FaB: Silver Age Review - The New Format for 2026

A few months ago, I wrote about Project Blue, a new, faster, cheaper format for Flesh and Blood, but it was only a project then. The concept and the idea were there, but nothing was certain yet.

Well, after the 6th Anniversary broadcast and Worlds, LSS has confirmed and made public Project Blue in its final form: Silver Age. However, none of us were ready for the level of commitment and effort the company is putting into this new format.

But are they making the right decision? Will Silver Age become the next great competitive format?

If you've kept up with Project Blue while it was in development, then you already know a lot about Silver Age because they share the same structure: a deck with exactly 40 cards plus 15 cards in the inventory (including weapons, equipment cards, and any cards you want to sideboard) and 35-minute matches.

The new thing is that in Silver Age your deck can only play common or rare cards, including your hero. So you can't play Enigma, New Moon or Emperor, Dracai of Aesir.

This deckbuilding restriction means two things: meta decks will be a lot cheaper, and some cards that couldn't compete in other formats will get a new chance to shine. Some of these couldn't compete because a certain hero had already become a Living Legend, and some had no space because another card, majestic or legendary, was simply better.

Furthermore, this format already has an extensive banlist:

Silver Age Banlist

Besides the cards that were already banned in Project Blue (which still are), Nimby (1), Old Knocker, Fiddler’s Green (1), Honing Hood, Reality Refractor, and Vigorous Smashup (1)

are also banned.

This list conveys a clear message: no staples in aggressive or defensive decks. The playing field is even for both of them.

LSS also announced several tournaments for Silver Age in 2026, as well as a new line of products.

Showdowns and the Pro Quest Season

The first change LSS made to the competitive scene is that Battle Hardeneds were replaced by "Showdowns". In practice, the structure of these tournaments is the same, but the format featured in them (which so far has been either Classic Constructed or Living Legend) will be Silver Age during all of 2026. Like so, Silver Age will be under the spotlight at the most competitive events straightaway.

But those won't be the only tournaments with Silver Age.

Besides a part of the Pro Quests: Las Vegas and an entire Skirmish season, Pro Tour: Las Vegas will also feature the new format as well as Classic Constructed.

A New Set

The next FaB set will be Compendium of Rathe, a "supplementary set" (that is, undraftable) for every class. Nonetheless, it will focus more on Classic Constructed and Silver Age and bring us many new common and rare cards.

Because of this set, Silver Age could look like a whole different format once it finally debuts in competitive tournaments. The meta could change considerably.

New Precons

Alongside this new set, LSS will also give us a series of new precon decks for Silver Age. They're called "Chapter 1 & 2" and have a very clear goal: they're supposed to be ready for tournaments straight out of the box. You don't have to swap any cards in them at all. Just get them, open them up, and you could win a tournament.

We still don't know the full lists, but if they truly are this competitive, considering how cheap they are (US$20), they could be the best FaB sealed products ever. A lot better than the old Blitz decks, certainly.

A New Rotation

Unlike the other formats, Silver Age won't use a "Living Legend" rotation. Instead, the community will vote on which cards should rotate out of the format.

Before each competitive season, a new vote will be opened for the community to decide which hero should rotate out of Silver Age. The three most voted heroes (and another one the dev team gets to pick) will no longer be around for next season. However, if they aren't voted out again, they'll return.

This new system will make the meta a lot more democratic and make the community an important part of this entire format as a whole.

This Silver Age debut looks promising, but there's a lot of context around it we still need to explore.

The Death of Blitz

Back in 2020, LSS announced Blitz with the following introduction:

Blitz serves a different purpose. It offers fast and fun games, which we believe is a really good fit with Play Anywhere, social gaming, and time constraints some local game stores are operating under (...)

Furthermore, Blitz was supposed to be the "introduction" to the game, that is, what a beginner would play when they first started playing FaB. That way, they didn't have to spend as much as they would have to spend on a Classic Constructed list.

However, five years have passed since then, and some of these goals are no longer being met.

The first is the "introduction" idea. Actually, if you take time to compare, the same hero costs more or less the same amount of money both in Blitz and Classic Constructed. Of course, one less copy of Command and Conquer makes any deck a lot cheaper, but many expensive cards, particularly equipment cards, still saw play in Blitz.

For instance, because in Blitz players have less HP, equipment cards that block a little more (mostly the legendaries) make a huge difference.

Another matter is the "fun" factor. "Fun" is an extremely subjective concept, but the community, overall, feels Blitz wasn't all that fun. As new heroes and cards came in, it was clear whoever won the "coinflip" at the beginning of the game got quite ahead from the get-go. The biggest example of that was Rhinar, who could win games in turn "0" before the opponent could even react to him.

LSS tried to fix all these issues: last year, the Living Legend cutoff was changed from 500 to 1000 points, and they were more aggressive with the banlist, but the cycle always seemed to repeat itself. Whenever a new hero hit Living Legend status, a new one took their place and became just as problematic.

With time, more experienced players lost all interest in Blitz, and, after the Armory Decks, a new line of products, came along, beginners had a better way to get into the game through Classic Constructed. So, LSS removed Blitz from all sorts of competitive tournaments.

Commoner's Unpopularity

The alternative to Blitz was, then, Commoner: a format with only common cards. It is pretty cheap, as well as a great "introduction" for beginners, but, for experienced or competitive players, it isn't that interesting.

Because of its deckbuilding restriction, most Commoner decks are too simple, so the gameplay actually isn't that exciting. Furthermore, many popular heroes, like Dromai and Viserai, had no space to play because they couldn't cut it with only common cards. As a result, a massive chunk of players also had no interest in Commoner.

Silver Age is supposed to fix all the problems these two Young hero formats have: its power level is lower than Blitz, and overall it is a bit slower, but it also kept all the benefits of Commoner. On top of it all, it has better cards and decks than these formats.

LSS has placed their bets. New products, several high-level competitive events, and a whole new collection are all part of their plan. Betting so much on such a new format is definitely risky, so what are they actually trying to accomplish?

Silver Age could be what FaB needed to actually become popular.

FaB is still considered an "expensive" TCG. This might not even be true if we compare it to other competitive TCGs (and we could spend an entire article on this matter alone), but this reputation is often enough to drive off new players. Giving us a cheap, extremely competitive format with lots of support and official prizes could be what the game needed to soar among both casual players and competitive ones (even from other TCGs). Like so, they wouldn't have to invest so much in a new TCG straight away.

As a matter of fact, Silver Age is so popular right now that 27 thousand Silver Age matches were registered on Talishar.net, the FaB tabletop simulator, in the past two weeks. In comparison, 24 thousand Classic Constructed matches were registered in that same period.

With all this support and investment, Silver Age should be set for success, but what will really make it stick will be game balance. LSS has to figure out a way to keep it healthy and balanced, or fail just like they have before.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!