Wolfgang has released the final standings of the European Championship event 2011 at Castle Stahleck. It may not be pretty to look at, but all the info is there.

http://www.eaglecard.org/tourneyofstahleck/result/agot/

Here's some quick stats:

Total: 120
Stark: 37 (30.833% of the total), 32.43% of which made the cut
Lannister: 14 (11.667% of the total), 35.71% of which made the cut
Baratheon: 16 (13.333% of the total), 25% of which made the cut
Targaryen: 19 (15.833% of the total), 26.32% of which made the cut
Greyjoy: 13 (10.833% of the total), 30.77% of which made the cut
Martell: 21 (17.5% of the total), 9.52% of which made the cut

Top 32
Stark: 12 (37.5%)
Lannister: 5 (15.625%)
Baratheon: 4 (12.5%)
Targaryen: 5 (15.625%)
Greyjoy: 4 (12.5%)
Martell: 2 (6.25%)

Top 16
Stark: 4 (25%)
Lannister: 3 (18.75%)
Baratheon: 2 (12.5%)
Targaryen: 3 (18.75%)
Greyjoy: 3 (18.75%)
Martell: 1 (6.25%)

Top 8
Stark: 2 (25%)
Lannister: 2 (25%)
Baratheon: 0 (0%)
Targaryen: 1 (12.5%)
Greyjoy: 3 (37.5%)
Martell: 0 (0%)

Top 4
Stark: 1 (25%)
Lannister: 2 (50%)
Baratheon: 0 (0%)
Targaryen: 0 (0%)
Greyjoy: 1 (25%)
Martell: 0 (0%)

Stark and Lanni are overrepresented in Top 32, GJ is slightly overrepresented, Bara and Targ are about evenly represented, and Martell is grossly underrepresented in Top 32 and all subsequent rounds. GJ and Lanni are especially overrepresented in the later rounds. I guess we should calculate the average placement of all the houses, but I think it can safely said already that Martell is the one house with the weakest showing of all the houses by far (let's discount Neutral here, shall we?).

This is somewhat surprising, and IMO these numbers argue strongly against any further nerfing of Martell and their cards at this point.

heheheh looking for this results I would like to lie on the bed laughing hourly. We have thread about powerful house martell and the killer card GG and see result:

Total: 120
Martell: 21 (17.5% of the total), 9.52% of which made the cut => worse result next one was more then 3 times better bara 30 %

Top 32
Martell: 2 (6.25%) => worse result, next one was twice better

Top 16
Martell: 1 (6.25%)=> worse result, next one was three times better

Top 8 no martell at all => worst result with bara

I can't imagine how broken house is this. Martell is really outrageous. Lets ban GG immediately maybe they will be ten times worse next time and don't reach finally top 32.

The current fuss about Martell is mostly pre-emptive. GG with the new Myrcella will become a serious issue. Targaryen at least have Aegon's Hill to disrupt GG-oriented decks. The others will probably face many problems.

Let's look at national representation.

Total: 120
Spain: 27 (22.5% of the total)
Germany: 17 (14.17% of the total)
Italy: 15 (12.5% of the total)
France: 12 (10% of the total)
Portugal: 12 (10% of the total)
Poland: 11 (9.17% of the total)
Czech Republic: 9 (7.5% of the total)
Austria: 5 (4.17% of the total)
Luxembourg: 4 (3.33% of the total)
Switzerland: 3 (2.5% of the total)
Finland: 2 (1.67% of the total)
United Kingdom: 2 (1.67% of the total)
Hungary: 1 (0.83% of the total)

Top 32
Spain: 16 (50%)
Germany: 3 (9.375%)
France: 2 (6.25%)
Italy: 2 (6.25%)
Portugal: 2 (6.25%)
Switzerland: 2 (6.25%)
Austria: 1 (3.125%)
Czech Republic: 1 (3.125%)
Finland: 1 (3.125%)
Poland: 1 (3.125%)
United Kingdom: 1 (3.125%)

I'm pretty sure Thomas Kisselbach is German, so I counted him for Germany, not for Spain. Correct me there if I'm wrong.

I also counted berto for Germany, not for Poland. His nationality may be Polish, but he's part of the Munich meta, so he's ours. ~First we stole your football players, now we're stealing your Thrones players.

"Impressive" doesn't even begin to describe the showing the Spanish players had. They dominated our collective asses from here to Asshai and back. 22.5% Spanish players in the tourney, 50% in Top32 and Top16, 75% in Top8, 100% in Top4. Just wow. Congrats Spanish guys and gals!

While we're at it: Female players: 5-7 (wasn't sure about some names). If not even my appearance was enough to significantly increase the contingent of women present, then it truly is a lost cause.

Oh, and BTW, the results for Melee are all there too. Maybe somebody who cares about the format more than I do would like to collate them?

Ratatoskr said:

Yeah major props to the Spanish meta! Those guys are awesome! Shutting out the top four at Stahleck?! Man I wish some of them could make Gencon!

Ratatoskr said:

LOL! I almost fell out of my chair at work reading this!

berto said:

I think Martell's poor showing here should be taken with a grain of salt. First, Martell tends to be less popular in Europe than in the US, where some of the top players have played it in recent tournaments. Second, given its recent popularity, some players may prefer a different house because (1) they thought there might be a lot of anti-Martell tech, or (2) they are just tired of playing the house.

All that said, it's still pretty clear Martell is no longer *the* "dominant" house, even if it's still competitive at top levels (in my opinion).

What's interesting though, is that over the course of the past 1.5 years Martell has gone from a sub-par house (competitively) prior to the Wildlings/Night's Watch block (although there were some shadows builds that were pretty strong), to very competitive in Brotherhood and Maesters. Looking at the cards they received during that time period:

• Burning in the sands
• Narrow Escape
• Viper's Bannermen...was in the original Martell box, but not widely played until about 1.5 years ago. Again, I credit a Canadian player (drawing a blank on the forum name) for revealing his strength. It was easily a metagame-defining realization.
• Beric/Brotherhood...extremely good in Martell (especially with Taste for Blood)...

At the same time, the environment shifted in the following ways:

• Restriction of three of the above cards + Venomous Blade (not included above because it's been out for awhile).
• More location hate (makes location-heavy builds like the shadows version) much more risky
• More choke in general with Fear of Winter + stronger GJ choke (makes slow builds like shadows more risky)
• Popularity of Martell as a house has increased, so that there's more "bounce" in the environment with Game of Cyvasse (and now Ghaston Grey). That's particularly hard on Brotherhood/Beric decks.

So, Martell was a "crappy house" until it got a few *very powerful* (overpowered when used together) cards, and some innovative players began to take advantage of its natural card advantage. In the past six months, most of these cards have been either restricted, or the cardpool has expanded enough to make it harder to lean on a single card/strategy like Beric/location-heavy. Martell's character base has filled out a little since then with some decent nobles/maesters/sand snakes/Lost Spearmen, but I think the "average" Martell card in the last couple of sets has still been pretty crappy.

It's really not surprising that people aren't very excited to play with Martell...or that when they do it's not performing quite as well. All the "fun" stuff (Sand Snakes, Knights/House Dayne, etc.) has generally proved pretty crappy in joust. Take away the OP stuff, and there's not a whole lot left to work with outside of maesters (largely dependent on neutrals) or GG.

Ratatoskr said:

My eye was drawn to this as well. While the size of the tournament does lend the argument quite a bit of weight, I do still find myself skeptical of the sudden and extreme downturn in Martell's showing not being partly a statistical anomaly. In the last 9 months or so running up to where we are now, Martell was the defining force at nearly all the large events. While it didn't win all of them, it was certainly the defining house in deck representation in the overall meta, as well as in top house placement after the cut at these tournaments- even in melee!

So my question then becomes, if a good portion of this can't be chalked up as anomaly (something I would argue we won't know for certain until we have a couple more large tournaments under our belts to support this radical shift), then what has caused it? I can't recall any cards coming out lately that were in particular Martell hosers. Other houses have been getting some consistently solid cards, but Martell has easily been in that group as well, so out of the newest cards, I don't see their quality having gone down to drive people away as happened with Lannister during the Defenders block (where they recieved almost nothing playable for an entire cycle).

Does anyone have a good card based suggestion? Lol, or did people just get tired of playing Martell and decide to change it up? Which is always a possibility.

*edit*

Ah yes, Dan beat me to the punch by replying to my post before I'd even posted it. And made a very good point about the additional restrictions, which for reasons unknown (perhaps a lack of coffee this morning) I had completely and utterly forgotten to analyze. Likely the most recent restrictions did indeed provide a large part of the impetus that I was looking for.

@ Twn2dn: While Martell is perhaps less played in Europe than in the US, I'm not sure if that says more about the European Meta or the US Meta, since Martell still was the second-most played house in Stahleck... and one should also note that AFAIK at least the reigning Spanish Champion was playing Martell Maesters (wasn't he also the winner of the last larger OCTGN Tourney?), so it's not like there weren't some of the very best players playing it either. Oh, and to add to that, Martell was also the second most played House last year (with an even larger margin), and fared much better then.

Comparing with your own Thrones Times Results, it could almost be said that Martell is to the US, what Stark is to Europe.

Dan,

I think this is a very well tought-out post, and I agree with everything except the "less popular in Europe" bit. At Stahleck, Martell was the second most played house in the Joust, and if I look at who played them, even I recognize several strong players with decent tourney records (and remember, I haven't even been around that long, so if I don't recognize the others, that doesn't mean much).

Will,

I really don't think Martell's Stahleck result can be fully explained as a fluke. Some of it, sure. Their showing is certainly a lot worse than everyone expected, and also worse than they're capable of, I'm sure. But their results at Days and Black Friday haven't been that great either, IIRC. Decent, sure, but not spectacular. I think it's safe to say that their dominance is over for now. Whether Myrcella can bring it back remains to be seen, but if I'd been on your podcast last episode, I'd have strongly voted to leave GG the hell alone at this point, and Martell's latest tourney results is the reason why.

I think the fact that Erick Butzlaff has turned away from Martell for his latest tourney deck speaks volumes. I don't know the guy, but I get the impression he has a knack for finding decks that do well at any given point in time.

I am not sure how to explain it, but Martell definitely sees more play AND has more success in the US. Martell seems to be the US weapon of choice, while Stark is the go-to house in Europe. Maybe its play style? Who knows. Perhaps its just that Martell is on its way out and we haven't quite seen the results of that yet. It could also be based on who is playing it. A lot of the top players in US play Martell (or did recently).

I think I might have a possible explanation for exactly WHY Martell seems to not do as well as say Stark at Stahleck and Europe in general. Something that Martì mentions in his TR is that he decided to play his GJ deck because its something he could play even when he was really tired. That kind of brought something to mind: the European tournaments, and Stahleck especially, are a lot bigger than they are here in the states. That means you are going to have a lot more games to play in order to win. Here in the states we generally have five rounds of swiss followed by a cut to a top 8. Stahleck has six rounds of swiss with a cut to the top 32! That's three extra games that they have to play, with each gaming getting more mentally fatigued. Is it any wonder then that a Martell deck, that tends to have lots of decisions and moving parts doesn't do as well as a Stark deck? After a tournament I'm just mentally drained. I couldn't even imagine having to play three extra games! I'd fall asleep somewhere in the top 8 at Stahleck! A straightforward deck is going to give you an advantage over a deck like Martell Maesters that tends to have more moving parts and more decisions. Now I'm not saying this is the sole reason. I think there are a number of reasons for Martell's less than stellar showing at Stahleck, but I think this might be a contributing factor.

Staton said:

Actually, there's some merit to this... At least the reason I chose NOT to play Targ is that I make a ton of errors on the best of days, and Targaryen is REALLY not forgiving about those... couldn't believe that I could run my burn deck with any decent coherence even for the 6 or 7 (did not know back then yet) Swiss rounds. I think I was talking about this with Tomdidiot in the cafeteria bit before the Tournament, and I think he also made a similar choice regarding a Stark Winter-control and a Stark Siege.

Then again, last year both the whole Stahleck Tourney and also the Top 16 were full of those slowly grinding 3-6 Agenda decks... and I don't think those games were really 'light' for anybody.

I think that another part of this whole equation might be that some Aggro decks (at leastSiege & Bara Knights) in general seemed to be crawling back out of the woodwork in Stahleck, maybe just because people had figured out that they were pretty good at disrupting Maester builds (apply pressure early on, so that they don't get a chance to build) and don't fare at all badly against Martell control either (Fear of Winter, Frozen Solid, Brienne, targeted kill & steal).

@Twn2dn: Oh, and if I didn't emphasize this in the last post - Man that Thrones Times thing is awesome, since you can at any time go back and have a look at what the statistics really look like! Oh, and also some nice analysis of the environment, agree with everything else pretty much.

@Ratotaskr, Oh no, sorry, I didn't intend to say that it was entirely a fluke, just that I wanted another tournament or two before we declare that Martell has been brought low. As well, I wondered if there were any new cards in the environment that were obviously influencing that, which I had just missed. Of course, I forgot to consider restriction in that question, as Dan so aptly pointed out.

Will, I got you. I think I expressed myself badly. What I meant was that I also think that the Martell result at Stahleck was a bit of a fluke, because they're not as bad as that. They're still a top house, but I think it's clear that they're just not as dominant as they were over the summer, and the results at Days and Black Friday also corroborate this.

Ratatoskr said:

Wait, are you saying Martell Summer was dominant over the summer?

so I'm going to sound like an idiot (a perpetual noob perhaps?) but when I first started playing, before I realized there were raven attachments, I thought the summer/winter mechanic referred to the actual seasons.

The list on eaglecard.org are full of errors. I placed 8th and not 10th after the Swiss rounds, and I lost to Michal Walach in the TOP32. Also I am from Germany and not from Spain. I have contacted Wolfgang.

perpetual noob said:

That would be a SWEET mechanic

imrahil327 said:

It would be funny if FFG made a set like magic's unglued and unhinged. A funny one with random stuff like that.

I don't know who is or isn't familiar with tournament level Magic here, but at the larger PTQ events (you know, those 400+ ones) there was a phenomenon described about which decks come out of the swiss into the positive bracket. Essentially running it down to the fact that as you got into higher rounds of swiss, you saw a more and more concentrated pool of decks UNLESS something else punched through during the first round. it was really cool, so when deckbuilding their decks would have a huge vice (like to Targ burn or something) but as long as that could be handled by most of the environment's other tier 1 decks at about 60/40 then if you didn't pair up against it first round, it was a non-issue (it would get weened out). And if you matched up against it first round, well, your in the negative bracket at a 400 person event, so your going home. Maybe somebody remembers it better than I do.

I disagree with the affirmation than Martell become good after BotS and brotherhood.

Just before the release of The Return of the Others (the cp with Val, BotFM, Mance, BotS...) we had the Spanish regional. It was won by Lannister but the finalist was Stukov with Martell, abusing Viper's Bannermen and summer (he played without agenda, Northern Cavalry Flank are that influent here). So i'd say Martell was very good just from the release of their Core.

I disagree too with the idea that Martell is not popular in Europe, in Spain at least they are very, very popular. They had a finalist in last year regional, a champion this year, Stukov won the Italian regional bak in June with them, they won another tourney in March with 72 players, they won too many local Madrid tournaments, they play every weekend, but they are at least 20 people reaching 30 sometimes... so they have been the dominant house here.

And the reason I see for the decrease in Martell performance is the restriction of the Viper's Bannermen. Other reason some people in Spain see is the end of summer as a dominant strategy, due to the rise of Greyjoy over the last chapters. They had an excelent draw, now they rely too much on Samwell and Valyrian Steel Link.

Fieras said:

This would be awesome.

As AegonTargaryen said, those results are wrong. There were 13 players from Poland, not counting berto. And 2 in top 32.