Welcome back to SGP. Today I want to take a look at the current data from Longshanks for the time period of the character updates until now and see if we can gain any useful information about the state of the game and the updated and new stuff.
Now Pat will tell you just looking at the raw stats is useless information because we don’t know who’s played a faction, who was the opponent, what was the list etc.
And while this is absolutely correct I think we can still see some trends and draw some, if not conclusions, then at least educated assumptions about the game state.
First we can definitely see what has been popular over the time frame and what hasn’t seen the table as often. If course this data is once again skewed because not everyone will record all their casual games in Longshanks (honestly the majority of players probably doesn’t). Which in turn means it is probably more of a tournament focused set of data here.
I’m looking at the totals from September 20th until today November 4th.
Most popular affiliations and leaderships:
Sitting at #1, a bit surprisingly, are the Avengers with 657 games recorded. And it is actually Steve 1 that makes up almost a third of all Avengers games in the time frame. He didn’t fare too well though… First Avenger Steve has had a rather stellar opening month on the other hand. And of course 12 games isn’t a good measurement but big shout out to anyone playing under Hulkbuster leadership and crushing it with a 54% win rate. Sam who?
Second most popular (beaten by 4 games ) are the X-Men who got the most shake up from the character updates. Many people went to try out Scott’s much improved leadership but with a pretty below average outcome. This will probably get a bit more even over the time when people start to learn how to use the X-Men Blue effectively but I still believe Scott is the back up and Storm stays the primary plan for competitive X-Men.
Not far behind the top 2 are the overall most popular faction (over 5000 recorded games in the last year) in the game: Guardians of the Galaxy. Their current win numbers are even higher than their 54% win rate over the last year. Much has been sad about the strength of Guardians but in very short terms: basically all affiliated models are at the very least at the upper end of their threat levels, their leadership is pretty good and most importantly they can adapt to basically any crisis combination. Cosmic Ghost Rider is affiliated but not an every game piece for Guardians. That’s definitely saying something about the strength of the faction.
Scratching the 400 games mark are the Web Warriors. And they even beat out Guardians for being the highest win rate faction. Buffs to ASM and Daredevil have apparently softened the blow of the Black Cat Nerf more than enough to cope with for the Web Slingers.
The always popular Criminal Syndicate remains a force both in games played as well as win rate. The faction is absolutely carried by Kingpin and Nudok really seems to be the #1 back up plan now posting similar percentages but on a fraction of the games played. SLDD stays almost at exactly 50% which is an absolutely fine place to be. It shows that while Kingpin is probably better, you can play the faction in a very different way and expect to do reasonably well with it.
The same appears to not be true for poor Klaw. His leadership is pretty awful and his numbers show it. Not that 9 games played is reliable data usually but this is a case where we can pretty safely assume it is representative. Big shout out to the winner/s of two games under Klaws leadership however!
Speaking of Daredevil: Defenders have had a well deserved resurgence with Matt now finally being a leader. He’s seeing a good amount of success, but Doctor Strange has still only won a third of his games. I don’t think it’s a big surprise but Matt Murdock should now be considered the primary leader of the Defenders while Doctor Strange offers a tool box addition. Focusing on Strange here hasn’t worked out very much in the past and probably won’t now either.
Many people have Cable as the most improved model in the updates (Black Bolt challenges that to be fair) but it apparently hasn’t translated into a world of success yet. But it almost certainly edged Weapon X out of the meta.
Only 50 recorded games and 25th of 25 in win rate. The question a WX player often had to ask her/himself is now “why am I not just playing X-Force”.
Most successful (that haven’t been mentioned above already):
Here we have one instance of data being false because of faulty information. Some factions can choose to play leaderless but Hellfire Club needs Emma Frost in the squad to even be an option. So the 32 “leaderless” games here Emma just wasn’t selected as the leader in data submission.
Aside from that HFC is doing incredibly well while not being on many people’s mind it appears.
I eluded to it earlier but Black Bolt definitely challenges Cable for most improved model in the updates and his affiliation seems to have profited from it a lot more. We have to acknowledge the fact that Pat and also Sooner played Inhumans at WTC both going 5:0. But top players like these two picking up the faction for such a big event with only a few weeks to practice them kind of speaks for the new strength of the faction in and off it self.
Unrestricted Gem Thanos has Black Order on the rise again? It definitely makes it easier to dual affiliate them and only play as BO when the match up is advantageous for them.
Wakanda stays north of 50% in win rate. M’Baku proofs to have been a great addition and worthwhile leadership. Going to be interesting to see how the two new leaderships out of the rivals panel will impact the faction.
With A-Force running leaderless in 12 games isn’t an unrealistic circumstance but we can’t be sure it is intentional. The biggest impact on A-Force in the time frame probably comes from Captain Marvel, Cosmic Avenger but as we don’t have the lists we can’t really validate that.
Other new or updated stuff:
Nick Fury seems to remain most SHIELD players first choice of leader for the faction but iTony is doing a lot better in the limited amount of games he’s been chosen to lead. Definitely something to watch out for.
Another new core box leadership doing good here with Helmut Zemo staying above 50% in the limited times he’s been chosen to lead. Baron Strucker, hands down the coolest leadership in the game on paper, continues to struggle. There’s just too many immunities around especially on top meta models like Bill and CGR.
Doc Ock isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire it appears. The hope is that people need to adjust for his different play style and it will even out but so far it hasn’t worked out too often. Ock Foes is definitely #1 on my list to try but I’m currently committed to Asgard.
Speaking of: updated Thor is closing in on getting to 50% but Asgard remains a below average faction in terms of recorded win rate at the moment. I’ve added some wins here and will continue my run with them for a little bit longer.
This has to be taken with quite a bit of salt as we still haven’t gotten a timing confirmation on when you can use Master of the World’s leadership (and no ruling on his superpower yet either). I assume most people played it like you would play Cloak of Shadows for Malekith so after rolling your own attack dice (thus having the crit explode). There are arguments that it could be used at any time making it basically an offensive only Reality Gem. The latter would certainly be stronger as you could affect a skull you rolled from an exploded crit and you also have the information of your opponents defense roll at this point.
Malekiths nerfs seem to have really taken him down quite a lot. He is far from unplayable though.
Hammers remains the most popular extract with almost 200 recorded games more than 2nd place Skrulls. Research station stays popular but Montesi Formula is definitely a suprise to be seen as much.
A bit of a more even spread with Scoundrels being the most played a bit surprisingly.
And that concludes our look at the stats for today. Check out Longshanks for more stats if that’s something you’re interested in but also always remember Pat’s words ☝️
See you next time and cheers from Germany 🍻
MCP Germany Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/UKsgcfPP