a big deal for Flesh and Blood. Much more so than it might have seemed at the time. Before, it was actually somewhat hard to imagine how a game that doesn’t usually revolve around a board state like its cousin Magic: the Gathering would treat our scaley friends. Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light had previously leaned into a similar space with her weapon, Luminaris, turning auras into weapons, but the only full-on permanent board entities were Blasmophet, the Soul Harvester and Ursur, the Soul Reaper, which both required a legendary card and some major boxes to be checked before they could be summoned.

And while it was certainly cool to summon these powerful beings, they didn’t exactly lend themselves to having an entire deck being built around them. They were too powerful to really be the major point of their own deck. If they were, would the game still be its own thing, or would it be the start of FAB chasing some of what makes Magic: the Gathering special?

So the first and, arguably, still most important thing that Dromai, Ash Artist did with Uprising was teach us that FAB was able to adapt into being a more board state-focused game without losing its identity. While games against Dromai often feel like a bit of a subgame is going on, it’s undeniable that both players are still playing Flesh and Blood.

So Dromai gave the game its first dragons, and with it, a major selling point for players who otherwise might not have bothered. I was in a bit of a similar position when I just started to become interested in playing. I liked the mechanics and the aesthetic of the game, and although the very first thing that grabbed me wasn’t Dromai or her dragons, but the preconstructed Dorinthea Blitz deck of all things, Dromai eventually became my first ever main for sheer familiarity: board states were something I could wrap my head around much easier than the elusive idea of tempo.

I believe this is the second major service that Dromai provided for Flesh and Blood: an option for an on-ramp for people coming to the game from other, more board state-oriented systems. I know that I introduced my fair share of ex- and still ongoing Magic players to FAB through an initial game with Dromai.

And this isn’t just because of familiarity, even though it certainly helps. Having a board state, one that consists of sweet dragons even, just feels good, especially for players who are just starting out. It makes you feel like you’re accomplishing your own thing. Regardless of whether you lose or win a match, if you got to attack with a big horde of dragons, you felt good about a little added accomplishment.

And more than that, you feel secure if things are going at least kinda well. You’re not getting attacked; your dragons are. You can feel your opponent’s tempo slipping when they go gunning for your scaly friends over you. You feel powerful when you take the reins of the game and start dictating new rules that both you and your opponent have to abide by.

How I Became a Dromai Hater

On the flipside, once you play a certain number of matches against Dromai, this can start to shift. How high that number is will depend on many factors: the hero you play and how tolerant you are of having your game plan messed with, just to name two.

Dromai, by her very nature, is disruptive. Just by doing what she’s doing, she asks you to respect her game plan. Maybe not more so than Bravo, Showstopper throwing a dominated Crippling Crush at you, but in a different, slightly more insidious way, by forcing her opponents to make tough decisions. Those decisions have the potential to be some of the most engaging moments of playing Flesh and Blood, but they can also be tiring if all you want to do is shoot your arrows as Azalea, Ace in the Hole.

And that’s just the nature of the baseline, smooth-brain, hit you with my dragons game plan that Dromai is always going to revolve around in some shape or form. Once you go past that, there are tools for even more disruption and chicanery – like attacking your hands with Phantasmaclasm or Lost in Thought.

That’s where I ended up once I moved away from Dromai. It certainly didn’t help matters that I was drawn at first to playing Guardian with Bravo, Showstopper and then moved on to Ranger with Riptide, Lurker of the Deep. So while I may have shot myself in the foot on that front – and knowingly, since I played against my fair share of Guardians and Rangers as Dromai myself – I still came to see where playing against the dragon queen had massive potential of being plain unfun.

What Made Dromai Great Despite it All

And in that special, somewhat maddening Illusionist design space, Dromai really was a special step forward for the class as a whole. It’s easy to forget that when Dromai arrived on the scene, the complete mess that was the spectra mechanic was still fresh on players minds. Spectra in particular and the kit of Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light in general seemed at times to have been geared toward maximum frustration.

Dromai was the first step in an ongoing effort to smooth out the issues with the Illusionist class: Dragons don’t take your entire turn with them if you attack them. They’re sometimes okay to leave on the board because they don’t always accumulate value as quickly as old Prism‘s auras did. And most importantly, they are gated behind Ash, a special resource that Dromai had to work towards. Within the purview of the Illusionist class, Dromai usually has a more proactive game plan than old Prism. Sure, she can still force a three-hour game with the best of them, but more often, the point is just to beat you down with big lizards.

In the end, like some kind of enlightened centrist, I ended up in a position where I was able to appreciate the perspectives of both sides. And while that sounds incredibly smug to me, typing these words now, I feel like the cliché really holds true here and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Dromai could be incredibly engaging. Dromai could just as often be incredibly annoying. But her impact on Flesh and Blood overall and her class in particular has been nothing short of great.

So while we wait to see how Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry shakes up the Illusionist class once again, let’s take a moment and remember Dromai, Ash Artist, who paved the way for her. And pour one out for all the Dromai simps. I think I can understand your pain, speaking as a now-reformed former simp myself. While I am glad to take a break from getting slowly whittled down by her, I know that when the dragon queen inevitably returns, I will be as excited as anybody to see her again.

Further Reading:

Flesh and Blood’s Living Legend System, and the Power of Storytelling

The Competitive Edge of Specialists in Flesh and Blood

Legends, Stories, and Immersive Gameplay in Flesh and Blood

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.