Welcome back to the world of numbers, troopers. Since February is the month of love, I am going to talk about data because I love it, along with my family, of course. Just a brief reminder about how the graphs are being compiled: data is collected from Longshanks after filtering for rated, singles events. The data is further refined by removing mirror matches, which can suppress our view of how each faction is performing.
First up are the current overall win rates for each faction (Figure 1). In general, we have been in a steady-state meta since the launch of 2.6, with armies that can field higher activations having higher win rates. This was first demonstrated when 2.6 launched, and GAR had several under-costed units, allowing them to reach 12 activations with high killing power. After the initial post-launch update, Rebels and CIS have shown consistent positive performance with their ability to reach twelve or more activations. With recent points decreases to Dark Troopers and other units, along with the upcoming release of thirty-five-point Imperial Probe Droids, it will be interesting to see if Empire lists are able to further close their win-rate gap with other armies through activation padding. It will also be interesting to see if new missions in Battle Pack II introduce objectives that are better suited to lower-activation armies, such as missions requiring contesting objectives instead of controlling them.
Figure 1: Faction win rates since the Star Wars: Legion 2.6 update
With Longshanks, we can investigate how each faction performs versus the other factions and look at which objectives they perform best on. These results are summarized in Tables 1 and 2 below. My overall reading is that the factions are close to balanced, with CIS having a small advantage over the other factions. This could shift easily with points adjustments and new releases that narrow the spread. Shadow Collective does not have the same level of play as the other factions, and so while it is not performing well, it is hard to determine how significant that data is currently. Regardless, the upcoming releases of the Weequay Pirates and WLO-5 Speeder Tank may boost their win rates and the battle force’s popularity.
Table 1. Faction head-to-head win rates
Table 2. Objective performance for each faction. Each row is heat mapped by color to show best and worst performance.
Before we look at the remaining data, we first need to examine the relative popularity of each faction so we can contextualize their performance. Looking at the data, we see fairly even popularity among the four factions, with GAR slightly ahead of the others, likely owing to new players joining the Republic as their entry point into Legion.
Figure 2. Faction popularity since the Star Wars: Legion 2.6 update
Now that we know how popular each faction is, we can look at how the factions are performing at events. The first graph we are going to look at is the percentage of X-0 or X-1 finishes for each faction as a portion of all X-0 or X-1 finishes, with each requiring at least three wins since the recent points update. This gives us a view into the game that most competitive players experience regularly, which is local three-game, one-day events. What we can see is that these results largely mirror the win rates, with CIS and Rebels overperforming. Notably, GAR and Empire have similar effectiveness compared to their popularity
Figure 3. Faction popularity (x-axis) vs each faction’s percentage of all winners/top finishers
Shifting from the current competitive scene, we are next going to look at the top tables at multi-day events. There have only been a few of these events since the November update. Of these events, CIS has had five lists that went 5-0 or better, Rebels have won two, and GAR and the Empire have each won one event.
Figure 4. 5-0 or better finishes for each faction separated by update periods
Looking at how the factions have done at winning events since the start of 2.6, we see a much more exaggerated version of the current meta, with CIS significantly outperforming their popularity and Empire significantly underperforming. Interestingly, Rebels and GAR are near their expected performance, with each faction having spikes of overperformance in one period but overall performing as expected.
Figure 5. Faction popularity (x-axis) vs each faction’s percentage of all 5-0 or better finishes
Wrapping up this article, I wanted to highlight a few lists that finished 5-0 since the last article. Windy City Skirmish had two 5-0 finishers, with Kyle Dornbos running a Wheel Bike Grievous list and Tristan Britt running an Operative Luke/Jyn Erso/Cassian Super Fleets squad. The Katooni Open was won by Aidan Patterson running a Dooku/Kalani/Bug list. CANCON in Australia was won by Peter Lyons running an “oops, all Super Tactical Droids” list. All these lists are shown below for readers who want to use them for their own list-building ideas. Notably, every droid list still brought double Aqua Droids despite the recent price increase, and all but one featured the new custom Super Tactical Droid.
Windy City Skirmish Top Lists
Katooni Open Winner
CANCON Winner
