First and foremost, huge shout out and thanks goes to Nevetz. As the creator of Warlords Armada Fleet Builder, he’s the one that made this analysis possible. So show him the love by using his awesome platform as the more users it has the stronger the data will become. If you like his platform and you like this sort of data analysis, then I encourage you to seek out his patreon site.
Privacy concerns: Nevetz did not in any way compromise the identity of any user accounts on his platform. I received only data of the lists themselves devoid of any identifiers that could link them to anyone or any account.
What this analysis is…
This is me looking for trends in the way people build lists. It includes roughly 30,000 lists that have been created since November 2015 through half of June 2016. I scrubbed the data to only look at lists built for 400 points with a bid of no more than 35 points; as I considered anything lower than that an incomplete list as opposed to an aggressive bid for initiative.
This should be treated as another data point similar to what Smmitty has gathered and analyzed from regional tournaments. In fact he is the inspiration for this. After reading his blog post, I thought about how we could expand the sample size to look at the global meta. The next step was thinking of a way to get that data. After about a day of trying to figure out a way to create a program that would scrape the data from list building websites I had the great idea to just ask… 30 minutes later I had all the data I could possibly want.
What this analysis is NOT…
This analysis in no way shows that anything is “OP” or what is the best in the game. There is no analysis of what lists are winning or losing. This is simply what are people building. This of course includes crazy lists to extremely competitive lists built for serious tournaments. Unfortunately, there is no way to separate these. But, I hear you saying that warlords includes an option to mark a list as a tournament list. Surely, you can simple look at those lists right? Well shame on all of you for not using that little feature. With roughly 30,000 lists, the number marked as “tournament” lists is pretty small and nowhere near the size I’d like for a proper analysis. So maybe in the future if more users mark their tournament lists as such, but not as of today.
++Side note of fun++
Props to the person that can guess the exact number of lists marked as “tournament” lists. I’ll be so impressed I’ll even mail you a lollipop.
++End Side note of fun++
At first I wanted to do a gigantic analysis looking at every possible thing and then publishing a behemoth report. That idea quickly died as I realized the amount of work that would take before I could post anything. So I changed tactics and will plan on focusing on a specific question and analyzing the data and posting my findings on a weekly basis.
Going forward I’m going to try my damdest to publish something every week. I also want to hear from you guys what questions you want me to look at and try an answer. Apologies, this turned into quite the lengthy introduction.
On to the good stuff.
Question #1
What is the split between Rebels and Empire?
Pretty evenly split which, to me, is a good thing. It would raise some serious questions if one faction represented a disproportionately large amount of the lists. But, the data seems to imply that people are evenly distributed between both factions and/or perfectly happing creating lists for both.
Although, with Rebels being 4% more than Empire. I found this pretty interesting when compared to the findings of regional tournaments where Empire made a stronger showing. This could be an indication that there is more flexibility in the ways you can create a rebel list versus an empire list or that as a whole people are slightly more inclined to play rebels for fun but not at a tournament level. But with a separation of only 4% it seems pretty negligible to me.
Question #2
What percentage of fleets are people dedicating to squadrons?
For both factions the sweet spot is 15-20% of the fleet, although there isn’t that wide of a variance until you look at lists that only invest 5-10% of their fleet in squadrons. Both factions aren’t too keen on spending 20-40 points on squadrons. But Empire does show a strong surge at less than 5%. It seems to show that Empire players are more likely to be inclined to believe that they can ignore squadrons and focus entirely on ships.
Question #3
Has this changed over time with the introduction of transports?
Yes. Yes it has. Not by a lot, but the change is undisputable that with wave 3 people are building more lists with squadrons. Warlords introduced transports at the end of April. So May is the first full month that people had access to transports on the platform. I expect this trend to continue to tick upwards with the actual release of wave 3. But, I am surprised at the decline in rebels in June.
Question #4
What does this look like when we look at the actual number of squadrons players like to bring to the table?
Pretty self-explanatory. The magic number for rebels is 4 and 6 for empire. With a pretty even spread from 4 to 8. Nothing too surprising. Stronger showing than I expected from fleets that drop squadrons completely.
Question #5
Which squadrons are the most popular?
The lowly tie fighter comes out on top as most popular for the empire. The way to read these charts is that 40% of lists that had squadrons included at least 1 tie fighter. Very strong showing for Major Rhymer. This seems to lend support to a lot of anecdotal evidence that while Rhymer may not be “OP” there is very little reason not to include him in any list that includes fighters.
Where is the love for YV-666? Mark of the beast got a lot of you spooked I guess. Less than 1% included the poor ignored slow yet tanky fighter.
Switching to the rebels some pretty interesting findings. First, X-Wings are king followed by A-Wings. One trait that I noticed that was different from the empire is the very distinct separation of rebel squadrons into three different tiers or buckets. While the empire had a pretty linear decline from most popular to least popular the rebels have a tiered structure that strongly favors only two fighters before steeply dropping off to the next tier and then dropping off again to the poor forgotten and ignored bottom tier made up of rebel bombers.
I was surprised to see that people like Dengar and Jan Ors while their generic counter parts are met with a collective shrug. Also, looking at Dutch, how many lists fielded the famous Y-Wing bomber without his trusted side kick Wedge? Not many. Of all the lists that included Dutch, 74% of them also included Wedge but only 53% of lists that have Wedge also included Dutch.
Question #6
A deeper dive into Major Rhymer.
With the strong showing of Major Rhymer I wanted to see who he was most often paired with. Not a big surprise that Rhymer lists almost always had bombers followed by Advances followed by Dengar. Classic Rhymer ball goodness.
Again, the poor YV-666 gets no love.
Questing #7
Do Empire lists field bombers without Rhymer?
No, not really. Looking at lists that included at least a single squadron with the bomber trait a full 72% also included Major Rhymer. I feel this is the biggest support that if a list has a bomber its most likely got Major Rhymer to go along with it. After looking at this I have to agree with the anecdotes people have been posting that there is no real reason why you wouldn’t include Major Rhymer. All benefits with no will opportunity cost.
Well everyone, that’s all I got this week. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know your thoughts and what you want to see in the future.
