Images courtesy of Legend Story Studios

Flesh and Blood’s sixth ProTour played host to a weekend full of announcements, cosplays, great games, and history in the making. If you were there, I hope you had a great time. If you weren’t, I hope I was able to show you a great time via the livestream.

It seems that all is well for Flesh and Blood, but rather than reflect too much, I want to look forward to what I envision to be the most existing period in our game’s five-year history: the quick cascade of Living Legend.

Living Legend in Years Past

When Flesh and Blood first graced our LGSs, the promise was made that it was an eternal game with a twist: the game would self-regulate with 1,000 point win-thresholds. In those early days, it was a tough system to prove, since the game needed to scale up for the Living Legend system to work. 

Most of the world was introduced to Flesh and Blood in 2021 with the more global release of Monarch. At that time, their Organized Play circuit wasn’t fully developed, and the game only sported 12 heroes. So when it exploded in popularity, it meant points funneled pretty quickly towards the best deck, Chane, Bound by Shadow, but without too many events to see our first Living Legend.

Then in 2022, things ramped up due the narrowness of the hero pool. First, in just three months after release, Bravo, Star of the Show rocketed to over 1,300 points, completely siphoning the ProQuest season’s points. In quick succession, Chane and Prism followed. With 15 heroes still left in Classic Constructed, the rest of the year continued to funnel points towards the more successful decks. With the size of the game then, this was a pretty aggressive rotation cadence, especially for collector satisfaction. The rotating decks had only been legal for a year or less, but without the hero bloat we see now, it was inevitable.

In 2023, the remnants of that late 2022 season were felt, with Oldhim, Briar, Lexi, and Iyslander all slowly crossing the finish line. Even compared to now, this is the highest rotating year on record, but felt the healthiest. The best heroes were known quantities, and there was enough diversity at the top that points didn’t funnel quite as much. Those that did rotate were mostly from Tales of Aria, a set that had lasted almost two years.

Then came the hero bloat. To wrap 2023, Bright Lights released three new heroes, Heavy Hitters launched 2024 with five new heroes, Part the Mistveil came out with three, and then Rosetta brought us four. Oh, and let’s not forget Ira, Scarlet Revenger. So 16 new heroes for the 2024 season, and only Dromai reached Living Legend. More heroes were released than even existed in 2022, and yet only one rotated. Still, the strongest decks certainly won more events, but due to the sheer size of the hero pool, the points spread out further on the smaller scale ProQuests and Road to Nationals. 

Now in 2025, we’re in the critical mass cycle similar to 2023 where so many points have stocked up that we’re just a season away from seemingly massive change. But is it really that massive by the numbers? We said good riddance to Viserai, Rune Blood and hello to four (soon to be seven) new heroes, so the game is still outpacing itself with new releases versus Living Legend rotations. By the nature of Living Legend, the points are all going somewhere, it’s just a question of if the heroes reach 1000 points before new heroes spread the distribution even thinner. I’m looking at you, Fai!

This Season’s Impact

At ProTour London, we saw Enigma win both the ProTour and the Calling, launching her to the top of the leaderboards at 989 points. She’s as good as gone, and honestly this is a triumph for the LL system. Imagine if another rogue hero like Uzuri won this ProTour. That would be 100 points that simply don’t affect rotation, and with the timing around a new season with High Seas, everyone is itching to say goodbye to Part the Mistveil. 

Starting this week is another ProQuest season, with a couple tweaks from last time all for the benefit of the LL system. For one, all events are Classic Constructed – no draft. Also to note, we’re still under the November 2024 update where the points per season are set to 1500 and divided down. So, after Week 1, Enigma and Zen should rotate only needing three to four wins to do so. For the remaining three weeks, all eyes are on Aurora to see if she can win 305 points – a mere 20% of the season! For reference, she performed better than that in the last Road to Nationals Season after Vis rotated.

There are another four Battle Hardeneds and plenty of ProQuest+ to give us another 100+ points this season as well. There are fewer than 500 points needed to rotate the top five of the Living Legend Leaderboard alone, putting me right on the edge of my seat to see what Flesh and Blood looks like in just a month or so. 

My Predictions

My ideal world sees at least four heroes rotate: Enigma, Zen, Aurora, and Azalea, with Nuu getting pretty close. Even with just the Enigma rotation, Nationals will look drastically different, but I’m concerned that if Azalea doesn’t rotate soon, her window might close for quite some time.

Guardian is getting support this year, and Necromancer is likely a tough matchup. I’m all for whatever makes the best viewing experience, so, yeah, I’m biased. But wouldn’t it just be awesome if the de facto best Ranger is Marlynn or Riptide?

What do you think of the pace of Living Legend? Do you enjoy these bursts or was the slow and steady nature of 2023 the best? Perhaps almost no change like 2024? Leave a comment and let me know!