On the sunny island of Singapore, a fleshier and bloodier Trading Card Game is rapidly growing in popularity. This game enables players to play as a seasoned battle veteran in a fantasy RPG-inspired setting, and pit their abilities against another such character, with a full set of equipment and combat actions, sword skills, archery skills and perhaps even forbidden dark magic spells, depending on the character. Some readers might already be familiar with this game - it is the fittingly named “Flesh and Blood” TCG.

In the Flesh and Blood TCG world, there are a few formats. Other than the limited formats common to TCGs of this nature (sealed and draft), there is a multiplayer format called Ultimate Pit Fight, and two 1-versus-1 competitive constructed formats, named Blitz(BLZ) and Classic Constructed (CC). Any reader who’d like to find out more about these constructed formats can do so on the FAB official website’s resource pages, just click on the format name to check it out!

Legend Story Studios have recently announced an entire structure for organised play up to the professional level, and of the formats presented, Classic Constructed has been designated the official format for professional level play for the time being, which is also the format of play for our upcoming Nationals.

 

This brings us to the topic for this series: as a player just starting out on your journey for glory, if you have aspirations of improving yourself and perhaps standing on the professional stage, how are you to prepare yourself for that level of play? What does a proper competitive deck look like? What is going on in the metagame of the classic constructed world? Through this series, which we hope to present to you on a regular basis, our affiliates have prepared a set of interviews of the Top 8 players in the 2021 Singapore Road to Nationals, to share their experiences and understandings in the format in the hope that their experiences can bring you more insights. 

 

In the first of these interview series, we were honoured to have the opportunity to speak with our local Katsu specialist Abbey Fong, the champion of this year’s Road to Nationals, to probe his insights into building a Aggro (aggressive) Katsu CC deck.

 

1. How long have you been playing FAB?

I started in June 2021, about 3 months ago.

2. How many days in a week do you play FAB events?

1-3 events a week

3. What do you like most about FAB as a game?

Games are usually close because of how it is played, so games don’t usually feel like a blowout.

4. Which hero did you choose to play for Road to Nationals?

Katsu

5. Why this hero?

Aggro Katsu seems well positioned in the Singapore metagame, not many Bravos and control Katsus.

6. In your opinion, what are your best and worst match-ups?

Worst will be Bravo and control Katsu. The rest of the matchups are pretty even.

7. How do you side-board?

Side in the 6 attacks for Prism.
Side in defensive reactions for the mirror.
2 Command and Conquers for most of the other matchups.
2 Soulbead Strikes (red) for Chane.
When deciding which cards to side out, I usually trim these to 2 copies - Snatch, red Rising Knee Thrust and Art of War

8. What is the class you like the most in Tales Of Aria, and why?

Oldhim, a proper guardian that can actually use a shield coupled with a defensive ability, only problem [I foresee] is going to time in matches lol.