September 26 Affiliation Stats

 

Welcome to the September 26 Affiliation Stats article. The first full month with the August 26 Updates in play. So let's not waste any time and dive into AE (All Events) first and RSE (Rated Singles Events) further down.

Wakanda rules the world on the back of incredible months from classic Black Panther, M'Baku and Killmonger Usurper, who has taken the mantle of most played leader by a mile. Only King T leadership struggles. 

The White Queen of the Hellfire Club shows what I have been expecting: some buffs to a couple of affiliated models (including herself of course) and they will be top tier again. September shows that August was no fluke. 

Convocation got a huge popularity boost through the inclusion of Scarlet Witch (the objectively best Avenger is the movies 😉) and can boost almost 300 games. About three times their usual in the months prior. They are also very very good. 

Mighty Avengers have gotten some more minor but impactful buffs (a big one for Steve 2, but I'm not sure that he's run in lists now) and importantly no nerfs to Blue Marvel which combines into a 4th place finish. 

Weapon X make a surprise trip into the top 5 and that mostly led by unbuffed X-23. 

Criminal Syndicate was even more popular in (and successful) than usual with especially Shadowland Daredevil seeing a big resurgence. Is it on the back of Sin and Crossbones? It seems very likely. But if course there are multiple affiliated characters that got buffs as well. 

What is this? Bizzaro World? Miles Morales in the low 40s but Peter Parker led Web Warriors are the most popular and most successful? Interesting times that we live in. It's very much down to the Crisis Rotation, showing just how impactful that is.

Guardians rival Criminal Syndicate and overtake Web Warriors in games played with the vast majority back to be led by Star-Lord. I played them in our local tournament last weekend and that will have been the last time I did for quite a while now. 

Bizzaro World continues in SHIELD, where the defacto Leader of the Affiliation, Namor, had a subpar month while classic leaders Nick Fury and Invincible Iron Man step up to keep them in the top 10. 

What is the most popular Marvel team? X-Men. And they are good again so it's absolutely no surprise to see them top the rankings in games played. And if Storm wasn't dragged down by Cyclops (and less so Professor X) she'd be in the top 3 overall.

Some people have apparently found working Legion of the Lost rosters. More power to them, I guess. 

Corvus has clearly taken over as the main Leader of Black Order which makes a ton of sense as he's much cooler and the leadership, after it's update and the inclusion of Nebula in the Affiliation, just does a lot more work. Thanos is also not completely unrelevant with all the buffs to the BO models as well. They are very firmly back on the menu. 

Inhumans have been declared dead and buried after their leadership change and then went on to win Nashcon. Our local Inhumans player also went 3:0 at our event last weekend. So there is definitely still something there. It has gotten harder but certainly not impossible. 

So close! Elsa with a best month ever after her nice Update and with a much improved Werewolf almost reaches 50% and the Affiliation as a whole can manage exactly that. 

So does Unaffiliated. 

New Mutants miss the mark by one game. It's going to be interesting how much Mirage will change the Affiliation. 

Exactly 100 Hydra games where heavily buffed Helmut Zemo and nerfed (he himself arguably side or even upgraded, but the nerf to the Grunts and Peerless reduces his power level) Red Skull 2 do quite well, but Strucker, who had to lose his best thing on this card due to the sins of Baron Zemo (3 threat), could not keep up. 

Daredevil actually had a positive win rate which Doctor Strange could not achieve for Defenders. 

Winter Guard hasn't really changed that much. They do the same basic thing they've always done but are just a tad bit more efficient at it. So they remain decent but not great overall. 

It's not looking good for either Steve Rogers in Avengers at the moment but Sam keeps them at least close to the 50% mark. 

Asgard absolutely exploded in popularity and of course there is a lot to like here: the Stater Set came out, Thor 2 is back, Angela got a huge glow up, Valkyrie and Elendil have become even better and so have the Warriors Three. It hasn't taken them back to the top yet but Loki going 50% in over 300 games played is a good sign for the Affiliation. 

Speaking of popular: the buff to Magneto has brought a lot of people (back) to Brotherhood. Win rate is not as good though. 

Cabal also boosts a ton of games with an interesting distribution between the leaders. Red Skull 1 had the most games played but only Red Skull 3 went positive. 

Games played for Servants of the Apocalypse have absolutely plummeted. They already lost most players before the Updates and the nerfs have not brought many of them back. 

Spider-Foes enjoyed another month of high play rate with a pretty even split between Goblin and Ock, but neither got to 50% or better. 

A-Force has not seen an improvement to their win rate despite many buffs to affiliated models and the change to She-Hulk. 

Thralls of Dracula enjoy that their models got even tankier but don't like that, that is also true for most of their opponents. The crisis rotation is also not their favorite I'd say, with the many P2Fs and Sources taxing their power economy making the leadership harder to use. 

Despite almost reaching 400 games played again, Sentinels had a very disappointing month. They could barely manage to stay above 40%. Everyone else getting tougher is just not good for them. 

Speaking of bad months, Dormammu and his Dark Dimension had their worst month since his November 25 update by a mile. It's probably a similar issue for them as for Sentinels, where everyone else getting tougher makes it harder for them. But of course Dark Dimension can take anyone so they could stock up on buffed models themselves. Hasn't worked out great in September though. 

Oh X-Force... A few affiliated models got a bit of extra Stamina but nothing has majorly changed to help them. Weapon X seems to be the better option if you like your characters to have claws for hands. 

And finally Onslaughts Grip, in their release month, had pretty terrible numbers. I would teach patience here though. It will take some time to figure out the way to go with him and I expect his numbers to rise. Not to a top tier level, but definitely above 30%. 

And with that we can shift our focus to Rated Singles Events (RSE) 

Hellfire Club is here to stay. Their RSE month has been even better than AE resulting in a first place finish. 

Wakanda, again with all leaders except for King T (who costs them first place with his terrible month), absolutely dominated. 

26 RSE games make it hard to have any great conclusions about the state of New Mutants but someone has success with them, which is nice. 

Convocation do have the numbers to show that Jeff 'Toast' Troast was always right and Wanda being affiliated does help a lot. They are a force to be reconnected with. 

Web Warriors have a great month as a whole and just like in AE it's Amazing Spider-Man leading the charge. Web of the Spider-Verse put in good numbers as well but Miles has problems at the moment. 

Unaffiliated won 6 of their 11 RSE games. Yay? 

In much more interesting news: Shadowland Daredevil is back with a vengeance with a 60% RSE win rate (in a fraction of the games Kingpin has led). Maybe the strong month will have Sam finally fix the name in Longshanks 😉

Overall Criminal Syndicate has been strong which is not a surprise. 

X-Men, on the back of Storm, are rising back to the top. Nate from Alfredo's won Second Wind with them, AtB Jamie has won multiple events during the summer and we should expect them to show up in force at WTC. And if people would, at least in RSE, stop trying desperately to make Cyclops work they'd be in the top 3 with ease. (But don't take that literally, play what you like. I also find it more fun to make a worse team or leadership work decently than taking the best and making it even better. Personal preference matters)

Blade with a 55% win rate and Midnight Sons in the top 10. That fills my heart with joy and I will just claim with no prove whatsoever that it's because Werewolf and Elsa Bloodstone were buffed 😅. 

Servants of the Apocalypse in the top 10 in RSE? But they are supposed to be dead and buried? Of course 41 games is hardly definitive evidence to the opposite but it shows that you can still win with the Affiliation. 

Guardians have been popular in RSE as well but here it has become even clearer that Adam Warlock has taken a backseat in games played. Both leaders stayed above 50%. 

RSE numbers for Defenders are better than AE by quite a bit, but still not near the top. 

For Weapon X it's the other way around, but them getting to 13th in RSE is still good. 

For Inhumans we see that less people were so brave to bring Maximus as their leader and Black Bolt also showed that his changes don't mean it's a bad leadership now. Medusa did struggle. Having a leadership that triggers if dazes and KOs of course does not like the majority of the game to get tougher. 

A perfectly even month for Winter Guard in RSE is honestly a pretty good result for them overall. 

Avengers could not get to 50% in RSE as well but he Steves have changed places compared to AE. Sam, as usual, was the most successful in the least games played. 

Corvus led Black Order was pretty popular and did reach a very respectable 50%. Thanos drags the affiliation to below 50% overall though. 

Helmut Zemo could not carry over his AE success into RSE and Hydra overall wasn't great, though Red Skull 2 did manage a positive outcome. 

SHIELD has plummeted down quite a bit, even though Invincible Iron Man put in a great month. More people have tried Steve 2 as the Invaders leader now but it didn't work out great. And surprisingly Namor was also rather bad compared to his average win rate. 

For Cabal it's once again only Red Skull 3, who stays above 50%, but at least all the others were above 40% so there's hope. 

Despite only leading about 1/5th of the Brotherhood of Mutants games, Mystique helps lift them up to 47%. Magneto as a model is now very good in a vacuum, but he appears to still struggle with the crisis rotation. 

Legion of the Lost getting in 40 RSE games is a win in and of itself for them. 

Despite a rebuffed Thor 2, Angela and all the others Asgard didn't end up winning at least half their games. In theory they should be well adapted to the double tax of Pay to Flips and Source Extracts but I think in practice it hinders them too much to make use of their superpowers and spenders. 

A-Force are pretty unchanged in win and play rate after the Updates. The meta shifting more and more towards higher threat crisises being the most taken should in theory be good for them but the opponent of course also gets more toys to deal with them. 

Sentinels need to adjust to the new world. 

Spider-Foes maybe needed more than just health updates. A big quality of life improvement I was hoping for would've been that Sandman gets at least one Grunt back for free after dazing but it was not to be. 

X-Force is an Affiliation that exists in Marvel Crisis Protocol. I'm really out of words for them. 

Dark Dimension at 37% is a big surprise. You'd think with almost everyone getting better the "take everyone you want" Affiliations would get a boost, but the opposite happened: 

Thralls were even worse and Onslaughts Grip had a terrible start to their RSE career. No where to go but up for all three here. 

That's it for today. 

Thanks for reading and Cheers from Germany 🍻