BlessedBe (a.k.a. Headchime) did mention elo scores before the I.G.L. tournament, matched the faction win-rate. It makes sense that skilled players (who have above 1,000 elo) will win with the faction they are playing more than less skilled players (who have under 1,000 elo). Player skill is the independent variable that has the greatest influence. (A point I was trying to explain in a separate post.) However, there is a persistent idea that attributes, not player skill, is the main factor in a faction's success.
I don’t believe the Elo ratings are reliable enough for a meaningful analysis. In my view, the only data worth analyzing comes from tournaments with a sufficient number of participants. Since Infinity is a tabletop wargame, various real-world factors cause Elo systems to falter. A 'strong' player is often only strong relative to their local club, not necessarily compared to players from other clubs or countries, simply because they rarely have the chance to face one another. Take the situation in Taiwan as an example, where we have several clubs—let's call them A, B, and C: Club A is near my home and has very high-skilled players. My performance there is usually just above average—while I do occasionally take 1st or 2nd place, it's never without stiff competition. Club B has the longest history and the most players, hosting tournaments frequently. However, the overall skill level is quite low, and rules are often played incorrectly. If just three players from Club A attend a tournament there, they will inevitably sweep the top three spots. Club C is perhaps the most active of the three, with people playing every week. Most of the players there were taught by me; none of them consider themselves stronger than I am, and indeed, I took first place in their tournament. To illustrate with an extreme case: Imagine a player named James. His club only has 4 active players, but they run a 'tournament' every week. On the other hand, we have William. His club doesn't play as often, but they host a monthly tournament with 15 to 30 participants. If William and James have played the exact same number of total matches, whose rating carries more credibility? The answer is obvious, yet Elo struggles to account for this disparity in competitive density.
of the top 10 players, most of them don't stick to one faction, but there's a few that keep showing. White Company, Aleph FRRM, Caledonia, USARF Combined Next Wave, NCA, PanOceania NCA, White Company, White Banner Next Wave Ariadna Next Wave, MO, CA TAK, Next Wave, CA Bakunin, KCF, FRRM These are what the top 5 are playing. 4 Next Wave, 3 CA, 2 White Company, 2 NCA, 2 FRRM. Not a single Haqqislam, O-12, or JSA. I’m glad to see one White Banner.
About two weeks ago I posted a few little charts here and since I guess we all more or less like to see what changes over time I'll do it again (and maybe again it two weeks...): Thus without further ado the five most played factions: And what do we see here? Bakunin (orange because it's my main faction which I ironically didn't play even once this season) got some games in; pushing itself right on 4th position and thus shoving MO and YJ on joint 5th. Bakunin has an average total win rate* and since they win more with a Sacha than without one Bakunin became the 8th faction profiting from a Sacha according to my arbitrary metrics Which brings us to the future home Sectorials: nothing interesting to see here, still only two who benefit from a Sacha's presence. Speaking about benefitting from the Xeno stuff hunters No real surprise here but NCA is now at the top (note: despite the Sacha use dropped a bit the no Sacha win rate remained the same whilst the win rate with a Sacha still rose) after USARF fell quite a lot. Again no surprise here, the NCA is at the top whilst the CHA shoved PanO aside for 5th place. And when observing the total win rate we see no changes as well WhiteCo didn't even change in terms of played games. Which implies it just sits there dormant, sleeping on its laurels. All in all only Next Wave and the NCA saw actual (reported!) play during the last weeks whilst CHA and Kosmo only got 3 and 1 game on their cards (given Corvusphere had reporting issues during the last weekend this might be a factor) . And finally the watchlist for the upcoming season: No changes at the top 3 but there's a new one: Qapu Khalqi finally got more than 50 Games registered and is thus part of the big players ;) * the ITS top 100 data (didn't want to crawl through all 2531 ITS player profiles) shows an about 6% average tie rate. Thus the expected average win/lose rate lies at about 47%. Edit: Here's also a comparision between the win rates (of all factions with more than 50 games registered) without a Sacha and with a Sacha in Form of box plots for y'all:
