By Dimos Kallouppis

As our seasons change on Earth, the winds of change blow across Rathe and Aria. We will have plenty of new cards to play with and plenty of exploring to do across Rathe. A new set means a new meta to solve, and new mechanics to learn. Rather than make some bold and certainly wrong predictions about what will be top tier, I want to discuss the mechanical and strategic changes that Tales of Aria brings us. There are a couple small observations I have about design within this set, but the biggest one is how the arsenal has changed. I think that if you are going to a pre-release event, you should give some serious thought to how differently the game will flow.

Arsenal management is the most important piece of strategy for a new Flesh and Blood player. Different classes play differently, but they all get the same arsenal. Arsenal strategy is pretty universal (except for the Ranger class): you either arsenal a good combo card, a defense reaction, or a particularly efficient attack. If you put a strong combo piece in arsenal, it waits there until you see the other part of your combo. If you arsenal a defense reaction, it stays there until it is used to stop an important on-hit effect or until you have a combo piece to arsenal. You can also arsenal an efficient, easy-to-play attack as a placeholder, expecting to play it out the second you get a better card to put in there. Games can be lost by putting the wrong card in arsenal. Or by putting the right card in arsenal at the wrong time. But for all the Tales of Aria heroes, arsenal management becomes an entirely separate game.

Fusion is the central theme of the set, and it requires revealing a card to buff another card. In a lot of instances, you will likely be Fusing a card and not have an action point leftover to play out the Ice, Earth, or Lighting card that you just revealed. Where is that going to go? Right into your arsenal. Odds are, that card isn’t amazing. Even though there are strong Ice, Earth, or Lighting cards, it is unlikely that the one card that you are revealing to buff your Fusion card is the one card you want to arsenal. There are some important exceptions, such as the Amulets and the non-attack actions that draw a card when played from arsenal. You will want to empty your arsenal nearly every offensive turn you have, or else your turn-ending Fusions will be inefficient. Either you won’t be able to Fuse your card and lose out on the buff, or you end your turn with an extra card in hand only draw three. Because of this arsenal cycling, if you do want to put together a very strong combo, I think the best way to go about it is to pitch all the cards. Holding a combo piece in arsenal for several turns is not an appealing prospect in Aria.

Lexi has to do double duty on her arsenal management, dealing with the cards revealed for Fusion that end up there, and cycling her arrows through it. Lucky for her, she directly benefits from both of these through her hero ability and bow. If I end up playing Lexi during a pre-release, I’m going to be extremely cautious of any card that I arsenal that costs any more than one resource or does not have Go Again. Unlike Azalea, she cannot cycle her arsenal for free. Having to take a full turn off to play out a Heaven’s Claws that got stuck there will be a very disappointing turn.

Earth has more arsenal interaction than the other two elements, and encourages the cycling of the arsenal to the bottom of the deck. This can be used in some very interesting ways, as a weaker blue arsenal card may be just what you want at the bottom of your deck to pay for that combo you just pitched. Or it can be used as a sneaky Sink Below effect so your opponent doesn’t see what power card they’ll have to deal with at the end of the match. I’ve largely ignored Crown of Seeds for now, even though it has the biggest impact or arsenal usage for Oldhim and Briar, because it’s unlikely to be relevant at pre-releases.

Now on to the minor items. If you were only readying to get an edge for your pre-release events, you can probably stop here. We now have typeless damage from Lightning cards. Up until this point, all damage has either been physical or arcane. Those are technically different from loss of life, which can still happen as an on-hit effect, such as from Ode to Wrath or Searing shot. In Tales, this typeless damage exists to help make the on-hit effects of Lightning cards more explosive, as there are now cards that trigger from each source of damage. For example, Briar can trigger three different damage sources by using two cards. Pitching a blue for a Singeing Steelblade is four physical damage, one arcane, and threatening an extra source of typeless damage from Shock Charmers. Not only is that a very annoying split, it also threatens to create Embodiment of Earth tokens for her, bolstering her defence next turn.

Today’s other small observation relates to cards being locked behind talents. It is now more muddled as to when and why a card is locked behind a talent. In Monarch, there was a clear distinction between class cards and talent cards. For example, the weapons of the set were not Light- or Shadow-locked unless it directly used a Light or Shadow mechanic. Hexagore and Galaxxi Black both care about cards in Banish, Luminaris and Raydn care about yellow-pitch cards and Soul. The Hatchets, Iris of Reality, Ravenous Meataxe, and Dread Scythe do not interact with those elements and are all only locked to their respective classes. When looking at the Tales weapons, Runeblade got Rosetta Thorn and Duskblade. Both are usable by Viserai and Chane, theoretically because neither interact with Fusion, Earth, Ice, or Lightning. However, both Ranger weapons are locked behind the Elemental talent this set and I have no clue as to why. Neither bow cares about any keyword other than “arrow” and “arsenal”, just like Red Liner and Death Dealer. The only other difference that comes to mind is that the Tales bows are Instants. But Ranger already has an instant in Feign Death. As such, I’m still confused as to why these bows break an established design pattern. I don’t think it’s for balance reasons, because then I would have expected to see Duskblade (most consistently activated by Chane) locked behind the Elemental talent before two bows that may have helped the ailing Azalea.