FaB Review - October 2nd Banlist and Dev Talk About the Future

Unexpectedly, LSS has just announced another update to their banned and restricted lists, targeting the Living Legend format in particular.

The following changes to Living Legend are effective from Friday, October 4, 2024:

- Kraken's Aethervein is banned.

By default, the Living Legend format is designed to let players tinker with the strongest strategies that ever existed in the history of Flesh and Blood: Bravo, Star of the Show, Chane, Bound by Shadow with Seeds of Agony (1), Briar, Warden of Thorns with Ball Lightning (1), Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light and her fearsome Luminaris, and so on and so forth.

However, even with all this power, there's a limit - and this limit was broken with Kraken's Aethervein.

After all, was Iyslander, Stormbind's signature weapon really that powerful to be banned in a format that basically only includes the most powerful strategies that ever existed?

This weapon has been monitored by the game dev team ever since it was valid in Classic Constructed. Its ability, in a vacuum, doesn't seem great, considering it gives you a mysterious card in exchange for a blue card (and only if you deal arcane damage with it), but any type of damage buff can escalate the potential of this card.

In Uprising and Dynasty, many players worked hard to build a deck around this weapon. Cards like Alluvion Constellas and Blessing of Aether (1) supported this strategy, but it never truly became competitive.

The dev team feared it would break the game. So much so that, when they announced FaB 2.0 and introduced the concept of signature weapons, Kraken was tied to Iyslander, Stormbind to make sure it would leave Classic Constructed as soon as she hit Living Legend status. That's precisely what happened, even though this weapon never truly saw competitive play back then.

However, now Rosetta is out, so we have support for damage buffs with the Amp ability. Anyone could see how we could abuse this weapon with these strategies.

The most obvious Wizard that broke this staff was Verdance, Thorn of Rose. Unlike Classic Constructed, in Living Legend this deck thoroughly ignored the concept of Decompose, and this hero's text box. Instead, it focused on using the Earth talent, cards like Channel The Millennium Tree, and, mostly, Rampant Growth // Life.

Thanks to Meld, Kraken threatened somewhat 14 arcane damage, drew you 14 cards from your deck, and gave you the victory with multiple Snapback (1) or a gigantic Firebreathing (1). This combo was quite fast and threatened lethal damage really early on.

The dev team knew about all these risks, but they let this weapon see play for some time. Nonetheless, they quickly realized this wasn't the right decision after the first Living Legend event with Rosetta. After many events with this format at Worlds, they banned this weapon and showed that even the format that has the highest power level in the entire game has its limits.

So, after this announcement, Kraken's Aethervein became the first card to be banned in Living Legend.

Alongside this announcement, LSS also released another episode of their Dev Talk Podcast (as you can see above) which included a few critical pieces of information about the future of the game. Let's see them.

Changes and More Eyes on Blitz

For a while now, Blitz players have felt this format was a bit "abandoned", and the greatest proof of that was the July banlist, which lowered Zen's power in Classic Constructed but completely ignored him in Blitz. This led to one of the worst metas in the format and one of the worst Skirmish seasons ever.

Because of these mistakes, the company decided to pay more attention to this format. We'll see some of these changes at the Osaka World Championship (which will be held in a month), namely a different scoring system for young and new heroes - besides an apology for all the problems in Blitz during the last season.

Burning the Tomes

In this podcast, they also gave us more details about the last banned and restricted list announced last month, and why they banned a few cards, like Art of War (2).

Besides all the reasons they presented to us in the ban article, they noticed two types of decks were prevailing: the decks that focused more on value and both blocked and attacked a little, and those that only followed the same explosive game plan because of the cards they banned.

The most explosive decks created very boring matches to watch. In many games, players would use the same strategies for several rounds, which, in a live, broadcast tournament, was just tedious for viewers, who felt like "they had seen that movie before".

So, to keep the game fresh, they had to remove a common element in all of those decks that were "boring to watch" - and this led to one of the most important bans in the game.

A Possible High Octane Ban

The community has often voiced their concerns about the new card, Cerebellum Processor, and how it can make Dash I/O too strong. However, this item is great in a vacuum, and all the ways to play it are acceptable, except for one, which can be a bit over the line: in turns with High Octane (1).

High Octane (1) is, today, just barely acceptable for the game, but, as more Mechanologist support comes out, it will become quite problematic.

Besides limiting future strategies for this class, this action gives you action points very easily for very little - which we know is problematic, considering Luminaris and Chane's ability. So, as a result, the dev team decided this card will be valid at Worlds, but they'll keep a close eye on Dash I/O and, eventually, they'll probably ban this iconic Mechanologist card.

After the Pro Quest + event that took place at the Milwaukee Battle Hardened, no one could say the Living Legend format was healthy. Because of how fast Verdance managed to draw cards with Kraken's Aethervein, defeat was inevitable. Something had to be done, and, fortunately, the FaB dev team did something fast enough to guarantee a healthy format at Worlds.

This podcast also brought us more tidbits about the future of the game. Besides a preview of what they'll announce for Blitz at the Osaka Worlds, the devs also shared their view of what a strong class card should be, and how this will guide them as they develop the game. Key pieces of information like these are what make us all truly anxious for the future of the game.

What did you think of this ban? Was it too fast, or should this weapon see more play in Living Legend for now? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!