Flesh and Blood World Premiere - Uprising was this past weekend which featured a Calling, Battle Hardened, and a Sealed Uprising event! Each participant also received promo versions of the cards “Phoenix Flame” and “Helios Mitre” which we were able to use in the sealed event as well. As a playgroup, we had done a lot of research going into the event, and it paid off really well for us in total. The majority of our research pertained to discovering which cards and card types were necessities and figuring out optimal pitch ratios and deck construction for each hero. We were looking forward to playing a refreshing limited format since it had been a long time since we have had a main set.
For Fai, the Draconic Ninja, we were looking for a lot of red-pitch Draconic attacks since getting a large Draconic chain link was important for your game-winning turns. Cards such as “Blaze Headlong” and “Rise from the Ashes”, which are low rarity cards, can really carry a Fai deck to great success. Fai is most likely the “easiest” hero to build in this sealed format, however, I do believe you need to get some of the more powerful majestics, like “Phoenix Form” or “Tome of Firebrand”, to have a good shot at winning a sealed event. General consensus regarding Fai’s token weapon, “Searing Embercleave”, before the event, seemed underwhelming at the very least (especially considering the power level of “Harmonized Kodachi”). We would soon find out how inaccurate that assessment would end up being throughout the weekend as the weapon provides an easily accessible Draconic chain link to extend your powerful turns.
Drommai, the Draconic Illusionist hero, felt like the opposite of Fai in a lot of ways. With Fai having the lowest floor required to have a strong deck, Drommai felt as though they had the highest floor of the three heroes within Uprising. Their strategies were very synergistic and required a lot of setup of making multiple “Ash Tokens” and transforming them into either “Aether Ashwings” or any of your Rare or Majestic dragons. Cards like “Rake the Embers (Red)” or “Skittering Sands” put in a lot of work considering you make ash tokens for free throughout the game with Drommai’s first ability. Drommai can also transform their ashes into bigger, better dragons with the “Invoke” Rares and Majestics. Some of these dragons are better than others, but all of these cards are red and have ‘Go again’ which triggers Drommai’s second ability, giving your dragons ‘go again’. Drommai can be very powerful with the right cards and could be pretty terrifying to go up against when they completed their hoard of dragons.
Last of the heroes in Uprising, but not least, we have the only non-draconic hero left in the set: Iyslander. Iyslander proved to be as threatening as the other heroes without needing very many powerful in-class cards. Most Iyslander decks we came across, including some of our own builds, consisted of about half their deck being blue pitch Ice/Wizard cards and quality red pitch cards to supplement playing on your own turn sometimes. The general strategy being, play a 1-cost blue pitch from your arsenal on your opponent's turn and activate your weapon, “Waning Moon”, with the remaining resource from a blue pitch. This strategy caused Iyslander decks to lean more into playing a slower game while chipping in arcane damage with their cards and weapon and disrupting their opponent by making “Frostbite” tokens with Iyslander’s ability. Iyslander doesn’t necessarily need specific cards to be a strong limited deck. More so, they want specific types of cards, namely 1-cost Blue Ice non-attack actions to play on their opponents turns. This allows their deck to be consistently pushing arcane damage while also slowing down their opponents. If you happen to pull about 15 blue Ice/Wizard cards this weekend, odds are you're playing Iyslander.
Finally, we come to the generic cards to look out for while playing sealed this weekend. First, just to get it out of the way, I could make this whole section about how good “Scar for a Scar” (especially the red pitch version) is in this format for every hero, but I won’t. Just know if you pull this card in your sealed pool or are able to draft one, you are playing that card in your deck. Moving on, there are a lot of solid generics in this set to fill those few remaining spots in your limited deck. Cards like “Flex”, “Fyendal’s Fighting Spirit”, and “Brothers In Arms” provide value outside of just being good attack action cards while cards like “Sigil of Protection” and “Oasis Respite” can provide you good defensive options if you want a slower game. Overall, you shouldn’t really be looking to play too many generics in your sealed deck as the heroes are very synergistic within their class’s cardpool that interact with their hero abilities too.
Our group in the World Premiere Event ended up having 2 Fai players, 1 Drommai player, and 1 Iylsander player. All of us felt individually and within the group agreed that our cardpools pushed us in those directions as well. After 6 rounds of sealed, the Fai players went 5-1 and 4-2, the Drommai went 2-3 and dropped, and the Iyslander player went 4-2. We noticed a lot of players in the event were playing Fai and, towards the end of the event, we started to see the strong Drommai and Iyslander card pools as well. Overall, the meta seems pretty balanced with it following a rock-paper-scissors pattern amongst the three heroes with Fai being favored over Drommai, Drommai over Iyslander, and Iyslander over Fai. With that being said, the meta isn’t as cut and dry as it seems. Each hero has tools to beat the other heroes even if they aren’t favored.
Overall, Day one of the event was a blast and this limited format seems incredibly fun to play. Each hero offers a unique playstyle and all of their card pools seem fairly balanced compared to each other. All of the generic equipment is equally strong and the new ‘Quell X’ mechanic is a great way to offer fair damage prevention on either player’s turn. The format feels great to play and we had an exuberant amount of fun playing in this event. Next up, Day 2 and The Calling - Team Blitz event!
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