Bright Lights Hero and Weapon Review

This is an early access article for one I'm writing for fabrec.gg

Lots of other content creators are going to be writing reviews on there for every card in the set

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Today I'll be giving my thoughts on the new heroes and their weapons from the upcoming set Bright Lights. Let's start with the hero I'm most excited to start brewing with.

I_n with the new/O_ut with the old

Much like her counterpart from Arcane Rising, Dash I/O has an item focused gameplan. Instead of trying to set up a hyper late game engine though, she is looking to play a value oriented gameplan where she gets free advantage off the top of her deck and with her Signature Weapon. You do need to keep in mind your lower starting life total and the amount of items in your deck that don't block or else you might get run over before you can leverage all the raw advantage she can generate.

One thing to look for in deck building is ways to see additional cards from the top of our deck to play more items off the top. Card filtering effects like Opt can help facilitate this. Boost also perfectly fits the style of the deck since you will know what the top card of your deck is before boosting in case it's a card you don't want to Boost and it also gives us more opportunities to dig for items. You can also surprise your opponent with cards off the top of the deck with cards like Boom Grenade or Mini Forcefield for even more value. Or go for big value plays with cards like Penetration Script and Polarity Reversal Script. You might even want to consider the cycle of items that go back to your deck like Medkit so you never run out of items in the end game.

If you want to go even deeper Bios Update will pull double duty letting you truly play the item for free. Bios Update was always a good card but a bit high rolley since it was a bit of a nombo in deck building but Dash I/O breaths new life into it. We want to play a mix of items and Boost cards in our core strategy so it will be much easier to get value off Bios Update. The only card that on its own can generate more value than Bios Update is both of Dash's old Specializations combined. The Classic play of Spark of Genius to search for Teklo Core is even better now since it also will give us an additional two damage with Symbiosis Shot.

I don't think we can talk about Dash I/O without talking about her signature weapon Symbiosis Shot. This weapon is going to be integral to your core gameplay loop. I think Symbiosis Shot might be the most powerful weapon ever printed in Flesh and Blood. I realize that's a bold claim but it's functionally a zero cost for two damage every time you play an item which is pretty crazy. When figuring out the value of every item you now get you add on two damage to whatever else the item is doing. Lets not forget that we are going to be putting items into play "for free" off the top of our deck using our hero ability adding on even more value to the equation. Symbiosis Shot and how it interacts with a couple cards is the biggest thing pulling me into Dash I/O.

Much like Teklo Plasma Pistol it is not a once per turn action to attack with Symbiosis Shot. But this is a Gun not a Pistol so it will not work with Induction Chamber or Plasma Purifier. Because of this we will need to look to other methods to create big rounds with multiple weapon attacks. Cranking an item will not only give us a steam counter for Symbiosis Shot but it will also generate an action point. If we are playing it as an instant with our hero ability or putting it into play with another method this will generate an extra action points so we can attack with Symbiosis Shot more than once this turn. Another way to do this is with System Reset since it will re-trigger Crank on every item that re-enters and also give Symbiosis Shot a steam counter for each. High Octane also will do the job with requiring much less set up and also fitting our core Boost game plan. Its very easy to have a turn where you play High Octane with multiple Boost attacks and then unload all the Symbiosis Shots you've had stocked up. Finding ways to generate extra action points will be key to getting max value out of Dash I/O.

Speaking of max value

If Dash I/O is the item focused side then Maxx 'The Hype' Nitro is the Boost focused side. Boost Aggro is a hyper consistent and powerful strategy that can present significantly above rate damage at the cost of your deck size. What Boost typically lacks in 'on hits' it makes up for in the raw damage. Historically most decks can't keep up in a race with a Boost decks meaning their only counterplay is to block with their whole hand from the start of the game. It's also an excellent deck for getting into the game due to how straightforward this strategy is.

So long as we are going to be making some Hyper Drivers we might want to consider adding some cards to our deck that synergize with them. Crankshaft and Big Bertha can help keep them around for longer. Jumpstart and other cards like this that get extra bonuses for Hyper Drivers in play can help add more total damage to your deck. Before adding these cards to your deck consider how often you actually end up with Hyper Drivers in play. If you find that you don't have a Hyper Driver in play often enough then maybe the pay off cards aren't worth including into the deck. The Evo Breaker cycle might have potential in the deck too.

Maxx has some pretty big shoes to fill with Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire. Both decks can enact the same boost game plan but Dash is able to do a few things that Maxx can't. For one she gets to start with a Teklo Pounder in play starting the game with 6 damage on board. Or she can start the game with an Induction Chamber letting her convert the first blue in her hand every turn into 4 damage. Access to the pistol items also gives her another axis to lean into versus fatigue decks. You also lose out on two very powerful cards in Spark of Genius and Teklo Core which in my opinion were power cards in the deck. We are going to need to find reasons to be in Maxx over Dash otherwise he might be in the waiting room for Dash to Living Legend.

A big weakness of the Boost strategy is going to be fatigue since Boosting will burn through cards in your deck very fast. Maxx has a few tools to deal with this though. One way to beat fatigue is to have turns that present damage above the blocking value of the fatigue deck. Maxx is able to carry forward resources into future rounds with the Hyper Drivers he creates, letting him have access to more resources than he normally should. This can let him go significantly above rate where he can present 20 or so damage in a turn. The idea here is that you will try to alternate between big damage turns and set up turns where you build some items and get a high value arsenal. The other thing he can lean into can be high synergy pay off cards such as Moonshot and Maximum Velocity. The Nice part about most of this is that these are all cards you would normally want to play in your deck anyways, it's more of a matter of playing differently when you realize your opponent is trying to fatigue you. The tools are there to deal with fatigue.

You can also take a different approach to the deck by trying to take advantage of Construct Nitro Mechanoid. Surprisingly this isn't a Dash specialization so it's fair game for Maxx and he might be the best user of this card with his on demand access to creating Hyper Drivers. We can utilize cards that put extra steam counters on our Hyper Drivers or cards that put them directly into play like Gas Up or Blessing of Ingenuity combined with our hero ability to get all the Hyper Drivers we need. The raw value of Construct Nitro is insane. If you attack with it all 8 times its 47 damage if you have Galvanic Bender under it. Plus 15 block value you get out of it. But there are also some crazy things we can do with it beyond raw value. This is another weapon that doesn't have a once per turn clause on it for attacking so once it's in play we can look to have some crazy rounds that might be impossible for the opponent to block out. If you play two High Octane and four Boost cards you will be able to attack eight times with Nitro, and that isn't counting any damage from your Boost cards. You can also go for a more reasonable single High Octane with four to five Boost cards and still present far too much damage to stop.

Maxx also has access to a lot of great weapons. His signature weapon Banksy fits his Boost and Hyper Driver game plan perfectly. One key element about Banksy that I would like to highlight is the importance of efficiency compared to the raw value a weapon like Hanabi Blaster. Hanabi Blaster presents more value in a vacuum but the game doesn't always play out perfectly. You might end up with turns that you don't get a counter either because you didn't draw enough boost cards or it made more sense for you to block on that turn. Even if we are in perfect conditions where we get to attack with Hanabi Blaster every other turn we are getting 2.5 damage out of our weapon every turn versus if we attack with Banksy every turn that's 3 damage every turn. Granted, Hanabi Blaster doesn't cost anything to use but that can also present an efficiency issue to the deck. Hanabi Blaster doesn't give you a resource sink for turns where you draw too many blues. If you want to play Hanabi I recommend keeping track of how many times you attack with it every game to see if it was worth using. The combination of these factors prices you into a playstyle where you have to block very little and play all the cards in your hand regardless of their value.

Having a resource sink and flexibility in your weapon is important for this style of deck and due to the nature of how Maxx works. Normally when you build a deck you try to make the cost curve of your deck work off a blue but in the case of Maxx you the number of resources we have access to will fluctuate because of Hyper Drivers. This makes it very hard to account for this in deck building. The combination of Banksy and Maxx's hero power gives you the flexibility to never end a turn with extra resources. If you just have one resource you can swing Banksy. If you have two you can activate Maxx and make a Hyper Driver. If you have three then you can do both by Cranking the Hyper Driver you make and attacking with Banksy after. To my own point though it might still be better to use Teklo Plasma Pistol because you don't need to meet any conditions to use it and you can load it and activate your hero ability on the same turn without having to Crank.

Flesh and Blood Steel and Oil

Teklovossen is a fresh take on Mechanologist so it's a little more unclear which direction this deck is going to end up. He introduces a new card type and mechanic in Evos which are ways to upgrade your armor over the course of the game. This plays very differently than traditional Flesh and Blood decks. Normally you start the game off at full strength and get weaker over time through using up cards in your deck and by using up your armor. Teklovossen on the other hand starts off weak and gets stronger as the game progresses. To play Evos you must play them over "Base" equipment and for the most part they are all of a lower power level than what you would expect out of equipment. And a lot of the power in his cards and weapon is realized only once he starts getting Evos into play.

As far as I can see there are two distinct build paths for Teklovossen. You can either play towards a hyper late game where you play the Evo Steel Soul cycle and Singularity. This style reminds me of what it's like playing Pistol Dash where you are setting up for a late game win condition. Or you try to speed run getting Evos into play using the cheaper cost Evos so you can take advantage of your Evo pay off cards that care about how many Evos you have in play. You are either getting to throw two card nines with an on hit or get to do some crazy Ultron shenanigans. There might be some mix of the two strategies also. All of his pay offs for getting Evo's into play are very above rate, it's just a matter of getting there.

There are a few ways you can get there. You can just play the Evos from hand but there are two better options since Teklovossen lets you play Evos from banish. The first is adding Boost cards to your deck and hoping you banish them. The other is by utilizing the new Scrap mechanic to banish an Evo after blocking with it. Boosting is more effective if you are playing the Evos with low to no block value since you are going to have a hard time getting them into the graveyard for scrap without making bad blocks while Scraping will be more effective with the higher block value Evos.

Teklo Leveler fits both gameplans perfectly as a very efficient weapon once you've assembled Exodia. Even after one evo it's perfectly reasonable at the same rate as Teklo Plasma Pistol. I don't have as much to say on this weapon as the other two, its far more of a straightforward weapon. The biggest thing is going to be finding ways to get it to fit the cost curve of your deck since most of the cards you want to play cost 3. All I'm gonna say is that Reaping Blade took down a nationals so Reaping Blade with go again must be pretty good right? 🙃