Prism was found as a child in the depths of the Great Library of Solana by a Magister wandering past. With a bleach blond head of hair and a mysterious orb floating around her, she was a shocking find for the Magister, but her silent and studious demeanor make an excellent fit for a role of a librarian. Her past, however, was a mystery to all.
“In developing her skills, Prism’s talents were made clear for all to see. After years of careful study, she came to intimately understand the Heralds, lending more and more detail to her knowledge of these legendary beings. After capturing their very essence, Prism learned to give shape to their forms, conjuring their likenesses for the first time in living memory.”
The first Illusionist hero introduced in Flesh and Blood is Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light. As an Illusionist, Prism creates grand illusions of Solana’s heralds to strike fear into her opponents. Those who are too weak to see the illusions can suffer great punishment, as Illusionist attacks tend to pack a punch. However, fearless opponents can overcome these attacks by “popping” the illusions.
This is represented in the phantasm mechanic. Phantasm allows Illusionists to throw powerful, cost-efficient attacks, but opponents can destroy these by defending with attack action cards that have six or more power. This makes phantasm attacks very effective against classes like Ninja and Wizard, but not that good against classes like Guardians and Brutes.
Having the Light talent, Prism cares about having cards in the soul – a unique zone for Light heroes. Cards like Invigorating Light work with all Light heroes and promote the Light concept of gathering a soul. As the above Light Illusionist attacks show, Prism can gather cards in her soul when the Light Illusionist attacks hit. Having cards in soul is an integral aspect of Prism’s hero ability. It allows her to create Spectral Shields.
Creating Spectral Shields is another thing unique to the Illusionist class. For Prism, it’s another way of attacking her opponents. There are currently two main weapons Prism can use to turn Spectral Shields into weapons.
While both weapons use Spectral Shields to attack, they offer distinctly different approaches to the game and often promote a different strategy for how Prism can play. Choosing between these two weapons often gives a strong direction of where your Prism deck will end up and I recommend choosing between the two early in your Prism deck construction.
Iris of Reality promotes a very aura-heavy build that relies on the activated ability to deal most of the damage. Because of the three-cost to activate, it also promotes a blue pitch-heavy build, as you will need lots of blues to pitch to the effect. Luminaris, on the other hand, promotes a yellow pitch-heavy build. Allowing your attacks to gain go again makes it an easier deck to attack multiple times with Illusionist attacks as well and is often chosen when building an attack action card-heavy deck. Luminaris also enables you to attack for one point of damage with your auras, which makes it a very efficient weapon for an aura build as well.
Spectral Shields aren’t the only auras available to Illusionists. Another unique cards to the Illusionist class are Spectra. So far, we have seen instant Spectras introduced in Monarch with the release of Prism and non-attack action Spectras introduced in Everfest.
Spectra cards are Illusionist auras that permanently stay in the arena and provide you with unique benefits throughout the game. The main way of destroying these is for the opponent to spend an action point attacking it. Because the Spectra immediately gets destroyed, the attack never resolves. What this means is, even if the attack had go again, your opponent won’t get their action point back when attacking a Spectra, making them great against decks that cannot attack multiple times in a turn. However, unlike the Illusionist attack actions, which all defend for three, Spectra either do not have a defense value, as with the instant ones, or defend for two. This makes decks that rely heavily on Spectra cards susceptible to not being able to defend well against aggressive decks.
The range of choices Prism has gives her a lot of options when it comes to deck building. Illusionist attacks defend well and deal lots of damage when they hit, but they can be popped. Spectra and Spectral Shields, on the other hand, are great control tools against decks that don’t pressure your life total well and allow you to set up multiple auras in the arena. Prism has access to lots of different synergies and can be built in different ways.
Some Spectra pair up nicely with powerful phantasm attacks to promote an aggressive, beatdown-type Prism deck. Focusing on heralds can get your opponent’s life total down to zero very quickly.
While cards like Soul Food and Genesis really push for the Light-based strategy of caring about soul, this version relies a lot more on yellow pitch and gaining advantage based on Light cards.
Despite being the latest class to be added to Flesh and Blood and having limited card pool, the power level of these allows for a wide range of deckbuilding and successes in competitive play. However, the many moving parts and many instances of instant speed play make her a tricky hero to master. I recommend only trying out Prism if you feel comfortable with the basic understanding of rules of Flesh and Blood, but once you do, this hero is extremely rewarding. There are many intricacies when playing Prism and her unique playstyle is a blast if you like arena control, punishing slow control decks or going aggro with her big phantasm attacks.
