By Dimos

This week we will be examining how what we know about the upcoming Outsiders set will impact the limited play found within. If you haven’t read last week’s precursor which discusses what makes a good limited set in Flesh and Blood, you can do so here.

We know Outsiders will feature six heroes across three classes and have 14 cards and two tokens per pack. With just this information, we can use information from previous sets to guide us in surmising how the drafting experience will be. The three-classes-and-six-heroes combination (in addition to dual-class cards) will function most similarly to the split we saw in Tales of Aria, where three heroes had access to flexibility in builds based on a focus on Ice, Earth, or Lightning. This also means that, in contrast with the four-hero sets, there will never be an even split of heroes of these six heroes at an eight-person draft table. However, it does open up some flexibility in options for sealed deck building which is something that I love to see. With the majority of players’ first experiences of a new set being a sealed deck pre-release, I think it’s important to have sealed be a positive experience.

Beyond sealed, I’m curious to see what the ideal Outsiders draft pod will look like. It is my favourite format for armories because of the higher amount of card and player interaction, deck-building and in-game decision-making, and accessibility to new and budget players. Will it be one of each unique hero with two dupicates? Or will Riptide carry the bulk of the “default” options as Ranger and leave Azalea to exist as a more niche alternative?

We know that Stealth exists to be interacted with, and we can surmise that the unique interactions will likely come from Uzuri and Arakni’s unrevealed hero abilities. This could allow similar draft pools to be played in different ways, or it could incentivize the drafting of slightly different pools of Assassin cards. We have the most complete information about Benji and Katsu, as they remain unchanged from their previous cards. From the cards that we have seen so far, I think that there is going to be more competition between Benji and Katsu in drafting Ninja cards than was initially thought. Previously, I would have assumed that Katsu would aim to draft Combo cards like Bonds of Ancestry while Benji would focus on standalone hit effects at awkward breakpoints. However, Mask of Many Faces and Be Like Water will let Benji change the name of cards to play out full Combo lines, which may make our Ninjas compete over the same cards but in different colours. Benji is incentivized to take yellow or blue cards to make them more likely to hit from his ability, whereas Katsu, like most heroes, generally wants to maximize powerful red cards.

Another reason I’m excited to see Benji in the set is because he helps to address the longstanding issue of yellow cards in limited FaB. Generally speaking, no one wants them. Uprising tried to address this, with mixed success, by only printing Draconic cards in red. Not even Prism, who cares extensively about yellow cards in constructed formats (due to Luminaris) cares about them in limited. This is why I like having Benji available as a release valve in Outsiders. There could be pools where there are no Benji players due to a high amount of red Ninja cards, and there may be pods where there are multiple Benjis because of an abundance of yellows. Either way, Ninja cards will be used in the draft pod to their best ability, whether through Katsu or Benji. For example, in Uprising, if there happened to be too few blue cards and too many yellow cards for Iyslander to draft, she felt like an incomplete hero. This situation also created feelings that the draft pod as a whole was incomplete, where one third of the heroes are lagging behind. In Outsiders, regardless of what the other cards have in store for us, we know that if there is a box with very few red Ninja cards that Ninja will still be playable through Benji’s unique utilization of lower-power cards.

I am curious to see how yellow cards are similarly addressed in the other classes without causing imbalance. We can surmise that the Assassin “Spike with…” reactions will only be printed in their red form due to having consecutive set numbers. These cards are all powerful as they block well, deal an appropriate amount of damage for their cost, and each have a uniquely powerful standalone on-hit effect. My guess is that this was a partial way of addressing how lackluster yellow cards can feel in limited play, while also limiting it to the Rare slot in the pack, so decks are unlikely to have a dozen of these cards hidden within. Additionally, the Rare slot in each pack is likely getting rarer, as each pack is no longer guaranteed two rare or better cards. Depending on how this pack configuration change is executed, it may meaningfully change expectations in the drafting process. It may be something akin to how the Equipment slot in Tales of Aria was shared with the Amulets. This may mean you could either get a second Rare card or a colour-locked common, Generic equipment, or something else specific. My assumption for Rangers is that they will have colour-specific Traps as most of their Rare cards. We have seen LSS be particular about the colour of defense reactions in the past, with Springboard Somersault, That All You Got, and even the previous Ranger Traps (which features a uniquely strong ability on a yellow card). Additionally, most class-specific defense reactions in draft sets have come at the Rare rarity.  

Outsiders looks like a set that will be providing some interesting play options. Death Touch is a card that gives options to the attacking player on hit, and the trade-off of the Ponder token delay from Peace of Mind is an interesting cost to consider. There were plenty of interesting play options for Dromai and Iyslander in Uprising draft and the payoff for those complex mechanics was a lot of fun while playing. Even though we know Outsiders won’t have Dragons or Arcane Damage (and consequently fewer instant-speed shenanigans), I hope that there are still new and interesting mechanics that reward depth of knowledge in the set without making it a requirement for playability. This looks like it could be the case with the use of the Ponder, Bloodrot Pox, Frailty, and Inertia tokens we have seen so far. Most of these interact directly with the arsenal zone, and it’s looking like this set will focus heavily on arsenal management and interaction.

Now I want to shift gears and talk about what I think Outsiders limited should avoid, based on the experiences of previous FaB sets. In short, I think that individual cards that provide power spikes should be avoided. Additionally, the probability of drafting low-power or low-option decks should be minimized. Based on what we have seen so far with Benji and some red-only cards, I think that drafting low-power decks is less likely, but the 14-card packs still frighten me in this regard. That single extra card per pack makes an outsized difference in the feel of a deck.

In terms of individual cards, I hope that Outsiders does not have Majestic-rarity weapons. Monarch had generally well-balanced token weapons, but also had the Majestic-rarity options that could blow draft or sealed events out of the water. Luminaris is event-warping in its power, Raydn is a solid and consistent upgrade that allows for some slightly alternative playstyles, Dread Scythe opens an interesting inevitability-through-arcane-damage build in Chane, and Hexagore is entirely unplayable. If you manage to open a Hexagore and your opponent opens a Luminaris, it isn’t a great feeling since so much of the game is now decided by a single card. In Tales of Aria there were similar feelings, as having Winter’s Wail was oftentimes a blowout, while Voltaire or Duskblade rarely saw play even if they were opened.

In the same vein, I hope that Outsiders avoids playable “bombs” (cards that are so powerful they can warp your drafting process and decision-making on their own). Monarch featured Soul Reaping, which was effectively a resource-generating attack that buffed one of your other cards, dealt six damage, and nearly always had Go Again. It also had V of the Vanguard, which could easily create massive turns that your opponent could not defend against in a format with little disruption or defense to mitigate it. The fact that these cards were printed at the Rare rarity meant that they would feature in nearly every limited format experience and could occasionally create a “who sees their powerful card first” game, rather than a more engaging back-and-forth. However, it is always fun to play powerful cards so I’m less dead-set on this than I am on the Majestic weapons.

The last major thing that I want Outsiders limited to avoid is weak or non-playable tokens like Uprising had. Helio’s Mitre addressed some very specific problems in the set, namely unblockable early arcane damage from Iyslander and early Ash generation for Dromai. For this reason, I think it was okay. However, I don’t think it made up for the 14-card packs, which result in having three fewer cards to build your deck with. Compounding this was Phoenix Flame. Iyslander couldn’t play any copies at all, putting an even higher deckbuilding burden on her. Most Dromai builds could use a Phoenix Flame similarly to how a deck would use a Cracked Bauble – as a last resort. Fai was usually happy with one or two in his deck, but he was the hero with the most playable cards to begin with. Overall, Phoenix Flames being the only in-deck token which also only really functioned well in the hero with the widest card pool made the other heroes feel short or boxed in on lackluster choices.

I hope that Outsiders doesn’t have the same issue with their tokens and that they are more playable. Titanium Bauble, for example, would be something that I would consider a very suitable power level for a token to have in the set. It blocks for three and is blue, which will help to fill out the resource base of heroes (which are usually the least interesting part of the deck to draft, except in Tales of Aria), while also offering meaningful downsides to hero abilities. Katsu could not discard it to search for a Combo card, and it is unplayable out of arsenal if Azalea uses her ability to put it there from the top of the deck. It offers some tools (pitching and blocking) while not enabling any one particular strategy for one hero over another.

Overall, I think this set has a lot of potential to be a strong limited experience, and the team at LSS has had a good amount of time to work on it. With supplemental sets like Everfest and Dynasty being released alternately with draftable sets like Uprising and Outsiders, there is more time to balance out the limited play experience. I have high hopes for Outsiders and am actively looking forward to pre-release weekend even though I remain very wary of the 14-card packs for draft. I’m excited as always for the impending spoiler season as it sets the whole community racing with deck ideas, draft line speculations, and a desire to get back to shop to play some limited games. I also have a sneaking suspicion that we will see some key reprints in this set, and my money's on Fate Forseen.