October 26 Affiliation Stats

 

Welcome to the October 26 Affiliation Stats article. As always we start with All Events AE and further down we have Rated Singles Events RSE. Note that the option to choose the newest Affiliations Thunderbolts and Intelligencia were only added to Longshanks today, so there might be a number of games with either recorded as Unaffiliated instead. 

So the first ever Thunderbolts game recorded on Longshanks was a win. Stop now and they'll stay at 100% win rate forever. 

Already 49 recorded games for X-Factor and they have been incredible in their introduction month. I've spent this very evening building my box and am very excited to get them to the table. Both leaders, with Multiple Man being used about double the amount of Havok, have insane 71% win rates to start. I don't expect that to stay that way but it is a big statement to their potential. 

Rumours of Black Bolts demise after the August Updates were greatly exaggerated and he leads the Inhumans to second overall, first among Affiliations with 100+ games. Maximus also chipped in a good performance. 

For Wakanda classic Black Panther has seen a surprise resurgence with an absolutely dominating month. M'Baku was very strong as well while Killmonger Usurper and King T were both pretty close to an even 50/50. 

Pretty high number of games and as expected a lot of success for the Hellfire Club. 

As stated above some of the Unaffiliated games could have been played with Thunderbolts or Intelligencia before they were an option to pick. 

Web Warriors have shifted away from Miles 1 in the current crisis rotation but have found a lot of success with Amazing Spider-Man and Web of the Spider-Verse. 

Like Father like Daughter. Red Skull 3 and Sin had great months for Cabal while Malekith was exactly even and Kang and Red Skull 1 are least weren't too far off of 50%. 

Uncanny X-Men, always in the conversation for most popular Affiliation, lead the month in games played and especially Storm is back to old dominance. 

For probably the first time since their Portals, Soul Strange, Blue Marvel list has run rampant Defenders reach the top 10 and it's mostly on the back of Daredevil here. 

Loki 2 had a really good month for Asgard and has also led the vast majority of their games. 

X-Force with a positive result?! Was Danny Moonstar really the missing piece here? She is absolutely a very good 3 threat so having her affiliated is definitely better than not, but I didn't imagine that it would lift up the Affiliation that much. Importantly as of today the TTC Pretty Sneaky Sis is rotated out and replaced with Covert Operations which is similar but paid for by Cable alone and importantly can affect splash characters. 

Winter Guard, while still not especially popular, are quietly quite decent in the current crisis rotation. 

Blade is back for Midnight Sons with a strong month and a good number of games played. Elsa, after a short high last month, is back to very few games and even fewer wins. 

Corvus has absolutely taken over the role of main leader for Black Order and he went positive but Thanos could not support him enough to get the Affiliation to above 50% overall. But of course reaching an even 50% and being played 204 times in a month shows that the August 26 Updates did a lot for the affiliation. 

For Hydra Baron Strucker appears to have taken over the role of main leader this month and he had a good one, Red Skull 2s was fine but Baron Helmut Zemo could not win a game on 3 tries. 

Mighty Avengers had a perfectly even month.

As did the Guardians of the Galaxy even though Adam Warlock could not reach that plateau. Something doesn't add up in the numbers and quite a lot of Guardians games were recorded as leaderless which I find quite unlikely to actually have happened. 

October was a down month for Criminal Syndicate. Kingpin himself barely managed 50% and no other leader helped him out either. 

For Weapon X Laura Kinney had a good month but Logan did not as much. Here it is quite possible that some games were played leaderless and overall the affiliation just barely missed 50%. 

I'm personally very surprised to see Dark Dimension so low. Maybe the added health is enough to hamper their output enough. 

Spider-Foes were popular as always but they really struggle to get to above 50%. Something needs to happen for them but currently none of the 2027 releases we know of (confirmed) seems to have affiliated pieces. Jack O'Latern, slated to come out right an the end of this year could be affiliated and maybe he'll give them a necessary boost. 

SHIELD with the worst numbers in win and play rate that I can remember. Really not sure what happened here. 

Avengers struggle in the new world. Sam obviously doesn't because he kind of never does but both Steves were pretty far off of 50%. 

Almost everyone has left Apocalypse behind. Competitive mutant players flocked back to Storm and/or Hellfire Club most likely. 

The Update to She-Hulk also doesn't seem to have gotten A-Force the boost that we hoped for and even affiliated Angela doesn't seem enough to get the ladies over the line. 

Brotherhood do have the numbers of games played but have numbers that look worse than before the Updates somehow. 

Sentinels once again with a lot of games but with by far their worst month since the release of Bastion. 

New Mutants might be the affiliation that jumps between top and bottom tier more than any other one. This is of course often caused by the small number of games but noticable anyway. Mirage in her first few games as leader has Not been great. 

All of Thralls of Dracula, Onslaughts Grip and Legion of the Lost show, that a leadership that has everyone in the game affiliated doesn't mean it's a strong affiliation. Onslaught struggles very heavily with above 150 game that he lost 2/3s of. 

And, opposite to Thunderbolts, Intelligencia lost their first ever recorded game on Longshanks. I don't believe they will stay in the bottom for long. 

Rated Singles Events RSE 

As said above Intelligencia and Thunderbolts were only added on the day so it's pretty likely that some of the Unaffiliated games were played under either. 

Black Bolt and the Inhumans were even better in RSE. 

X-Factor was chose able and did very well on their limited games. 

Hellfire Club also dominating in RSE. 

X-Force at #4. Wait what?!? 61% win rate in respectable 52 games. It appears that Mirage really did have a big impact. 

Incredible 74% wins for Black Panther and all of the leaders for Wakanda were at least decent. 

On the back of the LVO win for Nobility Defenders had a great month especially under Daredevil. 

Convocation very popular also in RSE. Also very successful. 

Storm leads the X-Men to #8 even with the wooden block of Cyclops on their leg. 

Only original Red Skull held back Cabal, which had a great RSE month for Red Skull 3 and Sin while Kang and Malekith went 50/50. 

RSE was the better of the two for Mighty Avengers. I don't expect 12 leaderless games to have actually happened for them though as the leadership is the main draw. 

It's not the best crisis rotation for Miles 1 but as an Affiliation Web Warriors are doing just fine with two strong leadership options. 

For Asgard there currently only seems to be one of three options working which is Loki 2 who is also the most popular by a gigantic margin. 

RSE doesn't look as grim for SHIELD as AE did but Nick Fury still had a down month. 

Strucker did well in limited games for Hydra but that keeps the affiliation to an even 50% at least. New and improved Viper probably has a big part in that but Sin and Crossbones being affiliated might also help, though they have little to no synergy with Struckers leadership. A super wide Hydra list is very possible under him now. 

50% wins in over 200 games would be great for most leaders but for Kingpin it is a month below average. And despite the overall excitement about Shadowland Daredevil (monthly reminder that there should not be an S behind Shadowland) with Sin and Crossbones there aren't a lot of games and even less wins under his leadership. But that doesn't even come close to MODOKs terrible month and the 0:3 from Klaw, whose usage in RSE is probably more surprising than his results. 

For Black Order we have the same thing as in AE where Corvus Glaive has taken over the affiliation and Thanos is a niche leader who loses more than he wins. 

We are back to old habits where Midnight Sons could be in the top 10 with only Blade as the leader but a bad month even by her own Standards for Elsa Bloodstone drags them down here. 

Both Spider-Foes leaders have registered perfectly even 50% win rate, which is above their AE performances but I don't think 37 Spider-Foes games have actually been played leaderless. 

Adam Warlock struggles in the rotation and Star-Lord couldn't reach 50% in RSE this month either. Guardians were still among the most popular affiliations though. 

Once again games have been recorded without putting in the proper leader which makes Dormammus personal stats look better than they are. Simply because it is actually impossible to play leaderless Dark Dimension. It can only exist with Dorm on the table. His November 25 buffs seem to not be enough to handle the August 26 Updates. The prevalence of Angela and to a lesser extent (but just as dangerous) Warriors Three and Valkyrie and Elendil might also hurt him a lot. 

6 leaderless games of A-Force don't feel impossible and once we've seen the Affiliations for Sensational She-Hulk it might happen more often that people want to try her there (I'd be quite surprised to not see her affiliated) instead of the leader She-Hulk. Regardless it didn't work out great in RSE. 

For Crimson Dynamo the RSE stats look great but not for the Winter Guard as a whole adding 8 losses and only 2 wins in the 10 games tracked without a picked leader. Depending on the crisis combination it is thinkable to run a leaderless squad but you don't just loose your leadership but also your best model (OK Omega Red might challenge that now) while not gaining a whole lot. Winter Rush and especially Sovereign Strike are great affiliated TTCs of course. 

It doesn't look good in RSE for the Avengers where Sam, as per usual, is the least popular but most successful by a giant margin. Steve and Steve are very far off 50%. 

Logan drags X-23 and Weapon X down even further in RSE than AE. It's always interesting if people actually brought Wolverine as an unaffiliated leaser or if they just chose the wrong Logan when they track a game with Wolverine as the leader. We may never know. 

Almost no one plays Apocalypse anymore. It makes it quite hard to actually evaluate how much the nerfs have affected the affiliation in combination to the buffs to many affiliated models, especially the 4s. There is the chance to a lot of innovation in a previously solved Affiliation but most people were probably bored by them or have seen the nerfs and lost theirs and flocked to currently competitively strongest Mutants in HFC or Storm X-Men (or anything else really). 

Brotherhood on the other hand can have terrible numbers but keeps their loyal fan base through thick and thin (with the latter being the much more frequent for some reason). 

New Mutants have had a down month. Expect them to be in the top 5 in November and last place in December or something. They bounce up and down like no other Affiliation (as said above mostly down to small numbers of games). 

With the stubbornness of one of the biggest villains in the Marvel universe mind melted with Magneto people try hard to make Onslaught work with no less than 114 games in RSE. The win rate is quite terrible though. Onslaught suffers from the same fear of Angela and the other two while not making the models around him better like Dormammu. He probably dies a bit too easy himself as well. 

Mephistos Legion of the Lost also didn't do well but in much fewer games. 

Sentinels gained quite the following this year but this was by far their worst month since the affiliation doubled in size. 

Thralls of Dracula could not win 10 games in 29 tries. This is their worst month ever I'm pretty sure. 

That's it for today. 

Cheers from Germany 🍻