Arakni and Gravy Bones: The Two Best Decks in Flesh and Blood Classic Constructed!

The first one took 4 slots of the ProTour Singapore Top 8, with taking both slots in the final. The second one took 2 slots of the Top 8, but had the best Constructed win rate of the event.

Today I’ll try to cover both decks as I prepare for Calling Copenhagen that’s happening the 23 of August that I’ll be playing at.

Arakni, Slipped Through the Cracks

My good friend Tommaso Viscido from Italy finished 9th at ProTour Singapore, piloting Arakni. He’s an assassin expert, after Top 16-ing PT London and winning Calling Bologna with Nuu, he’s almost Top 8-ed Singapore with his good friends Bonds of Agony.

Arakni Slipped Through the Cracks is a lot more aggressive than Nuu was and you need that in a world of Gravy Bones that can easily deploy two Allies in the same turn where you need to have Go Again in your deck to compete.

Arakni's Strength

The deck is extremely efficient, with a lot of natural Go Again attack actions and you’re able to convert almost every hand between multiple attacks and pump spells. Being able to convert every 4-card hand means that you’re able to keep the Tempo up and once you have successfully pressured your opponent into a corner you can keep doing that till the end of the game.

The combination Kiss Of Death + Tarantula Toxin is insane and something that was entirely printed in one of the latest sets: The Hunted. This combination of cards plus Flick Knives is able to apply 12 virtual damage! Kiss of Death being a dagger means that you can Flick it and deal 2 damage in Attack Reaction on top of having both -3 to opp block action and +3 to your Kiss of Death thanks to Tarantula Toxin. You’re able to present this scenario with Take up the Mantle too, taking control of the lategame.

The Assassin class has access to one of the best cards ever printed: Codex of Freyalty. Able to give significant value in combination with Leave no Witnesses or Command and Conquer. The more I’m practicing with Codex, the more I’m realizing how complex it is to use. My general tip is to make sure your opponent can’t recoup high power level cards like Felling of the Crown or Conqueror of the High Seas, especially if you’re aiming at a Fatigue strategy. So try to cast it only when they already have their Arsenal in play against these decks.

Bonds of Agony is another complex card to use, and this deck abuses of it by leading with it in a full hand without any ways to turn it on, but the opponent often respects it and overblocks it, so you follow it up with just more attack actions and you’ll have made significant value with it.

You can also block with Bonds of Agony and then later on copy it with Take up the Mantle for the full unexpected blowout.

Arakni's Weakness

Arakni suffers against Earth heroes. Verdance can be fatigued, but the Florian matchup is almost unwinnable. The deck blocks way too good and has all the defense reaction you need to beat Arakni, Slipped Through the Cracks.

Gravy Bones is a tough matchup that I would definitely classify as negative, although you have the tools to win, pairing some go again to kill allies as well as pressure life total with strong on hit effect. The fatigue plan is definitely and totally real!

Gravy Bones, Shipwrecked Looter

Gravy Bones has won A TON and the metagame entirely warps around it by pushing out Guardians and making Aggro decks like Cindra and Ira playable, thanks to their ability to send multiple attacks triggering Mask of Momentum.

Despite all of that, Gravy keeps on winning and definitely feels like the best deck in the format, only hindered by its difficulty in gameplay.

Gravy Bones' strenght

Gravy Bones is incredibly consistent thanks to its 9 Golden Tipple. Just like Arakni, it’s able to convert almost every hand with multiple Go Again and a high density of Blue spells that are amazing to cast and make the deck work.

Call to the Grave is insane and able to both enable the best Ally from the deck, or gain an action point with Back Alley Breakline. If you play Magic, you know how strong Entomb is (a card that should have been banned in Legacy months and months ago), this is the same but in a lowered powered format!

Gravy Bones plays some of the best cards in the game such as Dread Threads, which is a Chest piece that adds one extra mana every single turn. In a world where Fyendal’s Spring Tunic is considered a great FaB card, Dread Threads is three times better! Unbelievable ratio.

Conqueror of the High Seas is only worse than Command and Conquer because it’s not Generic and only three Heroes in the whole game can play it (Gravy, Puffin, Marlyn). This is a deck that can exploit it and easily turn on High Tide with its 30 Blue in the deck. 4 mana (in a deck that can always and easily produce one every turn) for a 8 Go Again that Destroy Arsenal - what more can you ask for???

Gravy Bones' weakness

As I mentioned above, one of the weaknesses of Gravy Bones are the Ninja Heroes that are able to exploit Mask of Momentum, drawing an extra card every single turn, since Gravy Bones cannot block the attack on the Ally. Cindra and Ira are able to attack with their third attack on an Ally, drawing a card without Gravy to have anything to say. This doesn’t mean the matchup is unwinnable, but definitely negative.

Another angle to attack Gravy Bones with is Fatigue, being able to destroy every Ally Gravy can produce means that they’ll run out of damage in the deck while they keep drawing extra cards, reducing the deck size.

Cards like Rememberance and Prismatic Leyline can help against that plan and are now adopted by Gravy Bones to not suffer fatigue.

I hope I covered the top two decks well enough and this will give you a good idea of what the best deck in Classic Constructed are trying to do right now in Flesh and Blood.

See you soon in Copenhagen!