(Invoke Azvolai | Art by Federico Musetti)

Flesh and Blood brings visceral, gladiatorial combat to the tabletop. Players choose their hero, select their equipment loadout, and bring an arsenal of attacks, actions, spells, and maneuvers to survive.

Set in the world of Rathe, heroes come in all different flavors.

Before Monarch, the first 13 heroes had access to an ever-growing generic card pool and their class’s suite of cards. For example, Rhinar used Brute and generic cards.

Then Monarch brought an extra element to deck construction and declared it to be the game’s future – talents. In this mothership article, Flesh and Blood creator James White said that talents “reveal the ‘completeness’ of the game.”

What Are Talents?

Talents represent the unique regional qualities of heroes and add an extra layer of distinctive design to many heroes in Flesh and Blood.

Here’s how James introduced the world to Levia, Shadowborn Abomination, and talents:

It simply became obvious that the world we needed to build to house our heroes and their stories would be comprised of 8 regions, each with its own identity, culture, motivations, agenda, and talent… How do we make a Brute from somewhere else in Rathe, say the Demonastery, feel different to a Brute from the Savage Lands other than just aesthetics? By giving them cards and mechanics that only heroes with the talent unique to that region can use!

So far, we’ve seen the following talents:

• Solona – Light
• Demonestary – Shadow
• Volcor – Draconic
• Aria – Elemental (Earth, Ice, Lightning)

I’d be remiss to not mention what could be a talent seen anywhere in Rathe: Royal. And, of course, we can’t forget about the mysteries of Mechanologists.

How Do Talents Affect Card Value in FABTCG

There are a lot of resources out there for determining the value of a card in Flesh and Blood. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Michael Hamilton’s “Expressed Value”
• Team Covenant’s FAB Foundations
• Vazerum’s “Card Formula Revealed”
• FABrain’s Summary

For now, I’ll be referencing the “Total Value” or “Rule of 8” method as well as Hamilton’s “Expressed Value”.

Total Value (8) = Pitch Value + Attack Value + Defense Value – Cost + Text Effect(s) + Card Type Modifier.

Expressed Value (EV) = Effective Damage Dealt – Resource Overheads (action points, cost, etc.).

Let’s explore the three pictured cards above to see if there’s a difference in value between a generic card, a class card, and a talented class card.

Brutal Assault

Brutal Assault has no added effects in its textbox, so determining its value is extremely straightforward.

Here are the calculations for its red-pitch version.

Total Value: 1 + 6 + 3 – 2 = 8

Expressed Value: 6 – 2(r) – 1(ap) = 3

Cards like Brutal Assault red and Wounding Blow red provide the insight we need to understand the default values of attack action cards.

To cover our bases here, let’s examine a generic card you have seen played against you.

Scar for a Scar

Total Value: 1 + 4 + 2 – 0 = 7 (plus effects)

But what about the conditional go again? LSS typically judges “go again” as having two (2) points of value and any condition as a negative one (-1).

So, Scar for a Scar takes its four-corners evaluation of seven (7) and its effects’ net value of one (2 + -1) to achieve an average Total Value of 8. Of course, when its condition is satisfied (you have lower health), Scar for a Scar has an effective Total Value of 9.

Expressed Value: 4 – 0(r) – 1(ap) = 3 OR 4 – 0(r) – 0(ap) = 4

Evaluating Scar for a Scar through these two models shows us why having more than one way for assessing attack action cards is essential. Expressed Value doesn’t consider the attack’s defense value. And since players are very unlikely to block with a card like Scar for a Scar, we can see why it finds its way into so many decks – when its condition is met, it has a higher EV than the default rate.

Enigma Chimera

While we don’t have a talentless Illusionist hero, we do have plenty of basic Illusitionist cards. Enigma Chimera red gives us another example of a negative condition that allows other values of the attack to increase.

Phantasm exemplifies the illusory nature of the class’s magic. When a strong enough attack blocks a Phantasm card, the illusion bursts, ending the attacker’s combat chain.

The question is, does Phantasm count as a negative one (-1) condition or negative two (-2)? Let’s investigate.

Total Value: 1 + 8 + 3 – 2 = 10 (minus Phantasm).

Expressed Value: 8 – 2(r) – 1(ap) = 5 (minus Phantasm).

So, is Phantasm worth one or two negative points of value? 

Running the math on other class cards like Already Dead and Pack Hunt red show how class cards gain an additional value point compared to standard generic cards.

Coach Phil from Australia describes this increased value as a result of a deckbuilding restriction. Since only Illusionists can run Enigma Chimera, it counts as a conditional minus one (-1) against the card’s overall value to keep the Rule of 8 consistent.

Embermaw Cenipai

Now let’s examine what happens when we have a talented class card. Does the extra deckbuilding restriction provide an additional value to cards?

Well, sometimes yes, and sometimes no.

Embermaw Cenipai is a Draconic Illusionist attack with Phantasm and a little extra effect if the attack is destroyed through Phantasm.

Total Value: 1 + 8 + 3 – 2 = 10 (minus Phantasm).

Expressed Value: 8 – 2(r) – 1(ap) = 5 (minus Phantasm).

While the additional effect doesn’t add to Embermaw’s calculated value, it does provide an extra hedge against Phantasm-popping attacks.

The History of Talents in Flesh and Blood

The advent of talents in Monarch and Tales of Aria created meta-defining heroes. Those sets were released at a pivotal time for the game as well. Thousands of players joined the game at this time around the world, and in-person events became more common after COVID-19 had made large gatherings nearly impossible.

Talents continued into the subsequent releases of Everfest, Uprising, and Dynasty. While many original Flesh and Blood heroes still saw competitive play, and only some talented heroes succeeded at their release, several heroes proved to be on another level. This question is why.

There are multiple factors, including:

• Talents drastically increased the card pools of some heroes
• COVID-19 hindered the playtest and design processes

Increased Card Pools

As the fourth set, Monarch proved to be a lot of players’ first Limited play experience for Flesh and Blood. Illusionist became the first new class since set two, Arcane Rising, and it needed a way to be capable in Limited and strong enough to break into the Constructed environment.

Enter talents. As James White wrote in the previously mentioned article, “Talents add a lot to the booster draft experience.” Players could stay open longer in draft by picking generic cards early or opting into one of the two talents in Monarch, Light or Shadow. Then, as each pack progressed, they could commit to one of their talent’s two heroes.

At her introduction, Prism could build decks from four sets of generic cards and the newly introduced Illusionist, Light, and Light Illusionist cards. As our study of value showed us, access to three categories of cards with (on average) increased value to their generic counterparts helped her merge right into the meta.

The constructed scene at this time had eight adult heroes bolstered from their own draftable sets and Crucible of War, a supplemental set that brought those eight heroes plenty of new toys. So every hero with a previously represented class gained a substantially larger card pool than their predecessors.

More selection alone didn’t bring heroes like Boltyn to instant stardom, but it’s easy to see how a game early in its development could benefit certain decks more than others through set design.

Consider Magic: the Gathering. Every set of Magic uses the same color pie. Flesh and Blood complicated deck construction by having a conceptually infinite pie (yum). Every added class and talent offers a new slice for players to enjoy and designers to balance.

Design Flaws and Power Creep

I am an LSS fanboy, but I also think it’s permissible to offer criticism. James White and other members of the development team have openly acknowledged how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their design and playtesting processes while creating Tales of Aria (which may have also been the first set fully developed by their team, as opposed to the previous sets which James had iterated on for years).

Even balancing Monarch before its release presented problems. LSS was planning multiple large-level events around the release of their fourth set. They wanted a premier Limited format to showcase their game to a growing global audience.

They wanted all four heroes to thrive in both draft and sealed to achieve this goal. Unfortunately, Chane wasn’t performing well. Let’s let LSS explain:

We knew and wanted Chane to be a top-performing deck in constructed formats… Considerations such as Chane having three (3) intellect, less than 20/40 health, no arsenal, variations to his activated ability, and the cost of some of his cards were all considered. In hindsight, the mistake was reducing the resource cost of both Seeds of Agony and Rift Bind during booster draft development to enable these two (2) commons to form the core of the primary Chane draft archetype.

With Chane unleashed on the constructed meta, the Tales of Aria heroes would need to emerge as competitors. This desire to match power levels and disruptions in processes from the pandemic eventually led to the Elemental heroes proving too powerful for the game’s foundations.

Organized play events surrounding 2023’s World Championship sent the remaining Elemental heroes Lexi, Livewire and Iyslander, Stormbind to Living Legend Status.

Presently, the Draconic heroes of Volcor and the ongoing War of the Monarchs between Light and Shadow display the game’s only talented heroes.

Dynasty, Outsiders, Bright Lights, and Heavy Hitters only brought marginal support to talented heroes, focusing instead on adding non-talented heroes and an array of support for both new and old classes. But what about the future?

The Future of Talents in Flesh and Blood

As we’ve seen, talents present an additional modal lever for Flesh and Blood’s developers to pull while creating unique tabletop experiences.

I believe LSS intended to sweep across the world of Rathe and add each region’s talent to the game before sweeping back through to bring new heroes with new combinations of class and talent. But with rapid growth and some mistakes in the design of some talented cards, they chose to return to their bread and butter by mimicking Welcome to Rathe as best they could in Outsiders and the upcoming Heavy Hitters.

We still have many of Rathe’s talents to see, and several mentioned classes are waiting for their turn in the sun.

The adjustments to the Living Legend system came with a promise of an influx of new heroes in 2024. Some will replace known heroes (Prism, Awakener of Sol), and others will replace previous combinations (Vynnset, Iron Maiden).

When LSS decides the time is right, all they’ll need to do is pull the talent lever again to show us how deep their designs can really go.