GENCON stats

Saw this and as a stats nerd wanted to jot down a few thoughts about it.

Stuff that I expected:

Warmachine is still outperforming hordes. Mostly because they have more options. Warmachine factions are able to build more varied lists in a multilist format and have slightly more broken stuff that has managed to slip through from MKI. It's not a big difference but you see it whenever you see data for these things. It's also more noticeable at higher points and this was a higher points con than normal.

Menoth dominated. They are the best jack running faction and the meta is shifting towards jacks. They've always been top tier but the new releases are helping them edge up even further. Still 7/16 players who qualified for masters (so 7 of the top 16 players for the weekend) were menoth players, that's a lot. They also took out masters.

Trollbloods did well. They can crack ARM and though they are the most infantry heavy of the hordes factions their infantry is generally high ARM not high DEF so the new infantry removal stuff doesn't work so well on them.

Circle did well. They struggle a bit to kill colossals but with circle's tricks they don't need to.

Legion did not do particularly well. Not particularly bad either but Legion is generally a top tier faction. That said they don't really have a way to kill colossals and stuff that can kill colossals will obliterate Legion heavies, I expected them to drop down a bit in the standings.

Mercs, Minions and Ret still struggled. Mercs are actually really really good at low points. At 35 points Mercs are top tier. At 50 they struggle, most events were 50 points and masters was 75 points. Minions and Ret just lack options.

Skorne did average. Skorne is a hard faction to get around but the top skorne players do win a fair amount of tournaments (unlike Cygnar which has not won a major tournament in mkii).

Stuff that was different than I expected:

Cygnar did terrible. Cygnar normally struggles a little bit, the faction used to have some problems that I believe the stormwall goes a long way to solving. I expected a lot better out of Cygnar, will need to wait for more results to see if Cygnar are still going to struggle or if the Stormwall really does push them into the top tier.

Khador did really well. Cryx did well too (though not quite as good). I had expected both factions to drop down the standings now that the meta was shifting towards jacks. These two factions are the infantry factions, I expected the amount of stuff out there to deal with infantry would push them down a notch. Again it might just be that the new stuff hasn't made it into everyone's lists yet.

The player who came second played a mountain king. At masters. At the final at masters. It was Flanzer so I don't know if that counts. I want to go through his lists (I have them) when I have time.