Welcome back to SGP where today we take a look at what people have come up with as their main affiliation plan for the first two online Timeline events.
I know Timeline isn’t something everyone will be interested in but I am very intrigued by the format myself and was eager to find out which affiliations were the most and least popular in the first events.
We’ve got two online leagues running where I’ve pulled this information from. Combined they have 48 players, but two are in both leagues and some lists were missing on Longshanks so I have 42 unique roster spreads to pull out the info here.
If you’ve read my original article on the full timeline reveal you might remember that the affiliations I thought would be the most popular were:
Brotherhood, Avengers/ Shield (as a dual) and Web Warriors/ Defenders (aus a dual) with X-Force and Spider-Foes as the additional diserable options.
Let’s see what the actual players have come up with, we’ll go over the times of use for each available affiliation in alphabetical order:
A-Force:
Taken 3 times on their own and 7 times as part of a dual affiliated list. Two times with Web Warriors, two times with Shield, two times with Avengers and once with Brotherhood. 10 uses total.
Avengers:
Taken 11 times solo, 5 times as part of a dual and once as part of a triple affiliation roster. For a total of 17 uses. Two times A-Force, two times Shield and the triple is with Hydra and Cabal.
Brotherhood:
Brotherhood gets taken a whopping 27 times on their own and 4 times as part of a potential dual affiliated list. Duals were A-Force, Spider-Foes, Wakanda and Web Warriors once each. 31 total uses.
Cabal:
Taken 7 times as part of a roster, never on their own. 5 times with Hydra (because it basically is almost automatically to be fair), once with Winter Guard and once with Hydra and Avengers as a triple affiliation.
Criminal Syndicate:
Taken once on their own and twice in a dual with Spider-Foes. 3 total uses.
Defenders:
Taken 4 times on their own and 6 times in the Web Warriors dual for a total of 10 uses.
Hydra:
3 times taken on their own, once as part of the aforementioned triple and the 5 duals with Cabal. 9 uses overall.
Sentinels:
Taken once on their own, but that roster wasn’t Timeline confirm as it had Cosmic Ghostrider in it and two times in a dual with Shield for a total of 3 uses.
Shield:
7 total uses, all as part of a dual affiliated list: twice with each of Sentinels, A-Force and Avengers and once with Web Warriors.
Spider-Foes:
Spider-Foes taken 16 times on their own and 4 times as part of a dual affiliated list. Twice with Criminal Syndicate, and once each with Brotherhood and Web Warriors. 20 total uses are far more than I would’ve expected even though I was high on them.
Uncanny X-Men:
8 uses all with the X-Force dual included. This might change a lot once we’ve seen the stat card and leadership for Professor X.
Wakanda:
Obviously hindered by two of the three available leaders not released yet we only see them being once in a dual with Brotherhood.
Web Warriors:
The web heads get taken 4 times on their own, 6 times with Defenders, twice with A-Force and once each with Spider-Foes, Shield, Brotherhood and X-Force. 16 total uses of Web Warriors.
Winter Guard:
Only one player has brought them into the leagues and did so in a dual roster with Cabal.
X-Force:
15 solo X-Forces rosters and joined by the 8 X-Men duals as well as one Avengers dual for a total of 23 uses.
So the totals are like this:
Brotherhood 31
X-Force 23
Spider-Foes 20
Avengers 17
Web Warriors 16
A-Force, Defenders and Hydra 10
Uncanny X-Men 8
Cabal and Shield 7
Criminal Syndicate and Sentinels 3
Wakanda and Winter Guard 1.
It’s also interesting for which round each affiliation was chosen but you can look at the sheet yourself to figure that one out 😉
But before the much more important question: how many times has Toad been taken across the 42 players?
34 have him confirmed in one of their rosters, 3 don’t and 5 don’t have their rosters in a readable fashion in Longshanks so no idea about those. I would assume at least three Toads more, probably five, as all these players have Brotherhood as one of their rosters, too.
Toad obviously is very good in the format as the only model who can still safe grab without any outside help of a leadership or team tactics card.
Now the spreadsheet :
Now what can we take away from this all?
Just like expected there are some affiliations that clearly stand out as ones people believe will be good in the format. Brotherhood, X-Force, Spider-Foes, Avengers and Web Warriors are all very popular. But to my big surprise every available affiliation is taken at least once making the meta overall a bit more diverse than I was afraid of.
What definitely stands out is that ordering your rosters in a good way will be almost as important as the rosters themselves.
There are also more dual affiliated rosters here than I would expect at a standard event but that’s hardly surprising and also a good strategic move in my opinion. It lets you be that much more flexible in the matchups.
That’s it for today.
See you next time and cheers from Germany 🍻