The Dieckmeister and I

On the 17th of May, in round 11 of Calling São Paulo, I faced Max Dieckmann on Victor. The tournament was going relatively well so far, I was on Oscilio and at 8-2, this match was likely a win and in for top 8. Max and I had gone to dinner together the day before, so playing him was both sad and happy, as only one of us was going to make it. 

Victor generally felt like a favored matchup to me that tournament, I’d beaten two before that round. The most important tell if I was going to have a good game, was how much Arcane Barrier they presented. AB2? great, AB1? amazing. At that dinner the day before, I jokingly asked Max how much Arcane Barrier he brought. He smiled and said: “You’ll know it when you see it”. 

Well, when we were in the feature match, he flipped up AB2, but also Tectonic Plating and most importantly: Arcanite Skullcap… and when I saw that, I definitely knew it. This wasn’t ‘great,’ or ‘amazing,’ this was a giant skill check, because Skullcap heavily implies Max’s plan was to fully fatigue me. Before the match, I didn’t know whether he was aggro or fatigue, so I decided to hedge my bets. I added in cards that were good vs both strategies, but suboptimal against either. Glyph Power Spell for example, is usually a two card six+ value wise, that’s just on rate, so fine anyway. It’s worse than Aether Spindle when playing against aggro, because the opt effect of it can find your Gone in a Flash earlier in a fast game, which is huge. But Glyph Power Spell is much better against fatigue, since the game will go so long that the two extra value will matter way more than the opt, because you’ll find your Gone in a Flash anyway. Since I’m more scared of fatigue than I am of aggro, I’m okay making this small sacrifice because I’m not sure what strategy will be played. Making small sacrifices like this is called a ‘hedge’.

Playing Oscilio against fatigue Victor is hard. Victor has a lot of defensive tools, like Test of  Strength, Defense Reactions, and some disruptive attacks like Command and Conquer to stifle opponents’ setup turns. A key card in the matchup is Amulet of Echoes. Oscilio’s best bet is to find a good combo turn before it enters the arena because afterwards it gets hard to combat fatigue if you can’t really play Gone in a Flash multiple times. Top Oscilios will tell you the matchup is still good if you know what you’re doing, but having played a lot of fatigue Victor against Oscilio in preparation for Pro Tour Yokohama, I disagree. There is a lot of skill in playing Victor in that matchup as well, like really knowing when to block, when to activate Amulet of Echoes and when and if(!) to attack.

Well, Max is a very skilled Victor and he knew all of those things. The first turns went okay for me, I did some damage with arcane spells and set up a Sigil of Conductivity. Max was a bit lower than me (making Skullcap active) and played defensively. I still was hesitant to say if he was playing aggro or fatigue, but when he said “pitch into Tectonic Plating, pass” while keeping cards in hand, I was sure what was up. He was just not planning on attacking me at all, because doing so would remove 3 of his 5 Arcane Barrier, and that was something he needed to complete his gameplan.

Well, at the time I also felt like attacking was not in my best interest, since I’d be throwing cards away which he could defend freely with either blocking or Arcane Barrier 5. So I just kept passing turns as well: 

We are Entering Stalemate Territory

We call it a stalemate when both players ‘refuse to advance the gamestate’. If no one wants to attack, we can sit here for eternity. The rules for when a stalemate happens are very clear:

-If this happens in the Swiss rounds, declare the game a draw and in the time left, a new game will be played.

(as an Amulet of Echoes hit the arena, I would have been happy with this)

-If this happens in top 8 rounds, the player with the higher life total wins.

(this is to force the player with the lower life total to make a move and break the stalemate)

Max could advance the gamestate. By infinitely pitching to Tectonic Plating, he can order the pitch stack of his deck, and eventually get a perfect hand. But after Shocking myself to make my Sigil of Conductivity leave, I could also pitch into Volzar to do the exact same thing. Since this is fairly rare (but certainly not the first time it happened, which I will illustrate later) we called a judge. The judge call essentially gave us the rules for a stalemate, and we tried to shortcut with them present to a gamestate we were both ‘happy’ with. Since Max didn’t want the game declared a draw and to be forced into a new, Amulet-less game, and I wanted to just be lower in life so my arcane spells could threaten more damage, the onus to make a move was on Max. We ended up with a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ to pitch cards until Max would find his second Amulet of Echoes, cast his last Visit Goldmane Estate, and attack the turn after with Command and Conquer for 10 with those Might tokens. After this I’d be lower, and we could play the game normally again. However, because this isn’t clearly defined in the rules, we had to manually pitch cards to enter this gamestate, which looked very weird on stream. In the end though, Max had his good turn, I still didn’t really know how to overcome two Amulet of Echoes, AB2, and now also the pressure on my life total, so I just lost.

After the game, we found out we made a massive oversight. Because Max could infinitely pitch into Tectonic Plating, he could also infinitely pitch Riches of Tropal-Dhani, gaining infinite Gold tokens and thus infinite Might tokens when he would cast his last Visit Goldmane Estate. This completely switches the imperative to me to make a play, because if I didn’t do anything, he could one-shot me with an attack. Eventually, the stalemate itself wasn’t the thing that lost me the game, but the strategy Max used. He thought about this exact scenario, and that’s why he presented Tectonic Plating instead of Fyendal’s Spring Tunic. Without a pitch outlet he would’ve been forced to attack me to advance the gamestate and not enter a stalemate, which would get me lower and nullify his Skullcap. So Tectonic Plating and Arcanite Skullcap were a perfect combination. It is important to think about those scenarios when building your deck.

So what did I learn from this game? First of all, that specific combination of equipment should’ve made me very wary already. I’d say Fyendal’s Spring Tunic is a more common equipment than Tectonic Plating, so seeing that chest piece (Victor doesn’t have a lot of great interactions with Seismic Surges) I should already have known Max played that solely because of it being a pitch outlet. Second of all, when I saw Max pitching reds to Tectonic Plating, I could’ve also known that was an extremely suspicious thing to do when playing a ‘normal’ strategy.

But most importantly, I should’ve just known how to play into AB5 and one Amulet. That’s the main thing I would have done differently if I had to play this game again. Was it smart to voluntarily take a Command and Conquer for 10? probably not, but

I did what I thought best with my current level at the time, so I still think that was good for the current moment. The main takeaway is this: Don’t get trapped into stalemates where your opponent has the dominant strategy.

We’ve Been Here Before and We’ll be Here Again

When I made a tweet after the Calling to shortly explain what happened on stream, I also named a few cards/strategies that have a high chance of entering these scenarios:

-Arcanite Skullcap

-Reaping Blade

-Riches of Tropal-Dhani (in combination with Visit Goldmane Estate)

-Start in play stay in play (also called SIPSIP) cards that have a pitch outlet but do no ‘real’ thing, like OG Bravo’s hero power, Tectonic Plating, Crown of Seeds etc.

-Cards that reward you with something for blocking, like Sunken Treasure (Gold), Blood in the Water (potential Ally) and Traverse the Universe (Chi to enable a huge combo turn), so disincentivising your opponent from attacking you

-Some fatigue strategies against mainly Gravy Bones

These scenario’s happen more than you think and pose fascinating philosophical debates, so I wanted to tell another funny example: 

Playing to the Death (If the Die Complies)

In the top 8 of Calling Valencia I played Gravy Bones vs Jacob Clements’ Mario. That matchup is generally considered unfavorable for Mario, however Jacob wasn’t going to make it easy for me. The matchup is usually Mario trying to clear allies, and push damage with attack reacts. Because Mario has a (kind of underrated) weapon loadout in Hunter’s Klaive into Graphene Chelicera, he can switch to fatiguing Gravy when their primary plan doesn’t work. At the time, whenever I played against Mario as Gravy, I always tried to hedge my bets a bit as well: add three Blood in the Water for their attack reacts, and add two Wailers for if they try to switch to fatigue. Again, good for both of Mario’s strategies, but not optimal against either. 

The game starts and the first three turns feel normal: I develop an ally, Jacob seems to have a mediocre hand, clears it and passes turn. I’ve played a ton of games against aggro Mario now so I know how it usually goes, this feels normal.

My alarm bells start ringing however when I check his equipment turn 4 (don’t ask me why I didn’t care to look earlier) and see that he hasn’t presented Blacktek Whisperers, but Quickdodge Flexors! 

This is highly unordinary for Mario and it can only mean one thing: Jacob has been planning to fully commit to fatiguing me from the start of this game. Quickdodge Flexors can definitely get 6 defensive value against Gravy, so it’s a seriously good card as well. It suddenly makes sense that Jacob hasn’t wasted any cards on attacking my life total, but only used them to clear allies. Mario has some number of 2-blocks, so he needs as many cards as possible to block and preserve his life total and not fatigue himself. He will simply not attack me, because I have some cards that reward me for blocking like Sunken Treasure (making a Gold token) and Blood on the Water (discarding an ally without having to use a Gold token). Also, attacking me allows me to block to cycle through a bad hand, without having to use gold or playing cards to see new ones.

The reason why this is extra annoying is because I have a Blood in the Water in arsenal. Against an aggro strategy this is amazing, it stops him somewhat when he has an attack reaction on a good turn. But against fatigue, it just clogs your arsenal. You can’t set up five card hands anymore, while you desperately need them to overlap the defenses. When I draw my second Blood in the Water, I realize that pitching them will also just damage my pitch stack, since they are red and a real pain later in the game as well.

So then with my four card hand, I say the magic words again: ‘pass to you’

because I haven’t been attacked much, I’m at a higher life total than Jacob. And we are in top 8, so if Jacob refuses to make a move that advances the gamestate, I just win.

Jacob immediately calls a judge; he isn’t planning on attacking me, but there is a small caveat: I’m still Marked from when he flicked his Hunter’s Klaive in the first turn of the game. So, if he were to pass again, and I again, etc. he would transform and detransform an infinite number of times. Does this count as advancing the gamestate? 

The judges have a lengthy discussion about this. They eventually come back and say the following, yes that does count as advancing the gamestate, but after the form is rolled that Jacob wants, he has to attack me. Because I’m bad at math, I ask: “but isn’t there a chance he will never roll the form he wants?”. (Apparently when something has any chance of happening with an infinite number of repetitions, it will happen with certainty) 

So, the final verdict is this: Jacob gets to choose the exact form he wants, and we play from there. He chooses a form, attacks me with Hunter’s Klaive, and I get to finally get rid of my Blood in the Waters. Also, when I see a Sunken Treasure, I get to make him attack me to be able to get rid of it and make a free Gold token. Because of the long judge calls and the weird situation, the game takes over two hours and I luckily manage to win. I heard that after the game, Jacob was asked to report what exactly happened to the judges, because apparently these ‘gaps’ in the rules must be fixed as soon as possible.

Mutually-Assured Dude Destruction

Another cool stalemate that – funnily enough – also involved Jacob, happened at Calling Copenhagen. This was the time after Golden Tipple was nerfed, Gravy tried to find his new ways, and surprisingly was still broken. A lot of players submitted Gravy again, so the mirror was common. 

When I talked with Filipe Lima at Calling São Paulo, he described it best: The annoying part about the Gravy mirror is that your turns are very telegraphed. If you see a hand with Conqueror of the High Seas, blues, and an ally, you just have to go for it. There is usually a player who’s trying to kill the other player with these good hands, and a player who’s playing defensively the whole game whose win condition is playing for fatigue. Also, these matches take a lot of time. It’s almost impossible to play optimally and not finish in a draw, just because time ran out.

Because Gravy doesn’t have a weapon, fatigue is a real threat. Allies can swing for damage, but can also be cleared. So the goal as Gravy is to get to a gamestate where your allies demand all your opponents cards, and can’t be cleared after. That’s how you get a ‘weapon’ to finish the game.

In Calling Copenhagen, around round five I believe, Jacob was paired against Evan Tanguy and both were playing Gravy. The match had gathered a fair amount of spectators, since they were both undefeated at that point, and were nearing the end of a long game. With about ten minutes left, they had both already played all their Conquerors of the High Seas, and had only a few allies left. A bit further into the game, they noticed something weird: If they would develop their last ally and would attack with it, the opponent wouldn’t die, but gave them an opportunity to clear it. But if they attacked with normal attacks, neither could also win because they both still had a copy of Sunken Treasure, to put the ally face-down.

So with five minutes on the clock something amazing happened. The game was declared a draw, a judge came to ask the result be reported, but both Evan and Jacob reminded the judge: They could still replay the game. With a huge crowd at this point, they started speedrunning the mirror. I’ve never seen a Gravy mirror played so fast as these two played. There was no time left for thinking about decisions, it was just muscle memory. But the speed with which they laid their cards down while both knowing exactly what was going on was remarkable. They managed to get pretty far, but time in the round was eventually called. The judge asked Jacob first if he wanted to concede, and Jacob did immediately, to give Evan the win. They are teammates, after all.

Reaping what was Sown

My final example comes to you from US Nationals 2025. Randy Davis on Florian played Majin Bae on Verdance. The thing: Randy Davis played Reaping Blade. From turn 0, it becomes apparent Randy is doing something, he doesn’t arsenal and just passes to Majin. Then, he doesn’t attack Majin at all and is just blocking any damage possible. Majin establishes four Healing Potions fairly quickly: the key thing Verdance wants, as with a few Rampant Growths, Verdance can one-shot Florian. But as long as Majin has more life than Randy, the combo doesn’t do anything, as he can’t gain life because of the passive ability of Reaping Blade. A bit further in the game it becomes apparent this is exactly Randy’s plan. During the game Majin suspects this, and since it’s streamed you can hear him trying to tell Randy: “I can infinitely pitch into my Surgent Aethertide”. Randy has a pitch outlet in Grasp of the Arknight, however he can’t use this himself to pitch infinitely, as for every Runechant token he makes, it will cost 1 more to activate.

The funny thing about this game is that Randy was under the impression that the old stalemate rule for top 8 was in play, which was the following:
-If a stalemate is reached, the players replay the game

Since this was a very bad matchup for Florian at the time, maybe his gameplan was to play as many games as possible, and choose to change his ‘stalemate strategy’ on the one game he got insane hands and Majin got bad ones. In the interview before the game, he said he counted up the total damage the attacks from Majin could do, and the total block he had in deck. They added up to a similar number, so his plan was to fatigue and stay lower so he couldn’t be killed by the Healing Potion combo. However, Majin called a judge mid-game, who explained that Randy would lose if he wasn’t progressing the gamestate in any way, since Majin was higher. This forced Randy to attack Majin and get him lower in life so he could gain life again. So, in the last turn of the game, he can use his four Healing Potions in combination with three Rampant Growths to deal 31 arcane damage, and win the game. 

It May only Work Once, but Once is all I Need

You can also try to ‘gamble’ on your opponent not knowing your strategy, of course. For Pro Tour Rotterdam, Jimmy Niro Demers, a teammate of mine at the time, developed a strategy with Gravy Bones against Oscilio where he presented AB1 and Arcanite Skullcap. He hoped opponents would only notice after they committed some of their cards and maybe even some of their combo equipment, that he wasn’t attacking them at all. Since he desperately needed the AB3 from Skullcap to fatigue them. Skullcap is just a good card in general, and we tried our hardest to not leak this strategy, so some players didn’t catch on immediately. He beat two out of three Oscilios he faced, while it is otherwise a terrible matchup for Gravy! But had Jimmy’s opponents known this was the plan beforehand, it would have been much worse. In my testing versus friends that knew, they found out a bunch of annoying stuff. They’d only attack my allies, actually threatening to fatigue me instead. Or they just added more big arcane spells so that Skullcap mattered less in general.

A Legitimate Strategy?

So what is my opinion about stalemates overall? I’d say they are fun, because they are quite rare. But from a competitive standpoint, they aren’t great. In top 8, it’s all good, because there’s an actual incentive for the person with lower life to start ‘playing the normal game’, because they would lose otherwise. The normal game of Flesh and Blood is great already. In swiss however, stalemates are a real pain because your opponent can just draw you to infinity out of spite, with no other intention than to screw you. I think I would consider that a fault in the rules. When CYB Oldhim in LL made it so any game could be forced into a draw by both players, It’s no surprise a rules update occurred shortly after. Also, after my game with Jacob, judges showed great curiosity about what happened, so it seems like LSS doesn’t like these in the game and want the rules to counteract them as soon as possible. While interesting, stalemates often encourage players to engage with the game in ways that are not in line with the spirit of Flesh and Blood. For example, when testing Verdance vs Reaping Blade Florian myself, the solution to opponents that played Randy’s strategy in swiss was to damage yourself with your own arcane spells to get yourself lower in life. While cool, I don’t think that’s the game we should be playing. So I’d say this: fix the discrepancy between swiss and top 8 rounds, and stalemates become more fun when they happen.

The general ‘lesson’ I want to close with in this article is this: Stalemates are a real thing and they can happen to you too! Be aware of the rules surrounding them, and the difference between Swiss and top 8 rounds. If your deck inclines opponents to not make game actions versus you, be sure to have a plan for an eventual stalemate. Because you don’t want to be like me and take a Command and Conquer for 10 voluntarily to the face, live on stream.

Thanks for reading!