Let’s Dance Towards Death

You could cut the tension with a Nebula Blade. Across from my battle-weary Runeblade stood a raging Brute, and he was swinging at me. Specifically, he was swinging six damage at me, and I was down to eight. Sure, I could take it, but I had a major gamble on my hands. The Brute was down to one life, and I had the card to close out the game in my hand and a Tunic resource to pay for it. If, however, I went down to two life and he drew the one defense reaction that deals two damage to me, it was over.

I took the gamble because I always do. That's one of my weaknesses, I'll admit, but it paid off. I attacked my opponent with my Vexing Malice, he could only prevent one of the two damage, and I won the game. I turned around to revel in victory with my brother who had been watching, but instead of the admiration I expected, his face was solemn.

"Yo, my deck box is gone."

His panic crept over to me as I realized that any one of the hundreds of Flesh and Blood players at the 2024 US Nationals could have his deck box filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars’ worth of legendaries, cold foils, and promos. I mean, he uses The Academic. It's huge.

I flail about in confusion (I don't thrive under pressure), but he calmly suggests we check the lost and found. No way. There are too many people here, and that deck box is too valuable. It's gone, and the trip is ruined. Except that wasn't the case. Someone had turned it in, and my anxiety became appreciation for this community.

FAB's Mechanics and Community

FAB is a mechanically tight, tense, and enormously rewarding game featuring heroes fit to sit the Iron Throne or lead the forces of Middle Earth. For my money, it has the best community in all of tabletop gaming. I thought I'd start with a story about that community because if you haven't played tabletop games with strangers, it's important to know the other people will make or break your experience.

While I contend that FAB is the best card game I've ever played, the reason I still attend weekly events (called armories) and travel hundreds of miles for cardboard is the community. The story I started with is by no means an outlier. I'm pretty sure Majin Bae has a similar story on his YouTube channel, and at the Rosetta World Premier, I watched an attendee pick up $40 from under a chair, ask the guy sitting across from the chair who his last opponent was, and take that money and info to the front desk.

Over the two years I have played this game, I can count on one hand the number of unpleasant people that have sat across from me to clash steel in the world of Rathe. My locals have become my friends, and the people I meet at larger events are all helpful, ready to have fun, and most importantly, willing to uphold the vibe that we created to explicitly stand apart from the more toxic gaming communities. You know which ones I'm talking about.

And when you love something, what do you do? You tell everyone about it. This will be the first in a series of three articles that cover the mechanics, the lore, and the community, respectively, of my favorite card game. And so, for your consideration, treat these articles as a pitch—or perhaps a plea—to try out and join the Flesh and Blood community. It's where all the cool kids are.

Under the Hood of FAB’s Mechanics

Warriors going blow for blow, wizards conserving their energy for one devastating spell, an assassin’s target killed by the dagger they never saw—these are the moments Flesh and Blood seeks to emulate. You are a classic fantasy hero or villain, pitted against foes whose deeds the bards sing of in taverns across Rathe.

Two adventurers locked in a deadly duel: you both start at full power, and as the fight goes on, your strength and resources dwindle. You have a pool of health points, usually 40, that diminishes as hammers swing, arrows fly, and spells sling. This is pretty common to most games, but in Flesh and Blood, you also start with armor and weapons that become worn, and even break as you use them. You must choose your timing precisely because one mistake often cascades into others, and games are won and lost by who has made the fewest number of misplays.

Can you eke out more value per card than your opponent? That is the question, and that is what makes FAB so exciting.

At the end of every one of your turns you draw up to a hand size of four cards (normally), and the challenge is to use those four cards as effectively as possible. What that means depends on the hero you are playing.

• Maybe you are a hyper aggressive ninja, and so your goal is to get the max amount of damage out of those four cards as possible.

• Maybe you are a guardian who’s deck is all about the defense, baby! In that case, maybe your goal is to get the most block value out of those four cards to fatigue your opponent, and once they are out of their power cards and equipment, you beat them senseless with a hammer that hits harder than they can.

• Maybe you hate fun, so you want to disrupt your opponent as much as you can with those four cards until you can go in for the killing blow, you dirty assassin player. I get it; I think I’m smarter than everyone else too.

However you play, you must contend with the push and pull of an offense/defense trade off. Keen eyed readers will note I stated that you draw up at the end of your turn. This is very different from most card games where you draw at the beginning of a turn. This is because the cards you draw must last you through your opponent’s turn into yours.

Most cards can be used either for defense or offense. This means you have a choice. How much offense will you sacrifice to defend your life total? The answer to that question comes down to the hero you are playing, but also the cards you drew and the state of the game. There are a myriad of ways to play, and it all comes down to how effective you are with those fours cards, or, alternatively, how effectively you plan for the future.

Resource Management and Pitch Stacking

But Mr. Presley, you say, I have a type A personality, patience, and have not been diagnosed with ADHD. I cannot relate, however, some of the devs of FAB apparently can. One of FAB’s core design philosophies from the start was that all cards in your deck matter.

In a game like Magic the Gathering, you will often only be seeing a portion of your deck, and this introduces a large amount of variance. The more variance there is, the more luck is involved, and therefore less skill. Flesh and Blood seeks to be a low variance game with the best built decks often being the most consistent.

The way FAB achieves this is a resource system that creates a cycle during which you will see all of your cards one or more times. This isn’t always the case. Some games are lost quickly, particularly when it comes to the hyper aggressive decks. Much like how most cards can be used for both defense or offense, nearly every card(with few exceptions) has a third option; to be used as a resource. When you use your card as a resource, it goes to the bottom of the deck to be drawn again later. Most games will get through this cycle at least once, and the resource value(or pitch value) of a card is inversely equal to its power, i.e. more powerful cards tend to have low pitch values, and vice versa.

This also plays into the idea that you are more powerful at the beginning of the match and become worn as it goes on. After the first cycle, you have fewer power cards and more high pitch value cards. This also leads to the ability to potentially stack your pitch in a specific way, or at least remember what is coming up. This has a very high skill ceiling, and varies in effectiveness by hero. I should also mention there is a more immediate way to plan for future turns.

Planning Ahead

At the end of your turn, before you draw up, if you have cards remaining, you can place one in a designated spot called the arsenal. This effectively gives you a five-card hand the next turn, though there are downsides. You cannot pitch or defend(normally) from the arsenal, so place cards there wisly. You don’t want to get a card stuck and lose the flexibility of your arsenal for the rest of the game.

High Skill Ceiling

All of these mechanics combine to create a game filled with an enormous amount of choices every turn that will all be massively impactful to the outcome of the game. Another way of saying that is Flesh and Blood is hard. It’s true, and when you first start playing you will lose. You will lose a great deal of the time. You will, however, start improving as you play, and I think that is the best feature of FAB. Yes, luck is involved, and yes, some decks are better than others, but ultimately if you know what you are doing, you can beat a better deck with better luck if your opponent doesn’t.

Keen FAB players will notice that my story at the beginning of this article doesn’t make any sense. If that’s you, I’m not sure why you’re reading this, but if I attack with Vexing Malice, the two arcane damage (which the Brute could only partially prevent) would always come in before they could react with Reckless Swing—the card that could kill me. Yes, fine, you got me.

I have been playing this game for two years, and while I still make mistakes, I am significantly better than when I started. You can see yourself progress as a player in real time. You go from losing every game, to winning a few, and the sky’s the limit. Well, first place at worlds in the limit, I guess.

Regardless, games end like that story all the time, and I don’t mean the fact that I forgot the rules. You make choices and win and lose games by your knowledge of your deck and your opponent’s. I have never experienced a more satisfying skill progression in a game as I have with the Flesh and Blood Trading Card Game.