na ja, but if clash comes turn 2 it is highly unlikely there would be another clash turn 3 (and not too likely turn 4 too), isn´t it?

your wolf pelts will be often hanging behind Bara´s belt by end of turn 4 if you miss good position in the first clash as Stark. It is not uncommon for Bara to win the game on turn 5 with DS, KL, CCP, Eyrie, WH, MC and one of HH/WFELL/SE... in fact I saw turn 4 victories for Bara in the event of mustering

Crippling yourself to 4 tokens in the turn 1 is just always wrong for any house
We must be playing very different types of games.  Based on the 500 games I have logged, it is very uncommon for Bara to sail immediately north, much less win by turn 5.

I love attacking Stark as Bara*, but you need more than an early clash to make it viable.  You basically also need both the South and Lanni/GJ to be at war with each other, or else turning your back is just daring up to 3 houses with nothing better to do to come take a bite. And even if they don't, it can all come crashing down if another clash comes quickly.  Plus in order to take all 7 of those castles (WF and the Eyrie aren't falling to a single knight), you are probably going to need more than one early muster.



*Bara's house cards are the weakest overall, but Patchface's ability to neutralize Roose makes that the best head-to-head match up for them

Overall the winrate is more influenced by alliances & what other houses do.

You can place bad orders as Stark and have an easy victory in case of GJ Lanni war.

You can place good orders as Stark but if GJ is upon you, the victory is harder.

There is so much variance in this game that you´d need thousands of games for each opening to make it representative. I agree, there's variance in this game, and in a lot of cases alliances are more important than starting orders, see my initial post on page 1 regarding Lannister .

In the case of Stark though, you do not see the same lack of correlation between starting orders and win-rate. You can make the following statement "Order sets E and F are clearly inferior openings for Stark", and I believe everybody will agree with this statement since this is also supported by the data Now in the same vein, if order set B was clearly superior to order Set A, would you not be able to see a marked difference in the winrate as well? ...or at least not the opposite? Because you have it there black on white, when an order set is clearly inferior for Stark, you see a drastic change in win-rate. Should you not see something similar for A vs B?

I've already stated that against an aggressive Baratheon who shows enmity towards you, you're better off CP-ing in White Harbor, BUT if the Baratheon player is friendly, I prefer order set A, and I've already stated my reasons.

The whole argument for Order set B hinges on a disastruous CoK after which Lord Stannis takes Lord Eddard behind the shed and does unspeakable things to him... that Renly can only dream of . That to me doesn't sound like "clearly superior".

The worst thing that happens is that a muster comes as well as Game of Thrones. For Stark, the muster is completely neutral. You have the same number of units as you would have as moving do Karhold.
The muster is not completely neutral for Stark, you're in a better position with order set A. You can assign more orders and do more things with your units. With a GoT you end up with one extra token at the end of round 2.

I understand your (and Cornie's) points, you want to safeguard against the Clash, and even though it's 1/3, you put more weight on it because of the dire consequences it could have. It could be just me or my naivete, but with a friendly Baratheon, I'm not that worried about a clash, even if I go into it with only 4 tokens, and I've had clashes on turn 2 with 4 tokens as Stark, and had no problems with it.

Last edited by Zsa on 2018-Feb-27 19:21, edited 1x in total

Excellent stuff, great work. But before we read into the stats so much, I'd like to suggest an improvement. Most games are played by beginner or novice players, and that's probably why we see so little variation between openings. There's too much noise.

I suggest filtering out only games played by experienced players, and by that I mean look at the minimum avg. score (or win rate) for all the players in the game, and filter above a certain value. These are the games we really care about when discussing openings in such detail. Absolutely Bara's win rate is high in beginner games (mine was 82% for the first two years here) and Martell's is low, but those two stats reverse themselves when playing with experienced players, or so I believe.

Unfortunately, the top player list contains only recent players, so I think it would involve scraping player profiles, unless somebody regularly archives the player list. Even then you'd only get their current stats, not the stats at the time the game was played, but I don't think that's a serious problem as most good players were good right from the start.

Hopefully this site isn't hosted on AWS ...

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Zizzeus Guide to AGoT

The worst thing that happens is that a muster comes as well as Game of Thrones. For Stark, the muster is completely neutral. You have the same number of units as you would have as moving do Karhold.
The muster is not completely neutral for Stark, you're in a better position with order set A. You can assign more orders and do more things with your units. With a GoT you end up with one extra token at the end of round 2.

I understand your (and Cornie's) points, you want to safeguard against the Clash, and even though it's 1/3, you put more weight on it because of the dire consequences it could have. It could be just me or my naivete, but with a friendly Baratheon, I'm not that worried about a clash, even if I go into it with only 4 tokens, and I've had clashes on turn 2 with 4 tokens as Stark, and had no problems with it.
Well, I’m sure we can all agree that if neither GJ or Baratheon attack Stark, you can be pretty safe against most any set of Westeros cards. Of course, a disastrous clash is often the reason someone needs to backstab...

As Stark, and to a lesser extent Martell, I think the early game is all about not losing the game. To borrow from sports, you can’t win the match in the first quarter, but you certainly can lose it! No Stark player has ever said after a loss ‘if only I could have expanded faster!’

As far as being able to set more orders, yes you get one more order, a CP in Karhold 90% of the time (the other 10% being FFC).. As mentioned, the added flexibility will net you 1 additional PT compared to the safer opening, and 10% of the time it is clearly superior since Feast For Crows makes the initial march a horrid blunder, as you end with 2 fewer tokens.

Just throwing this out there:

Comparing my own stats over 500 ranked 6p games to those from original post, they mostly line up. My Bara stats are slightly above and Greyjoy stats slightly behind the field, but the biggest difference is that my Stark stats are markedly better than those listed for any of the potential openings. I've posted a 30% win rate over 70 games, without ever having started with a regular CP in White Harbor.

So I do not agree, because neither the data provided by OP or my own experience backs it up, that dropping to 4 tokens on the first round is a DISASTER. Mostly because this highly aggressive Baratheon is a boogeyman that doesn't actually exist, and also the nightmare clash scenario is only even a possibility if Stark sees it coming and decides to hoard their tokens and allows Bara to buy the blade for 2 . If you bid 3-4 tokens, Bara has to give up their shot at stars to outspend you. And they are (justifiably) loathe to go all-in on the blade for fear that Doran can promptly swipe it and leave them with absolutely nothing to show for their profligacy.

If Stark spends their money in a 2nd turn clash, and still winds up with nothing to show for it, it basically means everyone else is broke too, and now having Karhold is vital to put you back into the race for cash.  Even with dominant track positions, Bara is going to have limited order space to launch an effective sea assault, land invasion, and CP themselves to keep them competitive for power.

Basically, y'all talking like invading the North is easy. It's not. Stark units are practically immortal thanks to their deck, and especially as Bara you always have potential threats at your flanks that can cut you up before you can secure much of the copious amount of territory Stark can maneuver around.

The whole argument for Order set B hinges on a disastruous CoK after which Lord Stannis takes Lord Eddard behind the shed and does unspeakable things to him... that Renly can only dream of . That to me doesn't sound like "clearly superior".
Haha now I am convinced

Btw just as we are discussing this look at those Turn 2 westeros cards... if I played the inferior opening I was done after 1st turn... unleashing the medieval renly https://game.thronemaster.net/?game=153207

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Don´t fight in the North, or the South. Fight every battle, everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend, every possible series of events is happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you.

Maybe it is a newbie thing, since a very aggressive baratheon usually does not last too long. But did you never see Baratheon invade Narrow Sea in the first round, since Stark put only one march order? I did. Yes, it is not that common, but when it happens it's very painful for Stark, I think. Isn't that also worth hedging against?

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“The only way to treat disease is to understand disease.“

Yes, having an agressive Bara in round 1 can be VERY painful for Stark, especially because he most often has the support of Martell.

So basically you should adjust your opening to your opponent and how the conversation is going.

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"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." , Terry Pratchett

Maybe it is a newbie thing, since a very aggressive baratheon usually does not last too long. But did you never see Baratheon invade Narrow Sea in the first round, since Stark put only one march order? I did. Yes, it is not that common, but when it happens it's very painful for Stark, I think. Isn't that also worth hedging against?
For Bara to take this route, he has to have a march in Kingswood or Dragonstone.  Which means even if the dreaded clash comes, he does not have the 7 to 4 token advantage (if he marched in Kingswood), or he starts the next round with a deficit in units (if he marched in DS) that limits his ability to capitalize on his superior track positions.

Generally, if Bara has more than one march it is so he can take KL the first round, which leaves him out of position to sail north on turn 2.

I've never seen Baratheon winning after taking the narrow sea first turn. It has the downsides Ser Hodor mentions, and opens up a lot of chances for martell.

I've never seen Baratheon winning after taking the narrow sea first turn. It has the downsides Ser Hodor mentions, and opens up a lot of chances for martell.
Yes, but some people do it nonetheless.

But I agree, maybe it is worth the risk to lose the narrow sea to a very aggressive Baratheon in some special cases.

Last edited by Nomaris on 2018-Feb-28 12:43, edited 1x in total

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“The only way to treat disease is to understand disease.“

I've never seen Baratheon winning after taking the narrow sea first turn. It has the downsides Ser Hodor mentions, and opens up a lot of chances for martell.I’m not sure why we decided that Baratheon was the enemy after a disasteruous clash and not Greyjoy. Losing track position to Greyjoy, especially star orders is the difference between holding off GJ for several turns and crumbling after just two or three.

As Stark, and to a lesser extent Martell, I think the early game is all about not losing the game. To borrow from sports, you can’t win the match in the first quarter, but you certainly can lose it! No Stark player has ever said after a loss ‘if only I could have expanded faster!’
That's pretty funny . To be fair, no Stark player complains about anything, they just drone on and on and on about Winter coming...

As for the early-game-aggressive baratheon player, I don't think he's a boogeyman as Ser Hodor puts it. I've seen one, and apparently Nomaris has had at least one sighting in the wild as well. But it's usually not a very successful strategy, since they usually get their head caved in, in the following few turns.

I'm glad I got to convince Cornie at least ... wait a minute, what happened in that game. Did your mouse break when you were mustering the units?

I’m not sure why we decided that Baratheon was the enemy after a disasteruous clash and not Greyjoy. Losing track position to Greyjoy, especially star orders is the difference between holding off GJ for several turns and crumbling after just two or three.
Cornie was basing his case for the CP in White Harbor around Bara aggression.  I agree that Greyjoy is the problem 9 times out of 10, which is the basis of my disagreement.  A rampaging Baratheon remains a beast of legend, which only appears when the full moon falls on a Tuesday.  Whereas Greyjoy attacks Stark 5 days a week.

And part of the reason why a first round clash tends to not be so apocalyptic for Stark is that Greyjoy starts slower, giving you another round to adjust, negotiate and spread out.  Also, losing Winterfell to GJ is not the end of the world. If you still hold the eastern seas and have the Eyrie to fall back to, then you retain basically still have a capital and your full range of motion.  Many times and more has Theon learned that taking Winterfell is easier than keeping it.