I wish Talishar didn't exist

[komfyrion]

I play Flesh and Blood "vanilla". I play with real cards in the flesh and blood in adherence with the official rules of the game and the formats hosted at armory. At the kitchen table among friends, we make some exceptions for playtesting, sure, but in general you could say I play the game as it was meant to be played.

I really think they were onto something when they named and designed this game. Digital entertainment plays too large of a role in our lives, and it's great to have amazing and novel in person experiences to draw us away from that. I think this is pretty much a universal, undeniable truth about the western world.

Unfortunately, the game is so good that people can't help themselves and want more of it all the time and have made a digital client anyway.

But there are other reasons than "screen bad, go touch grass" for why I think Talishar is a bad thing.

I don't play Talishar or in a testing team with playtest cards. That means that for me, at any given time, the current meta is very unlikely to be over and done. I don't play enough to reach that point. As of the time of writing this, close to the end of Compendium of Rathe season, I have yet to even play a single game against the current version of the top deck, Oscilio. I have one game against current Victor and Marionette, respectively. GEM pairing is random and there are only so many chances of actually facing any given deck, so for me there are many completely unexplored matchups and I am far from experiencing the many quirks and nuances this game has to offer when you play the same matchup a few times.

On the other side of the proverbial fence, you have the Talishar grinders. The kind of people who ask "list?" 30 seconds after major tournament results are out so that they can grind out all the top meta matchups on Talishar. Eventually they buy the cards and head out to claim victory at their armories, PQs, RTNs, nationals, skirmishes, battlegrounds, callings or pro tour (different people aim for different levels of tournaments, but the method is roughly the same). This is effectively mandatory to keep up competitively with others who are doing the same.

When you play the game like this, eventually there comes a point during a tournament season that things start to feel stale. There's only so many Oscilio vs. Marionette games you can actively enjoy. The novelty eventually wears off, and in particular when you are playing very sweatily you can focus too much on your mistakes and feel disappointed when you lose and content when you win, instead of feeling content when you lose and happy when you win.

One could say that the Talishar grinders and me occupy different spaces, and that we can happily co-exist without them taking away from my experience. But it is not that simple. My local armory is thankfully not full of Talishar grinders, but I have heard tales from other places where people get so tired of the meta that towards the end of the season, nobody cares about playing the current CC decks anymore. Spoilers have begun and they yearn for something new and fresh and start bringing print outs of spoiled cards to playtest the future CC decks. To me this is evidence of Talishar's "future" format bleeding out into the real world, and I don't think this is the only way Talishar is bleeding out into the real world.

In my recent post about Silver Age, I talk about how when new game content comes out, there is a limited time window where things are wacky and exciting before the meta gets "solved" and becomes stale and predictable. This affects all players, not just the ones who over-indulge. I think Talishar is a very significant catalyst in this process.

I am glad that my local armory is not so Talishar-brained that we have to deal with this problem. We have a local meta that is very much driven by personal player preferences, so even those who chase the meta can find themselves ill-equipped to handle the oddities found here. (This is not really 100% true since the very best decks usually just beat lesser known decks by having vastly superiour levels of damage output/disruption/consistency.) So the same incentive to chase the top meta isn't really there. But there is a tipping point that could be reached, after which we would see more top meta chasers and an overall more predictable game experience that could make even non-grinders grow tired after only a few months.

What would a world without Talishar look like? I must admit I am not strictly saying that I think Talishar itself is the problem. Talishar is just the result of our contemporary gaming culture. If Talishar was removed, the aspects of gaming culture that lead to its creation would find other ways to make the game less exciting and joyful overall. Still, I think if LSS struck Talishar down, we would have a slightly healthier community, and perhaps most importantly, FaB would truly be a game that stands up for its values, defying the norm of hyper-online, binge-oriented gaming.

[OptimistTCG]

I have mixed feelings on Talishar myself, but I think it’s a net positive for the community. It enables people without a large FAB community to play and it lets people test new things in a low-stakes environment. Stuff like that is really important to grow and sustain a game.

That said, I think the best FAB players get their reps in on paper. It’s too easy to go on autopilot and cruise through priority windows or let the PC remember your triggers for you (TUNIC COUNTER!!!) so reps in the Flesh and Blood are crucial.