• name: Malice, Domina of the Dead
• class: Necromancer
• talent: Shadow
• hero ability: (One resource, tap): Until end of turn, you may play target zombie from your graveyard. Go again
• hero ability: Whenever a zombie you control dies, banish it face-down and create a Corrupted Corpse in your banished zone.
• play style: board presence
• current sage deck: Bullet in the Head (current as of September 21st, 2026)

Malice is Flesh and Blood's second necromancer, employing a cyclical strategy of converting her decaying allies into terrifying Corrupted Corpses via Gate to i'Arathael tokens and low-cost Shadow actions. but if she doesn't bring them back from the dead in time, her Corpses will lead her to Blood Debt and kill her first.

• Official Flesh and Blood page for Malice
• Malice, Domina of the Dead decks on FaBrary
• Young Malice decks on FaBrary

one of my first matches when I began playing Flesh and Blood was Bravo vs. Gravy Bones in Silver Age format, with me on Bravo. I was intrigued by Gravy's necromantic play style, resurrecting and activating ally after ally and forcing me not only to block out turn after turn but, when I was afforded the opportunity to begin a turn with decent cards in my hand, I had to waste my awesome Guardian strength on killing Gravy's allies instead of killing Gravy himself. my friend on the other side of the table explained that Gravy used allies instead of a weapon--effectively, Gravy's allies are his weapons, he said--and slyly began several of his turns with "wanna see a magic trick?" before activating his allies' Watery Grave abilities and forcing me to block blow after blow lest I walk his dumbass plank. I was quickly mercked.

since then, I have had the great fortune of beating Gravy from time to time, but my curiosity about Necromancers has remained insatiable. the board control, evocative of a commander-in-chief rather than someone who themselves sees combat, remained intriguing to me. however, I had absolutely no interest in playing Gravy Bones myself. why? I'm comfortable admitting this: aesthetically, I don't like him. I don't want to be a fucking pirate or make anybody walk the plank. I don't want to be named "Gravy," as gravy is food and I am not food. I have to feel like I relate aesthetically and temperamentally to my heroes in Flesh and Blood, and Gravy just wasn't it for me.

I and several others at my local TCG shop agreed that a Shadow Necromancer would absolutely fuck. as a spooky goth bitch, Shadow Necromancy is way more up my alley. at the same time, I was sort of skeptical about the whole zombie thing. for one, what would the resurrection mechanics look like? for another, and way less consequentially, I've never been a "zombies" person.

when Usurp's promotional materials were finally released, however, I couldn't have converted more quickly to Zombie Person than if my brain had been munched on by Malice herself. not only does she boast the necromantic ally deployment reminiscent of Gravy's style, but, instead of the Watery Grave resurrection format that simply pulls the same allies repeatedly from the graveyard, Malice's allies actually undergo a transformation from decaying ally to permanent ally: the Corrupted Corpse. this forces her opponents to contend with constant 3-for-1 attacks, each with Go Again, putting them at high risk of fatigue at best and merciless slaughter at worst. (the Blood Debt Malice takes is therefore a small price to pay for the damage she can do if managed properly!)

suddenly, Malice was the talk of the town at the shop. a ton of us were excited about her release. but as Usurp's prerelease date grew closer, I have to admit that I had grown a little bit lukewarm about Flesh and Blood. it was right around the time that Usurp's promotional materials were released that Palworld 1.0 was released for PC, and the Palworld TCG was not far behind; I had become something of a Palworld fanatic. further, I was very keenly aware that not only did three of my existing four Flesh and Blood decks need an absolute shit-ton of work to be even remotely competitive, but one of them, Oldhim, was at high risk of being benched for the season, anyway. Malice would need to be as exciting as poised for me to continue feeling good about the game.

I actually wasn't sure if The Country Pat and I would be able to attend the Usurp the Shadow Throne prerelease. as fate would have it, it fell on the 18th, when The Country Pat was scheduled to undergo an outpatient procedure. however, he was not about to be prevented from going to our shop that day, ASAP in fact; I had to explain as we walked out of the clinic at about 9:30 in the morning that, no, it wasn't open yet.

a total of 19 people attended our home shop's prerelease: over a dozen players cracking pack after pack like it was Christmas morning. one player had the great fortune of pulling a Marvel Malice. for me, I didn't pull a single Legendary or Marvel, but my couple of Majestics and three Rainbow Foil Corrupted Corpses were good enough for me. they'd form a great foundation from which I could build my 30-card prerelease deck and, later, my SAGE deck. as I am wont to do at drafts and prerelease events, I began building my deck primarily on vibes. my first impression was that I needed to maximize the number of Restless allies I had in my deck and the opportunities I had to turn those allies into Corpses via their Gate to i'Arathael tokens. later, on the Flesh and Blood Discord server, I discovered that the number of allies in a Malice SAGE deck is a controversial topic; some players feel four is a solid maximum, while others find 6-7 (🤷🏽‍♀️) is suitable.

during the three rounds, ultimately I finished at 1-2 and ranked 14th of 19. I considered this a big victory due to the sheer fact that it was the first time I had played a necromancer, the second time ever I had to contend with Blood Debt--and, the first time I did, I promised I'd never do it again--and, I write this understanding how wild this is, the third time in my six months of Flesh and Blood that I had played someone other than a Guardian (not counting the Learn to Play event where everyone was on Ira). as I sat there for turn after turn trying to maneuver my way into a Corrupted Corpse whilst simultaneously maneuvering my way out of its Blood Debt, I realized that I had not grown bored of the game of Flesh and Blood but, rather, after six months of remaining faithful to the Guardian play style, I was finally sick of putting all my resources into big swings and sighing with disappointment when they didn't materialize. comparatively, with Malice, there were so many small choices to make that I didn't have to invent a five-step system in my head to reach a two-digit attack. if I needed to block an attack using a card I was going to make a Gate token with, oh well; I could simply... do something else to make that same Gate token. (probably for the same amount of resources, too.) I was finally about to join the rankings of players whose heroes can boast several small 1-3 damage hits, with Go Agains a-plenty and for very little cost.

by Sunday the 20th, which was my day off, I was fully committed to becoming a Student of Necromancy. I popped on the official FABTCG YouTube Channel to watch Malice vs. Gravy Bones with their unmodified armory decks, to take notes on best Malice practices. the deckbuilding technique became clear and plain: the more you could maximize action effects by utilizing cards that allow you to discard allies--especially in place of paying resources--the more quickly you could bring your allies onto the board. and since Vox Necropolis allows you to bring allies in swinging rather than paying an extra resource to attack with them, I would be building my deck around a 3-for-1 technique meant to either slowly fatigue or slowly degrade my opponent.

subsequently, I built my first Malice SAGE deck around these practices, loading eight allies into my deck, against the recommendation of other Malice enthusiasts on Discord. I want to note here: this is my first time, although I have belonged to the Flesh and Blood Discord for several months now, that I actually took the initiative to speak to others on the server. truthfully it has not been easy for me to open up and get comfortable with putting myself out there as a TCG player, given my rocky start with them as a teenager, but my discomfort was a hurdle I needed to get over in order to learn more about Malice.

I took my deck--named "Bullet in the Head" for the Gvcci Hvcci song of the same name, its chorus line "the only way to stop me is a bullet in the head like I'm back from the dead" evocative of Malice's "come and get me" approach to board control--and we headed to our shop for the weekly Sunday Armory. I had not attended a Sunday Armory in a while, because my only two SAGE decks, Oldhim and (the new) Aurora, were very shit and I had not had time to make them less shit in months. but, like Gvcci Hvcci herself declared, the only way to have stopped me from attending this particular Armory was a bullet in the head. I didn't care if my Malice deck was shit or how shit it was. I just needed to unleash dead flesh on my friends and loved ones. it was pathological.

in the end, I finished 1-2 that night as well, ranking 5th of 6 and giving my first SAGE deck a win rate of 33%. however, notably, my first match was up against an absolutely masterful Verdance, built by a thorough and skillful regular at the shop. in between having what had by that point become a days-long migraine (thanks, Indiana weather) and attempting to put an Helm of Isen's Peak in my equipment because I could not read and forgot it was a Guardian card, having to favor-brigade another player into loaning me an arcane barrier, and the fact that Verdance is basically the cardboard embodiment of what is happening to people on account of climate change (which we deserve, to be fair), I didn't have high hopes for myself. to my great surprise, the match came down to 2-1 in Verdance's favor. had I been able to bring my Corrupted Corpse out of banishment, I would've not only taken Verdance, but I would've avoided taking Blood Debt, which ultimately became my undoing.

I did learn, however, that I was doing a couple of things wrong with Malice all weekend. for one, as this had been my first time working with cards in my banished zone, I did not realize that I could not move the Restless allies from the banished zone into my graveyard when playing cards that move require banished-graveyard travel (e.g. Shadowrealm Solace, Shadowrealm Strength, etc.). this would have prevented me from doing the Gate token song-and-dance a couple of times. further, I did not read the Corpses' cards properly to note that Blood Debt is taken at the beginning of end phase and, therefore, I would not take Blood Debt when the Restless allies initially decayed at the beginning of end phase. for the most part, these basic pieces of information will result in a subtle but important change: putting more Shadowrealms Solace and Strength in the next version of this build.

overall, this has been a great weekend full of teachable moments, great fun with my friends and, most importantly, a renewed interest in a game I fell in love with half a year ago but have recently grown out of sync with. it's very easy for me to get lost in my circumscribed interests and leave little room for change and, in the interest of full disclosure, I was a little worried I'd be irredeemably shit at anything playing other than a Guardian. this experience has taught me that it's not about strict class adherence but, rather, thorough and proper study of one's hero ability by interfacing with others in the community by watching their games and discussing best practices. the irony here is that, although Malice is Domina of the Dead, and commander-in-chief of the corpses of Solana, her greatest resurrection this weekend was my love for the very game that brought us together in the first place.