(Valda Brightaxe | Art by Wisnu Tan)

What do you think when you hear “Blitz” as a Flesh and Blood player?

It tends to be a polarizing topic. For some this format is their favorite, and they’re always waiting for Skirmish season to come back. Others despise the format and are very vocal about it.

I started with the mindset of disliking Blitz. I came from a competitive card gaming background before FAB. How that game felt really shaped what I thought I wanted out of the game. After a while of struggling to understand why people like Blitz, I found the ability to step back and view the format as a kind of different but related game. At that point, I grew to love the format and my favorite hero, Valda.

Now I really enjoy telling people about how much fun they can have with Blitz if they let themselves. It might even make you a better player.

Gameplay

Flow and Decision Making

Blitz comes with a different game flow than Classic Constructed (“CC”). This is largely due to the fundamental difference in life total. The average life total for Blitz heroes floating around 20 means that the game gets tight and decisions start to be pivotal quickly, sometimes as early as turn one.

This creates a level of excitement and tension in the format. Making basic mistakes in Blitz will get you killed more often than not. You need to keep your fundamentals polished in order to keep your win rate up.

It’s a great place to practice tense decisions and mitigating an end game for CC.

Math for Attackers

When it comes to balancing cards, LSS is usually thinking about the CC format. This gets interesting when you remember the life differences between Blitz and CC. Being at half the life total means that five-damage cards in Blitz are as effective as ten-damage cards in CC. This sets the pace for the matches, and lets some strategies have extremely explosive plays based around haymakers that the opponent has to be prepared for. Some common examples are Crippling Crush, Alpha Rampage and Maximum Velocity.

This can also work in reverse though, as Frailty tokens and similar effects can create a lot of room to breathe in Blitz.

Card Economy

Another factor in the gameplay of Blitz is that you have exactly 40 cards to work with every game. Understanding card economy can be key when playing strategies like Boost Dash or Great Axe Fatigue Dori.

The format has viable fatigue strategies and fewer cards to get through than CC. That being said, when playing these fatigue decks, it’s important to not get too caught up on not taking any damage. Break point strategies can quickly eat at a deck’s cards by getting them to use extra cards to only block one damage.

The other thing to remember about the 40 card rule is that you need to have a plan for what’s coming out when you sideboard cards in. This can be painful if you have a use for most of your cards in your main strategy but need silver bullets for certain heroes.

Deck Building

A Builder’s Paradise

In CC there are a lot of strategies available, but there are just as many that don’t work because the opponent has enough of a life buffer to ignore them. While not every strategy will work in Blitz, it generally has more room to brew.

This is one of the big things that draws me to the format. I’ve built all kinds of things from Saber Dagger Dori to Fatigue Life Gain Benji. Some of the archetypes that open up in Blitz are things that would be a bit too fragile or can’t produce enough pressure early game in CC.

On top of this there are heroes that are only printed as young heroes. These heroes have unique abilities and are a lot of fun to build around. For more on them, check out my The Fountain of Youth series.

Play Your Favorite Heroes (Again)

When a hero achieves Living Legend status in CC, they’re often still legal in Blitz. Chane, Prism, and Lexi players have a little more time with their favorite heroes in Blitz before they go the way of Iyslander and Oldhim. This is a nice way to still have them around for a time while waiting for replacement heroes for CC.

I will note that sometimes your favorite hero will LL in Blitz a bit before CC, like in Viserai‘s case.

Blitz Outside of the Game

Game Times

For some people, there’s only one night every week or two that they can make it out to an event to play because of important things like family or work. Blitz allows people to get more games in with its shorter 30-minute rounds and faster gameplay.

This can also be great if a person doesn’t get to practice a lot because it’s generally less fatiguing. If getting more games in isn’t the concern, it also creates shorter official events, which can be nice when you have something else to do that night.

A Good Place to Bring in New Players

Blitz is one of the best onboarding points for new players. The matches are short, allowing for them to see more heroes and how they play in a shorter period of time. While one mistake can get you killed, it’s also pretty evident where it was and makes fixing mistakes easier.

There are a handful of decks that are great for new players as well. The kind of things with a bit of high roll potential to avoid getting your butt handed to you as often while learning. Blitz is also a little cheaper to build a first deck for, since you don’t need a third copy of in-deck staples like Enlightened Strike and Command and Conquer. In addition to this, there aren’t very many Blitz decks running Fyendal’s Spring Tunic.

Wrapping it up

Blitz doesn’t receive the kind of love that I wish it would. People oftentimes want it to be a miniature CC, and it just wasn’t ever supposed to be that. It’s a fun, fast format that still has a lot of depth and decisions, even if it can be high rolly at times. Plus, Valda lives there.

Jo O'Brien

Jo (they/them) is an avid Flesh and Blood player, judge and, writer. They are one of the blitz specialists here at FABREC. Jo has played a lot of classes and heroes but, they have an affinity for two heroes in particular, Dash and Valda. When not playing FaB, Jo is typically filling their free time playing guitar, playing Apex Legends, or building their next Rube Goldberg machine of a deck.