The Rathe Times logo

Should Fatigue be the Future of Control?

It’s 2am and 49 minutes into the 2024 Worlds Finals. I watch with a bored malaise and try to ignore the enraged Youtube chat as Mercy Bickell tries desperately to find the line that will give her a fighting chance in this game. Her gameplan of trying to rush down Grzegorz’s Count Your Blessings (CYB) Enigma has proved ineffectual; the purported weak early game of Count Your Blessings has not materialized, and Mercy has found herself facing a fatigue end game with 26 points of life gain still in Grzegorz’s deck. Her last hope - in the form of Poison the Well - has been sitting in arsenal for the last few turns.

Mercy ends the turn, draws up. Grzegorz throws his first attack of the whole game: Command and Conquer. Mercy can’t stop it; she has three instants in hand and has used all her armor to try and end the game before it ever reached this point. Variance has played its cruel trick and Mercy pointlessly plays her Poison the Well just for Grzegorz to respond with his 7th Count Your Blessing...

Later in the game, commentator Pankaj Bhojwani would note that the Grzegorz read the Poison the Well was in arsenal and changed his block patterns to wait it out until he could find the counterplay. Grzegorz still had an Oasis Respite and a Sigil of Solace in his deck to eat the Poison the Well effect; the Command and Conquer didn’t even need to hit.

Card image of Command and Conquer (Red)
Card image of Poison the Well (Blue)
Card image of Sigil of Solace (Red)

Not two weeks later, LSS releases a Scheduled Banned and Restricted Announcement where James White himself says, “Count Your Blessings Enigma is what a control deck looks like in Flesh and Blood” - nine months after Bryan Gottleib said in an interview, “I do not want you to be able to find long-term, sustainable success at the game of Flesh and Blood by only defending with your cards and only gaining life.” How did we get here? How could this possibly be the official stance of Flesh and Blood’s founder? 

After reading his words, I resolved to dig into the mechanics and design principles of Flesh and Blood to better understand where James is coming from - and explain why I think he’s playing a dangerous game.

The Aggro Boogeyman

Since the early days of competitive Flesh and Blood, the boogeyman has always been aggro. From Ball Lightning Briar to Outsiders Lexi to even as recently as last season’s Bonds Zen, aggro has regularly been the meta boogeyman pushing all other decks to adjust to their ridiculous offensive output. It seems like every time the math of the game is broken, it comes back to a few heroes pushing 20, 30, even 40 or 50 damage turns!

In a recent stream titled “Aggro vs. Control: The Great Imbalance”, Nathan Crawford showed that aggro decks had made up 59.34% of all Top 8’s at Tier 3 and higher events. It’s clear that aggro has a strong history as the dominant strategy, edging out all other archetypes and methods of playing. However, Nathan Crawford also showed that since the banning of Belittle in January of 2023, aggro decks had only made 36.81% of Top 8’s - a 22% decrease!

Here is a screenshot from Nathan's stream showing his data.  If you wish to learn more about Nathan’s arguments as to why aggro is at a fundamental disadvantage right now, I encourage you to watch his entire stream where he discusses these ideas in-depth, provides more evidence, and engages with questions from his audience. 

The impact of the Belittle ban intrigued me, and I decided to do some research of my own. I dug through all of LSS' Banned, Suspended, and Restricted announcements to see just how often they have targeted aggro strategies with bans. I found that cards which featured prominently in aggro decks have made up 60% of all bans, suspensions, or restrictions in the Classic Constructed format, with seventeen total cards banned. Control is the next closest at seven banned cards, making up 25% of the pie. I'm not trying to say that LSS is persecuting aggro players, but it's clear that aggro has consistently had their card pool targeted by LSS to weaken the strategy. 

For some context, I do want to mention that control and aggro were far closer in their share of bans until the recent Book Burning of 2024 where LSS banned seven aggro tools in a definitive shift in game design and what they considered acceptable. If Belittle's banning resulted in a 22% decrease in conversion rate, then I imagine that the Book Burning will result in an even greater downward trend for aggro in 2025.

Here you can see my data and how I organized each banned/suspended/restricted card.

The issue of card pool strength has become exacerbated with the continuing rise of more and more Generic tools to deal with aggro. From Warmonger’s Diplomacy to The Weakest Link and now Count Your Blessings, control has been given tool after tool to deal with aggro’s gameplan without them being given the same allowance into control. 

As a result, we have seen blocking become increasingly important as decks shift towards a more midrange gameplan. Just look at the Runaway’s Viserai list piloted by Noah Beygelman to a 5th place finish at Worlds; they dropped the heavy-aggro playstyle Viserai has leaned on for years and pivoted towards a more midrange, switchboard style with nine different block 4’s. Other decks have taken the same philosophy and pushed it to its very extreme - none moreso than the Worlds-winning list: Grzegorz Kowalski’s CYB Enigma, which decided to nearly do away with the idea of attacking their opponent altogether. Grzegorz would go on to win Worlds, not through combat, but through the attrition of resources.

Card image of Warmonger's Diplomacy (Blue)
Card image of The Weakest Link (Red)
Card image of Count Your Blessings (Red)

Attritional Fatigue?

Let's first start by discussing what fatigue is. 

Fatigue is a game state wherein a player gains an advantage through deck size. Naturally, fatigue occurs when one player consistently blocks the attacks thrown by the other player. The math of Flesh and Blood is simple: if you’re blocking with cards that go to graveyard while I attack with cards by pitching, then you’ll have fewer cards in deck. Play this pattern out turn after turn, and one player will have an advantage purely because they have blocked less and attacked more. This is an essential aspect to the basic math of Flesh and Blood, because it gives the attacker an inherent advantage in the game outside of dealing damage and promotes players actually play their cards rather than just block with them.

Attritional Fatigue is what happens when the fatigued game state is achieved through defensive tools rather than offensive tools. This subverts fatigue’s purpose of encouraging defensive decks to find the space to attack, and instead creates a repetitive game state where one player is only attacking and the other only defends. This strategy has existed in fringe, off-meta decks since the origins of Flesh and Blood, but has risen to relevance through CYB Enigma, which leverages Illusionist’s ward effects and CYB’s over-rate life gain to provide a defensive overlap to outlast their opponent’s combos until they use their hero ability and weapon to attack with Spectral Shields over and over again - generating both offense and defense with a single card. It's extremely frustrating and looked exceptionally powerful at Worlds this year - but it's not unbeatable.

Card image of Count Your Blessings (Red)
Card image of Spectral Shield

In the most recent Banned and Restricted Announcement, James White discussed control decks like CYB Enigma. He noted that these sorts of lists need to spec for combo or fatigue-ready strategies; otherwise, they will be buried under a mountain of tempo. A deck with a combo element or well-constructed fatigue endgame can beat an attritional fatigue deck regardless of how much life they gain. This often results in the fatigue deck having to play against type and find more proactive plays in their list which take away cards that can be spent more efficiently in defense. If you haven’t played any of these games, they are incredibly tight and very engaging. It’s not as simple as throwing and blocking as much damage each hand as Youtube commentators may lead you to believe. 

Regardless of the depth in gameplay, attritional fatigue decks have still drawn the ire of many Flesh and Blood players. One common sentiment I've come across is that attritional fatigue goes against LSS' design principles. But James White, the creator of the game, clearly believes this strategy is in line with their design principles. So where does this disparity between creator and community come from?

I want to go through each principle the developers have shared with us to try and understand.

LSS’ Design and Development Principles

On September 2nd 2024, James White graced us with an unscheduled Banned and Restricted Announcement in which he outlined LSS’ Design and Development Principles for 2025, and the bannings which resulted from those new design principles. I’m going to go point-by-point through these Design and Development Principles and make the case for and against attritional fatigue’s existence in Flesh and Blood

Does Attritional Fatigue Degrade Class, Talent and Hero Identity?

Time after time, the most defensive decks are the ones running the most Generics. Justin Cu’s Tree Frog Dash list had 50 Generics and placed 2nd at Calling Manilla. Charles Dunn's 1st place Briar list that won US Nationals in 2023 ran 50 Generics. Grzegorz Kowalski’s CYB Enigma ran 31 while Mercy Bickell’s Aurora - a deck notorious for running lots of Generics - ran 25.  Most of the hyper-efficient disruption, strong block cards, and fatigue tools are all Generics: Warmonger's, C&C, Weakest Link, Sink Below, Fate Foreseen, Test of Strength, Sigil of Solace, Oasis Respite, Last Ditch Effort, Count Your Blessings, etc. And even if they print equivalent cards inside a Class or Talent that required some sort of synergy, there’s no guarantee that players would select those cards over the unconditional value they could get from Generics.

Card image of Fate Foreseen (Red)
Card image of Sink Below (Red)
Card image of Test of Strength (Red)
Card image of Last Ditch Effort (Blue)

Now this isn’t to say that any deck can jam playsets of these cards and go on to win a Tier 3 event.  Certain decks use these defensive tools better than others, or use them in combination with their own synergistic Class and Talent cards for maximum value. For example, Count Your Blessings is exceptionally efficient with equipment that can defend by spending a resource, like Phantasmal Footsteps. But at the end of the day, the core of the deck feels very Generic heavy, and each deck plays very similarly until the endgame where each deck uses their weapon to swing for the win. James White says it himself in the most recent BnR: “How you win the game after [running the opponent out of threats] is simply a formality.” 

If it’s a formality, then all of the Class, Talent, and Hero identity must be expressed defensively only. The army of spectral shields CYB Enigma wins the game with is no different from Tree Frog Dash’s Pistol Package or Guardian’s Titan Fist. Which flavor of 'endless pitching to attack an opponent who can’t block' would you prefer?

Can Fatigue Empower Agency?

Here is the design principle that I believe supports LSS' statements the best: attritional fatigue definitely promotes victory through the accumulation of many good decisions, whether that’s block patterns, deckbuilding, pitch-stacking, or choosing which cards to arsenal.

One notable concern comes in whether or not there is enough counterplay to combat attritional fatigue. Nathan Crawford suggests in his stream that aggro does not have enough tools in the Generic card pool to deal with control. James White seemed to agree with this in the BnR when explaining the blue Count Your Blessings ban, declaring that we would be receiving more tools to interact with specific gameplans like value from graveyards or prevention effects. This declaration of printing more support to deal with different game states - including those used by attritional fatigue decks - has convinced me that LSS has this principle on lock.

Does Every Card Truly Count?

When going to fatigue often means going to 2nd, 3rd, and sometimes even 4th cycle, it’s easy to think that every card counts. And it does - at least, for the aggro deck. The aggro player needs to carefully consider each card in their deck and assess whether they are extracting maximum value from each card they play. Meanwhile, the control player only really has to worry about preventing the most damage on any given hand. 

One statistic I would love to see is how often a card blocks in these CYB lists. How often do you think a fatigue player attacks with C&C over the course of an Armory? What about a tournament? Do these cards really matter if they are only being played out in a small percentage of games? James White did say that these lists do need to consider alternate gameplans into the archetypal mirror and combo decks, which should help make deck building impactful and important; however, there will be plenty of games where the only number that mattered on a card is that 3 in the lower right.


Is Fatigue a Healthy Path to Victory?

Games can end in one of 5 ways: 

  1. Judge intervention
  2. Life total being reduced to 0
  3. Concession
  4. Game going to time and ending in a draw
  5. Regicide 

Of these endgame states, LSS has declared that they want to “Offer players strategies and card synergies that can create game states slanted towards offensive advantage, so that most games end with one hero being reduced to 0 life.” 

Attritional fatigue games are far more likely to end in concessions or draws than other game strategies. Even at Worlds, the peak of Flesh and Blood’s competitive spirit, both of Grzegorz’s games ended in concession.  

When an attritional fatigue hero wins by reducing their opponent to 0, it’s “a formality”, a foregone conclusion where there really isn’t a point in playing the game out anymore. There’s no tension at the end of the game, no chance of a comeback. The fact that you play out one player going to zero life is just pantomiming the game actions that you’re supposed to take while ignoring the reality that you’ve already won/lost. Most players will avoid this and just concede. 

Along with the fact that this goes against LSS’ stated principles, an increase in concessions is dangerous because LSS’ GEM system cannot track concessions - meaning they will not be able to collect data and respond to this issue.

Attritional fatigue can also wreak havoc on a local armory scene with this increase in draws and concessions. I’ve seen this at my own scene, where we’ve struggled with games going to time. Two of my close friends who attend my local Armories regularly play fatigue decks (Teklovossen and Riptide). They go to time often, and especially if they sit across from a new player. This can build resentment at the Armory level. Players will look at the fatigue player constantly going to time and blame them for the long Armories; while fatigue players will note that they are often playing quite quickly, it’s their opponents who take their time!

Saying that attritional fatigue is what control - one of the most common archetypes in the game - looks like in Flesh and Blood is asking for more games to go to time or end in a concession - not with a player being reduced to 0 life. But how many are acceptable to LSS? Perhaps as attritional fatigue becomes more prevalent, there will be a learning curve as players adjust their lists and strategies, and the amount of draws and concessions will decrease. Or perhaps LSS will print new tools specifically to combat these attritional strategies and speed up games. It's important to remember that LSS designs 9 months out or more, and there's a lot of groundwork already done that we haven't seen by the time they make these statements. A healthy dose of optimism is always a good idea.

Conclusion

Some players consider control toxic and believes it has no place in Flesh and Blood, but there are also players who are drawn to this game because of the fascinating ways control expresses itself within the game’s systems. Control is a vibrant and diverse way of playing this game, and it makes Flesh and Blood better by existing. And yes, part of that diversity is fatigue. 

But attritional fatigue pushes the boundaries of the game. If the developers are adamant that attritional fatigue is the future of control in FAB, then I implore them to approach designing for the archetype with great caution - not because it doesn’t create interesting games (it does), not because it isn’t skillful (it is), and not because there aren’t ways to combat it (there are) - but because it acts against their core design philosophies and creates unintended consequences that divides the player base and prevents us from enjoying one another’s company playing this great trading card game in the flesh and blood.

Discussion (1)

Reader

Hedios

1 day ago
great article, congratulations and thank you very much.

You must be registered and logged in to participate in discussions.

Read next...

Court is now in session, and the defense has prepared for a fight.

by: Alex Truell

1 month ago

Our latest Pro Series article - available to Rathe Times subscribers - lays a foundation for Chane in Living Legend.

by: Kevin Brayer

3 months ago