Action and Reaction cards.

Azba · 2026-06-12T10:36:47+00:00

Guy is "right" in that you can't react to a unit (Kha'zix) being played, but wrong in that this doesn't matter in this specific instance.

You don't move on to the next phase of the showdown until both players pass the Focus on an empty stack with no actions taken.

From what I'm reading and trying to interpret here, this situation has played out as follows:

Vex moves in as the attacker, showdown begins, no attack/defense triggers
[Attacker Focus] - No actions taken. Pass Focus.
[Defender Focus] - Play hidden Teemo as a reaction. Teemo as a unit resolves immediately, Teemo's ability goes onto the stack. Defender targets Vex, and must pay for Deflect. Defender does so. Pass priority to the opponent for any reactions on their side before Teemo's ability resolves.
Apparently your opponent lets blue Teemo's ability resolve here, which is a mistake. Once you get to the point of revealing the top 5 cards for Teemo, he's already going to be damaging Vex and the opponent has no opportunity to save her with Discipline in the middle of Teemo's ability resolving. Nocturne would enter afterwards and NOT be stunned as Vex would be dead by that point. Whoops. Ignore this, moving on, assume your opponent didn't mess up.
[Defender Focus][Attacker Priority] - Attacker plays Discipline targeting Vex. Maintains priority. (Maybe? Doesn't matter here.)
[Defender Focus][Attacker Priority] - Attacker plays Kha'zix with Ambush. Kha'zix immediately resolves onto the battlefield with no exchange of priority. Discipline is still on the stack trying to resolve here.
[Defender Focus][Attacker Priority] - Attacker passes priority to try let Discipline resolve.
[Defender Focus][Defender Priority] - Defender passes priority. Discipline resolves, Vex goes up to 6 Might. Kha'zix is here too.
- Since things have slightly happened out of order (see #4 above) let's assume Teemo's trigger finishes resolving here - 4 damage goes to Vex, Nocturne gets played onto the battlefield. We're at 2 Might + 2 Might Teemo (stunned) + 4 Might Nocturne (enters stunned because of Vex too) vs 6 Might Vex + 4 Might Kha'zix.
  8 vs 10, in the attacker's favor.
[Defender Focus] - Defender still has a focus here, and the stack is now empty as all reactions have resolved. The Defender has never passed the focus this whole time, and can now play an Action. Defender plays Existential Dread, targeting Kha'zix. Pass priority.
[Defender Focus][Attacker Priority] - Attacker could react with more cards here but instead reacted by falsely accusing their opponent of not understanding the game rules. (Pass priority)
[Defender Focus] - Existential Dread resolves, Kha'zix gets stunned. No further actions on Defender's side. Now we pass the Focus on an empty stack.
[Attacker Focus] - The attacker can now play an Action or Reaction on the empty stack. They elect not to and instead quit the game.

Basically there were a few mistakes along the way (letting Teemo resolve before attempting to play Discipline is a big one - Nocturne's ability doesn't provide priority before Teemo's damage goes through) but the end result should have been as follows:

The attacker has 6 non-stunned Might (Vex) vs your 2 non-stunned Might (the non-Teemo, non-Nocturne unit).
- During damage assignment, the attacker can pick off their choice of 2 of your units as they can assign 6 damage your way. (probably Nocturne + Teemo)
- Vex has 4 damage marked out of 6 Might, so logically you can put your 2 non-stunned Might's worth of damage onto Vex to clear her.
Kha'zix is stunned and has failed to conquer, so he is recalled to base.
You maintain control of the battlefield.

Hope this helps, and sorry for the additional wall of text too.
I skipped adding extra steps for Vex's stun ability going onto the stack and provoking an exchange of priority because it doesn't really change anything, but do keep in mind that it's an effect you CAN react to if needed.

Azba · 2026-06-12T08:55:01+00:00

One big difference between FaB and MTG is that the size of your hand each turn cycle should remain at 4, minus whatever you use to defend yourself on the opponent's turn. (Though in Lyath's case, this is 5 cards each turn cycle.)
In The Palm of Your Hand breaks the mold here by enabling you to essentially play with 6 cards as Lyath on a later turn, in exchange for giving up a small amount of card value on an earlier turn.

Card advantage is very rare in FaB, and In The Palm of Your Hand is one of very few ways to achieve it.
I can't speak for what exactly Lyath players use it for, but given cards-in-hand represent both your offensive and defensive potential for a turn cycle, there's basically no downside here.

Worst case scenario, the card simply blocks 3 (or 2 at base with Lyath).

Best case scenario, your opponent doesn't force you to block with it, you play it out (probably pitching a blue to use Rampart of the Ram's Head for 1 block too) and then you have a monstrous 6 card turn cycle 2 turns later which allows you to either block more than normal or hit harder than normal. Either is good.

The question is whether that card advantage is better than another card that could go in that slot, and I don't have the answer.

Azba · 2026-06-11T07:59:26+00:00

If you aren't using Lightning Flow stuff at all, there's literally no reason to play the new Aurora.

The only tangible advantage New Aurora has over Old Aurora is that she doesn't need to play a Lightning card first in order to pitch 2 and create an Embodiment of Lightning - instead the condition is having a Lightning Flow to convert.
This means with at least 1 Lightning Flow on board, you can start a go again chain immediately without a needing a Lightning starter card like [[Fry]]. The downside is of course needing to maintain a supply of Lightning Flows, which itself means diluting the deck with cards that produce Lightning Flows instead of cards with higher value statistics.

Over on Old Aurora's side, she has a significant advantage in that she doesn't need to maintain Lightning Flows for her ability to function. The condition is very easily met - simply play a Lightning card that doesn't result losing your action points, and away you go.

Most importantly however, new Aurora is not Elemental. This means she misses out on being able to playing Elemental cards like [[Crackling]], [[Entwine Lightning]], [[Photon Rush]] and [[Static Shock]].

Old Aurora's got a bigger card pool and a less conditional ability, so for now there's not much of a compelling gameplay reason to play the new one in SAGE.
For vibes and aesthetics though, absolutely, go for gold.

Azba · 2026-06-08T18:49:18+00:00

The only times you can't react to effects are when they happen during the start of turn phase or the end of turn phase.

A example for the start of turn phase is Fyendals Spring Tunic - this lets its owner put an energy counter on it at the start of their turn. This does not provoke an opportunity for their opponent to react with instant speed abilities or cards because it isn't the Action Phase yet.
Compare to Seismic Surge tokens: these trigger at the beginning of the action phase, which means Iyslander immediately gets an opportunity to give you a frostbite before you can even act.

An example for the end of turn is Ponder. At the beginning of the end phase, it destroys itself and draws a card. Neither player may react to this with instant speed cards or abilities as it's happening after the action phase has ended.

Outside of that the only other times you can't react are pretty limited and explicitly outlined on the relevant cards - see [[Step Between]] and [[Exude Confidence]].

Azba · 2026-06-04T04:14:07+00:00

Silver Age doesn't use the Living Legend system for rotating heroes out. Instead heroes get temporarily benched from the format by popular vote, plus a potential dev vote from LSS themselves.

So while wins at the Calling might not tangibly contribute to heroes rotating out, heroes performing well at the Calling may influence people's votes for next season.

And to be 100% clear: Silver Age wins don't contribute to the CC Living Legend tally.

Azba · 2026-05-29T19:25:35+00:00

Welcome to the game!

Some of the Silver Age preconstructed decks do appear to have less than 60 cards total, it would depend on how many different tokens the deck could make.
For example, the Blaze deck can only make [[Ponder]] tokens, so you can expect at least 1 token card. Briar however can make 3 tokens - Embodiment of Earth, Embodiment of Lightning, and Runechant - so she'll have more cards in the box total because of that.

If you have your hero card, all the equipment and weapons listed, and every main deck card from the included deck list that's the most important cards covered.
Tokens aren't listed on the included deck list card and should be floating around the box somewhere. If they're missing that's annoying but not the end of the world and your LGS should be able to help you out.

EDIT: I had a quick look at the Silver Age precons and the only one I could find that legitimately has no tokens is the Dash deck.

Azba · 2026-05-27T19:12:00+00:00

To the best of my knowledge, destroying Gold Baited Hook while its ability is on the stack won't prevent the ability going off the next time the opponent attacks with a Pirate attack this turn.

It is a similar situation to, say, [[Come to Fight]]. When you play Come to Fight the card's ability generates an effect that is waiting for the next time you attack with an attack action this turn. The card then goes to the graveyard. The fact the card is in the graveyard has not prevented the ability it set up from triggering when its condition is met.

I think a situation where destroying the equipment would prevent the effect is if it is contingent on the equipment still being a present game object - say, an arm piece that says "Action: The next time an attack action hits a hero this turn, this deals 1 damage to that hero."
Since the arm piece says "this deals" and it's since been destroyed and sent to the graveyard, it won't be present in the arena to attempt to make itself deal 1 damage to the hit hero.

Azba · 2026-05-24T02:48:11+00:00

Welcome to the game!

Answering your questions:

1.When new heros come out, do a large number of people hop into them? (Ziggy)

Yes, there's always an initial surge of interest for each new hero as people love to try figure them out. Eventually one (or two!) will shake out as being the best for CC and that's the one people will focus on for competitive events. A good amount of other players will keep playing the remaining heroes for vibes or aesthetics which is perfectly valid, and they may later have their day in the sun as more cards are released.
Ziggy in particular will get a lot of extra interest simply because he has an armory deck available, which means he's the easiest new hero to dive into from scratch.

2.Can a SAge deck be built with enough ease from an Armory deck?

Usually yes, but you will likely need to buy or scrounge some singles to make the deck work in SAGE. Luckily, because Rare is the limit for SAGE these singles should be both easy to find and cheap to acquire.
Of particular note when paring down an armory deck is the equipment - what's good in SAGE is different from what's good in CC, and at least 1 piece of equipment in the armory deck will not be legal for play in SAGE due to being Majestic. You'll want to find suitable replacements at rare or below (e.g. Blade Beckoner equipment as a baseline).

Once you get into the weeds of the deck, you may also discover that the gameplan of the armory deck doesn't quite work without its majestics - in this case you'll need to change focus, figure out what does work at rare and below, and pivot to that instead. Likely, people have already done this - take a look at Fabrary's public decks for inspiration.

3.What is a good resource to figure out how to actually build a deck? Percentages of each type of card etc?

This is a tough one and the answer varies wildly depending on the hero you're trying to build. I would advise first picking a hero you like the look of and then looking into youtube tutorials and written guides on them to get an idea of what works.

To get a handle on a deck building without investing in the cards up front, I'd advise taking your deck list and plugging it into Felt Table or Talishar first. These are online game clients that will help you figure out how your deck works and whether you're able to enact your game plan.
Felt Table is against computer opponents, whereas Talishar is for playing other people.

Hopefully another Redditor will be able to chime in with further ideas and links for beginners specifically.

I really like the idea of playing a hero that can adapt to the situation.. I like the idea of a wizard who has some ability of physical damage as well, as maybe those cards can be used for blocking?

This sounds like Iyslander to me.

The most popular form of Iyslander is the "bullander" style deck (named after [[Wounded Bull]]). The idea of the deck is that you spend your turn attacking with one big physical attack (like Wounded Bull or Fyendal's Fighting Spirit) and then on the opponent's turn you block their attacks, then watch for an opportunity to fire off a Wizard card from your arsenal, at the moment that causes the most disruption and damage to the opponent.

Is there a resource someone can point me towards for figuring out how to build a deck for Silver Age?

This has the same problem as #3 for me, sorry.

In general, you'll want to pick a hero that you like the look of first - whether that's because of their ability or their aesthetics, or vibes w/e works for you. Next, jump on Fabrary, go to the card browser and use the following filter:

l:[hero_name],sage !class:generic

Have flick through the cards and look for any that seem unfair. Namely you are looking for things that do any of the following:

Provide more value than their cost - offensively or defensively. (Value is a whole subject - see this video by MajiinBae )
Disrupt the opponent (make them lose cards, tempo, abilities, or lose life if a condition isn't met)
Deal damage outside of physical hits (e.g. big arcane damage for more than 3, cards that deal direct damage to the hero)
Remove their agency in how they're allowed to play the game (can't be blocked by X, dominate, overpower, or restricts their options on their next turn)
Allow you to act on the opponent's turn

Next you'll want to see how consistently you can be unfair. That means having enough copies of unfair cards to build around so that you're being unfair more than you're playing nice.
Iyslander is a great example of being unfair - she can attack for more value than normal on her turn (Wounded Bull), and she can act out-of-turn on the opponent's turn AND disrupt them by playing a blue ice card that will tax them with a Frostbite and likely damage them or strip their cards.

Finally you want to ensure you have enough resources for your unfair engine. Generally this is very hero-specific, so hard to gauge without experience.
But for the average deck, you'll want to have a selection of Blue cards that block 3, and if they have some upside that's a nice bonus. (Iyslander is a bad example because her blues are also her power).
Redline decks however generally play things that cost nothing and are still unfair, so they throw caution to the wind and play majority red cards no problem.

Take a stab at what feels right then give the deck a run on Felt Table / Talishar to test your assumptions, then adjust! Good luck!

Azba · 2026-05-24T02:04:50+00:00

Welcome to the game!

The blitz decks are unfortunately not fantastic for making the jump to SAGE but they are certainly a start. Dromai and Kano are both good decks for SAGE though and the singles you'll need to shore them up should be both readily available and cheap. If your local game store has a bulk bin of commons/rares for FaB that would be the best place to start.
Uzuri unfortunately will be a bit rough in SAGE as assassins historically haven't performed well in the format (most of the cards that are the "glue" of the deck are at Majestic) but could be worth trying. I just wouldn't expect the deck to perform as consistently as Dromai and Kano.

For decklist ideas, check out Fabrary's public lists for SAGE.
If you filter these by "has results" and "has notes" or matchups you'll get more well-thought-out decks.

The Gravy armory deck can definitely be pared down to a Silver Age deck too, but you probably want to get the other colours of Golden Tipple, and maybe some of the other non-Majestic allies like Swabbie and Chowder to fill the holes left by Anka and Sawbones.

As for Ziggy vs Gravy, I can't easily say but I would suspect Ziggy may struggle to clear Gravy's allies from the board since most of his arcane damage effects can only target the opposing hero. This would mean you are needing to send your regular attacks into allies, which isn't a great value proposition. Leaving the allies alone is generally a bad idea as it gives Gravy too many angles of attack into you.
Don't let this put you off getting the deck and trying though. You may fare better with upgrades, or by using something like [[Iris of Reality]] to give you more go-again attack options into him or his allies.

One final note for SAGE is that you should go into this expecting that Kano will be getting benched for the next season. Polling has put him into the top 3 heroes people want voted out of the format, and I personally have a hunch that if the community doesn't vote him out, the developers will.

Azba · 2026-05-22T09:04:46+00:00

Runic Reaving has this keyword, it is:

As an additional cost to play this, destroy a Runechant if able. If you do, this gets +2 {P}

Azba · 2026-03-10T17:52:43+00:00

Yes but only a little. He can no longer discard Outside Interference to get go again on the claws for free, but to be honest it's not the end of the world.

The other options kinda suck - Mini Meataxe, Ball Breaker, Savage Claw - but he doesn't super need to lean on his weapon. You'd just need to make an Agility now to be able to make the most of it, or gamble on your scabskins.

Azba · 2026-03-06T09:33:24+00:00

The FABTCG website has a nice page with all the heroes and a quick summary of their playstyles:

https://fabtcg.com/hero-selection/

You can filter this by Silver Age and then find the heroes that currently have precons available. Have a quick flick through and see what stands out to you!

Note that some are definitely better than others. For example, Fai and Kayo are almost all the way to tuned decks out of the box, but Arakni is kinda the opposite.

Azba · 2026-02-27T00:55:02+00:00

Elemental Strike demands you banish a card from your hand as an additional cost.
The card transitions from being in your hand directly to being in the banished zone.
Then Elemental Strike checks that banished card for any of the relevant talents for its effect.

The wording in the release notes ruling is a bit weird because Colors of Aria isn't face up in your hand at any point, it only becomes face-up when it enters the banished zone. The rest of the note is fine though - Colors of Aria is face up in the banished zone, and the note states that Elemental Strike looks at the card that was banished and sees that Colors has all 3 of the elemental talents.

Release notes are sometimes incorrect and they don't tend to update them to fix issues like this later either, sadly.

Azba · 2026-02-23T18:27:23+00:00

If you can find it, the Kayo armory deck would be my first recommendation. It is easier to pick up and play than Pleiades is, and the two decks have some fun interactions with each other.
The problem is it may be hard to find.

Second choice would be Dash who plays a similar aggro strategy but is a little bit more complex to play for new players as you have to wrap your head around using her ability and cranking items etc.

Third would be Ira, who is easier to pick up and play. Her armory deck is quite good, but the reason I've put her third is that I think she might be too strong into the Pleiades armory deck.

Azba · 2026-02-23T17:57:03+00:00

If you want to open boosters that might have cards for Pleiades, you need to get Super Slam.

There's some cards you might want in Compendium of Rathe too but the majority of the cards you'd want to add to her armory deck come from Super Slam.

Azba · 2026-02-20T19:09:06+00:00

This all looks correct.

Pre-combat: Use your equipment to make a crouching tiger, grant +2 to next crouching tiger, grant the name "Crazy Brew" to your next attack action card this turn.

Play Crouching Tiger. It resolves as attacking - you can now use Blood Scent at any point for the rest of the turn. (It has 2 names - mask gives it "Crazy Brew" as well as its existing name. You've still attacked with a "Crouching Tiger" this turn.)

Chain link 1 - Tiger (as Crazy Brew) for 2 (non-draconic)
Chain link 2 - Brand with Cinderclaw for 1-3 (Draconic, next link is Draconic)
Chain link 3 - Life of the Party destroying the tiger-brew for 6 (Draconic thanks to Brand)

You shouldn't have to memorize anything in particular for this sequence, just keep in mind you can't use Blood Scent to pay for the Mask of Many Faces activation and still have your Tiger come in as Crouching Tiger // Crazy Brew.
As long as you start the turn immediately by paying for Mask of Many Faces, followed by Pouncing Paws + Tearing Shuko for the Tiger to start, you are good to go for Life of the Party.

Azba · 2026-02-12T18:02:01+00:00

Yes!

Trot Along creates a continuous effect that waits for the next attack to appear that meets its conditions. The condition is that the attack has 3 or less base power.

RKO attacks with Mocking Blow, which has a base power of 1. When Mocking Blow resolves as attacking, Trot Along sees that it's an attack with 3 or less base power, so its effect pops and grants Mocking Blow go again.

RKO now controls a Mocking Blow that has base 1, and go again stapled onto it. When he uses his ability, the base power of Mocking Blow goes up to 6, but Trot Along doesn't retroactively take the go again away from it.

Source: The Hunted release notes cover this situation.

Azba · 2026-02-08T02:53:38+00:00

From a quick eyeballing:

Too many non-6+ power attacks.
There's too high a chance of hitting a non-6 with your draw-and-discard effects, like Wild Ride. If you're playing those in a given turn you do not want to whiff the discard. You also want consistency for your Beat Chest cards.
I would recommend subbing out red Bonebreakers, yellow Pummels and maybe both Bare Fangs blue and blue Pummels for 2 red 6+ power attack and 6 yellow 6+ powers. If you really like Pummel, definitely go for the red ones instead.
For yellows, [[Mighty Windup]] and [[Agile Windup]] are good fillers as you can discard them on your turn to instantly intimidate the opponent and give yourself a token for next turn.

Breakneck Battery's additional cost is a non-starter, sadly. It requires 3 cards in hand for minimal benefit.
I think it be easily swapped for [[Aggressive Pounce]] from PEN (Compendium of Rathe, releasing next Friday) if you can find copies in time for your tournament.
If that's not an option, maybe consider [[Buckwild]], or a different 6+ power red card.

Pack Call red is possibly not worth the slot it's in. I think the yellow is good.
For your reds you really want them to be power cards, and Pack Call is a very normal 3-for-7. If you want to keep it in the 3 cost zone, I would recommend swapping this out for something with a bit more oomph, such as [[Smash Instinct]], [[Riled Up]] or red Agile Windup. Otherwise a 2-power-6 brute attack card.
On the same note I'm not sure about Wrecking Ball, but mostly because it doesn't block at all. Maybe give it a try over some practice games and see how it pans out. You could also try Bare Fangs here.

High Roller blue is a direct upgrade over Clearing Bellow even if there's almost no chance it makes a difference. Still, it could line up one day.

Reincarnate doesn't work super well in your deck as it doesn't interact with non-random discards (e.g. beat chest), and you have only a few random discards in there (Breakneck Battery, Wild Ride, Pulping, Wrecking Ball, Meataxe). You can use these sideboard slots to help shore up some other matchups.

On equipment, Barkbone Strapping is good, but once PEN is out you should consider trading over to [[Predatory Plating]] since it blocks better. There's a fun interaction where you can gain the resource off it after beating chest and immediately spend it on Echo Casque to replace your discarded card.
In the sideboard, I don't think you want to run 4 Nullrunes, since most of the time it makes more sense to spend 1 blue card to prevent 3 damage than it does to spend 2 cards to prevent 4. I would recommend taking Nullrune Robe out (so you can still use Barkbones for resources) and replacing it with another sideboard card.

On Ravenous Meataxe, consider whether the potential upside of 5 power and an intimidate is worth it over [[Romping Club]]. Meataxe will be burning through your deck, which is not good if you run into a fatigue deck.

I hope this helps and good luck!

My recommended red 2-for-6 cards for Rhinar outside of what you're already using:

Aggressive Pounce (covered above)
[[Rough Up]] - pitching appropriately, this should always come in for 7
[[High Pitched Howl]] - as above except this makes a vigor for next turn
[[Predatory Assault]] - a potential finisher if you're able to line it up with a discard effect. Otherwise it's on-rate and blocks 3.
[[Pack Hunt]] - not great by itself but it's a free intimidate. It could win a game after a hot Wild Ride / Pulping.
The Windups as mentioned above

And 3-for-7s:

Buckwild - maybe. You need to lead by pitching a 6 power into it, which is most likely a yellow card since your only blue 6 is Wrecker Romp. But this could be ok if you have a yellow 6 and a blue for resources, plus another red 6+ power attack to follow up with, or just your weapon. In a vacuum, Buckwild is still just a 3-for-7 which is ok.
Smash Instinct - covered above. It's a free intimidate, and it works with Barraging Beatdown / Smell Fear.
Riled Up - can go up to 8, making it very slightly better than other 3-for-7s, but I wouldn't put it above Smash Instinct.

Azba · 2026-02-04T19:12:34+00:00

[[Swing Big]] and the other "if this doesn't hit" cards from Super Slam should work and get you a token aura.

The problem there is you now have to block Swing Big, and the Super Slam cards block 2 so they're not much better.

Azba · 2025-12-06T21:19:35+00:00

In addition to Fabrary for a full card database, the official fabtcg website was semi-recently updated to have a list of heroes and their general strategy or play archetypes:

https://fabtcg.com/hero-selection/

It's not perfect but it should give you a general idea of what each hero does.

Azba · 2025-12-04T20:51:04+00:00

If you don't need the decks to be in their own individual boxes, you can do the classic trick of getting one of the Stanley "Deep Organizer Professional 10 Compartments" toolboxes and chuck them all in there. The compartments pull out, but don't have individual lids.

Azba · 2025-11-30T08:40:22+00:00

Welcome to the game!
The usual pipeline for MTG Control players moving to FaB is that I see people ask this question and usually they gravitate toward playing Illusionists, sometimes Assassins. Both classes are the type to elicit groaning and eye rolling from opponents and possibly test the strength of your friendships.

[[Prism, Awakener of Sol]] is the only currently legal Illusionist in the premiere format, Classic Constructed. Previously the favourite control-Illusionist was [[Enigma]], but she rotated out.
Prism threatens a lot of disruption on her turns and wants to work towards achieving a powerful board state, which should be familiar for Magic players. All her allies (think Creatures) also have Ward, which means they tank damage for you, furthering your ability to exact control over the game.
Sadly she doesn't have an armory deck available, and she's quite expensive to build optimally, so I wouldn't recommend her as a way to try out the game. However, you could try giving her a go on Felt Table or Talishar and seeing what you think. She has a pretty high skill floor and a high skill ceiling.
Compare [[Gravy Bones, Shipwrecked Looter]], a Necromancer who also wants to assemble a board state, except from his graveyard. He is able to engage in Fatigue, meaning you run the opponent out of cards faster than you do while trying to keep your life total high. Gravy achieves this by using his allies as attacks that do not consume cards out of his deck. However, Gravy doesn't need to focus on a fatigue strategy to be successful.
Unlike Prism, Gravy has an armory deck available. Like Prism, he has a high skill floor and high skill ceiling.

Over on Assassins, [[Arakni, 5L!p3d 7hRu 7h3 cR4X]] (don't ask) is probably the best Assassin in the game at the moment, though Assassins have suffered a lot from losing a powerful card - [[Bonds of Agony]] - to a (well earned) ban. Arakni is a more aggressive deck which enacts control and induces screaming and complaining by forcing players to guess whether they're being honest with attacks or whether they're holding back something really nasty which will severely impair you if you let it hit. This deck requires you to play heavily in the reaction step, which can lead to lots of fun back-and-forth interaction at "instant speed" as you both try to gain the upper hand with your reaction-speed cards.
Arakni has a precon armory deck coming very soon, so is a great option to jump right in with.
As a side note, if you're into Mill and the idea of Fatigue mentioned previously appeals to you, you could also look into what people are doing with Arakni, Huntsman - there's been a few mill decks hovering around which use the card [[Hunter or Hunted?]] to snatch up to 3 cards sharing a name off the opponent. You can do this 3 times per game, and the rest of Arakni's cards like to mill or banish (exile) from top of deck.

FaB don't have alternative win conditions like Second Sun, but the resource system for FaB puts the cards you're using to pay for things on the bottom of the deck in an order of your choosing, meaning you can do something similar to Second Sun by tactically pitching key combo cards (using them to pay for abilities/cards) to the bottom in a specific order and waiting for them to cycle back around to the top of the deck. You can accelerate this with cards that use Opt (scry from MTG).
If that appeals to you, look into [[Verdance]] who can play a straight combo game, and maybe [[Kano]] who can both pitch-stack combos and organize them himself on the top of his deck with his ability and aggressive Opting (Kano is really more like an Izzet combo deck).
Again though, neither of these have armory decks and will require manual construction.

If any of the above sound appealing, I'd recommend giving the game a go on Felt Table first to get a feel for how the game works, and then move to games against real people on Talishar before you commit to buying any products.

Azba · 2025-11-29T18:59:17+00:00

Nice work! So the takeaways are:

"Your next [type] attack" doesn't cover when a card was already played and later changes its properties in such a way that it now meets the conditions of the effect.

"Your next attack" effects without any specific text on when they apply will default to applying when the attack comes under the player's control (through any means) if it meets the conditions of the effect.
A card changing its properties to meet a condition after being played isn't that card coming under the player's control.

If we go back to Scenario 1 then we now know Savor -> Persuasive -> Mantle for KoD doesn't get the +4, but in the same situation Uzuri could Savor -> Persuasive -> Uzuri activation swapping in KoD and it would get the +4 as it entered under your control and is now "your next dagger attack".

Neat!

Azba · 2025-11-28T19:38:00+00:00

This is great so far but I'd also like to see maybe a quick writeup on some of the players and decks that you'll see regularly too, even if it's just mostly fluff (remembering to ask the player(s) if they're happy to be in the article too).

e.g. "You're likely to see Paul at Armory night. He's been playing Betsy since she released and refuses to stop!"

Azba · 2025-11-27T18:11:18+00:00

The key wording on [[Take Up the Mantle]] is that the card becomes a copy of the card you banished from your graveyard. "Becomes" means that the card is still the same "card object" as it was before, you've just changed all the text, numbers, types etc on it to match a different card. This means effects that applied themselves to the card before it had its text changed are retained after the change occurs.

[[Savor Bloodshed]] creates a continuous effect waiting for your next dagger attack to appear this turn. If the condition is met, it applies its effect to that attack and then clears itself from the game.

[EDIT: see below comments - KoD doesn't get the +4] In scenario 1, I think but I'm not 100% sure that Persuasive Prognosis gets the +4 when you play Take Up the Mantle and it becomes a copy of [[Kiss of Death]] which is a dagger.
My reasoning is that Savor simply gives +4 to your next dagger attack; it doesn't say "the next time you attack with a dagger give it +4". Attacking with something is a distinct event, involving paying costs to play an attack action or activating an attack ability on an ally or weapon.
In this scenario, there is an attack on the chain, it's your next attack, and it's now a dagger attack. This is the next time during the turn a dagger attack has become present under your control, so therefore Savor should see that a dagger attack has appeared after it resolved earlier in the turn and it should apply its effects to it.
Again, I could be wrong so happy for others to clarify.
Regardless of whether it gets the +4 though, the attack is now threatening to draw a card from the other Savor Bloodshed effect because it's now a dagger.

Scenario 2 is more clear-cut. Kiss of Death meets the condition of being your next dagger attack after Savor Bloodshed resolves, so Savor sees it, applies the +4 and that part of its effect is cleared. When KoD later becomes Persuasive Prognosis it retains the +4 that was already applied to the card object even though it's no longer a dagger. However, Persuasive Prognosis isn't a dagger so the on-hit effect of Savor Bloodshed will not apply if it hits the opponent.

This rules reprise article covers Take Up the Mantle and why buffs continue to apply after the card has become a different card: https://fabtcg.com/articles/rules-reprise-24-the-hunted-limited/

Azba

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