First of all, let me apologize.

I know it’s been a long time since the last Dumpster Dive, but unfortunately as I was rummaging through the remains of discarded sandwich crusts, empty boxes of packet potato bake, and the gradually decomposing corpse of a suburban possum, I accidentally knocked over the cool stick I found in the park that was keeping the dumpster lid open, and well… I locked myself in.

Eventually a friendly group of door to door asbestos salespeople heard my screams from within and let me out, so now I’m back to writing, AND I have new wall insulation! But while I was trapped in the darkness for several weeks, surviving off mysterious yellow liquid that could be apple juice, cat urine, or a mix of both, keeping myself entertained by playing out hypothetical Verdance combo lines in my head (defend 6, attack for 7, pass), I had a lot of time to think.

And the conclusion I came to… was that aggro Kavdaen was the pick for Skirmish Season 13.

Anyway, today I’m bringing you three Ultimate Pit Fight decks I cooked myself, to finish the year on a new low. This will probably be the last Dumpster Dive for a while, as I’m not sure Silver Age has the grunge that Commoner had that made Dumpster Dive so notoriously odorous. Don’t worry, I’ll still be doing the funny words and stuff, but it might just be in a different form next year.

At the very least, I can sleep at night knowing I didn’t give in to my inner demons and release the “Talishar Special” episode…

Benji Burp

The plan is simple. We spend 30-40 minutes chipping away with Harmonized Kodachis, accumulating Gold and Copper through blue Strike Gold and yellow High Striker (which conveniently work with Benji’s ability), while ending chains with potions. Any other cards should be defended with to increase our life total, EXCEPT Tome of Fyendal, which we are looking to park in arsenal, Firebreathing, which should be pitched away for second cycle (using Ironhide Gloves if you have to), and Cash In, which should also be pitched for later, but are far more awkward – so if your turn is just a single Kodachi just to get it out of hand, so be it.

Once your potions are out, Tome is in arsenal, and you’ve redrawn the Firebreathing, pick someone at the table who you don’t like – maybe they keep beating you at Armory, maybe they slept with your husband and/or wife, or maybe they just looked at you funny – it doesn’t matter. Crack your potions, Mage Master Boots into Tome of Fyendal, draw cards, Cash In if you can, draw more cards, then activate Silken Gi. This makes Firebreathing cost 1, but more importantly, reduces its power to 2, so they are unable to defend it from hand. Then in the Reaction Step, when they can no longer defend (except reactions… I guess), pitch your entire hand to send them into the afterlife.

Decklist

The Sickening

Oh boy! Another Arakni deck!!! Some of you will already be familiar with me explaining this concept, but I never put it together in paper because I didn’t want to get folks down at the local game store sick (because they already sicc asf bruh). A lot of cards in Flesh and Blood are printed for 1v1 games but with text that conveniently allows for different interactions in multiplayer. The key cards that make up this deck are the Codecies and Plague Hive, which create disease tokens under EACH opponent’s control. You can relive flu season by spreading plague amongst your friends. Yeah… that’s it. That’s the deck.

We’re also running all three disease stealth attacks in red and blue, all three Spikes, Kiss of Death (which can be Spiked, then flicked to create even more disease), and Deathtouch as a based target for the Codecies. Lastly, the deck has one single Drone of Brutality to pair with Plague Hive to ensure you outlast all your friends with worse immune systems than you. If anyone asks why you aren’t also sick, just point at your headpiece and say “I wore a mask.”

Decklist

Role Call

This deck requires you to make a pact with the table before the game starts. You agree to never attack with allies, they agree to never attack your allies. From there, you begin Gravy Bones’ role call for his expedition to the bottom tables of a Calling side event. The aim is not to do stupid crazy Pirate Necromancer things, the aim is to get out one of every single ally. You’ll do this through general Gravy Bones slop, things like Golden Tipple, Portside Exchange, Chart the High Seas, and so on, but also niche blues with go again like Sift, This Round’s on Me, and Spirit of Christmas. There’s 18 play-out blues and 16 allies, so every time you play a blue, you should aim to play an ally on the same turn. This is a slim margin to work with that stems from the fact that the entire deck is utter nonsense, so just be prepared to play some allies from hand.

Gold is obviously pretty key to filtering through what is very much a seafaring workplace health and safety violation level of allies, but the Armory Deck equipment offers a bailout if you draw four in a hand with no other way to move them. Funnily enough, Give No Quarter is actually really fantastic in this “strategy” because you’re not aiming to swing with the allies, so there’s no jumping through hoops to make the most out of the cost reduction. I don’t exactly know how you win with this deck if you agree to never swing with allies, maybe the rest of the table will scoop out of admiration, maybe a freak thunderstorm will set the building ablaze. Science can’t explain what exactly will happen if all 16 allies hit the board, because it’s never been done before.