SGP: end of the year Longshanks stats

Welcome back to SGP for the last time in 2023. Today we take a look at the end of the year stats from character updates until December 30th (a day early as I won’t have the time tomorrow).

As always with these posts there has to be the Pat Dunford disclaimer off: raw data doesn’t mean too much if we don’t know who played what against whom etc. (We should have a picture of Pat’s head shouting: don’t trust raw data).

But it is fun to look at anyway so here we go (we go from button to top in win percentages):

Poor old Sentinels remain the bottom of the barrel. 22 games without being led by Prime is pretty surely a misinformation as he is their best affiliated character and with such a short list of characters it’s hard to imagine anyone picking leaderless Sentinels (maybe the two MK4s with Cassandra as pseudo leader? Unlikely).

Only 107 games overall is also a clear message saying: “We need help AMG!”

Weapon X is by far the least played of the many mutant factions in the game but answers a question many players have: Wolverine is the statical best leader in the game (well now tied for first as we’ll see later) while Logan is worse than even Sentinel Prime in win rate (near the bottom of the barrel overall). So Wolverine is better than Logan full stop 😉

Playing WX means Laura Kinney should be your leader at all times as she is almost a complete even 50% .

While Crimson Dynamo is everybody’s darling and Red Guardian is a common splash as well, their faction, even after the addition of 3 characters to the affiliated list, isn’t especially popular or successful. 17 games without Dynamo sound a bit more realistic here because people think he is only good on E shapes (pro tip, no he isn’t. He is best on those but at least fine on every map you put him, especially when he holds your leadership, maybe not worth it as a splash then).

Pretty surprising to see Blades crew this far down the ladder but apparently his and Wongs buffs couldn’t offset the nerfs to Voodoo and Black Cat (though hers is more of a side grade then a full on nerf).

They are far more popular than the two before though. Once again it is possible that some games were played leaderless and Midnight Sons still offers great tactics cards if you actively forgo the leadership but 109 of 517 games leaderless seems way to many to be true.

Another faction I wouldn’t have expected to be so low. Steve 3 is narrowing in on 50/50 as does the defacto only relevant leader of the faction (that’s Hulkbuster for all you unbelievers 😃) and Sam keeps the faction afloat while Steve 1 is the most popular but also worst leader in terms of win percentage.

Problem here: the four leader combine for only 1326 games played which leaves a big chunk of games (more than Sentinels played overall) in question marks as to which leader was taken (you plain and simply don’t play leaderless Avengers).

Asgard remains well under 50% and doesn’t quite crack the 500 games but they are on a good way to reach the plateau and will receive no less than four new models in the foreseeable future.

I’m proud to say I added three wins to this during the first German speaking TTS league (and two losses but that’s over 50%☝️) and will absolutely be rocking them for season 2 as well.

Unexpectedly few times played is SHIELD which should probably accept that iTony is their primary leader now. Which is how the two most prominent SHIELD mains currently often play: with Fury and Eye in the Sky in the squad but with Tony as the leader.

She-Hulk is definitely a leader sometimes left out of the squad (even though her leadership is one of the best in the game) as she can have terrible matchups and is obviously 6 threat so that’s a bit more possible here. The girls aren’t as popular as I would’ve thought but aren’t that far away from 50%. I guess would’ve been that Cosmic Carol (who has her best home here) has a big impact on the faction at least in games played but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Played once more and a tad more successful are the Wizards. No leader is shown as it’s a tactics card that lets you put the leadership on any affiliated character after deployment. It is always the same leadership regardless of who you put it on so it’s not statistically relevant.

You can safely ignore the numbers on Dormammu as the only way you can play Dark Dimension is to have him on the board which immediately makes him the leader of your squad. The dark lord is actually more popular than I would’ve thought and much much more successful than the online discourse would have you know. I’ve not beaten him in three overall games (all casual pick ups but still) and he isn’t far from reaching 50/50 either.

Unsurprisingly one of the most played faction are everybody’s favourite 90s cartoon crybabies: the Uncanny X-Men.

Many players are trying to make Cyclops, whose leadership is definitely a massive improvement from it’s original form, work to… not a whole lot of success. Storm remains the clear choice number one here it seems. Will be interesting how the upcoming releases, especially Xavier himself of course, will shake up the faction.

After a really slow start Foes players now seem to have adjusted more to the Doc Ock leadership and he is the first choice to lead in a majority of games. Pretty close to 50% for the faction overall and Ock is brining them there (Goblin isn’t terribly far behind either though).

Cable and his X-Force a picking up more and more steam it seems and have overtaken X-Men in the standings. Almost 700 games also shows how popular the affiliation has gotten.

Not a lot to say here, it’s a faction that came out of the character updates with massive buffs for Cable and Deadpool and it starts to show in the results.

Defenders are extremely popular now. Who would’ve thought that giving a fan favorite character, in an affiliation stacked to the absolute teeth with beloved characters on top of him, a half decent leadership would result in a lot of people playing it? Me, I did ☝️😃 as did AMG obviously. Some people still want to make Strange work as a leader here with very little success sadly. It’s probably better to play Convo if you want to have Strange lead your squads.

A very uneven spread here that makes me pretty sad as I find Strucker to have by far and away the coolest leadership in the game but it really doesn’t turn into success it appears and heavily drags down the factions stats. Red Skull 2 has top of the line win rates and Helmut Zemo outperforms expectations with a 53% rate too.

Brotherhood remains pretty popular and pretty solid with Mystique being the less often used but much more successful leader.

Releasing the Gems out of restricted prison for Thanos’ crimes has done wonders for Black Order who can cope with the Thanos nerfs they had to take for it.

Corvus as the emergency leader doesn’t seem to work out great though. There is no reason his leadership shouldn’t work on unaffiliated characters on top of costing a spot in your 5.

Red Skull, Master of the World seems to do incredibly well but as we still don’t know how his leadership is actually intended to work it has to be taken with a tablespoon full of salt.

Malekith has dropped of in popularity and win percentage, Red Skull doesn’t do too well and Sin. Is a character in this game that they put a leadership on as a joke. No honestly with Scott’s now being decent it is clearly the worst leadership in the game. The intend is cool and having a control leader in Cabal would be awesome but it just doesn’t do anything far too often.

Scratching the mark of 1000 games played is the meta main stay of Criminal Syndicate. The faction remains to be defined by Kingpin.

Klaw appears to be gaining some steam but here we have an example of raw data being misleading. Klaw is been championed by Simon Jarry aka Vodkablitz who added most of these wins. Go listen to the Danger Room Christmas episode on CS to learn more.

Coming into the top 5 we have the one leader trying Wolverine for best in the game in King T’Challa.

Wakanda is doing very well overall mostly on the back of premier leader M’Baku but Black Panther stays clearly above 50% himself.

Despite their success Wakanda sits at the lower end of games played.

There is no reason to play leaderless Inhumans especially after Black Bolts heavy buffs so ignore those but if also doesn’t matter really. 55% is a whole lot.

We don’t know how much CGR (who has one of his best homes here) plays into this but the faction is already very strong without him now.

Probably a suprise for many to not see the Guardians at #1. They are still far above 50% and pretty clearly the best at what they do: shoot you dead.

Almost as popular as GotG are the premier “grab and run” guys and gals of the Web Warriors while edging out 10 more total wins.

The faction is obviously defined by Miles and his wide defensive plan but ASM leadership is sometimes used and stays above 50% itself.

But who is missing? What is the statically best faction from 2023 character updates until the end of the year?

Bow to the White Queen because Emma Frost is here to take the crown from the two most talked about teams when it comes to the “best thing” you can do in this game currently. Only about half as many games played but nearing 600 is still more than I expected as HFC never seems to be mentioned in any conversation about the state of the game…

This makes Hellfire Club also technically the highest ranking mutant faction.

Hammers remains the most played Extract by a mile but Skrulls is getting up there with it now. Montesi is supringly popular; Researcher unsurprisingly so. And Alien Ship is the least common extract. Also 16 games were played on banned extracts but to each their own.

Sword remains the least played Secure while Scoundrels takes an unexpected first place here. The expected Gamma, Demons and Infinity Formula make up next three while the Pay to Flips aren’t as popular.

The 16s also aren’t taken all to often.

The spread of priority and not is pretty fantastic.

And the spread of threat levels is to be expected from the popular crisis cards. Play more 16s people!

And this is the end of the article.

Enjoy new year’s and cheers from Germany. 🍻