Prime Championships Results Analysis: Episode IV – A New Meta

The Spark of Hope meta has come to an end, so we thought we’d look back at the data from this very long Prime season before we have our first official CM tournaments.

If you want to see any of the earlier, more detailed analyses, they’re here:
Episode I, Episode II, Episode III.

Deck Popularity

This was the ReyLo and Hero Droids meta, with those decks accounting for a third of all decks in the 628 decks that made Top Cuts. Looking at the slice of victories for those decks, it’s clear that Chopper Droids was the stronger of the two decks for most of the meta, taking a much bigger share of the victories despite being sightly less common.

Deck Performance

I calculated deck performance based on popularity. For those unfamiliar with my power graphs: red means weak, blue is average, green is strong and dark green is extremely powerful:

The only deck which I calculate to have been overpowered (and by quite a margin) is Chopper Droids.

However, this data includes pre-nerf droids. Post-Holocron, Droids’ popularity fell, despite the fact that the strength of this deck remained high. I put this down to a slight weakening of the deck but also a desire by many players to try something new:

Changing popularity of decks across the meta

The New Meta

Given the duration of the Spark of Hope meta, I expect the decks that make a showing at the final Primes of the season to be dominated by Covert Missions lineups.

Will double Trandoshan be everywhere (for those who can get there hands on 4)? Will there by Death Stars, Fetts, Bane and Pirates? Will heroes get a chance with Wookiees, Spectre and Anakin. Or will there be old decks with new tricks, like ReyLo, Droids and Palp3? I have some thoughts on this which I published in my Covert Missions deck predictions article.

Click to see my Covert Missions predictions

One final thought

During the last 6 weeks of the Prime season (22 tournaments), Order 66 decks won 6 events out of 10 Top Cut appearances. This is well above the curve, and is peculiar given Order 66 decks appeared only twice (in Top Cuts) in the preceding 18 weeks (74 tournaments).

This may be that Order 66 is simply incredibly strong and it just took players a long time to figure this out. However, I favour the idea that this late success was down to the fact that Order 66 is strong in a 2-wide meta, as the Primes came to be after the decline of villain supports and 3-wide droids thanks to their Holocron nerfs.

If that’s the case, and if the Covert Missions solidifies around 2-wide decks such as Bane, Anakin, Kragan or a revamped ReyLo, we might see Order 66 rear its head again.