Classic Constructed
The following changes to Classic Constructed are effective from Monday, September 1, 2025:
- Bonds of Agony is banned.
- Golden Tipple (Red) is banned.
- Golden Tipple (Yellow) is banned.
- Plume of Evergrowth is banned.
- Talk a Big Game is banned.
- Germinate is unbanned.
Given the high quality of games and statistically strong balance of the current Classic Constructed format, this significant change to the Banned and Restricted list may come as a shock. It’s worth talking again about some of the reasons we may choose to modify the Banned and Restricted list, and our current philosophy regarding adjustments.
We may employ bans for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to:
- A deck running afoul of design principles.
- A deck performing in a statistically anomalous fashion.
- A deck providing an unfun or difficult to engage with play experience.
- A card restricting current and future design space.
- To freshen up a metagame.
- An attempt to slightly modify balance, adding space for more heroes and classes to succeed.
Today’s Banned and Restricted Announcement, in small parts, attempts to do all of these things. When we last adjusted the Living Legend point system, we declared a desire to be more active in the management of our formats - especially when it comes to Classic Constructed.
In the early days of TCGs (and indeed, persisting to the present in the minds of some publishers) bans were often treated as a Scarlet Letter that designers and developers were forced to wear, signaling that they had failed at their jobs. While Flesh and Blood may be inspired by classic TCGs, it also endeavors to be the future of the medium, and does not feel beholden to the past. We believe with the advent of live service gaming, the modern gamer’s appetite for format adjustments has changed with the times. Bans are a tool that we believe our player base appreciates the liberal usage of.
This is not declaring there will always be macro and micro-adjustments in each ban period. We are just making clear that even when a format is solid, as Classic Constructed currently is, it will not stop us from striving for an even better metagame if we think it's possible. We will continue to use bans and unbans as a valuable part of Flesh and Blood’s development, striving to do so in a way that respects our player’s time and investments.
Bonds of Agony
Bonds of Agony was intended to reward Assassins for taking on a somewhat challenging quest of deploying multiple attack reactions to the same chain link, and in turn give the Assassin’s opponent a difficult defending decision. Both of these propositions have begun to break down as the Assassin card-pool has expanded.
The defending decisions around Bonds of Agony when Arakni, 5L!p3d 7hRu 7h3 cR4X starts the turn with it alongside a full grip of cards are simply impossible. There is almost no counter play. There are almost no outs. Over-defend and Slippy moves on to the next chain link and mauls you. Under-defend, you’re taking 12+ damage and maybe losing your most important cards. With Take Up the Mantle in the mix, this decision is one theoretically faced on the vast majority of turns in the game. It simply feels unfair.
Pair this with a Slippy win-rate that sits just the below the problematic threshold, and the fact that the Assassin card-pool, like all card-pools, will continue to add more powerful options as time goes on and therefore more profitably and reliably find the three reactions to trigger Bonds of Agony, and it has become clear it is time to slightly scale down Assassin’s power level.
As is true of every banned card on this list, the goal here is not to destroy Slippy’s win-rate, but the time has come to take steps to mitigate the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” play experience, and along the way get Slippy back to winning at a slightly safer clip.
Golden Tipple (Red + Yellow)
In my 30 years of TCGs, I struggle to find an analogue for the Gravy Bones experience. When we are analyzing whether a deck is warping balance or performing at statistically unacceptable rates, we are necessarily driven by data. If win-rates tell us a deck is too strong, we’ve got to respect the evidence. But what happens when almost everyone is positive a deck is too good, but the data tells a completely different story?
Well, that’s Gravy Bones - a deck with an entirely pedestrian win-rate that many folks believe is the best deck in format, and perhaps one of the most powerful Flesh and Blood decks we’ve ever seen. And frankly, I have to agree with them.
Gravy Bones may be having his win-rate altered by the fact that he is fiendishly difficult to play, but watch what the deck can do in the hands of Pro Tour Top 8 competitors like Michael Hamilton, Arthur Trehet, Enki Dupaquier, or Shirui Wu, and it’s hard to argue against the fact that Necromancy is the best thing you can be doing in Flesh and Blood today. In the hands of the masters, bad matchups tend to dissipate very quickly, and the good matchups are over before they even begin.
Thus far, so much of Gravy Bones' power has been tied up in the fact that he has access to an almost indefatigable amount of Gold. Gravy Bones plays solid turns with all manner of hand sizes and configurations, but those legitimately broken turns? They always involve cracking 3-4 Gold and shaping a hand to be an opponent’s worst nightmare. Gravy Bones needs to start working harder for his access to such bountiful treasure.
The starting point here will be a ban of Golden Tipple in both Red and Yellow, but that may not be the end for Gravy Bones adjustments. A huge benefit of the Living Legend point changes is the time granted to us in order to shape a new hero into a balanced and successful participant in Classic Constructed. Perhaps Saltwater Swell in all colors also eventually proves to be too much. Maybe the metagame evolves in such a way where Gravy isn’t good at all anymore, and Golden Tipple ultimately comes back to the deck. We are open to all possibilities, and are happy to have the time to explore this go around.
A word to the Marlynn enjoyers out there. A Golden Tipple ban surely impacts Marlynn as well, but she is a deck that needs help regardless of the existence of Golden Tipple. That card being present in the card-pool would only restrict our ability to build out her core identity over time, as it’s near impossible to make other good Gold generation cards in the Pirate class with Gravy Bones already having access to Golden Tipple. And no, hero-specific bans cannot be the answer here. While bookkeeping around the first few such bans would be fine, the format would eventually become an impossible to remember web of ban exceptions.
Marlynn will have her kit built up over time, with some small support in Super Slam, and more significant support arriving in sets that follow. Remember, this is a hero whose ability read so powerful, that everyone convinced themselves Three of Kind would be banned prior to her release. There is latent potential in Marlynn’s kit. Enjoy the ride that so many other heroes before her have taken, and trust that someday she will find her place, even in the face of this setback.
Plume of Evergrowth
From her creation, Verdance was always envisioned to be a battlemage, weaving arcane and physical damage in equal measure. In testing though, it was clear that the numbers for such a strategy just didn’t work. Pack enough Arcane Barrier, and battlemage Verdance simply could not deal enough damage over the course of a game to close out opponents.
Thus, Rampant Growth / Life was born. A combo kill was exactly what Verdance needed to find windows to win, while decomposing was still challenging and the raw damage was simply not there. But with the addition of Burn Bare, and now especially Light Up the Leaves, the math has changed. It’s becoming easier for Verdance to decompose, her chunk arcane damage is getting larger, and her tools will continue to evolve and improve as time goes on.
This means it’s time to take some points away from Verdance’s end game. While pure Rampant Growth / Life kills purposefully take a hit with the banning of Plume of Evergrowth, the addition of Light Up the Leaves is the thing that really mandates this ban. Returning a 6 damage burn spell with Plume of Evergrowth left Storm Striders kills feeling near arbitrary in the late game. By allocating power into other aspects of Verdance’s gameplay, we hope to make the experience of playing against her more enjoyable, and potentially make her matchup spread slightly less polarized than it presently is.
Talk a Big Game
At this juncture, we have taken on the feedback that if development believes there is a dangerous deck with potential to operate outside of acceptable parameters, our players prefer we address that deck in advance of its release. Sentiment broadly seemed to feel that we waited too long to ban Zephyr Needle, even though a sanctioned Classic Constructed game was never played with Needle Ira. Here, we are trying to act with ample notice.
With the release of Super Slam, Talk a Big Game would allow a couple of loquacious heroes to run their mouth off a bit too much. In this case, we’ve chosen pre-emptive action.
Germinate
Emblematic of our new approach to Banned and Restricted management, we intend to return Germinate to Florian’s card-pool. We still believe Germinate and Everbloom / Life might give Florian one of the best end games in all of Flesh and Blood, but with Gravy Bones catching nerfs, a secondary predator for the heroes looking to go extra-deep into second and third cycles should prove to be a healthy thing for the metagame.
We never wanted to see Florian removed from competitive viability, and it’s clear that this current metagame already presents challenges for the hero. We’re willing to return some support his way, with acknowledgement that Florian’s pre-High Seas dominance led us to a bit of an overreaction.
Blitz
The following changes to Blitz are effective from Monday, September 1, 2025:
- Talk a Big Game is banned.
The scenarios described around Talk a Big Game in Classic Constructed are just as present, if not more so, in the Blitz format. For that reason, this ban will also be carried forward to Blitz.
Living Legend
The following changes to Living Legend are effective from Monday, September 1, 2025:
- Deadwood Dirge is unrestricted.
Early returns on our first efforts to bring Chane back to the rest of the Living Legend field look promising. With the Deadwood Dirge restriction offering some noteworthy splash damage to Viserai (and his Living Legend Armory Deck), we are motivated and willing to attempt returning Deadwood Dirge to the card-pool.
Next Scheduled Banned and Restricted Announcement
The next Banned and Restricted Announcement will be published on Monday, November 3, 2025, with changes effective from Monday, November 10, 2025 (United States time).