We investigate the influence of base states on the consistency of the dual variational formulation for quadratic systems of PDEs, which are not necessarily conservative (typical examples include the noise-free Nash system with a quadratic Hamiltonian and multiple players). We identify a sufficient condition under which consistency holds over large time intervals. In particular, in the single-player case, there exists a sequence of base states (each exhibiting full consistency) that converges in mean to zero. We also prove the existence of variational dual solutions to the noise-free Nash system for arbitrary base states. Furthermore, we propose a scheme based on Hilbertian gradient flows that, starting from an arbitrary base state, generates a sequence of new base states that is expected to converge to a solution of the original PDE.