Well, several players from our meta have already gotten together to play some Thrones since Gencon, and built new decks with some of the new cards. As well, we have a new player who is buying several core sets, chapter packs and KoTS expansions who is meeting with us in two Saturdays. So here locally, Thrones is still thriving, and there still seems to be excitement post-Gencon.

However, here on the boards, it seems to really be dead. Is there burnout? Lack of interest? No buzz since there was only one chapter pack worth of new cards released?

Dobbler said:

Post Gencon lull? The lull pre-dates Gencon!

I think it comes down primarily to the shift in focus of the game. As you say, Thrones is thriving locally. But what is the value of taking that life to the boards?

Consider the fact that 85%+ of the replies, thoughts and comments on the few Gencon tourney reports (and there were what, 3?) came FROM people who went to Gencon. There has been essentially no mention or discussion of your article, either. The boards are a great tool when there is a thriving organized play program that crosses local metas. We don't have that, so there is almost nothing to talk about on the boards.

Consider also that, for all the thriving the game is doing in your local meta, no one there has felt the need (or presumably the desire) to talk about what's going on here on the boards; the decks that are being built, the strategies that are being used or explored, combos that took people by surprise, etc. So even in a local meta where the game is thriving, there is no real impetus to try to "spread the love" as it were. Same thing happens here. So if we want to know why the boards are "dead," a good place to start might be asking the local question: why don't we take the discussion from the local meta to the boards?

Not sure. I know that personally, my schedule has been crazy lately, and when I was forced to cancel my GenCon trip last minute due to some family and real life matters I was pretty bummed. So I've been periodically stopping by, but not posting much, and only just got my first game in several weeks in this past Sunday.

ktom said:

Good question, and I'll ask them. Some minor discussion has taken place on our local store message boards, but still not a ton.

I also think that each meta has a face, and if that meta is not getting together a lot (which happens in the summer) then that face isn't posting as much.

Stag hasn't posted in general discussion in a while (and NY is having problems meeting up). Dobbler, you are the face of your meta (with kennon, but you seem to have taken over on game discussion from him). Longclaw was busy with his article, etc. etc.

We have been meeting and growing still (another new player joined us last week, WOOOT!!!) and are now up to 6-7 regulars and 9-11 if we hit our max and alternate between two stores. So we are thriving, just not much to talk about.

One of the problems is that LCG inheriently (well at least an LCG w/ CPs) produces Peaks and valleys. Wehn a new CP is spoiled this place is bumpin. Dobbler you just happened to be at GenCon when a lot of the discussion of the new CP/GenCon was taking place. Plus with the comments section on articles a lot fo people post there and it gets a little buried (instead of posting here and enabling further discussion). I thnk in the long run what i'm saying is that forum activity should not be an indicator of the health of the game. Quality forum discussion (when it happens) is a much better indicator.

~we can always invite SerLannister (i still have his e-mail......) back if you want to stir up activity on the forums......

Lars said:

And how has that been going recently?

It's a huge chicken and egg thing. There isn't much quantity, so even the quality gets little response, so people don't feel the need to post, so even the quality gets little response, etc., etc., etc.

I haven't had a chance to play at all.... Aug/Sept is also that season where all the college students are heading back to school. Both me and Kyle are dumped with work, and I'm also in the process of moving.

Parents have to get thier kids ready for school, and some people might be using the last days of summer for outdoors related activity.

Well, I still read the boards daily, though I do admit that my posts have been more sporadic lately. I shall endeavour to fix this. I might have to put more thought into things as often there are things that I consider bringing up here that I instead table for an article on MGUinc.com. For instance, I was planning on finishing my GenCon write up this weekend as an article for them, rather than a post here.

i, too, have yet to get to my gencon TR, which might turn out to be a little longer than i expected; i actually want to try to contact some of you to clear up the details involved before i submit it to nate, but i just don't have time to get around to that yet.

i've also been meaning to start a thread discussing the necessity of OP, and exploring possibilities for what we as a community can do in the absence of any real FFG OP sponsorship -- tying together thoughts on a community-hosted series of sanctioned tourneys, the necessity for a ratings system in getting new/casual players excited about local and higher-level OP (which, of course, was attempted by the NYC meta -- but the kingsmoot hasn't been included, and i doubt FFG is going to submit the results from worlds to it, so there's still room for discussion here), etc. (that's a big etc.)

again, though, i'm not quite ready to start that thread yet :-D

As Lars correctly pointed out, it's been a slow summer for the NYC meta --even the Kingsmoot tournament, which had a good attendance, was lacking several NYCers who I would consider at least semi-regulars. We've had two of our most stalwart players (Sithlord and GreyjoyChris) unavailable for a couple months now. Staglord now has to split whatever time he can get for gaming b/w the Long Island players and NYC, so trips into the city for him are less frequent. Things should be picking up in NYC starting in September. Sith and GJChris will be back, Red Terror will be around more (he's a LIer, but goes to school in the city, so is around more when school is in session), and hopefully one player who has been missing from the scene much of this year will be getting back into the swing. And we do have one new player who started earlier this and perhaps another joining shortly from what I hear. I always feel like I have more to say (and thus post more) when I've gotten some games in recently to see how cards/themes play out, had chance to talk with people directly while I'm playing with them, and just generally get my game playing juices flowing.

As for the the tourney reports, I've enjoyed them both a lot and I'm looking forward to finite's. It's great hearing how people built their decks and the reasons for their decisions. (One of the most personally disappointing "casualties" of the LCG transition was losing jchabot from the game --I really enjoyed his analysis on cards. Sithlord is always good a lengthy analytical post once or twice a year. Seems about time for him to post one. )

As for the player ratings, I do believe Sithlord (who does the hard part crunching the numbers; I just try to help gather results and then have to format/pretty up the rankings info for posting on www.agotny.net) plans to update them with Kingsmoot results. He's taking a medical boards type exam (today, I believe), which has kept him from our meetups or from doing the ratings updates for a while. Once that exam behind him, I expect he'll get around to it. And if ktom or someone else who has results for the LCG events at GenCon is willing to forward them to me, I'll see if Sithlord can incorporate them as well.

Yes, I have been busy lately, and not just with my article. Work has been a madhouse, as my school is opening up a new building that I'll be moving into for my admistrative job and in which I'll be teaching in the mornings. The ribbon cutting is tomorrow, and classes start Monday, so I've been very much tied up with that.

I actually missed Greg's article until one of my friends mentioned it, and I missed a discussion I would have wanted to weigh in on when a thread slipped away during the flurry of posts after GenCon (the discussion about the power of Wintertime Marauders and Alannys with Support of Harlaw. I think they're fine as they stand, if you're wondering. In a nutshell, they require a lot of things to go right, and I'm okay with powerful effects if it takes a little work to make them run.)

A more robust OP system would surely help local and national numbers, although we have some pretty excited players around here these days (all of whom made it to GenCon and came back more fired up than ever about the game). And new chapter packs are great, but anticipation for the Martell expansion is enormous right now for some of us. Martell has always been my favorite house to play, and I'm hoping they can compete with the Lannisters and Greyjoys as soon as the expansion hits.

Maybe I'll start a thread (belatedly) about Greg's deck with some observations about the state of the current meta.

And yeah, Erick, you're up.

Isn't there some sort of statute of limitations on tourney reports, at least in practical terms?

ktom said:

I hope not, I wrote up something about the Kingsmoot tournament at FFG's request and I've been told it will see the light of day. At this point, maybe not?

LetsGoRed said:

I guess my question is more along the lines of whether there is a point in time after an event takes place where you, the reader, don't care about a tourney report.

As an example (and please don't take this the wrong way), but by now, I really don't care about a round-by-round tourney report of what happened when "you" took your deck to the Kingsmoot event. A write-up about about the event itself, why it was thrown, why people came, some of the larger meta-game observations, etc. might be interesting, but a traditional "round 1 vs. Stag Lord, round 2 vs. Lars" style report? Meh.

ktom said:

That's a fair point, although I think my interest in a blow-by-blow type report would stay high for a good length of time so long as it's still talking about decks that are not horribly out of sync with the current card pool. (Btw, the Kingmoot writeup was more of a "write-up about about the event itself, why it was thrown, why people came, some of the larger meta-game observations, etc." ~so if FFG does post it, I fully expect you to read it.)

LetsGoRed said:

i, of course, would love to see it published, as i was too lazy to write my own :-) (did i mention how much i hate writing?)

I'm leaving in France and I've never had a chance to attend to GenCon (and this is not going to change, I'm afraid). However, I was very pleased to read both Champion's reports about their GenCon decks and how they managed to reach the first place. It was very interesting and enlightening. And I'm sure the last Champion report will be of the same quality.

I've been surprised, though, that there hasn't been any official announcement about GenCon results. The information is spread out in these boards, but I would have expected at least a thread like "GenCon 2009 results". And in this thread, I would have liked to learn how many people attended to the event, which were the houses played in Joust and in Melee, with which agenda, and how they performed (just the number of win/loss would be fine).

More specifically, as a Targ player, I would really like to know how this house performed at GenCon, which house were the best/worst match-ups. I'm also wondering if the Summer agenda has been played by anyone, and if it has not been too much hammered by Winter decks.

I'm sure this information has been gathered by TO (I don't know if ktom was the only TO), and I would really appreciate to know them.

The French community has been severely affected by the (brutal) switch to LCG format, but things are going better and better. There are new players coming in almost all meta. And we know have the feeling that a 2009 French championship would be worth organizing (something that seemed quite utopic a few month ago). I hope we will have enough time to make it in 2009.

This was a little of topic but my point was that it's good to read organized play results, even if they are from accross the sea, as they are creating emulation to have organized play in our area as well.

heres my recollections of houses etc. (i don't know about agendas)

24 players (thanks again ktom)

at least 8 lanni decks

at least 5 GJ decks

at least 3 baratheon decks

at least 2 targ decks

at least 1 martell deck

I was running bara and personally played against 2 lanni decks 2 bara and one GJ, beating anything that wasn't bara becuase i suck at mirror matches

I knew that Erick, Cory, Rings, Longclaw, DarthJeff, and oraclerob's buddy (sorry i forget your name) were running lanni

I saw and or heard from friends that Luke and another player were running Targ. That Ktom, Bloddycelt, and Kyle were running GJ. That one of the newer guys from Longclaw's group was running martell.

And of course we all know by now what house Dobbler was running.

Here is FFGs announcement of winners:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=737

Lars said:

Lanny players: Erick, Cory, Rings, Longclaw, Darthjeff, Wade, Tony, Kevin, Huseman, Will (those are the ones I know of)

Targ Players: Luke, Dan (those are the ones I know of)

Martell: Zeiler (From my meta, thats all I know of, but I heard there was one more)

That ups my total house count by 3 (1 martell and 2 lanni [i'm assuming either tony or kevin was oraclerob's buddy) so updated is

10 Lanni

5 GJ

3 Bara

2 Targ

2 Martell

need to find the other 2 players' houses

Tony was Rob's friend, both from the TN area. I never saw Tony's deck, but he borrowed two Lanny cards from me before the tourney. Kevin is from my meta, tall, placed second in Melee.

And another thing is that every other GenCon brought a tangible sense of change to the game - a feeling that something would be different in the fall. It started for me with the spoilers coming out of GenCon in 03 with the super armies (Great Khalassar does what??) adn continued through '04 9What the hell is Cannot be Killed?!) That GenCon aslo brought rotation, which was not as positive, but over the years, it became familiar - as the leaves turned you would store a set of old cards and start to introduce new ones.

Even last summer, as we were heading towards the LCG era - there was the Core set to look forward to, and the long awaited end of Winter block. But I think the covnersation ahs been somewhat muted after thei year's GenCon - becuase the game isn't going to look very different this fall tahn it does right now. Just my .02 about something I was thinking about over the weekend.

Stag Lord said:

agreed -- after the taxing effect gencon had on my desire to play, the environment is going to have to look a lot more different from what it does now (or rather, did at gencon) before i feel like i actually want to be playing. ~and short of a chapter pack that introduces neutral draw, high gold/initiative locations, and awesome toolbox plots, that's not going to happen soon :-D (who knows, maybe the martell expansion will fulfill some of those wishes?)

Stag Lord said:

Absolutely right. GenCon was for the last years just something like a new year festival for the card game- even if you hadn´t the chance to attend. This year it was somehow dissapointing.... relative low turn out (only few participants), spoilers for a single chapter pack that´s available 2-3 weeks later. Another example, for the past years i had the feeling that the Gen Con winning decks reflected the good and popular houses/strategies for this year, because of the big field of players. This year it turns out to be just another torunament with around 20 participants.

Rotation is another interesting thing. Usually rotation was around GenCon , but i don´t think any play group which still plays that format will rotate anything before Princess of the sun is released. Which might be released in fall.