Count Your Blessings (“CYB”) has shown itself to be a very real card. This comes as a shock to some high-level players like Rhea Adams who ended up eating a card because Jacob Clements brought a CYB deck to a Top 8 finish at Calling: Lyon last month. The card has been making waves lately, and that has people talking. Some think it’s broken, game warping, unfun, and should be banned. Others are loving that there is the ability to play some of their favorite strategies again in a wave of decks that felt a little too resistant to control. This article is going to touch on some of the numbers behind CYB and some other things to consider with the card.

I’ll be using Brutal Assault as a comparison, as the vanilla two cost-attack seemed like the closest offensive comparison. Other cards can be substituted in its place but this keeps things pretty simple and uses a card I’ve never heard anyone complain about.

Card Evaluation Method One: The Add and Subtract Method

This method takes into account all the pieces of text on a card and assigns them values that are combined to create a card score. This is a great way of looking at the full utility of a card.

How It Works

To start, this is the formula:

Pitch Value + Power Value + Defense Value + Effects – Cost = Card Score

In this formula all effects are worth 1 with the exception of go again which is 2. An average card tends to come out to 8 Card Score in this method. This can be confirmed by using Snatch red. It’s math would look like this 1 + 4 + 2 + 1 – 0 = 8.

Addition and Subtraction on CYB

When looking at CYB I am assuming that a player is playing every copy of it. Trying to account for lists that play Call to the Grave or having to discard them occasionally to effects would make for more complicated of a math problem than I want to tackle. The main thing to account for on Count Your Blessings is the scaling. Because of this, I use the effects value to indicate the life gain off of each copy and increment the extra life gain by one for each extra copy. Assuming we play from all the blues through all the reds this mean the first two would be:

B1 = 3 + 0 + 0 + 1 – 2 = 2

B2 = 3 + 0 + 0 + 2 – 2 =3

and so on.

In this configuration an interesting thing happens with the card values of CYB. From blue to red played in order, the values count from 2 through 10. That means that you can add all values from 2 to 10 to get a total value of 54 for all nine copies. The other interesting thing is that if 8 is considered the average point, CYB numbers one through six are under rate, seven is on rate, and you get two of them at an above rate value.

Addition and Subtraction Method on Brutal Assault

Brutal Assault is a lot easier to run through this method as it’s one of the cards that falls perfectly on the average. All copies of Brutal Assault come out to a card score of 8. This means for the total value of a full rainbow of Brutal Assaults we can multiply by nine to get 72. This is a bit more value than CYB and all of them play on rate from the first to the last.

Card Evaluation Method Two: Just the Proactive Numbers

This is a method I put together is intended to compare cards when there is no intent of blocking with them. This seems like a good number to look at because CYB is a null block and the previous method knocks it a lot of points based on its lack of blocking utility.

How It Works

This method uses a little simpler formula in that we’ve removed the defensive component. This is indicative of cards that we intend to never block with.

Pitch Value + Power Value + Effects – Cost = Card Score

Effects are calculated the same as before.

Proactive Numbers on CYB

There’s not much to be said here; removing defense values doesn’t effect the value of CYB because it doesn’t have a block value. There is no value to be lost here.

Proactive Numbers on Brutal Assault

Brutal Assault sees a significant change with each copy of it being dropped to a five-value card instead of an eight when we stop accounting for its defensive value. This brings it down a whopping 27 points of value, bringing it down to 45 when we assume that we’re only blocking with it. This being said, this method will see cards like Cadaverous Contraband scoring better, as it has more offensive potential.

What Does This All Mean?

In the end, CYB is more powerful than some thought. It’s better than most three-block cards that people put into their decks with the intent to play out all nine of them. This is because it doesn’t have any weight in its block value. When compared to a two-resource cost six-power with an on hit, it finds itself at the same value. It’s important to note that an on hit effect is at the mercy of it hitting, but getting cards from the opponent is a form of value in itself. When we average out the CYBs you see that each of them is gaining about six life, and that puts them on par with red attacks. This is a tradeoff for the fact that CYB decks don’t get to block on hits as well.

Where Should We Play the Card?

As far as I see it, this card belongs in two different places: decks that can reverse the flow of the game, and Guardian. The decks that can reverse game flow are Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry, Teklovossen, Esteemed Magnate, and Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire on Pistol plan. These decks want to survive till late game to assemble some kind of inevitability. They can afford to take off turns at random points in the game to make up for the hand having too many CYB in it and the other parts of the deck are optimized for blocking.

Guardian likes CYB for one reason, because it works perfectly on curve with Rampart of the Ram’s Head. If you’re built with a correct blue count, this should be able to up the value of every CYB by one making it into a 63-value rainbow, putting it more in line with more diverse options. I think a lot of other decks can play the card and be fine, but these will really excel with it.

Adding It All Up

CYB is a strong archetype, but it is beatable and has a good opportunity cost. The decks will not fair well in a meta that can force on hits or interact with their plans. People leveraging the fact that there are so many non-blocks and their weapons could prove to be tough for these decks to deal with. Poison the Well is also showing up lately with a lot of success as it can ruin the value curve and potentially kill late game. I think this card is fine for now but LSS should definitely keep an eye on it as it could find a home where it’s way too strong.

Jo O'Brien

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