The Ashes Cool At Last

Ok, we’re back again for the week and there’s been some pretty big news – we might as well start right there. FFG officially did it on Monday, Cad Bane / Blue 30 is suspended from Premier, effective August 31. 

Don’t forget the new FAQ page explains methodology and sourcing instead of being listed here every week. (And look, I know that mentioning the FAQ every week kinda defeats that purpose, but I promise I’ll cool that eventually and we’ll get the space in the article back to play with.) New this week: Bounty Rating gets a real-world test it wasn’t supposed to get this soon.

What Happened in Indy

The announcement landed essentially right after Indianapolis wrapped which was the final premier sector of this cycle. Five of eight Top 8 slots went to Cad Bane / Blue 30, just like Berlin. The difference this time is that Cad Bane won it, of course. Lando cracked Top 8 twice, Ahsoka once and everything else was Cad Bane.

Berlin’s Top 8 was just as saturated, but the champion beat Cad Bane three times in a row to get there on a deck that doesn’t even win the matchup in aggregate (Mandalorian / Colossus). Indianapolis on the other hand went the more expected direction. The best deck just won. His Day 1 entry count was 106, more than three times the second most populous deck (Luke (JTL) / Data Vault at 32) and more than four times the next-closest at 27 which was a tie between Krennic and Vader.

The Season Numbers, One Last Time

Cad Bane’s numbers, right up to the moment the suspension was announced: his field share is at 14.5% and still climbing. Top 8 share 29.0%, still Strong. Win rate 59.8%. Average matchup win rate 67.5%. All are at season highs and well beyond any other current deck.

Frankly, Bounty Rating tells the same story with sharper teeth. His score rose this week, from 92.9 to a whopping 95.1, the gap to second stayed essentially the same with Krennic moving from 27.5 to 27.7. He also claimed a perfect 100 on three of the four lenses, not just two.

That last part matters because of what changed underneath it. Top 8 to Win APR, the one metric sliding every period since the LCQ, turned around this week, and boy did it turn — up to +29.6%. Previously, I had been holding on to that slide as my marker for to be a bit conservative on Cad, hoping that other numbers would start to follow. Last week I went ahead and called for his suspension on the back of all the other numbers NOT following that trajectory. This week, the one I was watching shot back up, so I think the suspension was more than justified.

The Field Already Started Adjusting

Here’s another item worth looking at: the community was already starting to vote with its deckbuilding. Every archetype flagged in the last three columns as an answer, Mandalorian, Krennic, Lando, gained field share again. Every archetype flagged as part of the broader problem, Boba Fett / Lake Country, Ahsoka, Vader, lost share with Boba / Lake Country losing the most.

There’s a real wrinkle, though. Lando and Mandalorian’s numbers into Cad Bane kept getting worse as their field share climbed. Lando’s number has fallen every week, 61.7% to 54.9% to 46.9% to 44.8% now. Mandalorian slid from 49.2% to 45.5%. There are two things that are probably true at once about why we’re seeing more people play them but their performance go down. First up, popularity dilutes skill. Once a deck is talked up as an answer and starts picking up new pilots who haven’t logged the reps yet, the newer players tend to lose more. Also as time’s gone on,  the matchup gets more games on both sides, which gives experienced Cad Bane pilots just as much chance to sharpen their side as the challengers.

On the other hand, one new name of note in the archetypes: Boba Fett / Blue 30, different from the well-tracked Lake Country build, posts a positive number into Cad Bane, 51.1%, and gained field share too. Whether that’s real or a one-week blip remains to be seen. It’s interesting in some ways that we actually have one more week of Cad Bane before the suspension is enforced in order to study things like this.

What Comes Next

So with the impending loss of Cad Bane from the premier environment, where do we go from here? What steps up to the new best deck in the format? Well, I’ve run a couple hypothetical scenarios on some of the existing numbers so that we can get a feel for where I think things are going to shake out in at least the short term.

Bounty Rating Hypothetical

Ok, to start with, we’ll pull Cad Bane out of the Bounty Rating math and see what happens. This doesn’t reallocate his field shares or wins or anything like that, but it does mean he won’t be anchoring the top end of any of the lenses anymore. Plus, two of the lenses are APR based, so I think that helps give us some perspective on trajectory. Once we do, the field compresses hard, much like when I ran the hypothetical last week. In this week’s version: Krennic leads at 78.7, Luke Skywalker (JTL) / Data Vault close behind at 74.0, a 4.6-point gap where Cad Bane’s real gap to second is 27.7. An 83% reduction in power gap and as soon as Cad leave’s, it’s real.

Real Week 4 — Top 5:

Hypothetical — Cad Bane removed from pool and anchors — Top 5:

Here’s what’s actually different from last week’s version, though. Last week’s hypothetical gap was about 1 point and basically a three-way tie. This week it’s 4.6, still a massive compression against the real 27.7, but Krennic pulls clearly ahead rather than sharing a coin flip. Cad Bane’s own rating kept climbing, so he’s compressing the format just as hard as before. But as it turns out, Krennic also got more decisively good on his own terms, a perfect Power Score and a perfect S2-APR in the hypothetical world. He’s not just the best remaining option by default. He’s separating himself.

Krennic’s been the clear #2 on Bounty Rating for three weeks running. Lando’s the only real matchup answer that’s existed all season, even as his number into Cad Bane keeps sliding. Luke Skywalker (JTL) / Data Vault has quietly climbed since Week 1. Those are the three decks worth watching first once the suspension hits.

FWME Hypothetical

In a similar vein to the Bounty Rating exercise above, there’s a second way to run this hypothetical using one of the other stats that has really intrigued me lately. FWME is field-weighted matchup equity, which is the expected win rate against a randomly drawn opponent from the real field. So the more popular a deck is, the more weight it gets in this version of win rate. So lets pull Cad Bane out of that calculation entirely, not just off the leaderboard but out of everyone else’s weighted average too. Keep in mind that I didn’t redistribute his share among the other decks and guess at how that shakes out – this is strictly deleting him entirely, so keep in mind that real field shares will change what happens here. Regards, this is fascinating as the picture doesn’t just flatten the way Bounty Rating does. It reshuffles who looks best-positioned.

Real Top 5 by FWME:

Hypothetical — Cad Bane removed from the list and from everyone’s weighted calculation:

There’s a few things worth looking at here. Everyone who survives into both lists gains ground once Cad Bane’s out of the population, somewhere between half a point and 2.2 points. Krennic gains the most, 2.2 points, and becomes the clear #1 rather than a close #2 by FWME and this also matches his status as #1 under the Bounty Rating hypothetical. His matchup against Cad Bane had been dragging his weighted number down harder than for the rest of the field, so removing it does more work for him than anyone else on the list.

The rest of the list changes as well, though, not just the order. Aurra Sing / Data Vault shows up in the hypothetical top 5 and wasn’t within shouting distance of the real one. Dedra Meero drops out entirely. And the Ahsoka Tano build that shows up flips: Yellow 30 sits at #4 in the real list, but it’s Blue 30 in the hypothetical top 5. Two different archetypes on two different bases, not the same deck sliding around.

Put the two exercises side by side and they tell different stories. Bounty Rating says the format compresses toward a real race once Cad Bane’s gone. FWME says removing him as an opponent doesn’t just flatten the field, it changes which decks were held back by him specifically versus which were just solid on their own. Either way you slice it, though, it looks like Krennic is poised to be the new behemoth in the meta, with a different assortment of other decks fighting for position behind him.

The suspension takes effect August 31, giving the format about a week to keep running as it has. Week 5 is the one to watch for how fast the field redistributes toward Krennic, Lando, and whichever Ahsoka build turns out to matter, and whether the skill-dilution theory above holds once these decks stop absorbing so many new pilots chasing an answer to a problem that no longer exists or wether they keep absorbing former Cad players looking for the new hotness.

There you have it, folks. Let me know in the comments if you think these projects look better for the meta.