In next three episodes I will be taking a deep dive into Arsenal system in Flesh and Blood.
Table of Contents
Arsenal Play
At the first glance, setting one card to a special zone at the end of your turn does not appear that special. However, better arsenal utilization will directly improve your game play.
The expressed value of a card played from Arsenal zone is no different from any other card. It’s the expressed of the card when it is played.
However, in contrast to cards from hand, cards in arsenal zone have to follow its own rule. Usually, they cannot be used immediately, limits to 1 card in the zone at a time, and they can be only “played”. These unique game rule results in arsenal zone specific merits and demerits.
So I will be taking a deep dive into Arsenal theory in the game of Flesh and Blood in next 3 episodes.
In this first episode, we will be focusing on Arsenal merits. In the second episode, we will look at demerits. In the last episode, putting two together and see if there are some tips/lessons for Arsenal play.
Arsenal Merits
A card played from Arsenal zone may get one or more merits. Personally, I classify the merits into one of five categories.
- Arsenal blessing
- 5 cards hand
- Saving card
- Card Draw
- Bluff
Arsenal Blessing
Amongst the five merits, the easiest to understand is arsenal blessing.
There are cards that get a bonus effect when placed or played from arsenal by game design. The prototypical of this is ranger class’s hero ability, equipments and weapons as the class utilize arsenal zone for its core game strategy/tactics. But this is not limited to rangers.
If Lightning Surge is played from a hand, it’s just at rate. However, when played from Arsenal, this becomes above rate card.
Iyslander’s hero ability allow blue cards in arsenal zone to become instant during opponent’s turn.
The legendary equipment crown of seeds gives arsenal card blessing independent of what the card actually is.
状況は限定されますが、アーセナルから使用するディフェンスリアクションはdominateの制限に引っかからないという点もアーセナル恩恵として考えられます。
Although situational, the game rule such as defense reaction played from Arsenal is not limited by dominate can be viewed as a form of Arsenal blessing.
Five cards hand
As of today, all hero’s intellect is 4. Therefore, normally players formulate inning/turn plan based on four cards in their hand.
Using Arsenal zone, one can practically get five cards hand. There are certain card synergies allow the five cards hand to produce significantly more than just one additional card worth expressed value.
For example, Art of war in the wide attack strategy Fai’s aggro combo deck or Aether Wildfire in Kano combo deck. In these decks, the fifth card allow massive combo turn damage.
For instance, Kano’s Wildfire Lava combo turn with tunic counter and Ragamuffin giving 3 additional points of resource, adding 2 blue pitch cards give the minimum 10 resource points for the combo. Assuming the opponent can’t block any of the damage, the combo turn has turn expressed value of 23.
On the contrary, if Aether Wildfire was set to arsenal and assume you get an additional blue pitch card. The combo turn EV becomes 35. In this situation, arsenal play produced 12 points of expressed value.
Even if you do not produce combo grade massive damage, five cards hand produce higher inning EV than four cards in majority of cases. So a player can use this when intentionally trying to get a tempo on particular turn/inning.
Saving card
Sometimes saving a card until the right moment can improve the card’s efficiency. In this case, having five hands is not the purpose.
For example, paradigmatic above rate block card, Sink Below shows its above rate value when blocking a card with break point attack points and relevant on-hit effect.
However, if you try to save the card until the right moment in your hand, you are essentially playing with three cards until the moment. This is where setting the card in the Arsenal is beneficial. It allows you to save the card until the right moment without compromising your hand size.
Card Draw
The forth merit is a card draw when you have a card left over in your hand. Under such a circumstance, placing a card in the arsenal allows you to draw one more card at the end of turn. On average, this means you are getting 3 expressed value.
One must be careful not using this as a sole reason to set a card in arsenal. There are several demerits of using Arsenal and if this was the only merit, it often results in overall loss of cumulative expressed value with such arsenal play.
Bluff
One may argue if bluff should be considered as a real merit. But the more experienced player is, better making educated guess for opponent’s play. Therefore, bluff can be more effective. Hence, I personally consider it can be a real merit under the right circumstance.
For example, if a player has an experience played against Kano, they know Aether wildfire set in Arsenal can inflict over 30 damages in one turn if Arcane damage is not reduced.
For this reason, those who know how to play against Kano will usually avoid tapping out resources. So they can pay for arcane barrier when combo is attempted.
During the combo turn, a point of damage from Wildfire becomes 5 damages when unchecked. So preventing 3 arcane damages using a blue pitch saves you 15 damages.
But what if the card in Arsenal wasn’t actually a Wildfire? Then the player actually wasted a card for that turn. From Kano player’s perspective, just having a card in Arsenal prevented one card worth damage that turn.
Similarly, when playing against Iyslander, the opponent must always at least take frostbite possibility when there is a card in Iyslander’s deck. When resource is tight, one may choose to spend more cards for blocking even if it weren’t the most efficient way. This is indeed exactly what tempo Iyslander deck wants to do.
Impression
If you aren’t sure whether a card should be placed in Arsenal or not, you could perhaps start listing the potential merits of the Arsenal play.