That is indeed a good indicator too, there are several factors behind this, that been said, a big player count and a consistently good score instead of an average, like for example N4 Nomads, is something worth considering. There is always to consider the Morat example, they are a really good and strong faction, but for me they are so because they are the ideal new player faction, and such factions are good to have around.
I agree that’s a lot of the problem is the very good low-end troopers they have. Some should not even exist in vCA. There are 26 different hackers they can choose from. The Dartok should NOT be in vCA for instance. Of those, 7 of them have pitchers, 10 of them are under 25pts. 5 of them under 20pts. I also think they shouldn’t have Exrah hackers at all. They also have a lot of characters (11). Which matters because characters are also Veterans for the classified deck. Of those characters, 6 of them are specialists, and 3 of those are hackers. As mentioned in OP the Daturazi are too cheap. They should not cost only a point more than a Varangian.
To be fair, I made a comparison to Yu Jing. YJ because I feel they are a pretty middle of the road faction. I think Nomads would have been closer to CA for number of specialists. Ariadna the worst maybe. I would need to actually look up both and don't have the time. Note, some troops are AVA 1 but have many to choose from. Doc Worm for example is AVA1 but has 4 to choose from. Both have troops like this. You can see that CA has 34 specialists under 25pts. It's true that Yu Jing has some good expensive specialists. However, so does CA. Combined Army Specialists 8 FO (7 under 25pts.) 3 ENG (6 under 25pts.) 2 CoC (0 under 25pts.) 1 Doctor (4 under 25pts.) 4 Medic (4 under 25pts.) 26 Hackers (10 under 25pts.) 13 Special Operatives (Not counting Commlink troops and TAGs) (3 under 25pts.) 34 specialists under 25pts. 29 Elite 7 Veteran 32 Character options (17 also specialists) 4 TAGs Yu Jing 10 FO (5 under 25pts.) 7 ENG (4 under 25pts.) 7 CoC (2 under 25pts.) 2 Doctor (2 under 25pts.) 4 Medic (2 under 25pts.) 21 Hackers (8 under 25pts.) 13 Special Operatives (3 under 25pts.) 26 specialists under 25pts. 28 Elite 33 Veteran 12 Character options (5 are specialists) 3 TAGs
Out of pure boredom during this heatwave I combed through the 17 tournaments on ItD to check how well CA, its Sectorial Armies and select other contestants performed on those Tourneys. And to no surprise the CA was on top of every metric I checked. Most players, most Top 10 placements relative to all listed players, most wins in absolute and relative Numbers, and so on. The sample size with 17 tournaments is a bit small and might not be representative of the whole world but it shows a trend.
Thank you for that little piece of data! I still think the easiest fix would be to limit CA's bottom end a bit. Make Imetrons, Ikadrons, and Daturazi all AVA 1, make it harder dor them to fuel their apex pieces.
Easy is not the same thing as good. For the Daturazi, reduciung AVA to 1 when it's a 4 model box (and expensive to boot) doesn't sit right with me, considering also that most people will deploy 2-3 at most. HOWEVER, I think limiting profiles would work better, for example leaving only the Combi Rifle ones (+4 points over the usual Chain Rifle + smoke grenade). Same thing with Imetrons and Ikadrons, since CB repackageed them from a blister of one of each to a box with 2 of each... Revising the Ikadrones would be better, I think, since they cost 1 point more than any other baggage bot, go into a S2 instead of S4, and carry a pistol, Light Flamthrower and Flash Pulse. I feel those need less gear or more cost, frankly. R-Drones could be reduced to AVA1, since while the box comes with 2, there are other roles the models can fulfill since all "wide" remotes for CA are S3 (EVO, TR, ML, specialist...). Finally, what has made CA to break walls in N5 have been, besides the usual changes in rules that end having an indirect effect, things like Nourkias and Dukash (despite nerfs from rules change and sidegrades to the first one), and Team Achilles... not because of the team per se, but because of Drakios TEUCER (MSV2 BS14 Mimetism with sniper plasma and neurokinetics, with an option for Total Reaction and NWI for good measure...) and, to a lesser degree, Pandora and maybe Patroclus, with Achilles being redundant with the other rambos in the list (he is quite expensive, since he is top at several things and good at others)... TLDR, it's not (only) the cost of cheap (yet somewhat extra good for their cost) cheerleaders, it's also the amount of top, optimized troops to choose from.
