April League Data from Star Wars Unlimited: Surprising Stats on the Meta!

In this video, I discuss data from a large league that was played over the month of April in Star Wars Unlimited TCG. Some of the results are surprising! Are we now in a midrange meta? Is Sabine Green the best version? Come see what this data has to say about it!
You can check out my introductory articles at The Fifth Trooper blog over here:
General Introduction: thefifthtrooper.com/an-introd...
Deckbuilding and Aspects: thefifthtrooper.com/star-wars...
Initiative and Actions: thefifthtrooper.com/star-wars...
Who's the Beatdown: SWU Edition: thefifthtrooper.com/whos-the-...
Draft and Sealed Play: thefifthtrooper.com/star-wars...
Improving Your Efficiency: thefifthtrooper.com/improving...
Drafting Spark of Rebellion Common Leaders: thefifthtrooper.com/drafting-...
NOTE: This is an unofficial fan video. I intend no infringement; if FFG or Disney requests I am happy to remove this footage. Star Wars is the property of Lucasfilm/Disney, Star Wars: Unlimited is a Fantasy Flight Games production.

[@Thorrk_THT]

I think the reason we sometimes sees ''odd'' versions of certain leaders like Sabine red or Palpatine yellow doing better than the more meta version is because a lot of players of a wide skill level netdeck popular decks while "odd" versions are usually played by players who know their deck inside out and play them very well. I think we are still at a stage where playing a maybe inferior version will still bring you better result than playing a "better" version but with average skill. But it doesn't necessarily mean that those "odd" versions are better than the meta ones (maybe they are). As for Iden, we also saw her doing very poorly during the Orlando tournament, while krennic keeps pulling solid performances across the board despite seeing a lot less play. On my end I always preferred Krennic over Iden in the green midrangy control decks, we will see how it develops, if it's confirmed that Vador is better than Iden in those "hard control" decks I am afraid we are not going to see a lot of Iden in the future.

[@jaydens8331]

This was my initial thought too, I wonder how many matches some of these top sabine red/yellow players played and if they alone were responsible for skewing results (ie. if a very strong player had 20 matches on sabine red, that alone would massively skew results)

[@gambitocards]

I agree 🫶

[@SWUDAD]

@@jaydens8331 Totally Agree. and Iden as a leader is just not that good. A 4/4 is too easily removed by take down, or 4 powered units. I'd rather just play Vader Blue. Luke Green and Han Green are the two decks that I think are going to rise a lot in coming events.

[@WhiskeyjackZA]

That Florida event also had the "control deck drawing and pairing" incident. That said, I am also very interested to see if Iden control gets replaced by Vader heavy control. I would also like to see a proper format breakdown for this league to really put things in context. Could you change decks, how were matchups decided, did everyone play same amount of games etc etc etc

[@TowerNumberNine]

@WhiskeyjackZA -- Yes you could change decks between games, matchups were broadly self-organized by players (but you could only play each person once), and people played different numbers of games based on enthusiasm but the first eight were by far the most important for league standings.

[@rebelresource]

I saw a lot of comments about deck piloting skewing results. I just wanted to mention that this is technically true anywhere. It goes all ways. Meta decks, bad pilots. Meta decks, good pilots. Non Meta, good pilots. Non meta, bad pilots. It's impossible to tell unless every game is recorded and analyzed. I've heard that at Orlando a lot of casual players played in the tournament because they were local and wanted to just be apart of the biggest USA tournament so far. I think that's cool. But sort of introduces fuzziness everywhere. The Top Cut of all of these events should be where we analyze the most, I think.

[@rebelresource]

All in all, this video was cool. Thank you for putting this together!!

[@DiegoDeschain]

I do think though, that some types of decks are more prone to changes in performance based on pilot skill. For instance, it's much easier for Sabine to be played to a good enough level, than hard control to be piloted at a "good enough" level.

[@jaydens8331]

It is the case anywhere, but here there's a very low sample size of games per deck and thus especially prone to happening.

[@tooldt09]

Great video. Love all your hard work and entertaining commentary

[@TowerNumberNine]

Thanks, happy to hear you’re enjoying it!

[@Tylerjstratton]

Cool video! Nice review. Hey any way to see your Chirrut deck? Or at least what your sideboard was for the league. Love to see your take!

[@sifudanny87]

Is there anywhere to look at decklist

[@StarWarsUnlimitedTCG]

Can't wait to see Luke move up on these boards! Thanks for the awesome stats!

[@TowerNumberNine]

No problem, happy to help -- and I'm also excited to see Luke doing well!

[@brandonjohnson9876]

Wonder what kind of Iden decks these are. The hard control Idens are annoying, but not difficult to beat. I’ve had more luck with a mixed control/mid-range deck.

[@nickF_CA]

The pilot behind the deck seeming more and more important the more i analyze the game 😅

[@TowerNumberNine]

This is definitely a game where player skill matters!

[@damiencrews7603]

Han is actually broken. I just think he's harder to run optimally than most other leaders

[@TowerNumberNine]

I don't know about broken but I do think Han can be very strong -- I agree he's complex and hard to use though!

[@xxwinzzxx7568]

Where's the source of this data? I can't seem to find anything relating to this. It would be nice to have more context to this information.

[@riddick729]

It's not that control is bad it is just very difficult to pilot and requires a great deal of patience.

[@Zeromus]

Was this an online league? How many players were there?

[@LoDoFilmUnlimitedMedia]

A factor that is never considered in these analysis videos is the pilot's skill with a particular deck. Its possible that these meta decks didn't play well, because the players didn't play them well.

[@thecamdamage]

Of course but with games played as an included metric, we can at least pull information of an average power. Still a very helpful breakdown

[@TowerNumberNine]

This is a good point. To really evaluate competitive matchups in careful detail you would have to compare only games where good players played against other good players. At this time I don't think we really have enough games, even in this large league, to do that accurately.

[@lucascarpellini9279]

in our shop aggressive decks almost never manage to achieve results! boba luke and krannic are the most played decks.

[@TowerNumberNine]

Sounds like a very midrangey field - if I were playing there I might want to bring some control!

[@joaocarlosmatos]

I used to play Iden red, but the problem was it struggled with sabine and on the control mirror, because it is a coin flip to who gets to restock faster, many of the hard control mirror, gets decided on game 1, and Iden is less potent as leader so tends to struggle vs palp or vader. I've changed to Vader blue and the results are more consistent and the games faster.

[@MattB619]

Nobody played Jyn...

[@antharper11]

Nobody repping Leia/Blue smh.

[@Purdizzle]

Iden win rate is low because draws don't count as wins lol

[@TeamSuperDope]

Iden seems pretty underwhelming compared to the new blue Vader. Her stats are much weaker and using her actions is counter intuitive when playing control. You want initiative as a control player and you lose that when playing Iden

[@Antisocial1987]

Καποια ζωα δεν με πιστευανε!

[@jeffkoenig7402]

Palp Red and Palp Blue barely got played but Palp Yellow got 48 games? WTF is this league?