Thus far, aggressive decks have not been very prevalent in Flesh and Blood’s Classic Constructed meta. The mainstream meta has generally been focused on midrange-oriented game plans that defend efficiently while delivering their offensive plan. And in my view, this has been one of the best ways to build strategies early in this game’s life. With the limited card pool, and with every player still learning a lot about this game, operating efficiently in your opponent’s turn is a great way to gain an edge. Flesh and Blood is a game of layers, and there are real levels to the skill curve within this game. Building a deck that can work both offensively and defensively is a great place to start, as you end up with decks that can both counter what an opponent is trying to do whilst allowing for a progressive game plan of your own on offense. Examples of these decks can be found across most of the classes. Take, for example, the predominant Warrior builds, which all include a sizable package of defense reactions and focus their aggression on climbing with the Dawnblade to score small chip damage in the long game.

Warrior has been the gatekeeper of the format to date. Its fairly straightforward playstyle and likeability as a class has seen many players pick up the class and stick with it as their main deck. So when determining whether your newest theorycraft is viable for tournament play, you always have to ask yourself, “Can this deck beat Warrior?” And rightly so; the class is very good. It is also the reason why many decks have gravitated towards the midrange and control spheres; those are decks that can easily fit in defense reactions without hurting their game plan too much, and can afford to pay for cards like Unmovable.

Dorinthea is also the reason that the 2020 Classic Constructed season was dominated by midrange and control Dash. A deck like Dash's inherently preys on other midrange decks and the traditional Warrior builds, because the Mechanologist can play a defensive suite that lines up well against single weapon attacks, and has an inevitability in the endgame that outpaces Dorinthea's.

Because the format became all about Dash and Dori, heroes that couldn’t beat either slipped away. More importantly, the notion of true aggro decks never came to the forefront of the meta, because Warrior decks continued to show up in droves despite the difficult matchup into Dash- they could seemingly beat “everything else”, so this glaring weakness was considered acceptable.

But the metagame is evolving, and players' understanding of the game: how to attack and counter certain strategies, is improving rapidly. Notably, this has impacted how people view defense reactions. While defense reactions have a fantastic upside in generally helping combat an opponent’s game plan, they seldom advance your own plans. Defense reactions have a steep cost from a deck building perspective. As we see more and more tools become available to each class, we should be seeing less defense reactions played in favor of streamlined decks built around core strategies, decks that can be purely offensive (Ed: yum!!).