Creating Tempo as the Guardian Class in Flesh and Blood TCG

Crushing your opponent & disrupting their plans as Flesh and Blood’s Guardian Class

Guardian is one of the hardest-hitting classes in the Flesh and Blood TCG. With the right setup, we can swing in for massive 20+ damage attacks with Dominate that are sure to break all of your opponent’s equipment if not flat out kill them. We have some new and compelling tools for deck building in Monarch, and I’m excited for Guardian’s new place as the meta emerges.

If you’re new to Flesh and Blood and want to know more, you can learn all about the classes in the game right here.

Monarch’s new Illusionist class with the phantasm keyword will serve to check and balance Warrior and Ninja — and we should have a great matchup against Illusionist since we have many 6+ attacks in our deck that can break through the phantasm consistently. Even though we received no official support for Guardian in Monarch with any new class-specific cards, it’s a very exciting time to be a Guardian main.

What is tempo?

Tempo in card games is creating momentum through the efficient play of our cards, disrupting what our opponents are doing, and seizing incremental advantage throughout the game to better our position in the match. Establishing tempo will lead to card advantage and creating a board state where it is hard for your opponent to recover.

What tempo looks like as a Guardian

At a bare minimum, we want to be attacking and causing our opponent to lose a piece of equipment or at least one card from their hand. Nothing feels worse in Flesh and Blood than having to defend with all four cards from our hand just to stay alive, passing our attack round just to draw up without doing anything to pressure our opponent. It’s a vicious loop and one that can be hard to escape.

On defense-heavy turns where we do not have a lot of momentum or have stalled out, our goal is often to block with three cards, reserve a blue pitch card, and swing with Anothos for 4 just to put a little bit of pressure on our opponent.

As I noted in my Guardian starter Blitz deck guide, Guardian is the most-resource intensive class in the game. Most cards in our deck will be blue pitch to cover the massive costs of our cards. We do not have a lot of red cards and try to play cards with cast cost 3+ to take advantage of Bravo’s ability, Blessing of Deliverance, and Anothos.

Creating tempo with Guardian attacks

Bravo works to set up some of the largest attacks in the game. We attack with powerful crush attacks which will have an additional detrimental effect for our opponent if the attack hits for four or more damage. By setting up and swinging with massive attacks, we can force our opponent to block suboptimally and break a lot of their equipment to avoid being crushed by the attack.

It is important to note, occasionally we want to allow our opponent to block freely (IE, not put Dominate on our attack) and consume more cards from their hand if we plan on chaining into another powerful hit during our next turn by holding an attack in our arsenal. If your opponent blocks with 2+ cards, they are likely just going to arsenal + pass their turn and won’t be able to pressure our life. Usually, playing a dominated attack with crush should feel like the correct play.

Building tempo with Guardian Auras

Setting up powerful auras to more efficiently defend ourselves, power up our attacks, and gain life are also ways that we can establish tempo and perhaps card advantage, too.

Auras allow us to trade some tempo on the current turn for (hopefully) more tempo on our next turn. Our opponent gets a momentary break from our beatdown of powerful attacks, but only momentarily.

Building tempo with Guardian equipment

Tectonic Plating is a core piece of equipment for generating tempo. Once per turn, we can spend a resource point to gain Seismic Surge, effectively carrying that resource into our next attack turn. Seismic surge also allows us to more effectively play four-cost attacks by paying for them with only one blue pitch card. That last point is huge. Being able to more effectively activate Bravo’s hero ability and attack gives us more options in how we choose to defend against our opponent without sacrificing our ability to generate tempo.

Helm of Isen’s Peak allows us to destroy it to draw an extra card which we can use to generate tempo. Having an extra card to pitch toward a big attack or defend ourselves can mean all the difference in the late game. Just be sure you have blocked with your helm before sacrificing it for this ability to maximize your value. I try to block with Helm of Isen’s Peak earlier in the game so I have more options in when I can crack it for the extra card draw.

Creating tempo by leveraging our life total

Life is a resource in Flesh and Blood TCG more than any other card game I’ve played. Since almost every card in the game can be used to defend against our opponent, taking damage directly corresponds to the creation or retention of card advantage. We can trade cards for life.

Towering Titan is one of our most powerful cards. With a strong enough attack in hand ready to take advantage of Towering Titan, we can ‘face tank all or most of the damage from our opponent (as long as it isn’t lethal) for a truly spectacular 20+ damage with Dominate attack on the follow-up. Don’t be afraid to lean into your equipment to block heavily once you have invested the massive nine resource points into playing Towering Titan.

As a Guardian, we are always looking for optimal opportunities to trade our life total for more powerful attacks that help us gain more tempo. With cards like Tectonic Plating, Blessing of Deliverance, Stonewall Confidence, and Staunch Defense, we have more defensive capabilities than many other classes in the game that can help us effectively defend ourselves at low life totals later in the game.

New Guardian tools in Monarch

Notably, Guardian gets two compelling new cards in Monarch. Rouse the Ancients and Exude Confidence. Alex Truell at the Rathe Times wrote about what Guardian may look like in the Monarch meta. Time Skippers could provide a means to trade a little bit of defense for a more consistent ‘go-wide’ strategy that can enable a lower-cost attack and a swing with Anothos/Sledge.

Well-renowned Guardian-player Cayle McCreath from the community says we still play Towering Titan with Rouse the Ancients in our deck. He has spoken, so we play Towering Titan unless it proves to be suboptimal over a large sample of games.

It will be interesting to deck build around Rouse the Ancients. It may reward the inclusion of some yellow pitch cards like Crush Confidence and Cartilidge Crush. Note, by getting 6 power instead of 5, this also helps our matchup against Illusionist and defending against phantasm. The only drawback is that these cards generate one less resource point which will make it harder to set up a massive seven-cost Crippling Crush or our nine-cost Towering Titan.

Exude Confidence gives us an attack that can scale up to outmaneuver our opponent if they choose not to defend and match the power of Exude Confidence in their defense. It’s very cool to see an instant-speed reaction nailed to another card.

These two tools give us the ability to include a ‘Go Wide’ attack plan in our deck that can serve to allow Guardian to reliably set up multiple attacks per turn — something the class hasn’t really been able to do before.

Conclusion

As my favorite class in the game, Guardian has many ways of generating tempo and seizing the advantage. I am excited for what Guardian will look like in the earliest days of the new meta. Here’s to a fantastic launch week for Monarch. I can’t wait to see what the community creates. Stay tuned for some of my own Guardian deck brews for Blitz and Classic Constructed as I experiment with the new cards.

What do you think about Guardian in the new meta? Let me know in the comments below!

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