Welcome back to SG Protocol.
After we covered the reveals today I want to take a deeper look at what was played, what did well and what didn’t in the tournaments at Adepticon 2024.
There were multiple major events:
The classic Challenger Event which lastet 4 rounds then cut to top 8 and played single elimination from then on. We also had the first “official” timelines event (Omnus also had one run by Lexa at LVO but it wasn’t nearly as big or as in focus as it was at Adepticon). An awesome format Adepticon runs that I would love to be able to try locally someday is the team up. You form a team of two people and play one list together. Threats for every crisis are increased by 4 if I remember correctly and each person has 7 characters to form their side of the squad. There was the affiliation battle that only allows affiliated models and finally the what if event. The later I’m not 100% sure of the rules but as I understand it you pick a leader and then anyone in the game that you pick for your roster counts as affiliated. And I think at least sometimes there is a draft process involved too. Anyone who can explain it better please comment and I will update this section accordingly.
Since it is the best representation of the state of the (competitive) game I will mostly focus on the challenger event and will consider everything else too.
First let’s look at who got played in the Challenger event:
Avengers taken top spot seems surprising at first glance but we have to remember that this isn’t LVO. Anyone fast enough to get a ticket can play in the event meaning some top calibre players might not have been able to get a spot while more casual players might (nothing wrong with that just something to keep in mind).
HFC, X-Force and Web Warriors being popular isn’t a suprise at all but 7 out the 96 players picking Asgard wasn’t expected at all.
Looking at the lower end only 6 Guardians players and mind-blowing to me only 4 Wakanda players. I’d be really interested if players like Mike DeLuca who did very well with Wakanda at LVO (3. Overall) switched to X-Force because he thought it would give him a better chance of winning the event or if he didn’t want to feel bad for taking the statically best affiliation. (We need the new Danger Room Episode Mike!)
One brave soul brough Sentinels to a competitive event which is a win in and of itself. Our Dark Lord Dormammu also showed up once.
Noone played a game unaffiliated, no one brought Weapon X or Winter Guard.
Here is how each affiliation did in the Challenger Event:
Somehow Wakanda did not make it into the top cut despite having an insane 73% win rate. Pat van Value (of Alfredo’s Size 3 taco truck fame) went 3:1 but lost a top 8 spot to tie breakers (which is how Vincent Curkov got in). It might not be obvious from the winners and the games played but the Spirit play has to be adjusted some way.
Pilotet by Quebec Tango (who was also the best WW Player at LVO) to a perfect 7:0 for the tournament win Web Warriors had a fantastic showing at Adepticon. We’ve seen a much more Type 1 roster heavy meta here and Webs excells at games against other teams trying to score out quickly.
Extremely good showing for mostly Mystique and probably for the same reasons as Web Warriors. Piloted by Alex Botts (once again an Alfredo’s member, but they are locals in Chicago of course) into the top 8 as well.
A lot of games for the White Queen and her pawns and mirroring her win win percentage in the pre Adepticon stats. Aaron Franklin of Infamous got into the top 8 with them.
Very good showing from classic Steve and not a very good one for First Avenger. Slightly below his own average performance for Sam who can sometimes struggle a bit against other Typ 1 Teams.
Decent numbers for the Inhumans, who do feel the CGR nerf as he was their most common splash.
Good showing for Dormy, who usually isn’t expected to go 2:2 at a major event.
Perfectly balanced as all things should be.
See line above. But of course 2 games isn’t really a big enough sample size.
One Hydra Player, 4 leaderships used. Baron Helmut Zemo continues to be the worst leader (and in my opinion model) of the earth’s mightiest core set.
A lot of Affiliations went exactly 50% it appears.
Another one but this is a huge success for the Sentinels.
Shield is the first below 50% faction and that includes 5 wins form tournament finalist Vincent Curkov (5:2 overall).
People wanted to play the new leaderships with X-Men and were burned heavily for it. Nate Horn (Taco Truck) made it into the top 8 with them on the back of Storm but apparently hasn’t played her leadership in his cut game.
X-Force remain a top attrition faction for most while continuing to not show it in the results.
Klaw leadership is for Vodkablitz to use and noone else on the planet apparently.
Convocation is the counter pick to Wakanda but there wasn’t a lot of them running around.
Asgard was way more popular then I would have expected but about as or maybe even below of how I would have expected them to perform.
Doc Ock had a pretty rough weekend after carrying the faction in the top ten of the pre Adepticon stats for 2024. Pretty good showing for Green Goblin though and Foes did get into the top cut piloted by Corey Age.
Was the CGR nerf too much (no it wasn’t)? In an attrition light meta here Guardians struggled to get all those running around teams in front of their guns.
2024 does not seem to be the year of A-Force so far. Last in the pre Adoption stats and not a good showing at the con either. I also don’t really see any help on the horizon for the faction which is pretty large as it is but probably needs an alternative to or a defensive buff for She-Hulk.
Cabal often just kind of plays a worse Guardians game nowadays and struggles mightily against the Typ 1 heavy Meta.
Very healthy spread of win percentage with and without prio and except for 16 the spread of games played is rather close together.
Crisis cards:
Hammers remains the most often taken crisis and the hellhole of Spider-Portals sit at a well deserved last place.
TTCs:
No big surprises here, maybe the biggest one is so many people not taking Brace.
Characters:
Beta Ray Bill remains the most used character in the game and Black Cat and Rhino also continue to be globally useful splashes (and in faction of course as well). Toad and Bullseye show the importance of a 2 especially for Type 1 and 2 rosters but Lizard over Hulk is surprising. Heavily buffed Deadpool shows up a lot as well as Cable and X-23 the core trio for X-Force but all very splashable as well. Shadowcat coming in at 12 uses in the month of release is interesting.
Biggest surprise here is Lockjaw at the same number Nightcrawler.
Not everyone has put the MTC code in Longshanks and only 6 Gwen’s seems unlikely (if not impossible) with 7 Webs players.
MS Thanos over SR Thanos is interesting too.
Still some CGRs running around but nowhere near his LVO numbers. Thor should be more often here as it’s unlikely that 3 Asgard players played leaderless.
Fewer Bucky 1s than Operatives and Gwenpool remains criminally underplayed (I don’t like her as a character either but she is nothing short of fantastic on the board, especially under Nudok).
We will briefly look at the other events in less detail:
The Timeline Event. 57 players participated and chose these affiliations:
“Only” 37 Brotherhood players is surprising to me when they appear to be kind of best (or at least second best) in every style of game in timelines. X-Force, Spider-Foes and Web Warriors on 2, 3 and 4 is pretty much expected.
Lukas Schieck beat Mike DeLuca in the finals with Brotherhood against X-Force.
But let’s see how each of the 15 available affiliations did in the event overall.
Foes and Webs do well as expected but seeing X-Men perform so well without their usually best leader in Storm is surprising.
Avengers do well (the two Steve Rogers games are wrongly inputted) and X-Force too though not fantastic considering that they have their full roster while most other factions don’t.
She-Hulk enjoys the format at least more than Standard and Helmut Zemo tanks the Hydra stats as usual. Klaw actually wins a couple of games in timelines. Someone was possessed by the spirit of Vodkablitz it seems.
Red Skull 1 is once again wrongly inputted but Cabal still doesn’t work great. Brotherhood is very very much worse then expected. Wakanda is tanked by terrible leader KM, U.
Lastly Sentinels perform worse in timelines than in standard but of course neither is a big enough sample size.
In the affiliation battle Vince continues his run of Shield running the show with a 4:0 finish but Nick Kleeman running X-Force also went 4:0 and got first place on tiebreakers.
In the team up event Lukas Schieck and Mike DeLuca lost the finals with Wakanda against Jeremiah and Aaron England who run a dual of Midnight Sons and HFC (using Blades leadership in the finals).
And lastly Peter Sidaway Using King T Wakanda leadership got first place with a 3:0 finish in the what if event. If the rules are as I think they are I can really see the appeal of King T who currently lacks a bit of in faction synergy models aside from Shuri.
And that’s it. You made it through this monster of a post.
Cheers from Germany 🍻