To much surprise, everybody actually got their roster in on time for the Mulligan’s submission deadline! So many thanks to each and every one of you. No chasing or shaming needed. So now that all of the rosters are in… 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, 28% 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 out such as Spain, Germany and Belgium. Overall we have 87 coaches attending this year after some last minute call offs.
Next up we have Tier selection. The most popular tier this year was Tier 2 with a whopping 34 coaches (39% of the field) having selected it. This was no surprise with teams such as Underworld Denizens, Chaos Dwarves and Orcs being in there. Tier 1 and then Tier 6 followed in 2nd and 3rd place for selections with Tiers 4 and 5 bringing up the rear. Tier 6 unsurprisingly had a good amount of selection with that tier having access to 2 star players. I will keep my eye on this for next year with the possibility of only allowing Tier 6 to have 2 star players if neither are a Megastar. Some feedback given found that the new stunty championship offered by the SBBC as part of the tournament series also led to some coaches selecting Tier 6 teams this year.
Moving on to races next we can see that Underworld Denizens were the most selected team with 10 selections (15% of the field). This is unsurprising as Underworld Denizens are very strong at the moment. They do not need a lot of skills to function properly either so the availability of stars would have made them an alluring choice. Shambling Undead, Halfling’s, Dark Elves and Chaos Dwarves round out the top 5 most selected races. The most surprising one there would be Halfling’s. However as stated already, the ability to take 2 star players and some people aiming for Stunty of the Year points would have made Halfling’s a strong choice. It was nice to see a lot of the races gaining selection though with 26 of 29 races being chosen. Chaos Chosen ended up missing out in the end due to a last minute change of roster for one coach making them one of the 3 races not selected alongside Elven Union and Nurgle. Hopefully we can do something to get these races some love next year.
So what races ended up taking star players? Halfling rosters unsurprisingly took the most stars with all 7 rosters including at least 1 star player. Underworld Denizens also had a high level of star players included with 60% of Underworld rosters having one included. 13 races in total ended up taking star players which will definitely ensure that there will be some interesting builds at Mulligan’s Open this year. The one I have my eye on in particular is the Ivan the Animal Undead build... really looking forward to seeing how they get on. In total 28 rosters ended up taking star players (32% of the field) with the majority of coaches opting for a purist build.
So what star players are coaches rocking? The top 5 is made up of Varag Ghoul-Chewer (6), Ivan the Animal (5), Morg n Thorg (4), Rumblelow Sheepskin (4) and Griff Oberwald (3). All very strong choices with no explanation needed. There were some interesting picks with star players such as Ripper Bolgrot, Scrappa Sorehead and Max Spleenripper also finding their way onto some rosters. So it will be interesting to see how they get on over the weekend. All in all, 15 different star players were selected a total of 35 times over 28 rosters (32% of the field). Out of the star players chosen 11 coaches paid the hefty price of 4 SPP to take a Megastar (13% of the field).
What about the other roster rules? Only 2 coaches took stat increases! Both of the stat increases taken were Agility boosts with these both being on stunty players (Goblin Pogo + Snotling Stilty Runner) so get ready for some thrown players! In the end nobody paid the hefty price of 4 skill points to stack to skills, which to be honest is the right call as this was way too expensive and something I will look to reduce to 3 skill points next year.
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 first NAF national tournament!
ChrisRaff88
Mulligan’s Open TO
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