Lots Of Cobwebs
Week 14 - We Get Back To Our Local Armory
What is a Flesh and Blood Showdown? https://afabjourney.substack.com/p/what-is-a-flesh-and-blood-showdown
After not playing much for the last 3 weeks, it was good to get back to our armory and play again. There were a lot of cobwebs from not playing and I really could do with playing a bit more. Maybe just going through my deck to remind myself of my cards as well…..
This a week of a lot of little things rather than 1 big thing it feels like and so let’s get into it.
News
This week LSS gave us an update to the World Tour Points for 2026. Normally this would get filed into the ‘not relevant to your average player bin’ and most of it was to be honest. There was 1 item of note which was the announcement of a new event type called Showdown.
They didn’t tell us what a Showdown is going to be and told us “that’s a story for after the Keynote in Philadelphia.“ That doesn’t mean we can’t speculate though and I did a special posted last week saying what I think it’s going to be.
Emptying The Wallet
As far as spending at the LGS went this week it was under control. The normal $12 for 2 people to play in the armory and I used $2 of loyalty points to get an ULTRA PRO Mini Snap. Yup I’ve gone and broken my rule of not buying single cards as you’ll read in the Cardboard section.
Armory
We have missed 2 out of the last 3 armories and so I had almost forgotten what was in my deck. Clearly not that bad but I definitely wasn’t running at 100% efficiency and with Pleiades that’s not good. She just has so much going on that you need to keep track of especially in your opponent’s turn.
My first game was up against Lee who was piloting Puffin as usual. We’ve faced off a couple of times now and so we both knew what was coming. This was going to be a race to see who could kill the other quickest. He can’t block and I don’t like to. I got some big hits is using pummel and Pleiades’s auras. The card that really saved me though was In The Palm Of Your Hand. I ended up with a couple of either all red or all blues card hands. In The Palm Of Your Hand though meant I got to draw 4 extra cards and that really helped me to the win.
Next up was Anthony with Victor Goldmane so 2 Guardians going head to head. I made a major error with my first hand arsenaling a Blue Act Of Glory. I was too focused on emptying my hand to draw 4 cards rather than what I was going to do with that card. It got stuck in my arsenal for the whole game. Anthony was really good telling me stuff I should do. As I didn’t block and allowed him to get a life lead he was able to use life as a resource and I never was going to win against a good player.
Next was a game that I definitely could have won. My daughter who had a bye and watched my game against Roydon and Lyath said I played “uniquely” and that wasn’t in a complimentary way. Round 1 I attacked with Crush Confidence and removed all hero abilities from Lyath or removed the halving of attack and defence. Ops I really should have swapped that card out of my deck pre-game for Crush The Weak. Yup those cobwebs were there from not playing much. I also wasn’t lucky getting some red hands but I really didn’t help myself in this matchup. It was good though to get Colossal Bearing to work for the first time and destroy his Spring Tunic.
Finally I faced James with Gravy. The game plan here should be to kill the allies. I didn’t kill the allies as I had big hits that seamed a waste to use on the allies. Once James got enough allies out I couldn’t handle the damage coming my way and I was forced to attack Chum not Gravy. Again my mistake meant I wasn’t going to win. Maybe I wouldn’t have won anyway but I should at least try the higher probability route.
1 win and 3 losses meant that I didn’t finish high enough for a gem pack and my daughter did even worse with 3 losses. Clearly we need to play more.
Cardboard
We didn’t pull anything interesting from out 2 High Seas participation packs we got at the armory. However I did splash $200 on a Fyendal’s Spring Tunic. I know that I had promised myself that I wouldn’t buy individual cards but someone local was selling one. Having borrowed a couple of Spring Tunics the other week for my daughter and I to use at the Store Championship Qualifier I really appreciated how good this card is.
My rational is that this card is unlikely to lose it’s value so I’ll be able to sell it for what I’ve bought it for if I need/want to. This card has already been re-printed so many times that I don’t think another re-print will make that much difference to it’s price.
I just need another one now so that both my daughter and I can play the card at the same time….
Meta Matters
Having missed last week and forgetting to record the Meta from the week before I think it’s been nearly a month since I took note of our armory meta. Over on Reddit I’ve been seeing people complaining that the Meta is stale. Locally though I would say it’s great at the moment as we had 11 heroes across 11 decks:
* Gravy
* Ira
* Florian
* Pleiades
* Lyath
* Puffin
* Arakni, 5L!p3d 7hRu 7h3 cR4X
* Kayo, Armed And Dangerous
* Vynnset
* Victor Goldmane
* Verdance
What’s Coming Up?
With Worlds coming up that’s going to be most of the news especially with the LSS Keynote Presentation which is at 1:30pm Friday the 15th NZ time. As that’s at a reasonable time here hopefully I’ll be able to sit down and watch the livestream.
We should be getting more information on the next release coded PEN and a better idea what’s going on next year. So there will probably be a reaction piece from me about that one. However I am busy at the end of the week so I’m not sure how I’ll fit it in……
