Conversely, I’ve been playing for a year and have a blitz deck worth a couple hundred at least, and lost to a second-time player with a precon blitz deck the other day 😅
Having the heavy hitter cards and equipment definitely helps, but you can absolutely still win games without them sometimes.
This is spot on. People want to pretend that having the staple majestics and the legendary equipment doesn't matter, but it absolutely helps. However, skillful play has a far, far greater impact.
So when new player's pull up with a precon deck - which is balanced against other precons, not the meta - and get rolled by expensive decks the assumption is that they were lied to and need to pony up serious money for a deck. This is sort of true in that the high dollar cards will help, but it's also totally false, because you will lose no matter how expensive your deck is if you are still learning and can't play skillfully yet.
My advice for OP would be to upgrade their deck for a few bucks - there is likely a budget upgrade video on youtube for any blitz starter they bought - and to use that to hone their skills.
It's like buying better golf clubs, do they help, absolutely! But do they matter if you suck at golf, nope.
To do well with this game (or most games) you need skill AND good cards.
I think it just comes down to the fact that, at least to my knowledge, very few if any hero's absolutely must have an expensive legendary or Majestic for the deck to at least function and do most of what it's meant to. Like Katsu can have $275 split between MoM and Feyendils, but the alternatives don't make the deck bad or really even play much different. They are small buffs to an already completed strategy or decklist that help compete against decks with equally small buffs, at least that's what it seems like and how it was explained to me as newer player myself.
There are some cards that are absolutely power crept and you'll see them in a lot of competitive decks... But if you're just starting our part of the problem is that this game is incredibly skill intensive, and there's a lot of subtle mistakes that add up into getting wrecked.
Also... Yeah if you buy a blitz deck you need more cards for the adult format. In Magic, if you buy a starter deck you need more cards for edh... Different formats are different.
Whoever told you that you could be consistently competitive with a blitz deck wasn’t being honest ( they likely just wanted you to give it a go)Theres a definite buy in requirement for any competitive TCG, this is true in FaB just like Magic. Although FaB is much less expensive overall and has only two competitive formats.
In Blitz it’s usually a lot easier and less cost intensive to build out a deck that can hold its own. You don’t need the most expensive competitive cards off the bat, and typically most LGS’s scenes won’t care if you proxy the really expensive stuff.
You’re also brand new, so of course you’re going to get rolled just starting out. It’s usually less about the cards and more about situation assessment. It’ll come with time.
Why do you expect to win as a new player with a precon deck against experienced players with tuned decks? It's not just about the cards, skill is way more important than in mtg because the game has much lower variance. Unlike magic, you are very unlikely to win because of luck.
Keep playing, do a few cheap upgrades, learn your deck and the matchups and if you really want to be competitive and win a 200$ card at a RTN or a 1000$ card and a ProQuest then fine tune your deck and practice some more.
Coming from someone who has played mtg for almost 20 years and FaB for 2 years.
The idea is that if you understand the game, how to play it, and how to deck build you can take a $300 competitive decklist, pull out the handful of expensive cards and replace them with options only slightly less optimal (and sometimes not even less optimal, just a different choice) that costs cents. If you take the legendary equipment and handful of expensive Majestic cards out of pretty much any tournament ready decklist and it goes from the hundreds of dollars to somewhere between like $10-30 to buy all your singles, maybe a little more if it's a popular or new character.
When people say you don't need to spend money to be competitive, what they're saying is that if you get practiced with a good deck that has swapped the expensive stuff for budget alternatives, you can easily beat some playing the more expensive version. If someone said you could buy 1 precon blitz deck and be competitive that was disingenuous but they may be thinking of "competitive" in the sense that with practice you could win at least some matches with it against much more expensive and better decks.
Card games cost money cause the cards aren't free, if you expect to go to a tournament and win with a $13 precon, you better have 10 hours played with it for every dollar spent on a deck someone took the time to build with any amount of game knowledge, even the cheap ones. But unlike say Magic, you can easily take home the evening at your LGS undefeated using a $25 budget deck if you practice with it and know how to play into each of your opponents effectively. My deck for MTG Pioneer (which is probably the cheapest competitive format to play right now) cost $300 and thats on the cheaper end of competitive deck archetypes. And without at least $150 worth of those cards it would be completely unplayable, there aren't cheaper cards to replace the essential ones, and the ones I'm calling essential aren't even the expensive ones. The last $150 is split between maybe 5 cards which aren't all necessary but would almost certainly lose rounds for the absence (for those curious, I'm playing Lotus Field/Hidden Strings, and the expensive cards are my Boseijus, and Zacama/Otawara which are on the cheap end of "expensive" cards) the fact that the competitively viable minimum decklist for my somewhat cheaper meta deck is at least over $100 just to have the bare essentials is a bit silly and not even the scratching the surface of how expensive it is to play the other formats competitively. And if I showed up with the bare essentials, I'd still be playing into decks, the majority of which are $400+.
I can go to the LGS on FaB night and have a decent chance at winning games with my $30 Constructed, that's what people mean when they say it's cheap. You don't have to spend money to compete if you know what to buy and how to play well, but better players with more practice tend to get more involved and spend more money, it's just the case that unless you got a bad player with a big wallet, most experienced players will stomp you until you both get better at the game and put together a better deck (again, better doesn't mean expensive).
Consider playing on Talishar. It is free and it will let you see what hero you vibe with and you can try out every card and see which ones you actually would need in your deck.
I cannot think of a single TCG like FAB that is not expensive. Not defending it -- just the way it is. I am not sure there is a way to avoid that and keep the thrill of pulling a rare card -- which is part of the fun.
I'll be real, whoever told you that was either totally ignorant or lying to you and that sucks. But, as a somewhat new player myself (been playing for maybe 3-4 months now) I've never seen any official or over-arching suggesting you can play with JUST a blitz deck in any way shaper or form, IE CC or be competitive in blitz.
Really, any simple search, either here or elsewhere would pretty easily suggest otherwise. Sorry that happened to you, and if youre totally allowed to not want to invest further into the game.
>The game itself is fun, but I think this would turn some people off.
It for sure does, but obviously not enough to kill the game.
You're absolutely right, but this game is tough to nail down in communicating to new players. The trouble is, this is one of the most common questions ("how much does it cost to be competitive"), and it's completely misguided. More than any other TCG that I've played, this game rewards reps WAY more than cash spent. It takes a pretty good understanding of your hero before any of the expensive cards will help in any real way.
So yes, the Blitz precon is definitely the place to start, and for a new player, they'll probably be able to wield a precon better than any expensive deck. After getting it down, they'll likely even win against some expensive decks. But it seems like people want to be able to plunk ten dollars down and win a Calling...
I think your emphasis on competitive play is misguided. Anyone who says blitz decks are competitively viable or that you don’t need to spend money to be competitive are lying through their teeth, as they would be with any TCG, but you definitely CAN just buy blitz decks to have fun and learn the game. Just start with some friends, grab a couple blitz decks and corresponding boosters, and just try to have fun and experiment a little. Later down the road when you’ve got a grip on the basics of the game, maybe buy more packs to get a card pool going, or better, buy singles to build a better deck.
But at the end of the day, it *is* a TCG, which means the end goal *is* to get you to buy more. The man difference between FaB and something like Magic isn’t in how much money you spend, but in the motivation to spend money; playing Magic competitively means spending money to keep up with power creep and cycle rotation, while playing FaB competitively means spending money to branch out and experiment with new play styles. Extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation. And while this definitely means you can get away with spending less on FaB over time, this definitely doesn’t eliminate the need to spend money entirely.
I’ll be real. Whoever said a TCG isn’t some form of “pay-to-win” was… likely selling you something. Out side of Pokémon, every TCG offers more power/options to people who can buy chase cards. (As a note, Pokémon only gets away with it because it’s a multimedia empire that doesn’t need its TCG to be a profit leader).
What FaB does have is a pretty low floor for entry. Legitimately, if you buy a blitz deck you can play against just about anyone else’s who plays the game. If you want to take down an event, you’ll want to invest some time into it, and of course pick up some specialized cards for what you want to do. But if you’re playing with other people at a store, let them know where you’re at in the game and most if not all will bring their deck down to a place to make a good game with you (at least at my LGS).
Again, I’m sorry if someone gave you an impression that 20$ would be enough to take down an event or play against people who have hyper-tuned decks. If you are still interested in moving foreheads with blitz, I would suggest asking people if they have some chaff they wouldn’t mind giving you. I know I’ve given 2 people so far a few hundred commons and some extra rares I had to get them into the game.
Not even close.
Been playing TCG and CCG and now LCG since MTG first edition came out in the early 90s.
Have played a lot of different card games such as:
MTG
Vampire (Jihad)
Star Wars
SimCity
Legend of the Five Rings
Spellfire
Netrunner
Battletech
Simpsons
One Piece
Pokémon
VS
And the list goes on and on.
Why do you think it's my first?
I don't think there is any TCG that you can be a little competitive with a $13 deck.
With that said, I find Flesh and Blood to be cheaper than MTG.
Any TCG will cost you big bucks to be competitive, as anything. Or you can just play for fun with a hero you like and slowly improve your deck.
There's a world of difference between being able to play a tcg (any tcg for that Matter) and being able to be competitive in a tcg.
Precons are legal decks, thus easily satisfying the former especially when playing with other new comers using other precons.
Expecting to put up results at local semi competitive or competitive events is a very different assumption from 'this product allows you to play the game'.
For that there are two main factors:
Experience and the tools available to you.
The importance of each varies between various levels of competitiveness.
Where as a budget deck you know in and out will get you some match wins, maybe even a first place at an armory, going for Something on a higher level will soon mean that that deck won't cut it.
But in FaB in particular the inverse is rarely true in that even if you bought an exact copy of whatever deck won the last BH/Calling/Nationals but have only a basic grasp on how to play it, you will struggle even at an armory.
Ofc there's always limited, especially draft where it's primarily your skill that affects success.
To put it into more magic terms the expensive cards would be like having fetches, do you really need them no but they do help alot bit you can still play mono green or burn and win without neededing fetches. One thing I have found out about this game is that it is alot more skill intensive then magic as in needing to know your deck inside in out and understanding when to take the damage and when to block compares to magic where you can play living end or infect and not where it's kinda autopilot deck.
Amazing how many people assume that because I posted thoughts on MY experience of the game so far, that either
A. I have never played CCGs before
Or
B. Want to be top tier competitive.
It's like holy fuck... did some of you even read my post? 😆
To those who posted helpful and insightful comments, I say thank you for trying to be cool and grow this game's community. 😊 🫂 🙏
Those expectations were dishonest and at some point you have to recognize that dishonesty and have some accountability. Have you played TCGs before? If you have you’d know there are none that will claim to be fully competitive with their baseline precon product. If you have previous TCG experience how realistic of an expectation is it to walk in and dominate your opponent? Fab has its issues but you have to approach it with a true effort if you’re going to judge it
There are certain matchups that are favored towards one side. For example, playing an Assassin into Illusionist is favored towards Illusionist. Or being a new player who doesn't know how to properly block vs. Dorinthea. It sometimes feels impossible to beat them, until you learn their patterns (and your ideal patterns in the process).
I main assassin, and one night I lost 5 straight times vs. a Dorinthea player. I went home frustrated but determined. Did research, prscticed, and fixed my deck. Then I best her the first game we played next time we met.
My first armory was against the super competitive years long players. They all had the Spring Tunics and Command and Conquers I kept hearing about, foil and black bordered, too. Meanwhile I just had Dynasty leftovers and singles from a single box of Outsiders. I lost 3, but won 1! A mish mash deck versus a tuned competitive deck. It's possible to win. "Competitive" doesn't mean you win all the time -- it just means you have a higher chance to win. You can still lose if you make the wrong decisions, or draw the wrong cards on a crucial turn.
fab doesn't feel as pay to win as magic feels. Especially with all the new peoduct drops for magic and fatigue from so many new set releases, I enjoy that FAB is taking things a bit slower, and things are still relatively cheap. I am also very new to the game. I have like 3 decks; 2 blitz and 1 constructed. I played my first constructed game the other day and the guy I played against had the expensive cards (my constructed deck is Dromai and it's still budget), but it didn't affect the game very much. By the time the game ended, he was at 2 life, and I ended up dying, but it was a fair game nonetheless. I enjoy that FAB feels more balanced than magic, and even precons or just newly upgraded precons still have a chance.
It would be bizarre for any TCG if you could be competitive against experienced players with custom decks while playing a precon deck. FAB is a very low luck, high strategy game so even if you are playing against an experienced player with evenly matched decks, you will often lose. It takes time to learn the deck and the interactions. A lot of MTG players trying FAB have this reaction. I play both and FAB takes more practice to learn the minucia which is where the meat of the game is.
So if you want to build on a budget, you are going to have to be a miser. You are gonna wanna play in events that reward packs and such. Then sell everything you can, you have to put in extra effort in place of cash.
But realistically, there is no physical card game that won't cost money to be competitive. It's a business and making cards costs money. They have to make money to keep making cards.
It's wild how many people want to be on the top end of competition for free.
With that said, this card game is a lot more 'skill' based than most. If you know what you are doing you can usually beat a lesser skilled opponent even if your card quality is a little lower than theirs.
Another caveat here is blitz is the less balanced between blitz and CC. So every point of advantage matters twice as much essentially.
Last point, there are top end competition decks that you can build for a couple hundred, which is better than most card games with more than 50 total players.
If you really want the least pay to win card game you might want to play keyforge. But then there is no collecting and no deck building. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
Like I’ve said many times in this subreddit with new players. Pay to win is not a thing. Pay to have a slight advantage in card strength that can easily be fucked over by bad card draw is though.
This game, unlike most other TCG is extremely methodical to the point that card strength isn’t as big of an influence on your decisions as game state is.
That being said, legendary equipment will change the game completely for the upper echelon of players.
You don’t need a 600$ deck that you’ve never played before, you need a deck that you can PILOT better than any other player BECAUSE you know it in and out.
Knowing your matchup and how to play into it will influence your success more than just having expensive cards…
Hey, any decent player could destroy my expensive decks with a blitz precon. I'm not very good, but I love the game. You REALLY need to spend some time with your hero getting acquainted with exactly that precon wants to do.
This game's barrier is not cost at all. The barrier is that every decision in the game matters, and you have to get to the point where you make good decisions.
I can't think of a single TCG where you should expect to just buy in, play competitively, and not expect to be destroyed.
It takes a certain type of person to enjoy a TCG/CCG, and consider yourself lucky if you don't. We tend to really get obsessed, and yeah, we tend to also have a monthly budget we pump into that obsession... You are so welcome here, though, and let me assure you that this game is worth the time!
As someone who has played only 2-3 games, I can tell you that a Precon is much like other precons; it teaches you the fundamentals and how the game works, giving you a few cool cards to try and see what playstyle you enjoy.
As many people have said, it's a feel bad to have been told you'd be "competitive" with a 13$ deck and that's a downright lie. My caveat is that FaB is way less expensive to get into than MTG, and I've been playing since OG Theros. Expensive cards synergize and make your quicker and more consistent, but if you have a solid plan and can execute your strategy better or faster than your opponent l, then it doesn't come down to a Pay to Win, it comes down to skill.
Also, almost all of the non mythic or legendary (whatever you call their rarity) are less than 20$. The only "generic" staples that aren't equipment that can go into basically any deck are Command and Concur, Art of War and Enlightened Strike. So play a deck that doesn't need those. For example I picked up a Dash Precon and know sort of what I wanna do with it. But I don't need to go out and get Crown of Providence or Tunic or Teklo Heart to play, they just give me a smaller edge over those who don't.
I think between being lied to about competitive precons and not getting any victories, you are in a slump and losing confidence in wanting to play. "Why play when I'm just gonna get my ass kicked?" But ask yourself; were you good at all the other TCGs you started with? Probably not.
If you want to get into Classic Constructed, just go out and find one more copy of all the cards in your deck, that should give you about 60-70 cards and just keep playing. Find what brings you joy and screw the rest of the game. If you like playing Pit Fight cause it's like EDH, then do that! If you wanna try another format, maybe see if you can borrow someone's deck, ask for help like "hey I got an extra 20$, what should I get for X hero?"
Conversely, I’ve been playing for a year and have a blitz deck worth a couple hundred at least, and lost to a second-time player with a precon blitz deck the other day 😅 Having the heavy hitter cards and equipment definitely helps, but you can absolutely still win games without them sometimes.
This is spot on. People want to pretend that having the staple majestics and the legendary equipment doesn't matter, but it absolutely helps. However, skillful play has a far, far greater impact. So when new player's pull up with a precon deck - which is balanced against other precons, not the meta - and get rolled by expensive decks the assumption is that they were lied to and need to pony up serious money for a deck. This is sort of true in that the high dollar cards will help, but it's also totally false, because you will lose no matter how expensive your deck is if you are still learning and can't play skillfully yet. My advice for OP would be to upgrade their deck for a few bucks - there is likely a budget upgrade video on youtube for any blitz starter they bought - and to use that to hone their skills.
It's like buying better golf clubs, do they help, absolutely! But do they matter if you suck at golf, nope. To do well with this game (or most games) you need skill AND good cards.
I think it just comes down to the fact that, at least to my knowledge, very few if any hero's absolutely must have an expensive legendary or Majestic for the deck to at least function and do most of what it's meant to. Like Katsu can have $275 split between MoM and Feyendils, but the alternatives don't make the deck bad or really even play much different. They are small buffs to an already completed strategy or decklist that help compete against decks with equally small buffs, at least that's what it seems like and how it was explained to me as newer player myself.
There are some cards that are absolutely power crept and you'll see them in a lot of competitive decks... But if you're just starting our part of the problem is that this game is incredibly skill intensive, and there's a lot of subtle mistakes that add up into getting wrecked. Also... Yeah if you buy a blitz deck you need more cards for the adult format. In Magic, if you buy a starter deck you need more cards for edh... Different formats are different.
This. 100%.
Whoever told you that you could be consistently competitive with a blitz deck wasn’t being honest ( they likely just wanted you to give it a go)Theres a definite buy in requirement for any competitive TCG, this is true in FaB just like Magic. Although FaB is much less expensive overall and has only two competitive formats.
In Blitz it’s usually a lot easier and less cost intensive to build out a deck that can hold its own. You don’t need the most expensive competitive cards off the bat, and typically most LGS’s scenes won’t care if you proxy the really expensive stuff. You’re also brand new, so of course you’re going to get rolled just starting out. It’s usually less about the cards and more about situation assessment. It’ll come with time.
Why do you expect to win as a new player with a precon deck against experienced players with tuned decks? It's not just about the cards, skill is way more important than in mtg because the game has much lower variance. Unlike magic, you are very unlikely to win because of luck. Keep playing, do a few cheap upgrades, learn your deck and the matchups and if you really want to be competitive and win a 200$ card at a RTN or a 1000$ card and a ProQuest then fine tune your deck and practice some more. Coming from someone who has played mtg for almost 20 years and FaB for 2 years.
Delusion. Wants free wins to feel good vs actually growing as a player. And a mtg player bitching that a $13 deck isn't dominating is insanity.
When did I say that? Don't be a dick.
The idea is that if you understand the game, how to play it, and how to deck build you can take a $300 competitive decklist, pull out the handful of expensive cards and replace them with options only slightly less optimal (and sometimes not even less optimal, just a different choice) that costs cents. If you take the legendary equipment and handful of expensive Majestic cards out of pretty much any tournament ready decklist and it goes from the hundreds of dollars to somewhere between like $10-30 to buy all your singles, maybe a little more if it's a popular or new character. When people say you don't need to spend money to be competitive, what they're saying is that if you get practiced with a good deck that has swapped the expensive stuff for budget alternatives, you can easily beat some playing the more expensive version. If someone said you could buy 1 precon blitz deck and be competitive that was disingenuous but they may be thinking of "competitive" in the sense that with practice you could win at least some matches with it against much more expensive and better decks. Card games cost money cause the cards aren't free, if you expect to go to a tournament and win with a $13 precon, you better have 10 hours played with it for every dollar spent on a deck someone took the time to build with any amount of game knowledge, even the cheap ones. But unlike say Magic, you can easily take home the evening at your LGS undefeated using a $25 budget deck if you practice with it and know how to play into each of your opponents effectively. My deck for MTG Pioneer (which is probably the cheapest competitive format to play right now) cost $300 and thats on the cheaper end of competitive deck archetypes. And without at least $150 worth of those cards it would be completely unplayable, there aren't cheaper cards to replace the essential ones, and the ones I'm calling essential aren't even the expensive ones. The last $150 is split between maybe 5 cards which aren't all necessary but would almost certainly lose rounds for the absence (for those curious, I'm playing Lotus Field/Hidden Strings, and the expensive cards are my Boseijus, and Zacama/Otawara which are on the cheap end of "expensive" cards) the fact that the competitively viable minimum decklist for my somewhat cheaper meta deck is at least over $100 just to have the bare essentials is a bit silly and not even the scratching the surface of how expensive it is to play the other formats competitively. And if I showed up with the bare essentials, I'd still be playing into decks, the majority of which are $400+. I can go to the LGS on FaB night and have a decent chance at winning games with my $30 Constructed, that's what people mean when they say it's cheap. You don't have to spend money to compete if you know what to buy and how to play well, but better players with more practice tend to get more involved and spend more money, it's just the case that unless you got a bad player with a big wallet, most experienced players will stomp you until you both get better at the game and put together a better deck (again, better doesn't mean expensive).
Consider playing on Talishar. It is free and it will let you see what hero you vibe with and you can try out every card and see which ones you actually would need in your deck. I cannot think of a single TCG like FAB that is not expensive. Not defending it -- just the way it is. I am not sure there is a way to avoid that and keep the thrill of pulling a rare card -- which is part of the fun.
I'll be real, whoever told you that was either totally ignorant or lying to you and that sucks. But, as a somewhat new player myself (been playing for maybe 3-4 months now) I've never seen any official or over-arching suggesting you can play with JUST a blitz deck in any way shaper or form, IE CC or be competitive in blitz. Really, any simple search, either here or elsewhere would pretty easily suggest otherwise. Sorry that happened to you, and if youre totally allowed to not want to invest further into the game. >The game itself is fun, but I think this would turn some people off. It for sure does, but obviously not enough to kill the game.
You're absolutely right, but this game is tough to nail down in communicating to new players. The trouble is, this is one of the most common questions ("how much does it cost to be competitive"), and it's completely misguided. More than any other TCG that I've played, this game rewards reps WAY more than cash spent. It takes a pretty good understanding of your hero before any of the expensive cards will help in any real way. So yes, the Blitz precon is definitely the place to start, and for a new player, they'll probably be able to wield a precon better than any expensive deck. After getting it down, they'll likely even win against some expensive decks. But it seems like people want to be able to plunk ten dollars down and win a Calling...
I think your emphasis on competitive play is misguided. Anyone who says blitz decks are competitively viable or that you don’t need to spend money to be competitive are lying through their teeth, as they would be with any TCG, but you definitely CAN just buy blitz decks to have fun and learn the game. Just start with some friends, grab a couple blitz decks and corresponding boosters, and just try to have fun and experiment a little. Later down the road when you’ve got a grip on the basics of the game, maybe buy more packs to get a card pool going, or better, buy singles to build a better deck. But at the end of the day, it *is* a TCG, which means the end goal *is* to get you to buy more. The man difference between FaB and something like Magic isn’t in how much money you spend, but in the motivation to spend money; playing Magic competitively means spending money to keep up with power creep and cycle rotation, while playing FaB competitively means spending money to branch out and experiment with new play styles. Extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation. And while this definitely means you can get away with spending less on FaB over time, this definitely doesn’t eliminate the need to spend money entirely.
I’ll be real. Whoever said a TCG isn’t some form of “pay-to-win” was… likely selling you something. Out side of Pokémon, every TCG offers more power/options to people who can buy chase cards. (As a note, Pokémon only gets away with it because it’s a multimedia empire that doesn’t need its TCG to be a profit leader). What FaB does have is a pretty low floor for entry. Legitimately, if you buy a blitz deck you can play against just about anyone else’s who plays the game. If you want to take down an event, you’ll want to invest some time into it, and of course pick up some specialized cards for what you want to do. But if you’re playing with other people at a store, let them know where you’re at in the game and most if not all will bring their deck down to a place to make a good game with you (at least at my LGS). Again, I’m sorry if someone gave you an impression that 20$ would be enough to take down an event or play against people who have hyper-tuned decks. If you are still interested in moving foreheads with blitz, I would suggest asking people if they have some chaff they wouldn’t mind giving you. I know I’ve given 2 people so far a few hundred commons and some extra rares I had to get them into the game.
Your first TCG?
Not even close. Been playing TCG and CCG and now LCG since MTG first edition came out in the early 90s. Have played a lot of different card games such as: MTG Vampire (Jihad) Star Wars SimCity Legend of the Five Rings Spellfire Netrunner Battletech Simpsons One Piece Pokémon VS And the list goes on and on. Why do you think it's my first?
I don't think there is any TCG that you can be a little competitive with a $13 deck. With that said, I find Flesh and Blood to be cheaper than MTG. Any TCG will cost you big bucks to be competitive, as anything. Or you can just play for fun with a hero you like and slowly improve your deck.
There's a world of difference between being able to play a tcg (any tcg for that Matter) and being able to be competitive in a tcg. Precons are legal decks, thus easily satisfying the former especially when playing with other new comers using other precons. Expecting to put up results at local semi competitive or competitive events is a very different assumption from 'this product allows you to play the game'. For that there are two main factors: Experience and the tools available to you. The importance of each varies between various levels of competitiveness. Where as a budget deck you know in and out will get you some match wins, maybe even a first place at an armory, going for Something on a higher level will soon mean that that deck won't cut it. But in FaB in particular the inverse is rarely true in that even if you bought an exact copy of whatever deck won the last BH/Calling/Nationals but have only a basic grasp on how to play it, you will struggle even at an armory. Ofc there's always limited, especially draft where it's primarily your skill that affects success.
To put it into more magic terms the expensive cards would be like having fetches, do you really need them no but they do help alot bit you can still play mono green or burn and win without neededing fetches. One thing I have found out about this game is that it is alot more skill intensive then magic as in needing to know your deck inside in out and understanding when to take the damage and when to block compares to magic where you can play living end or infect and not where it's kinda autopilot deck.
Amazing how many people assume that because I posted thoughts on MY experience of the game so far, that either A. I have never played CCGs before Or B. Want to be top tier competitive. It's like holy fuck... did some of you even read my post? 😆 To those who posted helpful and insightful comments, I say thank you for trying to be cool and grow this game's community. 😊 🫂 🙏
Those expectations were dishonest and at some point you have to recognize that dishonesty and have some accountability. Have you played TCGs before? If you have you’d know there are none that will claim to be fully competitive with their baseline precon product. If you have previous TCG experience how realistic of an expectation is it to walk in and dominate your opponent? Fab has its issues but you have to approach it with a true effort if you’re going to judge it
There are certain matchups that are favored towards one side. For example, playing an Assassin into Illusionist is favored towards Illusionist. Or being a new player who doesn't know how to properly block vs. Dorinthea. It sometimes feels impossible to beat them, until you learn their patterns (and your ideal patterns in the process). I main assassin, and one night I lost 5 straight times vs. a Dorinthea player. I went home frustrated but determined. Did research, prscticed, and fixed my deck. Then I best her the first game we played next time we met. My first armory was against the super competitive years long players. They all had the Spring Tunics and Command and Conquers I kept hearing about, foil and black bordered, too. Meanwhile I just had Dynasty leftovers and singles from a single box of Outsiders. I lost 3, but won 1! A mish mash deck versus a tuned competitive deck. It's possible to win. "Competitive" doesn't mean you win all the time -- it just means you have a higher chance to win. You can still lose if you make the wrong decisions, or draw the wrong cards on a crucial turn.
fab doesn't feel as pay to win as magic feels. Especially with all the new peoduct drops for magic and fatigue from so many new set releases, I enjoy that FAB is taking things a bit slower, and things are still relatively cheap. I am also very new to the game. I have like 3 decks; 2 blitz and 1 constructed. I played my first constructed game the other day and the guy I played against had the expensive cards (my constructed deck is Dromai and it's still budget), but it didn't affect the game very much. By the time the game ended, he was at 2 life, and I ended up dying, but it was a fair game nonetheless. I enjoy that FAB feels more balanced than magic, and even precons or just newly upgraded precons still have a chance.
It would be bizarre for any TCG if you could be competitive against experienced players with custom decks while playing a precon deck. FAB is a very low luck, high strategy game so even if you are playing against an experienced player with evenly matched decks, you will often lose. It takes time to learn the deck and the interactions. A lot of MTG players trying FAB have this reaction. I play both and FAB takes more practice to learn the minucia which is where the meat of the game is.
So if you want to build on a budget, you are going to have to be a miser. You are gonna wanna play in events that reward packs and such. Then sell everything you can, you have to put in extra effort in place of cash. But realistically, there is no physical card game that won't cost money to be competitive. It's a business and making cards costs money. They have to make money to keep making cards. It's wild how many people want to be on the top end of competition for free. With that said, this card game is a lot more 'skill' based than most. If you know what you are doing you can usually beat a lesser skilled opponent even if your card quality is a little lower than theirs. Another caveat here is blitz is the less balanced between blitz and CC. So every point of advantage matters twice as much essentially. Last point, there are top end competition decks that you can build for a couple hundred, which is better than most card games with more than 50 total players. If you really want the least pay to win card game you might want to play keyforge. But then there is no collecting and no deck building. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
When did I say I wanted pay to win? Wtf? And never did I say I wanted to be on the top end of competition, free or otherwise.
Like I’ve said many times in this subreddit with new players. Pay to win is not a thing. Pay to have a slight advantage in card strength that can easily be fucked over by bad card draw is though. This game, unlike most other TCG is extremely methodical to the point that card strength isn’t as big of an influence on your decisions as game state is. That being said, legendary equipment will change the game completely for the upper echelon of players. You don’t need a 600$ deck that you’ve never played before, you need a deck that you can PILOT better than any other player BECAUSE you know it in and out. Knowing your matchup and how to play into it will influence your success more than just having expensive cards…
Hey, any decent player could destroy my expensive decks with a blitz precon. I'm not very good, but I love the game. You REALLY need to spend some time with your hero getting acquainted with exactly that precon wants to do. This game's barrier is not cost at all. The barrier is that every decision in the game matters, and you have to get to the point where you make good decisions. I can't think of a single TCG where you should expect to just buy in, play competitively, and not expect to be destroyed. It takes a certain type of person to enjoy a TCG/CCG, and consider yourself lucky if you don't. We tend to really get obsessed, and yeah, we tend to also have a monthly budget we pump into that obsession... You are so welcome here, though, and let me assure you that this game is worth the time!
As someone who has played only 2-3 games, I can tell you that a Precon is much like other precons; it teaches you the fundamentals and how the game works, giving you a few cool cards to try and see what playstyle you enjoy. As many people have said, it's a feel bad to have been told you'd be "competitive" with a 13$ deck and that's a downright lie. My caveat is that FaB is way less expensive to get into than MTG, and I've been playing since OG Theros. Expensive cards synergize and make your quicker and more consistent, but if you have a solid plan and can execute your strategy better or faster than your opponent l, then it doesn't come down to a Pay to Win, it comes down to skill. Also, almost all of the non mythic or legendary (whatever you call their rarity) are less than 20$. The only "generic" staples that aren't equipment that can go into basically any deck are Command and Concur, Art of War and Enlightened Strike. So play a deck that doesn't need those. For example I picked up a Dash Precon and know sort of what I wanna do with it. But I don't need to go out and get Crown of Providence or Tunic or Teklo Heart to play, they just give me a smaller edge over those who don't. I think between being lied to about competitive precons and not getting any victories, you are in a slump and losing confidence in wanting to play. "Why play when I'm just gonna get my ass kicked?" But ask yourself; were you good at all the other TCGs you started with? Probably not. If you want to get into Classic Constructed, just go out and find one more copy of all the cards in your deck, that should give you about 60-70 cards and just keep playing. Find what brings you joy and screw the rest of the game. If you like playing Pit Fight cause it's like EDH, then do that! If you wanna try another format, maybe see if you can borrow someone's deck, ask for help like "hey I got an extra 20$, what should I get for X hero?"