4 replies to this topic

[istaril]

Where do I find the Annals of Castle Black?

 

Here. The current version is brought to you by Istaril, assisted by the heroic efforts of Jason Wentworth (Coding), and Michael Henri Lamezec (Graphic Design).

 

What is (are?) The Annals?

 

The Annals of Castle Black is a repository for AGOT tournament information dating back to 1st edition (for old versions, see  "History of the Annals" below). As a user, the Annals allows you to browse current and historical data for Thrones events throughout the world. These data can be very useful for analyzing the meta-game – player choices of decks and decktypes. As it is queryable, you can set custom parameters to 'define' the meta-game that interests you; do you only want to know the results of European tournaments? Only tournaments with a top 4 or larger cut? Only tournaments using the latest Chapter Pack? 

 

However, this database is only useful if the data continue to be robust. This is entirely dependent on continued community participation in submitting tournament data. Please do your part to obtain and input data!

 

Articles based on data from The Annals:

 

"The Meta: A Year in Review" (2nd Edition, Aug 15th  2016), by Istaril

"A Living Meta" (1st Edition, April 9th 2014), by Istaril 

 

History of the Annals:

 

Spoiler

The Annals began as a project of Alex Hynes (Istaril)'s in 2014, inspired by the efforts of Will Lentz (Kennon) to collect regional stats for the 2C1C Podcast, followed by Bert (L1b3rtine)'s attemps to facilitate the process using a google spreadsheet in 2013. The first edition spreadsheets were seperated by FAQs, which at the time best defined the meta, and are still available here: 5.5, 5.4, 5.3.1, 5.2, 5.0, 4.2. When 2nd edition launched, the sheets were updated (archived here), but it was clear the google sheets model wouldn't be sufficient to match the growth of the game. With the help of James Evans (dRakk), the Annals was turned into a queryable database in February 2016, vastly improving its functionality. It wasn't long before even this structure was straining under the weight of submissions and queries, and with the help of Jason Wentworth (Coding) and Michael Henri Lamezec (Graphic Design), the Annals was re-relaunched into its current form, porting over all the data from the second edition versions since launch.

 

 

What's New?

March 2017
- Will now pull in Jousting Pavillion's newer features, like region locations and latest CP, directly from TJP
- Can now pull ranking data from submissions to The Jousting Pavillion (for tournaments not run in TJP)

Sept 25th 2016:
- You can now import your tournament's data from The Jousting Pavillion, using the button on the "Add tournament" page.

Sept 18th 2016:

- Everything: Vastly improved responsiveness.

- Everything: Brand new look!

- Everything: Compatibility with Safari & Firefox

- Front Page: Now defaults to displaying only the last 3 months of data.

- Front Page: Pie charts now have an outer rim depicting agenda breakdown (for factions) or faction breakdown (For agendas).

- Front Page: Ability to break down faction graphs by agenda, or agenda graphs by faction (simply click on the slice of interest).

- Everything: Colours in graphs are now always consistently tied to factions/agendas.

- Front Page: QR is calculated differently (a log2 transformation). For more info, see "FAQ" below. 

- Tournaments: More sort and filter features. 

- Tournaments & Add Tournament: Ability to edit a submission within 3 days of its entry!

- Add Tournament: Better 'logic' checks to ensure against faulty submissions (e.g. more cut than participants, date format wrong)

- Add Tournament: Ability to use apostrophes. Seriously. This has been nagging at me for months. You can now use apostrophes in tournament names and player names. This one is for all of you with anglicized Irish surnames!

 

 

What's Coming?

 

In order of priority, we're working on: 
 

- A way to import standing/name/faction data from Tome (Agendas will still have to be manual) or The Jousting Pavilion

- An "about" page.

- A means to support donations for hosting costs.

- Personal stat tracking, by registering and 'tagging' yourself (optional) in tournaments you've attended. Note that whether these are displayed in public leaderboards or not will also be optional.

- Additional graph/leaderboard info.

- Making the Annals available on GitHub, so other programmers can work on/with it.

- Support for Melee tournaments.

 

FAQ:

 

1. Entering Data

 

Spoiler

• I accidentally made a mistake in entering my tournament - what do I do?

Anyone can edit an event within 3 days of its submission to the Annals. Simply find the tournament in the "Tournaments" page, and click "edit"! If you've missed your 3 day window, use the contact us link and we'll open up the submission to being edited again. 

• 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 for a player - what do I do?

Enter them as "unknown"

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

Yes

• What if we didn't use the same pairings in our cut as the form 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 (largely due to sample size) for the community at large, and aren't supported by this site. We do plan to support Melee once tournament rules are actually released, so we can base the data entry on something!

 

2. Using Entered data: 

 

Spoiler

• That's a lot of numbers... how do I use the Annals to perform better at tournaments?

There are too many good answers to this, but the simplest is to use the default settings (3 months of data) and see what factions are popular right now. Make sure that whatever deck you're planning on playing is ready for the most popular decks in the field!

• What in the blazes is a QR / Qualification, and why is it log2 transformed?

A qualification ratio is a way to represent a faction/agenda's performance. If a faction is more common in the cut (by %) than in the field, it's overrepresenting and will have a postive QR, while if it's more common in the field than in the cut, it's underrepresenting and will have a negative QR.

 

Being log2 transformed does two things; it gives us a nice scale where "0" is a faction performing as expected, positives are overrepresented in the cut, and negatives are underrepresented. Secondly, it makes the magnitude of that difference more relevant; a faction doing twice as well as expected will have a QR of 1, while a faction doing half as well as expected will have a QR of -1 (equidistant from the expected "0").

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

Contact us using the contact us link at the bottom of the front page.

• 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 special access to the database, contact us through the contact us link at the bottom of the front page.

[istaril]

Thanks to everyone whose given feedback so far. We (I say we, I mean Jason) has already implemented a number of suggestions and fixes since launch including

 

- Bug Fix: Ironing out some bugs with QRs where certain factions weren't being displayed

- Bug Fix: Ensuring links to decks are displayed in a tournament record, when available.

- Bug Fix: Better blocks on impossible numbers ( = -1 participants)

- Optimization: Better scaling based on screen resolution.

- Minor Tweak: Consistent terminology (Factions, not houses, Releases, not CPs)

- Minor Tweak: Full descriptions (without abbreviations) of SCs, GNKs, etc when selecting a tournament.

[LoneElfRanger]

Are people allowed to edit any tournament by design? Because I went into the Gen Con Joust and edited my name.

[istaril]

Are people allowed to edit any tournament by design? Because I went into the Gen Con Joust and edited my name.

 

Yes. Currently, a tournament is only editable up to 3 days after it is posted (but all tournaments were posted when the site went up on Sunday). This generally allows people to reach out to their community to complete a tournament record (or submit the pre-cut record and edit later), while leaving most of the historical record untouchable without actively reaching out to a mod.

 

We may be implementing a few more checks on the system (allowing people who submitted a tournament to edit that tournament indefinitely, if they've registered - or allowing players to add information, but not edit existing information - so they can add decklists or their name). I'm not terribly concerned about vandalism - we have a robust backup system in place, and in 3 years of tournament data (most of it on publically editable spreadsheets), I've had 0 instances of vandalism.

[istaril]

Another big new addition (Jason is amazing): we now have enabled an import from the Jousting Pavillion. If you run your tournament using that site, you'll be able to, in the "Add tournament" function, directly pull in all of the data for your tournament - filling in only the few gaps (e.g. region).