ProQuest: Week One Metagame

For the ProQuest Season, we have invited some guest writers to contribute to fabtcg.com over the course of the series. Davis Kingsley previously covered the Skirmish seasons and National Championships with metagame breakdowns and analysis; we're pleased to bring you his analysis of the state of the meta for the first week of ProQuest!

Welcome, Flesh and Blood players! The first weekend’s ProQuest results are in, and I am here to look at the data and discuss what we’re seeing early on. Legend Story Studios has kindly provided me with GEM results from this week’s events, which I have analyzed to bring you the latest metagame news – hopefully without introducing too many errors of my own!

This data corresponds to fifty-three events and 2,035 different players (though some players may have played in multiple events, so the “total number of individuals playing” is probably somewhat below this) – however, some stores provided incomplete information as to all the heroes that were present. As a result, there were 1,628 players with known heroes, and as such the overall meta statistics are going to be a little approximate.

First up, we have the overall meta:

As you can see, the new Bravo, Star of the Show, recently released in the Everfest expansion, was a very popular hero with Flesh and Blood players, making up about 22% of the overall metagame! Following was the classic Arcane Rising hero Viserai, Rune Blood with about 14%, and Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light with about 13% of the meta. However, no hero went unrepresented, and even the least commonly seen hero (Kano, Dracai of Aether) still made up more than 1% of the meta.

Next, we’ll get into the top eight placements:

Bravo, Star of the Show again took the lead when it came to “the cut,” taking about 36% of the top eight placements. Viserai and Prism also maintained their positions as the next heroes in line, with about 16% and 12% of the meta, respectively. Interestingly, Chane also did exceptionally well here, going from nearly 7% of the overall meta to over 10% of top eights – an impressive “conversion rate” from players to top cut spots!

Finally, we’ll look at wins:

Once again, 'Bravo, Star of the Show' took center stage, impressively taking around 47% of wins! In second place was Prism, who overtook Viserai to take almost 19% of event wins. Viserai wound up in third with about 9.4% of wins, dropping off a bit from his strong showing in terms of overall player count and top eight placements. Chane took fourth place with 5.7% of wins – a notable drop from his very strong showing in the top eights.

On the other hand, Oldhim took around 5.7% of wins despite only representing ~3.4% of the meta, while the Welcome to Rathe classic Bravo', Showstopper' took ~3.8% of wins while representing ~3.5% of the meta! Don’t count these older Guardians out just yet – even though Bravo, Star of the Show might be “hogging the spotlight” a bit, the earlier Guardians might well still be solid choices!

Another interesting point is that a lot of lesser-played heroes did manage to pick up at least one win, and every adult hero other than Kano, Dracai of Aether managed to get at least one top eight placement. That said, the season is still young – I’m personally hoping the game’s Kano fans manage to pick up some wins!

If you want to look at the data in more detail, here’s a picture of where it’s at presently:

The final two rows there, T8Conv and WinConv, represent the “conversion percentage” from overall representation to the top eight and from overall representation to an event win. Finally, the last row, T8toWin, represents the “conversion percentage” from *top eights* to event wins. "Starvo” is an abbreviation for 'Bravo, Star of the Show'.

It looks like 'Bravo, Star of the Show' is putting on a great performance, at least at first. Unlike past Guardians, this version of Bravo often plays a much more aggressive game plan, using his ability to combine cards of each element and buff up big attacks with +2, Dominate, and go again – often allowing for both a powerful attack and a hammer swing followup in the same turn! This can be highly threatening and a bit of a surprise to those used to Guardian players and decks that sit back and defend more rather than attacking aggressively!

However, it remains to be seen how the meta will adapt – will other heroes or styles of play rise up to counter the new Elemental Guardian? Bravo may be the star of the show for now, but there’s a big cast of characters vying for victory – only time will tell whether Bravo will find himself upstaged! Stay tuned for more meta updates here at fabtcg.com as the ProQuest season progresses and the Flesh and Blood community explores Everfest!

Davis Kingsley is a competitive Flesh and Blood player and author of content relating to gameplay and strategy. The opinions expressed in the above article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Legend Story Studios.

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