Worlds 2019 data and analysis

I've got an awful lot of data gathered from the 91 fleet lists at Worlds plus some analysis on a table-by-table basis, so get ready to crunch through some numbers with me. Before I get any further, I want to give special thanks to a few people:

• John, my co-author who did the lion's share of the data entry and got so tired of it that he let me do the fun part because he was sick of looking at it all.
• Giled, who helped John with the remaining data entry
• Truthiness from Steel Command, who gifted us his excel spreadsheet with formulas for making sense of the Regionals data, which was used for turning Worlds fleet lists into data.

So basically, a big ol' thanks to all three of you who did the labor-intensive un-sexy work before I get into the (to me, anyways) fun part. Let's proceed, then!

In short, John deserves a beer. Or support for his charity run. Or both?

Let's start off easy as well as explain how this will work. In short, we'll have all the data divided into the following columns:

• All
• Meaning literally everyone who showed up to the event that we have a fleet list for. So 91 people. I could've sworn there were 93 or 94 but it's possible we had some no-shows. I know we got lists for everyone who made it to day 2 (so the top 40) for sure.
• Top 50% 
• Basically just a bit more than everyone who made it to day 2. This is where you can start to see what is "more competitive" as opposed to "less competitive." Even getting into the top 50% at Worlds is quite impressive.
• Top 25% 
• This, in my opinion, is the "sweet spot" for drawing conclusions about the competitiveness of various things the tables are tracking. 
• Ideally, to draw a strong conclusion, you need both a good focus for drawing those conclusions as well as enough data from that subset to feel reasonably confident in your conclusions. Top 25% at Worlds are clearly lists/players who did well but there are enough entries for the data to "stabilize" a bit. The issue you'll find with Top 10% (coming up next) and "winner" are with so few entries populating those subsets, it's hard to make a strong case that it's representative.
• Top 10% 
• The top-notch results. As I mentioned above, the data reliability here for drawing strong conclusions starts to get wobbly. It's fun to look at, though, just don't put too much mental weight on this.
• Winner
• Everything I said about the Top 10% but even moreso. Fun to look at, basically worthless for drawing strong conclusions beyond "Tokra is obviously a good player and this is what he used."

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Total Lists	91	46	23	10	1
Faction
Rebels	47%	37%	43%	40%	0%
Empire	53%	63%	57%	60%	100%

Okay so here's our first table. Very simple. We had a fairly close breakdown of Rebel vs. Imperial fleets, favoring Imperial, but we can see the division becomes more pronounced higher up - the split for the top 50% in particular is rather extreme, with almost 2/3 of the top 50% being Imperial fleets, with the gap decreasing for the top 25% but still evident.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Rebel Commanders (Within Faction)
Admiral Ackbar	16%	18%	10%	0%	x
Commander Sato	0%	0%	0%	0%	x
Garm Bel Iblis	5%	6%	0%	0%	x
General Cracken	5%	6%	0%	0%	x
General Dodonna	12%	12%	20%	0%	x
General Madine	5%	12%	10%	25%	x
General Rieekan	28%	29%	40%	50%	x
Mon Mothma	0%	0%	0%	0%	x
Leia Organa	5%	0%	0%	0%	x
Admiral Raddus	26%	18%	20%	25%	x

We see here that at higher-level competitions, Rebels are the faction of 4 commanders: It's Red Fish (Ackbar), Blue Fish (Raddus), Crit Wish (Dodonna), and Death Wish (Rieekan) with some honorable mentions made here and there. In particular, congrats to Alex for running Madine into the top 10 (that bump is pretty much all her). I'm both surprised and not surprised to see Ackbar struggled to get into the top 25% at all - the environment was very squad-heavy and Ackbar can struggle to kill enemy ships quickly enough, especially against Pryce shenanigans (which we'll get to).

No Sato or Mothma at all is somewhat disappointing, but Sato is infamously tricky to get working consistently and even Mothma's most ardent devotee, Cory, has given her up in favor of Rieekan lately. Poor John and Mike Bohlmann weren't able to crack the top 50% with their Leia fleets, either.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Imperial Commanders (Within Faction)
Admiral Sloane	12%	31%	31%	17%	100%
Grand Admiral Thrawn	40%	38%	54%	83%	0%
Admiral Konstantine	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Admiral Motti	15%	17%	8%	0%	0%
Admiral Ozzel	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Admiral Screed	4%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Darth Vader	8%	3%	0%	0%	0%
General Tagge	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Grand Moff Tarkin	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Moff Jerjerrod	10%	10%	8%	0%	0%

While I'm normally more optimistic about Imperial commander variety than their Rebel counterparts when it comes to high-level competitions, we can see that when it came to breaking into the top 25%, it was effectively just Sloane and Thrawn with an honorable mention to Motti and Jerry. It's not surprising to see Konstantune, Tagge, and Tarkin on the scrap heap, my Ozzel heart is saddened by my boi not showing up at all despite having won Adepticon back in 2017.

Seriously, though, Imperial MSU is basically dead at this point so it's not surprising to see commanders like Ozzel and Screed barely exist at Worlds right now.

Back to the top 25% of Imperials - Thrawn did exceptionally well (as a component of 2 ship) and Sloane in particular did extremely well (12% of Imperial fleets, 31% of the top 25% Imperial fleets). Sloane isn't surprising in retrospect given I saw a number of Sloane 2+1 fleets there as a counter to all the Thrawn 2 ship fleets - it was a target-rich environment for fleets that specialized in hunting squads and that's where Sloane excels.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Squadrons (All)
0 Squadrons	18%	15%	9%	10%	0%
1-20 Squadrons	2%	2%	4%	0%	0%
21-40 Squadrons	4%	2%	4%	0%	0%
41-60 Squadrons	7%	4%	4%	0%	0%
61-80 Squadrons	8%	4%	0%	0%	0%
81-100 Squadrons	4%	7%	0%	0%	0%
101-120 Squadrons	10%	9%	13%	10%	0%
121-134 Squadrons	47%	57%	65%	80%	100%
Intel	47%	52%	57%	60%	100%
Strategic	19%	20%	26%	20%	0%
Rogue	34%	39%	48%	80%	0%
Percentage Aces taken (if squadrons taken)	60%	66%	72%	85%	100%

You want to be depressed, take a look at this chart right here. Heavy squadrons continues its reign of terror over Armada, with 47% of attending fleets bringing it and 65% of top 25% fleets having a serious investment in squadrons. No squadrons suffered overall (I was one of the few to contribute to that top 25% average of 9%), going from 18% to 9% by the top 25%.

Given most heavy squadron fleets are bringing Intel, it's not surprising to see Intel tracks very similarly to the heavy squadron numbers. Strategic stayed fairly level around 20%, with a bit of a bump at top 25%. Rogues are also doing fairly well but I suspect that's largely to do with the row directly underneath that entry: Aces have gotten completely insane, and a lot of the Imperial squad-heavy fleets are bringing Morna (and sometimes Bossk and/or Boba Fett) while Rebel squad-heavy fleets occasionally bring YT-2400s, Hera, Dash, or Corran.

The fact that aces are quite likely too good for their cost compared to generics seems pretty well-established by this point, but the chart above should hopefully provide some numbers to back up the gut feeling a lot of Armada players have by now.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Squadrons (Rebel Fleets)
0 Squadrons	23%	24%	20%	25%	x
1-20 Squadrons	5%	6%	10%	0%	x
21-40 Squadrons	7%	6%	10%	0%	x
41-60 Squadrons	9%	6%	10%	0%	x
61-80 Squadrons	14%	12%	0%	0%	x
81-100 Squadrons	2%	0%	0%	0%	x
101-120 Squadrons	9%	18%	20%	25%	x
121-134 Squadrons	30%	29%	30%	50%	x
Intel	33%	24%	30%	0%	x
Strategic	35%	41%	50%	50%	x
Rogue	26%	29%	30%	75%	x
Percentage Aces taken (if squadrons taken)	44%	50%	62%	75%	x

So breaking down the squadron information, we can see that Rebels are bringing more variety overall in terms of points investments in squadrons, doing fairly well with no squadrons at all and lower investments (up to 60 points) and heavy as well as super-heavy investments, but doing poorly with a moderate investment.

Intel numbers are interesting in that generally it looks as though Intel was at best competition-neutral, and it falls off entirely for the top 10%. Given the ubiquitousness of Jan Ors, I find that pretty interesting, actually. Strategic is unsurprising given VCX-100s are substantially superior to Lambdas in most ways, so if you're going to do Strategic, you're doing it with Rebels, and it worked pretty well for those who did include it. Rogue stays flat in the 26%-30% range until the top 10%, where it jumps remarkably. Again, try not to read a lot into the top 10%, but that is interesting to me.

We again see ace numbers are high and increase the more competitive the fleet becomes, but the rate is below the overall squadron average. This is again unsurprising given Rebels have access to potent mutli-role squadrons as well as Jan Ors to give them "fake ace" durability as well, and we can see as the incidence of Intel falls off in general (going down from "all" in) the percentage of generics (the inverse of aces percent) goes down as well. That said, sneaking in some generic B-Wings, Y-Wings, X-Wings, YT-1300s, or YT-2400s in heavier squad builds is fairly common, and using generic A-Wings in smaller squadron groups is also not unheard of.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Squadrons (Imperial Fleets)
0 Squadrons	13%	10%	0%	0%	0%
1-20 Squadrons	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
21-40 Squadrons	2%	0%	0%	0%	0%
41-60 Squadrons	4%	3%	0%	0%	0%
61-80 Squadrons	2%	0%	0%	0%	0%
81-100 Squadrons	6%	10%	0%	0%	0%
101-120 Squadrons	10%	3%	8%	0%	0%
121-134 Squadrons	63%	72%	92%	100%	100%
Intel	60%	69%	77%	100%	100%
Strategic	4%	7%	8%	0%	0%
Rogue	42%	45%	62%	83%	0%
Percentage Aces taken (if squadrons taken)	71%	72%	76%	90%	100%
MJ	71%	72%	100%	100%	100%
MMJ	35%	34%	46%	83%	0%

Notice a trend? Imperial fleets are loaded up on heavy squads; of the top 25% of Imperial fleets NINETY TWO PERCENT of them used 121+ points of squadrons, ALL OF THEM used 101+ points on squadrons. Intel (/Dengar, usually) was also very common, with its presence going up the higher the fleets placed. Rogue was also not surprisingly a common sight given Morna Kee (we'll get back there in a moment). Strategic unsurprisingly was not common, but it did all right so far as the top 25% was concerned, going from 4% of the total Imperial fleets to 8% of the top 25%. I know one of our locals, Jack, included a single Lambda as a form of objective control for some "light Strategic," so he's included there in the top 25% with one other Imperial player to get us to 8%.

We can group the next 4 rows into a fairly comprehensive statement of "Maarek, Morna, and Jendon were everywhere." Morna tipped the Rogue numbers pretty substantially all on her own plus the occasional Rogue bounty hunter friend as I mentioned for the overall squadrons chart. Aces were a substantial investment for Imperial fleets, moreso than Rebel fleets, and most of the generic Imperial squadrons I saw were TIE Interceptors in Thrawn or Pryce fleets to round out their anti-squadron, or the occasional Firespray or TIE Bomber in somewhat unconventional Imperial squad heavy fleets.

To clarify, "MJ" means any 2 of Maarek, Morna, and/or Jendon; "MMJ" means "the entire terrible trio." We can see MJ itself was already present a shocking 71% of the time in all Imperial fleets and had worked its way up to 100% representation by the top 25% (literally every Imperial fleet in the top 25% had 2+ of Maarek, Morna, and/or Jendon). MMJ was not as popular overall but it still performed extremely well, especially once you get to the less-reliable top 10% column. To say Imperial fleets are relying heavily on these three aces is an understatement.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Ship Classes (All)
1 Flotilla	29%	30%	26%	10%	0%
2 Flotillas	54%	48%	52%	60%	100%
MSU (Small Only)	14%	11%	13%	20%	0%
1+ Medium Ships	41%	43%	43%	30%	100%
2+ Medium Ships	7%	9%	13%	10%	0%
1+ Large Ships	68%	63%	57%	60%	0%
2+ Large Ships	5%	4%	0%	0%	0%

For flotillas we're not seeing huge jumps up or down in terms of competitiveness overall for the all through top 25% categories, although the results get wacky in both cases for top 10%. Given the 800 pound gorilla in the room convention center was 2-ship, which uses no flotillas, it feels like "kept just about even" is not a bad showing given it's effectively not at all talking about the fleet to beat this year.

The MSU row is a little misleading in that it counts fleets if they use only small ships regardless of ship count, so even fleets that are squadron heavy but only using smaller ships (and thus have, say, 4 to 5 actual ships usually) will count as MSU when at best they're squad-MSU hybrids. That said, overall MSU is still not doing great in terms of competitiveness but the line is closer to flat than I would have expected.

Single medium ship fleets are effectively flat, with 2+ being more competitive than I would have thought. That said, that considers both Ackbar with double Assault Frigates as well as Thrawn or Pryce with a Quasar and an Interdictor, which are somewhat-rare-but-not-unheard-of variants for both of those commander's squad-heavy builds.

Large ships were once again everywhere with an interesting slight downward trend the further in you get. Not a substantial one, but noteworthy. If you come to Worlds, you need a plan for blowing up large ships quickly and that was pretty evident - squad-heavy fleets handle it by their nature and a solid showing for Raddus as well all contribute to an environment that's slightly harsh on large ships. The double-large fleets of last year (Vader double ISD being the most notorious) are nearly nowhere to be found as of 2019. Despite doing well in the UK, double-large seems mostly absent now, likely for fear of the squad-heavy meta.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Ship Classes (Rebel Fleets)
1 Flotilla	16%	30%	10%	0%	x
2 Flotillas	79%	71%	90%	100%	x
MSU (Small Only)	28%	29%	30%	50%	x
1+ Medium Ships	12%	18%	20%	0%	x
2+ Medium Ships	7%	6%	10%	0%	x
1+ Large Ships	63%	53%	50%	50%	x
2+ Large Ships	7%	6%	0%	0%	x
MC75 Armored	9%	12%	10%	0%	x
MC75 Ordnance	7%	12%	10%	0%	x
MC80 Assault	7%	6%	0%	0%	x
MC80 Command	7%	6%	10%	25%	x
MC80 Battle	7%	6%	0%	0%	x
MC80 Star	16%	6%	10%	25%	x
Assault Frigate MkIIA	0%	0%	0%	0%	x
Assault Frigate MkIIB	12%	18%	20%	0%	x
Pelta Command	9%	12%	0%	0%	x
Pelta Assault	0%	0%	0%	0%	x
CR90A	35%	41%	40%	75%	x
CR90B	21%	12%	20%	25%	x
Hammerhead Scout	9%	12%	20%	0%	x
Hammerhead Torpedo	42%	47%	50%	25%	x
MC30 Scout	2%	0%	0%	0%	x
MC30 Torpedo	30%	47%	40%	50%	x
Nebulon-B Escort	14%	12%	10%	0%	x
Nebulon-B Support	2%	6%	0%	0%	x
GR-75 Combat	0%	0%	0%	0%	x
GR-75 Medium	95%	94%	100%	100%	x

Lots of Rebel fleets going 2 GR-75s (including mine). MSU holding up but not excelling. The chart mostly speaks for itself, but a few items that caught my attention:

• There are a few Rebel ships where you see a higher All %, followed by a lower 50%, finished by a 25% result that climbs back out of the hole a bit. It's tough to say for certain but I tend to interpret results like this as "requires a high degree of skill to do well." For example, the LMC80 Star Cruiser when used well (by Truthiness, for example, with Raddus) can perform very well, but it's a fragile ship that dies easily when it's not used skillfully or hits bad matchups.
• Similarly, CR90Bs.
• Hammerheads are getting it done! Hammerhead Scouts in particular have that big 25% bump. I love the little guys, so I'm on board.
• Neb-B Escort, meaning Yavaris, use is down. With 2-ship's popularity, Intel+MMJ smashing the side of Yavaris with a last+first is a quick way to die.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Ship Classes (Imperial Fleets)
1 Flotilla	40%	30%	38%	17%	0%
2 Flotillas	31%	34%	23%	33%	100%
MSU (Small Only)	2%	0%	0%	17%	0%
1+ Medium Ships	67%	59%	62%	50%	100%
2+ Medium Ships	6%	10%	15%	17%	0%
1+ Large Ships	73%	69%	62%	67%	0%
2+ Large Ships	4%	3%	0%	0%	0%
ISD 2	48%	48%	62%	67%	0%
ISD 1	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
ISD Cymoon	6%	3%	0%	0%	0%
ISD Kuat	23%	21%	0%	0%	0%
Interdictor Combat	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Interdictor Suppression	15%	10%	15%	17%	0%
Quasar 2	6%	10%	23%	0%	0%
Quasar 1	48%	45%	31%	50%	100%
Victory 2	2%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Victory 1	2%	3%	8%	0%	0%
Arquitens Command	2%	3%	8%	17%	100%
Arquitens Light	8%	10%	8%	0%	0%
Raider 2	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Raider 1	19%	28%	15%	17%	100%
Gladiator 2	4%	3%	8%	0%	0%
Gladiator 1	38%	41%	31%	33%	0%
Gozanti Assault	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Gozanti Cruisers	71%	69%	62%	50%	100%

I don't intend to ramble on too much about this chart (it's fairly straightforward), but you can see the impact of 2-ship here a lot:

• Generally lower-than-average flotilla numbers
• lots of Quasars and ISDs 
• the occasional Gozanti (in some 2-ship fleets adding a small friend to make it 2+1 and in a lot of Sloane fleets)
• Note how low Demolisher has fallen (let's be honest, that's what Gladiators are for). It's still a fairly common sight, but nowhere near its former prominence.
• No non-ISD-IIs made it to the top 25%. 
• No ISD-Is were brought at all.

On a side note, I've been saying for a while that Imperial MSU is in a bad place and oh man do the numbers bear that out. Yikes.

On a side note, remember back when I said Imperials are a 3.5-ship faction because the only ships you see with any regularity in competitive fleets are ISDs, Gozantis, and Gladiators with a possible addition of Quasars? Well we're up to a 4-ship faction now, fellows. Congrats.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Deployments (All)
3	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
4	5%	4%	0%	0%	0%
5	23%	22%	17%	30%	0%
6	24%	22%	26%	20%	0%
7	20%	20%	26%	10%	0%
8	14%	17%	17%	30%	0%
9	12%	15%	13%	10%	100%
10	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
11	1%	0%	0%	0%	0%

In general with deployments, more is better and you can see that with the lower end (4-5) struggling and those with more deployments benefiting, if only a bit. The sweet spot seems to be around 7 to 8. Co-author John is propping up the chart there on the bottom with his insane 11 deployment Leia fleet.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Deployments (Rebel Fleets)
3	0%	0%	0%	0%	x
4	9%	12%	0%	0%	x
5	9%	6%	10%	25%	x
6	23%	24%	30%	0%	x
7	23%	12%	10%	0%	x
8	19%	29%	40%	75%	x
9	14%	18%	10%	0%	x
10	0%	0%	0%	0%	x
11	2%	0%	0%	0%	x

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Deployments (Imperial Fleets)
3	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
4	2%	0%	0%	0%	0%
5	35%	31%	23%	33%	0%
6	25%	21%	23%	33%	0%
7	17%	24%	38%	17%	0%
8	10%	10%	0%	0%	0%
9	10%	14%	15%	17%	100%

I post these two together mostly to show the effect of 2-ship on the Imperial meta. Rebels overall are bringing more deployments (around 7 on average, perhaps 8) than Imperials did.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Activations (All)
2	14%	17%	17%	30%	0%
3	16%	22%	35%	20%	0%
4	15%	13%	4%	0%	0%
5	29%	26%	22%	40%	100%
6	19%	15%	13%	10%	0%
7	4%	4%	4%	0%	0%
8	2%	2%	4%	0%	0%

Again, we see the influence of 2-ship and 2+1 ship with a good number of 2 and 3 activation fleets with the rest averaging out around 5 or 6. The low-activation fleets did well overall (especially 3-activation, which saw a lot of Sloane 2+1s going after all the Thrawn 2-ships) with all other activation counts except 8 doing worse than their total representation. The only reason 8-activation looks good is because that Top 25% value of 4% is double the "All" value of 2% and it's one person. That person is writing this article, haha.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Activations (Rebel Fleets)
2	0%	0%	0%	0%	x
3	7%	12%	10%	0%	x
4	14%	6%	0%	0%	x
5	37%	41%	40%	75%	x
6	28%	24%	30%	25%	x
7	9%	12%	10%	0%	x
8	5%	6%	10%	0%	x

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Activations (Imperial Fleets)
2	27%	28%	31%	50%	0%
3	25%	28%	54%	33%	0%
4	17%	17%	8%	0%	0%
5	21%	17%	8%	17%	100%
6	10%	10%	0%	0%	0%

Again, we can see the influence of 2/2+1 ship Imperial builds here. Rebels had more activations and topped out at 8, but averaged around 5 to 6. They did better overall (but still fairly flat) with all their activation counts except 4. Over half the Imperial fleets had 3 or fewer activations, and they did very well for themselves. The Imperial fleets that weren't going for low activations got blown out.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Points total (All)
395-400	45%	39%	35%	40%	100%
390-394	15%	20%	17%	0%	0%
385-389	14%	15%	26%	40%	0%
380-384	12%	11%	9%	20%	0%
375-379	7%	7%	4%	0%	0%
<375	7%	9%	9%	0%	0%

The bidding wars at Worlds were insane. I hit some huge bid fleets all day. The data here largely backs up my anecdotal experience. We've got a lot of lower-bid fleets but they're at best fairly flat, trending a bit down, for competitiveness. After that, we see bids generally improve performance up until around the 16-20 point range, where they taper off in terms of competitiveness (but holy crap look at that 11 to 15 point bid payoff!). There's a bit of an upswing for insane bids of 26+ points, but not much of one, and none of them made it to the top 10%. Again (you're sick of seeing this), we're seeing the impact of Imperial Pryce fleets mostly bidding for the last+first against one another.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Points total (Rebel Fleets)
395-400	56%	59%	50%	75%	x
390-394	16%	24%	30%	0%	x
385-389	9%	6%	10%	25%	x
380-384	9%	6%	0%	0%	x
375-379	2%	0%	0%	0%	x
<375	7%	6%	10%	0%	x

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Points total (Imperial Fleets)
395-400	35%	28%	23%	17%	100%
390-394	15%	17%	8%	0%	0%
385-389	19%	21%	38%	50%	0%
380-384	15%	14%	15%	33%	0%
375-379	10%	10%	8%	0%	0%
<375	6%	10%	8%	0%	0%

Hey everyone look it's just what I said it would be😜! Rebels have some bids in there too but nothing like the Imperials do, and the Rebels are doing much better with lower bids. Given the amount of and access to Rieekan that's not surprising. I personally wanted to get out of the bidding game because it was getting absolutely nuts.

Before I get to the upgrades section, let's clarify a few of the terms. The charts are looking for 1+ examples of any of the following to qualify for that designation:

• Accuracy generation: things that can produce accuracy results 
• i.e. H9, Home One, Sensor Team, Captain Jonus
• Defense Mitigation: things that mess with defense token spending 
• i.e. XI7s, Intel Officer, HTT, Suppressor, Boarding Troopers, Sloane, Mon Karren
• Command Manipulation: stuff that messes with enemy commands
• i.e. Cham, Slicer Tools, Raid tokens
• Command Fixing: stuff that allows you to manipulate your own command dials or execute additional commands
• i.e. Leia (officer), SFO, Liaisons, Support Officer, Eng Cap, Nav Officer, Tac Expert, Wing Commander, Thrawn, Pursuant

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Upgrades (All)
Strategic Adviser	34%	39%	48%	80%	0%
ECM	56%	61%	52%	20%	0%
EWS	5%	4%	9%	20%	0%
Accuracy Generation	11%	13%	9%	0%	0%
Defense Mitigation	42%	39%	30%	30%	100%
Command Manipulation	20%	24%	30%	40%	0%
Command Fixing	41%	41%	43%	60%	100%

Strategic Adviser continues his unrelenting reign as king of Boredom Mountain as a nearly-mandatory large ship upgrade, competing only meaningful with Pryce (we're getting there). Otherwise:

• Electronic Countermeasures is a very common defensive upgrade nowadays but it seems to largely be flat here in terms of competitiveness, with Early Warning System seeing a surprising bump by Top 25%. This is likely due to Team Canada running 3 fleets with ISD-IIs with Early Warning System and doing well, but the fact is that EWS is a solid upgrade in a squad-heavy meta regardless.
• Accuracy generation seemed to generally struggle but in a meta full of ECMs and otherwise going for death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategies to deal with large ships, that makes sense. Similarly, defense mitigation underperformed for what I would argue are similar reasons.
• Command manipulation means Slicer Tools for the most part and as you'd expect in a squad-heavy environment, they did fine.
• Command fixing means more than just Thrawn (with guest stars officer Leia and Pursuant in some Sloane fleets), but for the most part this is Thrawn which is why the numbers are so high. That said, they stayed mostly flat.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Upgrades (Rebel Fleets)
Bail Organa	16%	24%	20%	0%	x
Yavaris	14%	12%	10%	0%	x
Toryn Farr	37%	41%	50%	75%	x
Strategic Adviser	26%	29%	30%	75%	x
ECM	42%	53%	50%	0%	x
EWS	9%	6%	10%	25%	x
Accuracy Generation	19%	24%	10%	0%	x
Defense Mitigation	35%	18%	20%	25%	x
Command Manipulation	37%	53%	60%	75%	x
Command Fixing	28%	24%	10%	0%	x

• Given Bail is a counter of sorts to Pryce and there was a lot of Pryce, it's not surprising to see he did fairly well. He's got issues with fitting into most fleets (rather than Strategic Adviser), so it's unsurprising he's not there more.
• As mentioned earlier, Yavaris was conspicuous in its absence but for understandable reasons.
• Toryn Farr continues to be one of the most "no duh" upgrades for Rebel squad-heavy builds, and the numbers climb down the row as squad-heavy concentrates further down the line.
• You don't see the same bump for EWS here as you do for the general information, so like I said, it's the Canadians and their sneaky ISD trap fleets bumping it up 😜.
• Lots of Slicer Tools (presumably some Cham too) with the Command Manipulation for Rebels, which is unsurprising given the number of double GR-75 fleets. I did the same thing, myself.
• Command fixing, however, gets pretty bad here for Rebels which means it's going to get pretty good for Imperials in just a moment...

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Upgrades (Imperial Fleets)
Captain Brunson	56%	55%	69%	100%	100%
Demolisher	35%	34%	15%	0%	0%
Avenger	56%	55%	38%	33%	0%
Pryce	42%	45%	54%	33%	0%
Strategic Adviser	42%	45%	62%	83%	0%
ECM	69%	66%	54%	33%	0%
EWS	2%	3%	8%	17%	0%
Accuracy Generation	4%	7%	8%	0%	0%
Defense Mitigation	48%	52%	38%	33%	100%
Command Manipulation	4%	7%	8%	17%	0%
Command Fixing	52%	52%	69%	100%	100%

• Captain Brunson is borderline broken to the point where she's just straight money all the way up to being in over 2/3 of the top 25% Imperial fleets. She's also very good for keeping Quasars alive, so it's no coincidence we see her a lot here.
• As I mentioned before, Demolisher wasn't seen as much as you might expect. A number of Canadians were running the Projection Experts Gladiator-I, which explains the discrepancy between the Demolisher title and the number of Gladiators taken earlier.
• I'm a bit surprised by Avenger here, given it's a fairly common ISD title and fairly standard in both Thrawn and Sloane fleets, but I know it's not uncommon to cut it for more bid when you get concerned about needing a higher bid.
• Pryce was everywhere and she performed well up to the top 25% bracket. Given she was the centerpiece upgrade in most of the Imperial squadron fleets, that's not surprising.
• Lots of Thrawn and/or Pursuant and/or SFO in Imperial fleets bring that Command Fixing value up very high.

	All	Top 50%	Top 25%	Top 10%	Winner
Objectives
Advanced Gunnery	22%	26%	22%	10%	0%
Blockade Run	1%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Close-Range Intel Scan	10%	9%	4%	10%	0%
Most Wanted	44%	43%	52%	60%	100%
Opening Salvo	4%	2%	0%	0%	0%
Precision Strike	12%	11%	13%	0%	0%
Station Assault	5%	9%	9%	20%	0%
Targeting Beacons	1%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Capture the VIP	5%	4%	4%	10%	0%
Contested Outpost	25%	26%	22%	40%	0%
Fighter Ambush	22%	24%	22%	20%	100%
Fire Lanes	12%	13%	17%	20%	0%
Fleet Ambush	1%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Hyperspace Assault	18%	13%	13%	10%	0%
Jamming Barrier	1%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Planetary Ion Cannon	15%	20%	22%	0%	0%
Dangerous Territory	7%	2%	0%	0%	0%
Intel Sweep	11%	17%	26%	20%	0%
Minefields	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Navigational Hazards	1%	2%	0%	0%	0%
Salvage Run	8%	7%	13%	30%	0%
Sensor Net	7%	4%	4%	0%	0%
Solar Corona	20%	17%	9%	0%	0%
Superior Positions	47%	50%	48%	50%	100%

We're nearing the end! Let's talk objectives.

In terms of red objectives, it's still the fairly standard Advanced Gunnery, Precision Strike, and Most Wanted. Unsurprisingly, Most Wanted is still a great objective even if it's boring. That said, Station Assault was a surprise hit too.

For yellow objectives, there was a bit more variety here without a clear favorite. Fire Lanes did better than you'd expect, Hyperspace Assault didn't pan out great, and otherwise Planetary Ion Cannon, which is generally avoided by Imperial squadron fleets, did pretty well too.

Blue objectives saw a lot of Superior Positions, which you'd expect from squad-heavy fleets, and a lot of Solar Corona as the backup. I'm surprised to see Solar Corona did as poorly as it did, honestly. Salvage Run was knocking it out of the park, as was Intel Sweep. Given there was about a 20% rate of Strategic going on, that's not too surprising, but what was surprising was Sensor Net doing so poorly. Lots of unexpected results for the blue objectives here.

Summary/Eric's thoughts
It's an awful lot of information to try to process, honestly. My big takeaways are this:

• Heavy squadron is again (for how many years now?) a fleet archetype that overperforms, especially at Worlds. It's consistent and squadrons have obvious advantages in a variety of matchups. That said, it's getting kind of boring.
• When it comes to squadron-heavy, we have the further issue of ace-heavy outperforming as well. There are reasons for that too, but I've already gone on the record discussing how much I dislike ace spam.
• On a side note, if we accept that squadrons are points capped to limit their power but also accept that points spent on aces is stronger than points spent on generics (usually), do we not reach the conclusion that ace spam subverts the intention of the points cap?
• The Imperial meta has become extremely inbred. We've got two main commanders with one basic fleet archetype (with variants, of course, but still) dominating the top spots right now. I could write a long article on this subject alone, but I'll try to summarize the Worlds-relevant points below:
• There are reasons for this, some of them having to do with shortcomings in how a lot of Imperial ships and squadrons are designed, but the core of it is a 7 point upgrade and a bid are allowing the most powerful activation (an ISD and 4 self-sufficient ace squadrons) in the game to last+first reliably. You can play a fleet that counters it (Sloane, Raddus to some extent, etc.) or get on board the Pryce train and try to bid deeper but that's more or less where we're at right now if you want to do well.
• In case I'm not being clear about it, Pryce probably should never have been printed the way she works right now. She can't work to give Demolisher last+first but she can work on the strongest ship in the game?
• Maarek, Morna, and Jendon are showing up frequently for a reason - Imperials generally lack the good anti-ship aces Rebels are spoiled with and their anti-ship generic squadron that can be fielded in any quantity is all of TIE Bombers (you can sprinkle in 2-3ish Firesprays in some builds). TIE Bombers rely on Gozantis, which rely on Bomber Command Center, which requires the extra points, which means why not just ignore all that and use MMJ without the support apparatus? It also provides a lot more punch for the individual squad command than trying to spam bombers and abuses Squall much more efficiently.
• To put it this way: of the 13 Imperials represented in the top 25% (10 Rebels), only 2 are not Thrawn or Sloane.
• And remember, literally all of them are bringing at least two of Maarek, Morna, and Jendon.
• To continue to harp on the wave 7 officers, Strategic Adviser is still everywhere and it's a brain-dead choice on a large ship for 4 measly points if you're not trying to abuse Pryce. Brunson is a terrific value for only 5 points and is very easy to use and is also seen a lot. Bail gets a pass for the most part if only because Strategic Adviser usually steals his chair.
• The inevitable issue that arises from "we probably need to nerf some of this stuff because the Imperial internal meta is getting inbred and Pryce probably isn't good for the game" is "okay, so then the Empire is back to not competing with Rebels at Worlds again?" and... there's some truth to that. 
• If anything, it's an excellent argument in favor of some kind of points adjustment errata and an eventual X-Wing style dynamic points app or at the very least a more considered wide-ranging adjustment that addresses issues on both sides rather than just playing yearly whack-a-mole with whatever build has been dominating lately.
• We'll see how/if the SSD shakes things up. 
• I have my doubts - when "silver bullet" counter-matchups are held forth as a balancing mechanism for problematic builds, it rarely works satisfactorily and I've seen faith in that kind of thing cause problems for other games I've played.
• Not to mention Rebels get nothing new to really improve their options.
• The Rebellion in the Rim campaign might assist with some new stuff, especially objectives, but we know even less about that at this point.

And that's pretty much it. Thanks for digging through the numbers with me and putting up with my griping in the wrap-up here. I don't think it's all doom and gloom - I had a good time at Worlds and I did fairly well with an unconventional fleet, but I don't think I've ever seen as little variety out of Worlds as I did this year and I feel like it's the kind of thing that should merit a response to encourage more diverse fleets.