(Strategic Planning | Art by Peyeyo)

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions

It’s your first Armory. Your deckbox is packed, your sleeves are fresh, and your excitement is high. You get your first pairing. You shake hands, unpack your hero, and realize… What’s my gameplan? You dive in with a guesswork strategy, but then are faced with a new puzzle. You’ve never seen this exact draw sequence before… What do I do with this hand?

Believe it or not, this story is not unique to your first Armory. It happens even at the highest level when new factors can leave you unprepared for how to handle a game. Flesh and Blood is still young and innovation happens from tournament to tournament. If you aren’t the one in the driver’s seat, you at least need to be ready to adapt.

Being ready on your feet is one of the hardest skills to master in this game, because it takes a deep understanding of not just the capabilities of your own deck, but also of your opponent’s. While the easy answer is to just spend more time playing so you can play every matchup, draw every hand possible, and witness both wins and losses, there are some guiding principles that can help you learn the most from even a kitchen table game.

Ask What is the Game State

Game state recognition is the determinant factor between feeling lost or in control in a game of Flesh and Blood. Regardless of an early life lead or a slew of passive turns from your opponent, each turn gives you a mountain of new information to process. At minimum, you’re seeing eight new cards from both you and your opponent. It’s a lot to process, and you don’t need to be on top of it all the time, but there’s some leading questions that help tell the story of a game. 

Unlike other card games with a board state, an ongoing game is told through the degradation of armor, the faster pace of seeing cards in a deck, who is setting up with an arsenal, and, of course, life totals. Here’s a simple example with a question that’s still core to anyone playing against Bravo, Showstopper: how many copies of Crippling Crush have you seen?

The amount of Crippling Crush can tell you a lot about how the game will play out. Bravo will want to take damage to return his biggest hitter, so you need to prepare. Save your armor, set up a defense reaction in arsenal, or slam a big turn with an arsenal play so you can be ready for an off turn. 

Ask Which Card to Arsenal

Drawing four cards and playing four cards is not the right mindset. Decks are built with powerful turns and combos in mind, and you have easy access to an incredible way to reduce card draw variance: the arsenal. Your arsenal allows you multiple new ways to play turn cycles, either by pushing for an effective five-card hand, block down and play three-card combos with more reliability, and more. Either way, your arsenal should never be a zone you take for granted. 

When you’re choosing what to arsenal, you need to know what card you’re waiting for to either be your new arsenal target or to be the other half of what you were waiting for. For example, in Levia, Shadowborn Abomination, she’s looking to pair Dread Screamer with Graveling Growl. When you see a hand with one of those halves, consider what waiting for that combo does versus playing it out now or blocking with it. It’s hard to have hard rules beyond this one: your arsenal is intentional, not incidental! Well, unless it’s Snatch or Ponder. I never said this was a perfect rule!

Ask Why You Lost or Won

There are myriad factors that go into any win or loss in Flesh and Blood, and almost any of them are worthwhile moments to pick apart and analyze, especially when you’re newer. Beyond the perhaps obvious mistake made by a player, try to not to chalk up a loss or a win to lucky draws. While that sure enough might have been the case, you should start your analysis with a reflection on a turn cycle that perhaps demanded one more card out of your hand than you could handle. Would having armor available have protected your card? When did you use your armor?

Specifically with a win, packing up and moving on to the next game quickly means you miss out on worthwhile reflection. While it’s great to relish your well deserved victories, make sure to reflect on why it was so well deserved in the first place. Were you able to punish a misplay? How did you play it differently than last time?

The more games you play, win or lose, help you recognize patterns in the future that can sway a loss into a win. For example, you could have let an Azalea, Ace in the Hole hit you with an undominated Remorseless early in the game and then not have the choice to block her dominated Remorseless later in the game. Perhaps those life points saved early could have made the second Remorseless not cost you the game!

The principles we went over above are the baseline of what I try to answer in every Flesh and Blood game, especially when I’m playing a new hero. While you definitely need to read your cards first and foremost, taking the time to check in with yourself and ask these questions can help you feel the ebb and flow of the game. 

In this series of What to Ask And How to Answer, I’ll take you through the questions to ask yourself about Flesh and Blood both in and out of the game. The best part? I’m always learning new questions to ask myself as well, so there is no limit to what we can learn together. 

Ethan Van Sant

Ethan ‘Man Sant’ Van Sant is known for his commitment to Levia and his coverage of FaB events as Savage Feats. He has a light background with Yugioh and Pokemon, but Flesh and Blood is the first TCG that has fully consumed him… As willed by Blasmophet.