Cad’s Final Embers

Ok, that was it. The weekend that just wrapped was, of course, the last one Cad Bane / Blue 30 was legal for, and the data from it is the final look at a field that most agreed was warped by his presence. Starting next week we’re in whole new territory.

One quick note before diving in: methodology and sourcing live on the FAQ page, enjoy!

Cad Bane’s Last Week

Right up to the end, most of his numbers were still climbing. His field share climbed to 14.9%, the season high. Other season highs include win rate 59.95%, average matchup win rate 68.5%, and FWME 58.0%. Cad looked like a deck at the top of its game in many regards. But his Top 8 share dipped for the first time all season, even if it was pretty miniscule (29.0% to 28.9%), and his entry-stage APR cooled slightly as well from 78.0% to 74.3%. Overall, Cad ends his run on a high note in most ways, a king going out near the height of his powers before his strength fails him. The king is dead, long live whoever the new king is.

Beyond Cad Bane

While all the attention’s been on Cad, five weeks of two-stage APR data show real movement elsewhere and not always the decks that sheer popularity would point to.

Director Krennic has been slowly building strength a notable story this season. His field share has been on a steady climb every week without exception (3.41% to 3.56% to 4.03% to 4.52% to 4.74%). His entry APR dipped briefly around Weeks 2 and 3 before recovering to a season-high 12.9% now, and his closing APR has been strongly positive since Week 3, peaking at +48.7% in Week 4 before settling to a still-healthy +24.6%. These don’t appear to be numbers of a single high swing spike, no, these are indications of a steady workhorse building steam and as we saw in last week’s hypothetical Bounty Rating and FWME exercises, Krennic stands a solid chance of being the next in line for the throne. 

Ahsoka Tano / Blue 30 and Boba Fett / Lake Country tell a related story from the other direction. Both have lost field share every week with Ahsoka dropping  from 8.79% to 6.42% and Boba Fett from 8.95% to 6.46%. Their APR pictures are more tangled than a straight decline, however. Ahsoka’s entry number (-9.6%) has actually improved even as her closing number keeps getting worse (-44.3%) and is now at its worst point of the season. Both are negative overall, though, and that lack of performance is likely what’s driving folks away from her. Boba has seen a nearly flat entry number for the past few weeks (now at -36.5%) while his T8 to Win (now -11.3) looks to be curving downward this week. Both had negative matchup numbers into Cad, however, so I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if this stabilizes a little as people start trying out new builds next week.

One more worth noting as we go: The Mandalorian’s closing APR just had its worst week of the season, down to -20.7% after sitting positive three straight weeks. His Top 8 count climbed sharply again, 22 to 38, but his win total stayed flat at 3. More Top 8 trips than ever, same trophy count. His combined APR is still positive right now, but that closing performance currently at (-20.6%) is starting to really drag things down.

Dedra’s Real-World Receipts

Ok, I thought this one was worth its own header here. Dedra Meero / Colossus saw quite the spike this weekend taking home 3 events on three different continents all while facing Cad’s and Krennics all along the way in the top 8s. Her total field share has remained relatively flat, hovering between just under 1% to about 1.5%, and it did not see a noticeable spike on Cad’s last weekend, even if performance seems to indicate that some players are moving on to Dedra as the next vehicle for Vigilance/Aggression/Villainy decks. As of this weekend, she’s performing massively well for that field share, however, with a combined APR of 90% on the back of two very positive stage performances (Field to T8 at 50.8% and T8 to Win at 39.3%). On sheer performance, Dedra looks like a strong candidate for the throne.

Post Cad Hypotheticals Again

First up, the real current Bounty Rating top five:

Dedra’s jump to second place matches everything above. Her Top 8 count more than doubled this week alone (from ten to twenty-two) while her field share barely moved as previously mentioned. She’s had roughly the same modest pool of pilots but now performing at a much higher rate, and her matchup into Cad Bane backs it up: 50.6% on a real 354-game sample which is the only non-mirror positive number at 1% share or more.

So lets run the hypothetical again and pull Cad Bane out entirely to see what happens. 

This week it looks like Dedra takes the top spot and pushes Krennic down to a very close second. In fact, the gap between #1 and #2 shrinks from 27.1 points (Cad Bane’s real 94.6 against Dedra’s 67.5) to 1.1 (Dedra’s hypothetical 77.3 against Krennic’s 76.2), and the top three sit within 2.3 points for essentially a three-way tie. Watch these fluctuations closely as Week 3 was a near-dead-heat, Week 4 showed real separation with Krennic pulling ahead, and Week 5 snaps back to another near-tie with a different deck on top. We don’t show signs of a clean (if hypothetical) trend yet, just oscillation which is tentatively a very good sign. If nothing else, the compression of much tighter Bounty Ratings after Cad’s removal indicates the meta may be much healthier and more competitive overall without him.

What the Field-Weighted Numbers Add

Lets take a look at the other hypothetical this week and see how it stacks up. Remember, FWME is Field Weighting Matchup Equity, which basically means the win rate that deck has weighted versus how often the other decks actually appear in the meta.

First, the real current FWME Top 5:

FWME tells a related but distinct story to the Bounty Rating. With Cad at the top with a very real, but closer gap with Dedra and two slightly different Krennic builds sitting comfortably in the top 5.  

So now lets run the hypothetical on pulling Cad out of the calculation and see what happens.

So here are a few things to look at. Both Krennic builds still crack the hypothetical top five, and both gain real ground once Cad Bane’s removed, +2.2 and +2.4 points respectively — the Krennic shell as a whole was held back by that matchup, not just one list of it. And Aurra Sing breaks into the hypothetical top five for the second week running, despite not being close in the real list either time. Two weeks now where removing Cad Bane opens the door for that archetype which seems like a pattern worth watching. And one final note, this hypothetical actually sees Dedra move down the list slightly, even while her raw number is better. Looks like a consequence of an overall tighter range in the hypothetical here as well, which I reiterate looks like a decent meta sign in general.

The Cards, Not Just the Leader

There is another item worth really talking about, however – the other main deck cards (largely Vigilance/Villainy) that have been in the discussion for potential bans or suspension. A large number of winning decks from the weekend still featured Vigilance as one of the aspects, so I wanted to investigate things a bit further to see how different these were, or whether they were effectively just players trying out new leaders to replace Cad with many of the same moving parts.

I pulled nine winning decklists from this weekend’s Planetary Qualifiers, spanning six leaders: Cad Bane three times, Dedra Meero three times, Krennic once, Aurra Sing once, Darth Maul once. Chimaera was in all nine. Pre Vizsla was in all nine. Ninth Sister was in seven of nine (shoutout to Star Trek: Voyager) and was missing only from the Krennic and Aurra Sing lists, which obviously weren’t running Aggression at all. Every winning list, regardless of leader, ran two to three copies of the same two or three cards.

So the argument still stands that this was never really a Cad Bane problem, but a card pool problem. Folks certainly have some solid ground to argue that just pulling the leader doesn’t mean the toolbox will go anywhere. And while I do think that the hypothetical scenarios above indicate the new meta will be healthier, I’m not quite sure it will be healthy overall. Astute readers will likely have already noticed that in the Bounty Rating hypothetical, Luke (JTL) / Data Vault is the only deck to crack the Top 5 which isn’t playing these cards and in the FWME hypothetical, none of the Top 5 avoid them. 

Sure, I’ll want at least a week (maybe two) of data to see if any surprises creep in once folks are truly forced to play things other than Cad, but it’s not looking pretty at the moment.

What Comes Next

I’ve been conservative about calling for movement on Cad, and I still want a little real time without Cad Bane on the table before moving on to another card on the list. A couple weeks of hypothetical skewed data isn’t enough to separate a genuine shift from a format still figuring out its shape. But between the Bounty Rating gap, the FWME reshuffling, and nine real decklists all running the same handful of cards regardless of pilot, the argument that this was never purely a leader problem is about as solid as it’ll get while that leader was still around.

The Homeworlds set is coming before too long, which could complicate any clean read on this. That said, most of what’s been previewed doesn’t look like it plays in the same weight class as Chimaera or Pre Vizsla. If that holds, whatever the format looks like in a few weeks should still be a fair read on what Cad Bane was propping up, not muddied by a fresh power spike arriving at the same time.

That’s all for this week.