games of flesh and blood are a balance between attacking and defending (this is well known but stated here for coherence)
a 'fatigue' gamestate is when one player runs out of cards to play, or basically is threatened with this happening, at which point they can no longer defeat the opponent (same as above)
LSS has stated they want games of flesh and blood to end conclusively with a winner, for the gamestate to be continually advanced through play, and their tournament rules back this up
therefore, in composite, fatigue is something that is inherently against the design of flesh and blood but also keeps aggro decks honest and forces games to be more interesting
as they say, the dose makes the poison
however the game is balanced against fatigue states happening, or rather cards have their stats skewed in the direction of causing damage and bringing the game to a close
- wounding blow attacks for 4, blocks for 3
- scar for a scar can gain go again, but trades a point of defense for this compared to wounding blow
- many blues block for 3, sometimes 2, but virtually all weapons deal 3+ damage (and any that cost a full 3 to attack with deal 4+)
with just a few examples we can see what would happen if two similar decks threw their cards at each other, one attacking and one blocking - the blocking deck would leak a few damage each turn until they lose
so why is fatigue even a consideration? who cares about this strategy if its doomed to lose?
while some aggro decks are very good at converting their entire hand into damage, sometimes a deck will have trouble generating the action points to do so
comparably, blocking with cards effectively always 'has go again', and the difficulty in getting full hand value is blocking for exactly the attack amount - for example, if someone is attacking for 6, and the opponent blocks with two 3 blocks, then they block it perfectly and get full value
aggro then has another counter to this in the form of break points and small attacks
a good example of this is katsu, a powerful aggro deck well known for defeating defensive strategies by attacking with multiple kodachis every turn for 1 over and over which cant be blocked easily
some defensive decks are able to counter this however, for example arakni hunter spider can block and buy back his mask of perdition repeatedly to block 1 turn after turn
so actually the balance between fatigue and aggro is more of a spectrum where decks have elements of both, and the best decks can flex their strategies between matches or even in the middle of a game in order to spike their opponents strategies
with all this said, it sounds like fatigue is actually more necessary than ever, right? if many decks have access to it, and the idea is a necessity in the meta to keep decks in balance with each other, then why the hate for it?
in order to understand this, we must travel back a few years to when oldhim was shaping the meta
on release oldhim had access to crown of seeds for prevention, rampart of the rams head for reusable single block, and a couple other cards that used 1-2 resources to prevent damage; taken in aggregate these allowed him to prevent variable amounts of damage by pitching blues, both keeping cards in deck as well as blocking very efficiently and flexibly from turn to turn
rounding this out, he had a one handed mace named winters wail that would usually give a frostbite on hit, which required the aggro opponent to block it out (spend a card lol) or pitch extra to frostbite which then also usually messed their turns up as aggro decks generally have their turns costed out precisely to use a single blue pitch to play out so a single pitch is worth minimum 1 value like if they dont attack with a kodachi or something but usually it means they have to juggle around which cards they attack with so it might even mean the difference between them arsenaling an attack to attack you with next turn which just puts the game into a sort of midrange fight that oldhim is happy to play
okay so this sounds like a cool deck right (no pun intended lol)? you have defensive tools as well as some disruption to keep aggro decks honest?
well the problem with oldhim was that he was really good at it, and he also had a hero ability that allowed him to pitch a card to either prevent 2 damage or force the attacker to put a card from hand on top of deck, so he had many tools that allowed him to pitch to disrupt rather than spending cards from deck, so he was a certifiable fatigue machine
to really fully understand why people hate fatigue, also consider the infamous case of counting your blessings
is life gain fatigue? it doesnt like disrupt the opponent, and you spend a lot of cards from deck to do it, in fact CYB very famously required things to be in your discard - some people even thought about using cards like call to the grave to fatten up the CYB count
so these decks would sit and just gain life up to 100 or something and aggro decks would literally run out of cards trying to kill them
and depending on what the cyb decks had available to close the game out with that might be it
so think about e.g. CYB nuu, now you have an assassin with mystic talent cards on top of this - a lot of nuus cards gain life too, mystic cards care about blues, suddenly you have a ton of disruption tacked onto a flexible deck that pitches tons for above-average value effects, and also it has like 100 life
if you dont like slippy now think about if she had 100 life LOL
we arrive at the inevitable conclusion that disruption is powerful, and fatigue basically makes the opponent survive 10x longer and thus disrupt the aggro player 10x as much
or, in short, people like to play their cards
so what do we do with this information? well weve seen more disruption printed especially in generic cards for every class, in the forms of things like weakest link and mischievous meeps
but weve also seen more defensive cards printed - in addition to sink below and fate foreseen, we now have shelter from the storm as well as several 4 value block cards like fiddlers green and on the horizon, things like oasis respite and peace of mind that allow for flexible instant speed damage prevention while also pitching to retain deck count
so who wins this arms race? aggro gets more powerful every set, with the average deck getting 4+ value per card, so is sink even good any more?
perhaps this is why we need fatigue, for if you think about the disruption posed to slippy or cindra by a single frostbite all of a sudden their math gets thrown way off - think about jarl, even though hes no oldhim he still applies some frostbites and uses cards like blizzard to massively reduce the value his opponents get on their turns
if you give someone like jarl the chance to play his cards then suddenly youre facing down an oaken old or felling of the crown
so surprisingly a fatigue deck becomes more powerful when it also has plays it can make on its turn to threaten to kill the opponent, because now an aggro deck might have to block with its cards and get much lower value from them!
suddenly our entire premise is turned on its head, and the best fatigue deck is one that forces the opponent to block rather than blocking itself!
therefore in conclusion i believe that the communitys opinion of fatigue is based more on the idea that a fatigue deck just sits and gains life and doesnt interact with the opponent, and indead that does sound pretty boring lol
but instead consider the best fatigue decks in the current meta are decks like slippy or mario, who use bonds of agony (lol rip) to pull your good threats from your deck and make you unable to present a good turn back
or perhaps cindra, who forces you to block all her attacks or else she draws off of mask
or even jarl, who just strips your whole hand with oaken old recurred 12 times with sow tomorrow and evergreen
and we see that fatigue isnt so much a main course, but instead like a soup or salad that you can pair with anything
-dbk