Welcome to SGP, where today we take a small break from the updated Affiliation Overviews to talk about the Mutant Weekender that was held in London this weekend.
It is a giant 80 person tournament (that had 79 players this time due to a last minute drop, that couldn't be filled in anymore) run by the new Across the Bifrost podcast hosts Jaime and Dr. Norbert.
This tournament has one very unique but super interesting thing where on day one you play 4 games and earn your spot in the standings from 1 to 80. And then for day 2 there isn't just a top 8 cut but 10 separate cuts with 8 players each in a group with players next to them in the standings (1-8, 9-16, 17-24, and so forth). This sadly disqualifies the tournament to be an AMG approved GT, as it doesn't follow the Challenger Document precisely, but the price support was grand despite that from what I've seen. And every "pod" winner got something not just the best overall players.
We will look at the full stats from day 1 and then take a quick look at who won each pod and with what, as you were allowed to change your list for day 2.
The field was absolutely stacked with some of the best players of the continent including (among others) Conner Rooney, Pat Dunfort and Angus Hamill Stewart from London, Joemanji (the winner of the event) from England, Redcathal from Ireland, Seth from Poland, kollar, Huggybear, Thorbjörn and TheBjorn from Sweden, WTC head TO and organiser Gil from Denmark and four of my friends from Team Austria in Stefan 'Lunatic Machine', Mario 'Eusebio1210', theJJ and Erich 'old and wise'. I was of course rooting for the Austrians.
First up let's look at the roster stats from day 1:
Seeing Midnight Sons all the way at the top here is definitely surprising to me. They did just get a good influx of models but I wouldn't have necessarily expected them to be the #1 played faction with no less than 12 games more than next placed Criminal Syndicate which are a suprise at #2 themselves.
X-Men are always super popular in Europe so them having big numbers in players is expected, "only" 7 of 79 players bringing Asgard is less than anticipated.
Apocalypse is popular and often rather successful tying in players with Avengers the logical conclusion (?).
Inhumans boosting 4 players is rather high for them as despite them being very strong (basically always among the top 5 affiliations in terms of win rate) they aren't particularly popular.
Now the possible biggest shock of the list: only 4 Web Warriors players!
Wakanda slowly gains some traction again with after many players have left them after the Advanced RnD rotation.
Six players but only 14 games for Guardians means some of them must've been dual affiliated rosters. Once our lord and saviour Richard Ryder is here I'm sure their numbers will go up again.
4 Defenders players is pretty standard for the size of the event, maybe a bit on the low end to be honest.
6 people brought the option to play Thralls of Dracula and did so 10 times in total. It's a good flex, especially out of a Cabal roster I think. I don't think it is good for a Midnight Sons roster to do it as while Dracula himself is great under Blade I don't see any super real advantage in taking Thralls over it as it has the same weak match ups and doesn't appear to help a lot.
5 players and 9 games means Cabal also was mostly used on dual affiliated rosters.
SHIELD, the bane of my existence here in the (digital) German-Austrian Meta, was rather unpopular at the Mutant Weekender. As was X-Force.
Two brave players brought each of Brotherhood (not something I would have expected to write one year ago) and Sentinels each.
Black Order are rarely used as a single affiliation but have been appearently been that for one player.
Spider-Foes had their hayday after their latest four character pack droped but it hasn't been great for them since.
Two players used Devils Reckoning in their rosters for the Legion of the Lost pivot and one player had it as his main affiliation, playing all four games with it on Saturday.
One player each for Dark Dimension and (shock!) Hellfire Club. Both played each game with the affiliation.
Two players were able to play as Convocation and got exactly two games with them in total.
One player with one game for Hydra.
Unused: New Mutants. Their champion, Jaime, who was one of the hosts of the events played Sentinels instead.
A-Force, who are in a rough spot at the moment, Weapon X and Winter Guard.
Suprising absolutely noone Baron Zemo was the most taken character followed by Toad and Namor.
Bullseye beats out Shang-Chi for #4 and Shang "only" being taken 21 times is maybe a bit less than expected.
Black Cat and Wong are usual suspects in the top 10 while N'Kantu is making a big splash here. Of course 11 Midnight Sons players help him but he's been splashed at least 6 times too.
With high numbers for both Sons and X-Men that he's kind of an honary member for only 17 Voodoos feels a bit low honestly.
15 Thor 2s rampaged around the fields. Also less than anticipated.
Not a lot of suprises from 11 to 19 with Kingpin and Blade showing high numbers as their affiliations were popular, the same goes for Immortal Hulk who untypically beats out his non immortal version in roster spots.
Chosen of Bast making 10 rosters I wouldn't have predicted as I don't find him all that great but he seems to be working out great for other people.
Iceman finally gets some roster spots. Being a Horseman probably helped him a lot.
I would have expected a lot more Abominations personally but his numbers might be down to releasing so close to the event. He is absolutey amazing and with CS being as popular seeing more of him wouldn't have been a suprise.
Werewolf by Night and classic Ghost Rider appear to be battling for the affiliated 5 threat spot in Midnight Sons (a struggle I pretty much have myself in my MS roster).
The first new crisis revealed is a new Pay to Flip which doesn't make you roll dice equal to any defense your character has but a flat 3. If you carry and extract you get to reroll one of the dice. Seems... Fine? Would've liked to have the uncontested flip automatic but OK.
Now while I do love the pod system the Weekender does it makes it hard to get stats for the whole event as Longshanks isn't able to give me combined stats for all the pods to see how well each affiliation did.
So we'll have to make do with day 1 stats here and we'll take a look at the top 8 pod but not all the others. It's just too much.
Erich and the Dormanmu player went 3:1. Great for Erich; especially impressive for the Dormammu player. And of course the one Hydra game went well for that player.
Low representation but high win rate for the Spiders.
Unusually good showing for Black Order.
CS got played a lot with both MODOK and Kingpin doing fantastic while Shadowland (spelling error on LS part, there is no end at the end of it) Daredevil didn't. He instead took the factions average down.
I don't believe someone played a leaderless Avengers game but I don't know for certain. Classic Steve 1 was clearly the better choice here.
Low numbers but decent success rate for Cabal.
For Servants playing leaderless is plain and simply impossible so that is a mistake. They came out above 50%.
Asgard and especially Jane end up well below expectations. She drags down the average to a flat 50% with one game not having declared a leader (or having been played leaderless).
Midnight Sons were the most popular affiliation and did perfectly average.
As is custom Professor X and Cyclops drag down Storms high win rate to a flat 50/50 for the affiliation. 4 games failed to mark because playing leaderless X-Men seems super unlikely to me.
X-Force joins the 50% club while SHIELD is the first affiliation below with especially Namor performing worse than usual.
Three wins for Sentinels 💪 getting even one with them at such a competitive event is quite the accomplishment.
Legion of the Lost did OK. I would watch out for it in future events though. It is very strong in my opinion.
Wakanda ended up below average with one game not marked with a leader. Interestingly classic Black Panther leadership doesn't show up at all. Mostly due to King T being great under M'Baku, I think.
Inhumans perform well under their expectations.
Xandarian Worldmind help us! Guardians didn't do well either. Help is on the way if course.
Thralls also didn't have a good showing on day 1. Stefan went 3:0 with them in his pod ob day 2 though so Dracula has restored his face 😁.
Brotherhood didn't get a foot on the ground at this event but at least squeezed out one win for the affiliation. They are in desperate need of help and can only hope Exodus will guide them into a new age of competitive viability.
The two games played as Convocation also didn't go as planned.
Poor Spider-Foes no wins in six tries is rough.
Omega level Mutant pod (top 8) stats:
Midnight Sons proved to struggle in the top cut with the only win coming in the mirror match. They probably struggled heavily against an almost pure type 1 field here that they can't keep up with.
That's it for today.
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Thank you for reading and Cheers from Germany 🍻
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