Pushing Cards in Flesh and Blood: Death Touch and Outsiders Spoilers

There are new Flesh and Blood cards to talk about, so let’s get into it. We’ve seen some new spoilers from the upcoming Outsiders set thanks to promotional material for the Baltimore Calling and some showings at the recent Indianapolis Calling. This article is going to be discussing three of them: Death Touch, Quiver of Rustling Leaves, and Bonds of Ancestry. I think each of these cards has some interesting elements to them, but mainly Death Touch. While we lack the full context of the set, there is still a meaningful amount of discussion to be had about some of the design and options that these cards present.

Death Touch: When this card was shown, most people online were very excited about it. The card didn’t follow the established power curve of the game and didn’t have an alternate cost. Cards that deal six damage should cost two resources or have some other cost, like Enlightened Strike or Celestial Cataclysm. That sounds too good to be true, especially with a disruptive on-hit effect that comes with options, and that’s because it is. Death Touch can’t be played from hand, which means it either needs to be played from the arsenal or from the banished zone. Lining up this timing is going to be difficult, especially for Rangers. While this card looks excellent, I think there are a lot of pitfalls for it that will keep it from being a mainstay in decks.

Let’s compare this to some other cards and see how it lines up. There are generally strong Generic cards we can compare it to like Scar for a Scar and Snatch, but while those have upsides, they don’t have a restriction. I’m going to initially compare this to a Generic card because of how anti-synergistic this card is with the rest of Assassin and Ranger classes so far (detailed below). I think the most comparable Generic card is Flock of the Feather Walkers. It also blocks for two, hits for an efficient amount of damage, and comes with both a meaningful restriction and significant upside. While Flock of the Feather Walkers deals one less damage than Death Touch, it creates a Quicken token. I think that the creation of a Quicken Token in classes that use it effectively is worth roughly the same as the extra damage and on-hit effect of Death Touch. I think that Ranger and Assassin are two of the classes that can use a Quicken token most effectively. Their restrictions are also comparable, as Flock requires an extra card in hand to reveal, which slows down your current turn for a much stronger next turn. Death Touch requires you to have a weaker previous turn to arsenal it and get the efficient damage and disruptive benefit next turn. Consequently, I think the restrictions of these two cards are surprisingly similar. There are some unique advantages with Death Touch, such as being able to trigger Phantasm, but overall, I think I would be just as happy with a Flock in my deck. The kicker here is that while Flock is a great card in a vacuum, and works well with nearly every existing Ranger and Assassin deckbuilding restriction, isn’t currently good enough to be a staple in either Assassin or Ranger decks. I think Death Touch has a significant risk of falling into the same category.

Death Touch isn’t Generic and doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it is tied to the Assassin and Ranger classes. I’m not sure how much this meshes with the rest of the Assassin class, as the reactions that make the class tick don’t quite work with it. Shred can help make this attack land, but Cut to the Chase can’t (as Death Touch lacks the Contract property), and neither can the revealed Spike with Bloodrot/Frailty/Inertia reactions (as Death Touch lacks the Stealth property). If a significant portion of Assassin’s engine is attack reactions, which it is looking to be, and Death Touch isn’t targetable by most of them, it just seems a lackluster Generic that really needs that “extra” point of attack value to justify itself. Moving on to the Ranger side, the fact that Death Touch needs to be played from arsenal (since Ranger doesn’t currently have a way to play from banished) is a massive cost. It isn’t an arrow, so it can’t be loaded with a bow and it can’t be targeted by any meaningful Ranger buffs except for Take Aim. It is also a card without Go Again in your arsenal, meaning it will probably take your full turn as a Ranger unless you’re working with New Horizon or very specifically-ordered Reload effects. Because of how little Death Touch seems to mesh with the classes that it is associated with, I’m guessing that there will be some support for it in the draft set via cards that buff any Ranger or Assassin attack, similar to [how most Talent-related buffs in draft sets apply to any attack]. But with this little alignment, I’m thinking that this card is going to stay mainly in draft, where blocking comes at a much larger premium, and not show up too much into constructed format.

With all of that being said, there are some uniquely powerful things about the card. Extra damage means a lot in Flesh and Blood, and so do options. The ability to choose which negative effect you give to your opponent after you see how they block is significant. It can change which mode you choose depending on how many cards they have in hand, whether their arsenal card was a defense reaction, and so on. Additionally, having two different types of generally-applicable disruption on a single card is something that both Ranger and Assassin love. Currently, both classes have access to large suites of cards that target their opponents specifically. Most of these suites get ignored for being too specific, but that won’t be the case with Death Touch, since if neither disruptive option matters, you can choose to just threaten extra damage with Bloodrot Pox. 

Quiver of Rustling Leaves strikes me as more of a balance patch to smooth out some parts of Ranger, namely how restrictive the arrow mechanic is. It is interesting that its own destruction is not part of its cost, meaning the effects can be stacked and two arrows can be put into arsenal at instant speed with New Horizon. It is a Majestic-rarity card, which implies that it isn’t going to be an important part of the limited formats in Outsiders. This quiver gives Azalea extra game on her Three of a Kind turns, which are currently lackluster thanks to limitations on how often she can load cards into arsenal. Additionally, I think this card will work particularly well in decks that seek to use the aim counter, as it allows their uniquely powerful on-hit effects to start influencing the game on the first turn. Previously, most aim counter builds really needed to take a turn of set up (usually by arsenaling a card) before the already-less-than-consistent aim counters started to flow. There is currently no reason to not run this in Ranger, which is a useful buff but doesn’t exactly make for interesting deckbuilding choices.

Bonds of Ancestry gives non-Katsu Ninjas a good reason to run Surging Strike (a mediocre Card) and Whelming Gustwave (a great card). Benji can use the blue quite effectively, but this card really seems to shine in Katsu. It gives card advantage on play, not on hit, which is something that Katsu had been lacking. A deck with Sink Belows and some armor can very effectively block his key on-hit effects and deny him the much-needed value from card draw or deck searching. With Bonds of Ancestry, no hit is required, so the zero-for-four attack can be followed up by another zero-for-four attack like Fluster Fist, all with your opponent having no say on the matter. This brings the total damage of this alternative Whelming Gustwave Combo line in line with the Blackout Kick Combo line, but with the draw-on-hit effect of Whelming Gustwave. It generally reduces Katsu’s reliance on his biggest combo piece (Mugenshi: RELEASE) being limited to three copies that require a hit to be effective.

Although Bonds of Ancestry has a meaningful restriction, I think Katsu can navigate this quite well. Having a card in the graveyard before you can search for it prevents this from being a reliable turn-one blowout, which I think is a good direction for how aggressive deck should operate. However, the fact that Katsu’s ability allows for a discard, and will presumably happen when either Surging Strike or Whelming Gustwave hit, gives him an opportunity to lessen this restriction. Blue Fluster Fist is a staple card in Katsu currently, as it blocks for three, has Combo (for Flic Flak bonuses) and costs zero (for Kodachi functionality). It also represents a great target to discard for Katsu, as it can allow for an upgrade into red Fluster Fist for extra damage even without Combo bonuses. The introduction of Bonds of Ancestry makes this upgrade even more potent, as you get an additional attack to play, effectively for free. It is also worth noting that this card mentions “a card with Gustwave in its name”. Currently, this is only Whelming Gustwave but it bodes well for alternative Gustwaves to be introduced in Outsiders or some other future-proofing space. I hope we see more flexibility in Katsu’s options through cards of this style going forward. I think there’s interesting things to come from it and from the rest of the Outsiders set. The full spoiler season can’t come soon enough.