(Lexi, Livewire | Art by Federico Musetti)

Dusk Till Dawn and the ascension of Oldhim to Living Legend status have caused the Classic Constructed metagame to undergo a major shift. The loss of the stalwart wall of the constructed metagame has led to new heroes looking to take his place on the throne or unleash their power no longer restricted by his oppressive defense. Decks from the Outsiders metagame return, wielding their powerful strategies and testing new up-and-comers looking to earn their meta share.

With Nationals looming over the horizon, a review of the state of the metagame is warranted for those looking to chase the trophy and represent their country as their champion.

Pillars of the Format

Lexi, Livewire

Lexi was highly dominant in the previous format, serving as a powerful, aggressive deck with explosive draws to outpace almost every other aggressive option in the format, while having the tools to evolve and adapt to the format around her. The banning of Bull’s Eye Bracers has weakened Lexi’s ability to deal with arcane strategies and fatigue strategies, but without having to account for Oldhim, Lexi is left as the boogeyman of the format, with the best conversion rate during Calling: Birmingham.

Lexi’s strengths involve her powerful proactive game plan forcing opponents to attack her with unorthodox methods, trying to tackle her via disruption or fatigue. Three of a Kind, Codex of Frailty, and her disruptive arrows with annoying breakpoints of five is difficult for most decks to do battle with on the traditional melee axis of Flesh and Blood.

Lexi’s weaknesses involve her potential vulnerability to fatigue due to her lack of weapon and armor, leaving her open to disruption such as Command and Conquer and Spinal Crush.

However, each and every deck in the metagame worth its salt has a plan for Lexi, with each of the other pillars present due to a playable Lexi matchup. But even with being targeted, playing Lexi still guarantees a formidable deck with the most powerful proactive plan in the format and opportunities to outplay opponents, and she is still an excellent choice moving into Nationals season.

Iyslander, Stormbind

While Lexi took the place of the greatest conversion rate into Day 2, Iyslander has been winning out many tournaments. Iyslander was dominant before the Outsiders metagame, where she was held down by a poor Lexi matchup. However, the loss of Bull’s Eye Bracers has given her percentage points in the matchup, and with sufficient deckbuilding concessions and the introduction of Warmonger’s Diplomacy, among other innovations, Iyslander is making a return.

The version pioneered by Michael Hamilton (“Bulllander”), built on using powerful three-cost physical attacks to leverage tempo, has fallen to the wayside for an arcane-heavy build by Rhea Adams. Arcane Iyslander has a superior Lexi matchup, however there is still a debate between the two builds, with arcane wielding superior disruptive effects against aggressive decks and Wounded Bull having a superior mirror matchup and powerful tools against Bravo to fight for tempo. 

Iyslander’s strengths include her incredible plays of tempo and disruption, being a skill-intensive deck with a plan against every opponent. Her ability to disrupt her opponent’s larger hands, powerful two-card plays, and holding pressure, is a powerful proactive strategy that disrupts most opponents from generating an effective assault.

Her weaknesses vary, including her low health total, the inefficiency of some of her attacks, and her restricted ability to utilize four- to five-card hands. Her reliance on her arsenal and frail blocking leaves her vulnerable to disruption when she loses control of the game. Iyslander is also extremely skill-intensive and can be taxing to play perfectly throughout a long tournament, which is often what the deck asks of its pilots.

Iyslander remains a powerful deck in the metagame, ensuring any deck attempting to win out from the Top 8 has to keep their arcane barrier sleeved and a plan in mind for the mistress of Ice.

Dromai, Ash Artist

Dromai haunts as a dark horse with a powerful angle of attack, utilizing her dragons to create incredibly efficient lines of play that are difficult to deal with. She boasts a powerful matchup spread against a majority of the other pillars.

There are two variants of Dromai. “Big Dragon Dromai,” a deck primarily using dragons to outvalue its opponents, has a greater polarized matchup spread compared to its counterpart “Empress Dromai.” Pioneered by Mara Faris, Empress is a powerful aggressive deck utilizing her difficult dragon threats to mix up her assault with efficient damage, leaving the opponent under a massive amount of pressure.

Dromai’s strengths involve a powerful plan that leaves decks without specific tools to deal with them, leaving them helpless and struggling. Rake the Embers red, Invoke Themai, and Invoke Kyloria, for example, are powerful threats with difficult answers.

Dromai’s weaknesses include her softness to wide aggression, as well as decks with a high density of six-power attacks to blow up her dragons. It must be noted that these weaknesses can be counteracted with sufficient planning and proficiency of its pilot.

If one is able to predict their metagame well, Dromai is an invaluable deck choice, and a metagame threat.

Bravo, Showstopper

Bravo is the newcomer in the meta, replacing his predecessor Oldhim. By comparison, Bravo lacks the powerful defensive combination of Rampart of the Ram’s Head and Crown of Seeds, exchanging it for powerful aggressive options such as Star Struck and Crippling Crush. 

However, his dominance in Calling:Birmingham cannot be denied. His powerful attacks punish opponents who give him too much breathing room, and his superior proactive plan leaves little opportunity for opponents to take a methodical approach to dealing with his defenses.

Bravo’s strengths involve his unignorable hits, when successfully dampening a retaliating assault as he threatens an onslaught of attacks keeping the opponent on the defensive. He also has fatigue on his side, with a deck full of three blocks and Guardian weaponry for late game situations.

Bravo bears a weakness to defense reactions in arsenal defying his dominate ability, as well as needing a full hand to present his threats, often making his turns to pivot tempo extremely costly, and as such is far worse when behind compared to Oldhim.

While Bravo is no Oldhim, his presence filling the shoes of his Guardian predecessor must be accounted for for success in the coming format.

Honorable Mentions

While the above decks have been the most dominant and successful decks of the format, numerous decks lie in wait, looking for a metagame or innovation for success. A brief overview of less orthodox options for your Nationals deck, as well as a summary of their abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, lies below.

Levia, Shadowborn Abomination

Levia wields power. Raw power. The advent of Levia, Redeemed has given the Shadow Brute new options, stamping out her old sudden deaths, either transforming to Levia, Redeemed for late-game situations versus control, or Blasmophet for an extra oomph against aggression at the cost of being on a deadline. Levia has some of the most efficient plays in the game, with numerous one-cost six attacks, Bloodrush Bellow combos, and anti-fatigue strategies with recursive effects from the banish zone. She also wields an insane armor suite with Carrion Husk, Scabskin Leathers, and the new Scowling Flesh Bag staving away aggression.

Levia’s weakness, however, is her consistency. With a plethora of non-blocks, clunky draw, and reliance on Scabskin Leathers for action points, Levia has yet to put up significant results. However, if consistency is achieved with a balance of power, Levia will be feared.

Katsu, the Wanderer & Fai, Rising Rebellion

The Ninjas wait in the shadows for their opportunity, and with the death of Oldhim, they rear their head. Since the Ninjas both boast a powerful proactive strategy, with Katsu having a decent Lexi matchup as well as both of them destroying Dromai, both Ninjas serve as potential options. Katsu wields a higher ceiling with the Bonds of Ancestry line producing unfairly powerful attacks, whilst Fai pumps out consistent damage and has a powerful armor suite to boot. 

The Ninjas are held down by their poor answers to Iyslander and Bravo, faltering to disruption. However, if those matchups can be solved, the Ninjas surely will make their presence known in the format.

Uzuri, Switchblade

Uzuri serves as the game’s best answer to Lexi, wielding powerful cheap disruption to decks relying on setup with their arsenal and her diseases. Her small hands are among the most efficient in the game, serving as a powerful defensive option while still blunting the onslaught of her attackers. She is also incredibly difficult to block due to the nature of her attack reactions and daggers, presenting a powerful proactive strategy into decks attempting to block her out as well. 

Where Uzuri falters is her lack of raw damage output, often losing to defensive strategies with inevitability such as Iyslander with Frost Hex as well as Big Dragon Dromai. That said, Uzuri should not be counted out as her strength against aggression and hard to predict nature leaves her a contender in this metagame.

Viserai, Rune Blood & Azalea, Ace in the Hole

Viserai and Azalea wield powerful midrange strategies, with Azalea having extremely powerful and potent on-hits with disruption and evasion, while Viserai wields high damage mixed assaults and a powerful armor suite. Both of these decks however are capped by their own consistency due to their non-attack, attack action reliance, and the presence of Warmonger’s Diplomacy being extremely devastating to their strategies. 

If the metagame receives a shift and Warmonger’s Diplomacy is cut, both of these decks serve as powerful proactive strategy alternatives.

Vynnset, Iron Maiden & Ser Boltyn, Breaker of Dawn

Vynnset and Boltyn are two heroes from Dusk Till Dawn with potentially powerful effects. Vynnset wields free, massive attacks backed by Pummel and a sea of Runechants, while Boltyn wields the Lumina Ascension combo, being one of Flesh and Blood‘s few true combos, aided by new tools in Dusk Till Dawn such as the new Solflare cards and superior armor. 

Vynnset has a weakness to blue-heavy fatigue decks and her inconsistency with needing to draw the right pieces at the right times, while Boltyn is capped by running a yellow-heavy deck being very weak to Iyslander’s disruption and being outtraded by Lexi from a midrange angle.

What both of these decks need is innovation, to fix their weaknesses and improve their consistency. If solved, both of these decks wield great potential and may sit a place in the conversation of decks to fear. If you’re a brewer, both serve a opportunity in the format for investigation.

Axe Dorinthea & Axe Boltyn

Both Warriors received the Decimator Great Axe, serving as the end-all of fatigue, wielding extremely defensive strategies leveraging their insane weapon to run the opponent out of threats, devalue their blocks, and chop their opponent’s deck to bits. These decks however lack options against decks which fight from different angles from traditional Flesh and Blood, suffering against Illusionists terribly, as well as vulnerability to anti-fatigue strategies. However, if the meta shifts into a favorable position, these decks might be a unique and powerful choice.

Kano, Dracai of Aether

Kano rears his head when arcane barrier equipment is unsleeved, wielding the only exponential damage in Flesh and Blood and an insane number of options where an experienced pilot can dig out. Kano has the greatest nut draw in the game, and with enough luck and skill he’s able to upset almost any situation. However, he suffers from his strategy being inconsistent and significantly less powerful when being targeted. And while Iyslander is on the radar, Kano finds himself hard pressed to find easy prey. However, it is possible that a sufficiently skilled Wizard will burn themselves a path to victory given the opportunity.

Rhinar, Reckless Rampage

Rhinar serves a niche in the format with his powerful anti-control tools. Intimidate is a powerful mechanic, disrupting decks that attempt to manage aggression. But he suffers difficult matchups against aggressive decks that are unaffected by Scowling Flesh Bag, namely Lexi. That, however, doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.

Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire

Dash serves as a litmus test in card quality, playing incredibly fair Flesh and Blood, with tools to battle with most decks in the game. She has options to deal with defensive decks such as Bravo, as well as being largely immune to Iyslander’s disruption. However, she lacks the raw card quality that modern FAB asks for, especially matching up with Lexi’s aggressive options. Dash notably found success in the PTI event recently in Hong Kong, beating out a field of 67 players, involving the other metagame decks in the Top 8 cut. 

Prism, Awakener of Sol

Prism returns in Dusk Till Dawn with a crippling life deficit, a new suite of angels, hyper-efficient heralds, and her powerful spectra mechanic. She’s a hero with extremely favored and unfavored matchups, obliterating defensive decks with generation of value off her auras, whilst suffering against wide aggressive decks and her fellow Illusionist Dromai. But never count Prism out. Her auras have historically been underestimated and approach the game from an unorthodox angle. And given a good metagame, Prism dominates.

Conclusion

This has been an insight to many of the decks that you might face in your Nationals games, and I strongly believe this metagame is far from being solved. I wish all of our readers an excellent Nationals season, and regardless of your results, never forget why we’re here in the Flesh and Blood: for fun and great games. See you all at the top tables (hopefully). 😉