There’s a new king in the jungle, an alpha predator the likes of which has never been seen; powerful and violent, with a bestial cunning and instinct for survival. Hundreds of adventurers have fallen prey to its hunt, as its rampage slashes a blood path through the thick undergrowth. The few survivors, hardened hunters all, recount with heart-wrenching fear: its deafening bellow as it moved in for the kill.
Rhinar, Reckless Rampage
Romping Club
INTIMIDATE YOUR OPPONENTS
Rhinar is the first Brute hero to feature in Flesh and Blood TCG, and with him we get the keyword intimidate.
As an apex predator, Rhinar's strength comes from more than his raw power or gnarly romping club. He knows how to use his intimidating presence and bellows to cripple those who oppose him with fear.
Smash Instinct
Effect on Gameplay
As the designer of Flesh and Blood, if I had to summarize the core essence of the game into two words, it's Hand Evaluation. Now, to truly master hand evaluation, you need to be highly in tune with many elements that will affect the outcome of the game which are external to the cards in your hand.
Some of those elements include:
- Life totals
- Who the opposing hero is
- What cards are remaining in your deck
- The cards you care about that could be remaining in your opponents deck
- What equipment you and your opponent have in play and the state of it
- How much time is remaining in the round
- Who controls the tempo of the game
...But let's come back to the core concept of hand evaluation, in relation to intimidate.
Typically, when you defend, that is when you are also working out how you will play your next turn. The card(s) which contribute the least to what you can do on your next turn, are usually the cards that you choose to defend with. Intimidate takes options away from this decision-making process. If the weakest card in your hand is intimidated, the option to defend with that card is no longer available.
When you are facing Rhinar, you are hoping your best cards get intimidated, because they are the cards you don't want to be defending with anyway.
Working out how to configure your deck and the optimal strategies to counteract intimidate is one of the key pieces of knowledge players will need to learn in order to master the Welcome to Rathe constructed format. Otherwise, you'll become easy prey for tournament alpha predators.
Alpha Rampage
Hero Ability
Rhinar's hero ability is a core component of playing this hero, and provides direction on the framework of deck construction. When building your deck, it is important for you to have a number of cards that allow you to discard and plenty of cards with 6 or more power.
Being a Brute means that Rhinar is made to rampage, recklessly swinging powerful attacks at anything that crosses his path. For a Brute, there are no half measures. There is no backing down. Swing first, think later, and when it's time to swing, swing big. This is expressed through the "6 power matters" theme that runs through many Brute cards, and random determiners that reflect the reckless disregard a Brute has for their own and others survival.
Breakneck Battery
Rhinar's hero ability triggers each time he discards a card with 6 or more power, meaning that it's possible to intimidate multiple cards in a single turn with his hero ability, or in conjunction with an attack that also has intimidate. In Flesh and Blood the definition of discarding a card is when a card effect instructs a player to discard one or more cards. Pitching a card or putting a card into the graveyard from the chain is not considered to be discarding a card.
Bloodrush Bellow
Become the Alpha
During the development of Flesh and Blood we discovered that there are multiple ways to build a refined Rhinar deck.
As high-level tournament play evolves, we expect to see players explore further, and unlock deeper levels of strategy for Rhinar than what may be apparent on the surface.
Savage Swing © 2019 Legend Story Studios. Illustrated by Yulia Litvinova.
The easiest way for you to become the alpha is by picking up a Rhinar hero deck, which contains a cohesive 60-card deck, playable right out of the box. The hero deck includes a hero card, weapon, equipment set, and rulebook.
(MSRP $10.99 USD / $17.99 AUD / $19.99 NZD.)
Check out Rhinar's hero page to see more of Flesh and Blood's apex predator, and see more cards from Welcome to Rathe in the card preview gallery!
Welcome to Rathe releases October 11th in local game stores across USA, Australia, and New Zealand. Preorder now at your local game store, or refer them to b2b.legendstory.com to order stock now!