Wounded Bull has always been a draft and sealed all-star in Welcome to Rathe. In constructed play, it has historically been relegated to Merchant decks who are desperate to maximize their damage per card and avoid fatigue. That is, until Iyslander came along and made Wounded Bull a staple in her deck. What makes her usage of the card so different? In short, it’s the high density of blue cards required for her hero ability, how she breaks the action point economy of FaB, and a predilection for lower life totals. I will discuss these elements much more in depth later. For now, I want to establish the concepts of value and modularity in this game because those are what make Wounded Bull bad in most decks but strong for Iyslander.   

Defining the value of a card can be a challenge in FaB. It’s something that is core to the game, since being limited to four cards every turn creates a need to squeeze every last bit of value from the hand. For the purposes of this article, a point of value will be damage dealt, damage prevented (including blocking), or the amount of resources generated when a card is pitched. For simplicities sake (and because Wounded Bull does not have an on-hit effect), we will be ignoring conditional value-generating aspects of cards like on-hit effects and Dominate. Three is the absolute minimum value that a non-permanent card should provide your deck (blocking is a good default benchmark), with a standalone four-point card being actively sought after. Another way of viewing value is that each card should generate three points of value, but should generate at least one additional point of value if it consumes your action point. However, the most important practical consideration of this math is how the value on each card combines with another. A deck comprised of only high-value standalone cards (like Snatch) will ultimately be substandard. We can look to Fai as an example of how cards can piece together to be greater than the sum of their parts. His bread and butter are red cards that cost zero damage, deal three damage, and have go again. This allows him to play any number of these in a turn. However, his output scales up after the first card in hand when it becomes more efficient to pitch a blue card to swing Searing Emberblade and follow it up with Fai’s ability to play a Phoenix flame (representing a minimum of four damage from the pitched card). Adding a further card to attack with allows him to threaten a trigger for Mask of Momentum, or make triggering Mask of the Pouncing Lynx a larger threat. At a basic level, we can see Fai enjoys having more cards in hand. One card is three damage, two cards is seven damage, and any additional cards representing not only more damage but more non-damage threats as well.

Some five-card hands in Flesh and Blood can be insanely powerful, dealing upwards of twenty or even thirty damage. Key combo cards like Bloodrush Bellow, Channel Mount Heroic, Aether Wildfire, or Art of War can make this possible. However, the strength of these hands decreases exponentially as your hand loses cards to blocking. This is where I think modularity is important in Flesh and Blood. Since disruption has always been a powerful force in FaB, one cannot always count on holding a five-card combo hand. This leads to there being a secondary value in having flexible hands, which is not represented well when using the previous point system. If your hand can represent four damage with a single card and add an additional three points of damage or blocking value with each subsequent card, you gain a plethora of options.

I think the best representative of this modular value (or modularity) is Kassai. In blitz, she can almost always represent seven damage from two cards through pitching to play Blade Runner, Warrior’s Valor, Driving Blade, or Run Through and swinging her Cintari Sabres. Each extra card that Kassai can hold onto after blocking usually represents an additional three damage. Tools like Ironsong Response, In the Swing, and Hit and Run all accomplish this while costing zero resources. This is a big reason (in addition to a large armor suite in the lower-life Blitz format), why I think Kassai has always been a contender. 

Another great example of modularity is what Rhinar can do with a Primeval bellow in draft or sealed formats. With Primeval Bellow and some six-power attacks, Rhinar can craft strong hands from one to four cards. With four cards, one can play out Primeval Bellow to buff a follow-up attack like Pack Hunt or Smash Instinct, threatening 11 or 12 damage with two Intimidates. If he is forced to block with one card, then he can play Primeval Bellow and follow up with a Romping Club attack for 10 damage with an Intimidate. On two cards, he can just play the Pack Hunt or Smash Instinct for 6 or 7 with one Intimidate. If he was really forced to go on the defensive, he can pitch his only remaining card to swing Romping Club for four. All of these numbers represent good value no matter how many cards are being played out, and they all block for three, giving a high degree of flexibility that can respond to what his opponent is threatening him with.

It’s important to remember that FaB is a two-player game, and that what your opponent threatens you with has as much impact on your game as what your plan is. I don’t know about you, but I have brewed up some decks with very fun combos and items. But when I actually try playing them against a real opponent it often fizzles when I’m forced to block (looking at you, Blossoming Spellblade). You cannot always guarantee a four-card hand, but when you do get one, you should be able to take advantage of it. Building modularity into your deck is a key aspect of success in this game, as all of the top performing decks at major events since its inception have been able to play out strong hands with any number of cards in them. Chane saw plenty of success because Soul Shackles allow him to hold two cards to pay for the five playable-from-banished cards that appear on his turn.

Dash can Boost with any number of cards and can always efficiently spend pitch for resources to load her pistol and accessories whenever she is left with an extra card. Most recently, Iyslander can also do this very well. However, Iyslander does it very differently from heroes in the past. While Dash and Chane are concerned with preserving their action point through Go Again to keep their turn going, Iyslander is happy to only take one action per turn, and spend her extra cards playing on her opponent’s turn.

Iyslander’s main proposition is that she can load her deck full of high-value cards while allowing herself to extend her turn cycle through her hero ability. Rather than being left with an extra card to arsenal, Iyslander sees extra value in arsenaling a card. She not only gets to play it out at instant speed (solving the problem of needing Go Again on her turn), but it provides at least one point of disruption (a Frostbite), that could snowball into extra value if an opponent can’t pay through it. The fact that she doesn’t need Go Again to play out all of her turns is a boon to her value proposition, since Go Again usually costs at least one point of value per card that it is printed on. A great example of these high-value instant-speed plays are Polar Blast and Cold Snap. While the actual effect from each card is lackluster, the fact pitching a blue to play them creates a Frostbite (one point), activates and pays for Waning Moon (three points of damage) and draws a card (replacing the pitched card), means that a blue Cold Snap is at least four points of value for a single card. Iyslander gets so many of these value cards, and gets to play them out on her terms, that she has become the pinnacle of a value deck in FaB. Each turn cycle, she is aiming to be one or two points more efficient than her opponent while also actively making them less efficient through her Ice-fueled disruption.

Now let’s get back to Wounded Bull. Wounded Bull is only good when you have exactly two cards left on your turn: Wounded Bull and a blue to pay for it. It can also be decent when you have four cards so you can pitch the third card to play a Pummel, but this requires a very specific card combination that blocks poorly. On a two-card hand, Wounded Bull is fine if you are on higher life than your opponent and actively good if you’re on lower life than your opponent. If you are left with a third or fourth card, playing Wounded Bull becomes extremely awkward, as it can never be paid for with leftover resources and it only blocks for two. Because of this, other decks have found that this means Wounded Bull only performs well when you block with exactly two cards. 

Iyslander gets around this by being able to shift the continuation of her turn, and some disruption, into her arsenal when she has extra cards left over. One should also remember that Iyslander nearly always starts on a lower life total, so Wounded Bull is active from turn one, and that she will stay lower than her opponent for nearly the whole game. Wizards have a unique ability to appear behind through the entire game and then use Storm Striders and arcane damage can cheat a turn away from the opponent on the final turn. Iyslander has created the perfect storm for Wounded Bull to shine through her lower life total, bountiful blues, and unique ability to not care about which card consumes her action point.

I think it is unlikely that we will see another hero utilize Wounded Bull as well as Iyslander has, but I do expect to see some future heroes utilize other high-value but restrictive cards in the future. I have high hopes for Surging Militia and Demolition Crew to become good for the right hero who can bring their own on-hits to generic attacks. Overall, I think this goes to show the value in seriously reconsidering each and every card when building a deck for a new hero. That’s part of the reason why I write about a lot of what I think are mediocre but interesting cards and how they can be used in decks. It’s an exercise that keeps deck building skills sharp and allows one to make important connections when the time comes. Maybe you can find the next Wounded Bull and put it into the next big deck.