First of all a short disclaimer. ITS Data is available through OTM's open API for everyone who wants it. I haven't checked with CB if this is intended or not, but the corresponding video hasn't been taken down in the week it is out, so I guess this is fine. Overall this is just how games are handled these days, WR and statistics are usually available to the public, so this is nothing out of the ordinary. None of the credit for the tool used to display the data goes to me, everyone who wants to check the video here it is. (beware, it's in German) @psychoticstorm would be great if you could verify that. There are several parts to this 1. Playing consistent is what makes for a good player. You don't realistically win larger 5 game tournaments with less than 12-15 TP. 2. Placing well or winning several tournaments in a row with a Faction and list prone to freak accidents (for example your TAG getting oneshot) and very bad matchups. It simply gets harder the more games you play. Playing something that performs more consistent is an undeniable advantage, even a small advantage adds up quickly over the course of 5 games. Haqq is a good example for something that just falls a little short of the top - on a good day you can beat everyone, on a bad day your low BS, single attempt Chainrifles, Jammers and Daylami Panzerfausts will just not always stick when you need them to. 3. You can deploy terrible with a list suited very well to the mission you play and can deploy perfect with a terrible list. That will affect your individual game, but given enough samples doesn't affect anything else. 4. Sometimes dice in general or the table just screw you, it happens. If you bring an S7 TAG that can't really find Cover anywhere that can be a problem. Which again is why we should look at larger sample sizes. OTM has a lot of ITS matches recorded to draw from. You can pull a tierlist from the open API if you know what you're doing (someone did and wrote a very nice non public tool to put everything into a readable format). It's not a secret, our Warcors made a video showing some of that Data, and there is enough in it to crossbreed a tierlist based on average TP and tournament win percentile. @Lieutenant For now here is a Tierlist for ITS10 Data based on average TP earned per game: 1. ALEPH 1.69 2. OSS 1.57 3. Tohaa 1.54 4. Varuna 1.51 5. Combined Army 1.50 6. Shock Army of Acontecimento 1.43 7. Neoterran Capitaline Army 1.40 8. Ikari Company 1.39 9. Starco, Free Company of the Star 1.38 10. USAriadna Ranger Corps 1.37 Tartary Army Corps 1.37 Jurisdictional Command of Bakunin 1.37 13. Invincible Army 1.36 14. Caledonian Highlander Army 1.35 15. Jurisdictional Command of Tunguska 1.33 Onyx Contact Force 1.33 Steel Phalanx 1.33 18. Ariadna 1.32 19. Japanese Seccessionist Army 1.31 20. Nomads 1.28 21. Imperial Service 1.26 22. Haqqislam 1.25 Hassassin Bahram 1.25 24. Yu Jing 1.21 25. Qapu Khalqi 1.21 26. Shasvastii Expeditionary Force 1.20 27. Military Orders 1.17 28. Morat Aggression Force 1.15 29. Force de Response Rapide Merovingienne 1.14 30. PanOceania 1.10 31. Jurisdictional Command of Corregidor 1.02 32. Druze 0.98 For anyone who cares here is ITS9&10 combined. Changes have happened, but the overall trend seems to stay the same. You can see a bit of flux here and there and Vanilla Aleph definitely seems to have gotten even stronger with the OSS additions. Starco had a rather big change I assume mostly due to their small sample size. Not to say that overall stats shouldn't be taken with a grain of salt. Most of the human Vanilla Factions tend to have above average amounts of inexperienced players (accessibility through Icestorm and Red Veil make that the most likely scenario) and they're probably a bit better than the stats say they are. Other than that, the top dogs are a clear cut above even the midfield, relative to that most of the bottom feeders aren't that far below. CB has the same data sample that was used for this, so I expect we can expect more surprising rebalancing results like Bolt CoC for PanO and the Tohaa Symbiomate nerv in the future.
That's not really "playing consistent," is it? That's just "roflstomping people." Getting 5 minor victories means not winning, in most cases; in fact, it means doing worse than someone who had 4 majors and a loss. Which is unfortunate, because in my opinion the 5 minors is more impressive.
And yet that's what you need to bring it home once you get close to 40 people. Last time I got 12 points in a tournament of that size it only got me 3rd. That also seems to be the size where you get 2 top tables with 4 people who can potentially take the win last round. As usual it always depends on the missions, a lot if them are rather swingy and it's not that hard to score a major win. Not to mention that any given tournament has its fair share of participants who joined for fun or the experience and aren't really expecting to win. Sometimes you just get a good matchup in game 5 and have to stop killing stuff before your opponent enters Retreat. 2 of the tournaments I've been part of were won by a 15 points clean sweep, so that happens. Definitely is impressive, don't think I've ever had more that 14. I've definitely had roflstomps, there was a game 3 vs CA with us both sitting at 6TP. Fairly obvious Sphinx list, only possible Lt was a Camo Marker in his DZ Prone on a roof but fairly accessible by a ladder. Killed the Lt, and most of his Orders, the Spjinx revealed ate all his Command Tokens and failed BTS against an unopposed Flashpulse ARO. Game ended 10-0, 340 surviving points to 340 killed, including Baggage, with the Sphinx possessed on top of that. We know each other and had a good laugh about it. A match like that doesn't teach you much other than that obvious Lts are bad and a table really impacts the game more than you'd think. There was another game with me on the receiving end of Ikari with SoF and 8 Yuan Yuan drop ins. All of them stand the landing, Posthuman HMG and Achilles go down in 1 Order each to a Rui Shi and the game goes downhill from there. Only Aleph tournament loss so far, still a hillarious game against a fellow club member. So what does all of this have to do with playing consistent? A lot actually. While I took a beating against a list relying a lot on RNG, my Aleph is still 12-3-1 over 3 tournaments and I'm confident they perform when I play my part properly and don't make mistakes (Aleph being Aleph is definitely part of that, they compensate for a certain amount of bad decisions). A freaky game here and there just happens. You're very much welcome. Was about to do that for myself anyway. If I can talk the guy who wrote the tool into allowing me access, I'll definitely put together more of these that go a little more in depth and factor in more than just one data sample. Since it has happened till now it seems like no one gets in trouble for this, although I'd prefer an official comment on that. I'll certainly do more of these depending on how much I can access. For instance I'd love to know how Vanilla Factions are doing for veteran players or what the performance of lists built around specific pieces looks like. The data also includes a variety of other interesting stuff like pick rate for all troops.
I find it REALLY interesting that USArf and TAK are nearly at the same rank. While not as fancy as TAK, USArf does seem to have everything it needs to preform consistently well.
High, where? Invincible 13th ISS 21th Vanilla YJ 24th I would consider those "very mediocre" rank scores.
I suppose I should have prefaced this by noting I have very low standards for what I consider ranking good...
I'd certainly be interested in looking at the data JUST for the top 100 ITS players, for example. And looking in more detail at the data for specific sectorials, etc would also be interesting.
Same Problem as the Vanilla Factions I assume. TAK has a big box and is more accessible to beginners together with Vanilla. That should have given it a little dip relative to USA. For Ariadna you should also keep in mind that this is all ITS Data. I have the suspicion Ariadna doesn't do that well in Limited Insertion (which is by far the most used optional format at the moment). If I had seperate numbers I'd show you the comparison to back that claim up, for now it's nothing but an educated guess. For unlimted 300 points ITS all Ariadna Sectorials and Vanilla should be a bit higher up. TAK and Vanilla Ariadna has a recent influx of new players who might skew things a bit compared to USA. This doesn't matter much for OSS and Vanilla Aleph apparently even new players are doing very well with either of them. I guess the good options here are obvious and easy to handle, while using fragile Camo and Impetuous troops is harder to grasp. You can get the stats for Major Win/Minor Win/Tie/Loss for a lot of Factions and Sectorials from the video, they click through a lot of them (on top of my head including MO, Morats and the top rankers). Filtering by players is possible but there are privacy concerns. I wouldn't recommend posting anything that isn't metadata.
It would be interesting to drill down and, for example, look at the results only from events with no optional format as well as just the Limited Insertion or just the Soldiers of Fortune events.
I think limited insertion is SO popular precisely because it screws over the typical order spam strategy of Ariadna. Because if your not playing order spam you hate it. :P I think OSS and Pano sectorials have a similar advantage in that their strategy is often to straight up smash their opponent so playing them is more straight forward for new players than toolbox/order spam armies.
Not really, its more that order spam tends to limit your options since everyone feels the need to bring at least 14 order lists to compete against it. Taking an elite 10 man army into an order spam filled tournament is a true test of skill. Hence, limited insertion is popular because it allows everyone to see army lists that otherwise would not be taken.
That was unexpected. Might just be that my meta is weird, but taking such a list tends to be so jarring to people it actually becomes rather simplistic to succeed at times... Okay, I can see promoting more creative list building as being a fair enough excuse.
It wasn't the shock of not being used to the format itself, it was people being jarred by the fact their opponent brought a SCG list in a non LI tourney. This has actually won me at least one match so far, by sheer fact that my opponent did not expect to encounter a list with a single combat group. T:
People often underestimate single combat lists. They require experience and skill to play but they often feel like a sledgehammer compared to order spam.
I can agree on them being underestimated very often. Though I would not say they are like a sledgehammer... they're more like a solid cement block, honestly. Not sure if they require THAT much experience and skill to play though... I mean, I near-exclusively play SCG lists and manage to do decently well... and I am FAR from a skilled or experienced player.
