Honoring Living Legends
The culmination of the 2025 Flesh and Blood Organized Play circuit is this weekend at World Tour: Chicago. The first Living Legend Calling will grace the windy city and your screens with a live stream you will not want to miss. Produced by yours truly, it will feature an all-star cast of Bryan Gottlieb, Sam O’Byrne, and Pankaj Bhojwani. This short paragraph should already have you teeming with excitement, but to help paint the scene, let’s recap the acclaimed Living Legend format in its current iteration.
Technically, the current format has only existed since November 12th, but the changes were slight: Open the Flood Gates became restricted and Star Struck became unrestricted. To broaden our lens, we’re going to take a look at the format since the emergency banning of Kraken’s Aethervein. This gives us the Team Cup, Battle Hardened: Osaka, Battle Hardened: Columbus, ProQuest+ Stockholm, and the early Skirmish Season 10 data to dig into.
Digesting Tournament Data
Team Cup
World Championship: Osaka brought with it more than the standard slew of main and side events. For the first time, the top players from this year’s Nationals and XP leaders were invited to represent their country in a Living Legend team format. This meant that each team of three must register three different heroes with no special deckbuilding restrictions otherwise. Teams then played five swiss rounds on the Thursday before Worlds and then final elimination Top 4 bracket on Sunday.
With the importance of the Team Cup and its $60,000 prize pool on the line, this event hoped to show off a balanced and beloved format in the wake of the Kraken’s Aethervein ban. Sure enough, when the 32 teams came together, the meta revealed some impressive diversity.
No singular hero was present in over 50% of the teams, but fan favorites like the recent ProQuest+ Milwaukee winner Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light came close. The soon-to-be nerfed deck Kano, Dracai of Aether rounded out the middle of the pack, while to soon-to-be buffed Bravo, Star of the Show already stood atop the crowd.
Some of the team compositions featured Japan on Chane, Prism, and Viserai, Hong Kong on Dash I/O, Briar, and Prism, and France on Dash I/O, Prism, and Berserk Rhinar.
At the end of the five rounds played on Thursday, it was Team Malaysia at the top of the standings at a perfect 5-0 record. They brought Starvo, Lexi, and Briar. They then faced Team Romania on Sunday in the finals after the rest of the World Championship points had been tallied.
After heroes clashed and legends were witnessed, it was Team Romania’s The Carpathian Goats on Aurora, Prism, and Briar that etched their own names into the halls of Living Legends.
Battle Hardened: Osaka
Ongoing at Worlds was another Living Legend Battle Hardened with about 80 players. The results of the Team Cup were still unknown at this point, so there wasn’t much of an opportunity to netdeck. This gave us another fresh look at the meta.
Bravo, Star of the Show continued his reign at the top of the hero representation, but that’s about where the similarities ended. Briar now climbed to second, and Zen lost all gusto. With such a wide meta spread, fingers were crossed to prove diversity, and, sure enough, we were treated to a Top 8 of no repeat heroes!
No surprises here in terms of the power level of the heroes that made it, but it does show just how strong decks in Living Legend are becoming. From being the most represented hero, only one Starvo made it, and even fell to the more underrated Guardian Oldhim, Grandfather of Eternity on a full fatigue Count Your Blessings game plan. That game plan, however, could not overcome a Kano at full strength with Open the Flood Gates, Tome of Fyendal, and Tome of Aetherwind.
However, that power level of Kano would never be seen again. The most recent banlist stymied his combo potential by restricting Open the Flood Gates, meaning only one copy can be in the deck. Also included in the banlist is the unrestriction of Star Struck, which then takes us to the first event with these changes on display.
Battle Hardened: Columbus
The community was holding its breath for this event. The Star Struck changes were controversial, with many players worried that Starvo was already too strong. However, from what we’ve reviewed so far, he definitely was not the best deck in format.
While we don’t have much data for this event, we do have the Top 8’s decklists. Surprise, surprise, there was once again only one Starvo in Top 8. Instead, Chane, Zen, and Viserai showed up in duplicate. The lists, however, contained many differences, with one Chane running Tome of Fyendal, one Viserai running Belittle, and with the winning Zen not even running Bonds of Ancestry.
ProQuest+ Stockholm
There was one last Living Legend event before the Jarl Vetreidi Armory Deck released, and it came with some sweet coverage. While it was a small day two event, it comes with even more data than Battle Hardened: Columbus! Let’s take a look at the meta.
For the first time, Viserai rears his head as most prominent hero, with the rest being more as expected. The Top 8, however, revealed something incredibly juicy. That’s right, Levia, Shadowborn Abomination made it! The other heroes included two Zen, one Prism, one Chane, one Starvo, one Aurora, and one Viserai.
In the finals, Zen met Aurora in a fast paced race to prove their strength in Living Legend over Classic Constructed. Zen ended up taking it down with Zephyr Needles that just wouldn’t pop!
Skirmish Season 10
Finally, we get to the active Skirmish Season. The format is actually slightly different again, as Jarl Vetreidi‘s release has brought with it cards like Channel Mount Isen and Frozen to Death which power up both Oldhim and Starvo. Sure enough, the first week of results put Starvo on top, but not by much.
Zen continued his reign closely behind, possibly influenced by the bevy of performing decklists people could study and use. Notably, Kano was once again absent, though game developer Bryan did note these results may be incomplete.
The second week, however, completely turned things on its head.
Not only is Viserai ahead, but nipping at his heels is Dromai, Ash Artist?! This wraps our article with an exciting twist, because the stories told of Dromai’s demise had no counter until now. Will this inspire an uptick in dragons gracing the skies (and playmats) of Chicago this weekend? I hope so!
More In Store
Living Legend has been praised again and again on social media, podcasts, and by the developers themselves, but we have been lacking official coverage to back up those claims for years… until this weekend. I’m hoping the diversity from these past few events carries forth an exciting event for all to compete in, watch, and enjoy – especially if another Levia somehow sneaks in!
Want more Flesh and Blood content? Check out this in-depth guide on when you should play or draw. Or take a look at this guide to playing Dash I/O on a budget.
