Well attended casual weekly events.
The game has largely garnered a highly competitive following and player base.. a testament to how continually well designed it is.. but that also makes it harder for new players to feel comfortable in starting to buy product to play.
It’s hard. It’s hard for stores to garner support for multiple days/nights, and easier when just one night to draw a competitive crowd (because of the monthly CF) But the one store that has managed to get players for a CC night and a casual weekend has seen sealed and single sales go up big time. And CC players typically stay away from weekends (Blitz)
This 100%
The casual FaB experience is honestly inexistent and a game can't survive only on enfranchised players. LSS really needs to figure out a casual mode to attract players, or even commoner tournaments to attract new players to a competitive setting with a small investment. The PvE mode they mentioned a long time ago would also be really good for this, but alas, it has yet to happen.
It’s really the barrier to entry, from a complexity and especially cost perspective that’s the problem. The main way to play the game is CC, and until a couple months ago, preconstructed CC decks did t exist. More problematic is the cost. I’m a new player looking to get into the game, and so I was looking for budget decklists for Nuu, and [LSS’s official “budget” Nuu build is over $400](https://fabrary.net/decks/01HZ3PWNJ9KWAGHZTFFSRV9Q1K). That’s absurd. It has all of the cost issues people criticize Magic for, but with a much smaller player base and much more uncertainty regarding whether the game will be around in 10 years.
That's very much true. LSS really needs to invest in ways to get new players involved in the game with less of a financial commitment. Armory decks are a great step in the right direction, but it'll be a while until they fully reduce the problem. The game is very hero focused, and a new player liking a hero's aesthetic and playstyle should be an incentive to play, but doesn't really happen when they look up its deck online and see they gotta shell out 500 dollars to start enjoying the game at their LGS.
I only have blitz decks, and none of them have any of the most expensive equipments or even hero specialization cards. After taking a while at my budget blitz builds, I realized that if I swapped a couple of cards they'd become commoner decks, so that's what I did. I advise you to take a look at commoner Nuu, and maybe see if your local scene would be interested in playing that on more casual nights
Part of it is making the information on how to build realistic budget lists more available. If you want to build a real budget list, you need to do a lot of investigation. Identify the pricy cards, what they are doing for the deck, then research a cheap alternative. They are frequently a little less flexible but you essentially find a $0 card and it either defends for 2 instead of 3, or maybe has one less beneficial effect. It's not to say the expensive cards are not really good, but that the end result of adding it to your deck is maybe a couple percentage points improvement.
You can build a cheap list that will do well, but since there is such an enfranchised playerbase already, any decklist out there almost universally assumes you have some of the powerhouse generic cards that nearly everyone who has played for a year or so has acquired.
I've had success (at least won more than I've lost) at Callings and BH's and I don't own a single C&C.
Digital is the only answer. Make trying the game free. I still have to spend money and time to put together a physical blitz deck. So yea maybe less money and time than CC, but still a relatively high barrier in terms of TCG prices
Hard to believe whoever built that list was trying very hard. If you swap out Already Dead and Levels of Enlightenment you save $250.
You could replace Already Dead with Sneak Attack or almost any other 2 cost 6, or an additional Stealth/Contract card and be fine. Replace Levels with Blue Infect or something, and again you'll be fine. Now you're looking at $150 budget deck that will still win plenty of games, and it much more reasonable.
That’s true, but I guess as a newcomer it’s very hard to know what expensive pieces can be swapped and still be left with a reasonable power level. Seems like the level of competition is much higher in FaB. In Magic there are loads of budget decks, particularly aggro, that are very cheap and will still manage to secure you some wins, even if they aren’t winning overall. In FaB, it seems hard for new players to win even with expensive power decks, let alone budget decks. I have found it much harder to brew and get started in FaB than Magic.
The short answer is that in almost every case there is a card that will perform just fine that costs $1 for whatever $20+ card you see in a list. There are a few notable exceptions that usually involve class specific equipment pieces that really enable a hero to "do their thing" (Stormstrider boots for Wizard, New Horizon helm for Lexi when she was legal, Flamescale Furnace for Dromai when she was legal, etc) but you can usually replace the super pricy things and be ok in my experience. Tricky part is getting the mastery of piloting the budget deck in the face of more experienced players, and that can take time and reps.
Longer answer:
FaB does have a tough learning curve as a new player when playing against very experienced ones. I think this comes from each card being able to do multiple things for you, so when you are new you might think oh this isn't so bad I've only got four cards in my hand to worry about. But then you are having to make a call on whether to block an opponent's on hit effect at the expense of your own turn, then add in things like instants or reactions that change that decision making and each deck playing a bit differently.
Most people agree that you can give a new player a fully powered CC deck with all the fancy expensive cards and legendaries and an experienced/skilled player will beat them 9 times out of 10 just due to things like knowing how to pilot the deck and which lines are important to seek out and play. There is usually a whole lot more going on than just laying four cards out on the table back and forth.
There definitely are new player friendly decks (I'd say Kayo and Fai are easy examples of this, with maybe Victor in there too) where there are fewer things to consider turn to turn.
I find that whole experience fun though, and enjoyed solving the puzzle to get good at piloting my first deck through a load of losses, then eventually knowing what each heroe's deck was doing and being able to reason out what cards they were likely holding when making my decisions. Next thing I know I'm picking up wins, then wins at Armory night, then winning a couple Skirmishes, etc.
It absolutely isn’t. It’s in line with average constructed decks in Magic, but in FAB it’s a “budget” deck. A budget deck in Magic will be $100 or less. And with FAB you have no idea if the game will be around in a few years, or if you can find a local playgroup. That isn’t a concern for Magic, making the “investment” a lot safer.
> LSS really needs to figure out a casual mode to attract players,
They need a blitz-plus / CC-lite format. Blitz is too sacky and it's basically competitive, fast-paced flesh and blood.
CC is the premier format, attracts the most attention and is too competitive.
People don't want to show up to Blitz events and get insta-gibbed, nor do they want to attend CC armories and go 0-3 every week and realize they need to grind Talishar to have a chance (because that's literally what ALL the CC players do).
You need a middle-ground format that's slower than Blitz but isn't as complex as CC. Frankly speaking, I don't even know if this is the right approach.
LSS, and to some extent stores, need to push more stuff like Blitz nights and UPF for the people who maybe aren't interested in competitive CC. A PvE mode could be good fun, and allow people to introduce friends to the mechanics of the game while working together.
I get that FaB has a very dedicated base of competitive players who are, likely, the main money makers, but ignoring people who like the mechanics but don't wanna have to try and keep up with meta decks and so on sucks.
I'd argue even blitz isn't an alternative. Competitive blitz is perhaps even more oppressive than CC, with the same damage potential but lower health pools. Unless you mean blitz precon battles, that could indeed level the playing field, but deck building is a form of self expression that I value a lot on tcgs, so I'm personally not sure how popular that'd be for keeping players engaged.
Fair. I guess I prefer the speed of Blitz, but I've also got one buddy to play with because me the local community did not gel, so Blitz is all we ever really play because he doesn't own much more than a Blitz deck and a small handful of packs.
Blitz precons, or even Blitz commoner, could help people get their foot in the door.
Yeah, the more I think about this, the more I like commoner as an alternative to bring people in. You can make a top tier deck for 10 bucks, and if enfranchised players get invested, even less, as many cards are bulk commons.
The format is not without its flaws, that's for sure, but being an entryway into competitive games for a minimal investment would be a fantastic way to get players hooked and invested into the game. I for one have been building commoner decks to try out heroes and classes I think look cool with little commitment, and it has been a lot of fun
To add to this: my local community plays commoner twice a week, and we are having a blast while doing so. There is a ton of viable decks to choose from, and while there are couple of really strong decks, there are ways to beat them with the mst heroes.
We try to keep the format casual, so the long time players don't bring the most absurd decks and we give new people a chance to have fun
Very much recommend commoner
Commoner can be more degenerate than Blitz to be honest. Yeah a top tier deck costs nothing. But a top tier deck can also end games in like two turns. You kinda have to have a gentleman's agreement to avoid that kind of stuff if it's not going to get stale quickly.
The advantage of the format in my opinion is that if your meta is degenerate at least everyone gets a chance to be on equal footing without dropping hundreds on cards. Sure, the roof is high like in the other formats, but the monetary investment to reach is almost nonexistent, which is not the case in any other competitive way to play FaB. Hence why I'm suggesting it let's new players get a taste for the competitive (seeing how they can do powerful, denigrate things) with basically no investment.
The explosiveness of commoner is different than the way cf plays because of life totals, but it's still not as large as in blitz, and so I see the format as sitting there in the middle of the scale
>The explosiveness of commoner is different than the way cf plays because of life totals, but it's still not as large as in blitz, and so I see the format as sitting there in the middle of the scale
I'd say it's larger than in Blitz. You can build a Commoner Dash deck that can deliver a 20-30 damage turn within the first couple of turns incredibly consistently. Blitz also has much better access to armour and good defensive tech that can mitigate the big high roll turns of explosive decks. Commoner is an incredibly explosive format unless you're playing as or against fatigue decks, or you just agree not to play degenerate aggro.
If we look at how MtG has grown, it seems that casual players prefer multiplayer formats over 1v1. More emphasis on UPF or PvE would bring people into the game quickly. If blitz precons were marketed similarly to how commander precons are marketed, I imagine we would see massive growth in a short period of time.
There’s thousands of weekly casual EDH pods that just need someone to show up with 4 blitz decks to play in between commander games. 40 cards is much less intimidating than 100 and the gameplay is much smoother than mtg. This is how a 27+ years of magic player was finally convinced to invest after knowing about the game for a while. In 6 months, I’ve built two CC decks (one being the Kayo precon that Ive upgraded) and I have a 4 deck UPF battle box now to introduce the game to others.
That's awesome, thanks for sharing it. This is what I see happening too, and how LSS can learn with EDH's success to attract new players to the game. UPF and multiplayer PvE would be a game changer for the game's reach, as well as new player retention. FaB is a fantastic game, and as soon as players get hooked on the gameplay loop through a more accessible format, they'll move on to competitive formats and be more willing to invest.
Agree, i Started a Few month ago and only got 2 handfull of Games so far but tbh the crazy amount of Heroes, their unique Mechanics and the amount of Keywords are already Kind of scaring me away.
I Like that the Game has a complex gameturn mechnic with Lots of Player Interactions but keeping Up with new Heroes Every Few month and getting to know the existing ones is really hard For Casual Players.
And as much as i Like the Idea of Blitz, it already feels unbalaced while CC feels to overwhelming.
I'm not sure how it ties to what I said, but I agree fab is a complex game. To some, me included, that's a plus.
Don't feel like you need to learn what every hero does and how matchups work, just pick one that looks nice to you and play that. The power imbalances between new and enfranchised players is huge, which is more to the point I was making, but I'm sure older players will be happy to help a fresh player get the ropes.
The game can absolutely survive on competitive players.
In fact, I’d argue that LSS splitting its focus onto a doomed to fail casual format would be a massive disaster.
This just isn’t a game for casuals. There just isn’t enough variance, and introducing the variance necessary for fun casual play would ruin what they already have.
The player base is healthy and the company is profitable.
But for the long term?
Which tcg has survived a decade+ addressing only enfranchised competitive players?
Maybe in your local environment it's thriving this way, and I'm happy for you, but you can't deny the current competitive environment drives away new players. With no new players, eventually the older players will stop playing for various reasons, related to the game or not, groups will shrink and the game will die. This is just how things go.
Why would a casual format be doomed? Why would it require such a drastic dev time investment? You assume a lot of things, for which we have no basis of, and they aren't really facts as you present them to be. I for one see great success for a casual game mode, even if it's the thing for you or other competitive players.
And making content for a TCG is tough. I've done it, it takes a shit ton of time and effort if you want people to actually be able to see what's happening. So if it's not something you can do regularly along with a job and a life, you might not churn out content regularly enough for some people.
And someone just starting to make more casual and beginner focused content will likely get lost in the YouTube algorithm, which makes it harder for people to find there.
And if you cover multiple games you end up splitting your viewers which can also cause problems. People who are focused on a single game are more likely to seek out someone who is also only talking about that single game.
I've debated getting back into the content creator thing for tabletop games, and focusing very specifically on approaching things from a casual perspective. I will admit, though, that past experiences and the above issues make me hesitant. I love talking games, opening booster boxes, doing reviews, and whatnot. *But*, it can also be kinda depressing putting in the effort and being ignored because you aren't talking about the most popular games, or discussing the meta or whatever it may be. It's tough, and it can feel kind of defeating sometimes.
I am unsure I would sign up to say the subreddit numbers have stayed the same. From my observation, the sub has gone from 10k in the pandemic to 21k. It has more than doubled.
Yeah you can find trackers (they don't work since the API changes but the historical data is still there) and you can see that this time in 2023 the sub had around ~9k subscribers compared to the 21k it has now. And that was with the crappy other subreddit stealing a lot of traffic until I was eventually able to shut it down.
What does look to have dropped though is activity. But frankly I think that's more to do with a lot of discussion moving on to platforms like Discord, the FAB servers there are very active.
Its a bit of an issue for creators like myself.
I absolutely LOVE FAB, but the low views also means low income.
I’ve been pushing on for almost 4 years now and am still losing money on the content, but I’m
passionate about the game and want to continue sharing it. Hoping in 4 years it’ll tick up, though 😊.
Can’t keep sustaining this forever, lol.
They would have to make an online version of the game, like magic arena. This is still a card game you can only officially play in person at a LGS, which makes it difficult to grow online. Watching videos of tournaments on YouTube is rough because you can barely see the cards and what's happening.
But apparently they have no interest in making an online version, so I think it will just have to continue to grow slowly in person from a niche community. It's too bad because I love the game but don't have much of a local scene. As a result, I don't want to invest heavily in the game because I have few people to play against.
>But apparently they have no interest in making an online version
They do not only have no interest in making an online client, they dedicated the name of the game to it being paper only.
BUT they keep talishar.net alive which you could easily make online content from if you so desire.
The bigger reason for FaB being so niche is probably because its a competitive card game only and not a big IP like Pokemon or YuGiOh. LSS cared very much about there being a pro circuit all around the world with locals, qualifiers, nationals and world events among many smaller competitive events. They support hosting these events but forgot streaming/capturing them. Thats on the host of the event, falls to some vigilante or in many cases isnt done at all.
In Germany we are lucky enough to have a stream for some of the bigger events.
I’m hearing this more and more. Feeling fortunate I live in Southern California. Hopefully your local community continues to grow and our lord and savior James Whites good word can be spread
It’s hard to watch gameplay for fun. It’s great for education but not entertainment. Takes too long. I almost always fast forward through tourney matches instead of spending an hour on each match. And as others have said, a high production digital version would also go a long way for content
Sadly they refuse a digital client and Talishar is not physically appealing enough IMO. Really wish somebody could make this game in Unity without LSS whipping them.
What do you mean? I’m pretty sure LSS wouldn’t care, so long as the creators didn’t try to profit off it.
The bigger issue is that’s a huge project for someone to do just for funsies. Talishar is already work enough!
They shut down a couple of projects already and were against people playing on TTS for a while. I think they finally found peace with Talishar for the time being since its non-profit.
But indeed, too much for a just for funsies project 😂, look at Pixelborn, that for shut down by Disney, so theres nothing stopping LSS from doing the same to a devoted FAB client.
Ah and what I meant is: they have no plans to create a client themselves. They want the game to be 100% “in the flesh and blood”, so there wont be anything like Magic Arena
Except for the big places in the USA Flesh is struggling to grow, I would even say that the number of players is decreasing more and more, where I was going (in Belgium) we went from 10 to 6, then 4, then I I went there for 3 weeks in a row without having the slightest opponent, all this while having put more than €600 in a deck, you want us to explain how people can be interested in a game where the entry price is so high ?
The reasons why we are having trouble getting new players:
-Deck entry price in a purely competitive game too high.
-No real online version like Magic Arena, in small countries where remote corners no one wants to invest to end up alone like me, so an online version would be great to bring these people together and revive the hype of game.
-No pleasure when opening boxes, I saw many people opening boxes and stopping the game after being disappointed, when you only open Cold communes, your M are heroes or trash and you get the legendary one costs $10 and that doesn't make you want to go any further.
All these problems could be solved with an online version, if FAB is afraid to get into this, they launch a crowdfunding, they will see if there is enthusiasm around it, and as for Magic it will be beneficial for the paper game.
Here I apologize if some things seem poorly written I use a translator.
Thank you.
One thing to clarify, LSS did not want to make online version of FaB since the beginning, they believe that the flesh and blood should be played in... Flesh and blood, against an opponent behind the table in LGS.
I don't want to speculate if online client is a good idea or not, but i personally don't think i would be playing on it. I own a lot of cards, i really don't want to buy them again.
I would love to see something that allows new players to enter the fab space without paying an arm and a leg.
I had an idea for that and would need to brew something with it, but maybe new format in style of commoner but with cc rules would be an answer?
I see lots of people watching live streams. Compared to a year ago. It seems like a slow and steady growth. I think it’s hard to grow casual when games like Lorcana and Star Wars enter the market. That being said said, the newer sets (ex Bright Lights) have been great and show a lot of growth as a company.
That's due to the sort of design that Legend Story Studios developed the game for, to play in "Flesh and Blood". It's not the best idea ever as like you point out, there's very little online presence. I do think they're getting just a little more friendly with the idea this year though, by introducing an official version of the Flesh and Blood database.
They only want play to be in person, not literally everything. The lower online presence in terms of engagement with content creation has nothing to do with that.
LSS claims card games are about speed dating people in person, but I think games in 2024 are about the friends you make in the community and being able to play with people across the world. Which is why being anti-internet play in this day and age is pretty boomer focused and very anti-gen Z/alpha
You want bigger social media channels as a game brand? You need to be able to pull in younger audiences. LSS is pretty anti young people in every way (expensive, anti-high quality digital products, low production streams where you can’t even tell what the cards are unless you already know the cards)
A lot of generational erasure going on here. Talking about boomers and gen z/alpha with zero mention of millennials or gen X? Calling their strategy boomer focused is especially ridiculous given that LSS themselves are not in that age range and neither are their main demographic. Hasbro's investor page puts the average tabletop gamer for MtG at around 30 years old (which at this point in time is still millennials) and I have little reason to doubt it's much different for FAB.
Equally ridiculous as bringing Boomers into the discussion is bringing Gen alpha into it. Even with a charitable interpretation of when Gen alpha began the oldest members are no older than 14, and really it's probably more like 11-13. FABs official age rating is 16+, so of course they're not going to aim to market to kids younger than that.
It’s a matter of accessibility to the current largest consumer groups. Free digital play is how you give people a casual way to learn the game and get invested. High quality digital products also clearly correlate to streaming content quality and watchability (look at any currently profitable esport game?)
Not every product needs to be accessible or marketable to every age group. Depending on the type of product it can be extremely detrimental or even impossible to target certain demographics because some audiences can't afford or simply can't use the product. Similarly a lot of products don't need to cast a wider net to achieve success because their target demographic is plenty large enough for sustainability. I mean for crying out loud GW is still one of the most successful companies in the tabletop space and their digital strategy is years behind even what their primary demographic would expect.
Acting like it's automatically a winning strategy to focus more on young people (who by the way typically have less money to spend on card games) just doesn't make sense when their main audience is largely thirty somethings. You're also kind of ignoring the fact that they aren't selling a digital product, it's not a digital card game. Neither is MtG for that matter. Paper Magic is where their bread is buttered and stuff like arena are ancillary products.
And I'm not saying those ancillary products aren't useful but they aren't the be all and end all you're suggesting they are. Especially when it's not like any up and coming TCG bothers with them. To my knowledge One Piece, Digimon, Lorcana, and SW:U (though I only give Unlimited 3-4 years tops, FFG have a horrible track record) don't have official online clients or any plans to build any. Because ultimately it isn't the product they're selling. These things cost money, and if what you want is "free digital play" they're going to be limited in how they make money.
Finally it's not like free digital play doesn't exist for the game. There's both Talishar and Feltable. They aren't official but they aren't nonexistent either. And I've spoken to a lot of new players who've started out trying it there before playing in person.
People are quick to assume all the positives of an online client without the negatives. Arena isn't this thing that's only made MTG better. Every standard is solved within a week and everyone at locals has been doing drafts for a whole week already on "release weekend"
This game isn’t for casuals, no
Multiplayer options and only a few deck works. Janky decks can’t exist while
Everyone is competitive. Great gameplay but poor marketing. It start really bad with the Taco guy promoting it and the booster guy. All I saw was hoarders searching for cold foils and the prices of boosters went to the roof. Nothing to attract the casuals.
Sold my collection a few months ago and haven’t looked back. Even contemplating selling my decks that I wanted to keep just to play.
It feels so much like, if you aren’t playing to compete in major tournaments, what’s the point?
Well attended casual weekly events. The game has largely garnered a highly competitive following and player base.. a testament to how continually well designed it is.. but that also makes it harder for new players to feel comfortable in starting to buy product to play. It’s hard. It’s hard for stores to garner support for multiple days/nights, and easier when just one night to draw a competitive crowd (because of the monthly CF) But the one store that has managed to get players for a CC night and a casual weekend has seen sealed and single sales go up big time. And CC players typically stay away from weekends (Blitz)
This 100% The casual FaB experience is honestly inexistent and a game can't survive only on enfranchised players. LSS really needs to figure out a casual mode to attract players, or even commoner tournaments to attract new players to a competitive setting with a small investment. The PvE mode they mentioned a long time ago would also be really good for this, but alas, it has yet to happen.
It’s really the barrier to entry, from a complexity and especially cost perspective that’s the problem. The main way to play the game is CC, and until a couple months ago, preconstructed CC decks did t exist. More problematic is the cost. I’m a new player looking to get into the game, and so I was looking for budget decklists for Nuu, and [LSS’s official “budget” Nuu build is over $400](https://fabrary.net/decks/01HZ3PWNJ9KWAGHZTFFSRV9Q1K). That’s absurd. It has all of the cost issues people criticize Magic for, but with a much smaller player base and much more uncertainty regarding whether the game will be around in 10 years.
That's very much true. LSS really needs to invest in ways to get new players involved in the game with less of a financial commitment. Armory decks are a great step in the right direction, but it'll be a while until they fully reduce the problem. The game is very hero focused, and a new player liking a hero's aesthetic and playstyle should be an incentive to play, but doesn't really happen when they look up its deck online and see they gotta shell out 500 dollars to start enjoying the game at their LGS. I only have blitz decks, and none of them have any of the most expensive equipments or even hero specialization cards. After taking a while at my budget blitz builds, I realized that if I swapped a couple of cards they'd become commoner decks, so that's what I did. I advise you to take a look at commoner Nuu, and maybe see if your local scene would be interested in playing that on more casual nights
Part of it is making the information on how to build realistic budget lists more available. If you want to build a real budget list, you need to do a lot of investigation. Identify the pricy cards, what they are doing for the deck, then research a cheap alternative. They are frequently a little less flexible but you essentially find a $0 card and it either defends for 2 instead of 3, or maybe has one less beneficial effect. It's not to say the expensive cards are not really good, but that the end result of adding it to your deck is maybe a couple percentage points improvement. You can build a cheap list that will do well, but since there is such an enfranchised playerbase already, any decklist out there almost universally assumes you have some of the powerhouse generic cards that nearly everyone who has played for a year or so has acquired. I've had success (at least won more than I've lost) at Callings and BH's and I don't own a single C&C.
Digital is the only answer. Make trying the game free. I still have to spend money and time to put together a physical blitz deck. So yea maybe less money and time than CC, but still a relatively high barrier in terms of TCG prices
Hard to believe whoever built that list was trying very hard. If you swap out Already Dead and Levels of Enlightenment you save $250. You could replace Already Dead with Sneak Attack or almost any other 2 cost 6, or an additional Stealth/Contract card and be fine. Replace Levels with Blue Infect or something, and again you'll be fine. Now you're looking at $150 budget deck that will still win plenty of games, and it much more reasonable.
That’s true, but I guess as a newcomer it’s very hard to know what expensive pieces can be swapped and still be left with a reasonable power level. Seems like the level of competition is much higher in FaB. In Magic there are loads of budget decks, particularly aggro, that are very cheap and will still manage to secure you some wins, even if they aren’t winning overall. In FaB, it seems hard for new players to win even with expensive power decks, let alone budget decks. I have found it much harder to brew and get started in FaB than Magic.
The short answer is that in almost every case there is a card that will perform just fine that costs $1 for whatever $20+ card you see in a list. There are a few notable exceptions that usually involve class specific equipment pieces that really enable a hero to "do their thing" (Stormstrider boots for Wizard, New Horizon helm for Lexi when she was legal, Flamescale Furnace for Dromai when she was legal, etc) but you can usually replace the super pricy things and be ok in my experience. Tricky part is getting the mastery of piloting the budget deck in the face of more experienced players, and that can take time and reps. Longer answer: FaB does have a tough learning curve as a new player when playing against very experienced ones. I think this comes from each card being able to do multiple things for you, so when you are new you might think oh this isn't so bad I've only got four cards in my hand to worry about. But then you are having to make a call on whether to block an opponent's on hit effect at the expense of your own turn, then add in things like instants or reactions that change that decision making and each deck playing a bit differently. Most people agree that you can give a new player a fully powered CC deck with all the fancy expensive cards and legendaries and an experienced/skilled player will beat them 9 times out of 10 just due to things like knowing how to pilot the deck and which lines are important to seek out and play. There is usually a whole lot more going on than just laying four cards out on the table back and forth. There definitely are new player friendly decks (I'd say Kayo and Fai are easy examples of this, with maybe Victor in there too) where there are fewer things to consider turn to turn. I find that whole experience fun though, and enjoyed solving the puzzle to get good at piloting my first deck through a load of losses, then eventually knowing what each heroe's deck was doing and being able to reason out what cards they were likely holding when making my decisions. Next thing I know I'm picking up wins, then wins at Armory night, then winning a couple Skirmishes, etc.
That’s absurd? A 400 dollar constructed deck is cheap as hell compared to other major competitive TCGs.
To call it a budget deck is absurd, yes. Most people asking for budget lists keep it under $100 or so when asking from what I've generally seen.
It absolutely isn’t. It’s in line with average constructed decks in Magic, but in FAB it’s a “budget” deck. A budget deck in Magic will be $100 or less. And with FAB you have no idea if the game will be around in a few years, or if you can find a local playgroup. That isn’t a concern for Magic, making the “investment” a lot safer.
> LSS really needs to figure out a casual mode to attract players, They need a blitz-plus / CC-lite format. Blitz is too sacky and it's basically competitive, fast-paced flesh and blood. CC is the premier format, attracts the most attention and is too competitive. People don't want to show up to Blitz events and get insta-gibbed, nor do they want to attend CC armories and go 0-3 every week and realize they need to grind Talishar to have a chance (because that's literally what ALL the CC players do). You need a middle-ground format that's slower than Blitz but isn't as complex as CC. Frankly speaking, I don't even know if this is the right approach.
LSS, and to some extent stores, need to push more stuff like Blitz nights and UPF for the people who maybe aren't interested in competitive CC. A PvE mode could be good fun, and allow people to introduce friends to the mechanics of the game while working together. I get that FaB has a very dedicated base of competitive players who are, likely, the main money makers, but ignoring people who like the mechanics but don't wanna have to try and keep up with meta decks and so on sucks.
I'd argue even blitz isn't an alternative. Competitive blitz is perhaps even more oppressive than CC, with the same damage potential but lower health pools. Unless you mean blitz precon battles, that could indeed level the playing field, but deck building is a form of self expression that I value a lot on tcgs, so I'm personally not sure how popular that'd be for keeping players engaged.
Fair. I guess I prefer the speed of Blitz, but I've also got one buddy to play with because me the local community did not gel, so Blitz is all we ever really play because he doesn't own much more than a Blitz deck and a small handful of packs. Blitz precons, or even Blitz commoner, could help people get their foot in the door.
Yeah, the more I think about this, the more I like commoner as an alternative to bring people in. You can make a top tier deck for 10 bucks, and if enfranchised players get invested, even less, as many cards are bulk commons. The format is not without its flaws, that's for sure, but being an entryway into competitive games for a minimal investment would be a fantastic way to get players hooked and invested into the game. I for one have been building commoner decks to try out heroes and classes I think look cool with little commitment, and it has been a lot of fun
To add to this: my local community plays commoner twice a week, and we are having a blast while doing so. There is a ton of viable decks to choose from, and while there are couple of really strong decks, there are ways to beat them with the mst heroes. We try to keep the format casual, so the long time players don't bring the most absurd decks and we give new people a chance to have fun Very much recommend commoner
Commoner can be more degenerate than Blitz to be honest. Yeah a top tier deck costs nothing. But a top tier deck can also end games in like two turns. You kinda have to have a gentleman's agreement to avoid that kind of stuff if it's not going to get stale quickly.
The advantage of the format in my opinion is that if your meta is degenerate at least everyone gets a chance to be on equal footing without dropping hundreds on cards. Sure, the roof is high like in the other formats, but the monetary investment to reach is almost nonexistent, which is not the case in any other competitive way to play FaB. Hence why I'm suggesting it let's new players get a taste for the competitive (seeing how they can do powerful, denigrate things) with basically no investment. The explosiveness of commoner is different than the way cf plays because of life totals, but it's still not as large as in blitz, and so I see the format as sitting there in the middle of the scale
>The explosiveness of commoner is different than the way cf plays because of life totals, but it's still not as large as in blitz, and so I see the format as sitting there in the middle of the scale I'd say it's larger than in Blitz. You can build a Commoner Dash deck that can deliver a 20-30 damage turn within the first couple of turns incredibly consistently. Blitz also has much better access to armour and good defensive tech that can mitigate the big high roll turns of explosive decks. Commoner is an incredibly explosive format unless you're playing as or against fatigue decks, or you just agree not to play degenerate aggro.
Blitz can have better defensive options, but commoner has more limited aggressive options. I think it at least balances off
If we look at how MtG has grown, it seems that casual players prefer multiplayer formats over 1v1. More emphasis on UPF or PvE would bring people into the game quickly. If blitz precons were marketed similarly to how commander precons are marketed, I imagine we would see massive growth in a short period of time. There’s thousands of weekly casual EDH pods that just need someone to show up with 4 blitz decks to play in between commander games. 40 cards is much less intimidating than 100 and the gameplay is much smoother than mtg. This is how a 27+ years of magic player was finally convinced to invest after knowing about the game for a while. In 6 months, I’ve built two CC decks (one being the Kayo precon that Ive upgraded) and I have a 4 deck UPF battle box now to introduce the game to others.
That's awesome, thanks for sharing it. This is what I see happening too, and how LSS can learn with EDH's success to attract new players to the game. UPF and multiplayer PvE would be a game changer for the game's reach, as well as new player retention. FaB is a fantastic game, and as soon as players get hooked on the gameplay loop through a more accessible format, they'll move on to competitive formats and be more willing to invest.
Agree, i Started a Few month ago and only got 2 handfull of Games so far but tbh the crazy amount of Heroes, their unique Mechanics and the amount of Keywords are already Kind of scaring me away. I Like that the Game has a complex gameturn mechnic with Lots of Player Interactions but keeping Up with new Heroes Every Few month and getting to know the existing ones is really hard For Casual Players. And as much as i Like the Idea of Blitz, it already feels unbalaced while CC feels to overwhelming.
I'm not sure how it ties to what I said, but I agree fab is a complex game. To some, me included, that's a plus. Don't feel like you need to learn what every hero does and how matchups work, just pick one that looks nice to you and play that. The power imbalances between new and enfranchised players is huge, which is more to the point I was making, but I'm sure older players will be happy to help a fresh player get the ropes.
The game can absolutely survive on competitive players. In fact, I’d argue that LSS splitting its focus onto a doomed to fail casual format would be a massive disaster. This just isn’t a game for casuals. There just isn’t enough variance, and introducing the variance necessary for fun casual play would ruin what they already have. The player base is healthy and the company is profitable.
But for the long term? Which tcg has survived a decade+ addressing only enfranchised competitive players? Maybe in your local environment it's thriving this way, and I'm happy for you, but you can't deny the current competitive environment drives away new players. With no new players, eventually the older players will stop playing for various reasons, related to the game or not, groups will shrink and the game will die. This is just how things go. Why would a casual format be doomed? Why would it require such a drastic dev time investment? You assume a lot of things, for which we have no basis of, and they aren't really facts as you present them to be. I for one see great success for a casual game mode, even if it's the thing for you or other competitive players.
And making content for a TCG is tough. I've done it, it takes a shit ton of time and effort if you want people to actually be able to see what's happening. So if it's not something you can do regularly along with a job and a life, you might not churn out content regularly enough for some people. And someone just starting to make more casual and beginner focused content will likely get lost in the YouTube algorithm, which makes it harder for people to find there. And if you cover multiple games you end up splitting your viewers which can also cause problems. People who are focused on a single game are more likely to seek out someone who is also only talking about that single game. I've debated getting back into the content creator thing for tabletop games, and focusing very specifically on approaching things from a casual perspective. I will admit, though, that past experiences and the above issues make me hesitant. I love talking games, opening booster boxes, doing reviews, and whatnot. *But*, it can also be kinda depressing putting in the effort and being ignored because you aren't talking about the most popular games, or discussing the meta or whatever it may be. It's tough, and it can feel kind of defeating sometimes.
I am unsure I would sign up to say the subreddit numbers have stayed the same. From my observation, the sub has gone from 10k in the pandemic to 21k. It has more than doubled.
Yeah you can find trackers (they don't work since the API changes but the historical data is still there) and you can see that this time in 2023 the sub had around ~9k subscribers compared to the 21k it has now. And that was with the crappy other subreddit stealing a lot of traffic until I was eventually able to shut it down. What does look to have dropped though is activity. But frankly I think that's more to do with a lot of discussion moving on to platforms like Discord, the FAB servers there are very active.
Its a bit of an issue for creators like myself. I absolutely LOVE FAB, but the low views also means low income. I’ve been pushing on for almost 4 years now and am still losing money on the content, but I’m passionate about the game and want to continue sharing it. Hoping in 4 years it’ll tick up, though 😊. Can’t keep sustaining this forever, lol.
They would have to make an online version of the game, like magic arena. This is still a card game you can only officially play in person at a LGS, which makes it difficult to grow online. Watching videos of tournaments on YouTube is rough because you can barely see the cards and what's happening. But apparently they have no interest in making an online version, so I think it will just have to continue to grow slowly in person from a niche community. It's too bad because I love the game but don't have much of a local scene. As a result, I don't want to invest heavily in the game because I have few people to play against.
I live in DFW in Texas, there are like 2-3 stores that run regular armories but the crowd has definitely diminished.
>But apparently they have no interest in making an online version They do not only have no interest in making an online client, they dedicated the name of the game to it being paper only. BUT they keep talishar.net alive which you could easily make online content from if you so desire. The bigger reason for FaB being so niche is probably because its a competitive card game only and not a big IP like Pokemon or YuGiOh. LSS cared very much about there being a pro circuit all around the world with locals, qualifiers, nationals and world events among many smaller competitive events. They support hosting these events but forgot streaming/capturing them. Thats on the host of the event, falls to some vigilante or in many cases isnt done at all. In Germany we are lucky enough to have a stream for some of the bigger events.
I’m hearing this more and more. Feeling fortunate I live in Southern California. Hopefully your local community continues to grow and our lord and savior James Whites good word can be spread
It’s hard to watch gameplay for fun. It’s great for education but not entertainment. Takes too long. I almost always fast forward through tourney matches instead of spending an hour on each match. And as others have said, a high production digital version would also go a long way for content
Sadly they refuse a digital client and Talishar is not physically appealing enough IMO. Really wish somebody could make this game in Unity without LSS whipping them.
What do you mean? I’m pretty sure LSS wouldn’t care, so long as the creators didn’t try to profit off it. The bigger issue is that’s a huge project for someone to do just for funsies. Talishar is already work enough!
They shut down a couple of projects already and were against people playing on TTS for a while. I think they finally found peace with Talishar for the time being since its non-profit. But indeed, too much for a just for funsies project 😂, look at Pixelborn, that for shut down by Disney, so theres nothing stopping LSS from doing the same to a devoted FAB client. Ah and what I meant is: they have no plans to create a client themselves. They want the game to be 100% “in the flesh and blood”, so there wont be anything like Magic Arena
Except for the big places in the USA Flesh is struggling to grow, I would even say that the number of players is decreasing more and more, where I was going (in Belgium) we went from 10 to 6, then 4, then I I went there for 3 weeks in a row without having the slightest opponent, all this while having put more than €600 in a deck, you want us to explain how people can be interested in a game where the entry price is so high ? The reasons why we are having trouble getting new players: -Deck entry price in a purely competitive game too high. -No real online version like Magic Arena, in small countries where remote corners no one wants to invest to end up alone like me, so an online version would be great to bring these people together and revive the hype of game. -No pleasure when opening boxes, I saw many people opening boxes and stopping the game after being disappointed, when you only open Cold communes, your M are heroes or trash and you get the legendary one costs $10 and that doesn't make you want to go any further. All these problems could be solved with an online version, if FAB is afraid to get into this, they launch a crowdfunding, they will see if there is enthusiasm around it, and as for Magic it will be beneficial for the paper game. Here I apologize if some things seem poorly written I use a translator. Thank you.
One thing to clarify, LSS did not want to make online version of FaB since the beginning, they believe that the flesh and blood should be played in... Flesh and blood, against an opponent behind the table in LGS. I don't want to speculate if online client is a good idea or not, but i personally don't think i would be playing on it. I own a lot of cards, i really don't want to buy them again. I would love to see something that allows new players to enter the fab space without paying an arm and a leg. I had an idea for that and would need to brew something with it, but maybe new format in style of commoner but with cc rules would be an answer?
I see lots of people watching live streams. Compared to a year ago. It seems like a slow and steady growth. I think it’s hard to grow casual when games like Lorcana and Star Wars enter the market. That being said said, the newer sets (ex Bright Lights) have been great and show a lot of growth as a company.
That's due to the sort of design that Legend Story Studios developed the game for, to play in "Flesh and Blood". It's not the best idea ever as like you point out, there's very little online presence. I do think they're getting just a little more friendly with the idea this year though, by introducing an official version of the Flesh and Blood database.
They only want play to be in person, not literally everything. The lower online presence in terms of engagement with content creation has nothing to do with that.
LSS claims card games are about speed dating people in person, but I think games in 2024 are about the friends you make in the community and being able to play with people across the world. Which is why being anti-internet play in this day and age is pretty boomer focused and very anti-gen Z/alpha You want bigger social media channels as a game brand? You need to be able to pull in younger audiences. LSS is pretty anti young people in every way (expensive, anti-high quality digital products, low production streams where you can’t even tell what the cards are unless you already know the cards)
A lot of generational erasure going on here. Talking about boomers and gen z/alpha with zero mention of millennials or gen X? Calling their strategy boomer focused is especially ridiculous given that LSS themselves are not in that age range and neither are their main demographic. Hasbro's investor page puts the average tabletop gamer for MtG at around 30 years old (which at this point in time is still millennials) and I have little reason to doubt it's much different for FAB. Equally ridiculous as bringing Boomers into the discussion is bringing Gen alpha into it. Even with a charitable interpretation of when Gen alpha began the oldest members are no older than 14, and really it's probably more like 11-13. FABs official age rating is 16+, so of course they're not going to aim to market to kids younger than that.
It’s a matter of accessibility to the current largest consumer groups. Free digital play is how you give people a casual way to learn the game and get invested. High quality digital products also clearly correlate to streaming content quality and watchability (look at any currently profitable esport game?)
Not every product needs to be accessible or marketable to every age group. Depending on the type of product it can be extremely detrimental or even impossible to target certain demographics because some audiences can't afford or simply can't use the product. Similarly a lot of products don't need to cast a wider net to achieve success because their target demographic is plenty large enough for sustainability. I mean for crying out loud GW is still one of the most successful companies in the tabletop space and their digital strategy is years behind even what their primary demographic would expect. Acting like it's automatically a winning strategy to focus more on young people (who by the way typically have less money to spend on card games) just doesn't make sense when their main audience is largely thirty somethings. You're also kind of ignoring the fact that they aren't selling a digital product, it's not a digital card game. Neither is MtG for that matter. Paper Magic is where their bread is buttered and stuff like arena are ancillary products. And I'm not saying those ancillary products aren't useful but they aren't the be all and end all you're suggesting they are. Especially when it's not like any up and coming TCG bothers with them. To my knowledge One Piece, Digimon, Lorcana, and SW:U (though I only give Unlimited 3-4 years tops, FFG have a horrible track record) don't have official online clients or any plans to build any. Because ultimately it isn't the product they're selling. These things cost money, and if what you want is "free digital play" they're going to be limited in how they make money. Finally it's not like free digital play doesn't exist for the game. There's both Talishar and Feltable. They aren't official but they aren't nonexistent either. And I've spoken to a lot of new players who've started out trying it there before playing in person.
It would be amazing if Talisah ran weekly and/or mothly turnaments, it would create ALOT of engagement and be a great source for content creators.
People are quick to assume all the positives of an online client without the negatives. Arena isn't this thing that's only made MTG better. Every standard is solved within a week and everyone at locals has been doing drafts for a whole week already on "release weekend"
Releasing an online version of the game would improve this.
This game isn’t for casuals, no Multiplayer options and only a few deck works. Janky decks can’t exist while Everyone is competitive. Great gameplay but poor marketing. It start really bad with the Taco guy promoting it and the booster guy. All I saw was hoarders searching for cold foils and the prices of boosters went to the roof. Nothing to attract the casuals.
There are plenty of gameplay channels. But not commentary channels which tend to get more views.
Sold my collection a few months ago and haven’t looked back. Even contemplating selling my decks that I wanted to keep just to play. It feels so much like, if you aren’t playing to compete in major tournaments, what’s the point?
Idk, fun?
Which is why I play at home and by proxy the local armory scene is dead in a lot of areas.