Armory Decks at Home: Bravo

Welcome to the first installment of the Armory Decks at Home series, where I will be designing custom Armory Decks for the heroes of Flesh and Blood. Each deck will be limited to a budget of $50 (not including shipping), balanced alongside LSS’ official Armory Decks, and built to provide a decklist to help introduce new and experienced players alike to their next Flesh and Blood hero. For our first installment, I’ll be featuring the Guardian hero Bravo, Showstopper.

Guardian is a great introductory class for Flesh and Blood because they are the all-rounder class. They do everything you would want a competitive deck to do - but none exceptionally. They block well, throw evasive damage, can fatigue opponents, and have disruptive on-hits. The one area where guardians can struggle is in applying fast aggressive pressure, as the Guardian class has the least amount of go again. Instead, Guardian players will usually win the game by out-valuing their opponent turn after turn, crushing their opponents under a mountain of value they’ve accrued throughout the game.

Learning Guardian teaches players how to maximize value through blocking efficiently, returning disruptive attacks, and setting up for future power turns. There is a concept I like to use to plan each new hand that I call “4-3-2-1”. Ask yourself: what do you want to do when you have 4, 3, 2, or 1 card(s) in hand? This way, you can adjust on the fly to whatever your opponent is attacking you with and still act towards your win condition on your turn. Guardian does this exceptionally well because their deck is full of blue 3-blocks which can play multiple roles: fuel a red attack, activate equipment or hero abilities, swing their weapon, or simply block.  Regardless of which cards are in your hand or what threat you’re facing from your opponent, a Guardian should be able to find something meaningful to do on any turn of the game.

I’ve selected Bravo over our other Guardians because Bravo does the best job of embodying the class’s fundamental play pattern, while also giving us access to some of the flashiest attacks and power turns Guardian has to offer. Bravo is built around crush, which says that if an attack deals 4 or more damage, it will apply a disruptive effect to your opponent. This often motivates your opponent to block your attacks while letting a little damage leak through - and leaking damage is exactly what Guardians want.  

Bravo’s ability makes crush effects even better by giving them dominate, which prevents the opponent from defending with multiple cards from hand. Nothing feels quite as good as throwing a big, dominated, disruptive attack to completely swing the tempo in your favor. Bravo also makes the best use of Guardian's auras, which add a unique flavor to building a Bravo deck. 

With all that being said, let’s jump into the decklist.

The centerpiece of this deck is Tectonic Plating, which gives us lots of blocking value and the ability to create a Seismic Surge token to make our more expensive attacks more efficient to play. Tectonic Plating also serves as a pitch outlet to turn on our weapon, Anothos. Spending 2 cards to deal 6 damage is a very average rate, but being able to do so with a weapon means that we can threaten the opponent’s life total while putting two cards back into our deck. If the opponent engages in our midrange battle of blocking and attacking, we will end up winning the late game by having more cards in deck. 

We also run Crater Fist, which, in addition to its great defensive value, lets us provide a little bit more damage when we have full tempo. Helm of Isen’s Peak only gives 1 block value but also allows us the opportunity to increase our intellect, a unique ability which helps us pivot from blocking out our opponents’ attacks to crushing them! (The Helm doesn’t have go again, so make sure you also activate Tectonic Plating beforehand to set up.) And finally, in our legs slot, Ironrot Legs. The only other good option Guardians have in their leg slot is Civic Steps, but the card is too expensive for our budget - this is a clear gap in the Guardian card pool, and I think LSS should print a powerful Majestic or Legendary Guardian leg equipment in the upcoming Mastery Pack.

The attacks you’ll be playing most of the time are Chokeslam, Debilitate, and Disable. The basic play pattern is to pitch two blues to activate Bravo’s ability and play a  4-cost attack. If you have a Seismic Surge from Tectonic Plating, you can make the same play with Disable, or attack with Chokeslam or Debilitate by pitching just one blue card. A 2-card hand for 8 damage that disrupts your opponent? That’s pretty good! If you’re under too much pressure and want to block with your cards that’s fine; just pitch your reds to activate your equipment. Trust me, you’ll see them later.

So how do we survive until the second cycle of the deck? Or create the space to throw these expensive attacks? Two words: Defense. Reactions. This deck runs Sink Below and Unmovable. These d-reacts provide above-rate defensive power and helps us cover the opponents' breakpoint attacks without having to block with our equipment. Defense reactions can also block from the arsenal, letting us keep more cards in hand to fuel our attacks. This is especially important because Bravo’s attack patterns usually require three or more cards in hand. You need to be careful about letting your d-reacts sit in the arsenal for too long. It can prevent you from arsenal-ing the attacks you need to dominate and give you less flexibility in your hands.

(Initially, I also ran Fate Forseen in this list but found that doing so provided way too much blocking value for the Armory Deck power level. The other decks simply couldn’t put out the damage to get past the d-react suite without upgrades.)

This deck also runs some important auras, which sets it apart from many other Guardian lists. Blessing of Deliverance and Emerging Power fit well into Bravo’s resource curve as 2-cost red auras with go again that help us set up for future turns. When we pitch a blue to play an aura, we will have one remaining resource, which we can use to activate Helm of Isen’s Peak, Tectonic Plating, or pair with another blue to throw a crush attack. We also run Show Time and Imposing Visage to tutor the important cards in our deck and increase our consistency when we draw all-blue hands. 

Throughout this article we’ve talked about “pivoting”: the moment where we stop blocking and throw our disruptive damage at the opponent to stop their momentum and take over the game. Normally, a red crush attack is enough, but plenty of heroes have armor and defense reactions to deal with those. We need something… bigger...

Now entering, from the east entrance, it’s CRIPPLING CRUSH! And what’s this? He’s brought his tag team partner with him, STAR STRUCK!

These two attacks have more power, a higher cost, and a more debilitating on-hit. Landing their crush effects should essentially end the opponent’s turn. You’re looking to make similar plays as with our red crush attacks, but since both Crippling Crush and Star Struck cost a whopping 7 resources, you’ll need an extra blue card in hand. Show Time’s draw effect and the extra intellect from Helm of Isen’s Peak should prove useful. Be careful though, you only have one of each of these cards, so try to dominate them to get maximum value.

(Special mention goes to Pummel, a card that started as a three-of in this list before being cut to a one-of for balance purposes. Rather than dominating an attack, you can spend your two resources on Pummel to all but guarantee your crush effect and force the opponent to discard a card from hand. A strong poker face comes in handy here; if you’re too obvious about having Pummel, your opponent will be able to play around it.)

This deck needs lots of resources, so let’s finish up the deck tech by discussing our blue cards. We have blue versions of Unmovable, Debilitate, Chokeslam, and Disable. Even though they are blue, they can still pack a punch and provide plenty of value. Along with them we have Buckling Blow, Boulder Drop, and Crush Confidence as additional crush cards. We aren’t running these in red because we need more blues than reds for consistency. We also have two, 6-costed attacks in Cranial Crush and Thunder Quake. You aren’t really expecting to dominate these but, in a pinch, they can present some serious damage as part of a 3-card hand. Finally, we have one finisher in the blue slot: Macho Grande, which has dominate already printed on it -- no hero ability required! When all you have left in your deck are blues, this card will push through your opponent’s defenses to win you the game. You can play Macho Grande with two other blues in hand if you created a Seismic Surge the previous turn. All of the blues in this list are 3-cost or higher, so they will all activate Blessing of Deliverance’s draw ability and Anothos’ extra power.

• Go First in order to sneak through some damage with a dominated attack and/or arsenal a defense reaction.
• Just Block. Whenever the opponent sends more than 12 damage, don’t be afraid to just block. Be patient and you’ll find your opening to crush them.
• Pitch Your Reds for the second cycle. You won’t usually win in the first 15 turns, so make sure you’re pitching reds to guarantee that you can re-draw them in the late game, after your opponent has burned through most of their power cards.
• Make Your Attacks Count. You don’t have many red attacks and big finishers. Make sure you get maximum value out of them by tracking your opponent's armor block and any d-reacts they could have to get around your dominated attacks.

I would be remiss if I didn’t leave you with a few upgrades for the list. First thing’s first, completing playsets of Crippling Crush, Star Struck, and Pummel is a great way of adding some real power to your deck. Other notable upgrades are Tear Asunder to give you another way of providing evasive disruption on all blue hands and Spinal Crush to shut down any deck trying to go wide against you. I’ve also left out notable role players in Fate Forseen and Zealous Belting that Bravo lists like to have. You can make room for some of these cards by replacing the 2-cost auras, moving Unmovable to your inventory, and cutting some blues.

Want to see this deck in action? We've got a YouTube link for you!

I hope this decklist proves useful and informative to anyone looking to get into Guardian or introduce their friends and community members to the World of Rathe. You can see this deck in action by following the link below! Let me know which hero you'd like to see get the Armory Deck at Home treatment next. If you want to see more from me you can catch my work on the Pitch It To Me Podcast where my co-hosts and I discuss the past, present, and future of Flesh and Blood Design. You can follow us @pitchittomepodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and our website: pitchittomepodcast.com.