FAB 101: Defense
So, we’ve seen the basics of offense — now let’s talk defense! Just as Flesh and Blood offers many ways to attack an opponent, it also offers many ways to defend yourself against opponent’s attacks. However, not every defense is necessarily right for a particular situation! Read on to see how to make the most of your defense against different types of attacks.
Blocking from Hand
Blocking from hand is the most basic form of defense in Flesh and Blood. You can simply discard a card from hand to block an attack, and can do so with multiple cards if you like. Each card will then reduce the incoming damage by its block value (shown in the bottom right of the card) — many cards will block for three, some will block for two, and the weakest defensive cards (items and instants, generally speaking) can’t block at all! This flexibility allows you to use most cards either on offense or defense. However, you can only block with cards from hand — cards in arsenal can only be played, not used to block (or pitch).
When blocking from hand, be sure to consider your plans for the next turn. Try to think about what you can “afford to block with” while still advancing your own gameplan. If you block too heavily and find yourself without many cards in hand, you might not be able to do very much to threaten your opponent on your own turn! If you find yourself heavily blocking each turn, you may prevent your opponent from doing much but you give up a lot of tempo to do it. In general, tempo is often more important than damage. This means that you may want to allow some damage in if it means you’re going to be able to throw out a huge attack of your own and try to “seize the initiative”.
On the other hand, some attacks are too dangerous to let in — sometimes you just have to dump your hand to slow the opponent down! This can be especially true when the opponent threatens powerful on-hit effects. Against sufficiently threatening attacks, it may even be necessary to “overblock” — blocking for more damage than the attack is actually doing! Overblocking protects you from attack reactions, and while it isn’t necessary against decks that don’t run them it can be quite important against those that do.
For example, it can often be correct to block for three damage more than a Warrior is currently representing in order to prevent a potential blowout from an attack reaction — three in particular is an important breakpoint because the common red attack reactions will boost an attack by three damage, though some can do more and might merit even more defense.
If you have a defense reaction ready, overblocking is much less important. This is because your defense reaction can likely be used to “counter” their attack reaction, so unless they have multiple attack reactions coming in you may well be in a safe position just blocking normally and keeping your defense reaction “in reserve”.
Note that different decks care about using cards from hand to block to different degrees. For example, if your Guardian deck is playing for fatigue and you’re fine with just pitching one card and swinging your hammer, you might well be fine with blocking with two or three cards even against less threatening attacks while waiting for your moment — on the other hand, if you’re playing an aggro Mechanologist deck that really wants to chain together a lot of boosts, blocking heavily might be much more of an issue for your gameplan. Even attacks with strong on-hit effects might be worth taking if you know you’re going to be able to put together a huge attack of your own to follow up!
Equipment
All heroes in Flesh and Blood can play equipment that grants significant defense, though some are better at doing this than others! Equipment defense can be very reliable in that equipment starts the game in play, so even a player who draws a hand made entirely of cards that can’t block can still defend themselves with equipment blocks. However, all current equipment that can block physical damage will break or degrade after being used to defend, so you need to be careful about using it at the right time. As a result, you may want to save equipment blocks to protect against on-hit effects. These effects are often unusually important to stop relative to things that are “just damage”, and furthermore since they often come in at awkward attack values like four (see my article on breakpoints for more on this), equipment can be just what you need to bolster a block from hand and stop the effect!
Of course, some classes might not have on-hit effects (Brute) or might not have very relevant ones (non-aggro Mechanologist) — against those characters,
Here’s some sample equipment you might encounter:
This card can block one damage from an attack, but is discarded after defending — be careful when you use it!
This one isn’t discarded after defending, but the -1 counter it suffers will render it unhelpful for future defense.
This card offers stronger defense, but breaks after a second use — you’ll have to choose to either block or save it for its text.
(Flesh and Blood and its card art is © Legend Story Studios.)
Note that the Refraction Bolters and Crater Fist depicted will destroy themselves as a cost to use their ability. If you destroy a piece of equipment before blocking with it, its defense is wasted! Thus, it can often be prudent to block “early” with items that destroy themselves to use an ability, especially if you don’t know when that ability will come up. This can sometimes create tension with the general principle that holding back on blocking with equipment can be useful, and you may want to play differently in different matchups.
For example, it’s probably more important to save equipment to defend against potential on-hit effects if you’re playing against a Warrior than if you’re playing against a Brute, as Warrior often has strong on-hit effects from buffed weapon attacks, while Brute doesn’t have any on-hit effects anywhere in their class at all!
One special category of equipment defense is Arcane Barrier. Arcane Barrier can be used to block arcane damage. Unlike normal defense, using Arcane Barrier doesn’t destroy or degrade your equipment. However, you have to pay energy to use Arcane Barrier, which means that using it requires both cards and equipment. In general, you should make sure that you have Arcane Barrier 1 when playing against a Runeblade. Arcane Barrier of more than one is actually worse against all the small Runechant hits, since you can’t use “only part” of Arcane Barrier — an item with Arcane Barrier 3 would have to pitch for three in order to block a single point of damage from a Runechant, with the extra defense wasted! Against Wizard, things get more complicated and the amount of Arcane Barrier you’ll want to run may vary a lot based on your deck’s pitch, your class equipment, whether you’re playing Eirina’s Prayer, etc.
One piece of equipment is perhaps worth a special highlight — Arcanite Skullcap.
(Flesh and Blood and its card art is © Legend Story Studios.)
Arcanite Skullcap, the generic Legendary from Arcane Rising, is unlike all other current equipment in that its strength is dependent on whether you have less life than your opponent.
Try to make your first block with Skullcap while lower life than your opponent so that it can block two damage rather than one. If you’re lower life again later, you’ll be able to make a second block (albeit for only one that time).
Skullcap’s Arcane Barrier 3 is weaker than you might think. The only matchup in which Arcane Barrier 3 is strong is Wizard, but Wizard starts with less life than other classes and has better timing, allowing them to prevent the Skullcap’s barrier from being active. As a Warrior, I actually unequip Arcanite Skullcap in favor of Nullrune Hood when facing a Wizard.
While Skullcap is by no means a bad card, it represents a much more marginal upgrade over more common gear than other Legendaries do. I consider Arcanite Skullcap the worst Legendary equipment in the game. I think it is more likely to be “obsoleted” by future class (or even generic!) equipment than other Legendaries and it’s quite understandable to me if someone doesn’t want to buy one.
Note also that some classes have better equipment defense than others. For example, Warrior or Guardian have great physical defense, while Wizard or Ranger are weaker on physical defense but have some built-in Arcane Barrier without having to run Nullrune items. You can mitigate this with neutral picks to some degree, but the different classes will have different strengths and weaknesses.
Defense Reactions
The last main piece of the defense puzzle is defense reactions. These cards can only be played for defense or pitched — they have no other purpose. Because of this, defense reactions lack flexibility — while a normal card can be played, pitched, or used to block, defense reactions have to be played in order to block and aren’t very helpful (except as pitch) on the offense. However, they make up for this inflexibility by offering strong stats for their pitch — for instance, a red zero-cost defense reaction will typically block four damage, allowing it to stop attacks that make it past the three-damage breakpoint on its own!
Unlike other cards, you can’t just discard defense reactions to block — if you want the four block from this Steelblade Shunt, you’ll have to pay the one energy for it!
(Flesh and Blood and its card art is © Legend Story Studios.)
Defense reactions can also be played from arsenal, since they are played rather than used to block. This means that defense reactions can be a good way to counter Dominate and Intimidate. A defense reaction in arsenal can be a great way to get around Dominate, as it does not count as using a card from hand to defend and can let you defend with more than one non-equipment card.
Similarly, if a Brute opponent tries to use Intimidate to prevent you from defending with two or more cards so that he can get extra damage with Barraging Beatdown, you may be able to surprise him with a defense react from arsenal that will allow you to defend with two or more cards even if you only have one card left in your hand! (That said, it’s possible for a sufficiently good turn to dominate all four cards out of your hand, at which point even a defense reaction in arsenal won’t save you from Barraging Beatdown…)
In general, defense reactions can be a great way to get more “bang for your buck” — a defense reaction will often stop significantly more damage than blocking by discarding a card will, and sometimes give you a powerful effect to boot. However, drawing too many defense reactions can really slow you down — you need to decide whether the inflexibility is worth including these cards, especially reds. One useful thing might be to use a hypergeometric calculator (easier than it sounds!) to calculate your odds of hitting multiple defense reactions in a four-card hand — if those odds look too high, you might want to think about changes to your build.
Further, defense reactions are pretty matchup-dependent. In general, I would say that as of the Crucible of War meta, defense reactions are very important against Warrior and Guardian, decent against Ninja, Runeblade, Ranger, and Brute, weak against Mechanologist, and awful against Wizard — many Wizard decks do not run any physical attacks at all! However, these are just rules of thumb and may vary based on your specific strategy and what different matchups look like for you. Since defense reactions are of such varying value depending on your opponent, have a clear sideboard plan for when you do and don’t want to run them. I personally run nine defense reactions in my current eighty cards for Warrior, and depending on matchup I might run as many as nine or as few as two of those cards.
Finally, note that there are some effects that specifically punish defense reactions, like Command and Conquer or Dauntless — so even if you have a strong defense reaction in arsenal, you may not be as safe as you think! Flesh and Blood is a deep game, after all, and few things are certain! By the same token, some instants, like Bone Head Barrier or Reinforce the Line, can be used similarly to defense reactions. These are often inferior to “standard” defense reactions but benefit from avoiding effects that punish defense reactions, allowing for a trick that your opponent may not be equipped to counter!
Blocking With Your Face
Last but not least comes the classic “blocking with your face”, also known as not blocking at all and just taking damage. This is actually my favorite kind of blocking! If I can get away with not blocking something and hitting back harder, I love to do so. Allowing damage to hit you life total can let you counterattack on the next turn with more cards, as well as potentially enabling cards that are stronger when on lower life like Arcanite Skullcap or Scar for a Scar. As I mentioned earlier, tempo is often more important than damage, and one of the best ways to get a tempo advantage is to just let your opponent hit you and come back swinging with things they’ll have to defend against, putting you in the driver’s seat!
Many players, especially newer players, block too much. You don’t have to stop every point of damage — as the old saying from Magic: the Gathering goes, “only the last point of life matters”. Your life total is a resource that you should feel free to spend in order to gain tempo and related advantages. Similarly, sometimes it makes sense to take big hits in order to get a more solid defense set up for the future — maybe you have a defense reaction in hand and could defend more, but putting it in arsenal so as to ensure you’ll be prepared for future attacks is a safer call.
Now, you do have to develop a sense for where the “danger zone” where defense becomes crucial is in different matchups — there’s usually a point where blocking with your face becomes simply too risky — but this understanding comes with experience, and the best way to learn might well be to put yourself in that situation! If you go into Flesh and Blood thinking your job is to block everything your opponent ever does, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise.
In summary, there are lots of different ways to defend yourself in Flesh and Blood — blocking from hand, using equipment, playing defense reactions or defensive instants, and even just taking damage and swinging back for more! Each of these might be strong in some situations and weak in others. Ultimately, it’s up to you to figure out which best fit with your playstyle and what your deck is trying to do — a control deck might want to run lots of defense reactions, strong protective equipment, and almost entirely cards that block for three, while an aggro deck might prefer to run no defense reactions at all, equipment focused on offense, and lots of aggressive two-block cards! There’s a remarkable amount of depth to it for such a new game, which is part of what makes Flesh and Blood deckbuilding so interesting. Go out there and find what’s best for you!
