The Pitch Zone - Resouces & Discussion for FaB TCG

I went 4–1 at armory with this list (version 1.0)

There could be something here!

Dash, Database

They started. They didn't expect this game plan. They were playing setup/payoff that would normally be good into guardian but this allowed me to play a lot of cards and apply pressure. After the first few turns I was at 12 or so and they were at 8. I sent a boulder drop, they said no blocks, +1 in reactions for the win.

Kassai, Cintari Sellsword

They started. They were not very experienced with Kassai (they were borrowing a deck from someone), and it felt pretty chill to take the worst edge off of their attacks while still doing my thing. I got them on the back foot and had just enough equipment to keep denying refraction bolters while sending 8+ every turn. Eventually I got there.

OTK Viserai with lots of D reacts and blocks

I did classic setup/payoff to leverage their lack of ability to convert a full hand. Confidence FTW! Macho Grande got there in the end. I won with 19 life and they had something like 12 runechants, so this one felt pretty easy. If I took a setup turn they would just meekly create 3 runechants or whatever.

Kayo

This was a really close game where I had to make some tough blocking decisions. Overall I played really quite aggressively and ended up eventually winning when they had two red non blocks and could only send claw for 3. They had a 19 damage turn with buckwild, Pulping and run roughshod so it wasn't like they completely whiffed either. Still, this was really close, too close for comfort!

Oldhim

Ahh, the fabled blockslop. I won the roll for the first time of the day and got a decent enough turn 0 setup. They discarded fruits. Off too a decent start, I felt, and I managed to play mostly confidence 9+ attacks in the early game. Then it hit me just how bad confidence actually is in the matchup since block cards are excepted, and they have a whole lot of them. My biggest turn was macho grande with confidence for 23, but even so they still blocked 14 (4 block 2 equipment, 8 staunch). Had I been more focused on going super duper tall and not sent as many attacks for 10 or so I might have gotten more hits in, but with only two dominate cards in the deck I don't really think I had that great of a chance. I got fatigued like a puny aggro deck in the end.

Heroic Pose is not the right sideboard tech for fatigue because of the prevalence of block cards, which is a bit unique to Silver Age, so this is one area where we clearly have to diverge from Elly's CC tactics here. We need to combine confidence with dominate.

@u_mage Here's the first version. Give it a try!
https://github.com/braaar/nodebb-plugin-fab-cards

Let me be the first to show off my deck; Clash and Smash!

It's heavily clash based, and focuses on blocking for 6-7 with 2 cards and attacking for 8-11 with 2 cards. Simple as that! It's really cheap (less than 100€), so I would recommend it for someone who is Betsy curious, but don't want to invest in the expensive generics or guardian staples that are used in more conventional builds.

Cheers!

Remember to type Knick Knack Bric-a-brac with correct capitalisation and hyphenation, folks!

Regardless, the CSS could use some tweaking. It's a bit janky in terms of where the image appears in the viewport, especially on mobile.

And support for specifying the colour of a card would be nice.

To Be Continued...

My initial idea was to implement a server side functionality that would filter upon posting and insert HTML card embeds. I got it a rough draft of that working with a filter hook.
The problem was that I couldn't see a way to make it not look weird if you would try to edit a post that had cards embedded. Ideally I would have wanted another hook that would essentially strip away the card embeds when you hit edit, but I found no such hook. Could be it exists. The edit hooks that exist seem to apply once you click save in the editor? I would maybe like to ask about that. Maybe they could add a hook for this.

I was also worried that the embedded card markup in the actual post content would look awful if consumed outside of this site via federation. At least the embeds would have to be something that's not annoying to read on the other end, like a normal hyperlink. In that case I suppose the client side script in here could then only take care of inserting the images on hover, which would be a lot simpler and more performant.

Oh my! I just found out how this can be done server side! We don't need a separate edit hook, we just use filter:parse.post

This would be nice to have!

I've come to gather that all hero names in FaB are either a literal pun or are referencing something. Kayo is a respelling of KO (knockout), Kano is short for volcano, Bravo is a circus performer who makes his audience say "bravo!", Rhinar looks like a Rhinocerous and Uzuri is reference to usury, since she is a crime boss and is probably engaging in moneylending with interest.

Still, there are a few that stump me. What are these names referencing/making a pun out of?

• Kavdaen, Trader of Skins
• Viserai
• Dorinthea
• Fai
• Jarl Vetrei∂i
• Kassai
• Katsu
• Lexi
• Riptide
• Teklovossen
• Vynnset
• Yoji, Royal Protector
• Valda Brightaxe
• Shiyana
• Levia
• Dromai

I just published a new version of the package, extensively rewritten (now running server side and unit tested). Should improve the reliability quite a bit!

It would be really cool to have a plugin that lets us hover a card name to see the card. Uploading card images manually is a bit of a chore. This has existed in Magic forums for some time, so I'm sure there's lots of existing projects to draw inspiration from.

Additionally, I think it is a good idea to be able to post and see decklists directly in the forum rather than only having hotlinks to other sites such as Fabrary.net. Of course there's nothing stopping anyone from just posting a list as plain text currently, but it's unlikely that people will want to do that when you get card previews and other benefits in deck builders.

One of my motivations for this is that Fabrary decks often get modified, made private or deleted, but forum posts could preserve a more accurate representation of what was actually being discussed at the time, like an archive. I would suggest, perhaps, that such a decklist plugin could take in a fabrary link, and when you post your comment it will contain a static version of that decklist (with card previews on hover using the card preview plugin). The link to Fabrary could still be attached for those who want to click through and see more details in there.

@MeowMeow You're right on the money, it's my attempt at porting that deck to Silver Age. It was quite fun. 0 cost attacks are so nice for the suspense aura game plan!

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.

Thanks for the bug report! I've published a new version of the plugin that should address this and a few other things, as well.

Still, I'm noticing some annoying limitations with my current approach, so it's likely I'll make some more changes soon.

Excited for my next Silver Age armory tomorrow! I made some changes, in particular adding yellow Snatch and making sure the blues are worth arsenalling. I also put in Comeback Kicks and a singular Heroic Pose, which essentially means I get a third copy of Razor Reflex, just not at reaction speed.

I picked up on that, yep.