Are Multimasters broken? Tournament statistics.

[Scoffer]

On the 4th-5th of January we had a big 5 rounds tournament in Moscow. 40 players from 8 towns played 93 games of Malifaux (unfortunately two players couldn't play all 5 rounds because of personal matters and some players were late for the forth round). I asked players to fullfill information about their leaders, secondary masters (if any), selected schemes and scored VP. All data is available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SD8puKmVsJ1KNiPoFr1X8Yx1na0qjZ72AqBLI4aFYps/edit?usp=sharing Feel free to use it in your own recearch. 

I know that a lot of players in Europe don't like the very idea of multiple masters and think that multimaster lists are broken, overpowered and unbalanced. I tryed to check this hypothesis using the data I've collected. Long story short: multimasters are strong, but not overpowered.

Tournament rules allowed hiring additional non-DMH masters and allowed DMH-masters as solo leaders - this rules are used on most M3E tournaments in Moscow since late open beta. Most players in the European part of Russia (things may be different in Siberia and the Far Eastern region) find the opportunity to hire a secondary master a good option to build a strong crew, but not an auto-choice.

As there were 40 players, I divided them into four "quarters" for statistics purposes: 1-10 (TOP-10), 11-20, 21-29, 30-40. 

First of all, some faction statistics:

    

 

    

 

Solo leaders were more than 1.5 times popular than multi: 114/72. 12 players played only solo (including those, who didn't play all 5 rounds) and 7 played only multi. 

Among TOP-10 players 6 played more than half of their games solo. 2 (including the winner) played only multi. TOP-10 players picked solomaster crews 25 times and multimaster 23 times.

 

42 games were played Solo vs Multi. Solo won 13, Multi won 23, 6 were draws.

TOP-10 players played in Solo vs Multi games 24 times (a TOP-10 vs. TOP-10 counts as two). Solo won 7 games and lost 1. Multi won 10 and lost 3. In TOP-10 vs TOP-10 games Solo won 3 and Multi won 1. 1 game was a draw.

In Solo vs Multi games against players from the same quarter Solo won 5 and Multi won 3.

 

Also I divided all non-draw games into three groups by DIFF: minor (1-2 points Diff), moderate (3-4 points Diff), major (5-8 points Diff).  

Multimaster lists look more successfull, but 50% of all Major wins were achieved in Solo vs Solo games. Seems like the gap between some masters/keyword is greater than between Multi and Solo crews (:

 

Some more facts and numbers

1. The most popular leaders: Ophelia (14 games, 41.18% of all Bayou games), Colette (12 games, 38.71%), Viks (10 games, 33.3%), Dreamer (9 games, 40.91%), Shenlong (8 games, 40%), Parker (8 games, 26.7%), Lady Justice (7 games, 33.3%)

2. The most popular Solo leaders: Ophelia (11 games), Colette (10 games), Lady Justice (7 games).

3. The most popular Multi leader: Shenlong (6 games), Ulix, Viks, Molly (5 games each).

4. The most hired secondary master: Von Schill (10 games), Colette, Bayou Zoraida, Titania, Leveticus, Asami (6 games each).

5. Never saw the table: Rasputina, Marcus (both in Neverborn and Arcanists), Som'er, Perdita, Neverborn Lucius, Hamelin, Outcast Jack Daw, Jacob Lynch, Youko Hamasaki , Lilith, Nicodem.

6. Were hired only secondary: Wong, Bayou Zoraida, Titania, Kirai, McCabe.

7. Best winrate (among leaders, that played 3 games and more): Nellie (100% in 4 games), Seamus (100% in 3 games), Pandora (75% in 4 games), TT Mei Feng (66,67% in 3 games), Shenlong (62,5% in 8 games). Ulix and Sandeep (60% in 5 games). Colette (58,33% in 12 games), Dreamer (55,56% in 9 games). 50% - Collodi (6 games), Parker (8 games) Asami (4 games). 

8. Lowest winrate (among leaders, that played 3 games and more): Misaki (0% in 3 games), Arcanists Hoffman and McMourning (16,67% in 6 games), Basse (20% in 5 games), Mah, Molly, Lady Justice (28,57% in 7 games).

9. The highest average VP scored  (among leaders, that played 3 games and more): Nellie (7 VP in 4 games), Seamus (6.33 VP in 3 games), TT Mei Feng (5.33 in 3 games).

10. The lowest average VP scored  (among leaders, that played 3 games and more): McMourning (2.7 VP in 6 games), Ulix (2.8 in 5 games). 

11. Two players who played all their games with McMourning and Ulix were doing it terribly slow.

12. The Ulix guy was playing my favourite Summon-as-many-pigs-as-possible list (Ulix, Penelope, Zoraida, Old Major, the Sow, Hog Whisperer, Bokor) in four games (added one Piglet to score Vendetta in round 5) and finished 8th.

13. One person played Five-Masters list (Viks, Von Schill, Parker, Leveticus) in all rounds and finished 20th.

14. Best TT player played Shenlong in all 5 rounds (is anybody surprised?)  

15. Each scheme (except Harness the ley line) was used in pools twice. The most popular scheme was Outflank - it was picked 59 times. The least popular was Hold Up Their Forces - 15 times.

16. In average players scored more VP for schemes (2.04) than strats (1.84). TOP-10 players scored 2.35 for schemes and 2.3 for strats. Players from the second quarter (11-20) scored 2.14 for schemes and only 1.8 for strats. This shows us that strats are harder to score and more important to score if you want to win.

 

 

[Legislat]

An excellent statistics and organization by Scoffer. I was there and I applaud.

[Daniel Walker]

DMH is not overpowered, multi masters are not overpowered. Fair Malifaux. Due to statistics of first three places)

[Scoffer]

17 minutes ago, Daniel Walker said:

DMH is not overpowered, multi masters are not overpowered. Fair Malifaux. Due to statistics of first three places)

Due to statistics Nellie and Seamus are overpowered. NERF GUILD! NERF RESSERS!

[Ogid]

Wow, thanks for all the info @Scoffer!

 

[Daniel Walker]

40 minutes ago, Scoffer said:

Due to statistics Nellie and Seamus are overpowered. NERF GUILD! NERF RESSERS!

Nerf everyone except neverborn xD

[jovialevil]

Did you happen to track how many turns people were able to finish in these games?  Or did every round play out the full five turns?

[DuBlanck]

1 hour ago, Scoffer said:

One person played Five-Masters list (Viks, Von Schill, Parker, Leveticus) in all rounds and finished 20th.

Hero.

Is 20th of 40 an expected placing for that player? i.e. Did multimultimaster help/hinder his play?

It seems like 2-Master gets talked about a lot, but rarely 3+. I know the one game I played with 3 Masters (because it was gainst Zoraida and I was feeling salty) just left all three underwhelming because no-one had hte resources they needed to shine.

[Paddywhack]

Your own stats show significant win rate differences for those factions that used Mulitmaster. For Ressurs more than double the solo rate! The only ones without significant increases were Arcanists and Outcasts (and it sounds like an Outcast player used a very nontraditional all master list, so may skew the results). That sure seems to indicate you are better off playing multi-master if you goal is to be competitive. 

You list best winrates for masters, but were those solo masters or played as the leader in a multi-master crew?

[Legislat]

All my games (i am 4-th) were finished with full 5 turns, except the 4-th one, where my opponent didnt show up at all.

The 3 master neverborn list in any combination (Pandora/Dreamer/Titania/Nekima/Euripide with Serena Bowman) is a huge pain for me. I thought a lot about how it can be successfuly countered and havent found an answer yet. Really mobile and really hard to put down. 

[Scoffer]

1 hour ago, jovialevil said:

Did you happen to track how many turns people were able to finish in these games?  Or did every round play out the full five turns?

Unfortunately no. I was thinking about it but then end of year and new year stuff made me completely forget about it. I feel like 50% of games had all 5 turns finished in time. 

50 minutes ago, DuBlanck said:

Is 20th of 40 an expected placing for that player? i.e. Did multimultimaster help/hinder his play?

It was his first m3e tournament and I don't know how many m3e experience he had, but he was doing well back in m2e. I think he finished at his level.

 

46 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

You list best winrates for masters, but were those solo masters or played as the leader in a multi-master crew?

That's total winrate. 

The best among solomasters: Colette (60% in 10 games), Parker (60% in 6 games), Collodi (50% in 6 games), Leveticus and Asami (50% in 4 games each), Ophelia (45.54% in 11 games).

The best among multimasters: Nellie and Seamus (100% in 3 games each), Dreamer and Pandora (75% in 4 games each), Shenlong (66,67% in 6 games), Ulix (60% in 5 games).

46 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

That sure seems to indicate you are better off playing multi-master if you goal is to be competitive. 

Making such conclusions based on winrate information only can lead to serious mistakes. Malifaux is a complicated game with a lot of things that have influence on results of a certain game: schemepool and scheme choise, terrain, both players' skill, experience and knowledge of opponent's playstyle etc. 

As you can see, 6 players from TOP-10 played more than half of their games with solomaster crews. I'm pretty sure that their goal was to be competitive and they definitely were. 

[Ogid]

34 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Your own stats show significant win rate differences for those factions that used Mulitmaster. For Ressurs more than double the solo rate! The only ones without significant increases were Arcanists and Outcasts (and it sounds like an Outcast player used a very nontraditional all master list, so may skew the results). That sure seems to indicate you are better off playing multi-master if you goal is to be competitive.

The above statistics should be read with caution, this is only a tournament with from 7 to 4 players per faction and we can't asume all players have the same skill level so the results are going to be biased in some way or another. Here is the Rusian ranking.

For multi versus solo it's safer to look only at the top tables who are players that we can asume more consistent and this is pure speculation, but another reason to look at the top tables for this is more casual players with less options are probably less likely to bring multiple masters as most players start playing with their keywords before start experimenting with other options like double masters and OOK.

And in those:

2 hours ago, Scoffer said:

In Solo vs Multi games against players from the same quarter Solo won 5 and Multi won 3.

Which again proves nothing, but it's a hint that multi master seems powerful but it's not dominating the top tables. More data is needed from different metas with different players, but kudos to the rusian meta for start providing it.

[Maniacal_cackle]

The problem with focusing on the top tables is it makes your sample size super small.

Perhaps the solo masters were just flipping well. Or perhaps the best players just happen to prefer playing solo masters. Etc.

However, even at those levels we see that multi masters dominated when picked. I also don't see how you see that discrepancy in winrates and just dismiss it.

Also, why assume the best players would take double masters if that is so powerful? It is early days, and even the best players may not have a clear idea of what is powerful (and may not have had the chance to practice double masters. Locally we don't allow double masters for most casual games).

One tournament is hardly conclusive, but this data strongly leans towards double masters being super strong IMO.

EDIT: although the argument that the gap between masters being greater than the gap between multi/solo is important. Even if double masters is overpowered, single masters without the ability to counter pick a bad matchup may be even worse.

[Adran]

18 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

The problem with focusing on the top tables is it makes your sample size super small.

Perhaps the solo masters were just flipping well. Or perhaps the best players just happen to prefer playing solo masters. Etc.

However, even at those levels we see that multi masters dominated when picked. I also don't see how you see that discrepancy in winrates and just dismiss it.

Really, I thought when they looked at games between the top 10,  solo masters beat multiple masters more often than the other way round. ( the inverse was true across all games but at least looking at similar placed you minimize skill differences). 

The sample size is too small to draw any real conclusion, but it opens up some different discussion points to the UK national. As shenlong looks good in these stats, but the top thunder player only ranked 10th

[Daniel Walker]

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Also, why assume the best players would take double masters if that is so powerful? It is early days, and even the best players may not have a clear idea of what is powerful (and may not have had the chance to practice double

I have one very important note to that statement. It is not early days, we are trying to find best tool to win in our meta for 7 months at least. I was third on tournament and lost only to second place, just because I picked Euripides/Zoraida in first game, against Colette, instead of mono Collodi, who is broken as hell. This statistics is very solid for our top player)

I just want to notice that the “broken” multimasters, are not more broken than Shenlog, Dreamer or Collodi.

Even in casual games we don’t have a lot restrictions. (The most important is not to mix DMH and normal masters). But finally a lot of players realized that second master is just another tool to counter opponents leader. For example, I really don’t know how to play well against  McMourning while you playing neverborn and can’t take Pandora as second master.

[Scoffer]

57 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Also, why assume the best players would take double masters if that is so powerful? It is early days, and even the best players may not have a clear idea of what is powerful (and may not have had the chance to practice double masters. Locally we don't allow double masters for most casual games).

Top Russian players play a lot and spend a lot of time inventing and testing powerful list. We started playing m3e tournaments with multiple masters allowed in february 2019, as soon as m3e got out of closed beta. 

Two guys from TOP-10 (№1 and №4) had played through 12 tournaments in 2019, two other (№3 and №9) - 7. It is enough experience to find powerful combos and get familiar with them.

[Maniacal_cackle]

@Scoffer one thing I forgot to say in the original post was thanks for putting this amazing dataset together! Super useful!

I take your point (and a few other's) that other things are clearly stronger than double-mastering. So it doesn't appear to be the biggest offender compared to some of those top masters.

But I think you're overestimating how quickly a meta can be solved. Even if those players are playing 3 times a week, that's still less than 150 games. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a hundred games just to master a single crew, much less an entire faction and all of its cross-keyword possibilities. As far as I know, data of this quality is pretty rare and far between. Without access to lots of data like this, even the most savvy of player couldn't necessarily solve a meta with only 150 games.

So I'm just saying the top tables should be taken with some grains of salt. Of course, the wider pool needs to be taken with grains of salt as well (maybe double masters just dominate weaker players who don't know how to deal with it or panic).

[Daniel Walker]

1 minute ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

@Scoffer one thing I forgot to say in the original post was thanks for putting this amazing dataset together! Super useful!

I take your point (and a few other's) that other things are clearly stronger than double-mastering. So it doesn't appear to be the biggest offender compared to some of those top masters.

But I think you're overestimating how quickly a meta can be solved. Even if those players are playing 3 times a week, that's still less than 150 games. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a hundred games just to master a single crew, much less an entire faction and all of its cross-keyword possibilities. As far as I know, data of this quality is pretty rare and far between. Without access to lots of data like this, even the most savvy of player couldn't necessarily solve a meta with only 150 games.

So I'm just saying the top tables should be taken with some grains of salt. Of course, the wider pool needs to be taken with grains of salt as well (maybe double masters just dominate weaker players who don't know how to deal with it or panic).

I think all our messages here can be rephrased as : “Don’t ban multimaster for all big tournaments. Give them a try. And may be you will found that they will not be dominating all the meta”

[Maniacal_cackle]

Just now, Daniel Walker said:

I think all our messages here can be rephrased as : “Don’t ban multimaster for all big tournaments. Give them a try. And may be you will found that they will not be dominating all the meta”

That's pretty reasonable! Anecdotally and statistically, this post presents a solid argument that it is worth giving double masters more of a go. It partially depends on philosophy of what the goal is for 'balance.' In a perfectly balanced world you might get everything to a 50% winrate, but that's pretty unreasonable. If something has a 60% winrate, that's probably actually okay (even though that is actually ridiculously strong to get that high a winrate).

That said, locally we ban them mostly on the basis of fun. We find double master games pretty boring/homogenous. So I think a lot of this "double masters are overpowered" is probably secretly "double masters suck to play against."

[Daniel Walker]

17 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

That said, locally we ban them mostly on the basis of fun. We find double master games pretty boring/homogenous. So I think a lot of this "double masters are overpowered" is probably secretly "double masters suck to play against."

There are a lot of different definitions of fan) I really enjoy playing neverborn list that we named Charlie’s Angels (Pandora as leader, Titania, Nekima and Serena Bowman). I am fond of Titania/Euripides lists where you play both of yours masters as outflank scheme runners)

[Maniacal_cackle]

Fair points all around!

I'm really curious about Dreamer's performance. So far I've avoided him due to worrying about going to time, but I do love the crew. Anyone got lists for him?

Also surprised to see Molly perform so abysmally. Was it likely a player thing, or is she not suited to that meta, or just generally bad?

[Daniel Walker]

16 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Fair points all around!

I'm really curious about Dreamer's performance. So far I've avoided him due to worrying about going to time, but I do love the crew. Anyone got lists for him?

Also surprised to see Molly perform so abysmally. Was it likely a player thing, or is she not suited to that meta, or just generally bad?

You know, our first place on that tournament is master of Dreamer. We can try to summon him and he will answer.(but you know, he almost always takes Pandora or Titania or Nekima as second master)

[Daniel Walker]

43 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Also surprised to see Molly perform so abysmally. Was it likely a player thing, or is she not suited to that meta, or just generally bad?

A can’t say a lot about Molly, because we haven’t a lot of resser  players, but I heard about and seen some horrible visions of Seamus/Molly lists that are pretty competitive.

[Ogid]

2 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

But I think you're overestimating how quickly a meta can be solved. Even if those players are playing 3 times a week, that's still less than 150 games. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a hundred games just to master a single crew, much less an entire faction and all of its cross-keyword possibilities. As far as I know, data of this quality is pretty rare and far between. Without access to lots of data like this, even the most savvy of player couldn't necessarily solve a meta with only 150 games.

I have to disagree a bit about this point. The more real experience a player has the better, that's true; but when someone has played a lot and know how his models and enemy models perform; he can make an educated guess about what can or can't work in a particular scenario or what to expect versus a crew even if he hasn't play that/versus that exact list before. That player will still make judgement mistakes of course, but these will be smaller and smaller the more expericence he has. Playing each particular match once isn't necessary. Plus all the "indirect" insight that player would have thanks to battle reports and talks with other players of his meta (specially if it's a competitive one).

For example, I'm sure any top player of a faction could become a top player of a different faction he has not played before much quicker than a brand new player (asuming both players are equally good).

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

11 hours ago, Daniel Walker said:

For example, I really don’t know how to play well against  McMourning while you playing neverborn and can’t take Pandora as second master.

McMourning had second lowest winrate at your tournament. He doesn't seem like someone to tech against.