This weekend we held a BIGMOON BASH where all teams were randomly generated! Although the premise was a bit silly, there was some real skill to playing in it too. Rather than competing with teambuilding, it was a contest of your ability to think on your feet and assess a completely unpredictable matchup... and a fair share of luck too.

As a Bash player myself, I've always felt the top-level players get way too much time building and practising optimal teams for me to compete with. But in a random bash, with my superior game knowledge, I figured I would surely finally show all you nerds who the real boss was. Well, that did not come to pass... I was once again squarely destroyed.

So, let's take a look at some of the sweaty nerds who placed higher than me!

👑 Top-Scoring Players

1. Zonk (The Violet Enigmas) | Bash Score: 2956
2. Beat (The Musical Punks) | Bash Score: 2924
3. Dino (The Chaos) | Bash Score: 2908
4. Stardust (The Starbound Dinosaurs) | Bash Score: 2872
5. GFZA (The Fun Pizzas) | Bash Score: 2816
6. Akio (The Arcane Enigmas) | Bash Score: 2784
7. Arc Tech (The Arcane Machines) | Bash Score: 2728
8. Choc (The Ultimate Dinosaurs) | Bash Score: 2724
9. SPeCtator (The Local Aliens) | Bash Score: 2676
10. • Pummy (The Tiny Tacos) | Bash Score: 2668
    • Score (The Jamming Ballers) | Bash Score: 2668
11. N/A
12. Juninho (The Valiant Storms) | Bash Score: 2628
13. • Naydra (The Starbound Spirits) | Bash Score: 2580
    • CryoPhoenix (The Goofy Birds) | Bash Score: 2580
14. N/A
15. • Mabel (The Clashing Roses) | Bash Score: 2572
    • Charge (The Crimson Kings) | Bash Score: 2572
16. N/A
17. Boolerex (The Speedy Racers) | Bash Score: 2560
18. Lymerin (The Eternal Wings) | Bash Score: 2524
19. AirMan121 (The Bugs) | Bash Score: 2520
20. Igor (The Rutile Artists) | Bash Score: 2476

The median Bash Score this time was 1938. Even with the teams being random, it's interesting to see that the average players scores and even many of the top-ranking individuals are quite familiar to anyone who's watched past bash results.

Of course, it's not completely familiar. Congratulations to the players who excelled in this chaotic format!

📊 Beastie Usage Stats!

...Well, this isn't as informative as usual, but for posterity I've collected stats on the top most-used Beasties. In this case, it's really just a reflection of what Beasties are more likely to appear on generated teams. But for folks who played in the Bash, it might be interesting to see which of the more and less common Beasties you wound up playing with.

> Check out the STATS here!

For Beasties who appear in the top, it mostly comes down to how diverse their kits are and how many different team compositions they can fit into. Many of the Beasties near the bottom here are ones who aren't available in team generation until you've discovered certain in-game secrets, so it makes sense that they appear less frequently than others. But others may be at the bottom because they lack kits that fit as well into our current generation model.

For just a bit of insight; we have 500+ unique predefined Beastie sets in the game, 8 for each "adult" Beastie. The team generator picks a basic playstyle for the team, and then fills it with some combination of these predefined sets, with effort made to create synergistic combinations. ("Synergistic combinations" includes a lot of hand-coded data; for example, if a Beastie is added to the team with a trait that triggers on tag in/out, then the generator will raise the likelihood of adding a partner with tagging plays such as Quick Tag or Flight). Teams like this are generated for in-game challenges like the Tower Tourney. But when we generate teams for players, we do exclude or reduce the chances of certain playstyles appearing, particularly more passive ones, since they can be fun to battle against in the hands of an AI opponent but not so fun to pilot yourself. This adjustment accounts for many of the non-secret Beasties with some passive sets that aren't given to players as often by the team generator.

For those curious, here are the individual sets who appeared most often:

1. Captain-Beetlback: Confident Pass, Smack, Overpower (2.76%)
2. Avenger-Heliath: Rally, Thriller, Heat Up (2.68%)
3. Annoying-Noizard: Mighty Yell, Cornershot, Drum (2.68%)
4. Captain-Bandicraft: Build, Mindfield, Refresh (2.64%)
5. Shanty-Tortanchor: Boom, Patience, Provoke (2.6%)

We definitely will be looking at lots of data from this Bash and look for ways we can improve the predesigned sets to produce even better random teams in the future!

For future Bashes...

With such a different format this time, it's natural that some players liked it more and some less. But at least for me, this was the most fun I've ever had playing in a Bash. Overall I think this experiment was a huge success, and I would really like to feature it again in occasional future Bashes between more competitive open-ended ones and restricted theme ones.

But at least for next time, we'll return to a classic Open Bash! I'll see you on the court in 3 weeks!