All of the Mulligan’s Open rosters are now locked in and checked! Many thanks to all of you for getting these in with very minimal chasing and shaming. So now is the time to have a little look see at the field for this year’s tournament… Where are people coming from? What have they taken? let’s have a gander at some of the trends.
First up let’s have a look at where people are joining us from. Unsurprisingly the majority of the Mulligan’s Open participants are from Scotland, however, 30% of this year’s participants reside out with Scotland with the majority of these coaches coming from England. Although we do have some coaches coming from further afield such as Germany, Italy, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Sweden. Overall we have 104 coaches attending this year after some last minute call offs which is an overall 24% increase in attendance from the 2024 tournament. I am incredibly excited to see we are still consistently seeing growth in the tournament year on year. So many thanks to each and every one of you both domestic and foreign who have decided to sign up, join and support us this year.
Next up we have Tier selection. The most popular tier this year was Tier 1 with a whopping 38 coaches (37% of the field) having selected it. This was no surprise with popular teams such as Orcs, Lizardman and Dark Elves being in there. The ruleset allowing 6 skills for these teams also helps to make it an appealing tier to take from. Tier 3 and then Tier 2 followed in 2nd and 3rd place for selections with Tiers 4 and 5 bringing up the rear. Tier 6 saw a drop to last place this year from joint 3rd in 2024. The change in ruleset that limits star players and bans megastars obviously had an impact on this. The introduction of Gnomes which gives stunty players more choice, and this race being in Tier 5, will have also had an impact on Tier 6 choice. Overall though I am happy with the spread of selection in the tournament. Most people are playing on the top tiers which would be expected for a National competition although there is still representation of the bottom 3 tiers which were viable picks.
Moving on to races next we can see that Lizardman and Necromantic Horror were the most selected team with 9 selections (9% of the field each). Lizards are an obvious choice with being able to take 6 block on all of the Saurus and they will always be a popular pick. Necromantic Horror were also a spicy pick this year with extra TV allocated to their tier making them extremely viable and helping them bring out some more of the toys. Orcs, Wood Elves and High Elves round out the top 5 most selected races. Elves in general had a 10% increase in field representation this year over last year’s tournament with an overall 19% selection in 2025. Both Wood Elves and High Elves jumping up from 1 selection each in 2024 to 7 selections each in 2025 is interesting. However, the change in ruleset that allows these teams more TV and an extra skill definitely made them much more viable. Elven Union also finally got selected after being one of the few teams in 2024 that had no representation.
The most surprising one there would be Underworld. Last years most selected race with 15% of the field to not a single selection this year! There are multiple reasons for this, the loss of swarming doesn’t make them as good (albeit they are still a decent pick) and the reduction of star player viability in the ruleset (banned at T2) has led to them being a much less enticing pick than last year. Other than Underworld, 4 more races are also unrepresented at this year’s tournament. Nurgle, Old World Alliance, Snotlings and Tomb Kings were also not selected. Nurgle being the only race to have missed out for both the last 2 years. Hopefully we can do something to get these races some love next year.
So with changes to the rules pack this year in increased Star player cost, decreased stacking cost and the availability of stat ups, what did people take? As we can see 92 coaches (88% of the field) decided to stick to vanilla skills only and stay away from the trap of something different. However, some coaches opted to play in to the ability to do something different and attempt to give themselves an edge. 3 coaches opted to take stat ups (3% of the field). All 3 of these coaches selected an Agility increase for their players. All 3 of these were taken on stunty teams with one of these players being a Goblin Pogo. The agility 2+ Pogo will be an interesting one to watch for sure. On the same team as the AG2+ Pogo, the coach decided to take a Movement increase on their Ball & Chain. I for one am looking forward to seeing this player plow into more players than usual.
On to stacking next… 4 brave coaches (4% of the field) decided to sacrifice 1 of their skills in order to stack 2 on a player opening up some interesting opportunities for teams. Out of these 4 coaches it was a 50/50 split between Slann and Human teams who decided to opt for the stack. The first Slann roster took a Blodge catcher obviously prioritising survivability for what I assume will be their ball carrier with the other Slann team taking a Wrestle/Strip Ball lineman for hunting down the ball. The latter will be extremely effective at diving into a cage to disrupt and sack, especially if paired with a guard catcher… For the Human teams, both coaches opted to be a lot blunter and stack Tackle/Mighty Blow on a blitzer. This will no doubt be an effective tip of the spear for these coaches especially if coming up against the many stunty or elf teams that will be kicking about.#
So what races ended up taking star players? Overall there was a massive drop in star player representation from 2024 to 2025. Only 6% of the field have taken a star player this year compared to 32% of the field in 2024. This is unsurprising considering Star players were both more expensive (4SP instead of 2SP) and not available to the top 3 tiers. Mega stars being banned will have also contributed to the reduction in star players this year. Unsurprisingly, the races that did take star players were stunty teams. With these teams trying to make themselves more viable against the higher tier teams. Although 40% of the stunty races opted to play true stunty this year without star players at all.
So what star players are coaches rocking? Of the few that were selected this year Grombrindal was the favourite being selected twice. He offers a nice bit of utility being able to hand out skills each turn so I can understand why coaches would be interested in having him around. For the first time ever I will see Maple Highgrove on a pitch… I am incredibly interested to see how effective this player will be, in particular just how disruptive the vicious vines special rule will be. Scrappa Sorehead has been taken by this year’s only Ogre coach, obviously in an attempt to give themselves a better ball carrier. Lastly we have Ripper Bolgrot sitting on a Goblin team and Karla von Kill within a Halfling team.
For those who are interested in seeing the actual Mulligan’s Open rosters you are in luck. Keithabix will be doing a Mulligan’s Open deep dive and roster analysis today (Saturday 22nd) live on twitch kicking off at 2.30-3.00pm. So make sure and head on over to his twitch to see the rosters: https://www.twitch.tv/keithabixx
This will be recorded and put on YouTube tonight here: https://www.youtube.com/@keithabix
So that’s all folks! I hope you are all looking forward to the weekend. I am most certainly looking forward to having you all join us for Mulligan’s Open – Scotland’s NAF national tournament!
ChrisRaff88
Mulligan’s Open TO
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