Hello there! I was originally planning to do a guide to the new mission, First Contact, but honestly, I do not feel like I have enough experience with it yet to do that guide justice. So, instead of grinding games on First Contact, do you know what’s faster? Creating a big spreadsheet with every single list and game from the 2025 world championships and mining that for data. Yes, today we will be diving deep like a submarine, deeper than my previous top 8 article, to see what lessons we can learn. Granted, there will be an update soon in May which will shake up the meta, but I still think there is still useful information in the worlds data. I am tentatively planning to do another deep dive after LVO in October, so simply having a prior data set to compare to will be pretty useful.
Note that all data is based off the Longshanks entries for Adepticon and may not be 100% accurate. Full list information was not available for a couple players. This will affect the numbers for secondaries and supports very slightly. Luckily, for missions, I was able to deduce what everyone brought, even if it was not listed with their registration.
Let’s dive right in!
Bring Rate
A total of 101 premiere lists were brought to Adepticon across the two heats. As such, each character could have appeared 101 times. I am defining bring rate simply as times brought divided by possible times brought (in this case 101).
For the primaries, it’s no surprise to see Iden and Kanan near the top. They are the two big meta monsters. Seeing The Mandalorian at #1 is a bit surprising, but I guess that makes sense. Full Mandos are popular because they are a strong, flexible list and because they’re cool. Furthermore, Mando himself can fit in other, non-Mandalorian lists as a splash piece. Ki-Adi is quite notable here, since he really broke onto the scene at Adepticon. Coming out in February, he hadn’t seen enough table time yet to make it into my meta review article, but he’s clearly a force to be reckoned with.
The secondaries are not too surprising, mostly correlating with the top primaries. Hask was sometimes taken without Iden, which I’d expect. However, I am a bit surprised to see Ezra coming in at 29% when Kanan is at 31%. It’s hard for me to split those two up, and I think even non-Kanan rebel lists should probably be rocking Ezra. His tiebreaker is so nice! He doesn’t move friends out-of-activation (OOA) or have diceless displacement, but there’s no standout rebel secondaries who do.
We have a very clear top 4 when it comes to supports. Basically, it’s all the best stuff from the three most fleshed-out factions (RIP Separatists). I think Rebel Commandos taking the #1 spot is partly a reflection of them being good (they’re made of paper, but their attack is solid and Infiltration is very good) but also a reminder that rebels simply lack good alternatives for two body supports. Similarly, ARF are by far the best clone support and fits into every Republic list since they’re 3pc. Darks are very strong and ISF are brought almost exactly as often as Hask.
Not Brought
Yeah, not much to say here. I’d say all of these units are generally regarded as pretty bad or relatively niche. I’d expect/hope some of them get touch ups in the upcoming balance pass (I think Third Sister was called out during the panel as someone getting looked at).
Pick Rate
Due to the nature of premier events, each player will only play half of their squads each round. I’m defining pick rate as the number of times a squad was played divided by the total possible times it could have been played by those who brought it. For example, if Unit X was in three players’ lists, and those players played a total of 20 games, and Unit X was played 5 times, the pick rate would be 25%. For the figures below, I’m only showing units brought a minimum of five times.
Remember that the average pick rate should be 50%, since half of the units brought are played each game. As such, the numbers much greater than 50% are the most eye-popping. For example, people who brought Han really wanted to play, him! Out of a possible 25 games, he was chosen 19 times. Even if we remove a certain someone who played Han in 8 of their 9 games, his pick rate was still 69%, nice enough to retain the #1 spot across all units. Clearly Han is an acquired taste (his bring rate was only 6%).
Vader lovers clearly wanted to play the Dark Lord, seeing as both versions cracked the top 5 for primaries. I’m curious to see if Darth Vader, Fallen Master will follow a similar trend. Chewie and Bossk highlighting secondaries is a bit of a puzzle for me. Neither one seem like they’d necessarily be lynchpin units, but here we are.
Dark Troopers win the award for being the most picked unit, totaling 110 games played. However, they were also brought a lot (they could have been chosen 201 times). As such, they “only” get #3 for supports when it comes to pick rate.
Cut Conversion Rate
I’ve got to toss this in, even though it can be an iffy stat when it comes to premiere events. Conversion Rate is calculated as the number of players with Unit X who made the cut, divided by the total number of players. For context, 32 players made the cut at Adepticon (16 from each heat).
To filter out some noise, I decided to set a minimum 8 games played for these figures. Otherwise, for example, Talzin and Savage would both be at 100%, even though only one player brought them; they were picked once (first round), and lost that game. A minimum of 8 games isn’t much, only once per Swiss round on average (there were four games in each of the two heats), and means the unit was probably taken three or more times with good results.
Well, the primaries are a lot of familiar faces except one (and it’s blue). Of the seven players that brought Thrawn, five made it through to the cut. Now, it is worth noting that his pick rate at the event was significantly lower than the other primaries in the top 5 (only 35% compared to over 50% for the others). Thrawn’s win rate was a stellar 70% pre-cut, though he was winless in three games post-cut. Perhaps that means better players can effectively play around Thrawn, or perhaps he just got a few bad matchups. The sample size is too small to draw solid conclusions.
For secondaries, Obi2 is the standout. Six players made the cut out of the eight who brought him. Obi2 won 80% of his games in Swiss and 60% in the cut. Not too shabby! Clearly, the middle-aged hermit still has some (mind) tricks up his sleeve, but will he survive the balance pass in May?
When it comes to supports, the message is clearly that single body supports are overpowered! Three of the top four on our list are rocking just one character. I’m sure there is no other reason those units had success …
Win Rate
I thought long and hard about whether or not to do a Swiss vs. cut breakdown on the win rates. Ultimately, I decided to lump it all together. The reasoning here is that the sample sizes get quite small, and thus quite noisy, once you get into the cut. I counted 229 games played in the event overall, but only 31 in the cut. Of those 31 games, many units were only played maybe once or twice. If you want to know what performed well during the cut specifically, then check out my top 8 recap, or keep scrolling to the next stat (which is focused on wins in the cut). Of course, mirror matches were removed, since that drags win rates closer to 50% and disproportionately affects more popular units. Once again, I chose to filter for a minimum of eight games played.
It warms my heart to see Plo Koon topping the primary win rates. Granted, he was only played in nine games (6-3 ain’t bad) and he didn’t do anything in the cut, but as a long-time Plo bro I’ll take what I can get. One issue with Plo now is that he occupies a similar (yet distinct) role as Ki-Adi-Mundi. Sure, you can take both (and I have, it’s fun), but I worry about the in-activation speed/mobility of that team in struggle 1, especially on Odds and First Contact. Some buffs to clone troopers in May (501st and 212th were both called out) could really help Plo, though a 212th buff also helps Ki-Adi a lot since he loves the easy access to pins.
Another standout from the primaries is Vader. We’ve seen a consistent trend in pick rates, cut conversion rates, and now win rates where Vader2 is outperforming Moff. At LVO we saw Moff/Iden dominate as the preferred Iden pairing, but Adepticon swapped that around. From what I’ve been told by more experienced Iden players, the Vader2 version is probably favoured in the mirror, so it makes sense that’s the direction players went. A strong showing by the Stormtrooper Sergeant is certainly correlated with Vader2’s rise.
Similar to cut conversion rate, Obi2 is a big winner when it comes to win rate. Mind Trick is still an awesome ability that can completely change games. The existence of Ki-Adi-Mundi also opens up some interesting list building options for the man in (or I guess, out of) hiding. As noted, May might not be kind to Obi2, but he wasn’t called out specifically in the panel so he might dodge changes.
For the supports, I don’t have too much to say except Bounty Hunters and Padawan Learners are definitely higher than I would have expected.
Latest Win
This is a metric I’ve been very excited to look at. As noted, some numbers can be funky due to the format of premiere. The idea here is to look not at how far a certain unit got, but rather how far they got while still winning. I didn’t separate out wins in swiss (rounds #1 through #4) because, compared to the cut, the round number in swiss is less correlated to level of competition. A game in round 4 of swiss could be between two 3-0 players or between two 0-3 players, or anything in between. All units that were brought and are not pictured won at least once somewhere in the swiss rounds.
Primaries
It’s nice to see Anakin on the good side of this list! Ki-Adi definitely gave him some new life, and it’s great to see a main character getting on the table more. We’ve already got some teasers that Anakin is getting buffed. Assuming he still loves killing (probably a safe guess) I’d think the Ki-Adikin combo is here to stay.
As noted previously, Talzin went 0-1, which isn’t awful. Ahsoka went 0-3, which is a bit more sad. As someone who would love to squeeze some revenge into my Republic lists, I definitely wish she was a bit better. Luckily, she was one of the characters specifically mentioned to be receiving buffs in May!
Secondaries
Honestly, nothing too surprising here. I guess Kalani not getting a win is maybe a lit bit unexpected, but Separatists didn’t have a big showing and Kalani was only played twice. I have also believed for a while that he’s the second best super tactical droid, but this really isn’t enough data to say “I told you so.”
Supports
Once again, nothing too crazy here. We see less variety in supports compared to secondaries and primaries, but I’d say that’s to be expected.
Wounds
Dang, those numbers are extremely consistent between Swiss and the cut. I double checked my formulas (formulae?) and they all look OK. It’s very interesting, though I’m not sure if there’s much I can say about the consistency. We do see that winners average a little under one wound more than the losers. However, the winner is out-wounded about a quarter of the time. Shatterpoint is definitely not a game that’s solely about wounding, but it does help. Of course, it’s very, very important here to remember that correlation does not imply causation. Simply out-wounding your opponent is rarely enough to win a game on its own.
Objectives
These are the stats I was most interested in, so I’m saving the best for last. Sadly, Longshanks does not record who was the first player, but I do know the objectives each player brought. As such, I wanted to look at what happens when players played an objective different than the one they brought. For example, if two players who both brought Never Tell Me the Odds play against each other, I’d assume both are going to be pretty well suited for the mission. But if someone who didn’t bring Never Tell Me the Odds has to bring it, how did they fare?
It was a pretty even spread for the objectives that were brought, with Sabotage Showdown having a bit of an edge. This makes sense to me because there are some lists that are very strong on either Odds or Shifting, so you may want to avoid that if you fear a mismatch.
Yikes, looks players who brought Shifting struggled a bit to make the cut. Only 23% of them made it through compared to about 35% for the other two objectives. But wait, it gets worse …
More yikes! So, to be clear, when a player who didn’t bring Shifting had to play it, they won more often than the player who did bring Shifting. The win rate for non-Shifting players playing Shifting was a whopping 61% across the entire event. Sabotage and Odds both favoured the player who brought the objective, to varying extents.
I think these stats are a good reminder of the second player advantage on Shifting. Going second (scoring first) on that objective is quite handy. Players who played Shifting but didn’t bring it were almost certainly the second player in those games. Now, I’m not saying you should never bring Shifting as your mission. As a Kanan player, I was definitely more worried about playing Iden lists with Shifting than those with Odds. However, I’d say proceed with caution when it comes to picking Shifting.
Remember – now that we’re only looking at the cut, the sample sizes are smaller and noisier! For example, Shifting was only played twice by players who didn’t bring it. Those players went 1-1, which is better than the overall data, but I’d say the sample is too small to draw many conclusions. What is staggering is the stats for Odds. Out of twelve games, players who played Odds but didn’t bring it won only three times. As we say in the top 8 review, three of the top 4 players brought Odds. It’s still a small sample, but LVO had similar trends from what I can tell. To win tournaments, I think you need to be good at Odds, and I think First Contact might skew things even more. Of course, more discussion on that when I get around to the guide!
I also took a look at the average number of struggles played for each objective. Nothing too notable there, it was 2.7 for Odds and 2.5 for the other two. I’ve made a bunch of figures already, so let’s skip that one!
Wrap-Up
Well, I enjoyed that! I hope you did too. Much like my annual tier lists, I think data like this gets more useful when we can compare it over time. As such, I’ll try to do this more often! After all, I know that I have the Excel workbook, it should be much easier. Keep an eye out for another deep dive down the road. Until then, is there anything I missed? Did anything else catch your eye with the 2025 World Cup stats? Let me know!
