172 replies to this topic

[istaril]

The Annals of Castle Black

The Annals of Castle Black is a repository for AGOT tournament information dating back to FAQ 4.2. Inspired by 2C1C's regional data collection and L1b3rtine's attempts to get a google spreadsheet to faciliate the process in 2013, I launched this project in early 2014. In its inaugural 'season', ~1700 data points across 85 tournaments were gathered.

 

As a user, the Annals allows you to browse current and historical data for tournaments throughout the world, as well as meta-data for individual FAQ 'seasons'. These data can be very useful for analyzing the meta-game – player choices of decks and decktypes. However, the data are only useful if they continue to be robust. This is entirely dependent on continued community participation in submitting tournament data.

Where is it:

The current version (FAQ 5.4) can be found here.

 

 

Archived Versions can be found below:

FAQ 5.3.1 (October 2014-February 2015)

FAQ 5.2 (August 2014-October 2014)

FAQ 5.0-5.01 (April 2014-August 2014)
FAQ 4.2 (Nov 2013-April 2014) / An article restrospective / Podcast explaining the Annals

Instructions:

For all events you attend, check to see if someone's already started a spreadsheet. If so, edit that sheet, if not:

1) Pick a blank "Input X" sheet, or duplicate an existing sheet (right-click the tab on the bottom, select 'duplicate')

2) Fill in the sheet, starting with section 1 (top left, yellow box), then 2, then 3. If you have any doubts, check out the FAQ below

3) [Optional] Rename the sheet (double click on the tab at the bottom) to "Name Day Month", e.g. Montreal 7th April

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  If you are a tournament organizer, filling in the standings after the swiss rounds will allow the spreadsheet to sort out your pairings automatically, something existing tournament software like Tourney Magistrate doesn't do.

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  While using player names can be useful to serve as a frame of reference and help other players fill in their information, refrain from using full last names. After a while a sheet will become "locked" to prevent further edits, and player names will be removed. If you need to edit a locked sheet, submit a request to me (see contact info in faq).

What's New in 5.3.1?

 

• Updated for new Restricted List and typos (Game of Cyvasse)
• Removed the non-functional "Winners" sheet.

FAQ:

1. Entering Data

• I only know the top cut, but not the standings of swiss ranked players - what do I do?

The rankings of swiss players outside the cut won't be used in any of the data collection; just list all the other house/agenda/restricted in any order you like.

• I don't know the House/Agenda/Restricted for a player - what do I do?

Enter them as "unknown"

• My tournament was really small, should I bother adding it?

Yes

• If a deck was no agenda, included a chargenda but wasn't built around it - like a 1x Aeron Damphair, should I label it a chargenda or nochargenda deck?

There's not really a right answer to that - I realize it'll vary a lot from person to person and that a lot of tournaments won't collect chargenda statistics. My preference is to label it a chargenda deck when the chargenda is expected to surface and the deck is built around it; Kindly man decks are a typical example. A reasonable threshold would be if the chargenda is included at least as a 2x.

• What if we didn't use the same pairings in our cut as your sheet suggests?

You can overwrite the existing pairings by writing in your own (1 Wins vs 2, for instance).

• What about Melee, and/or other alternate formats?

The data collection for those is more complex, and (in many cases) generates less meaningful statistics for the community at large, and aren't supported by this sheet.

• Our cardpool differs from the typical tournament one (either missing CPs, localization efforts, self-imposed restrictions)

That's not really a question! Still, just make a note of it in the "Most recent CP" dropdown menu in field one; you can write as much as you like to describe your cardpool in that field.

2. Using Entered data:

• The metadata sheet/house-specific sheets haven't updated to take into account the tournament I just entered!

Unfortunately, the script that pulls data from new tourney data only runs a few times a day.

• There's a feature I'd like to see, how do I get it incorporated?

Contact me directly here on the boards, or email me here.

• What if I want to use the data you've collected?

Go ahead; the data is for the use of the community. If you specifically need access to the spreadsheets as an editor, contact me directly either here on the boards, or by email here.

Wishlist: ​

Add "Regional" tags so metadata can easily be separated by region (eg, "Europe, Asia, Australia, North America")
Group sheets by local tournaments, so you can get metadata for one meta over time

Find a way to clean up the otherwise clunky collumns AZ to CB, which are used for the house specific sheets.

Bug Fixes:

[emptyrepublic]

Awesome! Just in time for regionals season.

[istaril]

Edited the original post to add an FAQ about differring cardpools.

Within one day of this going up, I already have data for 4 tournaments over the last weekend. If you attended any of these (Tulsa, Chicago, Padis, Barcelona) and you have any further information or corrections, please edit the spreadsheet accordingly! I understand the spreadsheet was posted after the tournaments completed, so people are going off memory - but even that is very useful and extremely appreciated.

An effort like this is going to succeed or fail on the volume and reliability of the data submitted. If you're at all interested in this kind of data, or what others can do with this kind of data, please remember to collect data at all your local tournaments! Because it's accessible online, you should be able to do so at the tournament itself.

[scantrell24]

Bookmarked. Thank you, ser.

[agktmte]

Editing the Tulsa tournament pretty extensively right now.

There were only 23 participants. I updated that value, but there are still 24 entries below. Can that be changed?

[istaril]

Yeah - all you had to do was clear the House entry (unknown) for slot 24 (e.g. backspace), and it gets rid of them. They were manually added as unknowns, otherwise all the number of participants does is act as the denominator for all the charts and figures.

Thanks a lot for the extra info on that one, agktmte, the data looks much more reliable now.

I should add that tagging names in "notes" can help others reconstruct their placement and matches, and fill in relevant data - so it's an excellent idea. However, please do exactly as agktmte did and refrain from using full last names.

To avoid privacy issues, once the sheet is locked a few days after it's submission, I'll clear the names from the list entirely.

[Kennon]

What about for people that do like to know who is winning what events? It can be useful for a number of things. Would at least online monikers (if known) be allowed?

[agktmte]

He said to add names, not full last names though. You'll notice I added names and forum names when relevant.

[istaril]

What about for people that do like to know who is winning what events? It can be useful for a number of things. Would at least online monikers (if known) be allowed?

I have no issue with leaving forum names or other monikers of choice up indefinitely, I'd just rather avoid having full real names up there especially since permission to include that information isn't gathered with tourney data. I also don't want to make addition of names a mandatory/key part of this data collection, since it's barely useful in meta-data sense.

However, if many people see value in collecting the monikers of top-performing players, I could incorporate that into the sheet. At the very least, I could encourage the moniker (if known) of the winner be added - would that be sufficient?

[mdc273]

How come we don't have OCTGN stats like the Netrunner guys do?

[cockbongo]

We had a tourney in Newcastle (UK) at the weekend with 25+ players. I'll try and get hold of Ryan and see if he fancies adding the stats to this spreadsheet.

Great day, btw. I may even do my first tourney report, although bearing in mind I'd only had 15 mins sleep it may be a bit, how you say, "hallucinatory".

[JCWamma]

Great day, btw. I may even do my first tourney report, although bearing in mind I'd only had 15 mins sleep it may be a bit, how you say, "hallucinatory".

Do eeet.

[Nate]

Anyone else come here thinking this was the anals of castle black?

Just me

[TeamK]

Updated with data from Newcastle.

[Reclusive]

Anyone else come here thinking this was the anals of castle black?

Just me

Affirmative.
Not proud of it though.

[scantrell24]

Maybe this is too complicated, or maybe it's already there and I missed it, but is there any way to compile data from all tournaments into one sheet so we can see that, for example, Bara is being played 23% of the time and making the cut 19% of the time? Same for agendas and restricted cards.

[istaril]

Maybe this is too complicated, or maybe it's already there and I missed it, but is there any way to compile data from all tournaments into one sheet so we can see that, for example, Bara is being played 23% of the time and making the cut 19% of the time? Same for agendas and restricted cards.

That's the intent, I just haven't finished setting up that sheet. You'll find it under my to-do list. Unfortunately the one I built for my excel system doesn't port perfectly to google spreadsheet, so I imagine it'll be a week or so before I can make a good, solid version that will show overall statistics (and, ideally, by continent, etc).

It will show the following statistics for
Overall: House, Agenda, Restricted
Cut: House, Agenda, Restricted. Overrepresentation of House, Agenda, Restricted relative to Overall.
Winner: House, Agenda, Restricted.

It will not go into some of the specifics like "Agenda breakdown by house" or "KotHH winrate vs Noble Cause in the cut", but if the community starts to focus on these kinds of questions, that information *is* recorded in the sheets, so it would be possible to obtain it... it would require some manual combing of the sheets, or some heavy re-writing to automate it.

[WWDrakey]

Any chance of getting the qualification ratios automatically calculated (I outlined the numbers here) for Houses / Agendas?

They're pretty simple, just the percentage of a specific subgroup making the cut divided by the overall percentage of participants making the cut. However, they do provide a pretty simple and neat measure for comparing efficiency / performance of either a House or Agenda between Tourneys ...and it'd save me quite a bit of bother from having to calculate them out myself!

You wouldn't make a grumpy old Drakey beg, would you?

[istaril]

Any chance of getting the qualification ratios automatically calculated (I outlined the numbers here) for Houses / Agendas?

They're pretty simple, just the percentage of a specific subgroup making the cut divided by the overall percentage of participants making the cut. However, they do provide a pretty simple and neat measure for comparing efficiency / performance of either a House or Agenda between Tourneys ...and it'd save me quite a bit of bother from having to calculate them out myself!

You wouldn't make a grumpy old Drakey beg, would you?

Yeah, Qualification ratio is the same thing as what I call "overrepresenation" - the ratio of the % in cut over the % in field. I actually prefer the name "Qualification Ratio", as it explains values less than 1 better. There's already a quick-and-dirty version up there in the metadata spreadsheet, but there are too many 0s for agendas in our dataset to do it by agenda (yet)/

[WWDrakey]

Yeah, Qualification ratio is the same thing as what I call "overrepresenation" - the ratio of the % in cut over the % in field. I actually prefer the name "Qualification Ratio", as it explains values less than 1 better. There's already a quick-and-dirty version up there in the metadata spreadsheet.

Excellent!

I think I've also used both terms quite inter-changedly for a while, but now started to try and settle my terminology on the qualification ratio, for the very reason you mentioned.