Average Character Finishes by Board - An Analysis

 

Many of you know I'm currently in an educational leadership doctoral program.  This semester I took advanced data analysis, and our final project required us to analyze a data set of our choosing and to write up a report about it.

Many of you know I collect an obnoxious level of data for this-here blog.

You know what I did next.

If you would like to read the paper I submitted, please proceed accordingly.  I warn you, this is the dorkiest thing I've done in quite some time.

Board Analysis - Character Finishes

Professional Dueler Jonathan spent some time this summer running analytics on character performance and the different boards we play on.  He used the data from the first 40 Duels of our league and ranked all 12 characters on all 4 boards from highest average finish (Jango on Carbon) to last (Boba on Carbon).  Those are two crazy bookends on some rather illuminating findings.  Click on the picture and see for yourself - thanks Jonathan!

Board Analysis - The Emperor's Throne Room

Despite Curtis' absence at the Imperial March, he was kind enough to crunch the numbers again to give us an insider's look at how characters do on individual game boards.  So how to our combating avatars do inside the Emperor's Throne Room?

The first column after the character name is the average finish in the Throne Room.  In 36 league Duels in Waco, the Throne Room has been used ten times.  Jango Fett has the best average finish with a 4.4 and two career victories, while Darth Maul is a whopping 8.4 with four last place finishes. Given Maul's insulated starting position, his neighboring Dark Side brethren must get nervous that he'll attack first.  Obi-Wan Kenobi has the most career wins on the board with three, and that's somewhat impressive given that he starts on the front lines of the Light Side.  That also makes it easy to flip, which is what Dalton did when he won last month.

The heat map provides greater context.  Perhaps most interesting is the resident of the Throne Room - Emperor Palpatine.  He's never finished in the top three...and never in the bottom three either!  In fact, he's finished fourth through sixth seven times out of ten tries.  That's an unusual consistency.  Take a look at Luke Skywalker.  He's the only character never to have won in Waco, but he's got eight top six finishes and six in the top three.  That's impressive given his forward starting point on the center bridge of the board.  I predict if Luke ever wins, it will be in the Throne Room.

What patterns do you see?  Sound off in the comments below!

Board Analysis - Kamino Platform

Welcome to a new feature on the blog!  Thanks to some cool stat work Curtis has been running on our Duel performances, he's been able to isolate character performances based on the game board we use for a Duel.  Curtis contends that the starting position of some characters may positively or negatively impact a character's chances in a Duel.  Let's take a look at the Kamino graphs Curtis provided, since that was the spot of the 2016 Championship...

In the 32 recorded Duels for our Waco league, nine games, including the 2016 Championship, have been played on Kamino.  The first column after the character names indicates their average finish on this board.  It should be no surprise that Darth Vader leads in both average and wins - his starting position behind Slave One is a distinct advantage.  On the other hand, Emperor Palpatine should have that same benefit but he's rated second to last.  Last place belongs to Han Solo, and he easily has the worst starting position on Kamino, actually on the Dark Side of the circular portion of the board.  He doesn't have the most last place finishes, though.  That distinction belongs to Anakin Skywalker, who starts in the rear line behind the light side.  I'm skeptical that his board position should be that much of a determinant.

This graph demonstrates frequency of finishes, divided by four categories:  top three, four through six, seven through nine, and ten through last.  The more red a box is, the greater the frequency of occurrence, while the bluer it gets the less frequent it is.

You can see Darth Vader has a 77% chance to finish in the top six of a Duel on Kamino.  Liz finished fifth at the Championship, so that holds.  Despite not having a win on the board, both Yoda and Jango finish in the top three 44% of the time.  Obi-Wan has the highest percentage of any character, in the seventh through ninth place range.  That's not entirely surprising given his near-middle starting position.  Anakin has the strangest character pattern, as he tends to finish in the bottom three or the top three but usually never in the middle.

What are your thoughts about Kamino?  Sound off in the comments below!