I’ve never been much of a deck builder. I’ve tweaked decks that others have placed into my hands, and I find my strength lies in my play or deck choice over innovative deckbuilding. However, I have been perusing and building many more decks than I had in my previous years in Flesh and Blood, due to Worlds:Osaka preparation and been playing Arkham Horror: The Card Game in my off time.

As Flesh and Blood approaches its 5th Anniversary, the card pool for each hero has expanded tremendously. This provides more space for unique game plans and options in deckbuilding, thus demanding more level-ups to stay on the edge of deck technology. 

This leads me to something I’ve been weighing when building my decks: how do I keep the deck running smoothly, while being maximally powerful?

Clunk vs Smoothness

Many cards in Flesh and Blood are designed to be more powerful, but at a drawback. The cards with lesser drawbacks tend to be more consistent, but significantly less powerful. This leads to finding a mix of both powerful cards and a level of consistency to have a deck run smoothly, and have enough power to compete. So, what consistutes a clunky card?

Pitching for One

The first thing that makes a card clunkier is one of the core balancing factors of cards in Flesh and Blood, pitch value. Each deck needs a certain number of pitch cards to function (or a full commit to a no-pitch strategy). By pitching for one, it forces you to utilize the card, either by using the card, arsenalling the card, or using the card to block. Cards that are clunky by other measures get away with it by pitching for three, and are usable as a resource card. It also limits your pitch stacking options, as non-red power cards can be lined up easily in the second cycle, whereby pitching reds often is quite inefficient to make work, losing further tempo in the first cycle. For example, which of the following cards are the most clunky?

This, however, isn’t a problem, rather more of a factor to consider when building a deck. A deck with few reds rarely has enough power to compete. Thus, this is more so a boon for powerful cards that pitch for yellow or blue, that permit them to be more flexible when it’s not the right conditions for them to be used.

Poor Blocking

This leads to the second factor: poor blocking potential. As previously mentioned, if the card can’t be pitched, it has to be utilized in other ways. Blocking is a method for cards to retain their value when they otherwise can’t be used, either due to disruption from your opponent or from their hand not lining up. Cards that block poorly suffer in this regard, as decks with poor blocking suffer especially poorly when forced to play from behind.

One example of this is the popular Aurora, Shooting Star combo deck, which leverages numerous cards that block poorly, alongside sacrificing armor for power pieces, hoping to enact their linear game plan. The cost, however, is the deck performs quite poorly when falling behind and forced to block, with limited armor options and blocks from hand.

Conditional Usage

Lastly, powerful cards occasionally have requisites in order to be used to their full potential. This might cause cards to clunk if the conditions aren’t met, either by your hand or the game plan of the deck having gone awry. The cost of the powerful potential of these cards is often paid by the quality of other cards in the deck, aiming to enable these cards to take over the game.

One example is the Decompose cards. Felling of the Crown and Plow Under are immensely powerful cards, however they require a deck to be built around them, using other Earth and Decompose cards which tend to be less powerful than other cards in order to enable these haymakers. However, when the price is paid, the power of these cards is well worth it, and they’re some of the most powerful tools the Earth heroes have access to. 

Consuming the Action Point

Go again is one of the most ubiquitous key words in any card game, and the lack thereof on a card is a hefty cost. Go again enables large hands to be played, chaining several cards in a turn. However, cards without go again are either the only play of the turn, or the ending play after a bunch of other go again cards. Aggressive decks that aim to use all the cards in their hands have to be wary of including cards that lack go again in their decks, lest too many of them plague your hand and brick up your turn.

One example are the zero-cost blue Illusionist auras Shimmers of Silver and Haze Bending. These cards block poorly and consume the action point, thus often being the last card an Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry would play. Strong Enigma players have to navigate their turns cleanly to weave together defense and aggression with cards that do not consume the action point to end their turn with these auras to maintain the pressure against her opponents. 

Another example is deckbuilding for the Ninjas, such as Fai, Rising Rebellion. A vast majority of their decks are designed to chain go again, and careful consideration has to be made to which finishers to include in the deck, lest it becomes too clunky. Salt the Wound? Snatch? Lava Burst?

Doesn’t Fit Deck Ratios

Lastly, cards enable other cards in a well built deck. Any cards that stick out and don’t aid other cards in the deck can be a heavy cost as they may cause other cards to become inconsistent and cause a deck to misfunction.

Viserai, Rune Blood and his ratios are the prime example. Numerous cards in Viserai promote maintaining a 50/50 ratio for non-attack and attack action cards to maximize the power of cards such as Tome of the Arknight and Sonata Arcanix, and keeping Viserai’s hands active. Thus, by adding defense reactions into the deck, even Runeblade’s powerful options such as Haunting Rendition and Reduce to Runechant cause these ratios to become significantly less consistent. Hence, when considering sideboarding in defense reactions, this loss of consistency has to be kept in mind.

How Much Clunk Can a Deck Afford?

So how much clunk can a deck afford? Sacrificing these power cards altogether is a non-option, thus these cards must be kept in mind when working with one another. A good salad of enablers make a main course of haymakers all the more effective. It depends largely on the game plan of your deck, as well as the requisites of your payoffs.

Flexible decks which weave between offense and defense can utilize more clunky cards as they navigate their turns to generate value by throwing power card after power card when their conditions line up. Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry is one example of these type of decks, where her entire game plan is to enable her best cards such as Manifestation of Miragai, Phantasmaclasm, and Miraging Metamorph to bury an opponent under value. It also helps that Enigma’s natural game plan presents a powerful defense as she assaults her opponent.

Decks that have a lesser requirement to function can also afford more powerful cards. Kayo, Armed and Dangerous is one example, merely asking for his deck to hold a wealth of six-powers, made easier by his passive hero effect. Thus, due to the ease of achieving his ratios, this leads to Kayo affording several powerful cards that don’t fit the deck’s requirements to push the power of his deck. Such examples are Cast Bones or Bloodrush Bellow. 

Battling aggressive, high pressure decks also presses the need for more consistency over strength. These decks don’t give you much time to line up powerful cards, often asking for blocks to hamper their attacks, and needing to enact your game plan quickly and efficiently to alleviate pressure. Against defensive decks, you’re afforded more time to assemble clunkier, but powerful combos to overwhelm them.  This change is something that can be afforded in sideboarding. For example, I run minimal payoffs (cutting Maximum Velocity) in my Dash I/O deck in aggressive mirrors, as the excessive power is not needed in order to successfully race aggressive opponents.

Carefully tweaking these decks, feeling out how each hand plays out and which cards tend to get “stuck” is a good measure of which cards are worth cutting in favor of smoothness, either via adding more cards that enable these powerful payoffs, or trimming the number of payoffs in your deck. It’s always fun to use the fun flashy cards, but it’s usually better to include more copies of the tireless ratio cards working in the background to help your payoffs shine.

Case Study: Dash I/O

One example I can think of is planning a deck for Dash I/O. Dash I/O is a deck that aims to utilize her hero power to cheat on Flesh and Blood‘s intellect system, playing with five intellect over four when casting items such as Boom Grenade and Teklo Core off the top of her deck. However, she bears the weakness of needing to include these powerful items in their deck, which don’t block at all, and require other attacks to enable. Thus this involves a careful balance of how many Items to include in the deck without hampering her consistency.

On top of this deckbuilding requirement, Dash I/O has a critical weakness by which she often fatigues her own deck very quickly, using boost cards to extend her hand to dig for Items off the top of her deck. This leads to Dash I/O needing to overcome decks that attempt to block her out, thus needing clunky, powerful cards to go over the top and overcome a deck that blocks. 

Ratchet Up, Maximum Velocity, and System Reset are three potential payoffs for Dash I/O that illustrate my point for deckbuilding with clunkiness in mind. None of these cards perform well with one another. Ratchet Up and Maximum Velocity both lack go again, and are likely the ending attack of a long boost chain. 

Among the three, Ratchet Up is the least clunky. Its purpose in the Dash I/O deck is to connect Boom Grenade on hits, and get through an opponent committed to blocking via reducing their block value. The card is relatively cheap and flexible for a payoff, being able to Galvanize in a pinch when trying to weather an assault. 

Maximum Velocity is an especially powerful, yet costly card. It deals significantly more damage than Ratchet Up, forcing Boom Grenade hits through pure power, however it requires the precondition of having boosted thrice in one turn, and costing two. This severely restricts what cards a Dash I/O deck can include, as needing a hand to line up perfectly for Maximum Velocity to be castable. However, its power is unparalleled and might be worth building for.

Lastly, System Reset is clunky as it doesn’t aid in Dash I/O’s game plan, and its power comes into use when preserving Dash I/O’s powerful Items for more turns to keep the pressure going against an opponent trying to wait out her attacks. Pitching for two gives this card some level of flexibility, however its specific use case might hamper the usability of System Reset.

Conclusion

I hope this article aids your deckbuilding ventures while preparing your decks for your upcoming events!  Having played Flesh and Blood for so long, the widening deck pool presents new puzzles each set that give you a wealth of choices to try out to tweak out a perfect deck to find an edge against your opponents.

I will be travelling to Worlds: Osaka, do feel free to say hi if you’re there.