The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly of Everfest’s Items

Everfest, 1st Edition, released on February 4th, 2022. The supplementary set, now called an expansion set, brought some powerful new pieces to the Flesh and Blood card pool. Legend Story Studios introduced a “carnival slot” to the set’s pack structure as part of the release. In this slot was a generic card that represented the Everfest Carnival in the land of Aria. Included in that carnival slot was an intriguing suite of items in the form of amulets, potions, and Talismans. In this article, I want to examine the good, the bad, and the ugly of the items from Everfest.

The Good

Two of the most extraordinary things about Flesh and Blood are its art and lore. In Everfest, Legend Story Studios pressed into both of those strengths in the carnival slot.

These sets of 6 amulets, 6 potions, and 6 talismans are gorgeous pieces of art and introduce another character who could get her own hero card someday—Jezabelle. You’ll have to message me directly if you want to talk about 666 and Jezabelle being in the game. For now, let’s continue.

Jezabelle is described in a few different ways: healer, allsorts, alchemist, ringmaster, and wisewoman. From those, alchemist sounds the most promising to be a class in the future of Flesh and Blood. Ideally, such a class will have several ways of cheating out potions throughout the game. Perhaps, they could even start the game with some items in the arena—similarly to Dash.

When I was first opening my case of Everfest, I kept getting the overall feeling that some of the new cards were not remarkable. When so many players were prepping for a competitive Pro-Quest season, the time for niche items seemed a little off.

I had an appreciation for some of the effects to now be in the available card pool, but I wished for more heat from my packs.

Then the FAB 2.0 article was released by James White on fabtcg.com, and he made the glorious mention of PVE once again. This reminder about official PVE got me thinking about these items again.

Imagine you and your party have just delved into a dungeon, vanquished a foe, and found glorious treasure. You see a smattering of coin tokens and an item or two.

Just like the coin tokens, the items you receive as plunder would stay in the arena to be used by your hero when needed. This kind of item implementation would make every item in the Flesh and Blood card pool worthwhile to see in the format.

The acquisition of items throughout the campaign would bring the PVE system to life in a way that I don’t think players were anticipating before James White’s article and his conversation with Alpha Investments, which Rudy alluded to in a recent video.

Having access to these items in cold foil from the 1st edition printing would make your haul seem just that more splendid for glamorous players. The recent Skirmish season also put cold foil Copper tokens into the hands of several players around the world, so maybe James is correct that the market will be able to take on Everfest Unlimited in the future as the game continues to grow and PVE hits the scene.

Eventually, we’ll see cold foil Silver tokens and, of course, Gold tokens. Perhaps our exclusive teaser, cropped image from Uprising, is a Marvel alternate art or extended art version of the Gold token. If the set is based in Volcor, I could see the likelihood that the card is a Gold token going up. If it’s anywhere else, then this could be a new item instead.

Of course, there’s more than good to talk about with the items in Everfest. They took up a lot of slots in a set that was bolstering every hero in the game, so let’s continue with our analysis.

The Bad

Unfortunately, several of the Everfest items are just bad for competitive play. Many of the items require you to use your Action Point to get them into the arena, none of them block (of course), and some of their effects wouldn’t even be worth a slot in your deck if you could start with it in play.

Out of the 18 we received in Everfest, let’s look at the items with the best chance of seeing competitive Blitz of Classic Constructed play.

I don’t think that any of the amulets are currently viable, but Potion of Luck is a powerful tool for combo decks like Boltyn, Viserai, and Kano, as well as a method for generating Seismic Surge tokens for Valda Brightaxe in Blitz and UPF.

The three talismans I’m featuring have built-in go again, so when you play them on your turn, you gain your Action Point back. They can also provide value on the same turn they’re played or stay in the Arena for just the right opportunity.

Recompense can be a great way to keep your tempo alive if you run a red-heavy build. I think Chane would very much enjoy running this card.

Tithes is interesting. Depending on the current meta, it seems like it could be a card to flex into your deck. However, you could also build towards utilizing it by playing cards like Coax a Commotion or This Round’s On Me.

Lastly, Balance is another card to help you maintain your tempo—particularly for decks who like to have 5-card hands to play out. For example, Rangers would make great use of this Talisman by keeping their arsenal stocked throughout the game.

That leaves us 12 rare items taking up precious slots in Everfest packs that could have been taken up by aura tech, dominate tech, or go again tech to combat the Everfest constructed meta.

As I mentioned in The Good section, these items become incredibly interesting with the advent of the Player vs. Environment (PVE). However, only the potions are particularly strong in that setting—and that’s only if they’re added to your inventory instead of your deck proper.

The above items would not be helpful for PVE. I know, I know, they have value in UPF, but I can’t help but imagine that PVE will overshadow UPF as the premiere multiplayer format upon its release.

There’s bad, and then there’s ugly. Let’s look at the even more undesirable side of the Everfest items.

The Ugly

With the exception of Iyslander being able to cheat blue items out of her arsenal, currently, there are no efficient ways to run an item-heavy deck and have the items see meaningful play.

We can imagine a future when Merchant heroes create loads of currency tokens to enable Knick Knack Bric-a-brac’s ability to flood the board with items. Still, as we discussed above, this strategy would certainly not be worthwhile in a 1-on-1 constructed contest.

I am also hopeful for an Alchemist hero with the ability to have a number of items in their inventory or starting in the Arena. And The Golden Gnome could be an interesting shop to add to a PVE adventure in Aria. However, we are currently left sliding these items into storage.

There are ugly financials as well. Each box of Everfest 1st edition contains a cold foil item. With 18 options and none of them being Legendary (limit 1 per deck), I’m sure that we were all hoping to salvage some of the box prices back by flipping the shiny items.

Unfortunately, the average price of these items is about USD 5.00. A few are above that average, but if LSS intended these items to add extra value to Everfest boxes, I believe it’s safe to say they failed in that attempt.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am very excited for the future of the Everfest suite of items—especially in the PVE format. However, for now, they are largely unhelpful in competitive, constructive formats.

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