The 22nd season of Board Game Arena’s competitive ladder ended on October 7^th, after a three-month run.  The top finisher for Altered was AA – ClaedeusFR, who amassed 1950 Elite Points and bested nearly 4,000 challengers from around the world.

Players and Player Ranks

The Arena system for Altered on BGA features 6 Leagues, and players move from lower leagues to higher ones by accumulating 10 League Points. This equates to winning 10 games more than you lose against similarly ranked opponents, but you can advance faster if you are matched against and defeat opponents from higher Leagues. Once you reach a level, you cannot be demoted from that league until the next season.

A total of 3,799 players entered the Arena this season, and those players totaled 138,311 games played.  That works out to an average of a bit over 36 games per player for the season,

For Season 22 here is the breakdown of the highest League achieved by each of the 3,799 ranked Arena participants:

• Bronze: 19%
• Silver: 10%
• Gold:14%
• Platinum: 6%
• Diamond: 7%
• Elite: 44%

Elite Info

One thing that stands out about the rank percentages is that nearly half of all Altered ladder players for this season achieved the highest “Elite” rank.  This may strike you as strange, but because a good winning streak can vault a player forward quickly, and even the worst losing streak cannot drop you out of a League once you have attained it, the higher levels of the BGA Arena are attainable by most players of who pair a decent deck with a bit of effort and a dash of luck.

If you have given up on competitive ladders because of the grueling effort that Magic Arena or Hearthstone, give the BGA Altered Arena a try.  It is still tough, but much more reasonable, and progress is definitely possible!

None of this means that getting to the actual top of the ladder is easy!  Once you have attained Elite rank, an entirely new challenge awaits.  When a player reaches Elite they unlock a new rating that is similar to a chess ELO.  This starts at 1500 Elite Points, and rises and falls as you play games.  Players normally will have an ELO between 1000 and 2000, with the distribution forming a statistically satisfying bell curve.

What this means, essentially, is that the Altered ladder has two mountains to climb.  The first is rank progression towards Elite, while the second is the ELO battle that you unlock once you reach Elite.  Both present their own challenges and offer satisfying ways to provide players with incentive to improve their decks and their skills!

So how did the ELO ratings look for this season?

• 1900 or higher: 5 players
• 1800 to 1899: 28 players
• 1700 to : 1799: 172 players
• 1600 to 1699: 364 players
• 1500 to 1599: 564 players
• 1400 to 1499: 373 players
• 1300 to 1399: 132 players
• 1200 to 1299: 18 players
• 1100 to 1199: 3 players

Your New Arena Champion

If you have been watching the Altered Arena leaderboard, it should come as no surprise that AA-ClaedeusFR took home the BGA Arena Champion title for Season 22.  This is the second World Champion title for Claedeus, who also won Season 20!  A French Sigismar player, he led for most of the last month of the season, although the battle between 1^st and 2^nd place was close all along.  AJT – Birgor led the field early, and stayed close right to the end, until they were overtaken for the runner-up spot on the last day by Titou6.

Congratulations to Claedeus on a great season!

The Top 10

Claedeus and Birgor have been near the top of the leaderboard all season, but other than that the top 10 has been relatively volatile.  Titou6 climbed into the top 10 just last month, before rising nearly to the top by season’s end.  Other players moved in and out of the top 10 on a daily basis, and spots 11 through 25 or so all are filled with players that have risen into the top 10 at some point in the season.  But the score at the final whistle is the one that matters, so here are our Altered Season 22 top 10 finishers!

Top Players By Country

As you can see from the table above, the French are outright dominant on the BGA ladder currently.  The top nine finishers and 19 of the top 25 are displaying a French flag next to their name!  Other countries also were well represented, though.  Here is a list of the top finisher for each country that placed someone in the top 50:

• France: AA – ClaedeusFR, 1st
• Spain: FraNicoRico, 10th
• Austria: Warrior R, 11th
• United States: Idyllic1, 15^th
• Italy: EmilianoCastellano, 16^th
• Brazil: AFTU_Victormotta94, 29^th
• Chile: M4tu, 31^st
• Switzerland: Kruskalls, 39^th

Heroes and Zeroes of the Top 25!

One of the most interesting things to explore is how many different paths players took to get to the top of the Altered ladder, and most of these successful players locked in to a particular hero and stayed with them for most of the format.  Players have been linked to heroes by examining recent game recaps, so the decks mentioned are what these players used as the season closed out.

So what do we see?  First off, yes, Sigismar took three of the top four spots, and continues to run amok even as we expand the focus to 25.  But six different heroes led their players to top 10 finishes this season, and when we expand the list to the top 25, there is even more diversity, with 9 of the 18 original Altered heroes being the primary deck choice of at least one top-25 finisher.

If we look at these results from the standpoint of factions, all three Bravos heroes made an appearance in the top 25, and only Yzmir does not have any heroes at all represented.

Note: One of the top-25 players did not exhibit a clear hero or faction preference, resulting in the “various” entry listed in the chart.   DQ – Aganman managed to win on ladder with no less than 4 different heroes during the last week of the season, exhibiting a deck diversity no other high-level player came close to matching during that time.  Very impressive!