Flesh Eater
Bloodthirsty Demon
Cost: Lot 3
Generates: Lot
Fighting: 4
Regenerate. When this card reduces a Site's Body to 0, you may return a card from your smoked pile to your hand.
Of all the new Demon cards in Shurikens and Six-Guns, this one is probably the most versatile. If you have an open card slot in your Lotus deck, consider adding a Flesh Eater, or just go straight to building an entire deck around it.
The first thing that makes Flesh Eater stand out from other Demons is that it is a true ramp character. It only requires a single Lotus resource. SSG came with a second Demon ramp character, Agathon’s Deputies, but the Deputies are a highly specialized card that only goes into decks built around them. At a standard fighting of 4 at 3 cost, and two abilities that don’t suck, Flesh Eater can find a home in many decks.
But of course, the ability is what Lotus players are most interested in. Even though the Lotus are a faction known for Undead and Reburials, they don’t have access to any kind of character recursion (apart from Inauspicious Return), and they most certainly can’t recycle States or Events. While Lotus players have learned to build around that weakness (or multi-faction with Dragons), Flesh Eater gives them an in-faction way of dealing with the problem. And how often haven’t Lotus players wanted to return that critical Hopping Vampire that would get all the other Vampires out of the smoked pile again, or the Dragon Throne that was keeping the deck going? Many Lotus decks hinge on key cards, and a way to return them to play gives those decks much better stability.
But how do you get the ability to trigger in first place? The opponents are loath to let you take their sites anyway; won’t they take special pains to prevent you from getting the added benefit of recycling a card? If you need sites to seize, the easiest thing to do is bring them yourself: Battlegrounds. Most opponents will readily seize Battlegrounds for the power they yield, and not bother too much with defending them afterwards. This gives us prime targets for the Flesh Eater. The interesting Battlegrounds all have a Body of 5, so the Flesh Eater will need some help in taking them. Inauspicious Return provides an instant little helper. The Twisted Gardens or Stand Together provide Flesh Eater with the necessary damage dealing capacity to take the sites on his own, as would a State. What exactly you want to return is usually dictated by your deck, but realize that your recycling machine won’t go on forever, as you will either run out of sites to take, or the opponents will just tire of the Flesh Eater and kill him. Ideally, if you don’t have to use him as a ramp character, the Flesh Eater will enter play with a specific mission, to retrieve a card you desperately need to get going again. Alternatively, if you are dominating the table, you can recycle cards like Tortured Memories or Die!!! to keep the opponents down. And let’s not forget all the nasty things that happen when the Flesh Eater comes across a Reburial…
While the Eater is great in a Lotus deck, there are some really interesting combos that are possible with multi-faction decks. Two obvious factions for the Eater are the Hand and the Jammers. Shield of the Pure Soul and Payback Time are perfect cards for any deck that packs Battlegrounds. The Jammers give the Eater some teeth with Entropy is Your Friend, provide punch-through with Netherflitter, and have many good cards worth returning, such as the Single-Action Devolver (smoke with Stone Dolmens after using it in the attack, return it to hand, and replay), Street Riot, or Who’s the Monkey Now?. The Hand also have plenty of incentive to add a Flesh Eater or two. Rigorous Discipline can copy his ability around, various means for adding Superleap make sure the Eater reaches its target, and again there is a plethora of things to return.
Other factions that really benefit from the Eater are the Dragon and the Architects. While the Dragons don’t need character recursion, the Flesh Eater can turn into a game-winning machine once you boost his damage to 7 or 8 and have a Back for Seconds in hand. You can take as many sites as you have power with this combo. The Architects, like the Lotus themselves, have no means of bringing back cards (unless they’re Abominations), so the Flesh Eater can bring you back Colonel Reiger or the Spawn of the New Flesh (two classic Battleground deck cards), for example. Like the Dragons, the Architects have means to unturn an attacker multiple times with events that the Eater can bring back to your hand, such as Blitzkrieg (requires an Identity Chopshop) or Evacuation: 2066. And a regenerating character in a BuroMil Savage is a terror all on its own.
I hope that this article got your creative juices flowing, and that you’ll have fun experimenting with the possibilities that the Flesh Eater provides.