First Steps - Flesh and Blood Sealed Deck

My experience learning the Flesh and Blood TCG by opening Tales of Aria booster packs to play Sealed Deck.

This month has been exciting for Flesh and Blood players, with the Calling tournament in Las Vegas, then pre-release and release weekend for Tales of Aria. And I missed all of it. But, thanks to the generosity of family, I was able to take a minute to make a little extra money last month, save most of that extra money, and buy a handful of booster packs.

Then I learned I had leftover store credit with an online retailer from when I must have been playing a lot of Modern in Magic: The Gathering some lifetimes ago, and was able to pay only a few dollars extra for a whole booster box.

My first booster box ever, and my first time buying a Flesh and Blood product.

Nostalgia, and the Majesty of Trading Card Games

I've been playing, and loving, TCGs since I first saw Pokemon cards in preschool (late 90s). Watching older kids play with them from afar grabbed my immediate and deep interest, but my shyness and instability compared to everyone else's widely varying degrees of boldness, abrasiveness, and instability kept me from engaging with all but a few other kids over the next several years, let alone the few much older and/or bolder kids I ever saw playing with the cool cards (some of whom were bullies, some of whom I did not know were bullies until I tried playing with them, and others seemingly disappeared off the surface of this planet).

So, I kept playing Pokemon Yellow and Blue (and few other games) on my Pikachu Game Boy Color at home, watching all the cartoons on TV or renting VHS tapes from our library and catching a few kids playing it there or at the playground of my elementary school, rarely engaging with more than an invisible ten foot pole coming out of my eyes. I have no idea how long this really went on for, but it felt simultaneously like an eternity and the blink of eye, both at the time and whenever I think back on that time. Weeks, months, years, I don't know, but finally my mom let me buy a pack or two at Target when I was gawking at all the art on the packaging. It was stunning, in a way literally stunning because I had no idea what I was supposed to do now that I had cards, and that I was now thinking about how I would have to find someone to play with between older cousins and often mentally exhausting kids at school (on top of all the regular mental and physical drains from being in school and a kid with a lot of problems with sleep and myriad other things they wouldn't learn about for years to decades).

Eventually we started shopping more often at our local Kmart, and I would be given permission to run to and get lost in their multiple toy and game sections. Kmart, in my home town in the 90s, was the biggest superstore we had, roughly tied with Walmart but, in place of an auto shop that my mom rarely needed, Kmart had a much bigger variety of food (burgers, fries, chicken, hot dogs, mac and cheese, and red and blue and off-white flavored slushies, like large gas station offerings meets Sonic or Dairy Queen) at the in-store restaurant compared to Walmart's small in-store McDonald's or the Burger King next door (although that fast food place had my favorite chicken sandwich and ranch dressing).

Super Soakers, bikes, roller skates and blades, walls of Lego, Barbie, and so on and so forth. And trading card packs (Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon). Eventually these sections would show me critical early-00s kids stuff such as Bionicle, Beyblades, Playstation 2 and Xbox demo kiosks (that often froze at the start screen of any particular demo disk, or the controllers themselves were unplugged and it would play a video until someone came over, unlocked the sliding kiosk window, and plugged everything in for you) and a freely-available Game Boy Advance with a Metroid Fusion demo tucked away in a claustrophobic hallway of locked shelves which provided a relatively great degree of privacy and quiet compared to the busy toy section to truly get lost in the demo game on stressful days.

Whenever I was able to open a pack of Pokemon cards, just like whenever I read a new book with my parents, it was a tiny world to get lost in for the rest of the day. Just reading and cool art, and little physical artifacts to hold and use as game pieces to play with other people. Plenty of wonder, but also focus, and structure to much more easily socialize with other kids, and a way to stretch my brain to learn and, sometimes, teach other people (when recess bullying and stealing wasn't happening).

Anyway, I eventually picked up a bit of Yu-Gi-Oh for its first few sets, never really playing the game until I got a video game for the Game Boy Advance, then moved on to other shows and (much) bigger books and video games throughout middle school and high school, in addition to discovering and rediscovering D&D multiple times across several editions. Somewhere in there I started paying attention to the art of Magic: The Gathering (around Shards of Alara, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, and Zendikar), then playing it myself (with Innistrad, Return to Ravnica, and Theros), then getting into Modern, Legacy, moving, chaos, lost and stolen or otherwise never found boxes, and falling off.

It feels like it's been an eternity and the blink of an eye since I was deep into a card game. Long story short, re-discovering Flesh and Blood after bouncing off when its first set released (I was simply too busy and too exhausted at the time) has been giving me another way to get lost in a good way. On top of being a thing to look forward to (watching people play, seeing people discuss, analyze, and get excited about), it's just now become my current way to remove myself from the chaos and instability and loudness of real life, and a casual structure that helps me get back to interacting with the world and socializing with people again after living alone in the mountains for a couple of years then returning home during wildfire evacuations and the still ongoing pandemic.

It's been an emotion year, and an emotional month, and an emotional week, pieces of colorful and nicely-cut paper included.

Six pretty packs to play Sealed.

Breaking Open the Box

After learning I missed the pre-release for Tales of Aria (after hearing about it months ago and making plans to go to my local game store to play), I spent most of my free time re-learning the basics of the game in between caregiving and packing to move and trying to avoid panicking or losing sleep. I'll get into all of that another time. Eventually I remembered how the basics worked and learned a few new details, getting comfortable enough to play. The biggest problem now was finding people to play with and finding a regular schedule that works for me right now.

Although I wasn't able to go to my LGS's weekend event, I was able to play a very short and casual Sealed Deck event online over Discord with a shoddy video and text, which worked better than I thought but was still significantly more awkward than talking (but I've been there many times trying to play TTRPGs over text in forum threads). Here's hoping within the next month I'll have my computer and desk rearranged, or I'll least be able to afford a better camera and microphone solution to play online regularly when I can't make it local events in the evening (or just don't have the energy).

So, let's see what I opened, and which hero I decided to play.

Pack One

My first look at these cards in almost two years, and first time owning any.
I love the design of the card back.

The contents of pack one, and my first look at the set cards and mechanics outside of previews of the three new heroes.

While I've been trying to make habits to be less materialistic, I'll always love art and games, and having a physical tabletop game with beautiful art and striking design feels undeniably great.

Speaking of design, Flesh and Blood booster packs are designed to have five common generic type cards followed by one rare, one rare or higher, one foil (of any rarity), one equipment type card (of any rarity), then six common class type cards, and lastly one token card.

In Tales of Aria specifically, generic cards are replaced by elemental and "essence" cards (I don't know what the official terminology for this cycle of cards is, but they align with the essences of each hero and the types of elemental fusion in the set: ice, lightning, and earth). After you play an elemental card (which may also have a class type) and pitch any cards or use leftover resources to pay its cost, if it has fusion you can revealed one of these essence cards from your hand to fuse it and gain additional effects.
    This feels exciting as a player and designer, and very intimidating as a new player trying to guess the ratio of elemental and essence cards I should have in my deck on top of only having the barest impressions of what blitz and classic constructed decks look like (and absolutely no idea of what other limited decks look like).

But it should work out fine, as odds are that each player will have just enough cards to build a 30 (possibly 40) card deck with two of the three elements they open, and one of the three classes they open. Just by judging the design of the booster packs, it seems that, most often, your most challenging decisions will only be deciding which hero you want to play most, and—each time you find your opponent and reveal your heroes to create your final deck for that match—choosing the last five or so cards you will use from among the last handful of cards in your entire pool.
    Some tournaments may also allow players to switch heroes between games, which would let you keep three piles for each element and three piles for each class, then mix and match more casually. Since generic elemental cards with fusion can be played by any hero, regardless of essence, players will also be able to use these to fill out the last few deck spots to test out a hero they otherwise didn't open quite enough essence and class cards to make a complete deck with.

I've already enjoyed the experience immensely just from opening one pack and dissecting it. At this point, I think about whether or not I should save all of my packs to play a bigger event over the weekend. Since I usually don't get done working until just before my LGS's events start, and I still have a lot of anxiety about playing (on top of anxiety about going out at all, in general), I decide to open the other packs and try to play a few games online to get more comfortable.

Pack Two

The contents of pack two, with a legendary card.
"Huh... That's neat."

While the rainbow foil Ice Quake I opened in pack one was very pretty, and brought back many memories of opening and playing and admiring Pokemon and MTG, FAB has cold foil cards that are found in first edition booster packs. What I really like about them is the subtlety of the foiling, and, at least on the cold foil legendary equipment I opened, how it accents the frame of the card, giving it a very metallic look, while adding just a slight metallic quality to the card art itself. While rainbow foils are flashy (FAB included), these cold foils are uniquely tasteful.

Before deciding to buy any packs, and before opening them, I thought about the material aspect of card games, the necessary evils of trying to run a large business and engaging with capitalism (and how the creators of Flesh and Blood seem to be finding a much better, much more moderate degree of capitalism to engage with for their products), as well as how it can be difficult to be moderate with your emotions while opening packs and seeing "rare" pieces of pretty paper.
    When playing a limited format in a card game, it can be difficult to not choose all the rarest cards and play whatever matches them out of some combination of emotions including excitement and greed, and whatever drugs your body makes when you do things like gamble and, especially, when you win a gamble. So, part of my mental preparation for this little event (and potential future events) was to focus on learning and having fun engaging with the game and other people playing the game, and to focus on building the "best" deck I can. By "best" I mean finding the sweet spot between a deck that is fun to play, will function properly, and will be the most successful for the hero I choose—this will allow me to focus on learning and interacting with my opponents rather than having my attention split dwelling on negative emotions from obsessing over my deck and which cards I did or did not open.

Two kinds of laminated paper foiling, both beautiful.

Of course, seeing the legendary Spellbound Creepers runeblade equipment still shifted my attention away from everything else I was doing. Although I didn't fall into the trap of trying to force a deck archetype based on one card, I cautiously lifted the lid and put one foot inside, waiting to give myself permission to jump in until after I opened the rest of my packs and looking at my entire pool.

Packs Three to Six

 

Pack three.

Pack four.

Pack five.

Force of Nature, a majestic elemental runeblade action and Briar specialization card.
And another card pulling at my emotions, shifting my attention. But that's okay.

Pack six.

Analyzing the Pool

Overall, I opened a nearly identical number of cards for each element and each class, allowing me (as I guessed from the first pack) to play whichever hero I wanted.

Looking at the card pools more closely, I got a nice variety of equipment cards, with one of each essence in a different slot.

My equipment pool.

Aside from the runeblade equipment, one interesting thing I noticed was how my Deep Blue chest slot and Plume of Evergrowth earth head slot can be used together to let me fetch any earth action or earth instant from my graveyard to my hand. This kind of combo isn't very efficient (requiring me to put a card from hand on the bottom of my deck and destroy two equipment cards that have zero defense), but it could win you a couple of games in limited.

Understanding Spellbound Creepers wouldn't happen in either of my first two games (I used it once on a mediocre turn while focused on other mechanics), or even when looking at my deck and playtesting again the next evening. Misinterpreting equipment cards also slowed the game down on several turns, and two incorrect turns miscalculating net gains of actions (once when I used my arms equipment, which I then rolled back to play the turn differently and correctly before my opponent revealed any of their cards), but this is expected for (essentially) a brand new game with myriad sub-systems.

Instead of using my equipment to make critical deckbuilding decisions, I designated it to being an "X Factor" for decisions. Runeblade was very enticing at first glance, but the attention-grabbing cards won't work and will never feel great to play if there isn't a solid foundation to play on.

To analyze my pool better, I divided it into sub-pools (piles) of generic elemental cards, ice cards, lightning cards, earth cards, and one pool each for guardian, ranger, and runeblade.

Generic elemental pool, with one ice fusion, two lightning fusion, and two earth fusion attacks.

Ice essence pool.

Lightning essence pool.

Earth essence pool.

Guardian class pool.

Ranger class pool.

Runeblade class pool.

I think Lexi would have been a great option since I had plenty of low-cost ice and lightning cards in a decent range of colors (red, yellow, and blue pitch values, ideally with many red and blue cards with only a few yellow to fill out the middle) in addition to a lot of consistency offered by five copies of one arrow card and two copies of some others, while my earth pool had higher-cost cards although it was larger. One issue I noticed is that I didn't have many ice essence attacks, and I felt hesitant about playing a lot of cards that created Frostbite tokens instead of doing something more "standard" (or more focused on myself rather than interacting with my opponents' resources and hand). Because of this, I also wasn't as confident about playing Oldhim as I expected I would be after having only ever played matches with Bravo and Rhinar in the past, and with how many ice and earth cards I had to work with.

I didn't open an off-hand shield for Oldhim, or a ranger bow for Lexi, only two of the same one-handed hammer token for Oldhim and two of the same two-handed runeblade token for Briar. Normally, I would have opened these packs for an in-person event at a store, and everyone would have pooled their tokens together and asked the store or event managers for any more they were missing so everyone can play whichever hero they want, with whichever common weapon and equipment tokens they want. Since I couldn't make it to one of these events, I would have needed to make some kind of proxy for the missing tokens, or have the rules pulled up on another screen. As I was already using two screens to play online and monitor my settings, and didn't have time to print out a decent quality proxy, I discarded playing the ranger Lexi from my mind for the time being.

What I noticed at this point was how each element seemed to have a cost range that aligned with the goals of each hero: ice is slow and affects opponents' resources and their hand, lightning is faster and affects your actions and damage, earth is slow and affects your hand and your other zones. It's just some nice design I appreciated, and that I would understand a bit better after my first game.

Finally looking at my runeblade pool for Briar, I really liked my piles of lightning and earth cards combined with my runeblade cards based entirely on the apparent playstyle of my pool. In a way, it felt like a guardian's crush deck in its power buffs, with some added "ping" affects in its lightning and arcane damage, as well as some zone manipulation to fetch cards and augment my arsenal. All of that felt like it aligned with the equipment I opened, and with Briar's ability and runeblade weapon which make you want to be playing multiple attacks and non-attack actions each round to attack and deal arcane with your weapon, and to create tokens that either give you "go again" on your next attack or give bonus defense to your cards until your next turn.

Tokens for Briar's Embodiment of Lightning and Earth auras, and Seismic Surge for guardians.

Playing Briar, Elemental Runeblade

The first version of my deck played all of the runeblade cards I opened, plus most of the lightning cards (except Heaven's Claws and Lightning Press), and only a few earth cards (Burgeoning, Autumn's Touch, Weave Earth, and Earthlore Surge). The generic elemental cards I played were all the lightning and earth fusions (Entwine Lightning and Entwine Earth).

Later I would take out two Rites of Replenishment, the generic runeblade cards, and the two Entwine Earth to add in more earth cards and make room for either Invigorate or Lightning Press, which ended up feeling too fiddly compared to how it felt in my first match. Looking back, it might be best to play more "essence" cards and fewer elemental fusion cards than I initially wanted. I had 9 earth fusion cards and 7 lightning fusion cards, with only 5 earth cards and 6 lightning cards, which doesn't seem like an ideal ratio.
    My next iteration may have had slightly better ratios, but felt off with the game I played and my own playtesting afterward. Of course, playing two or three brief games with 30 card decks isn't the greatest level of testing, so I'll have to find more people to play this sealed pool against, or add a few extra copies of existing cards and play blitz.

My First Game

My opening hand of my first game against another runeblade was terrible with Force of Nature and other combo cards but nothing to combo or fuse with, so I played an action and an attack, pitched one card to pay for one or both, then placed Force of Nature in my arsenal. My second hand was equally bad with too many attacks and actions that costed too much and couldn't be used to fuse Force of Nature, so I discarded one card to defend and let me draw more cards (unable to place any in my arsenal since I didn't play Force of Nature).

I didn't make any embodiment tokens outside of one turn in my first game as I was using all of my mental capacity to learn the game and solve the puzzle in my hand of cards each round. I started paying attention to them in my second game, getting a few more efficient turns, but I also quickly ended up in the common mental stage where I understood how to play the game but repeatedly got slightly too excited about playing cards that I kept catching myself about to make a mistake and I had to slow down to process this new level of game and rules understanding for my specific deck and hero.

I also kept forgetting to put my pitched cards on the bottom of my deck, which seemed to be normal for new and even returning players while watching other streams.

My third hand, however, was excellent, and allowed me to make a massive attack.

Play Force of Nature from arsenal, reveal Weave Earth to fuse.
Play Ball Lightning, then Weave Earth, then Rites of Replenishment.

While I'm not confident that I played Ball Lightning and the combat chain correctly, this turn threatened 11 damage and drawing up to two cards. I drew a card when Rites of Replenishment hit, Vela Flash, which I placed in my arsenal and used to deal another large chunk of damage.

Another thing that happened this turn was realizing how useful Rites of Replenishment can be to stack the bottom of my deck in the first few rounds, and it would let me get another big attack to win in the very late stages of my next game (going through the last four to six cards of my deck twice).

The two turns after that involved me pinging my opponent with lightning cards and using cards to turn an action with "go again" into an instant to let me attack with Rosetta Thorn (using leftover resources) and deal arcane damage to win.

I could have used my equipment to make this turn more interesting, probably, but again I wasn't able to reach the point of being mindful of everything in the arena within just these two games.

My Second Game

Aside from getting rules confused, missing embodiment token triggers, misinterpreting and re-reading cards and equipment, and rolling back multiple combat chains and entire turns for both of us, there isn't much to talk about this game against a ranger. Except the late game. Because I was pitching earth cards to pay for my lightning cards, I ended up stacking my deck in a very interesting, thought-provoking way. When I realized on my second turn that I was pitching one type of element/essence, I cycled some cards around to stack more cards on the bottom of my deck to draw a more immediately useful card, then pitched a few more cards that synergized with the rest I had pitched. The rest of the game involved a lot of blocking, playing multiple attacks or actions in a turn to give myself more defense against big attacks and odd combo chains.

Before long, both our graveyard piles were as big as our decks. Eventually, they towered over our decks which only had a few cards left. It was very exciting seeing how well the dual element deck worked this game, with the latter half of my turns revolving almost completely around earth fusion cards and making a big swing or getting extra attacks in with my weapon. The game ended with me breaking the stalemate with arcane damage from Rosetta Thorn after defending with fewer cards than I probably should have. Very eye-opening!

I have no idea how probable this is in constructed formats, but it makes sense that it would happen in any limited format match in which one player didn't get one or two big early game turns.

Overall, these games were great although it mostly just involved smacking each other with attacks (playing against another runeblade and a ranger), and only engaging with unique Tales of Aria mechanics a few times total. They definitely helped me learn much faster than watching others play, though I hope I can get in one or two more games before going to a weekend event for blitz for classic constructed. The design of the set, so far, seems excellent and it's very fun to play. Some aspects feel odd or are difficult to comprehend at first, which isn't too overwhelming and seems natural/normal for most TCGs, especially one of this style.
    I'm amped to play more as soon as possible!

Whichever format they play at my LGS, I would be playing a Briar or Lexi blitz deck plus cards from my sealed pool. Everyone else, I presume, would be playing a mish-mash of competitive decks they have built throughout the past year, and blitz decks upgraded with cards from their sealed pools and, possibly, a few singles. I won't worry about that though, since my goals are simple to show up and enjoy learning the game, and of course seeing what and how everyone else is playing.

I may still worry about where I will stand on the scale between casual and competitive, and, more specifically, poor players who only have ten to thirty dollars a month to spend on one hobby and rich players who have hundreds (or thousands) of dollars a month to spend on their hobbies, and how wide that range is for my LGS. I'm expecting to be at the absolute lowest end of that scale with the exception of my fluke of getting an entire booster box. Maybe "worry" isn't quite the right word, but it could be dejecting if there aren't many players at both my level of expendable income and my level of skill going forward (whatever that ends up being). For now, I'll just enjoy whatever I can.

Thanks for reading! See you for more FAB, hopefully soon.