The online MCP league is about to finish it’s regular 6 rounds before a cut to a top 28 players out of 68. With a few games left still to be played, I pulled some stats out of the 170 games that have been recorded. Here some things I found out from that data set.

Disclaimer: the sample size is not insignificant, but I wouldn’t describe it as large either. There may have been a range of people playing in the league, with a range of reasons to play. Bear this in mind as you read on.

Priority

The player who won priority also won the game 54% of the time, indicating that wining priority is at best a small factor in determining the overall outcome, and it’s entirely possible that this isn’t a statistically significant deviation from 50% given the sample size.

Extract choice

From most chosen to least chosen:

• Fear Grips World As “Worthy” Terrorize Cities – 27%
• Panic Grips City As Evacuation Efforts Continue! – 26%
• Struggle for the Cube Continues – 19%
• Alien Ship Crashes in Downtown! – 11%
• Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan – 7%
• Mystic Wakandan Herbs: Fact or Fiction? – 6%
• Skrulls Infiltrate world Leadership – 4%

Hammer and Citizens are by far the most popular, with cubes in third.

Secure choice

From most to least chosen:

• Infinity Formula Goes Missing! – 34%
• Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 – 27%
• Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest – 26%
• Deadly Meteors Mutate Civilians – 13%

Threat level

The percentage of games built at the different available threat levels:

• 15 – 17%
• 17 – 49%
• 18 – 16%
• 19 – 10%
• 20 – 8%

Game length

How many rounds the game lasted. This ignores games that were conceded before being played to conclusion.

• 3 rounds – 18%
• 4 rounds – 49%
• 5 rounds – 20%
• 6 rounds – 13%

Weighted average game length: 4.25 rounds

Average game length by crisis

What was the weighted average of rounds taken by each crisis, from shortest to longest:

• Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest – 3.84 rounds
• Struggle for the Cube Continues – 3.88 rounds
• Panic Grips City As Evacuation Efforts Continue! – 3.95 rounds
• Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan – 4.00 rounds
• Fear Grips World As “Worthy” Terrorize Cities – 4.15 rounds
• Infinity Formula Goes Missing! – 4.39 rounds
• Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 – 4.41 rounds
• Deadly Meteors Mutate Civilians – 4.43 rounds
• Skrulls Infiltrate world Leadership – 4.50 rounds
• Alien Ship Crashes in Downtown! – 5.32 rounds
• Mystic Wakandan Herbs: Fact or Fiction? – 5.36 rounds

Interestingly, three of the secures are all pretty much the same in terms of game length. Only Gamma Waves is significantly faster – the fastest crisis. The extracts have a much bigger impact on game length – outside of Gamma Waves. Cubes comes off slightly faster than Evacuees. Skrulls was the least chosen Extract, so the sample may be too small to read too much in to, but it appears to be faster than Alien Ship – probably due to the larger possible threat level. Wakandan Herbs is another very slow extract, even with a smaller sample size.

Win condition

Again this ignores any concessions:

• 16+ VPs – 86%
• Most VPs at end of round 6 – 7%
• KOed all opponents characters – 7%

Faction popularity

Which factions got played the most? Black Order was only available for the second half of the league, as were the latest Guardians releases.

• Avengers – 84 games
• Cabal – 84 games
• Asgard – 60 games
• Guardians of the galaxy – 50 games
• Wakanda – 45 games
• Black Order – 24 games

Win stats by affiliation

What percentage of games did each affiliation win, after removing ‘mirror’ matches. The amount of non-mirror matches played follows in brackets.

• Wakanda – 68% (39)
• Asgard – 63% (48)
• Cabal – 53% (68)
• None – 50% (4)
• Guardians of the galaxy – 48% (44)
• Black Order – 45% (20)
• Avengers – 42% (76)

This is the one I advise most caution when interpreting. Avengers is a popular affiliation, and those playing it may not be playing with a competitive mindset. It is also an affiliation I think takes a lot of skill and practice to build and play well.

Specific lists’s records

Some lists have been written about by me or others. As I was going through the games I kept an eye out for them. These lists are presented as two numbers: win-loss

• Thor Launch/BDT: 4-8
• Wakanda Wave: 8-0 (1 mirror)
• Loki Pokey: 4-0

Coming up soon I’ll be looking at characters and team tactics cards played by the top 25% of players in the league.