Statistical analysis of the Battle of Winterfell on Game of Thrones: Who was the most useful player?

The Battle of Winterfell was extremely dark, bloody, cold and full of dead men, with really bad dental hygiene. A part of our favorite Game of Thrones characters are dead, some are resurrected from the dead to terrorize the living and others have barely gone through with last-minute assistance from their friends.

We recapitulated all the highlights of the episode, went through all the details that you may have missed and now we have followed, image by image, dark and dark, to count all the victims and the dead that we could. How many wights have been sent by the main characters? How long did they spend in combat? Who killed who and who was the most effective warrior? There were clearly winners – likely to be singing in Westeros in the years to come – and there were unexpected losers.

The following is our score of the Battle of Winterfell, a breakdown of the TV and the longest movie (and the darkest) Battle in history as if it were a major sporting event with a suite of analysts and data specialists.

[Note: I am just one humble man slowly scrolling through 77 minutes of prestige television so there’s bound to be some sort of error here. Please correct me!]

First, a few rules and a big warning.

Rules of engagement

• No dragons.
• Indirect victims do not count.

The hardest and fastest rule we had when we put this together was the idea that dragons would be excluded. Drogon and Rhaegal were, without a doubt, the MVPs when they fought outside the gates of Winterfell, easily slaughtering the warriors (and the giants of the warriors). We have not awarded any of their wins to Dany or Jon, their riders, because dragons are the equivalent of a video game hack. It's cheating.

It also means that there are no indirect victims taken into account. If they were, it would have allowed Melisandre, the slower walker, to find herself among the best warriors on the battlefield, as her trench fire has changed the game, preventing the castle to be invaded even sooner. On the other side of the moral barrier is the king of the night and his indirect slaughter by sending warriors to the slaughterhouse or Viceflamboyant things in a thousand pieces. A forbidden zone.

We were rather liberal with a confirmed slaughter. As long as someone stabbed a viewfinder on the screen, we thought of it as a zombie death. There were limited times when you could see a retreat of the skin and seem to hold on, but we like to think that the wounded are damned and that a kill was inflicted anyway.

Moreover, we will not come to that on the side of the villain, with the exception of two great bad guys: the king of nights and the giant who broke into Winterfell.

Finally, we counted the number of seconds that each character was involved in the battle – but only while he was on the screen. In addition, characters such as Theon and Bran, in Godswood of Winterfell, did not engage in combat all the time. Their inclusion in the battle was only once Godswood's invasion. This allowed us to determine the effectiveness of each warrior by examining his number of casualties per minute (KPM) based on his involvement in the conflict.

When we decided who we wanted to play in the big game, eliminations were the most important deciding factor. Our main inspiration here is the NBA. So we divided our team into five players, our bench players, whom we exchanged and gave a brave soul to the most valuable player of the Battle of Winterfell.

The starting composition

Choosing your top five for the Battle of Winterfell is a difficult task, if only because there are so many warriors who have already proven themselves in combat. You have warriors like Lyanna Mormont against Samwell Tarly, a man who is probably a better reader than a fighter. You have Ser Brienne, recently knight, against a man who can light his sword on fire by whispering, Beric Dondarrion.

And you have Jaime Lannister, a man who has spent a lot of time on the battlefield, against a person like Arya Stark who, although a qualified assassin, has no minutes for big games.

There is no bigger game than the one where you fight death itself. How would this lack of experience show?

After establishing the statistics, Arya is clearly the winner of the battle and perhaps the most brutal warrior of all. She leads the pack with 22 kills, the majority of those who arrive in a scene at the top of the ramparts, where she uses the double blades that Gendry forged to send wight after wight. Of course, Arya's size and speed are an advantage here, but she's also drawn with some of the kingdom's best fighters: the Faceless Men, the Waif, Brienne and the Hound.

Arya wins the equivalent of a seven-game NBA Finals final match since the half-court when she sends the Night King while she is strangled to death. This is a fifth-round knockout, world champion belt championship. It comes in the greatest moment of all – and with the highest number of victims in the episode – so it is an absolute lock in the first five parts.

Theon Frickin & # 39; Greyjoy joins Arya, a man who virtually prevented the seers from taking Bran in his wheelchair and taking him to Big Blue Bad. At a crucial moment in the battle, when almost everything was lost, Theon showed that he had real balloons, eliminating 20 warriors in the Godswood realm. He also, stupidly, loaded the Night King with his spades and missed embarrassing but for his courage, he landed in the entrances.

Jorah (19 kills), Tormund (17) and Ser Brienne of Tarth (16) complete the group. It is worth mentioning here that these three characters have been on the screen for a much shorter time in combat than Theon and Arya. All three had a much better kills per minute (KPM), with Tormund in the lead. The man who sucked on the nipple of a giant was in combat, on the screen, for less than 60 seconds, but he managed 17 kills in that period.

On the bench

When looking for someone to make his entry on the bench, you want a spark – a person who will inspire the team to go forward while the major stars are resting. You are also looking for someone who is not too "me, me, me" and who wants to take all the glory for himself. A team player, if you want.

Nobody has provided more sparks than Lyanna Mormont, giants killer.

Although the entire body of the little bear queen wrinkled in the giant's palm like Anderson Silva's leg at UFC 168, she managed to ward off a valiant knife at the eye and disintegrate the gigantic stroller as his last act of defiance. It is only really in combat for 58 seconds that his only murder is worth 20 killed. Can you imagine the damage the giant thunderbolt would have done by wandering through the inner dungeon? She was a personified bravery from the moment we met her until her brutal and rough end, which made her pass for the first time off the bench.

Two of the most inexperienced fighters (and lovers!), Podrick (9 wins, 12 KPM) and Gendry (9 wins, KPM 13.8) did not have much time on the screen, but whenever the battle came to them, they delivered with great efficiency. You can really see the duo team up to exchange stories about the war, their ladies and the fact that it's really easy to confuse them in the darkest televised battle ever filmed.

You have to give it to Jaime Lannister, who defends Ser Brienne with a decisive pass at the end of the match, an excellent KPM of 7.02 and 11 kills. Fighting side by side with the love of his life, Jaime survived the Battle of Winterfell, preserved Brienne from a widely presumed death, and, when the seers penetrated deep into Winterfell, proved that he had not been killed. he always possessed her, all with one hand. A lock for our fourth place on the bench.

The last place on the bench is difficult, but we start with the Hound. Although his aversion to fire and his hatred for virtually everything that exists can really tip the battle, his respect for Arya means that he comes out of the bench with real heat. He helped him in his 12 kills, but Hound was one of our least effective fighters (KPM 2.2). He spent a good part of the battle crossing the castle or conducting a totally different war – the one against his own demons.

Trade & em

Some warriors are just not part of a championship winning team and, for them, it's worth investigating some trades – that would have helped to prevent it from not being at the Battle of Winterfell ?

Sword of fire or not, the exit of Beric is limited. Does he play frightened because there is no Thoros of Myr to revive him? Probably not. Beric has plenty of time to shine on screen (3 minutes, 40 seconds), but much of that time has gone into the bowels of the castle to try to defend and protect Arya. His KPM is low accordingly (1.17), and look, it could be hard for our guy Beric, but we would like to have seen what Yohn Royce could have done in combat.

Samwell Tarly, even with four valiant feats, would be the water boy of the team. Did you see him sit down just to cry in the end? What are you doing, Sam ?! There is still time and you rock. Enter the game. We would prefer to see Hot Pie launch pastries than this.

Ghost, we do not know exactly where you went or what you did on the field, but we would trade against Nymeria and her bag.

Bran just spent the whole match on his galactic-brain iPhone watching the reruns of the disappointing finale of Lost. Thus, the sooner we exchange it, the better. There is yet another war coming, and now that Bran is practically the most powerful magician in the world, what is it for? Absolutely nothing. Swap it for one chicken and give it to the dog.

A small note on thin numbers

Wights do a lot of damage in this episode. There are some cases where they kill killed directly on the living (but no main characters) and where their number is really confusing. At the first encounter when they loaded the Unsullied in a tidal wave, there appears to be about 12 iron turns on four Unsellied. To extrapolate, let's just say that there are three weights for each unsullied, which seems to be a rather conservative estimate.

From several early scenes we can see the entire squadron without blemish. There are squads of 10 out of 10 and two squadrons behind each trebuchet, or 200 men per trebuchet. There are 11 trebuchets on the front line, which can be seen when Dany and Jon overhang the battle, or 2,200 men on the verge of battle. We also see that the squadrons without spot have four depths. So 2,200 × 5 = 11,000.

A conservative estimate of the invaders would then invade the total (on the front lines and not including those attacking the flanks) at 11,000 × 3 = 33,000, provided that the density of masks remains the same as that of the unsullied. Given that they are submerged, we take this assumption and are ready to commit ourselves to the idea that at least one hundred thousand souls invaded Winterfell during the long night.

Good chances of victory then.

Mother of defeat

We must talk about Daenerys Targaryen. The Mother of Dragons has achieved the worst performance of all time at the Battle of Winterfell and is almost done killing. Without the valiant efforts of Jorah Mormont, Dany would have gone and Cersei would spill another wine with a Cheshire cat smile.

Dany is moved in this episode because she's just discovered that Jon is actually his nephew. Sad trombone. She plays distractedly. She has other problems to deal with, such as accidental incest. Unlike Michael Jordan's infamous "flu game", Dany can not reverse what's gnawing at him. She is the anti-Michael.

First of all, she is mistaken in lighting the trench because she is blinded by a cloud of ice and does not think about … just going down a little? His next mistake is to allow Drogon to take the sun off the battlefield so long that monsters can crawl on him like he's a pie at a picnic, taking unpleasant bites from his dragon skin . Dany almost killed Drogon because she's watching Jon fleeing into the castle? Dany Lift.

And his most silly move, similar to J.R. Smith in the first game of the NBA's 2018 finals, is to burn the king of the night alive. Someone thinks to tell him that, hey, he does not burn? If it had been so easy, Dany, we would have flown into the north without fearing the entire population of Winterfell.

Her double assistance while Jorah was submerged does nothing to influence our opinion, even if she is brave. She only kills in melee once but spends a lot of time on Drogon, placing her personal KPM at .15, the lowest of all. She wanted to fight, she just made a lot of bad decisions.

She is a tremendous asset to the team, but it was her worst performance on the field. in the most important battle of the history of man.

The Battle of Winterfell MVP

Look, there are obvious arguments for Arya Stark who, despite the fourth worst efficiency of this long night, remains the most effective killer and one of the keys to victory.

So, we will do it.

The rise of Arya Stark at the Night King is a poster-dunk for the high fantasy crowd.

It's a fifth round knockout by Showtime Kick.

It is a triple climb in the half-field in the championship game.

All that Game of Thrones had built, all that the Battle of Winterfell had been built, was made possible by that moment. Who else than Arya could to be the MVP?

There may also be arguments for Melisandre – who came at the last possible moment to provide some form of hope through the mysterious Lord of Light. Recalling her prophecy to Arya, the lady of Winterfell is on when everything seems lost. That was what Melisandre was doing, but the us, the smart, the intelligence, the foresight to use the sneaky trick of the dagger left Arya at the top.

Tormund, you say? Look, we can not argue with this logic. The man with the best KPM and the giant's milk forever in his belly is also a worthy candidate for the MVP and allegedly MVP candidate of the season.

He will have to settle for Most Improved. Melisandre can receive our coaching award of the year.

After the war

Some liner notes from after the war:

• The killed dragons thousands wights – including a giant wight who was burned by Drogon halfway through the battle. On several occasions, we went frame by frame by counting the weights that were in the line of sight. It was a task for someone with more mental strength (or perhaps machine learning skills) than us. Let's just say: It was a bad day for the undead.
• The warriors claim Edd, Beric, Jorah and 99% of the Dothraki horde. Four main characters killed is pretty good.
• Edd was in the episode for 16 seconds before being knocked down by a wight. Gendry lasted longer, we hope.
• The Dothraki horde had a better result and was present for almost two minutes. They have zero confirmed win, but have they surely won small victories outside Winterfell?
• Alys Karstark was at the meeting during the last episode and was seen early in this one, next to Theon. She has not been seen anymore. Is she dead?
• Can we confirm if Shireen 2.0 is deceased? We think we can, but we have been cautious here. The crypts were not sure, of course, but our heroes had solid field armor, is not it?
• The crypts were not safe, as many had predicted, but I feel aggrieved. I wanted to see Eddard without a head.
• Davos has done an incredible job of avoiding any kind of conflict, but giving a lot of people a lot of hard looks. If looks could kill, he would have been MVP.
• We have not seen Yohn Royce anywhere. Where was he supposed to be?
• I've been informed that Gray Worm is two words. I was wrong.

Originally posted on April 30th.
Updated May 1 at 10h50 PT