As of Friday 23rd of January, Florian, Rotwood Harbinger will hit Living Legend status and no longer be legal to play in Classic Constructed.
Since his first release, the Runeblade truthers all flocked to this hero, recognising the potential of Earth as a provider of Midrange Value, and defense. Florian fit that role well, all the way to his ascension at the beginning of 2026.
Rotwood Harbinger
In 2024, only one hero ascended to Living Legend; Dromai, Ash Artist. The rest of the metagame was mostly stuck with the same select few heroes, with the heroes from Heavy Hitters bringing value based midrange back to the game. Then Part the Mistveil skewed power into implied value and Blue cards as powerful as Reds, which warped the format into truly absurd directions.
Rosetta, the set which brought us Florian, dropped end of 2024, and the player base collectively agreed on one thing: "this hero is gonna be so good when Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry leaves."
Upon Enigma leaving the format after Pablo Pintor's win at Pro Tour London, Florian defined the metagame with midrange value.
During Pro Quest Singapore season, what I like to remember as Aurora summer, he emerged as a reasonable counter to the Lightning Aggro deck. Prevention like Seeds of Tomorrow and strong defensive options like Rootbound Carapace allowed him to somewhat stem the bleeding against the lightning speed aggression.
Scepter of Pain
It would be remiss to talk about Florian and talk about a card that went from irrelevant to busted thanks to the Rosetta expansion.
Scepter of Pain started its life in Dusk Till Dawn as an cool in theme, but mechanically irrelevant card compared to more playable Runeblade weapons like Reaping Blade and, the then legal, Nebula Blade. It was templated exactly like Kraken's Aethervein: cards waiting for effects to amplify arcane damage.
It wasn't until Mistveil gave us the first look at the Amp keyword on Kindle, that we first started to consider multiplicative Arcane Damage. Rosetta took the Amp keyword to the heights of where it is today, with the main culprit being Channel the Millennium Tree.
Tree's intended design was for Verdance, Thorn of the Rose, but it being just Earth means both Florian (and technically Jarl Vetreiði) gets to play it. This presents the innocuous idea that the first Runechant a turn deals 4 Arcane damage instead of just one. The more upsetting notion is that by dealing 4 damage with Scepter of Pain, you create 4 Runechants. This lead to the Stack Florian archetype. One which played for full moderate Fatigue by blocking efficiently and generating dozens of Runechants to send with a Ninth Blade of the Blood Oath.
It's this archetype that got the Scepter banned.
Cadaverous Tiliing
After that banning, Florian transitioned back into Midrange, struggling to keep up with the intense disruptive aggression of Arakni, 5L!p3d 7hRu 7h3 cR4X and the board state style of gameplay of Gravy Bones, Shipwrecked Looter. After the bannings which took Slippy out of meta relevance, and the printing of Light Up the Leaves, Verdance became the prime Earth deck of choice. Her matchup into Florian was always particularly positive.
As midrange started jockeying for meta relevance in decks like Kayo, Armed and Dangerous and Kassai of the Golden Sand after the release of Super Slam, Florian's place in the metagame only strengthened, right up until the banning of Rootbound Carapace.
That removal of a key defensive piece took the deck in a radical new direction in its final days. By borrowing a powerful Earth card used by Briar, Warden of Thorns. Channel Mount Heroic gives a high boost to the attack power of so many cards, that the deck has pivoted into a somewhat aggressive stance in its newest iterations. Cards with easy Go Again like Ravenous Rabble and Outed are making the list, alongside the 9 Generic Defence Reactions.
This list, piloted by the 2025 World Champion, Michael Jaszczur, is exactly in this style, allowing them to pressure decks like Marionette and Oscilio, Constella Intelligence.
Wrap Up
Vynnset, Iron Maiden joins Gravy Bones and Prism, Awakener of Sol as the only decks of their Class left in Classic Constructed. Every other Runeblade has hit Living Legend, and it continues the tradition of how strong the Runeblade class is.
Compendium of Rathe and the hotly anticipated set 20 is likely to bring some heat to the Runeblade Class; and we can expect the second coming of Aurora, Shooting Star to bring joy to the Runeblade players, as we see Florian Living Legend.
Keep up to the latest news on Flesh and Blood right here at fabtcg.gg
