Magic certainly has its problems but when it all lines up i think it’s the absolute best game in the world. I have found immense joy in building and testing dandan decks a shared deck way to play the game.

I have noticed FaB absorbs players from other games like boardgames and fighting games

I actually find FAB less "fun" than other TCGs. It feels brain-burny and tight. You want to play your cards, but you have so few, and so many go to pitch and defend. The character styles vary so much, it's difficult to participate in the full breadth of the game. That being said, there's something so compelling about it. The visual style, the world, the characters, and the one-on-one focus... It all adds up to something brilliant. I still don't think the game itself is a good fit for casual players, however, despite being less ostensibly intimidating than older games.

This video just sounds like "im bad at this game but im good at the other one so that one is the better one"

Your point about not knowing what your opponent is playing in magic is just a lack of metagame knowledge. In a specific format, given enough experience, you can determine what your opponent is playing from the first land that is being played. I guess it require dedication to the game and climbing a learning curve.

One grand for a main format deck doesn't sound like a TCG for everyone to me.

FaB is somewhat more accessible than the big 3 with formats like blitz, but it's very competitive classic constructed community can be hard to crack into for casual players. I started playing FaB pretty recently myself. Learning the game and commonly used cards wasn't too bad, getting actually good at the game is a completely different experience. FaB attracts a lot of smart and competitive players, so even winning local tournaments takes a lot of practice and quite a bit of investment into the stable cards to be ready for larger tournaments.

play mtg commander lol

Your example for MTG at the beginning really doesn’t work. Sounds like your friends were super competitive players. And without mentioning the format it’s a little hard to take what’s being said at face value. Was it just Commander? I won’t say your points are wrong based off that, save for the point that TCG’s aren’t for you. There’s a TCG for every flavor, Flesh and Blood is still one of them. It’s very much so another attempt to make the format of drawing and playing cards feel different compared to MTG. And based off how you talked about MTG, you never had a proper introduction and your friends didn’t even try to get you in appropriately. Not to mention that no, not everyone goes for super busted combos, and not all of those are banned. The ban lists that exist are as long as they are after 25 years. Just talking about the people who take the game too seriously and making it sound like only hyper-competitive people play is very disingenuous and makes it sound like you’re trying to downplay it and the other games for the sake of your argument sounding better. And the whole ‘having to play lands makes the game bad’ argument really doesn’t work.

You should probably look into the different formats of magic. It sounds like people were just playing whatever, of course that’s going to have unbalanced oppressive combos.

Just play a fighting game. Ffs

You should try Star Wars Unlimited, it is the only TCG I've ever even wanted to try, and it is very readable to new players.

great video thx!

With legendary equipment prices over $100, is hardly a TCG for anyone. Sad to see such a good game regarding technical play go a worse route than Yugioh.

Have you ever played Sorcery: Contested Realm? It has many similarities to Magic but it is played on a grid. It solves the mana issue you refer to here by letting players draw from two decks: a mana deck (sites) and a minions & actions deck (spellbook). It's also relatively new so there aren't that many cards yet. Seems like you'd enjoy it, judging by the factors you bring up in this video 🙂

Hey bro I hope you're doing well and that you come back at some point, I like your content a lot

Just give FaB a few more years to experience the tcg lifecycle and you'll get the broken cards, meta decks, gigantic card pool, etc.

I really enjoy playing Dark Darker Darkest. I find the combat to be creative, especially the enemy cards which have various targets to hit or enemy abilities to beware of. I like that there are some cool weapons to be found which really boost a character's attacks, and I enjoy the aspect of unlocking doors to explore. My main gripe is that even the 2nd edition of the rulebook is still not too friendly, so I feel like I always have tons to review each time I play this. I also dislike having to constantly put out fires. Like you, I found that a few house rules make this alot more fun, and I enjoy playing it. Thanks for a well thought out review of this game!

I found it for $25. But now I'm thinking twice.

Wonderful video! I also found deck building far more approachable which led to me actually making decks rather than going based off of deck lists. Even if it's not as efficient as a pro player's deck list it's mine and feels special because I thought about why every card is there and can tweak the deck accordingly because I know what I want from each card. :)

Does anyone know the rule differences with the revised manual?

Ehh this kinda turned into MTG bashing 😂 MTG is what you make it. It's a truly great game and set of rules at its core and it's what you make of it - want to dive into competitive? Then yeh you buy expensive cards and get bashed - but you can just as easily play casually and not do all that, I have 2 starter decks £20 - great fun for a few games in the evening. Also have a more 'advances yet still casual' deck for LGS

This video was literally made for me. Im fairly new to MTG Commander and yesterday I played with a new playgroup and as a casual player who doesnt have decks for few hundred bucks or more just to somewhat compete with the others I obviously got destroyed and was nowhere near the powerlevel. Also the amount of knowledge the guys had I feel like I have to quit my job to get close on their level. Now I am searching for other TCGs as an alternative and I found your video describing my exact feeling about MTG right now, well done mate

You just found TCG for you. Many problems of MTG are not present in most new card games. For exmaple mana is replaced by much more friendlier system in games like dragonball (you can play any of your cards as reasource), One piece (you get 1 special energy card more to use each turn), or even digimon (where it is blanace of how much you spent - this much opponent will get).

Love this video. I got into CCG’s in the early 90s, in my teens and in all the time since I’ve never got into magic as it really feels like it is not designed for newcomers despite what they say. No I have kids, I’m on the lookout for fun card games that I can play with them and I’ve never considered magic even though whereas I’ve started playing Star Wars unlimited with my son and he picked it up straight away. I feel and is perhaps one step too far at the moment for him but never say never as I really love the idea of game

Being mana screwed absolutely has to do with your deck building skills. Having 42 lands does not garantee that it is well built. You need ramp spells, mana rocks, and other strategies to make sure you have all the resources you need. If you are overwhelmed by the game's mechanics that is understandable it is the most complicated game ever created. But that's not the game's problem it's been around for over 30 years. Flesh and Blood will eventually be the same 30 years from now.

It's also nice I'm fab that you can build a super budget deck and compete

Red, in Magic, is Direct Damage, not Monsters.

Great game. Poor channel.

Yugioh doesn’t have resource management lol

I played Magic since 1995. Now I onli keep one modern deck and one commander deck to play with my friends. In 2021 I discovered Flesh and Blood. I like it because plays completily ditfernt from Magic, as pointe in this video. Recentily I've been playing FaB Round of the Table bos with my friends. Last year I start playing Grand Archive TCG. Is like 50% MtG, 50% original mechanics and no land cards.I like the art style too. A GA competetive deck costs half of other games.

Great vid. Tnks

It’s really disappointing to hear how you were introduced to Magic The Gathering and I hope the folks that gave you a bad first impression learned along the way to have a more inclusive mindset next time. I’ve taught four people how to play MTG and one to play Yugioh and the top priority is always to ensure they’re comfortable and engaged based on their interests. Sure it’s hard not to be intimidated by folks having fancy gear for their hobby, but what they could do is either play weaker decks to match a beginner’s experience or offer to split a deck and walk you though how to play it. Education, inclusivity and support are key to any hobby and I’m glad to hear that at least you got that from a different crowd.

Bought this game about two years ago and it’s been sitting on my shelve without being played still :/ It caught the eye of one of my friends this past weekend and he showed interest in wanting to play it. I figured I go on to KZbin to see if I could find a refresher video for the rules, and here I am. I enjoyed your video and your take on things but I do have one question. Did you know they did a complete overhaul of the rules on line? A lot of people complained about the rules so they reworked them. At least, if I’m remembering correctly, that’s what happened. Gonna go onto boardgamegeek or something to verify, I just wanted to leave the comment while I’m thinking about it because I know me and I’ll forget… Definitely gonna check out your house rules too though just to be safe.

This is fascinating to me because my son and I just started learning MTG and Lorcana. We are playing with slightly modified starter decks. When we started figuring things out, it didn't take long to realize that the game was going to be ludicrously expensive and complicated if we wanted to build decent decks and strike out to play with other people. As a brand new player, it's all a bit off-putting and I'm definitely second-guessing whether or not MTG is going to be something we invest in for playing. (I don't care about the investing, speculating, etc.) Thanks for the video!

Just got out of MTG. Glad I didn't spend too much on it. Bought thousands of FAB cards off a guy that doesn't play for $100. Didn't ask too many questions. Would like to try it out. If it doesn't work out, I'm sure ill make money off of it.

I would argue that the reason why you feel FaB is easy to get into is mainly because the game is relatively new (it's only a couple of years old at this point), And so it hasn't had the time or chance to drown players in cards, mechanics, and design space. I come from a YGO background and have been playing it on and off for about a couple of years, and it's definitely easy to get lost in the sauce when it comes to finding a good play style and deck; the same can be said for magic. This drives new players out and forces other players into the FOMO effect. The FOMO effect harms new players as they are blasted with new product releases, many cards, and mechanics. It also hurts more veteran players because they want the latest and greatest cards, the cards that will do the best in comps, or the cards they can speculate on. If you want to hear me out, I recommend a few other TCGs: Grand Archive (another reasonably new TCG) and Digimon. Both are fairly easy to get into both from a cost wise and in terms of deck building.

I feel so much the same. I loved Magic, and for many years going back to the late early 00's, but I've never been able to compete at that top level. I had for a brief period of time around Scars/Besieged a disgustingly fast red goblin deck that could often win turn 2, and if the game made it to turn 4 it was guaranteed to lose, but at the time the dominating deck was a $500+ Jace deck. I dipped my toe into digital Yu-Gi-Oh recently. Gross. Very recently I discovered Flesh & Blood and Sorcery, I just ordered some cards and pre-cons, haven't even got to play yet but been watching videos and they have me really excited.

I really liked Star Wars Destiny. I played it a lot with my nephew. I was heartbroken when FFG cancelled the game.

Excellent review. Still want to get but at what cost. Your so right about making the game fit what you want it to be. Some games are too complicated to start with and should come with a learning curve. Change the rules you don't like , make it fun. But now I want a tabby cat . Cheers.

As someone coming from MTG, your criticisms overall seem very fair. In particular though, your comment about how FAB doesn't have mana screw/flooding makes it seem pretty appealing, as one of my personal least favorite parts of MTG is that you have to rely on your deck giving you the right proportion of cards, and how sometimes, even with a well-built deck, you just get unlucky. Regarding your criticisms of MTG though, I think your initial experience was one that is inevitable in any card game - If you go into a match with your starter deck that you just brewed having learned the game a few days ago and everyone else is playing their strongest deck, of course you're going to lose and not have fun. I bet if I started FAB today and built myself a deck without any outside tools, I would get stomped if I played against an experienced player. I also feel like starting with commander (which it sounds like you did) is the hardest way to learn MTG. A format like Standard has far fewer complex mechanics than commander, only has ~2,500 legal cards (which is a lot, but far fewer than the ~27,000 cards legal in commander), and it's a simpler format with lower deck diversity. This means that going into a game, it's easier to tell what your opponent is playing. Sometimes they're playing something super new and unique that you didn't expect, but I know that if I see my opponent play a Plains on turn 1, it's very likely they're on Mono-White Aggro. Again though, I really liked your video, and FAB seems like a cool game that I may have to check out at some point!

Sold my Mtg. And months later I discovered FaB and they got me. So much beauty and details. Now I try to introduce it to my Kids

I recently started playing as levia shortly before dtd and even as a rookie i did decently well. So When I messed up it was my fault not my decks fault. And thats what got me the most interested in flesh and blood

FaB is the best competitive card game I have ever played and I have played just about every major card game in the US since 2005. Has the best tournament structure, great prizing, the secondary market is very healthy and makes me actually think game to game. I feel like I make infinitely more decision in 1 game of FaB then I do in an entire 14 round tournament of MTG or pokemon. I have gone to and competed in worlds for Pokemon TCG, Force of Will TCG and Flesh and Blood, + almost 20 years of card gaming exsperiance makes me hope my opinion matters a little.

Man you will love Cardfight Vanguard

I like this game, just use the manual from bgg.

Keep up the great content. 👍

Thats why we all went back to 93 94 old school.

Playing Magic casualy is very much possible. Like yeah, Standar, Pioneer, Modern and even Pauper these days are expensive and extremely competitive, but the most popular formar Magic has is Commander. Idk if you tried it, but it's a lot of fun, and you can find opponents on your level pretty much everywhere, because most experienced to medium player probably have a cheaper deck or a pet deck they made for fun.

"no hope to play casually without being a punching bag" That my friend is why among a friend group, you need to develop a sort of scaling for the power of the decks your using, so you can both play a bad deck on purpose, or know what decks they are playing you might struggle with in certain match ups. Maybe ask for help designing a deck to be good.