Season 4 Review

I was thinking of going over our draft and teams from pre-season to do a full evaluation but let’s agree that it’s not really necessary. Especially when my #3 overall top pick, Daenerys "Sits on the Wrong Throne" Targaryen, turned out to have only scored six total points on the season! Dany was arguably the biggest bust in the draft, along with Jaime Lannister, who went #4 overall, but at least Mr. Goldhand got into double digit points -- and returned into his true love's embrace.

What is interesting is looking at the high scorers in each category, and seeing if there were any standouts and surprises. Overall, our top scorers were Tormund Giantsbane (142), Ygritte (138), Jon Snow (125), The Hound (117), and Styr (98). After those five is a huge drop off to Arya Stark with 37 points. Twenty seven characters accrued points this season — out of forty four — and all of them were positive scorers save one, Theon Lovejoy. The average character scored 33.5 points but that’s very misleading as the mean score was only 13 points. Basically, if you had a top five character, you did great! And if you didn’t, then it was a loooong season. In our league, Direwolf Pups! romped the field by owning three of the top five players...

Injury:
Overall, eight players got positive injury points — meaning they injured people — and two were the recipients of injury. Tyrion and Hodor were -7 and -14 points on the season for injuries suffered, while The Hound (56), Tormund Giantsbane (42), Jon Snow (21), Oberyn Martell (14), and Styr (14) were tops in positive injury points. I guess this means The Hound isn't so much a killer as he is a maimer?

Killing:
Most of the points action this season was in killing so it’s no surprise that thirteen characters racked up kills. Of those, four were single kills: Brienne, Daario Naharis, Petyr Baelish, and Samwell Tarly. It seems like Bran and Hodor split a kill, and then we move onto the real crew of killers, starting from the top. While it looked like The Hound (50) or Arya (30) would be murdering their way across Westeros early on, it turned out that all that fighting around The Wall brought the major points. Ygritte, Jon Snow, and Tormund Giantsbane all had ten or more kills, while Styr wasn’t far behind with eight. Overall though, it looks like Tormund and Ygritte win “best draft day values” as they were both picked up in the third round and finished #1 and #2 in scoring, respectively. MVP for our season goes to Ygritte though, as she was on the winning Direwolf Pups! team, plus she was so nasty that she didn’t get any injury points, meaning if she hit you, you died!

Sexing:
C’mon, where was all the gratuitous sex! Isn’t Game of Thrones all about that? Seven characters got sexing points, all only once, save for the twincest couple of Cersei and Jaime. It could be argued that Petyr Baelish deserves a double down for his possible hook up with Sansa, but perhaps that was way too off screen to count. The real curiosity is how Theon Greyjoy ended up with -7 for sex! I mean, is that the punishment for castration? (We assume this is a miscore for injury, but it’s funny so we hope it never gets corrected).

Insult:
The most subjective scoring category we used. What is a proper insult? Regardless of how Ryan defined it, eleven characters had positive insult points, while four were basically at the butt end of verbal daggers: Brienne, Ygritte, Theon Greyjoy, and Petyr Baelish. Interestingly, Tywin Lannister hardly put up any points in this category, although it’s hard to track week by week as there’s only a total here, and +2 and -2 insult points could have been moved by the episode. The winner in the duel of the dirty mouth department was Joffrey (20), who left very early on in Season 4 but not before flaming his uncle with a barrage of insults. Tyrion (16) and Cersei (14) got theirs, and The Hound was even a surprising #4 in the category with his ten points. Next year we’re gonna have to figure out how to translate great lines/insults into points!

Drinking:
For a show featuring so much alcohol, only thirteen characters imbided at least once. And of those, only about half drank more than once. Westeros’ resident lush Cersei only got six points here, which was very surprising. The other top drinkers were all Lannisters also: Tyrion and Joffrey with four points each. We’re thinking this category may have to go next season, as it’s probably funner to take real shots while watching the show, versus trying to track who is drinking on-screen.

OVERALL:
Out of 869 points doled out, the breakdown went like this: killing (590 pts), injury (147), insults (68), sexing (38), drinking (26). That’s 85% of points from injury/killing. That’s pretty heavily lopsided obviously and the challenge next season will be to come up with a system that more equally rewards all the other fun parts of watching Game of Thrones. Until then, big thanks to Ryan for starting the league (not the mention all the crazy scoring he had to do), thanks to Fantasizr, and thanks to all the members of So You Think You Can Dance With Dragons for participating!

EP 9,10: Game Time

The penultimate episode for Season 4 featured the incredible attack on Castle Black, which made for exciting viewing and a ton of points scored. Sure, 90% of the other characters were frozen out but Jon Snow and Co. made up for it with their mounds of killing. In the end, Mr. Pouty injured three and killed five, and Tormund Giantsbane, Ygritte, and Styr all racked up more than 50+ points each. Ygritte actually had the most kills from the episode with six, but she lost a few points because, well, you know what happened to her.

Episode 10 featured storylines from all over the continent and scattered points all around. Tyrion Lannister took top honors with his double kill and both Hound and Bran Stark pushed into the double digits. Sidenote: We should revisit whether Bran should get Hodor's kill points. I think it’s sort of a QB-WR question, and right now we are double rewarding! Anyways, a little bit of sexing by the Lannister twins, a brutal (presumed) kill by Brienene, and we end our first season of fantasy Game of Thrones. All in all, it was a fun time for everyone and we’re ready for improvemens and a new season! To the Wall!

An official congrats to Direwolf Pups!, who made quick work of her competitors and led the field after, oh, one episode. After our draft and even during our team previews, nobody was wise to the fact that killers -- physical killers, not verbal ones -- would become the MVPs.

Even with no shows such as Jaqen H’ghar and Lord Blackmont pulling down zero points (not to mention Melisandre’s paltry one point total), the sterling lineup of The Hound, Ygritte, and Styr was more than enough to overwhelm the rest of the league. We’ll cover individual honors later but there was basically no doubt for most of the season who would be winning So You Think You Can Dance With Dragons. So, with Valyrian swords raised high, a heartfelt congratuations to Melinda!

Let’s not overlook the other six teams though. I mean, God of T!t$ and Wine and Valar Morghulis did battle it out for #2 and #3, with Daniel squeaking by on the strength of Tyrion’s last episode surge. Nam was likely feeling great after EP9 as Jon Snow brought him into the top three race, but then Arya refused to finish off The Hound and Tyrion did, well, he did what he had to do. So in the end, a hearty congrats to Daniel and Nam, whose teams also did wonderfully.

As for Imping Ain’t Easy, Whore-Door, Blonde Ambitionz, and Dark Knights, it was mostly a light scoring season all around. Put it this way, Simon’s Imping Ain’t Easy team managed to place fourth despite having four players score zero — leaving only Cersei and Jaime to do the um, lifting. For last place Trieu, it must have been disappointing to see Bronn not kill anyone all season long, and as predicted, owning Theon Greyjoy was a net loss, as Reek recorded -2 points over the season. Better luck next year guys!

EP 7,8: Hulk Smash

Despite this being undoubtedly Game of Thrones’ most exciting season from a viewer’s perspective, the action has been far and few in-between. EP7 had lots of fantastic bits that really moved individual plots forward, but none of that resulted in a lot of fantasy points. Sure, The Hound and Arya both got killing points, but that’s de rigueur by now. What was more exciting was the kill by Little Finger, plus Daenerys finally getting down (even if it was off-screen)! Unfortunately for everyone, Gregor Clegane wasn’t a draftable character, as his one scene mauling defenseless prisoners/peasants would have obviously scored high.

And then we got EP8, the much anticipated Oberyn Martell versus The Mountain showdown. Of course, for our purposes, what was much more interesting was the Wildlings raid on Gilly's village. Tormund Giantsbane, Ygritte, and Styr all racked up huge killing numbers, vaulting high into the scoring ranks. In fact, those three are now all ranked in the individual top five scorers, pushing that bloodthirsty overachiever, Arya, into sixth place.

As for our league standings, what is there to say? Direwolf Pups extends their lead as they own The Hound, Ygritte, and Styr. With 222 points, they almost double second place God of T!t$ and Wine’s 112 points. While there’s a big battle at The Wall coming in EP9, it’s hard to envision any team catching up to the Pups. It’s a little more interesting at the bottom of the standings, as Dark Knights makes a late push to rise out of the cellar. They’re only fifteen points out of fourth place, which could make for an exciting finish. Okay, who am I kidding, this season is oveeeerrr!