Thanks for posting all those decks! Sounds like a great time had by all.

Twn2dn said:

Forget the Castellan (not that he isn't the 2nd bet Lanni card) but I'll chalk both of my wins up to 1st/2nd turn GTMs on my opponents part and my inability to get my resourcing in order. They were both dominant players, with most excellent deckage and failed to make mistakes I could exploit.

I think running both WFA and Valar really gives their card advantage a time to shine, while slowing down the slower Targ build up preventing me to get to the magic recurusion tipping point that my prolong the game enough to wear them out. WHen I grab my deck later, I'll get it posted. I was running 2 Support of the Kingdoms and 1 Condemned by the Realm. Availability, not preference, dictated that variation.

Thanks everyone for the kind words. It was truly my pleasure to do what could to organize and I hope that like Stag Lord's Black Friday that this can perhaps be something we do each year. It would be a shame if I only got to use that banner once.

I typically play Stark but had not been having a whole lot of luck with the House in joust for the greater part of the LCG era even after having tried a few different builds (lack of practice time and my crippling incompetent play don't help), so I decided that at best I could play spoiler and perhaps generate some talk by playing a deck that probably no one else was. Thus was born my Stark treatied with Greyjoy winter deck. And despite going 2-3, I was happy with it and enjoyed playing it. I did hand Casey a loss (the other person playing Stark) who eventually came in third and I got my other win against Lars's Bara MwNK deck. In the game against Lars I didn't put out any particularly tasty cards early (I don't think I had any GJ cards out in the first round, perhaps two). I eliminated one MwNK using an Icy Catapult (I think, Lars, feel free to correct me as I'm terrible at remembering details) --I believe he stole a Street from me before I killed it-- and got lucky and knocked his second MwNK out his hand with Intrigue claim. I recovered better from my Valar and was able keep his board pretty bare thereafter. Whether that outcome would be repeatable, who knows, and the game could have been different if Lars had countered my Valar with Power of Blood as he described. My losses were to two Lanni decks (I had beat one of those decks twice in the last NYC meetup before this but Red Terror made some refinements and simply played better than I did (I was not very smart about how I used my White Ravens) and won) and to Twn2dn's Targ deck in which he got his recursion going early in full force and just kept beating down my characters with Forever Burning and Flame Kissed. Thanks go to Ktom and Old Ben; I knew I wasn't going to get much time at all to play test my deck so I resorted to pestering them for constructive criticism on my deck list. Ktom knocked the rough edges off and got me focused on what I wanted to do and Ben steered me to some final refinements that really helped (including convincing me Valar was the better reset for my deck than Wildfire was, and he was right).

If you had told me in the depths of the dark winter tthat 10 out of towners woudl travel on a gorgeous summer Saturday to spend hours playing LCG format thrones - and that NY woudl eb ready and able to host such an event - I would have laughed. But it happened, it was true, and it was more fun than my wildest expectations.

Congratulations to lestgored for stepping up and running an absolutely first rate event . Your efforst and expense are so gretaly appreciated - words cannot suffice. seriously. I thougth thevenue was great - and it was something i could never have pulled off. i am not in the city nearly enough to negotiate a deal with a restauarant, and Neutral Ground spoiled me by having the tourney software available and having experts in its use on hand. Plus it was an established gaming venue. i had it easy - Jaosn you did an amazing job. NAd you made the "big" tourney expericne memorable for several first time players - which I think is the greatest benfiet of all.

All honor and props to the domainant DC metagroup. Erick, Corey and Dan are clearly the elite team at GoT in the East at the moment. They are all skilled players and their months of preparation and hard work should be emulated by anoy one who wnats to succeed at the competitive level at this game They have my admiration and I suspect we will hear from them at GenCon.

As to the tourney itslef, it served to confirm many of my suspicions about th wider metagame. lannister is just overloaded at the moment - with location control (clearly thay can pull off Condemned the easiest) attachment control, stealth and deadly, repeatable character control, draw and resources. Did I leave anythinng out? I really think there needs to be a Plot cancel for Valar, becuase it seems to me that fast rush might be the solve for the problam, since at least Lannister doesn't have a lot of renown at the moment. But otherwise - they are jsut dominaant.

Its interesting to see literally how all Thrones is lcoal these days. Between rounds a hot topic of covnersation was which House is second to lannister in viability. The DC guys are covnicned it is Targaryen, hte DE/Philly guys are sure it is Baratheon. Both make good arguments. i don't think it really matters, bacause all tings being equal, I think the Lanni deck wions more often than not.

I ran Baratheon and scrubbed out at 1-4. Each of my losses was to an opponent who was better prepared and who outplayed me tactically that afternoon. I won't be psoting a deck list - the deck was what you would expect. All three renown Bara brothers + Mel + renwon non uniques + weenies. Stand events, Bannermen and a splash of control. Some summer tech, but not the agenda, which I think is too risky to play at a big event. I am very excited about teh cards i saw spiled for baratehon over the weekend. The new Robert will be a staple, the jousting horse is amazing, and the free 3/3 guys will be almost impossible not to play.

Good times ahead - thanks to all for a wonderful event. Good luck to the NE guys heading to genCon.

Dobbler said:

My initial tests of shadow stalker was that with blockade, and other choke elments including winter... I had to keep my cost curve to about 1.9.

Martial Law is already gone... not only is it less effective, I always forget to trigger it when it could be.

finitesquarewell said:

60th card was a third Cersei's Attendant

ktom said:

i think the people that didn't run a lot of neutrals weren't going to anyway (i'd have happily stole the 2-5 neutral characters and the 2-3 neutral locations they did run and taken the advatage, so while he did not affect their deck building he would have affected the game, the decks flaws were me and my choices surronding MwnK not MwnK). I bet the guy i stole varys from rethinks putting varys in his deck next time. only one person said they weren't afraid of MwnK, but again i'd liek to play that deck again and see what happens with one more military icon first turn. The game against a OOH deck having a MwnK out early really changed his play style (he even mentions he had to not put out any 'tasty cards early' thereby losing the benefit of his treaty while still being hinderd by it) and again it was me, not MwnK, that lost that game.

Holy smokes, has no one mentioned this already, myself included? LUke came with a surprise to add a little "epic-ness" to the day: he had an advance copy of the Greyjoy expansion. Yep, everyone at the Kingsmoot got to preview all of the cards (GJ players should collectively wet themselves when they finally get it) including new titles for melee which have a very neat twist on how players end up with titles.

We were all on our honor not to spoil the whole set, but we were each granted permission to give one spoiler, so here goes:

It's back...

Jason(LetsGoRed) did a heck of a job organizing the event. Cranberry Cafe was a great place to hold the event, and they had a decent selection of beer as well.Thanks to FFG and everyone else who provided support for the event. It was wonderful to see the players from the DC and NY metas, the remnants from the Mass and NoVa metas, as well as the new players. It's amazing to see the turnover in the game. StagLord and I are the only 2 players who played in the NE Regionals in 2006 who played in this event. Almost everyone else on the Eastcoast still playing has come into the game since then. (I know there's a couple exceptions.) So the Eastcoast meta has almost completely turned over in the last 3 years, like alot of other metas across the country. THis event really enforced that fact, with the absence of the Reifs, SoS, the Harrisburg meta, Ethan, 'Mainn, etc. It almost didn't feel right.

Fortunately, the caliber of players was just as strong as past years. The DC/NoVa meta really brought it to the tournament. I was fortunate enough to play Finitesquarewell and Casey during the tournament, and both games were good. Casey and I went 15 plots before drawing.(I only had 3 cards left in my deck of 63) Finitesquarewell hammered me opening plot and had me from the 3rd plot, but I think it dragged out to 7 or 8 plots. My other Loss was to Bloodycelt. He played well and deserves all the credit for the win, but my deck gave me none of the right cards. My 2 wins were against StagLord and a relative new player in the NY meta. In both games, my deck played very well.

As to Spoilers, I'll reveal that Euron is a reprint of Winter Euron, but has the art from Ice and Fire(which I've always liked). Stealth is good.

Nobody told me anything... about only being able to spoil one card. I simply refrained from mentioning anything since... no one told me anything, and I didn't want to get anyone in trouble.

So... one spoiler.

AHoTh Maester Wendamyr.

I think the quote changed to: "NIXON's BACK!!!"

If we're revealing spoilers should it not be in a more appropriately titled thread?

It was a great event and I had a lot of fun getting my face smashed in by the Bara decks.... Okay, actually, I think my 15 to 14 loss to Casey's Stark deck (sorry again for all the missed Renowns and other things -- I'm still new to the game so it's easy miss things, but I do really hate in all games pointing out things that help my opponent) and my 13 to 13 draw with Peter's Lannister deck were probably more fun, but I learned a lot from all my games -- Fox's Teeth, what a beating. It was a great venue and the tournament was so smoothly run by LetsGoRed that I think we all almost took it for granted. I'd like to write short but slightly more formal report if I find the time just so I don't forget all the things I learned.

As for spoilers -- wow, I totally missed the new titles. I saw them laid out on a second table to all the blue backed Kings of the Sea cards but didn't realize they had different text from the Core Set versions. I'm looking forward to seeing those now. I should have written down a card, but sadly I forgot about it when I ended up playing a pick up game after the main event and then realized I needed to leave quickly to make my train. So, since I can't remember the exact stats of the Martell king/queen card, I'll go with a reprint -- Asha is the Iron Throne Edition (someone correct me if something's been changed about the card -- I'm not familiar with the old cards so I didn't recognize it at first sight but the version on tzumainn.com matches what I remember seeing on Saturday). Also, I kind of remember that the only 3x unique card in the new chapter pack is Shae's Cottage. Does anyone else recall that being the case?

My spoiler:

An Empty Throne. The 3-5-1 Power Struggle Plot that lets both players do an extra power challenge. Very sweet for Baratheon now that the vigilant thing is developed. When it came out in fall 2007, there weren't quite enough vigilant guys to make ti work. Now, I think it will be a staple.

hmm.....

i'm going to spoil a new card (at least new to me, it might be a reprint)

Dagmar Cleftjaw

3G

3STR

Mil Pow

(i forget the traits, maybe luke can pop them in)

Deadly

Each warship you control counts +2 STR for dominence