Congratulations to all the players who have qualified for 2022 Flesh and Blood National Championships! Over three hundred events took place throughout the Road to Nationals Qualifier season, with over 2000 players qualifying for their respective National Championships through the course of the season. Slots in National Championships are heavily contested, and it is a fantastic effort on the pat of the players who have made it this far!
As a reminder for how qualification for National Championships works, recall that there are two types of National Championships; Invitation Only for larger communities, and Open Entry for smaller communities. For Invitation Only tournaments, spaces in the event are first allocated to players who placed in the Top 4 of a Road to Nationals event. Remaining spaces are then allocated to the top ranked players on that country's 90 XP leaderboard who had not already qualified via a Road to Nationals invitation.
After these invitations have been issued, players who wish to redeem a PTI to attend their National Championships will have until 5pm Friday August 19 PDT to do so. In addition, players from Western Australia and Singapore who were unable to attend their 2021 National Championships due to Covid restrictions are also receiving invitations to their country's 2022 National Championships, and these entries are in addition to the standard player cap for those countries (i.e. these carry over invitations have not come at the expense of any players qualifying on the basis of XP).
For Open Entry tournaments, players who received an invitation via Road to Nationals will receive free entry to their country's National Championships. Any other players who wish to attend will need to purchase a ticket from the tournament organiser.
Remember that there are a range of side events that are being hosted as part of National Championship season as well. All Invitation Only tournaments are being accompanied by a PTI tournament on the Sunday with a Gold Cold Foil prize card, and many tournaments will feature other events throughout the weekend as well. So if you missed out on qualifying for an Invitation Only event, check out the link to the event organiser's page and see what else they've go going on during the weekend!
We also have a couple of updates on specific National Championships. Firstly, 500 unique players qualified for US Nationals via the Road to Nationals series this year, and as such we are increasing the player cap for US Nationals to 600 players to allow sufficient numbers of XP qualified players to attend the tournament.
Secondly, in order to secure a suitable venue for German National Championships, this tournament will run one week after the regular window for National Championships. In order to ensure that players who qualify for World Championships on the basis of rating have as much notice as possible to arrange for travel, we will be announcing all non-German qualified players in the week of September 30. German players who receive ratings based invites will then be selected the following week, after the conclusion of their National Championships.