After her impressive meta share during all three weeks of Pro Quest Singapore, we can now say for sure that Aurora, Shooting Star has ascended, and as of today, has left the Classic Constructed format.
This comes as a delight of many, now that they no longer need to play against such a linear, unappealing deck.
However, there are many issues with the speed that Aurora zipped out of the format. We'll discuss those issues, in today's articles, along with the story of her ascension, and what this means for the meta game she'll leave behind.
Arc Lightning
After Rosetta released in September, Aurora quickly became known as the breakout aggro deck. The overall kit shared by her and Oscilio, Constella Intelligence features a great number of cards that attack well above rate, and easily gain Go Again, be they classic Tales of Aria cards like Lightning Surge or Entwine Lightning or easily enabled cards like Current Funnel or Flittering Charge.
The feature that keeps her distinctly Runeblade is the fact of the split damage from her Specialisation card Arc Lightning. The deck already wants to be going as wide as possible, and this card just rewards you for doing so.
The aggressive overlap in Aurora comes from the strength of one key Lightning Majestic from Rosetta: Channel Lightning Valley. Card draw is heavily controlled in Flesh and Blood. It's powerful to draw cards in any TCG, but draw in FaB is one of the strongest things you can do in any stage of the game. Aurora got to pair CLV with an otherwise forgotten card, Sigil of Suffering to draw cards while being on defence.
Despite Aurora's strength, she never won a significant number of tournaments. Much like Zen, Tamer of Purpose, the majority of her wins came off the back of local, in store play, particularly during the January Road to Nationals season and the ongoing Pro Quest Singapore season. While Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry won the Pro Tour and Worlds in Osaka, Aurora never hit such heights.
After being an all around consistent hero, she has earned her spot at the heights of Living Legend.
Star Fall
This simple playstyle, which otherwise rewards you for knowing the deck and your ratios, was what quickly identified Aurora as the new entry level hero. It's clear that she was designed this way for newer players when Rosetta came out.
This is also coupled with the release of the First Strike decks coming out at a relatively similar time to Rosetta.
The First Strike decks are still one of the strongest entry level products Flesh and Blood has ever produced. These two decks feature considerably different play styles, and they have almost all the card types you need to teach a player how best to begin playing FaB. It even goes deeper than their other on-boarding product, the Armory deck, as it teaches the newer player about Equipment Loadouts. No need to bring Spellvoid in against a Guardian, but my $40 precon doesn't have Nullrune Hood?
Following on from this, Aurora was given arguably the strongest Armory deck since aio001-dash-io-armory-deck-dash-io-precon. During their recent Dev Talk, the game's creator James White admitted to Skyward Serenade being misprinted. Allegedly, Go Again was meant to be one of the bullet pointed modes, and not just tacked onto the card. The card gets significantly worse without that feature, but would have gained Go Again from Arc Lightning, so there's a reason for it.
Nevertheless, the inclusion of another 0 for 4 with Go Again in the form of Skyzyk and the consistent ability to find it with a Skyward Serenade is what the deck needed to turn a corner in its aggression.
With Aurora Living Legend, these products are now set to languish on game store shelves for a very long time. A lot of players had the concern this would have happened to Kayo, Armed and Dangerous after his deck came out, but Mistveil dealt with his point gathering.
The product languishing on the shelves is distinctly bad for business, and the players who were brought into the game through Aurora have felt very disenfranchised. Though not all is lost!
Written in the Stars
LSS created a punchy little video to announce Aurora Living Legend. It featured the date of 2026. In the same Dev Talk video, James White and Brian Gottleib confirmed the timing of May/June as the time for Aurora to return.
It's unprecedented for the developers to confirm that a character is coming back in such a clear and definite way. We've seen the Heroes return in new forms before, with Prism, Awakener of Sol to be the new form for Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light. We've also seen developments in the story show us that Dash I/O absorbed advanced technology to become part machine, a far cry from her scrappy first form, Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire.
While it's a point of consumer confidence that the developers have reassured the players that a polarising hero like Aurora is coming back, for definite, so very soon, it's somewhat confusing in the face of some other heroes.
We've had the promise of a new form of Dromai, Ash Artist since she hit Living Legend in 2024. The hero is beloved by many players, and is sorely needed in the metagame, that's now suddenly very devoid of Illusionist. Another beloved hero with a deep card pool is Viserai. The memes around waiting for another form of Viserai who can use Arknight Shard is very understandable. It's also a concern held by many players that Nuu, Alluring Desire may hit Living Legend during Nationals Season, so we can only speculate what will happen when Part the Mistveil becomes irrelevant like Tales of Aria was before Rosetta released.
It's these kinds of balances to the Living Legend system that LSS are considering in the near future.
Embodiment of Lightning
With Aurora gone, many players are wondering: what does Aggro look like in the new meta?
Certain decks may be in contention to fill that space, but few have the same output as Aurora. Dash I/O presents strong numbers with Boom Grenade and Maximum Velocity, but the deck is very easy to fatigue, especially if the format looks to get more defensive thanks to the increased presence of Florian, Rotwood Harbinger.
Fai, Rising Rebellion has been a good deck since the Hunted released, but few aggro players ever picked up on the hint. The inclusion of 12 blues, and being able to pair Searing Emberblade with Dragonscaler Flight Path has been a reasonable pick into the new aggressive decks.
Cindra, Dracai of Retribution has access to all the same sauce that Fai does, but also presents annoying true damage thanks to Flick Knives. With the prevention effects running rampant in Runeblade and Wizard, and with the existence of Shelter From the Storm, many Cindra players should be adopting the plan they had in the Enigma matchup, and just going brrrr.
hnt261-mv-arakni-5lp3d-7hru-7h3-cr4x-the-hunted-booster has all the makings of an aggressive deck, with Go Again on the hero card, and cards like Infect paired with damage boosting attack reactions like Razor's Edge to pressure the opponent and reduce their life, while also still being able to deal deck damage and threaten fatigue as Assassin is always known for. The uptick in the play rate of Arakni, Marionette is what has many players questioning what will be the best Assassin after Nuu leaves.
Ultimately, there's not a lot of incentive to brew into this meta that's already so subject to change. We're getting the release of a new set at the start of next month, and with two more sets of Pro Quest results to collect, there's every possibility that heroes at the top of the charts, such as Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire, Nuu, or even Azalea, Ace in the Hole all possibly leaving Classic Constructed in the recent future.
It's an exciting time to be playing in a format as wide open as this one.
Wrap Up
With the premier aggro deck now out of the format, we can expect Draconic to take up the mantle of the decks that go fast, while the remaining decks all converge around midrange and value gameplans.
With Aurora Living Legend, and High Seas on the horizon, it's a wide and open season for what is to be played next. Keep your eyes to DotGG Media for all the latest FabTCG news, guides and more!
