Walking away with a gem pack and a pack per win sounds fine to me. To be fair I also don't rely on packs for my cards. If there are cards from the set I want I get them. Any I pull from packs are great and it's pretty cool to pull a CF or something rare and have everyone all get excited plus I get some trade fodder which is always nice. I'm curious if there is a plan for when the gem packs run out. Will we still be at a pack per win? Go back to 2 packs per entry? Something else people smarter than me can think of? Ideally once the distribution settles out it shouldn't be an issue but it's something to think about, or at least address for the first couple months.

Thank you for the awesome and insightful video 🙏 I'm a co-host of a Seattle armory that gets 14-20 players weekly. Recently, due to an influx of new players and recent community feedback, we've started experimenting with a split armory structure. We're giving players the option to join a 'social play' side table where you pay your $5, get your promos or gem pack, and play with no round timers and no stakes with whomever is there. It's a space where you can learn the game, get advice, play your out of the box armory deck without getting crushed, and even have time for food, drinks and chatting. The main bracket still runs with store credit by record + promo/gem as usual. At our size, we're expecting ~4-8 social players and 12+ in the main one, which seems healthy, but we'll have to monitor that over time. We've only just implemented this, but already seeing players enjoying the new structure. This week it gave me a natural space to teach a brand new player with 1st Strike and get them into their first CC game after. Even some experienced folks are enjoying having the option to take a more chill week. 4 CC rounds is pretty grueling, and just barely fits before store close, so there isn't much time for socializing. With GEM packs, I feel LSS is encouraging this type of participation first structure. I also wonder what an all casual armory would look like, though I do feel something is lost there. Having the split structure should give us a sense of demand among our players, and we'll of course be monitoring that and iterating accordingly.

This deck was a bastard back in the day. I remember it slowing the game down a ton. You had to roll and resolve or risk eating the Easy Pickins/Crosshairs/Entangle.

Clash, or some tuned down blitz/cc format with enough character flavor to make it interesting, but enough power and price tone down to make it approachable for it to be a skill and experience based competition, would solve many of these problems. They need to put in the time to fix this entry-level armory problem. I don’t think blitz is it and I think commoner is not exciting enough.

DJ always makes me happy. At this same event I had a proxy Qi’ra and I remember the judges making me put it away as an unofficial card for at least 1 round before I just put it back out in open defiance of dumb rules. I had the official one behind it so I brought the legal card and it wasn’t even like a Legendary rarity. Stupid rule

I'm the Flesh and Blood tournament organizer at my LGS. I was used to a winner's heavy prizing structure where the local stores. The same guys winning the most prizing week after week. People got sick of that fast and retaining new players became nearly impossible. At my LGS we run the same flat fee, two pack structure that you do and it has been a tremendous boon. The winners of the armory still get the cold foil, but we distribute the foil promos evenly. I'm not personally convinced by pack per win, but I'm considering one additional gem pack for the armory winner, which may be untenable based on allocation. So we shall see.

I 100% agree that GEM packs should be given out to everybody and stores locking them behind performance will lose their playerbase, but I also agree that we can't just ignore performance based prizing. I did stop attending a store that ignored performance based prizing due to it feeling like "Structured free play". I already play a ton of FAB outside of the weekly and do feel something when I win the cold foil or packs or whatever. And now that GEM packs are revealed and they turned out to be basically reskinned armory prizing without any performance based winnings I don't think I'll feel good being the 4/5-0 player, getting one pack and opening nothing I wanted while the 0-4 player gets the same prize but opens a CF or marvel. Now I am the player that people got tired of me winning all the time, but when that happened the TO asked if I minded giving the cold foil to the second place person or having it raffle and asked me to not win for a few weeks. I did it; it didn't feel good for me since I was essentially being punished for playing well, and me winning armories essentially lets me have Flesh and Blood pay for itself (I wasn't playing a meta deck). I know this may sting for some people to hear, but you can't cast away the dedicated players the win a lot from your community since this is *the* competitive game on the market. That is the allure and pull of Flesh and Blood over other TCGs. I agree that stores need to find a middle ground, pure participation will grow stale after the initial hype has died down and there are many in the community who enjoy performance based prizing.

By the same token you can't force engagement. I mean realistically if people want to come in and be competitive in a non-competitive environment that's on them as individuals. And even with what you're saying, I feel that you're attempting to use prizing or glean away. Forward that encourages a specific mode of gameplay

It can be inclusive and competitive at the same time. I mean having prize packs does incentivize people to show up winning but at the same time having some floor of prizing would be nice. And I think that having prize packs for the high and at least just gem packs for the low would incentivize people to play

I appreciate your data-led ED explanations. If I've never said that to you before. I really appreciate your use of data to corroborate your findings

The best side game I ever played was PT Baltimore. There was a sealed side event and the last guy I played just said hey. Do you want to split the prize and just play and we spent the next 20 minutes. Bantering as we played and it was in stark contrast to my previous opponent with whom I won and he basically stormed off mad

I really feel the gem packs will help. I prefer casual armories because they are a vehicle for on-ramping new players and I'll be honest. I played a guy once who didn't even have a full deck. I mean he had 60 cards but it was not what you would consider complete and I ran over him. Mercilessly by turn one... I I helped him out with stuff. I even gave him advice while we were playing how to block better, but if you're just trouncing new players, they're not going to stay

I agree with you on the fact that they're giving enough that people who show up leave with one and to be honest I would prefer that. I really prefer armories to actually be casual play. The most fun I have is when I'm bullshitting with the other player. Not worried about whether I'm going to take the win and get into a level of prizing for stuff. I just want to screw around and play for fun

Armories are like any form of entertainment. I expect I have to pay for it. The price may be negotiable for what feels good or not, but I would always expect some form of paying to play

Mistveil also hurt our community. We had an enigma mastermind who would finish games 40-0 and those players he smashed never came back.

I think 50 packs per box is such a weird number. It works out to 6 packs per armory. Our store averages 8-10 players per event, so I’m genuinely curious to see how many boxes we get. We’re really not high enough to get 2, but we’re definitely over the quantity 1 box provides.

The Aurora player was fighting for their life! Great sportsmanship from players on both sides. Ggwp

Thank you for posting these gameplay videos! I really enjoy seeing these games played out in an Armory setting.

Thank you! That was all the info I needed. I’m so excited to import my original board games I’ve made into here!

This card is going to make my friends hate me lmao

Thanks for taking a moment to look at the art <3

This card is absolute gas! It's a big reward for marking the opponent and hopefully it doesn't just become a way of turning any stealth card into Bonds or Persuasive. Toolbox designs are cool when there are incentives to selecting different tools.

Oh that is some incredibly cool design!

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Looking forward to more actual mixup lines for Uzuri

This card almost makes me want to play Assassin Almost

Card is nuts

Great video. Very interesting to hear things being broken down in this way. I do think it’s pretty funny that blitz is the entry level format and a meta deck is like $600+ huge asking for entry level They should have started out with blitz being like commoner or like clash so the prices would also stay entry level. I feel like them adding commoner to the one calling event was them trying to gather market analysis on the format

Personally I'm a fan of Graphing Calculator over Celery 🤭

Curious how the new reveals have changed your options on obsidian fire vein?? He suddenly feels like much less work to get going.

I love the theory that there are ‘spinnerets’ for each version of random Arakni!!

Looking forward to playing my first calling at Memphis this month. Great videos.

I think, and really hope, GEM packs should be for participation and not ‘rewards’. Currently, my LGS does; everyone gets one pack and a RF (we typically have less players than you do) & the rest of the packs ‘bought’ from the entry fee are put in the pool and divided among the top 3. Imagine we’ll do something similar with the GEM packs… Hopefully we’ll have enough GEM packs to run like this!!

I will definitely be taking this suggestion to one of our local shops that seems to struggle. Up until about 1.5 months ago, we paid a $5 entry fee for the armory and the ONLY prizing given was what was supplied by LSS. We asked about everyone receiving a pack for the $5 entry and were told that "LSS is the one that said to charge a $5 entry fee." After the shop owner realized that all other stores in the area were either not changing entry (thus only giving away LSS provided materials) OR charging $5 and providing a pack to everyone in addition to LSS provided materials, they finally got on board with a pack per person at the end of the armory.

2 days? I can’t wait that long😢

Is there also something to be said for how this dagger improves assassin late game? Even as just a 1 of in the deck, slap on the celery and late game youre always able to pitch a blue and go 1 damage, 1 damage in combo with any of the other assassin dagger

I agree with your take. I was initially kind of bummed by the GEM packs because with the thought of using them for performance based prizing means the already enfranchised players are walking away with 3-4 packs when I think they are intended more to draw people in and give EVERYONE a chance at cracking that power card. Of course, this is sort of assuming they print good and desired cards in the gem packs like CnC, e-strike, tunic, etc. which they may not.

That's a super nice pull!

New arakni meta? Hahaha

Weapons create attacks. Weapons don't attack. So, the attack will cease to exist, but Uzuri won't make the token disappear.

Assassins need to start running Talishar

This card is so good!!!! Thanks for the video and FaB content!

Graphene Celery really amplifies the strength of Stealth as a keyword. It is ingenious as Stealth always does what any Assassing needs it to be. So on a flavourside, every Assassin is basically stealthy, but in their own way. And having stealth on a weapon just dials that up to 11 as you almost always have access to stealth if needed and it fits a different role for whatever stealth assassin we have nor or in the future. The only sad thing is, that OG Arakni just feels completely left behind and Contract feels more and more dated the more Stealth gets all the love. Might change with the spoiler tho, who knows? Can't wait to find out in Prague this Weekend!

Slippy > Crackni. Also, Slippy can always have this as a 0 cost +4 with Flick and I’m sure there’s a Slippy build where you have Graven to do Graven > Celery > 0 cost attack action. This card is really strong

I think reapers call is worth the mark for a card. Imagine you attack with mark of the black widow and your opponent doesn't block because they're not marked, you can instant and turn on its ability, doing it as marionette also means it gets +1 and on hit go again so the red becomes a break point. It's basically a card to give you a mark whenever you need one and frees the daggers up to be broken when your hand is a bit of an off turn

I'm super excited for ASC in commoner running the highest density possible of red stealth attacks. They are all 0 cost 3 atatcks block 3 with upsides, and I think that'll lead to a very solid and reliable base for the deck. Blocking 6 and swinging 6 guaranteed every turn is honestly quite decent.

burning blade has the "destroy dagger" after a period so it will always destroy the dagger regardless of if it hits same as flick knifes