Calling Bilbao - Usurp the Shadow Throne Makes It To Europe
The First Limited Calling After Seoul
Calling Bilbao was the first major Limited event since the World Premiere of Usurp the Shadow Throne in Seoul. Players had a week to analyse results, practice with the full set of cards, play their prereleases, and bring all that experience and preparation to a fully competitive limited event. The tournament started on Saturday with Sealed before moving into Booster Draft on Day Two.
Limited events always have a different feel to it, and Usurp the Shadow Throne being such a new set only made the skill required much more evident. Not only are you not playing a list you’ve spent weeks or months fine-tuning, but you’re evaluating the cards you receive on the go and figuring out your pool on the spot.
Usurp the Shadow Throne features three heroes, and the set’s new mechanics gave a lot of players a run for their money. Not only are you actively trying to kill your opponent, but you’re also actively trying not to kill yourself with blood debt. This is quite an intricate set to learn, and each deck has you approaching deck building in a different way with different play styles. And with Bilbao coming so soon after Seoul, plenty of those play patterns were still being figured out.
- More of Flesh and Blood:
Three Heroes, Three Different Game Plans
There are three heroes available in Usurp the Shadow Throne Limited: Levia, Malice and Viserai, Between Worlds. All three are shadow heroes with access to Blood Debt cards and interaction with the banished zone of Flesh and Blood. Many cards with Blood Debt can be played from banish; however, should these cards sit in the banished zone, you’ll be losing life every turn they do.
This set gives shadow heroes new tools for dealing with that problem, with the main one being the Gate to I’Arathael token. Each hero also has their own cards and mechanics to help with getting cards out of the banished zone. Each hero has their play style, and a lot of what you play in sealed and draft will also be centered around what your pool contains. While I’m sure you could try and force yourself to play a certain hero, the best players know how to evaluate their cards and build the deck that best complements their card pool.
Levia
Levia is probably the easiest hero to understand when you first sit down with her. She wants to hit hard, and she has a very specific requirement for doing it. A big part of her game plan revolves around 6+ power cards. By banishing a card with 6 or more power on your turn, you stop yourself from losing life to Blood Debt that turn. We weapon Hell Hammer and arm equipment; her weapon also helps in staving off death. This is also indicative of what makes a card pool good for Levia; you’ll want many cards with 6+ power and ways to maybe even play these cards from your banished zone.
Levia also has a new token this set, Blasmophet, the Insatiable Hunger. There are a few ways to create the token in the set, and this token also lets you play cards from your banished zone. However, keeping him around is quite expensive, requiring you to have banished cards with blood debt both on your turn and your opponent’s turn. However, this does offer a way to banish a card if you haven’t, and keep yourself alive.
Levia can be played defensively, blocking for decent value and swinging for 6-7 damage a turn. She can also have explosive turns where she can send out 12-18+ damage, overwhelming your opponents with massive attacks with go again. The most successful decks I’ve seen extract small bits of value, chipping away, and then suddenly sending a large burst of damage to close out games. Managing Blood Debt is also essential, as every life point matters, especially with the variance of potentially not being able to banish a 6+ power card every turn.
Malice
Malice, the newest hero to Flesh and Blood, takes a very different approach. Malice’s deck revolves around summoning a horde of zombies, and over time, turning them into Corrupted Corpses. The zombies that start in the deck are allies that can’t be used to block; however, they can be activated to attack thanks to Malice’s weapon Vox Necropolis. Additionally, when these zombies are played from the graveyard or banished zone, they enter tapped and attacking.
The zombie attacks don’t have go again themselves, and you really want them in your graveyard to attack with them when they come in. Both Malice’s arm equipment, Appaling Bracers, and several of her cards facilitate getting zombies in your graveyard. Eventually, when these zombies decay, they create the Corrupted Corpses, and this is where a lot of Malice’s power comes from. These Corrupted Corpses not only don’t have Decay, but also all have Go Again. The corrupted corpses, however, are created in the banished zone, have Blood Debt, and cannot be played from the banished zone on their own.
This shows us one of Malice’s core gameplay loops, and what an efficient deck will strive to do. Early in the game, you want to generate Gates to i’Arathael, discard zombies and aim to play one a turn. Each zombie that dies is a corrupted corpse for your endgame plan, where you want to efficiently overwhelm your opponents with an army of corrupted corpses. You’ll utilise your gates to i’Arathael and other cards to either play your corpses from banish or move them into your graveyard.
Viserai
Finally, we have Viserai, Between Worlds, who is, in my opinion, the most complicated of the three heroes. Viserai is the first hero with Traverse, effectively making him two heroes in one. On the front side, he is Viserai, Between Worlds, in limited play. His strategy here focuses on creating Runechants. Runechants are tokens that deal arcane damage when you attack, but are also a resource to be consumed when playing cards with the Usurp ability.
The basic idea is to generate Runechants three times in a single turn and enable Viserai to transform into Viserai, Usurper. On this side, the first attack action card with blood debt you play each turn gets go again. Here we see the vague idea of Viserai’s gameplay loop.
In the early game, you want to generate Runechants and traverse into Viserai, Usurper. Then, with hopefully a few powerful cards in the banished zone, you utilise the go again generated by the hero to throw out a flurry of powerful attacks from hand and banish zone. You want to be able to make use of the extra cards you have access to, split damage through arcane and physical, as well as the free go again, to close out the game or take tempo fast.
Drafting Viserai can be difficult because you really want a good balance of Runechant generation, cards that can be played from the banished zone, and maybe some cards that get bonuses for banishing other cards from hand. Of the three heroes, Viserai is the one I would be most interested in watching during a draft. There are more moving parts, and a good player can get a lot out of the banished zone once everything starts working together.
Jason Rolfe Takes Down Bilbao
After two days of limited Usurp the Shadow Throne, Jason Rolfe came out on top as Calling Bilbao Champion. Clément Maillet finished as the runner-up, with Emad Kashy and Julian Flury making up the rest of the Top 4. Sammy Weckx, Rafa Lopez Martinez, Ihor Kotaiev and Francisco Javier Camacho Vargas completed the Top 8.
Among the top 8, we saw that there were only 2 Levias in the top 8 draft pod, and both Levia players made their way into the finals. We also saw two players on Viserai and a total of 4 players on Malice. A massive congratulations to Jason Rolfe for winning Calling Bilbao.
The Silver Age Sunday Showdown
Sunday’s Showdown switched over to Silver Age, bringing players back to the tables with a much larger card pool and a completely different set of deck-building decisions.
Recently Silver Age had a new set of bans, along with a new set of benched heroes. This was one of the first showdowns after the changes to the Silver Age meta game. Following the excitement generated by Usurp the Shadow Throne, Levia was one of the most popular heroes in the Showdown, with Levia decks making it into the top 8. Kayo, Iyslander, Bravo, Ira and Riptide also each made it into the top 8.
The final came down to Juan Chacon on Bravo, Flattering Showman and Pablo Fernández-Baldor on Iyslander. Chacon took the match and the Showdown title, with Jacob Clements finishing third on Levia alongside Gustavo Cilleruelo on Riptide. Kilian Schellekens and Francesco Giorgio also had phenomenal runs with Levia, alongside Alessio Bouko on Ira and Francisco Leiva Espanhol on Kayo.
Paris Is Fast Approaching
Calling Bilbao gave us the first proper European look at Usurp the Shadow Throne Limited, with Jason Rolfe taking the title after two days of Sealed and Draft. Juan Chacon won the Silver Age Showdown with Bravo, while Levia continued to make its presence felt across the weekend. There is still plenty to learn about the new set, but Bilbao gave players another chance to push the format forward and work out what really matters when the pressure is on.
We are excited to see how the metagame develops as we approach Paris and the Flesh and Blood World Championship. With this milestone event just around the corner, we can’t wait to bring together the best players in Flesh and Blood and the community as a whole for the biggest Flesh and Blood event of the year.
More News? Check out our socials and newsletter! 🙂
Want to stay up to date with Flesh and Blood?
