Collector beware, you’re in for a scare!
Today for Collectors Week I want to bring you something more personal, and with the game's 5th Anniversary coming up I have decided to share the story of how I joined Flesh and Blood, was insanely lucky enough to open not one, but two Alpha Print Cold Foil Heart of Fyendals, and how I utterly fumbled them both. Buckle up kiddos, because this trip down memory lane has many twists and turns that’ll make any collector’s skin crawl. Let me take you back to 2019, where a messy flat of post-grads in Wellington, New Zealand, had just stumbled across the greatest game of all time…
Two of us came from different TCGs, one from tabletop RPGs, and the other from classic 52-card family fun kitchen table games. As you can imagine, we were in desperate need of common ground when it came to hobbies. While researching for a business story I was writing, I met this guy called James who was launching his own TCG. We sat down for an interview, he pulled a loose stack of unsleeved cards from his jacket pocket and proceeded to explain pitching and action points to me. “Seems neat,” I told my flatmates later that day.
A few weeks later something unexpected arrived in the mail. Two Ira, Crimson Haze Welcome Decks, and two playmats. I sat down, taught myself the rules, then roped in my flatmates one by one. First, the other TCG player. He lost his first game and immediately said “again”. Next, the tabletop gamer. Unsurprisingly, he immensely enjoyed playing as a hero with a weapon, and was excited to learn there would be multiple classes to choose from. Lastly, the classical gamer. I thought he was going to be the hardest to convince since he didn’t have any TCG experience, but he was actually the quickest to pick it up (and as we soon found out, the BIGGEST booster pack fiend we had ever seen).
So that was it. We were locked in. Welcome to Rathe hit shelves and with four heroes to choose from, we decided it would be most economical for each of us to pick a different one. TCG Boy likes Lord of the Rings so he dives straight into the Rhinar copium, Tabletopper is fascinated by Dorinthea, and Classic Chad has been binging a lot of manga so he’s a Katsu main. That leaves me, my single copy of Crippling Crush, and the start of a long addiction to Hammer Time. The flat was now neck deep in Flesh and Blood late into the evening night after night, and that’s when Legend Story Studios announced the first ever Calling in Auckland.
There were no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’ - we had to go. We could afford two hotel rooms, two to a bed. Armageddon (kind of like New Zealand’s Comic Con) was happening the same weekend, and the Mighty Ape stall there had a special Go Bananas promo up for grabs if you purchased packs of Welcome to Rathe. The others went a little wild, but I opted for just a humble three packs. We sat down to crack and I remember saying I hoped I would open another Crippling Crush in order to complete my Bravo deck. Then, in the second pack, a sudden glint of green.
“What the f*ck is this?”
It took a bit of online research to learn that I had just opened the rarest Flesh and Blood card - the Fabled Heart of Fyendal. My first reaction was “it looks cool, but it doesn’t block.” Rhinar Main chimes in with “yeah but it’s worth like $300.”
Now before you all harshly judge my next move, it’s important to note that I came from a TCG background where cards were barely ever worth more than $100, and about half a year after release they would get reprinted into complete oblivion. So if you needed an expensive card for an event, you flipped it real quick before it crashed in price. In my mind, $300 for a piece of cardboard was an absolute steal. So I flipped that bad boy for $400, used the money to complete my Bravo deck, bought a Fyendal’s Spring Tunic from Rhinar Main for literally one week’s worth of rent, and saved the rest to go towards pre-ordering a case of Arcane Rising. Absolute Baller.
2020 is when I truly contracted Flesh and Blood fever. I wanted to build every hero, I wanted to play against every hero, I wanted to open packs like it was life support. I worked just down the road from my local game store, which meant many lunch breaks were spent ripping open a cheeky 4 for 20. The life of a reporter can often be stressful, and I was a big fan of retail therapy. One day in January my pack-opening break was cut short due to the nature of breaking news, and I absent-mindedly popped my four packs of Welcome to Rathe in my bag, intending to crack them when I got home.
A few weeks later I’m chilling with the homies in the lounge, unpacking my bag, when I spot that familiar brown sheen. The dopamine receptors in my brain fired exactly the same way they do when you find extra french fries at the bottom of the bag. I open the four packs and start laughing my ass off. It’s a second Heart of Fyendal. I didn’t realise it at the time but this was a cosmic message. The Universe had given me a second chance and was desperately trying to tell me “please don’t sell this one.”
That Heart of Fyendal sits sleeved on my bookshelf as I flip-flop over whether to keep it or cash it in. Eventually something clicks in my brain, and I go “oh yeah, money is nice.” I post it online for a whopping $500. Believe it or not, the buyer is the same guy who bought my first one. All I have to do is pop it in my trade binder and meet him at the next Calling, easy as that. Except I can’t find it. It’s not on the shelf. In fact, it’s not anywhere in my room. I frantically rampage through clothes, notepads, cards, and dirty dishes but to no avail. I can’t let this guy down, there’s $500 on the line!
I usually enjoy the early morning skateboard to work but today my head is all stormclouds. To make matters worse, when I get into work they’ve had an office rearrange and shifted me to another desk. “Your stuff’s just in the drawer,” they tell me. I open it up and pull out my notebook, desktop knick-knacks, more Welcome to Rathe booster wrappers than I’m willing to admit, and a couple of deck boxes from my old TCG that I had brought in for some casual gaming after work. Better take all this junk home. As I unpack everything from the day, I open the deck boxes to sort the cards, and there’s that familiar green glow. Of COURSE I used it as a token. Of COURSE I left the deck boxes at work. Of COURSE I forgot about it completely.
So, despite the Universe trying every single thing it can possibly think of to prevent me making another mistake, my second Heart of Fyendal makes it safely into the hands of the buyer, and I am $500 richer. My Arcane Rising case has an Arcanite Skullcap and three Command and Conquers, so I’m off to the races, none the wiser.
Flesh and Blood kicks off internationally, despite a few minor issues involving a global pandemic, and the prices of cards start to steadily rise. At this point I’m feeling the same “I liked Flesh and Blood before it was cool” mindset as every Kiwi FAB fan, and I decide that because I’m about two Legendaries off having the full Cold Foil set from Welcome to Rathe and Arcane Rising, I should complete it for sentimental reasons. During this time I also pick up a Cold Foil Eye of Ophidia for the sole purpose of playing Kano. Heart of Fyendal has climbed past the $1,000 mark, and there’s no way in hell I’m humble enough to buy it back at that price.
Welcome to Rathe goes out of print. The Universe warned me. I didn’t listen. And now I am condemned to watch as Heart of Fyendal surges to $2,000, to $3,000, to $5,000. Maybe I should have kept the second one. $10,000, $20,000, $30,000. FUUUUUUUU–
I don’t regret selling the first gem. The initial sale funded much of what I needed to get into the game, and I still use that same playset of Command and Conquers to this very day. I was never in it for the big money. But when I look at my full set of Cold Foil Legendaries from Welcome to Rathe and Arcane Rising, alongside the Cold Foil Eye of Ophidia, and I see that gap where Heart of Fyendal should be, the last missing piece of the puzzle, and I can’t help but regret selling the second one.
But even with a million Fate Foreseens, there’s no way I could have predicted Flesh and Blood would take off like it did. I’m grateful for the brief time I was able to own such a special piece of this game’s history, I'm grateful for all the amazing Flesh and Blood collectibles I do own, and I'm grateful for the fact that I'm lucky enough to be part of this thriving community. I hope you will heed this cautionary tale and hold these reminders of what brings people together close to your Heart.
