There were many many store championships not recorded. And many more that don't have the elim rounds unfortunately. So its helpful but just keep that in mind. For example, I won 5 events with the same list and I think maybe 1 is actually on there.

Stmack, do you also happen to have record of the lists that didn't win? Otherwise it's hard to see how much things like popularity and ship availability are affecting the numbers. Is a ship winning because it's an effective ship or it's just being taken a lot? Most likely it's some of both, but to what degree?

There were many many store championships not recorded. And many more that don't have the elim rounds unfortunately. So its helpful but just keep that in mind. For example, I won 5 events with the same list and I think maybe 1 is actually on there.

Well feel free to send me any info you have, I can only keep track of what's reported either in threads or on listjuggler or a few sites I track (I tried joining like 20 regional facebook groups to get results but it was all noise).

Stmack, do you also happen to have record of the lists that didn't win? Otherwise it's hard to see how much things like popularity and ship availability are affecting the numbers. Is a ship winning because it's an effective ship or it's just being taken a lot? Most likely it's some of both, but to what degree?

I don't and it's out of scope for me right now. I do have 2nd place tracked for the vast majority of the tournaments and so there's the opportunity to compare final table matches. I'm kind of of the mindset that the only research worth doing is on what's in the upper tiers of tournament play, if it's not something you're likely to run into after the cut then it's not necessarily what you should be designing your list around to beat, which was the original intention of the site.

There were many many store championships not recorded. And many more that don't have the elim rounds unfortunately. So its helpful but just keep that in mind. For example, I won 5 events with the same list and I think maybe 1 is actually on there.

Do you have any reason to suspect that the store championships not being recorded were structurally different than those that were recorded to suggest a reason why the sample may be biased?

There were many many store championships not recorded. And many more that don't have the elim rounds unfortunately. So its helpful but just keep that in mind. For example, I won 5 events with the same list and I think maybe 1 is actually on there.

Do you have any reason to suspect that the store championships not being recorded were structurally different than those that were recorded to suggest a reason why the sample may be biased?

One limiting thing is that I find I'm mostly able to only find data on tournaments from english speaking countries since they use these forums. There's a few resources (like starfightersitalia.com) I've found but otherwise I'm in the dark for a lot of them. I think these cases are important as they have a good chance to have metas evolving different ways as they're more of their own distinct groups.

Added Wins by Points Spent (ie Initiative Bids), roughly 70% at 100, 20% at 99 and 10% at 98 or lower

And Wins by Points Spent on Upgrades, which kind of peaks at 21 but is pretty all over the place.

Imperials only won 38% of their tournaments?! Looks like the Phantom Menace was overhyped and then badly disappointing!

Well the Phantom was the ship with the 5th most appearances, only 1 behind the Falcon and then unsurprisingly behind Bs, Zs and TIEs, definitely wouldn't count it out there. Whisper was actually in over half of all winning Imperial lists.

So 2 ship builds are dominating? Very interesting

Very much so, less is more apparently in the tournament format.

This is because of the MOV scoring. If they changed it to add half points for half of the ship destroyed this would change a lot. By adding all these big ships FFG has made it math worthy to play them, because unless you kill them you get no points for them. Hopefully, some day they will fix this issue.

Imperials only won 38% of their tournaments?! Looks like the Phantom Menace was overhyped and then badly disappointing!

Well the Phantom was the ship with the 5th most appearances, only 1 behind the Falcon and then unsurprisingly behind Bs, Zs and TIEs, definitely wouldn't count it out there. Whisper was actually in over half of all winning Imperial lists.

So 2 ship builds are dominating? Very interesting

Very much so, less is more apparently in the tournament format.

This is because of the MOV scoring. If they changed it to add half points for half of the ship destroyed this would change a lot. By adding all these big ships FFG has made it math worthy to play them, because unless you kill them you get no points for them. Hopefully, some day they will fix this issue.

I completely agree. But I would also add that in the grueling 6+ round endurance contests of the larger tournaments (which have come into being now that the game has grown in popularity), only having two ships to manage is something nice in and of itself. When your brain is mush, it is much easier managing dials for 2 ships rather than 5, let alone 8.

Imperials only won 38% of their tournaments?! Looks like the Phantom Menace was overhyped and then badly disappointing!

Well the Phantom was the ship with the 5th most appearances, only 1 behind the Falcon and then unsurprisingly behind Bs, Zs and TIEs, definitely wouldn't count it out there. Whisper was actually in over half of all winning Imperial lists.

So 2 ship builds are dominating? Very interesting

Very much so, less is more apparently in the tournament format.

This is because of the MOV scoring. If they changed it to add half points for half of the ship destroyed this would change a lot. By adding all these big ships FFG has made it math worthy to play them, because unless you kill them you get no points for them. Hopefully, some day they will fix this issue.

I completely agree. But I would also add that in the grueling 6+ round endurance contests of the larger tournaments (which have come into being now that the game has grown in popularity), only having two ships to manage is something nice in and of itself. When your brain is mush, it is much easier managing dials for 2 ships rather than 5, let alone 8.

I think the REAL perk of 2 Ship lists is you have less ships for the enemy to SHOOT at. One of the downsides of playing something like Fel + 5 Ties is that even if Fel arc dodges and runs for a round, the Ties are too numerous and slow to ALSO avoid incoming fire. Meaning, throughout the whole game, it is very easy for your opponent to always have shots with ALL ships, so the arc dodging you DO with Fel has no impact on total damage mitigation, but only on Fels individual mitigation. In fact, because of situations where you fall behind, Fel might be forced to take risky moves to make up for the 30 pts you spent on him that are better spent arc dodging, which can ultimately lose you the game.

Take Deci + Phantom, for instance. It is not hard to take both of these ships out of most, if not ALL incoming fire, while still providing damage yourself. It then becomes easy to gain an advantage since you get to lay down more damage a turn than your opponent. The 2 ships get the advantage BECAUSE they both can avoid incoming fire, and thanks to Turrets, can provide the all important FOCUSED fire that is required to quickly kill ships. Swarms and slow ships spend the whole match relying on dice and jousting.

On top of this, there are ships that can shrug off tons of red dice being thrown at them. Phantom, Corran, and Fat Han can negate lots of damage that would go into hull, unlike swarms and other large small shop builds that use their bulk hull to pull out the win.

In summary, the 2 Ship meta is dominating because there are finally multiple ships in each faction that can arc dodge and still provide focus fire without too much loss to damage. It's really that the upgrades and ships have finally gotten to that point more so than them gaming the system.

I must add, in my experience 2 Ship builds that make the top cut tend to pull out lots of 100-0 victories, I think more often than swarmy builds, so the MoV they deny the opponent by limping off at 1 hp would only help the player that already lost who has a Swiss seeding right on the edge of making the cut, which I think doesn't make a WHOLE lot of sense to change, since the MoV is really just for tie breakers after counting tournament points. The 2 Ship build player that beat that player and made the cut would STILL make the cut, and since he has proven he can beat said player, the MoV that might be provided due to a 1 Hp Fat Han limping away is unlikely to affect the final tourney outcome, at least in my opinion.

Nah, the biggest perk of two ship builds is the last thing you mentioned: the complete lack of partial scoring, a pretty horrible oversight in the game's competitive rules imo

If you even leave a single hull on a decimator, you're not getting **** out of those 50+ points and your opponent will probably win. A couple of bad dice will end with the fattie coming out on top, because no amount of skill will stop it from firing without stranding it on an asteroid.

and that's why turrets can go die in a fire

Aye, but what about the games where 3 or 4 tie fighters limp off at 1 hp and pull out a win 48-30 against a full HP Soontir Fel? Should there be partial scoring for those small ships as well? It doesn't make sense to limit a partial scoring rule to big ships only, which could totally neuter them, and it is still possible that it won't "fix" anything, since the partial scoring for small ships at low life could still leave that 1-2 hp large ship with a win (though that DOES depend on how you define it). If people want the partial scoring, it need to be explored in depth to cover all possibilities. My guess is that some other ship archetype (high agility?) will just come out on top of the game instead.

It also makes sense that the scoring system is as it is. Your high value pilot still being alive, even though the ship is battered and bruised, is STILL alive. A Bounty Hunter going after a bounty doesn't get payed until the job is done, even if the target limped off with a broken leg. A mission to assassinate the Emporer is still failed if the Emporer only loses a hand.

Partial scoring will just open up weird avenues. For MoV, I maybe can get behind partial scoring, since tie breakers affect such a small portion of each tournament. However, partial scoring to determine a match win doesn't make much sense to me.

I looked over your stats stmack and it felt like info was missing, and I just figured out what it is. Could you also included stats weighted by how often that ship is brought? For example, it's one thing to say that Whisper was present in more than 50% of imperial wins, but what does that really mean? It would mean one thing if Whisper was present in 90% of all imperial lists, and quite another if Whisper was only present in 10% of all imperial lists.

Aye, I think Phildo has it correct. 2 ship build domination isn't nearly so much to the scoring system as those 2 ships tend to be very slippery or very survivable (Mr. Horn), dodging arcs and not getting a lot of return fire. Almost every one of these builds has at least one, if not 2, large base turreted ship with engine upgrade and a high PS.

@Hero, wish I could but I don't have full list data recorded from tournaments. It can be hard enough tracking down just the top 1-4. I'm still of the mind that if a new player brings a list like Paul's double droid Han list that it shouldn't get docked points just because they weren't able to fly it as effectively as he did at Worlds. Therefore I prefer just to focus on lists that place.

There were many many store championships not recorded. And many more that don't have the elim rounds unfortunately. So its helpful but just keep that in mind. For example, I won 5 events with the same list and I think maybe 1 is actually on there.

Do you have any reason to suspect that the store championships not being recorded were structurally different than those that were recorded to suggest a reason why the sample may be biased?

No, just saying a lack of data points overall. Still very helpful information and the list juggler is an amazing tool. I just wish TOs were a bit better at using it EVEN when they use cryodex, and are told about the juggler etc. It just seems like you leave the event and it never makes it up there. Or it does but lists don't get entered or something. The list I used is extremely effective, and others have tried it, but rarely do well with it so it won't really be a blip on the statistics radar.