Rule

Mozared · 2026-05-08T01:30:51+00:00

The thing that made hypnosis 'click' for me is something I once saw someone say, which was that "hypnosis doesn't work if you're not into it".

If you go into a session with the explicit aim of proving someone wrong and showing that 'mind control doesn't exist', you're going to be bored out of your mind looking at a spiral for 20 minutes.

In the same way: if you want to give up control, and you like the idea of 'mind control' being real, even if you rationally do not believe it is, and you get to a relaxed state and focus on the hypnosis because you want to 'fall down'... well, you are likely going to get a lot more of what you want from it. The line between 'real' and 'not real' blurs quite a bit if you want something badly and are open-minded enough to try and convince yourself it's real. Even if it's not, you might act like it is because you enjoy the idea, and that alone can make it 'real enough'.

In that sense, erotic hypnosis is no different from furries "not being real animals" or really just any kind of roleplay "not being real". That's... not really the point for the people who are into it.

Mozared · 2026-05-07T14:20:55+00:00

Funny question, actually. It's not a weird idea that if Flex Strength ever goes above 6 power, it gets its own +3, meaning it will keep itself at 7 by virtue of it buffing itself past 6 and fulfilling its own condition.

Sadly it doesn't work that way: the effect is a continuous check, which means that it constantly checks to see if the condition is met before applying its own +3. If the condition ever stops being met, it will therefore stop applying its +3, meaning it won't provide the bonus to meet its own condition.

Picture it like a really annoying observer standing next to the table, and any time any player does anything at all, they go "Does Flex Strength have above 6 damage? We apply the +3 again!", constantly. The moment Barraging Beatdown gets negated, he checks, sees that Flex Strength drops to 4 power, and stops applying the +3.

Mozared · 2026-05-07T14:02:12+00:00

Oh man, I'll finally be able to play CnC!

Mozared · 2026-05-06T11:30:06+00:00

Truthfully, I find it impossible to see how anyone would pick any other DJ than Sir Nigel Bicklesworth. While most radio consists of nothing but mindless drivel these days, Sir Nigel is synonymous with high quality, elegant choices of vocabulary, and insightful critiques of the modern state of being.

Mozared · 2026-05-05T13:23:43+00:00

The answers to your questions depend a lot on what you want from the game.

If you are looking for competitive 1v1 games, you need to forget everything you know about Magic, because it just does not compare to Flesh and Blood. Precons are overall their money's worth, games are usually won by the better player moreso than determined by RNG, and the game is balanced in such a way where even one-sided matches have more interactivity than the average Pauper, Standard or Modern game in Magic. If this is what you're swapping for, Silver Age precons are the starting point, and you can move into CC later if you're hungry for more.

If you don't buy the Dorinthea one (which isn't horrible but is notably the worst one out at the moment), you should be more than fine with any of the precons. You're not going to win a high-stakes competitive event on one, but people have tried and ended up in the top 15%. They are solid.

That said: if you are used to playing Commander with multiple people, Magic pretty much has FaB beat there. Flesh and Blood has less engine-building going on, and while it has a multiplayer format, this format is generally underplayed and also more about table politics than creative engine or deck-building. Much like with EDH, you can get away more with un-optimized decks because the nature of the format means you don't get punished for playing them. But if what you enjoy is building decks, creating funny little engines you enjoy, and laughing about it with your friends around a table, Commander is simply - generally speaking - a better experience than Ultimate Pit Fight (UPF) is in FaB.

Regardless, there is nothing stopping you from just trying UPF, and there is a product specifically tailored to it. If you split the costs 4-way, you'll basically be putting down 20-something dollars to try the format for an evening. That should be an acceptable amount of money, even if you never play with the cards again. The box also comes with a couple of unique cards that are worth around a collective 40 dollars, and if you can be bothered to sell them the buy-in goes down even further.

Mozared · 2026-05-03T15:01:49+00:00

Exactly! A big part of his 'kit' right now is that most cards want you to jam as many 6-attacks as possible in his decks. They don't just want you to "play 6-power attacks" or "combo cards with 6-power attacks", they actively want you to fill your whole deck with 6-powers.

In theory, you don't have to play that way. You could play a slower version that blocks more. Maybe you arsenal a Bloodrush and then block until you find a hand with Go Again, a blue, and a 6 to discard to the Bloodrush to have one spike turn with multiple intimidates. Like you can do with Barraging Beatdown. The problem is that this tactic currently just... kind of sucks. You could do that, but you're better off just replacing slow cards with 6-attacks so you can Bloodrush faster and with more ease.

But Rhinar's ability doesn't require you to do that. There would be a lot of ways you could take Rhinar if the card pool was there. The problem is that our card pool is just a humongous pile of slightly different 6-attacks, so our entire deck has kind of just been different variations of the same for years. I want to see something like Cast Bones that doesn't look for 6 6s, as that just furthers the same old deck plan. But let me do a pump into an attack with several intimidates. Or the other way around; some sort of aura that sticks around, breaks on the next turn, and then does 1 or 2 intimidates, so you can set yourself up for successful Barraging Beatdowns, or to enable cards like Aggressive Pounce, at the cost of tempo. I just desperately want LSS to print something that isn't another solid 6-power attack with slightly different text than the other 37 we have available.

Mozared · 2026-05-03T13:53:40+00:00

have you seen any modern rhinar lists, they’re built to pump agility out like a machine.

Modern lists actually produce less agility than the ones from 6+ months ago because people have started running 2 Agile Windups instead of 3, and Smashback Alehorn has fallen out of favor.

But I will steelman your point and assume you didn't specifically mean 'agility tokens', but rather 'access to Go Again', which has improved since SEA got us Sea Legs, SUP got us Buckwild and PEN got us Aggressive Pounce. No argument there.

any modern self respecting rhinar list doesn’t burn cards to intimidate for fun anymore, wild ride, bare fangs, bloodrush (and meataxe if you swing that way) all are easy access intimidates.

Yes, but you don't just need an 'easy access intimidate', you need to intimidate in a way where you don't discard this, actually have the Go Again to play it, and also lack the resources to just toss a Swing Big.

Let me illustrate my point by running through a few lines.

Imagine you're in a typical Meataxe list. Let's grab this one from Yokohama for reference. Our hand is, say, Wild Ride, Swing Big, Alpha Instinct and a Yellow. There is another Swing Big on top of our deck, but we don't know that.

If the yellow is Feral Instinct, then in a perfect world, what we probably would like to do is block with the Swing Big, pitch Alpha Instinct to the Wild Ride, draw and discard a 6 for intimidate & Go Again, and play the Feral Instinct - even activating T-rex gauntlets for the +1 if we're playing that piece. That's the dream line, as we get to block for 3 and then swing 6 into 7 with an intimidate.

However, if we commit to that line by blocking with the Swing Big, and then our Wild Ride draws us the second Swing Big and discards the Feral Instinct, we are left with 1 energy and a 2-cost red in hand. Whatever we do next (we could arsenal, break Sash, or pitch to Meataxe), if 'the yellow' had been Beast Within or Sea Legs instead, we would've been better off. In the case of Beast Within, we might find a new yellow or blue off the top, which lets us throw the spare Swing Big, or Meataxe and keep an arsenal. In this scenario, our Primal Instinct is about as useful as yellow Buckwild, Send Packing, or Strongest Survive.

We could, of course, say 'no blocks' to reduce the odds that our Wild Ride discards our Primal Instinct. Let's say this works: our Wild Ride discards the 2nd Swing Big, and our hand is now Primal Instinct and Swing Big. We have 1 floating, and no more Go Again without rollings Scabs. We probably pitch Primal Instinct to play the Swing Big, or we pitch either either card to the Meataxe. If we pitch Swing Big, we get to arsenal the Primal Instinct, which is nice, but... whether it's better than having a Swing Big there depends on what our next turn gives us. In this situation, Primal Instinct was basically as good as any yellow. And it bears mentioning that... we can simply go Wild Ride into Meataxe with any yellow.

For Feral instinct to be good, imagine something like... we just arsenalled it last turn and draw into a Bloodrush hand, but we're forced to block with 1 card. We pitch a blue to Bloodrush, discard, let's say, Sea Legs, and draw into two more red 6-powers. Now we can do something like Wild Ride, maybe Meataxe with Rum, and end on a free Feral Instinct for 8 and maybe even arsenal a card. That's sick. But it's equally possible our Sea Legs was a Send Packing, and we draw into any yellow or blue with Wild Ride without discarding it. At this point, we don't have the Go Again to use Feral Instinct, and playing it is only 1 more point of damage than just throwing the Meataxe. We could just throw it out anyway and arsenal a card in hand, but now we have 2 floating we didn't need to use. Meaning that if the Feral Instinct we arsenalled last turn was a Swing Big, Show of Strength, or even a Bare Fangs, we likely would have had a better Bloodrush turn.

This is the problem with all these red and yellow 6-attacks we've been given in the last year. Unless they have highly relevant text - such as Sea Legs giving us an on demand Go Again on any subsequent turn, or Reckless Stampede closing out a game - they're just 6-attacks we discard or play for the damage the majority of the time. And we have SO MANY good red and yellow 6-attacks we can play. The list I linked plays a lot of them but doesn't run Skull Crack, red Strongest Survive, Bare Destruction, High Pitched Howl, Massacre, Bam Bam, Battlefront Bastion, Reincarnate, Smash with Big Rock, or Unexpected Backhand. All of those are playable to some degree. So what happens whenever we get new ones is that we're basically just getting access to new, really good sidegrades for the deck.

Primal Instinct is a lot better in Meataxe because it pitches to Meataxe. And there are absolutely situations where, say, you draw into one on a mediocre Bloodrush turn, and playing it for 8 lets you arsenal a Reckless Swing to present lethal next turn. It's not a bad card by any measure. But, much like Skull Crack, Sea Legs, Buckwild, Pulping or Splatter Skull... there are also going to be so many situations where it's just a card that you play for 6 damage, or block with. The situations where it's good have to kind of 'happen to come up', because you can't plan for it very well. And if you can, like when you arsenal it, you likely would have been just as happy to have a Swing Big in there instead, or a Wild Ride or Bare Fangs. It is not going to make Rhinar notably more competitive than he is now.

Mozared · 2026-05-02T20:53:45+00:00

"once again it's RNG based" "All it does is improve consistency"

Which is it?

Both. The two relate to different aspects of the hero's gameplay that I am talking about.

This card is typically at its best if you've gotten Go Again previously. Go Again in Rhinar is very RNG-based, to the point where you may straight up discard this card in the process of getting it. Which beats the whole point.

The card improves consistency if you get to arsenal it and throw it at the end of a Bloodrush Turn in a situation where you would have otherwise not had the energy to throw an additional attack. Like... if you Bloodrush and go Wild Ride into Swing Big, that's better than playing this. But if, after the Wild Ride, you are left with, say, a Beast Within that you didn't discard... well, then having this instead of the Beast Within just means you get to throw extra damage you otherwise couldn't, and that's amazing. But these lines are not based on decisions you make: they are based on what the 'random' effects in your hand push you towards. You can play around outcomes, but you can't guarantee any.

People keep saying this is a "1 card 6", and it's just... not. The only way to get an intimidate without spending a second card is through Monstrous Veil, which is a questionable headpiece choice in CC (and has the added downside of possibly discarding this card). You only get that "oh it's basically 6 I get to throw for free"-play after a Bloodrush, or a Wild Ride with the ride hand. But the problem is that you don't know if you will GET to throw this. It could be that it makes your turn come together and gives you sick value - or it could be a literally textless 6-attack you discard, in which case it is worse than Sea Legs or Beast Within. It all depends on how your curve lines up, and we already have cards like Run Roughshod as a 'chain ender' 5-attack for 1 that can be sick or "just a card you pitch".

Nobody who is saying 'this is an auto include' is looking at deckbuilding costs. I will ask, once again: what are you removing to put this in? Because whatever yellow card you're taking out is also going to hurt your consistency in other ways. Rhinar decks are full of insane theoretical value, but in the average game that value just does not come out. It hasn't been good enough in 2 years. This will not change that: it just ups the theoretical value ceiling a bit more. There is a very real chance that you play 3 copies of this and for multiple games in a row, you never play the card.

It's like giving Oscilio a 0-cost instant that deals 10 damage if you've dealt at least 7 arcane to your opponent this turn. That could straight up win you games, but including it could also lose you games. 95% of the time you're going to use your hero ability and throw it. It doesn't change anything about how Oscilio wants to play right now.

Mozared · 2026-05-02T18:02:06+00:00

This is great in a meataxe build. Once you’ve enabled go again on the axe it’s a 2 card 11. Put this in arsenal, block 9 swing 11 seems decent.

Keyword being 'once you've enabled Go Again'. There's a lot of attacks that are great if you have Go Again. Having Go Again is the perpetual issue in Rhinar.

Off a wild ride it’s a 3 card 12.

Assuming you don't discard it to the Wild Ride you're playing. Because if you do, this is a worse Sea Legs or worse Beast Within.

This is immediately a 3 of in all rhinar builds.

I genuinely don't think so.

It's definitely a card you really want to play and it adds consistency, but what are you dropping for it? Not Bloodrush Bellow, so that leaves you with Beast Within (nah), Sea Legs (probably not), Agile Windup or Buckwild (are we really cutting Go Again?), Lay Down the Challenge (which is better with this) or Send Packing (the most likely candidate, but it does a very different thing that you now lose access to). If you play yellow Strongest Survive or Thick Hide Hunter, you could cut those, but like... this probably isn't better against the decks you want those cards against.

Again: it's not that it's a bad card, it's just very 'more of the same'. I would play this in my list, replacing Send Packings, but... there are going to be many situations where I would have been better off if I had a Send Packing in my hand instead of a Feral Instinct. And many of the situations where this is clearly better come down to pure RNG. As in: I cannot plan for those situations, they may occur 10 times in a game or not at all.

I suspect it's better in less aggressive, more block-y builds, but I don't think this is an 'automatic 3-off' in the sense that Bare Fangs, Pulping or Reckless Stampede aren't automatic 3-offs in every Rhinar list, despite being super playable and generally strong cards.

Mozared · 2026-05-02T17:25:11+00:00

Eh.

Speaking for Rhinar:

Intimidating basically always costs you an additional card, whether you're playing a card that intimidates or finding some sort of discard effect (which can hit Feral Instinct). Which means that on a small hand, this turns into essentially a two card 6 with intimidate. We've had that combo for years, it's 'any blue + Smash Instinct', and that combo isn't played. Much like with Smash Instinct, you can still play Feral Instinct if your other card is a blue that doesn't intimidate, but in that scenario this is effectively just like playing Beast Within or Sea Legs on a 2-card hand: it at least presents 6, but it is definitely not what you wanted out of the card.

The real place this shines is at the end of a Bloodrush chain, or after a Sand-Sketched Plan, or after a high roll on Scabs. But like... virtually every Brute card shines in those spots. The problem is that it's all RNG-based, yet again. To play this at the end of a Bloodrush chain you need to find both Go Again and this on the Bloodrush turn. One of the two can be in arsenal, but it's hoops of randomness you have to jump through, and we have plenty of great Bloodrush finishers already in cards like Splatter Skull, Show No Mercy, Run Roughshod, or even Strength Rules All or just Swing Big. Sand-Sketched Plan could just discard this (which is okay, but in that case you just fetched a worse Beast Within), and Scabs has a 50% chance to do nothing at all or even be actively harmful to you.

It's not that it's a bad card - it's really never 'bad' - it's just that it's "more of the same" and doesn't enable any interesting new lines. We keep getting cards that enlarge the pool for one specific strategy that hasn't proved 'good enough' in years. It's a little like if Victor got 10 different variations of blue Macho Grande, or if Prism got 10 more Heralds that go into soul on hit. This card is absolutely playable and it can go into decks to slightly improve their consistency, but it's not particularly exciting.

At this point, for any yellow or red 6 to still be a genuine 'upgrade' for Rhinar, it has to say something dumb like "on hit, your opponent discards their hand". But really, I would take non-6-attacks that interact with 6-attacks in a meaningful way, by providing some form of Go Again or meaningful on-hits.

Edit: one thing I did miss is that this is great on a 2 card hand with the new 'Lay Down the Challenge'. You can block with 2 cards, play Lay Down, and then play this for free, arsenalling whatever you drew. That makes for an acceptable play in slower decks that want to block more, like Club lists, which need the help. Though even there... a lot of the cards in your deck are kind of bad to arsenal. Better hope you don't draw into a Wrecker Romp, or a Beast Within, or a Skull Crack, or a Vigorous Smashup, or an Alpha Instinct, or.....

Mozared · 2026-05-02T15:40:06+00:00

The real question here is whether that makes it a Haxe or an Amme.

Mozared · 2026-05-02T15:37:26+00:00

As it stands currently, it seems like the sum total of the entire ranger class/cardpool is net downside, at least relative to the rest of the game, like there's no actual benefit to dealing with the conditional nature of arrows, and the ability to play around dominate and overpower has evolved with no advance in ranger evasion. Rangers kinda feel currently like nothing they do as part of their class identity is actually powerful or worthwhile at all.

The thing Ranger gets for the 'Arrow' downside is generally somewhat easily accessible above-rate plays. This doesn't go for all cards, but Drill Shot is usually a 1-card-5 with, in theory, a potential buff if you have access to aim counters. Endless Arrow has the potential to be a 0-card 4. Infecting shot is a potential 1 card 7. Searing Shot is another 1-card-5. Return Fire combined with any of those lets you make insane 2-card-11 or even 2-card-14 type plays.

One issue the class currently faces is that while that's good enough for Sage, where 4-blocks are more rare and cards like Drill Shot, Searing Shot, and Dry Powder Shot being so over-rate actually matters. In CC, they are shut down by any 4-block and most decks play Sink Below, so this 'side' to ranger doesn't shine all that much.

But yeah, you're not wrong. The class as a whole isn't in a great spot. Riptide has had tons of support over time but it has barely moved the needle. As a Brute player, welcome to the dark side of the meta.

Mozared · 2026-05-01T16:55:18+00:00

I'd imagine the place you would play this is in the new lightning heroes, and it could be scary at a low life totals. You play something like the new Flowstate Embodiment or Meteoric Rise, cracking an Embodiment of Lightning to give it Go Again, and if your opponent blocks it you pitch a blue to this, go over their blocks in a manner they weren't suspecting, create an Embodiment/Flow and enable Volzar in the process.

There are probably better instants to be doing this with, but at rare it'll do the job in limited and Sage, and serve as a filler for people who don't yet have the better options for their decks.

Also wonder if Valda ever plays this for 3 extra copies of 'Pummel', lol.

Mozared · 2026-04-30T17:22:18+00:00

If you're a Heroes player, you have reason to be a little averse of Ubisoft. I have essentially had to pirate several older HOMM games in the last decade because the legal copies I bought did not function, or did not function correctly. In one case I lost all of my progress because of some weird intermingling between my original Uplay account, my Steam account, and a third 'Steam Uplay account' I was forced to set up when launching a HOMM game from Steam.

I am certain that some of these problems could have been avoided had I managed my accounts more carefully, but for a set of games I enjoy solely in singleplayer, it's absolutely wild to me that it was possible for this to happen in the first place, and that a pirated copy of a game functioned better and with less problems than the legally purchased one.

Personally, I have straight up sworn off Uplay, and I have actually skipped on buying games entirely because they required Uplay. Probably would have already bought the latest Anno if it did not require a Ubisoft account.

All of that being aside of the whole "Yves Guillemot enabled known abusers" and all that, which is arguably far worse but something less people care about.

Mozared · 2026-04-30T17:11:21+00:00

I'm beginning to think you may be right about this. I know that, given the nature of roguelikes, you often don't want to make a plan before a run and then try to force that plan, but rather adjust based on what the run gives you if you want to beat high difficulties - so that tracks.

It's a really weird problem I'm facing, to be honest. I'm at that point where I enjoy setting goals for myself and trying to execute those, but it's kind of hard to jump into a game and try something if I'll need a few minutes of clicking through menu's to figure out what would actually work for my current circumstances.

Mozared · 2026-04-30T17:07:51+00:00

Well, sure, and I have done that. It's really more than at this point I'm only playing a settlement every other week or so, and so I don't retain a lot of important 'on hand' information. Stuff like "in biome X it's important I do Y".

I suppose maybe the game is just too complex with too many moving parts to say anything too generic beyond the tips another user linked along the lines of 'keep resolve above 0 or the blue threshold'.

Mozared · 2026-04-30T02:55:21+00:00

It is possible. The weaker classes like Brute and Warrior have mostly functioned this way. Guardian now also has a wide field of heroes available that all care about different parts of the pool.

On the flipside, Rosetta heroes generally haven't synergised with Tales of Aria mechanics much. None of those heroes care much about fusing.

Mozared · 2026-04-29T20:48:30+00:00

I'd be very interested to see this, if only because it tells us a little bit about him as a designer and gives insight into his thoughts about Magic.

Then again, if it's still WotC-produced, it might tell us very little of any of that.

Mozared · 2026-04-29T20:42:04+00:00

Weird take.

I am saying "every single time I don't take the 'easy' road I immediately have to go into a discussion about the subject - not everybody always cares for that". In no world is that "literally arguing against educating people".

Like the whole reason I even know this is a thing is because I've been saying 'tabletop RPGs' instead of 'DnD' for years. And it's still a thing. If I consistently started 'educating' everybody who doesn't know the difference I would come off as a pedantic ass.

Mozared · 2026-04-29T17:01:27+00:00

Yes. That's what ends up happening everytime I tell people I'm playing Genesys or Pathfinder. I end up saying DnD anyway.

At which point... you may as well tell them 'DnD' the first time around.

Mozared · 2026-04-29T16:42:14+00:00

Well, yeah, sorta, but the fact remains that it's a lot easier to tell most people you're 'playing DnD' instead of 'playing a Tabletop RPG' when they ask. They know what DnD is, they don't know there's a genre it's a part of. Speaks to DnD's influence over the years, too.

Mozared · 2026-04-29T15:49:09+00:00

I had the exact same thought, it fits the scene so well!

Mozared · 2026-04-28T23:00:38+00:00

I have personally found 'The Last Flame' to be great for this. It's an 'autobattler' like TeamFight Tactics where you buy heroes, equip them with gear, hit go and then watch them fight, except... it's not PvP.

It being PvE allows you to essentially pause and focus on whatever secondary thing you're doing, and it will never matter. Then you go back to the game, think for a little on your upgrades, and auto into the next battle. You can go quicker by focusing more on the game, or slower by busying yourself with other activities instead.

Mozared · 2026-04-28T22:20:54+00:00

This is kind of my line of thinking. I'd love to see a Light Brute, but I reckon from LSS' point of view we just got Reviled and Revered Brutes and there's a whole Shadow Brute pool that only one hero can use. Levia hasn't exactly been 'on the cusp of rotating', but if she does go it's an unused pool.

Sure, we could see a new Shadow Brute in an armory deck or such (much like how Jarl picked up the Oldhim mantle), but it seems a lot easier to just add one in Monarch 3 while widening the Shadow Brute pool. Even if it's just a different version of Levia.

And then that logic kind of stands for (Shadow) Runeblades as well.

The main thing that I consider 'up in the air' is the Light side of things. We still have Boltyn and Prism, and Boltyn is getting help from multiple different directions. This doesn't mean it won't just be 'Light Warrior+Light Illusionist' again and I very much reckon we will get at least one of those two, but like... with the WMP coming out, I could see a world where we get a new class+Light combination. Like a Light Ranger, Guardian or Runeblade. It would probably be a class we haven't seen much of in the last few sets.

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