January 2025 stats

Welcome to a new monthly series where we look at the Longshanks stats of the past month. We'll always check the overall global stats first and then just the rated single event stats where we'll also look at the most taken characters and crisis cards let's get to it then (you can always click on the images to enlarge them): 

All events affiliation stats:

Asgard remain both: extremely popular and strong with Jane slowly but surely becoming the main leader. 

Webs can somewhat rival Asgard in popularity and also success rate. 

Black Order have had a surprisingly strong month. 

Inhumans were strong as usual and with the new characters coming out soon there's nowhere to go but up for the faction. 

Weapon X is in the top 5 and the best mutant faction. It seems Weapon X (the character) and Maverick had a strong influence on the affiliation after all. 

The wizards are pretty unpopular at the moment but have had good results in the few games they were played in. 

Second best mutant affiliation and decently strong ever since they've been out are the Servants of Apocalypse. 

Guardians have gotten a boost with Nova and Yondu and are going well again. 

Sin and OG Red Skull are the best Cabal leaders while Malekith is struggling. What a time to be alive. 

Criminal Syndicate make top 10 on the back of Kingpin and MODOK while Shadowland (please remove the s at the end LS it is not supposed to be there) Daredevil and Klaw aren't doing so hot. 

In SHIELD land Namor has officially taken over as the defacto leader and Invincible Iron Man is unpopular and unsuccessful. 

In Wakanda M'Baku is very much established as the leader now and he, with the help if few but very successful games under King T, keeps the affiliation above 50% even with KM, Us terrible record. 

Dormammu reaching a perfectly even split in wins and losses is honestly impressive. 

Hulkbuster 💪 he is the statistical best leader of the month with at least 10 games played. Who had that on their bingo card? Steve 1 is back as the most popular Avengers leader, Sam is  untypically struggling a bit and First Avenger drags down the affiliation stats. 

Midnight Sons were by far the most popular affiliation of the month having almost 100 games more than Asgard played. And they did perfectly average with them. People who have tried Elsa leadership haven't seen a lot of success so far though. 

Defenders are just below 50% and here it is very possible that the leaderless games were actually played as such as that is often done in Defenders. 

Norman Osborne takes his affiliation back but is dragged down to only 48% win rate for the Foes overall by Otto Octavius. 

Legion of the Lost are quite popular for a very new affiliation but not super successful yet. 

Hydra has had a rather bad month with only Helmut Zemo reaching a winning record but in only 5 games played. 

Seeing Hellfire Club, a top 5 staple for months and months dropping all the way to #20 is a genuine suprise. They weren't popular either. 

Brotherhood players will be overjoyed to see that they sit a spot above the X-Men. But not because BH did particularly well themselves... 

X-Men, as usual sitting amongst the most played affiliations, had a rather bad month in the overall statistics with even Storm dropping to 47%. 

Thralls of Dracula were both, the most taken and least successful of the four everyone is in affiliations. 

Winter Guard need a new release. They are unpopular and unsuccessful. 

The same can be said for New Mutants who simply feel like just half of an affiliation. For them I fully expect the reveals of Wolfesbane, Cannonball and Danny Moonstone at Adepticon. 

When a giant and usually beloved faction like A-Force falls down to being the least played affiliation overall something needs to be done. Hopefully the new crisis cards will at least help them a bit... 

X-Force had an absolutely forgettable January. I can't really explain why with them as they consist of strong models with a good leadership. It doesn't seem to come together at all right now though. 

And finally Sentinels remain a none factor and joke of an affiliation... Nimrod come and save us! 

Rated Singles events only: 

 

Asgard who? Weapon X take the crown here but of course with only 58 games played. 

Webs remain a force to be reckoned with. 

Black Order have had their great month mostly in rated singles events surprisingly enough. 

Apoc is faring exceptionally well in rated singles. 

Asgard, while not the #1 here are still very good which shouldn't surprise anyone. Thor 1 naysayers have to acknowledge him to be the most successful leader however (but with just a fraction of the games of course).

Red Skull is back with a vengeance? Apparently so but Master of the World is the defacto leader of Cabal nowadays and did very well too. Even Malekith gets to 50/50 here. Sin keeps a positive record which is most astonishing. 

Move over Namor, Steve Rogers is the best statistical Invaders and SHIELD leader (with all of 5 games played)! Here it is even sadder for iTony having played 4 games and only achieving one draw in them. 

Convo played very few games but came out to a positive record in them. 

Criminal Syndicate was very popular and successful with MODOK and Kingpin and very bad with SLDD and Klaw. Without the latter two the affiliation could have probably gained a couple of spots. 

Hulkbuster! Didn't quite reach 10 games but did exceptionally well in the 9 he played. Sam was much better here and Steve was also good getting the affiliation into the top 10. 

Defenders reached a positive record too on the back of Daredevil and some leaderless games while Strange continues to struggle. 

Guardians were pretty much perfectly even. 

Even in rated singles Dormammu keeps his 50/50 record. 

Inhumas drop heavily from their overall stats above. 

Midnight Sons are the most popular affiliation here too but fall to below 50%. 

Storm apparently only performed in rated singles this month where she was still below her average but above 50%. Cyclops had another bad month though. 

Hellfire at #20 is really mind-blowing for me. 

Hydras month was even worse here than above, especially for Baron Strucker. 

Thralls were really popular but not super successful just like above. 

Brotherhood was very much flat out terrible. Let's hope their new release which is just around the corner will give them a decent boost. 

New Mutants aren't really an affiliation yet as mentioned above. 

Spider-Foes couldn't carry their success from overall into rates singles apparently. 

A-Force remains the least played affiliation here. 

With 27 affiliations, many more leaderships including 4 "unaffiliated" ones I just don't really understand why you'd ever go fully unaffiliated in today's game. It worked out 5 times but didn't do in the other 9 games making it overall a statistically bad idea. 

Poor X-Force aren't any better in rated singles than overall. 

And hats off to the players who decided to play Sentinels. It's not like they didn't win any games. Just one third of them when aiming for half is still rather bad. 

Let's see now which characters and crisis cards were popular in January of 2025. This is also only from rated singles: 

So we have 853 lists to gather our data from. I'd really love it if every event forced MCT codes but that's not the world we live in. 

Baron Zemo edges out Shang-Chi cleanly for the top spot while Shang also has 9 more uses than Toad on third. 

None of the names here come as any suprise honestly. 

Hulk appeared to have seen his usage decrease recently but he can claim spot 11 here so that seems to have changed again. The rest here are often staples of their affiliations while also being splashable. Immortal Hulk is not a great splash but really shines in his home of Midnight Sons where he doesn't have to compete with regular Hulk like in Defenders. And Sons were the most popular affiliation of the month. Beast being tied with him probably comes from his many affiliations where he's never the star but never a bad 3 to run either. 

More staples of popular affiliation.  Bobby Drake is finally getting some well deserved table time it seems. 

Werewolf by Night and Ghost Rider often fight for the affiliated 5 threat slot in Midnight Sons and there perfectly even on usage here. 

Crimson Dynamo has dropped quite heavily on usage. Maybe a result of Research Station being restricted (and soon rotated out as we know now).

Brace and Recall are on top of the pack here to none ones suprise. Honestly none of the cards here come as any suprise.

It's gonna be interesting to see which of these will survive the coming rotation and which won't.

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Thank you for reading and Cheers from Germany 🍻