The Road to Worlds - Dilemma Popularity Analysis

by Lucas Thompson, Ambassador

10th July 2014

The Sample

I used the top 3 dilemma piles of every regional with 8 or more people, the top 2 of every regional with 6-7 people, and the winning dilemma pile of every regional that had 5 or fewer attendees, for a total of 55 dilemma piles reviewed. I tallied both the total number of appearances of each dilemma in those piles, as well as the number of decks each dilemma appeared in.

The Data

The following charts express the percentage of those 55 piles that included each listed dilemma at least once. That way, having three All-Consuming Evils in every consume pile won't make it look like such piles are more common than they really are.

 

The next charts compare this year's data to the data from the last two years. I only used the top 40 duals, and the top 20 planet and space dilemmas here for brevity.

Analysis (In this section, dilemmas names will be followed by: D(dual)/P(planet)/S(space), their rank this year and, in parentheses, their rank last year)

An Issue of Trust D1(1) continues its dark reign of terror. The only dilemma to unseat it in the last four years, Hard Time D3(3), didn't see much movement either. It's just the complete package - despite the various and sundry ways to get around it (Klag, Neral, Central Command, Zek, Deleted Subroutines, not playing Bajoran, etc), it is both (A) a potentially large stop (that is fairly easy to track) for only 3 cost and one under the mission, and (B) a "skill dilemma" for the purposes of Donatra, Reyga, and friends. Even when you know your opponents will know it is coming, it is still worth using.

Making a big jump this year is Secret Identity D2(6). It sets up An Issue of Trust, that's true, but it's not like AIoT's popularity has changed much. So what do we fear? Well, we saw a lot of Relativity and TOS decks do well at regionals this year, and SI is a great way to deal with Kirk - who can show up in both decks. Donatra/Karina/Ruwon are great targets in the Romulan decks that have been popular lately too, but you've got to be prepared for one of the three to come into play when you use it.

What do Relativity and TOS have in common? Well, they're both Federation - and that's all that Moral Choice D4(5) cares about. The frequent Federation appearances at the top of tournaments explains both the bump in MC's popularity, but also the ascent of Assassination Attempt P3(13). The only Federation factions that are Treachery-heavy are Maquis and Equinox, but we haven't seen much of them in this Regional season.

Peak Performance brought a trio of attrition skill dilemmas, and they've all seen drops in their use. Pitching In D6(2) is still strong, but not at its peak - many of the well-performing decks included enough high-cost personnel that the cost reduction text has been less guaranteed. Four cost for two stops is average for a dual dilemma, but usually those stops are random. Healing Hand D20(13) and Honorable Pursuit D39(29) are the other two, and they're trending down too - unlike Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? D13(10) or Back Room Dealings 16D(19), they have no text that enforces the stop, and stop prevention has been as prevalent this year as it was last year. Getting the dilemmas to return to the pile is nice, but if they bounce and don't stop anyone, you're just down two cost on the current attempt.

Coolant Leak D27(12) and In Development D10(14) continue to bounce back and forth for dominance of the anti-weenie market, and frankly I'm rooting for In Development. Engineer is already a pretty useless skill, and Coolant Leak seems to just be kicking it while it's down. Also, the number of decks that Coolant Leak is useful against is smaller than the number that In Development hits, so it's a more general-purpose tool.

Tragic Turn D37(48) is back! Well, more accurately, All-Consuming Evil P7(16) and The Clown: Guillotine D24(43) are back, and Tragic is riding that wave. It was interesting, going back to the 2011 data, back then, TT was actually more popular than ACE or Guillotine, though that's certainly not true now. Current kill-piles are much more consume heavy, and several of the kills are on dilemmas that return to the pile (like Guillotine), so there are fewer opportunities for Tragic to trigger. These piles are often (but not always) paired with an Aid Legendary Civilization deck, be they the TOS, Romulan, Klingon, or Klingon/Romulan variety.

Several of those well-performing TOS decks are ship destruction decks - you hit your opponent's ship with a damage dilemma, then on your turn you drop a second ship and two damage engagement cards. There are a couple varieties, but the most popular dilemma damage source this year has been the perennially popular Gomtuu Shock Wave S1(1). Federation and Bajoran decks are the best at passing Gomtuu, so the pile is often built with those affiliations in mind (Moral Choice and the like). Another possible damage source is Prefix Codes S20(23), but that has a couple other difficulties. Sure, it will go on the ship no matter what, but any deck using a two-span space mission will be able to run home if you can't stop them with other dilemmas.

On the planet side of damage piles, Greater Needs P4(2) has actually slipped in popularity despite the battle trends. I do think that part of its initial popularity came from people just being so excited about running a planet wall other than Rogue Borg Ambush P1(1), but its damage effect is so good that people have been coming more prepared for it. Necessary Execution P2(3) use has come up some, and is also popular in battle decks - if your opponent just went to space and got asploded, they might get gun-shy and try to sneak to a planet. NE punishes that sort of behavior.

Accelerated Aging D38(41) is an interesting beast. While its popularity overall is generally static and middling, that statistic doesn't give the whole picture. Though I did not collect data on this next part specifically, this dilemma is very, very common in Europe, and almost completely absent in North America and Australia. I find that interesting, because there aren't really many other trends that are quite as noticeably different in dilemma use between the continents. I mean, sure EU kill piles look slightly different than NA/Aus, but the differences aren't as stark as the Accelerated Aging gap.

Space dilemmas win the award, again, for the least change from year to year. Slightly Overbooked S21(6) has slipped due to a decreased prevalence of 40 point missions, but otherwise the only change has been the appearance of Inquest S7(--) at the less-contested #7 spot (at that point we're already at just 12% of the piles in the sample). Gomtuu Shock Wave S1(1), Personal Duty S2(2), Where No One Has Gone Before S3(3), and Outclassed S4(4) still have no equal.

 

Infinite Diversity Awards

Finally, I've once again tracked the dilemmas that only one person used in the whole sample. Here are our IDIC winners:

Ken, I may have cursed your name once or twice as I put all those new entries in the spreadsheet, but congratulations on winning a Regional with an achievement deck.

 

It's Over

So, that's it for this season. What am I going to do with all this new free time?? Oh, right, play Trek. See you at Worlds!

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