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my top art this year is is marvel young enigma that card is just sooo pretty

FYI Rhea has a fuzzy/static noise that happens when Rhea’s mic picks up speaking/noise

Kevin. For the crime of saying Sexy Spurlocked, you are sentenced to fatherhood. Use this as a way to reflect on how such actions can affect other people.

Side events are phenomenal time to spend at big events. I ran into Blaze65 and his wife a couple of times in the many draft/sealed/blitz events. I think for Living Legends, as an individual format… They are going to be forced to do hero specific bans. The problem with Starvo is that he has access to Guardian and all of the element talents. Starvo previously ruined Ice and now it looks like he is ruining Lightning too. Oscilio and Aurora need somersault, to open up their decks… Starvo is just an unwanted visitor 😅 But yea if they really want LL format to thrive they need to implement hero specific bans for problematic decks.

First

Kevin’s joke near the end absolutely killed me

People like to categorize because it is helpful. If I said do you want to play a midrange hero, most people could categorize the same and it would make deck selection easier for most people. Same with aggro and same with control. It’s different to discuss them as who’s the beatdown. Better to discuss the merit of categorizing.

Glad Zen to be back cuz it gives me a chance to use him

I think you guys are answering two different questions

Every deck ultimately becomes the aggressor because outside of regicide the only way to really win the game is to drive your opponent out of Health. There's no ultimate judge decision like boxing. So if I understand your notions of aggressor and stabilizer correctly taken to its extreme, even old him is an aggressive deck. At some point I feel that your current definition of mid-range being predicated as a middle ground between these two, but then arguing that mid-range can exist because you ultimately need to devolve into the aggressor is slightly myopic

Ive never found the aggro vs mid range vs control to be particularly useful since it just depends how everyone defines it, which differs from person to person. Ive found it more useful to think of the offensive/defensive ratio to be more useful...where a 4/0 deck plans to optimally use all cards on offense and an 0/4 deck plans to use all cards on defense in any given "typical" cycle in a particular matchup. It helps with deck construction and sideboarding. Like, if youre a 3/1 deck you need to make sure youre action point economy can support the 3 actions during your turn. Or if youre a 1/3 deck in a matchup youd like to be those 3 block cards to be as efficient as possible. If in one matchup you plan to be a 3/1 deck you might side out some of your 4 blocks and bring in sufficient go again. And then in your next round you want to be a 2/2 deck, then youll bring some of those 4 blocks back in and can drop some go again. Its still a gross generalization but it can give you a way to analyze deck construction and side boarding.

This is why I fully support the rejection of card game terminology in this game in favor of using fighting game terminology. Mix-Up, Rushdown, Grappler, Zoner, etc are all way more accurate to Flesh and Blood gameplay patterns. Reject TCGs, Embrace FGCs

Framing complete fatigue as the furthest right a deck can be, while technically correct, shifts the overton window in a way that warps this conversation such that a 20 turn game is framed as a medium game length. The more useful metric for defining midrange would be taking the theoretical desired game length of each deck (I know this can fluctuate based on matchup but ignore outliers for now) and defining decks that exist in some median space as "midrange." These types of deck categorization semantics debates miss the point that midrange is a functionally useful term for describing where a deck exists on this spectrum. I like that you mention that roles can swap throughout a game which is a concept that exists in other games. This is much more pronounced in fab because of how turn cycles and tempo work and because of the sheer number of hand you see obviously not every hand will want to play the same way. But this does not take a way from the conceptual usefulness of thinking about how fast each deck is and identifying the beatdown in each matchup for forming macro heuristics.

Mike Flores wrote other legendary articles that to me are a bible in TCG like “The Philosophy of Fire”, almost no one in todays TCG games know about those articles or read them

Midrange, Agro, and Control are the decks core identity. Agro core is going face hard and blocking poor prefer to use there cards for damage and tend to lose value for blocking with those cards. Midrange a value you base strategy that blocks well while consistently throwing back damage these decks tend to have an easier time using all there cards on any turn cycle weather they had to block heavy or if they are given room they can dump a 4 card hand into offense. Control these decks tend to block the best/disrupt there opponents the best they often can't make use of opponents off turns leaving cards stranded in hand from turn to turn. the aggressor/stableizer to me is a skill to convey turn to turn with your 4 card hand where you assess on the fly with current knowledge weather you should be conserving heath for a bigger turn or if you have the agency to push your opponent to be the stabilizer

If you could run 60 Fry’s and 60 Sink belows conversely , you would have true aggro and true control. As a result, everything is somewhere in between there, whether they like it or not. And if everything is midrange….nothing is 😈.

49:00 mid range is any deck that has a lower value (attack only) with 4 cards for attack than 1-2 cards on attack and 1-3 cards defending.

Midrange isn’t how a deck plays in any specific matchup - it’s how much the deck is capable of switching roles in the meta as a whole. Pure aggro no block ninja is one end on the scale. Pure fatigue only block guardian is the other. Something that sometimes is the aggressor and sometimes the stabiliser is more in the middle of this range. Ie midrange. For example aggro guardian with zealous belting is more ‘midrange’ than fatigue guardian since it’s able to be more aggressive into matchups like Kano and prism. Generally if you have 6-9 d reacts in the sideboard that you sometimes bring in then you’re probably more of a midrange deck than aggro or control.

This was definitely 2 different questions being argued. Average playstyle of a deck doesn't compare directly to roles within a specific game of flesh and blood.

For the stabilizer vs aggressor, I agree but most decks can be probably given the blanket terms as a new player tool to understand how a deck plays on average, but it is a losing thought process to kinda be stuck thinking that your deck is a singular archetype into every matchup. Like back in the day azalea with sinks and fate had to play as aggro into some decks but then stabilizer into dawnblade dorinthea giving full hands to reset dawnblade counters. Same wizards on average, otk strats require playing stabilizer until combo vs some matchups require swapping between aggressor and stabilizer based on the turn cycle. Boost Teklo needs to be the aggressor into ninja, stabilizer until enough evo suits are online into other decks, somewhere in between into slow decks. That also said I think all the usual archetypes like otk, midrage, aggro, control, along with their subtypes, disruptive aggro, control disruptive, control fatigue, etc which kinda for easier discussions lie somewhere in between and are pretty valid for generalizing the archtype of a deck based on what you do more often, though being more verbose than just "midrange" is probably a lot better, like my vote would be just being more descriptive, like saying my hybrid teklo deck is "defensive value pivot combo" deck, it has elements of combo, it has the ability to pivot gameplan several times in a match, it prefers to block more, and it when needed just wins cause of better turn cycle math.

The reason Aurora is worth playing in LL is Ball Lightning with Arc Lightning.

I think midrange is diferent from fab to mtg, but midrange is related to playing against aggro and control, if you play against control you are aggro and against aggro you are more controly. These roles change depending of what deck you should be playing. Also you have weird combo(y) decks like prism right non that depeding on the mu you might switch to combo//aggro There could only exist a midrange deck once it is aggro vs a control deck, and it is controly vs a aggro deck.

I'm so glad this is a topic!

Nice video. Can you please explain in which heroes you run full combo and when you run midrange?

Thanks alot :) Great video. May I ask what you would remove for these cards? Aether Spindel. Channel Millenium Tree. Seeds of tomorrow.

My list is similar. I’m gonna have to try out the earth forms. I like my one of “Truce” I have in my build. Comes up more than I thought it would when I follow up after a set up turn from my opponent. Thank you for the video!

rank every format by mouth feel

Otk florian and wiz seemes so hars for islander with condem to slalguhrer 😅

Damn I would love to see these OTK Florian lists, but sounds like they will also lose to Zens?

I actually kind of agree with the symbiosis shot argument because there's no cost to dumping 12 damage into my Base at the end of a high octane term or more if they add counters to the Gun... It's just the fact that action points previously in mechanologist could be wasted if you didn't have the resources to act on and what high octane does is give you those action point resources and symbiosis shot removes the other resource that's needed to cause damage so you can directly Convert an action point to damage

Hamilton won 2 Calling Indys, 2022 and 2023 I think

fun fact i was not only the oldhim who drew against pat at insane health totals but i was also the person who mara had 30 plus damage of dragons on board against in fact she ran out of ashwing tokens against me and she claimed thats never happened before

What I'm hearing is Bonds of Ancestry did nothing wrong

Guys, what's wrong with Enigma having good MUs versus certain classes/heroes? Why warrior can't be one of those MUs? It's the same like asking Enigma to have anti-Azalea tech that makes the MU playable. That MU is cursed for regular enigma, so let LSS print something that stops Murkmire mid-attack and replaces it with another arrow that can't be murkmire? Now Enigmas everywhere can play that MU! Or since Warrior is having such a hard time with Enigma, let's print Wizard cards that can't be prevented by ward. Something like " Deal 3 arcane damage 2 cost action. This can't be prevented by Ward"

I would also love to see the deck tech! I’ve been playing Verdance as my main now that I’ve started going back to Armory consistently. More so than the deck, I’d love to hear your thoughts on piloting the deck, especially vs. bad match-ups.

this is my first episode, I am a big fan of balloons

Hopefully Jarl gets his own cleave.

Deck tech please 🥰

would love a verdance deck tech! seems like you’re on combo into most matchups? i’m curious why, and if you’ve found a way to make it work

Good thing I didn't come for Jarl tips & tricks ;) Verdance deck tech is good

Good game, Alex! Glad you made it to top 8!

Not the $1100 joke, holy shit 💀

For the part about viserai using condemned to slaughter to trade ours against enigma. Absolutely. If you ever have the chance fucking do the trade.

I got an ip 2 on my proquest so almost an shoutout to the pod 😂

Is there a link to Alex’s verdance list?

Was there stream of the top 8 games in pro quest

Holy shit you guys suck

Joke's on you, I'm already suscribed!

I dunno when this was filmed, but stores have received email invites to the Ira Celebration events already

Congrats on your invite Alex! Hope you guys are able to make it to Pittsburgh for one of our PQs