I checked the pricing tab on all of these via TCGplayer

I 100% agree

Some of your points are definitely valid, and some are off base

Also, great call out on Kano. It's insane how a top-tier, nationals winning, Calling competitive deck can cost <$300. That deck is INCREDIBLY affordable all things considered. It probably not playing any of the big Generics probably helped.

You do see how this is a problem for attracting new players right? Era advantage is a thing and if every staple goes to the moon we never get new players again. I started this game under the pretense that only equipment and a few generic cards were expensive but now even sideboard cards are expensive as hell e.g warmongers diplomacy

So basically the game is cheap if you're a speculator. Got it

@@Deingel12 So are every single TCGs ever ? LCGs exist just to let you know, it’s like tcg but you buy the whole set from the editor and there is no randomness in what you get Personally, from a player’s perspective, I’m happy that I have been rewarded with cheap runeblade staples because everyone else were buying into Kayo then Zen chasing the meta

⁠​⁠@@alexandermiguelsy599 ⁠how is it a problem for new players ? A new player join your local, explain them what the meta look like atm, and that they can invest right now in top meta deck (calling powerlevel) for big bucks Or buy into a cheaper hero because it’s not meta Which is an accessibility factor Warmonger, Hold the Line, CnC, codex and others strong staples are indeed expensive, it is a fact But unfortunately that’s TCGs for you, sometimes a card is really good and everyone want it If you need the card for your nats, you can buy it, play with it try to spike your national championship, then resell it Because if you play 1 calling/BH a year, and all the rest of the year, you are playing at your locals and the highest stake is the armory CF, well maybe you don’t need to buy into the pro tour winning list every time there’s a new meta/set If I want to go back to modern mtg and want a competitive Pro tour ready deck, I’m gonna have to buy my playset of rings, sheoldred and else Each of these cards are between 50-70 each, but slots in many different decks Or I could build merfolk or boggles, a weaker deck but more affordable But the cards I will buy will never be able to be swapped into meta deck because archetype specific Exactly the same as fab Buy CnC/Warmonger, and have a strong staple playset for every hero you will play forever

@@alexandermiguelsy599 No I don't see that as a problem New player at your local ? Explain them the meta, which hero is strong/popular, which one is not And let them decide what to do with their money as an adult Buy the list that dominated the nationals for big bucks ? Knowing that as soon as a new deck becomes the best deck, prices for that deck will go gown? Or buy a least played hero to start FaB Which is completely fine if all they do is playing once a week at an armory Also, yeah, Warmonger and CnC are super expensive But if you know FaB well, you know that these cards are sideboard and are not cards a deck need to function and do what its want to do Your Boltyn deck still completely function without CnC, you are just losing a little of agency into the decks CnC is strong against, but your deck is completely functional Which is completely fine for an armory which highest stake is a $20 CF, let's be real If you want to spike your nationals, and you need a playset of warmonger, but can't justify spending $150 for a playset for a hobby Borrow the cards Or buy them, then sell them as soon as you are back from your nationals

If you are using eye, heart, sharp as examples to add to your argument then you are new and actually do not understand what those cards are or how to play the game.

As someone who got into this game in the past few weeks - £10 for a Blitz deck, a friendly person on the UK Discord sent me a couple of kg of the basic cards so I have options for cost of postage. My hero, two sets of 3 hero action cards and a special hero equipment which puts me into a respectable deck to learn with that’s avoiding pricey stuff - £30. With the postage for the donation and the blitz deck, I’m about £45 into this game and reckon I could play a solid six months at local Armories to get some reps in without needing anything more. Sure, I’d do better with 3 Command and Conquers and a Spring Tunic, but the difference that gives when I’m learning the game and the meta is so marginal it’s daft to throw money at.

@birdsflapatnighttogether2304 No, you are just proving my arguments, "you don't need x card." It's the shear denial from this community that is so wild to me. I have 5 decks put together currently, Runeblade (no shard and all proxy expensive equipment), Dromai LL'd obviously, Zen formerly Katsu, Teklo, and Prism. You must be confused that someone who actually plays the game could ever have anything negative to say about it.

Which generic staples are you including in that 1k figure? Crown, Tunic, C&Cx3, and E.Strikex3 are around $510. $570 if you choose Balance over Crown. Art of War and anything beyond it is fairly hero specific.

@ravenousbabble the same list that FaBRec uses for generic staples: Fyendals: $100 Crown of Prov: $80 Balance: $130 3x Warmongers: $195 3x c&c: $250 3x E.Strike: $90 3x Art of War: $105 So what's that $950 before taxes, shipping, and handling? Not counting the cheapo Staples like Sinks and such. And also not counting class specifics like Phantasmals, Creepers etc.

Congratulations on becoming National Champion!

Yeah Pokemon is the insane outlier to just about every other TCG with regards to deck prices

Yeah, everything compared to pokémon is insane!

@DMArmada having grown up with Pokemon I'll always love it but man is hard to enjoy after moving over to FaB. There's so much more skill expression and less dependence on luck with FaB, it's crazy.

@@slotholopolis2314 pokemon for a while was not that cheap, they been doing great work for making the cost of decks cheaper and affordable for players while keeping chase cards for collectors. I think LSS could learn something from that game.

This is true of nearly every TCG in the hobby. I'm hardly dodging that critique by not pointing out a fact of life when any TCG experiences a new set release. If anything, this happens slightly less frequently in FAB as the sets release every 4 months vs. every 3 in many other games.

You just described every TCG except Pokemon

Oddly, FaB has a good argument that this is mitigated for a deck - a lot of the expense in a FaB deck is in the standards or the Equips. As DM said, if you pick up a Tunic, it's good for the life of the game. You will absolutely need to stay current and adapt to the meta, but that's a much cheaper option if you play a single hero or a single class. Especially if you're picking up the cheap cards when you can. I started on Azalea way back when she was terrible cause I just enjoyed her playstyle. I did not pay a ton for most of her deck because of that. Now that she's good, I've avoided most of the price spikes because I already had all those cards. When she finally LL's out, I will still have all the good cards for Ranger. But yes - if you want to be on the bleeding edge of competition all the time, pony up for the new hotness every set. That's how TCG's work.

That literally happens in every non-rotating game. Hell mtg now has de facto rotation of their eternal formats with the Horizon sets.

that happens in every eternal format in all tcgs. Nothing new.

@@ftgrimm1016 i mean, not really, not in the same way. flesh and blood enforces it's mini-rotation usually a few times a year as a mandatory function. if wizards decided to not power creep modern ever again it would probabaly stay 90% the same for the rest of time. if LCC decides to never print a card stronger than head jab ever again the LL system would still be forcing changes and rotations at minimum once per year (often more). i say this as a diehard fan who likes the systems FAB has, but the community has to be realistic when trying to sell the game to newcomers. otherwise we risk getting people engaged under the false pretenses that you can play the same character forever and souring them on the game when they realize otherwise.

have you heard about Yu-Gi-Oh?

@@Superaalleexx yugioh was mad dope until like 2010s, now reading a single card feels like reading a law in the constitution

This certainly was the case in FaB a few years ago (And was absolutely a very real problem). But thankfully, LSS has taken a lot of action to quell this kind of behavior in regards to most of the playable tournament staples thanks to pack restructuring and well needed reprints. We've been seeing a steady decline in the average price of most of the high dollar staples, and most of the crypto-bros who tried to horde FaB staples have bailed out at this point. There's still more work to be done to ensure accessibility for everyone, but LSS is definitely taking the right steps so far.

The heroes rotate, but the cards don't.

@@DMArmada I think cards also rotate when they turn to be useless after hero rotates out or you can't really play them anymore. Like ice cards right now. Also not sure why they don't reprint those expensive majestics. CnC needed reprint like 2 years ago. Still most decks play it. They do some gimmick reprints like judge pack version (AoW) or fable version (CnC) which not really helping to the situations. Now we starting to have other cards like Codex of frailty. I have 6 CnC's to just have two different competitive decks that I don't have to take apart all the time.. Can't even lend a deck if I had only 3.

@@wigitiPretty sure they don’t want to reprint CnC because it’s (still) too strong and they don’t want more of it around. It clearly comes from a time where power levels for some cards were clearly above rate. James White recently said they if they could, they would redo Generic cards like CnC, Fate Forseen, and Sink Below.

@@nightwalk4681 They should ban it then.. Not reprinting a cards that most deck use, because it's too powerful is bad solution. Specially when this is competitive game and not casual one. If you go for tournaments you need to have best deck possible.. What they gonna do when CnC is 1000$ card? You need to drop 10 000$ to get best possible deck to your competitive play.. That will be the price 10 years from now if they don't reprint any key majestics.. Or maybe not, because people will quit when they are prized out, so game stops growing. Either way it's not good. Imagine if your main format is vintage mtg :D

@@wigiti Yeah, it’s not ideal. They tried printing many other good Generic 2 for 6 3 blocks, but that hasn’t really done much. I feel like sooner or later they have to embrace CnC simply being overpowered and reprint it like they did with Tunic. Can’t even imagine the days when that was a $250 card anymore haha

For example, clearly balance of justice wasn't listed

Yep, this is more specific to anyone looking at minmaxgaming prices though. TCGplayer has all the cards listed with their prices.

That's interesting, because I added the deck lists to the description and just checked the hatchets list via TCGplayer to see if it was wrong. Minus shipping, it was actually slightly cheaper than what was displayed on Fabrary.

@@DMArmada hatchets are fine, it's the dash lists effected I believe.

​​@@DMArmada yeah sorry, I didn't check every list but as someone said, the dash list is not 200 to 300, balance of justice already is over 140 bucks alone, and i am buying the cards for DIO right now and it definitely don't cost 60 bucks in total

You said exactly what I wanted to. Glad to know its not just me that feels that way

It is a decent up front cost but you can build much of what you want and use filler gear until you can dedicate to that bigger card. That card will most likely be really good for that class for a long time

Okay so unless you want it to not be a tcg there will always be expensive cards. Yes CNC and EStrikes and Art of wars are really important in many decks.. but unless you want a booster box to be worthless some playable cards will be expensive based on playability. Heart of Fyendal is not overpowered to a level that it NEEDS to be included and most equipment is very much replaceable by budget options. Idk I've collected for a couple years now and built a collection that includes alot of the must haves. I now trade out cards depending on what I am wanting to play and sell crap if it skyrockets so my collection builds itself now.

​@@SUNIKIGAMINGI think the main issue here is that there is no 1-to-1 budget replacements for Staple cards in FAB vs other games. For example in Yugioh if Impermanence is too expensive, Effect Veiler exists in MTG for Shock Lands, Check lands or Fastlands are "good enough" There is no such thing as a "good enough" replacement for FAB. No other card in the game gives all your action cards +1 Power for the turn except AOW, there exists no other 6 Power with 3 Block other than CNC. And don't even get me started with equipment. Your budget options are one and done type things that either destroy themselves to activate or can block only once or none at all. No one is saying that cards should have no value. But there should be budget replacements for cards/more "good enough" type cards for the mid level players who want to play at higher than a casual level but not necessarily competitive level

I would take an influx of new kanos. The new ones ain't the ones ya gotta worry about

@calebmuir5615 But they can learn. We do not need more Kanos. Unless they just blow up all the tournaments and he LLs, then we need as many Kanos as possible

We ALWAYS need more Kanos!

Unless Kano gets a big boost in Rosetta (which is very probable) he probably will be in a weird spot because more AB will be in everyone's sideboard for the runeblades and wizards already.

Exactly the path I choose. Went with the Kayo Armory deck, and upgraded with some cards I could afford. I am having a blast so far in my armory events. I know the video is about competitive play, but new players have to start somewhere, right? Haha

@@Scariestkid yes it's actually the best power to invest ratio if you choose to upgrade SOME cards step by step.

@@Scariestkid Yup. And I think it is really worth highlighting someone like Kayo specifically because of the amount of success he has had in such a short time frame. He is obviously a top end competitive deck, not a fringe competitor (like Boltyn is). And yeah, it is great to focus on what tournament winning decks are costing, but I think the topic of "how much does a competitive FAB deck cost?" doesn't really matter at all without taking into account the group for whom the cost of a competitive deck matters the most: brand new players. Established players will be like, sure, if I wanna buy something from scratch, this number matters, but a lot of us have things like CnC and Tunic after enough time anyway. The cost to flip to a different deck isn't ever going to be that full cost anymore. But to a new player, showing them competitively viable budget builds with built in upgrade paths (particularly when those upgrade paths are heavily revolving around generics that will see play in other decks anyway instead of hero specific cards that will be less useful if that hero LLs or the new player finds they don't like them) is incredibly valuable. They can trade into and buy pieces bit by bit, feeling a definite sense of progression in the power level of their deck. And that is how you help make someone an addict who starts telling other people about budget builds for new players so they can con more people into playing the game with them...

Welcome to TCGs 😭

@@DMArmadanope Star Wars tcg 40 dollar deck(when I bought it now it’s 90) got top 2 in showdown

You're MY kind of person 😂

I will NEVER flip! (done.)