August 26 Affiliation Stats

 

This one's going to be very interesting. Of course there are some games from early August before the giant update included here but the vast majority of games have happened after them and we can see some early tendencies of their impact. 

As always we start with All Events AE and further down we look at Rated Singles Events RSE. 

Ugh I think my dislike of Unaffiliated is well documented but it appears someone has found something that works very well. It has become much harder with all the Peerless additions would've been my guess but that's apparently not true at all. 

Now it gets interesting. Buffs to many core members, surprisingly including Emma herself, were bound to push Hellfire Club back up and they actually pushed them right back to the top. It's always been an extremely strong leadership and now Emma is a top tier 4 threat in her own right while mainstay character Omega Red also saw a glow up (as did basically every other character on the affiliation list). 

Mighty Avengers have gotten an Updates Steve 2, She-Hulk and Ant-Man and it seems like that has helped them a lot. 

New Mutants have a second leader (not requiring a TTC) on their way finally but are already doing great right now. 

SHIELD somehow dodged any kind of tune downs in the update even though they would've been very warranted continue their reign of terror. They can now even include Steve Rogers, Captain America as a decent option for an Invaders leader. 

Many people are excited by the Killmonger Usurper update and it very much shows in the stats. Not only has he been played more than an other leader of Wakanda, he's also been the most successful with an incredible 64% win rate. M'Baku wasn't far behind either so all the buffs to the other characters have evened out the small King T nerf. 

Weapon X at 6?! (That rhyme was not intentional 😅; it was brought to my attention that in English it doesn't actually rhyme just when you pronounce the X in the German way. Sorry for the confusion 🙃) Personally I didn't think the update to the leadership would make a ton of difference but the 102 games played have proved me wrong as it seem. But it is pretty obvious that the 4 threat leader options have fared a lot better than X-23 even though she also was almost 50/50. I'm not sure if 5 games were actually played with (unaffiliated) Wolverine as the leader or if people just clicked the wrong name on Longshanks. (In case you didn't know: Are You Sure You Want To Remember can be played by any James Logan Howlet so all versions of him can be the leader of Weapon X even if Wolverine isn't affiliated with the squad he is leading then; I haven't seen anyone trying out Weapon X the character as the leader here but that would also be possible). 

Inhumans have had to readjust their play style and list building a bit but it ended up being more of a side grade rather than a down grade I think. They are still great and should remain a top 10 contender for the most part. 

Peter Parker lead Web Warriors swing to an all time high in win percentage! Spider-Verse and Miles also have at least 50% (which is a bit below their personal averages) so overall Web Warriors are alive and well even if they didn't get as much in the update. 

Criminal Syndicate remains extremely popular, though almost exclusively under Kingpin, who as usual put up by far the best numbers as well.

Is Magneto really back? In terms of games played there can be no doubt about it and he actually did lead the Brotherhood of Mutants back into the top 10 in August, with Mystique posting good numbers as well. 

Hydra had both their main leaders see nerfs (though with Red Skull he also gained a bit with his push now being both sizeless and any direction) and 3 threat Baron Zemo is basically a non factor now, because Baron Helmut Zemo will most likely be in every Hydra squad you play, and they still posted good numbers. Vipers glow up make her the Zemo replacement and Sin with a Crossbones is a serious consideration now to control prio. 

Winter Guard still aren't super popular but their updates seem to have helped them a bit at least. 

WTC isn't too far out so I have to practice what I'm going to play there but if that wasn't the case I'd jump right on to the Corvus Glaive Leadership Black Order train as many people seem to have done as well. And with decent success at that. 

X-Men are always popular but August has seen especially high numbers of games for all three leaders with Storm now being back in the top spot we were used to for many years. 

Convocation got a new toy in Wanda and got a boost in play rate but not so much in win rate yet. 

Midnight Sons with their best month in a long time. It's cool to see Elsa creeping closer to 50% and Blade has a far better Werewolf now making the 5 threat Splash a bit less important.

It's the last month ever that we will see Hulkbuster listed as an Avengers leader but he should see the table as a model far more now. Sam was great as per usual but both Steves need a bit of time to adjust as it seems. 

Doc Ock with a good month but Green Goblin couldn't keep up and drags the Spider-Foes to slightly below 50%. It's still an uptick from last month though. 

Doctor Strange got a buff, Blue Marvel dodged a nerf and Peerless but of course Shang-Chi got reigned in a bit. So overall what many consider the strongest list in the game is pretty much still intact but the numbers for Defenders and Doctor Strange were never great as the list only functions on specific crisis combinations. 

A-Force have gotten a decent amount of buffs to core models chief among them Angela and a side grade to She-Hulk (plus the very meaningful buff to 4 physical defense making her better overall) but it hasn't been fully figured out just yet it seems. 

Guardians of the Galaxy didn't get a whole lot in the update. Angela is now a very decent option and with 7/7 Agent Venom has stolen back his spot from Yondu in my roster but maybe the biggest improvement on any (non Angela) stat card doesn't have any impact on the actual game: the card art for Rocket. 

Angelas third affiliated home Asgard follows the other two right after. Maybe we are overvaluing her improvements 🤔

Some had a fear the rebuffed Thor 2 would brake the game again but his damage output is way less still than on release. He is a good 6 threat again but not the be all end all of the game as he used to. 

Legion of the Lost are very happy the Peerless on Mephisto was a mistake but the weren't popular or successful before and they still aren't now. 

I'm very happy to see Sin cruising to a 59% win rate in a decent 57 games but considering just how many buffs the affiliated characters got Cabal had a very disappointing month overall. Maybe they did crutch on Zemo 1 and Red Skull 2 too much before and have to figure out what to do now. 

Sentinels were already designed with the updates in mind and didn't get anything aside from a couple more health on already tanky Cassandra Nova. They were still very popular but couldn't find too much success. 

Dark Dimension was probably hit the hardest by the addition of Peerless to many characters they crutched on. Chief among them Red Skull 2 whose Grunts helped keep up on VPs while Dormammu shoots up the table. It might take a while to get a good Dark Dimension list rolling again. 

Servants of the Apocalypse were hit hard in the update and the claims that it was too much now have some data to support their case. I feel it is also a phase of re evaluating a previously completely solved faction. It will be interesting how it looks in a couple of months. 

Thralls of Dracula's strength before the updates were to be more durable than the opponent. That is now not that much the case anymore and they couldn't turn it into a lot of wins either. 

X-Force awaits the new X-Factor Box to give them some kind of boost. Stamina increases to some of their models didn't have an impact. 

4 games is basically nothing but early testing with Onslaughts Grip wasn't successful at all so far. 

Rated Singles Events 

Unaffiliated again? Really? OK... 

Hellfire Club was even better in RSE than AE and are definitely a force to be reckoned with. 

Not changing Namor was a mistake. Double bubble is alive and well it just costs a threat more now which is not enough to end Namor SHIELDs reign of terror. And Nick Fury was also good. 

Maximus had a stellar month and Black Bolt seems completely indifferent to the change to his leadership. 

Mighty Avengers also in the top 4 in RSE. 

Amazing Spider-Man is the driving factor behind a strong Web Warriors month here in RSE as well while Web of the Spider-Verse fails to make 50%. 

In Wakanda it is even more clear cut who the best leader was in RSE and it is once again Killmonger, Usurper. He is very high on the list of most improved models, even if his leadership now needs a forum errata to work as intended (currently rules as written you keep the herb token on a dazed model and still get to hand out 3 new ones next round. There are only 3 physical tokens so to me the intend is clear that you only get to hand out the other two while the 3. Just stays on the model that was dazed, but that's not how it would work right now)

Winter Guard climbs all the way to number 7 with a good month, though low numbers of games. 

Black Order at 8 is already a big surprise but probably the bigger one is the 54% win rate on Thanos as well as Corvus. 

Storm drags Xavier and Cyclops to a top 9 spot with her 55% win rate and the other two not sinking the X-Men ship for her. 

New Mutants fill out the top 10 in RSE but stayed below 50 games played. 

Once again the 4 threat lead the charge for Weapon X for an overall good month for the much maligned Affiliation. 

Terrible months for both Shadowland Daredevil and MODOK can't drag the Criminal Syndicate to below 50% because of Kingpins dominance. 

Decent month for Hydra despite the leader nerfs. 

The RSE numbers for Brotherhood of Mutants are sadly decidedly worse than those in AE but Magneto was still able to reach 50%. 

Defenders numbers are actually a little better in RSE and surprisingly Daredevil beat out Doctor Strange by a little. But of course in far fewer games. 

Dark Dimension had a better RSE month than AE so there might be hope for Dormammu to stay competitively relevant. 

A-Force get very close to 50/50 in RSE. 

Asgard has gotten a huge popularity boost from the updates but it didn't really translate into any real success even if Loki 2 could reach 50%. 

Avengers got a great month from Sam as you'd expect and both Steves could at least see the line for 50/50. 

Almost 400 RSE games for Guardians despite not getting a lot in the updates but it didn't translate into much success. 

Convocation still find their new identity with Wanda and could not quite make 50% but they definitely were popular. 

Spider-Foes get a pretty good month from Doc Ock in RSE but a pretty bad one from Green Goblin. 

Very high play rate for Sentinels but it didn't work out super great in RSE. 

In Cabal Sin was even better in RSE but none of the other leaders could manage 50% with Kang having an especially bad month. 

No good news in RSE for Midnight Sons where neither leader came close to 50%. 

Neither Thralls of Dracula nor Legion of the Lost had good months in terms of play or win rate. 

And now for the big one: Servants of the Apocalypse were downright terrible. 37% isn't a bit worse than before it's a 20% drop. They definitely needed to be toned down but the combination of nerfs might have been too much. We will need more data to get to a final conclusion. 

X-Force has been in the cellar for a long time and can only hope a new Member and a pretty automatic dual Affiliation will help them out. 

I don't know how, since he's not released yet, but there has been a single RSE Onslaught game and it was a loss. 

That's it for today. 

Thanks for reading and Cheers from Germany 🍻 

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