A Nationals Debriefing

After just four weeks' time, all 45 countries in the Nationals circuit have hosted their tournaments, crowned their victors, and delivered the cash and gold foil prizes. I hope that you got to participate in the excitement - and if you didn't get to play on your Nation's stage or in the side events, then I hope that you take the opportunities to qualify next year!

Flesh and Blood is a constantly evolving game, even with a scant 3 full-size sets each year; there is always room for innovation and improvements, so be sure to check out all the zesty decklists that fought their way to the top of each of the tournaments here - it's a great source of inspiration!

Looking back on the totality of the 2024 Nationals Season, we got to witness something pretty special. Players at the US Nationals event were faced with a very early and uncertain meta - the sort of meta where aggression typically does quite well as new cards enter into people's hands. There were a scant two weeks between the Mistveil's parting and the opening bell of Round 1 for the Nationals season! The competitions hosted in Minnesota set the stage for the weeks to come, as players all over the world would get to see what this set of North American competitors would bring to bear.

As the latest aggro deck on the market, Zen found quite a few victories week after week, starting with Evan Herndon in the USA - but it was not a story of all Zen all the time in all of the top 8 brackets! Although all 3 of the big tournaments in Minneapolis that weekend featured Tiger Tamer Zen in the final rounds, Azalea pulled her ace out and took down the Tamer of Purpose at the Calling, while the Dracei of Aether set tigers ablaze in the final moments of the Battle Hardened. Still, Zen accounted for 9 seats across the 24 available top-8 slots; clearly this was going to be a deck to pay attention to, and tech against, in the coming weeks.

In week two, 4 of the 14 national championships were won by pilots playing Zen - but the other 10 tournaments were won by the likes of Kayo, Kano, Enigma, Dash I/O, Nuu, Dorinthea, and Azalea. The reign of tiger terror would be felt all over the world, but mighty warriors do rise in the face of a menace: once the aggro deck shows us how it's done, brewmasters and character specialists can slip through the folds of the gi and use his momentum against him.

Indeed, by the close of the third week, Control had come to town as Nuu, Victor, Dash (Inventor Extraordinaire), and Prism took 10 of the 14 seats at the table. Disruption, weaved in to the aggressive playlines available to Nuu and Dash, made for quite the difference. Zen still took 4 victories, as he had in the week prior, but his foothold seemed to be slipping ever so slightly; the meta progresses, and the people who seek out answers do find them. Nuu, for example, claimed 5 victories that week, setting a new high-water mark for the end of the season.

Yet when the dust finally did settle, when the fourth week came to a close, Zen was still riding high on the Hundred Winds, having pocketed 6 more victories and cinching the season closed with the most wins of anyone. Nuu still won 4 of the 16 tournaments this week, but Zen did wash away last week's record and set one of his own.

All in all, 11 of the 27 legal heroes took home crowns- so while Zen did win 15 of the 45 events (a cool third of the events in these hot summer months), ten other heroes still rose to prominence and found victories of their own. Congratulations to all of the players that qualified and showed up, and thank you for giving us all some incredible games to watch.

At the end of the season, the total tally of winners went like so:

15 Zen, Tamer of Purpose
10 Nuu, Alluring Desire
4 Victor Goldmane
3 Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire
2 Azalea, Ace in the Hole
2 Dorinthea Ironsong
2 Prism, Awakener of Sol
2 Kayo
2 Dash I/O
2 Enigma, Ledger of Ancestry
1 Kano, Dracei of Aether

And with these results, the Living Legend Leaderboard is forever changed:
- Dash remains at the top of the list with merely 90 points to go before she ascends the final ranks of Legend;
- Zen crashes the Top 10 as fast as any hero ever has, resting barely below 500 points before his next opportunity to jump up the ranking;
- Nuu and Enigma both have also climbed up, albeit a bit slower than Zen;
- And, most notable of all, I see no heroes on the leaderboard with 0 Living Legend points. Not everyone gets to score in every season, but this veteran has seen heroes sit at the unranked bottom for months after their release as the world tries to figure out their decks and indeed their place in the land of Rathe.

To top it all off, after the velvet ropes had been packed away and the tournament floor had been swept clean of streaming equipment, sleeves, and dice, the developers and designers came in to change the meta up a little in pursuit of balance. After seeing one of the newest heroes take down a clean 1/3rd of the National events, some changes had to be made. Pour one out for the Katsu die-hards: of course, as he was hit pretty hard by this too, despite not taking any championship titles in the season. Bonds of Ancestry (Red) becoming, effectively, a majestic was perhaps not a move seen in the distance by many. Several people I know had been clamoring for the Crouching-Tiger-generating Stride of Reprisal to be banned, and other folk like myself still were cautiously optimistic that no bans would be necessary, and that the meta could continue to evolve to a healthy place. In the scheduled article, Brian Gottlieb took the time and the space to explain to us all why the bans were chosen, and I can only be grateful that we weren't just handed any bans without explanation.

Only time will tell how effective this update will be, but I for one am certainly confident that this change ought to make for new and interesting plays over the coming weeks of the next competitive season. Flesh and Blood never rests when it comes to competition, so get ready for the second Pro Tour of the year, this time hosted in Amsterdam, starting in just two weeks from July 25th through the 28th.