So, last weekend saw some of the world's best players slap each other in Copenhagen. But, not every player was able or legally allowed to make it to this competition and there were many other competitions. One of the bigger competitions in the US, Second Wind in Chicago, also happened over WTC weekend and drew in 61 players to compete for the top spot at the event. Today, we will look at the top four lists and the stat breakdowns to look at possible trends in the US meta!
The Top Four Lists
The winner of the event was Zach Cohen piloting Guardians of the Galaxy. I have had the pleasure of playing Zach several times and I can say the man knows how to guard a galaxy like no other. It is always a good time and a tough fight and I think to this day that I have yet to defeat him. But, we aren't here to sing his praises; here is what he took:
| Characters |
|---|
| Star-Lord (Peter Quill) |
| Nebula |
| Rocket Raccoon |
| Groot |
| Agent Venom (Flash Thompson) |
| Beta Ray Bill (Bill) |
| Angela (Aldrif Odindottir) |
| Cosmic Ghost Rider (Frank Castle) |
| Captain America (Sam Wilson) |
| Hulk (Bruce Banner) |
| Team Tactics |
|---|
| Crew of the Milano |
| Deadly Duo |
| Foreign Assignment |
| Brace for Impact |
| Sacrifice |
| Eyes on the Prize |
| Fall Back |
| Marked for Death |
| No Matter the Cost |
| Recalibration Matrix |
| Crises |
|---|
| Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest |
| Infinity Formula Goes Missing! |
| Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due? |
| Research Station Attacked! |
| Fear Grips World as "Worthy" Terrorize Cities |
| Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership |
One of the things I have always hated as I fight Guardians (at least...after their faction rework...) is their ability to run a minimal core and still have room for big death machines who get even more terrifying when you give them rerolls through leadership. It also doesn't help that pretty much all of the Guardians are fairly solid model wise and Cosmic Ghost Rider is affiliated so giving him Crew of the Milano to take away status and prevent it from being reapplied is massive. Guardians can bring a gunline while holding objectives that deals a massive amount of damage or have units running around or holding objectives well with fairly decent defense. Guardians are much like they are in the comics and movies, a versatile group of misfits who work together through pluck and hip thrusting to win the day. I just wanted to give a shout out to Zach and say congrats on your hard fought victory!
Second Place went to Kurtis Osborne piloting the following Hellfire Club list:
| Characters |
|---|
| Emma Frost |
| Beta Ray Bill (Bill) |
| Rhino (Aleksei Sytsevich) |
| Crimson Dynamo (Dimitri Bukharin) |
| Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) |
| Lizard (Curtis Connors) |
| Spider-Man (Miles Morales) |
| Black Cat (Felicia Hardy) |
| Luke Cage |
| Okoye |
| Team Tactics |
|---|
| Brace for Impact |
| Sacrifice |
| My Hellfire Club |
| This is a Robbery |
| Heroes for Hire |
| No Matter the Cost |
| Eyes on the Prize |
| Fall Back |
| Recalibration Matrix |
| Mission Objective |
| Crises |
|---|
| Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate! |
| Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 |
| Infinity Formula Goes Missing! |
| Fear Grips World as "Worthy" Terrorize Cities |
| Struggle for the Cube Continues |
| Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership |
While I am not familiar with Kurtis, I am more than aware of the durability and flexibility of a well-piloted Hellfire Club list. One of the things I can appreciate about a good Hellfire Club player is the timing it takes to maximize a good Emma turn and the skill it takes to implement it. Nothing screams an out of the norm list to me here, though I play my HFC a bit more aggressivley that he does. But, then again, I didn't just take second at one of the US's largest and longest running MCP tournaments, so why would you listen to me about HFC?
Now, I am going to do third and fourth place together, because I am so damn happy about it.
Conan Jennings Inhumans
| Characters |
|---|
| Black Bolt (Blackagar Boltagan) |
| Captain America (Sam Wilson) |
| Cosmic Ghost Rider (Frank Castle) |
| Crimson Dynamo (Dimitri Bukharin) |
| Crystal (Cyrstalia Amaquelin) |
| Medusa (Medusalith Amaquelin-Boltagon) |
| Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) |
| Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff) |
| Toad (Mortimer Toynbee) |
| Ulik |
| Team Tactics |
|---|
| Brace for Impact |
| Can I Borrow That? |
| Eyes on the Prize |
| Fall Back |
| Inhuman Royal Family |
| Mission Objective |
| Patch Up |
| Recalibration Matrix |
| Smash |
| Terrigenesis |
| Crises |
|---|
| Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due? |
| Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest |
| Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse |
| Alien Ship Crashes in Downtown! |
| Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? |
| Research Station Attacked! |
Dillon Byrne Winter Guard
| Characters |
|---|
| Crimson Dynamo (Dimitri Bukharin) |
| Omega Red (Arkady Gregorivich Rossovich) |
| Ursa Major (Mikhail Ursus) |
| Darkstar (Laynia Petrovna) |
| Red Guardian (Nikolai Krylenko) |
| Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) |
| Hulk (Bruce Banner) |
| Red Skull, Master of Hydra (Johann Schmidt) |
| Nick Fury & the Howling Commandos (Nicholas Fury, Sr., Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, Gabriel Jones) |
| Bullseye (Benjamin Poindexter) |
| Team Tactics |
|---|
| Advanced R&D |
| Brace for Impact |
| Sovereign Strike |
| Winter Rush |
| Comrade's Keeper |
| Vertical Assistance |
| Eyes on the Prize |
| Fall Back |
| Recalibration Matrix |
| Smash |
| Crises |
|---|
| Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due? |
| Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest |
| Mayor Fisk Vows to Find Missing Witnesses |
| Research Station Attacked! |
| The Montesi Formula Found |
| Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership |
That is right folks. Your eyes do not deceive you. That is, indeed, the Inhumans and Winter Guard taking 3rd and 4th respectively. Conan Jennings and Dillon Byrne took these newly buffed factions and ran them right to the top of the ranks. It warms my heart to see new factions getting top spots and shaking the meta up a bit, even when those lists surprise me in some ways.
The Stats
Second Wind had 61 participants in the tournament, which is massive for MCP and I am glad we are able to get so many players competing at one time. But with so many players come different perspectives and trends on the game. Meta shifts based on where you are and what you are expecting to encounter. I think that this is an important place to note this. Stats are great to understand trends in a game's macro-space and are good to see what a large swatch of players are taking when we look at events like this one, LVO (which I feel is going to be a monster of an article when it is time), and WTC, but it may not be as effective when you are trying to come up with a plan for your local space. If no one is playing Crime Syndicate in your local meta, then that 54% win rate means nothing as it doesn't apply to you (until you or one of your locals decide to become the whole problem that is). So, take these stats with a grain of salt and look at them for what they are: trends.
Another Note: I have divided all numbers by number of players in attendance. I am limited by what Longshanks shows me, so there may be a small +/- to the numbers due to lists not being submitted in a particular format or individuals possibly not submitting a list at all (we should all be submitting our lists people).
Another Another Note: 5 individuals didn't submit lists properly. Thank you to Vincent Curkov for bringing this to my attention! (Seriously, check out his channel. It has great stuff on it)
Factions Taken
Avengers being the most represented faction at this event does not surprise me. Sam has always been strong and we just got a new shiny leader for the faction with the new core box release. What does surprise me is the lack of top tier factions such SHIELD and Guardians of the Galaxy making an appearance. I mean, poor SHIELD only had 2 players!
But, 4 Winter Guard players is more than I have ever seen in person, much less at an event, so I am glad to see the faction on the rise.
Character Stats
Well, well, well, I feel like we are playing "OOPS ALL BILLS" the boardgame. Beta Ray Bill stays a dominant force in MCP list building, and it really isn't too tough to see why. He has consistent power generation, has above average defenses with an on-demand damage reduction to 0, has displacement, aggressive to keep him in the fight, and a slew of immunities all at 4 threat. He is not difficult to splash in lists that are looking for a solid all-rounder and makes Eyes on the Prize plays easy to pull off with his base and movement. Next in line is Crimson Dynamo, Wong, Black Cat, and Pyro rounding out our top five units taken. What was very interesting to me was that in our top 10, only 1 6 threat was taken. I find this interesting because I have heard for a while now that 6 threats and above are completely overpowered and are not good for the game as a whole. But it seems that the number of 6 threats that people are actually taking is low, with only 34 instances of a 6+ threat showing up in rosters. That means, and again, I may mess this up since I do not do math for a living, that 5.57% of the roster space was taken up by 6+ threats (34/610). Now, this is a bit skewed as the data I acquired from Longshanks for the event only shows 528 units taken. I am sure that 2 of the units or more were in the "taken 1 or less" category and I am certain that some people didn't submit their lists in a format that Longshanks could recognize for data, but even if we do 528 as our base that is still only 6.4% of the total field. I look forward to analyzing the data for the 6+ trend more as I know it is a topic of heated debate in the competitive community.
Characters Taken by Threat
Our kings and queens of the hill are as follows:
- 8 Threat: Thanos can be pretty much expected at this slot always as the only other 8 threat we have is Dormammu and, well, he is Dormammu...
- 7 Threat: The Immortal Hulk comes in at our king for 7 threats and, oddly enough, our only contender. I reckon the Malekith nerfs made people shy away from him pretty hard and it may be a while before we see the Doom Kitten again on competitive tables.
- 6 Threat: Hulk takes another slot with his 6-threat incarnation. He is tough to take down, hits exceptionally hard, is more mobile than he seems, and brings great control to your boards.
- 5 Threat: Amazing Spider-Man swings into the top spot of 5s for this event as his glow-up makes, what was an already durable model, near impossible to kill under the right situations. I am glad to see Pete coming in as a top tier model and pick.
- 4 Threat: Hey ya'll, it's Beta Ray Bill.
- 3 Threat: Black Cat and Pyro share this spot. We have talked about Cat before with her newfound durability and her ability to easily hand out Staggers to slow opposing aggressive. Pyro does something similar with his Flame Wall, but for superpower inhibition and slows. Pyro also hands out creeping ignite status, which is fantastic for attrition teams look to hit a bit harder.
- 2 Threat: Wong is one of the best low threat support units. He gives out power, he heals, and he removes status. The removal of status is huge as it allows threats and extract carriers to continue doing their job with a lower chance of being inhibited by Shock, Stun, Stagger, or Ignite.
Team Tactics Cards
Brace for Impact is still one of our top dogs when it comes to TTC inclusion and, as I stated in the last article, damage control is premium in MCP as healing is also at a premium, so any way to reduce that damage is great. Fall Back, X-Ceptional Healing, and Sacrifice do similar things and are near the top of our taken Team Tactics Cards for this event while aggressive options like No Matter the Cost are in the minority of the top ten. It looks like MCP is still about safety first with Eyes on the Prize and targeted defensive tech over all out aggression.
Scenarios
While the Team Tactics Cards were about defensive measures and controlling damage, our top 10 scenarios seem to be a bit more aggressive in nature. I don't think there will be a time where we don't see some of the staples of the game gone such as Hammers, Gamma Waves, or Scoundrels as top dogs in the game. Poor SWORD base is still bottom of the pack, and I am wondering if it will ever have its day in the sun.
I hope you have found all of this data useful and interesting. I look forward to our next big event to look and see if any of these trends have changed. If you have any requests for future blog content, please don't hesitate to post down below!
Till next time Webslingers.
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