For the ProQuest Season, we've 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 latest article analysing the state of the ProQuest metagame!
Welcome back, Flesh and Blood players! We’re on to the second week of ProQuest events, and once again, 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 week’s data corresponds to sixty-four different events and 2,209 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 1,777 players with known heroes, so the overall meta statistics will be a little approximate.
One other note on methodology – a few players were registered as playing young heroes (for instance, “Oldhim” instead of “Oldhim, Grandfather of Eternity.” I assumed that these were registration errors and grouped them with the adult versions of those heroes – except for one player who signed up with Benji, the Piercing Wind! I did not include that in the statistics, so we’re at 1,776 known heroes as a whole for the week – sorry to the lone Benji player! Similarly, if I say something like “all heroes,” I’m referring to all *adult* heroes, as generally, players do not use young heroes in Classic Constructed. That said, if anyone can get a ProQuest event win with a young hero, I will add that hero to my overall statistics – perhaps a bit of a challenge for the rest of the season!
With that said, let’s take a look at the overall meta for week two:
Once again, Bravo, Star of the Show was a very popular hero with Flesh and Blood players, making up about 22% of the overall metagame! This week Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light overtook Viserai, Rune Blood for the second-most represented hero, but otherwise, the meta looked broadly similar to last week’s events. Once again, no hero went unrepresented, and even the least commonly seen hero (Azalea, Ace in the Hole) still made up more than 1% of the meta.
Next, we’ll get into top eight placements, where we see more of a difference relative to last week:
Bravo, Star of the Show, Viserai, and Prism maintained their positions from last week as the “top three” heroes for top eight placements. All three of these somewhat overperformed their overall representation – relative to last week though, Prism, in particular, had a notably bigger “piece of the pie,” taking close to 21% of top eights as opposed to last week’s 11.7%! Chane also continued to notably overperform his representation when it came to taking top eight placement, this time taking 8.39% of top eights with 6.42% of the overall field – a top eight conversion rate of 34.21%, better than that of Viserai and only a bit behind Prism and Bravo, Star of the Show!
Finally, we’ll look at wins:
While Bravo, Star of the Show did have the most wins this week, he had a notably smaller percentage of wins than in last week’s events, dropping to 40.6% of events from last week’s 47.2%. Both Viserai and Prism made substantial gains, with Prism going from 18.9% of wins last week to 25% this week and Viserai going from 9.4% of wins last week to 15.6% this week.
Bravo, Star of the Show wasn’t the only hero to lose some ground – both of our other Guardian heroes (Oldhim, Grandfather of Eternity and Bravo, Showstopper) had worse showings this week than last. Oldhim did manage to score one win this week, but this is notably worse than last week’s three, and Bravo, Showstopper went from two wins to zero. I don’t know for sure, but it seems possible that the rise of Prism might pose a major obstacle for these decks – both Oldhim and Bravo, Showstopper have in the past found Prism’s auras a major difficulty. Similarly, Viserai’s ability to build up lots of Runechants and wait for the right moment to strike can pose challenges for builds that are aiming for effective “turn-by-turn” defense and fatigue strategies.
This week, Katsu, the Wanderer and Rhinar, Reckless Rampage also picked up their first wins of the season. Azalea, Kano, and Levia are the only adult heroes who have yet to pick up at least one ProQuest win – all other heroes have won at least one event between this week and the last, and even the heroes that haven’t won have made the top eight at least once.
If you want to look at the data in more detail, here’s a picture of this week’s results:
| Azalea | Boltyn | Bravo | Briar | Chane | Dash | Dorinthea | Kano | Katsu | Levia | Lexi | Oldhim | Prism | Rhinar | Starvo | Viserai | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Players | 18 | 40 | 47 | 85 | 114 | 80 | 47 | 28 | 81 | 23 | 142 | 68 | 270 | 63 | 399 | 262 |
| Top 8's | 0 | 7 | 2 | 17 | 39 | 8 | 8 | 2 | 11 | 4 | 21 | 10 | 97 | 3 | 156 | 76 |
| Wins | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 16 | 0 | 26 | 10 |
| %Meta | 1.01 | 2.25 | 2.65 | 4.79 | 6.42 | 4.5 | 2.65 | 1.58 | 4.56 | 1.3 | 8 | 3.83 | 15.2 | 3.87 | 22.47 | 14.75 |
| %Top 8's | 0 | 1.51 | 0.43 | 3.66 | 8.39 | 1.72 | 1.72 | 0.43 | 2.37 | 0.86 | 4.52 | 2.15 | 20.86 | 0.82 | 33.55 | 16.34 |
| %Wins | 0 | 1.56 | 0 | 1.56 | 4.69 | 1.56 | 1.56 | 0 | 3.13 | 0 | 1.56 | 1.56 | 25 | 0 | 40.63 | 15.63 |
| T8Conv | 0 | 17.5 | 4.26 | 20 | 34.21 | 10 | 17.02 | 7.14 | 13.58 | 17.39 | 14.79 | 14.71 | 35.93 | 4.76 | 39.1 | 29.01 |
| WinConv | 0 | 2.5 | 0 | 1.18 | 2.63 | 1.25 | 2.13 | 0 | 2.47 | 0 | 1.7 | 1.47 | 5.93 | 0 | 6.52 | 3.82 |
| T8toWin | 0 | 14.29 | 0 | 5.88 | 7.69 | 12.5 | 12.5 | 0 | 18.18 | 0 | 4.76 | 10 | 16.49 | 0 | 16.67 | 13.16 |
And here are the overall results (combining this week’s data and that from last week):
| Azalea | Boltyn | Bravo | Briar | Chane | Dash | Dorinthea | Kano | Katsu | Levia | Lexi | Oldhim | Prism | Rhinar | Starvo | Viserai | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Players | 41 | 91 | 104 | 157 | 227 | 170 | 92 | 48 | 173 | 45 | 261 | 124 | 481 | 135 | 759 | 496 |
| Top 8's | 1 | 13 | 11 | 34 | 77 | 12 | 13 | 2 | 23 | 6 | 41 | 25 | 140 | 10 | 289 | 134 |
| Wins | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 26 | 1 | 51 | 15 |
| %Meta | 1.2 | 2.67 | 3.06 | 4.61 | 6.67 | 4.99 | 2.7 | 1.41 | 5.08 | 1.32 | 7.67 | 3.64 | 14.13 | 3.97 | 22.3 | 14.57 |
| %Top 8's | 0.12 | 1.56 | 1.32 | 4.09 | 9.27 | 1.44 | 1.56 | 0.24 | 2.77 | 0.72 | 4.93 | 3.01 | 16.85 | 1.2 | 34.78 | 16.13 |
| %Wins | 0 | 1.71 | 1.71 | 1.71 | 5.13 | 1.71 | 1.71 | 0 | 1.71 | 0 | 1.71 | 3.42 | 22.22 | 0.85 | 43.59 | 12.82 |
| T8Conv | 2.44 | 14.29 | 10.58 | 21.66 | 33.92 | 7.06 | 14.13 | 4.17 | 13.29 | 13.33 | 15.71 | 20.16 | 29.11 | 7.41 | 38.08 | 27.02 |
| WinConv | 0 | 2.2 | 1.92 | 1.27 | 2.64 | 1.18 | 2.17 | 0 | 1.16 | 0 | 0.77 | 3.23 | 5.41 | 0.74 | 6.72 | 3.02 |
| T8toWin | 0 | 15.38 | 18.18 | 5.88 | 7.79 | 16.67 | 15.38 | 0 | 8.7 | 0 | 4.88 | 16 | 18.57 | 10 | 17.65 | 11.19 |
As before, the final two rows in these tables – T8Conv and WinConv – represent the “conversion percentage” from overall representation to top eight, and from overall representation to an event win. The last row, T8toWin, represents the “conversion percentage” from *top eights* to event wins. “Starvo” is an abbreviation for Bravo, Star of the Show.
This week it seems like we’re seeing a potential shift in the meta – while Bravo, Star of the Show is still at the top in terms of overall results, Viserai and Prism gained substantial ground on him relative to last week, with Prism in particular making dramatic gains. This also seems to have perhaps led to worse results for our other Guardians this week, though of course we have a relatively low sample size that makes it difficult to make confident conclusions. Does this indicate that players are figuring out how to counter the Star of the Show’s aggressive gameplay? Will Prism take the frontrunner’s position soon? Are there unexpected builds that have yet to appear but will soon influence the meta? Time will tell – I’m quite excited to see how the meta continues to develop!
Stay tuned for more meta updates here at fabtcg.com as the ProQuest season progresses and the Flesh and Blood community continues to explore the 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.
Living Legend Points - ProQuest Week 2
| Rank | Change | Hero | ProQuest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | - | Bravo, Star of the Show | 306 |
| 2 | - | Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light | 156 |
| 3 | - | Viserai, Rune Blood | 96 |
| 4 | - | Chane, Bound by Shadow | 36 |
| 5 | -1 | Oldhim, Grandfather of Eternity | 30 |
| 6 | - | Bravo, Showstopper | 12 |
| 6 | +1 | Briar, Warden of Thorns | 12 |
| 6 | +1 | Dash, Inventor Extraordinaire | 12 |
| 6 | +1 | Dorinthea Ironsong | 12 |
| 6 | +6 | Katsu, the Wanderer | 12 |
| 6 | +1 | Lexi, Livewire | 12 |
| 6 | +1 | Ser Boltyn, Breaker of Dawn | 12 |
| 13 | +1 | Rhinar, Reckless Rampage | 6 |
| 14 | -2 | Azalea, Ace in the Hole | 0 |
| 14 | -2 | Kano, Dracai of Aether | 0 |
| 14 | -2 | Levia, Shadowborn Abomination | 0 |
Lifetime Living Legend Leaderboard
You can find the updated lifetime living legend leaderboards below.