The Best Deck and My Worries. | Flesh and Blood TCG Week 3 Breakdown 

This is a fantastic take

Not that easy, Dash is my favorite hero, but I don't like the other 2 Mechanologists, especially Teklovossen. Luckily for me, Dash I/O already exists, but Fans of other heroes don't have that luxury. (better example would be that I love Prism and liked her playstyle way more than Dromais and most of the cards from Prism wouldn't even carry over to the Dragon Illusionist)

I love this take and believe it is the plan LSS is following! Didn't they increased the LL points rewarded specifically bc of higher hero velocity? Maybe we will see ll'd heroes getting reintroduced into the meta via armory decks as well!

F*ck, Murder, Marry... go

This is pretty smart from a playstyle standpoint, but individual hero identity is important as well. I love Victor but don't care at all about any of the other guardians. I'd argue that for some people, the hero's visuals and gimmicks trump the class they belong to and are the factors that drive people to play them.

That's the scary spot that we are in

That's an interesting idea

This idea is interesting. Maybe all new heroes have a 6 months or 1 year time frame from when they are released where they only earn half points rather than full points?

This is a good idea, but I worry that there will come a hero that NEEDS to speed run LL because they are ruining the Meta. I think Kayo is a great example of hero this works well with and Old Prism is a hero this would suck to have a free 6 months.

@@tylerann93 yeah that makes sense, but i think that situation can be dodged by B&R’s, which Lss doesn’t seem to have an issue with. And the current design space is a lot more refined, so I don’t think we’ll see those vastly over powered heroes again, at least not any time soon

I think this in context for Starvo/Chane, wouldn’t be great. Because it would effectively made them dominate the competitive scene much longer and require even more B&R runnings. Another way to simply let them cook without racking points would be to ban them from Competition for 6 months to a whole year. But that would kill the armory scene as no one would want to play against those heroes.

100% this.

It'll certainly change things up for the Brute class!

I kind of like what it's about to do to Levia honestly.

That's my hope

I think they will

That's a really good point!

Yeah, 6 months and he hit 150% of the LL points needed.

I tend to disagree but I see where you're coming from

Or maybe they didnt expect the hero to be this good? What do you mean is intentional? They had bad testing in the past, not surprised some things still slip up, we've had a bunch of heros being really underpowered and others too consistent since out.

@@Chunchunchunmaru they might want claws rotated to open up brute weapon design space

@@Cryonicity then they'd ban them, not make a strong hero and wait for it to LL..

The difference is that those Ira decks are free for anyone to ask for from an LGS and are only functional in a 30 card format, which Blitz isn't.

Agile Windup is the biggest offender. At it's floor it is a discard to give go again next turn and +1 to an attack. At it's ceiling, it gives go again to claw, go again next turn and +1 attack. There's less than a foot of distance between the floor and ceiling of that card, and it's what allows Kayo to have consistent 15+ damage turns. Especially since you can pack 9 of them into the deck and not be punished for it.

@@gunternine1130 Possibly, I think I come back to that potentially destroying any metashare Levia and Rhinar have as it has become quite important for those decks too.

I don't think he's worthy of nerfing. I think it's good that he's good, but maybe other heroes need to be good into him to slow him down.

@@DMArmada even that would not mean slow at all if we look at Kassai for example. Also over 300 in this short amount of time. All this is just to fast...

@@DMArmada Respectfully, any hero that can consistently threaten 15-20 damage a turn, isn't healthy for an interactive experience.

And right after I posted this they announced a CC Boltyn deck! Ha!

It would be really cool if they put an insert on a piece of cardstock that told players how to convert the CC deck into Blitz.

Good luck! Who are you playing?

@@DMArmada Either Prism or Boltyn. I’ll decide by Friday.

I would certainly not describe Kayo as less variance when we've watched players lose the game on the spot from a random discard multiple times at the high level competitive scene.

I disagree that they did this to purposefully rotate illusionists.

Oh, he'll be around for nationals season for sure.

I'm not sure it's worth going in and touching some of his cards. I said it before and I stand by it: I think it's good that he's good and I think other decks just need to be good into him. Maybe that means buffs for other heroes?

@@DMArmada I appreciate the reply! Maybe it’s something that needs to be looked at as far as LL is concerned in general? Half points the first year? I’m not sure if that’s an answer. I just stop and think if he had won PTLA he’d be past the half way point already with a hero centered product coming out. I’ve supported LL up until this point but now I’m questioning if it’s viable long term.

@@AdventureCoGaming yeah exactly, there's a darker timeline out there where he's at 600 already

better pick them up fast, by the time he LLs those will be long sold out

I actually think the living legend format is in the best spot it's ever been and starvo is far less prevalent than he was after their most recent changes

If you think Kayo is equal to Chane and Starvo, I have some land in Antarctica to sell you and I'll give you a great deal.

Sure thing! But I'm only in if you'll secure the loan with this bridge I own as collateral. I've watched the video back through a few times (helping ya keep up your watch time), and I have extracted a few key points. Your thesis seems split. You ask the question, "Should we change the awarded LL points so that Kayo can last longer?" and buried inside of that, "A new, exciting, approachable hero should last longer before hitting LL." I wholeheartedly agree with you on the second half. I think asking the first half is a foolish endeavor. Asking if system changes should be implemented so a very specific hero can stay longer doesn't do the game any favors. Every time a new favorite comes around you'll need to re-debate the question. Chane, Starvo, Prism, Iyslander, and Oldhim all had incredibly devoted players. I'm sure a large number of them would LOVE to have had more time with their favorite hero. Revisions to the LL system should be made hero-agnostic. Your first raised concern is if the hero eats up too much of the meta share. Right after, you asked if the hero is consuming too many points in the meta. Those are two very different questions. For your first point, I don't think we have the data to answer that question. I like to use a measurement like "Conversion to Day 2." Assuming all decks were equally powered and piloted, you would expect a deck making up 15% of the submitted decks to be near 15% of the Day 2 decks. I'll see if I can illustrate the difference in your questions with the following example. Mono-Red Burn was a very popular deck for MTG tournaments. It was essentially a coin toss if you won your game, but inevitably a player or 3 on Burn would end up making it to top 64 at events, and every once in a while, even a top 8. What was the conversion from Day 1 though? Absolutely abysmal. If I remember correctly, you had a less than 5% chance to go to Day 2 when just looking at the numbers. It had a large meta-share of players (cheap deck, easy to pilot), but it frequently did not perform well. Once upon a time, there was another deck called KCI. This deck was not cheap, it was not easy to pilot. It consistently performed very, very well. It had a small meta-share and over-represented itself in Day 2 conversions. As you have stated, Kayo is a relatively easy deck to pilot, right; this isn't Prism or the Kano mirror? He is also converting at a very high rate; he has picked up 400 LL points in 2 months. That isn't solely a function of many people playing him. Those players are also winning. If he stays on pace, which, admittedly, I find unlikely, he will LL in 3 month's time. The follow-up question you posited, "Does Living Legend allow heroes to exist at high levels of design," does require clarification. "What is high-level design?" The answer follows shortly, the heroes are fun to play and cool to play. Here is an easy answer to the original question. Yes. The LL system allows cool, fun heroes to exist and be played. We know from James White that the LL system is designed to evolve the meta-game over time. How long should a hero last before hitting LL? That question (your follow-up question) is also answered by the very same man, 15-20 months for high-performance heroes. If LSS wants Kayo to last anywhere near that long, one of two things will need to occur. The most obvious option is clearly a ban. It is possible for Kayo to LL before the next ban announcement in July. I don't believe LSS will exercise this option given that we just had a Brute ban last month. The other option is that the metashare spreads between other heroes. This might very well occur thanks to Mistveil and save Kayo's bacon. In the early days Dash picked up a huge number of LL points and was a terrifying force. As more heroes were introduced to the roster her points acquisition slowed. She has now been in the game far beyond the 15-20 month goal of the system. The explosion of FaB's popularity is partially a culprit in Kayo's point explosion. A few years ago LSS had planned on having 1,000 points available in a season. Heavy Hitter's season has had approximately 2,750 awarded. We also went from 16 heroes to approximately 24, it depends on if you are counting before or after Dromai LL'ed. The roster increased by 50%, but the points by nearly 200%. Having more events will do that. Crazy, I know. Let's check some recent tournament win numbers for the big guy. RTN Week 1: 10%, RTN Week 2: 10%, RTN Week 3: 13%, RTN Week 4: 14%, Proquest Week 1: 15%, Proquest Week 2: 12%, Proquest Week 3: 18%. It would seem that he is only picking up momentum as the deck becomes more solved even when he is widely accepted as one of the format's 'heroes to beat.' It would not shock me in the slightest to see him settle at 15%. LSS's unit of measurement for the 16 hero roster was a hero to ascend to LL in 12 months by capturing 33% of the year's points. A perfect win% split with 16 heroes would be 6.25%/hero. They would need to perform at just over 525% of their split to achieve that. In the Heavy Hitter season of ~24 heroes, each hero's win% split is 4 1/6th% or 4.167%. The same degree of overachievement would be a win rate of 22%. I assume that the point pool for the following 2 seasons this year will remain ~3,000 as this season has. An easy solution for just Kayo's position is to move the LL requirement up to 3,000 points. Then Kayo would need to capture exactly 200 points per month to hit LL on the hopeful pace of 15 months. Since that pace matches one metric, the timeline goal, but does not match the other metric, current win%, I think the system is not currently balanced to maintain equilibrium. The current system will rotate heroes faster (because they would be on pace to LL at a lower than expected win%), which might be to make room for a pile of new heroes. I'm certain there is more and better math that could be applied, but I have already spent a few hours on this and I think it establishes the point, moving the goalpost for individual heroes is incorrect, and provides some rough insights on the fact that Kayo is just strong, so he naturally should not last as long as the other more "fair" heroes in the roster. In my opinion, Kayo is a fast-mana hero, which we all know is totally fair and balanced in other games. He gets the benefits of running on-rate cards as 6's both on and off the combat chain. The off the combat chain buff is stated explicitly, but the ability to generate a Might token means that your attacks are also on rate. On top of that, your cards pitch for way more resources. As a Kayo, I get 50% more resources on a card running a yellow over a red. What do I miss out on? Popping illusions on some of my cards and Romping Club? That is a pretty great trade-off. He absolutely occupies an interesting design space. I think it was a risk (like Bright Lights), and LSS missed the mark just a bit. That noticeable advantage prodivded to Kayo in a low variance game like FaB can absolutely be leveraged.

It's interesting that you mention I called for bans when I specifically didn't call for bans, but okay

@@DMArmada you are an important voice in the community and I feel in these situations you should be way more positive and not jump the bandwagon of asking/suggesting bans with 1 week of a new meta. You suggested a ban on ALS loop, refering specifically the angel. And exactly for what? It's too soon on the meta, we don't even know if Prism will be broken or not. Maybe it will and it should be nerfed, but we don't know yet and pre-bans is not a fun thing. Instead next time, you could offer advices on how to deal with "maybe-but-not-sure-yet-problematic" heroes.

@@JDeodato I most certainly did not suggest that they ban ALS. I suggested that they ban nothing and instead players should sideboard. I then said that I indeed sideboarded for my own ProQuest. I followed that up by saying that if they do choose to ban something, I'd rather them move the Angel out than ALS.