Part of the contract you have to sign in order to be an official retailer of Flesh & Blood is not to sell below MAP. If you sell below MAP, you are in breach of your contract and can have your supply cut off. Rudy was in breach of contract, LSS asked him to adhere to the contract, and Rudy said no and decided to continue to breach it anyways, then he made a
public video talking about how he was going to continue to breach the contract he has with LSS. Who exactly is the child in this scenario?
A lot of big players in the TCG industry have tried to play games with LSS's contracts and LSS has given them a lot of leeway and slack but when you cross their line, they take action. Channel Fireball skated by with some scummy stuff on several of the major tournaments they hosted for LSS but their death blow came when they broke a box early on a livestream. An LSS employee messaged them during the stream and told them they weren't supposed to be breaking the box for that set yet, to which the host on the CFB show told the employee to go fuck himself. To no one's surprise, CFB's hosting and supply contracts were not renewed the following year. I don't know the situation with George, but I assume he broke an NDA and is conveniently leaving that out of the show.
As an official play coordinator for my LGS, I've had the opportunity to meet some of LSS staff in person and communicate with their NA play program staff a few times a year. They're typical laid-back Kiwis and are super easy to work with. Even if you mess up with one of their policies, they'll cut you some slack if you acknowledge the mistake and correct it going forward. But if you intentionally fuck around, you are going to find out.
I kept meaning to get around to trying this game out, but someone pointed out something on Reddit the other day I hadn't thought about. He mentioned a recent set isn't selling well because all the heros it's for are now retired.
The set he's talking about is Tales of Aria, which released on September 4, 2021, over two years ago. The print run for the unlimited edition of this product ended some time before April in 2023, so demand had already been met and whatever's floating around now is just the leftovers. The final hero for that set reached living legend in classic constructed format in November of 2023 (although one is still legal in blitz format), so the set lasted a little over two years, which was slightly longer than the two years a set used to be legal in standard format MtG. Tales of Aria was an
extremely pushed set with insane power creep that has been significantly cut down in the sets that came after it. For comparison, there isn't a single other set where all of the heroes who came in it have LL'd (or are even close to it), including the game's first ever set which was printed in August 2019 (three of the heroes released in that set are perfectly competitive, and one of them is getting a ton of support in the upcoming set releasing in a month to help bump up his power level to everyone else's).
FaB has competitive in-person events (unlike MtG), actually respectable prize pools (unlike all Asian card games), and mechanics that consistently favor skill over luck (unlike Lorcana). There are things you can criticize this game about (like sets not being appealing to people who don't play any of the classes that come in the sets), but everything you mentioned is cope and seething from mouthbreathers.
www.tcgplayer.com
