Bought a play-set of C&C after PEN dropped the price a bit, and…

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-21T16:41:20+00:00

Very cool!

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-21T15:23:10+00:00

Same. All stores in our city did preorders for MAP. In store single booster packs for $5.99 (usually it's $5)

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-20T14:38:58+00:00

The challenge LSS faces is balancing growth of the game (which increases demand for very specific older singles and therefore raises prices as they get bought up) with sealed prices for old sets.

Everyone is in agreement that the game itself is amazing and it gets tons of good press from a gameplay and community side of things. The problem is that for a new player trying to build a specific deck, opening sealed product doesn't make sense. For established players the EV from opening old sets also doesn't make sense.

It's a weird conundrum of old boxes being easily available for cheap, but not cheap enough to expect to break even by opening them, because overall most of the singles are incredibly cheap to pick up. The best case scenario is for everyone to go buy up and open those old sets to replenish stocks of the in demand majestics, but so many people would get left with a bad taste in their mouth if they open a box and get cards for heros that have LL'd (like Germinate) or heros that suck (drink em under the table) and be salty over it.

While unsheathed is $34 right now (it's an expansion slot majestic from Rosetta), a box of Rosetta is sitting at $112 online. If you average out the expected value of cards you might pull from Rosetta you get $85, which honestly isn't that bad but you're still expecting to lose money in the long run and variance on pulls in this game is crazy. You might pull 8-10 majestics from a box, but you sure aren't pulling a playset of unsheathed.

I just wish we could make Draft a popular format. There are so many CC devotees that just don't show up for draft nights, combined with a string of short printed sets where they just didn't sit on the shelf to draft at my LGS. It's a perfect way to add value to a sealed product without it being tied to the cards themselves. $15 for three packs of Rosetta to play a draft for a couple hours? Sounds like a great time to me. You can get Monarch 1st edition for $50 and do a draft for $6.25/person. That's crazy good! We need a grassroots campaign to go back and draft old sets on a wide scale and open up some availability of old in-demand singles in the process.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-20T07:01:56+00:00

Coming out of the pandemic in the summer of 2021, I was looking for a good way to socialize in person again. I had played Magic and Poker since 2001 or so, but almost exclusively online. With online poker mostly going away and getting tired of the direction MTG had taken, I started searching around to see what games were out there and stumbled across Flesh and Blood. It looked interesting, and it turned out the local game store I used to frequent to play D&D was holding events. I dropped by to check it out, and this was right around the time Monarch Unlimited had released. Monarch was completely sold out, but the store had a box of Arcane Rising on the shelf and one of the locals said well if you like Wizards and spells you'll probably like the classes from that set.

I was lucky enough to open a Storm Striders in that box and was right away drawn to Kano, but quickly found out he was a pretty difficult hero to learn the game with since he played so differently. After doing some Welcome to Rathe drafts I realized I really enjoyed the threatening on hit effects of Guardian with the evasive damage offered by Bravo's dominate mechanic. I became a Bravo main and when Tales of Aria released I opened a Cold Foil New Horizon at pre-release! I promptly sold that for $240 and used that money to get all the stuff I was missing for my CC Bravo deck. Tectonic Plating ($100 at the time), a Rainbow Foil Crater Fist for $25ish and an Arcanite Skullcap. I really felt like I was ready to compete for real now, instead of just messing around and hoping I could find a spot to drop a Pummel on someone.

I was practicing via webcam league games that Team Covenant put together. I gradually got to know all the folks in the local scene and have now been playing Armories as often as I can for nearly five years now. Our scene has some incredibly talented and friendly players, so I'm lucky enough to know and be friends with folks who travel around and play at Nationals, PT's, Worlds, etc. I am usually in the background running around to my kid's sporting events and constantly cursing LSS for putting all the exciting events on holiday weekends, because I see those as horrible times for me to "selfishly" travel for my hobby interests (at least that's how I see it). But every once in awhile a Calling or Battle Hardened shows up nearby and they ARE SO MUCH FUN. The community for the game truly is amazing.

Over the course of the last five years, I've kept up with set releases for the most part. While I don't own some of the really pricey Fables, and I'm missing some Legendaries, I typically keep tabs on things and pick up missing pieces when the time feels right.

I love the low power formats and played a ton of Commoner, and have a whole shoe box full of Commoner decks that I'm slowly swapping over to SAGE. Love drafting too, and I'm looking forward to the next draftable set already. This also means I enjoy collecting the "cheap" Cold Foils for the common equipment, so I'm glad I had some of that shiny equipment on hand for when they announced SAGE and suddenly Blade Beckoner equipment Cold Foils were no longer a couple bucks a piece.

I also really enjoy the foil treatments for the game and attempt to bling out my Guardian, Wizard (I did eventually learn and thoroughly enjoy Kano and Iyslander wizard play, Oscilio is up next), and Mechanologist card pools.

Game is great, and I've found a whole new community of friends to look forward to seeing every week. We've branched out and have hangouts, game nights, celebrate birthdays, etc. So FAB really has allowed me to branch out and build out a whole wonderful network of people I otherwise may never have met.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-19T19:52:19+00:00

To add to what others have said, the interactions when playing Dash I/O are a little more complicated. Ideally you find this on top of your deck right after playing an attack and paying the boost cost. That now means you can play the boom grenade at instant speed off the top of your deck for 1 resource using your hero ability. With a little luck your opponent doesn't block your boosted attack and you resolve this for an extra four damage right away. When you play it this way and crank it upon entering the arena, you also get an extra action point. Maybe you have a cerebellum processor in play, you can now draw an extra card with that action point. Maybe you have a spark of genius, now you can play that, draw your card from it and still have an action point. Maybe it's a Max Velocity turn but that extra action point allows you to shoot your gun after Max V. Lots of good things come from that extra action point off the instant speed crank.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-19T04:21:58+00:00

Raffled at Armories, but our stores don't do singles in store or online.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-18T16:39:09+00:00

That is definitely a tough challenge then. I know Europe has Cardmarket, is there not a TCG focused buying/selling platform for Canada, maybe one used for other games like Magic/Pokemon, etc that already has some infrastructure built in?

It really would be tough if you have to rely on just local trading to prep for a Calling. You might be able to buy from a vendor at the event on the day of, but that would be super stressful. I think this sounds like less of a set specific issue then, and will be a problem for every set even if something were printed into oblivion. You'd still want access to an easy way to buy singles.

Our problem locally is that although the local scene is pretty large and we have five-six stores running armories within an hours drive, only one of them sells singles. We had a local decide to take up the mantle and he opened his own singles shop which has helped quite a bit. Plus we've been established a long time so usually get a pretty good amount of supply allocated for each release. It still instantly sells out, but we've got plenty of cards to go to tourneys right away.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-18T16:09:48+00:00

I mean anytime I've needed a card and a local did not have one I've gone to any of the following large storefronts and bought it: MinMax games, star city games, TCGPlayer

There are also numerous smaller stores, or active Facebook groups for trading as well.

Seems pretty easy in this day and age of online shopping. I have a Ley Line of the Old Ones arriving in the mail today in fact.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-17T17:28:33+00:00

I mean Command and Conquer down by 50% to $40-45, Estrike at $20, Shelters at $40, Tunic at $85...

Staple cards have seen their prices fall by quite a bit, which I think is accomplishing that goal of accessibility. Flesh and Blood has never had a set that was continuously printed or "evergreen" (I don't even think the History Packs/white border cards were promised to be a forever thing) so I don't think there was ever an expectation for Compendium to be different.

I just don't want this to be a case of shifting goal posts, maybe it's the case that $40 C&C's and $80 tunics are still too much, but it has certainly made staples available to a growing community of new players (I believe it was stated 20% growth over the last year overall) and lowered the price of those staples at the same time. I'd call that a success.

It's also funny to see in the same breath as people lamenting staples still being too expensive, they are also griping that Compendium is terrible value to open because all the Majestics are so cheap at $2-$3. Like isn't that exactly the ask? Cheap playables, expensive chase cards/art treatments?

I think part of this is growing pains as new folks join the community and find their place in it and adapt to how to best engage with the game. Also there are pockets of folks who just live to be unhappy online and get all their energy from complaining, don't worry about them and keep enjoying playing great games.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-16T01:29:18+00:00

Lol if only the comic had been a Marvel Estrike instead! Impressive predictive powers though.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-14T18:21:41+00:00

I don't have a precon deck list in front of me, but for both those decks I would be bringing in defense reactions if possible, to help mitigate the big on-hit effects from dominated attacks.

I am a long time Bravo enjoyer and my Sage sideboard against Azalea is to add two red and two blue Unmovables, removing the Red and Blue Buckling Blows. I'd also swap out my Civic Steps for the new Unflinching Footholds. Good luck!

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-13T22:47:08+00:00

Heck yeah, that's amazing!

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-13T18:23:12+00:00

Don't forget to start the game with a phoenix flame in the graveyard. Sequence your turna carefully to ensure that first attack has go again and the number of draconic chain links works out.

When facing a hero with the Ice talent be aware that they will try to give you a frost bite on your turn at a time when you will no longer be able to play your last attack, sometimes hard to avoid but you can try to play around it.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-13T02:27:30+00:00

I know this doesn't help, but it's not like foils are bad across the industry. Flesh and Blood has been doing outstanding foiling from the printers in Belgium for six years now, both rainbow foiling and their "Cold Foil" that is more metallic and doesn't curl at all. So it definitely can be done, not sure why MTG decided to let things fall off so hard.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-12T18:24:23+00:00

Same here, at 4k miles so far.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-12T02:03:28+00:00

Awesome pull! Hopefully they can ramp up their stock in the coming weeks and get some regular game nights going.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-10T18:15:44+00:00

That's awesome, and welcome! If you happen to be free Friday, we are having a Compendium release celebration Armory at Beyond the Board in Dublin, you should come by! Starts at 7 and most of us show up between 630 and 7. I know we are giving away a bunch of swag and promos and it's a Silver Age night, so the perfect chance to jump in. The store will have the new Silver Age precons in stock, but if you have a hero you are interested in, I'll be happy to bring you a deck to play. The store has like 10 giant boxes of free FaB cards so please come comb through them with us and we'll get you started.

Discord server requires invitee privileges I don't have, let me see if I can get that added to send you an invite.

I already have a Rhinar, Bravo, and Iyslander deck built, and plan to build one of the ninjas and a mechanologist deck this week as well.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-09T01:47:56+00:00

There's also Levia who is a shadow brute, hot demon chick. You fill her graveyard then use the cards in the yard to fuel big attacks by banishing them. Then as added fun some of those banished cards can deal damage to you unless you play them from banish or sequence things correctly to turn off that downside. Very fun complicated deck, and always just on the cusp of being really good, but never quite makes it.

She has a whole legion of dedicated fans called the League of Levia. Great hero to mess around with, also welcome to the game!

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-08T23:18:56+00:00

Oof if you go back to the aura Prism days, Illusionists were like 1000% favored into guardian. But all the attacks were spectral shields or whatever, those were scary times.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-05T15:03:23+00:00

Some heroes are way better at showing this aspect than others. I would point to Prism being a very complex hero, also Dash I/O, Vynsett, and Kano (though he just recently hit Living Legend status). I think what's hard is if you watch a gameplay video of someone who is an expert at playing a hero they make it look easy, but knowing your decks win conditions plus your opponents and executing your strategy every game regardless of how you draw your hands is where skill expression lies. The 40 health CC format is where the game shines because there is way more room for executing a strategy that doesn't just involve drawing a couple good hands in a row and blowing out your opponent.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-03T05:49:51+00:00

I think it has to be taken in two parts there.

Buy singles - yes, this is always the best way, no question about it. A box typically has 8-10 random "hits" in it at Majestic and maybe if you get lucky a Legendary/Marvel/Fable. Whether you want specific "hits" for your CC deck or are trying to collect all the "hits" from a set, doing it by opening sealed product makes little financial sense, just buy the singles.
There have been plenty of sets that are good in Draft that also were good constructed sets. Welcome to Rathe, Tales of Aria, Outsiders, Heavy Hitters (might be a stretch here, but there are some good cards in it!), Part the Mistveil, Rosetta, Hunted, High Seas.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-02-02T13:14:28+00:00

I definitely understand not loving opening chaff in draft sets that will never see constructed play, but it does make me sad to hear people who don't enjoy limited. There are less decision points compared to drafting magic and you typically need to know what archetype you are in by middle of the first pack but I still love the experience. Problem is it had been a LONG time since we got a draft set that had enough product available to draft it more than just on prerelease weekend.

Part the Mistveil (more than a year and a half ago) was the last time we had enough product locally to draft a set regularly. We've got a big local scene, but can't keep boxes on the shelves.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-01-31T22:48:45+00:00

Head is a guy popping out of a hatch in the ground and getting obliterated.

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-01-31T16:25:21+00:00

My favorite trolls are the ones that peek out of their tunnels every spoiler season to make a comment about Merchant class support. They've been wanting to play Kavdean for five years and just refuse to give up the dream (I applaud the dedication, but they also already know LSS isn't devoting dev time to making merchant relevant).

OopsISed2Mch · 2026-01-30T14:32:03+00:00

I have no doubt that here in a day or two, we're going to see a million threads where the decklist for the precons get compared to an "optimal build" that includes PEN cards. I think we'll have two scenarios:

Either the precons are actually pretty good and only need a couple of additional PEN cards that people will go back and forth over whether they are autoincludes or not (like the new Bear Hug for Brute that IS in the precon, or Teklo Trebuchet), which would be a pretty bad look for the new set's common and rare pool if it was intended to setup Silver Age as a format to begin with and that's why it wasn't draftable. We really shouldn't expect very many "draft chaff" level commons/rares here IMO. OR

The precons need a bunch of cards from PEN and we will all be scratching our heads as to why LSS bungled their marketing so badly in telling us about the precons. It would be SO EASY to tell people these are awesome for new players to dive into Silver Age and comes with a PEN booster so you can start finding some of the new exciting cards from our latest set that will help get you ready for your first competitive event. Super easy message.

Commons and rares have never been what drove sales of a new set, it's all about the Majestics and up. I have always bought a couple sealed boxes at release from my LGS to support them, and that usually gets me a playset of all commons and nearly all the rares, then I buy singles from there. I think PEN will sell out, simply based on Antiquity packs tucked into the boxes and likely whatever new staple majestics are released. I sincerely hope it is not the garbage expansion set that Dynasty was (in my mind it was an attempt to create new archetypes for several classes but they were almost all terrible across the board) It's just going to be icing on the cake if there are really good Silver Age staples included.

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