The Commoner Club – A 2024 Revamp!
January 3, 2024 by
Kenny Suzuki 
(Inflame | Art by Henrique Lindner)
Welcome to the new year of Flesh and Blood! Looking back at the previous year, several shakeups have hit the Commoner format, such as the sideboard rules change, the just banning of Stubby Hammerers, and the introduction of an innocuous common that has affected the Blitz format as well.
Thus, it is in the best interest of this fortnightly column to keep previous published articles up-to-date, so that newer players diving into the Commoner format in 2024 can still look back at written content and see updated decklists. Consider this week’s edition a cliché New Year-decluttering of sorts.
We’ll go over every single Commoner Club article affected by the three reasons stated above and give out suggestions on how to best tweak these decks for 2024 and beyond. These should also be linked to their respective articles as an additional resource to provide readers a quick reference.
Let’s dive right in.
Kassai, Cintari Sellsword
Kassai’s core game plan stays relatively the same, but her sideboard can be a place for the defense reactions such as Sink Below and Fate Foreseen in matchups where we just want to race. Consider boarding out Flock and Razor Reflex when we’re going second, and boarding them in going first. This allows us to set up a Quicken token without severely diverting from our game plan on turn zero, while going second might not grant us the same privilege. Add in some Puncture when we go second instead.
Fai
This little blazing boy is the main culprit for the Stubby Hammerers ban, as he can put out an absurd amount of damage from turn zero, or just kill out of nowhere with huge chain links. The synergy with attacks such as Phoenix Flame and Salt the Wound are absurd in a 20-life format. The arm equipment piece was already banned in Blitz and Classic Constructed, so the writing was on the wall.
The easiest replacement would simply be Heat Wave, which is already included in the original decklist. However, with the sideboard change, we could even argue the addition of a second Inflame for more Phoenix Flame synergy. Cracker Jax is a worse Heat Wave in this case; there’s no upside in using it.
However, we could go for a greedier approach with Goliath Gauntlet solely for Flying Kick, which allows us to go in for a telegraphed kill turn. We can even add a Rebellious Rush as an additional hit. But it probably isn’t any better than just the Heat Wave + Inflame plan.
Consider adding in Sink Below and Fate Foreseen to the sideboard, just for matchups with bigger hits such as Guardian. If the local meta is infested with aggressive decks, deliberate over Dust Runner Outlaw – it’s included in the Fai Blitz precon anyway.
We can probably cut one Breaking Point and just board it in against arsenal-reliant matchups like Rangers or greedy Guardians. Mull over the brand new Bittering Thorns red, but the downside is it’s not a Draconic attack. We’ll discuss a better deck for this later.
Levia
This specific Hell Hammer Levia list is pretty set in stone. The provided current equipment sideboard is the transformative part, teching in additional blocks via the Ironrot Helm and Ironrot Gauntlet, or Spell Fray Gloves and Nullrune Gloves for the arcane damage battles. We could argue making space for Sink Below or Fate Foreseen, but we just want to race since we’ll accrue huge Blood Debt.
Boltyn
Boltyn utilizes Stubby Hammerers as well, but to lesser efficacy than Fai. So the substitution here is a little bit more straightforward. We can use Goliath Gauntlet, with two hits in Cut Down to Size and Feisty Locals. We can also add in a Brothers in Arms or two as an additional defensive option, cutting a red attack in the process, while being another valid Gauntlet target.
Vynnset
Vynnset unfortunately failed to make a splash in the current Flesh and Blood formats, including Commoner. After all, it’s hard to fill the shoes left by Chane. However, in Commoner, the sideboard now allows us to play with huge setup cards such as Read the Runes and Bloodspill Invocation if we ever go first, so these are cards we should board in on the play.
Ira, Crimson Haze
A huge threat in Blitz, Ira was pushed into Living Legend status due to the introduction of Bittering Thorns red. However, this means that Ira is still free to be the Commoner metagame haymaker with her newest toy. This is the easiest slot-in we can ever make for this deck over Leg Tap or Critical Strike, assuming we can get our hands on the Round the Table: TCC x LSS, due to the prohibitive cost of the common attack on the secondary market. Other than that, consider Wax On as another defense reaction. The rest of the deck remains the same; it’s already a formidable force as is.
Changing metagames and techs are just the nature of any competitive game; what’s viable now may not even be viable a day or two after, hyperbolically speaking. So the goal here is not just to ease the Flesh and Blood barrier of entry finance-wise, but also resource-wise. These updates to decklists published in the past year, before huge meta shifts, should bring these decks up to par. We’ve already begun incorporating sideboards into all the decks published after the rules change, so less bookkeeping will be required going forward.
Happy shuffling in 2024. Welcome to the Club.
Further Reading:
How to Build a Commoner Deck For Flesh and Blood
Playing Flesh and Blood on a Budget
Kenny Suzuki
Kenny is a non-binary Flesh and Blood player of Philippine and Japanese descent. A two-time A Game of Thrones: The Living Card Game National Champion, they started playing Magic: The Gathering during the Zendikar Block and eventually switched to harder stuff, like Legacy and Modern. When not asleep, they are probably compulsively building new decks, working on their design brand, thrifting for pretty clothes, bringing their kpop photocards everywhere, touching grass or malding over Teamfight Tactics.