Clan Tourney Success In Kotei Season 2014 #15

We’ve got a large batch of Kotei to kick things off for the Coming Storm environment, with seven tournaments held and all of them reporting (as always, we’re missing a few data points for the Renewal storyline, but all of the metagame statistics are intact).

Seven Kotei, and five different Clans won, so those are some reasonably good top-line figures. Better yet, they included a Phoenix win, two Dragon wins, and not a swarm of crushing dishonor decks (although 3 Crane/Unicorn wins probably isn’t as change of pace as one might like). If you dig to the “make the cut” number it continues to look pretty good for Unicorn/Crane, and also for Lion. But, of course, for all of these figures, there is a massive proviso that we’re still only looking at 291 data points. So we can expect some of those to smooth out a little. Not that we’re going to have any sort of large data set on the TCS environment before GenCon, given that there are only 13 TCS-legal Kotei (which means that this weekend has more than half of them).

The Coming Storm
Clan Players % of Field Made Cut Won % Made Cut Relative Chance of Making Cut
Crab 24 8.2% 5 0 20.8% 0.92
Crane 36 12.4% 15 2 41.7% 1.85
Dragon 33 11.3% 5 2 15.2% 0.67
Lion 31 10.7% 9 1 29.0% 1.29
Mantis 29 10.0% 6 0 20.7% 0.92
Phoenix 22 7.6% 3 1 13.6% 0.61
Scorpion 40 13.7% 7 0 17.5% 0.78
Spider 31 10.7% 2 0 6.5% 0.29
Unicorn 45 15.5% 17 1 37.8% 1.68
Total/Average 291 100.0% 69 7 23.7% 0.40

On the storyline front, we’ve got this (which, of course, does still include all of the points from earlier in the season; they don’t stop counting just because another set became legal):

Clan Players Awards Total Projected
Crab 214 92 306 333
Crane 372 355 727 791
Dragon 261 115 376 409
Lion 278 130 408 444
Mantis 230 107 337 367
Phoenix 217 65 282 307
Scorpion 282 187 469 510
Spider 215 77 292 318
Unicorn 282 245 527 573

And … not a lot of change. Just too far into the season for big swings in the projections. Biggest change was the projection for Crane dropping by 39 points despite two wins (they did not pick up their frequent plethora of honor contest wins, and Kotei size matters a lot). Although the Unicorn have now actually crossed 500, rather than just being projected to cross it, that wasn’t really in any doubt. Biggest prize that remains up in the air is whether Scorpion will nail down that 500 point haul (for a complete victory of some sort), followed by whether Crane can “upgrade” its complete victory to a daimyo/clan champ kill (I still like the 500 points prize better, but then most players are far more enamored of killing characters than I am). With everyone crossing at least 250, most of the ‘up in the air’ left is whether some Clans will be able to get a 250 point and a 100 point prize (or a second 100 point prize, assuming you’re allowed to get two).

Just for giggles, I thought I’d go back to the very first Renewal point projections, and see how much they had changed over the course of 14 weeks.

Crab: +18
Crane: -332 (what, errata matters?)
Dragon: -44
Lion: -79 (they have slid as the season went on; and that’s a big 79 since it crosses to the wrong side of 500)
Mantis: +31 (let’s call it the “Abbott factor”)
Phoenix: +255 (because Phoenix players actually showed up after week 1)
Scorpion: +48
Spider: +3
Unicorn: +258

So, pretty big changes for several Clans. On the other hand, of the three really big changes, two were pretty easily predictable – Crane was not going to be allowed to continue on that pace, and Phoenix weren’t going to continue to be completely absent from the tournament scene. A surge in the better decks was predictable after the Crane errata (as was, potentially, a drop in Lion as it no longer got to exercise its “Crane go second to me” privileges as often), but the massive surge for Unicorn was not something I would have expected. Given the really small amount of data from just one week, I’m surprised at how relatively little the projections have shifted from then until now.

3 thoughts on “Clan Tourney Success In Kotei Season 2014 #15

  1. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have foreseen the major change for Unicorn. It was obvious for me that after the Crane erratum, the most likely beneficiary of these changes would be the Unicorn, with its even better economy. I was more surprised that Mantis didn’t grow more (for similar reasons). But I suspect there is also the “playing first or not” aspect there. And of course, I had totally not anticipated the Phoenix return…

    1. I thought Unicorn were going to improve. I didn’t think they were going to have the massive surge they did. Although, when I look week to week, most of the Unicorn’s improvement had come before the Crane errata anyway – they just had a really bad Week 1.

      1. I think it was a breaking dam effect as well (and probably a bit of bandwagonning as well). Crane victories and good stats in the cuts were basically masking the good Unicorn potential by knocking off very good decks and players early. Once that was gotten rid of, the true Unicorn power could develop without any more hindrance.

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