Sparking Ideas with Oscilio

It’s been way too long, hasn’t it?

Part of being a known brewer and competitive player is that people generally discount my musings as “just another Abby experiment”, waiting for me to fall back into the more “tuned, traditional” lists. This also means that when I do succeed, my successes are highlighted even more - think Prison Aurora, an early build of the deck (before the Armory Deck, mind you) with Face Purgatory that was smashing PQs left and right. 

Now, I have another major competitive success with Oscilio, featuring incredibly spicy cards in Aether Spindle and High Voltage that the more traditional lists have long since cut.

What was the meta like that encouraged these changes, why was I running these cards, and more interestingly, why won’t I be running them in the future? 

This tournament was just following the return of Germinate to Classic Constructed, as well as the Golden Tipple and Bonds of Agony bans.

Going in, my team and I expected a very different format than the previous Slippy/Gravy-dominated format we saw before. We expected quite a bit of Earth heroes, and more specifically, a drastic increase in everyone’s favorite emo:

Given this, I was between Oscilio and Kano as strong, linear decks for a new format with a good matchups into what we thought would be the most represented decks. Both decks had unique strengths, but specifically, Oscilio had significantly higher agency, and had obvious appeal to me for that.

Both Wizards have the potential to win any game of FAB if they see the right sequence of cards. Kano can Turn Zero any hero in the game, and Osci is able to line up a 7-card Gone in a Flash combo after just 1 turn of setup with the perfect draw. 

However, Kano innately “rolls dice” during his combo, with his blind flips able to hit Kindle, potions, and gems; whereas Osci’s combos don’t normally play as closely with RNG, and especially not in ways that can end the tournament run immediately. In other words, Kano is playing with fire, whereas Osci just frequents the carnival.

We also expected Gravy players to do well, given how good the Earth matchup is and how good, on average, the Gravy players are. While Kano doesn’t have a bad matchup into Gravy per se, Oscilio's matchup is significantly better.

These factors combined to make the Wizard a very compelling choice for the tournament. However, with my previous runs of the deck, I felt I frequently came up just a little damage short of winning games, and that I wasn’t finding my combo soon enough into other aggro decks. 

Enter...

While being a brewer is one of my best-known qualities, one of the other things I’m decently well known for is being passionate on Flesh and Blood TCG Community Discord: unafraid to speak my mind and discuss deck and card choices for hours on end. Me and Yuuto are two of the most outspoken members of the Purple Discord, especially in the Oscilio channel, and frequently disagree on card choices. This leads to long, drawn-out arguments on the smallest of card choices, for the entertainment of those reading.

In this instance, the argument in question was over a few specific cards: I believed in High Voltage and Aether Spindle, while Yuuto didn’t like either and loved Electrostatic Discharge, which is a card I found bricky. 

I like my Oscilio gameplay to be as “deterministic” as possible, and found that Discharge was bricky and low impact, where as Voltage increased kill range while still being good on the combo turn and good for pitching; and Spindle let you dig for combo or set up specific sequences of cards to win in specific situations. 

For example, a very common use case with Spindle is to set up your top 5 cards such that you could use Osci's ability if your opponent sends too much damage for you to block, while still allowing you to top a very greedy 4 in case they don’t.

Spindle also has direct synergy with High Voltage, as having a higher density of arcane spells and having one that had an effect proportional to the damage dealt really made the blue instant shine.

While Yuuto disagreed - largely arguing that Spindle was itself bricky, Voltage was unnecessary, and that Discharge was a bonkers instant that was uncuttable - my team's testing into the suggested meta proved insanely promising, and I locked in on the choices.

What follows is my 3rd place list from Battle Hardened: Chicago.

This list proved incredibly strong in the meta, even as people teched for me and had experience into Oscilio. Multiple times throughout the tournament, Aether Spindle let me set up combos that could win through disruption, and High Voltage punished players for going to a single digit number that felt safe to them, not factoring in the card.

While this was easily my highest placing tournament finish of all time, I think the moment for Oscilio has passed, at least in the short term. 

Oscilio was specifically a good choice for that one tournament because of the recent un-ban, the expected meta, and my unique spin on the deck with increased agency. However, with Super Slam's release, I expect some big changes in the format. Namely:

• Brutes going from C-tier hero picks into several of the top meta contenders. While I wouldn’t have previously called Brutes an unwinnable matchup, the introduction of more 2-for-8s and 2-for-7s such as Show of Strength and High-Pitched Howl, as well as more disruptive cards like Strongest Survive and Smashing Ground, challenge the Wizard on two fronts, which makes the matchup significantly harder for Oscilio.

• Earth heroes - and specifically Verdance - getting stronger tools to deal with the “unfair” decks of the format. While Light up the Leaves is the obvious answer, Gravy being significantly weaker and less prevalent than expected allows the list to have more tech for other Wizards, making previously unfavored matchups like Oscilio and Kano significantly better for Verdance, and potentially even favored.

• A much wider meta, with several low tier heroes receiving massive buffs that are likely to make at least some of them playable. While I personally hope to see Maxx and Arakni soar with their new cards, there is no denying that Catch of the Day, Tempest Palm Gustwave, and Beat of the Ironsong are huge buffs to their respective decks, and all of these are hard-to-unfavored Oscilio matchups already.

I don't think you'd be crazy for bringing a massively-retooled Osci deck for this format. However, part of what I love about this deck is sending huge Spindles and knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was going to kill my opponent in the next turn. These decks - all able to easily bring high Arcane Barrier counts and able to disrupt you from sending big Spindles - all make that version of Osci significantly less viable, and my love for the hero goes significantly down without those cards.

If you're wondering where I'm going next, you'll find me in new territory within Rathe, aligned with a hero who embodies the inverse of arcane knowledge and restraint. That is, until Aurora's return.