The Metropolitan Wargamers (www.nycwargames.com) and the A Game of Thrones The Card Game New York Players (www.agotny.net) have joined together to host an AGoT LCG event at the Compleat Strategist (www.thecompleatstrategist.com) game shop in New York City on December 12. This is an opportunity for new players (or those not familiar yet with the game but interested in learning about it) and existing players to get together to play some melee (multiplayer) games. We'll structure the afternoon as a tournament, but the emphasis will be on introducing/teaching the game to anyone who is new to it. Note that we'll be using a limited deck format similar to FFG's "League" deck guidelines. Prizes will be available. And it's free! For the latest details including deck building guidelines, please visit www.agotny.net.

sounds like fun and something i can try to hassle our newer players to go to.

also for ease fo navigation saek i'll post the deck building rules here

For the "Winter is Coming" event, we will be using a limited deck format based on FFG's "League" deck building rules.

If you are new to the game and do not have cards to build your own deck, you can borrow a deck to play with. Just email us and we will have a deck on hand for you to use.

Each player may use a deck he builds from a limited card pool selected by him; the player's card pool may consist solely of the contents of:

1. One copy of the Core Set, plus

2. Either (player chooses which option he wants to use):

a. One copy of the Kings of the Sea expansion, or

b. One copy each of three different Chapter Packs selected by the player.

The typical deck building parameters for AGoT apply (see the "Tournament Play and Deck Construction Rules" section in the Core Set rulebook), except that the House (draw) deck minimum is reduced to 50 cards. Also note that where the rulebook says "Your House deck ... may not contain more than three copies of a card", cards with the same title are considered the same for this rule, e.g., the "Robb Stark" in the Core Set is equivalent the "Robb Stark" in the Kings of the Sea expansion and thus only three copies of those cards (in whatever combination) would be permitted.

Card bannings and errata set out in FFG's AGoT LCG FAQ (available here) will apply.

just got a bit of bad news, my football teams playoffs got pushed back to Dec 5th, which pushed our paintball trip back to Dec 12th so i will not be abel to make it. I'll still if there is interest in our meta, especially among the newer players.

how many people are you guys expecting for this, both new and seasoned? i'll consider coming up if i decide not to do a debate tournament that weekend

finitesquarewell said:

I don't have a good estimate, but I'm expecting at a minimum a dozen the shop says there's been some interest and I believe the Metro Wargamers have a half-dozen or so interested players plus I'm hoping to have ~six of the NY players joining in. If you or any other established players can make it, that would be great; the more experienced players participating that can help explain and showcase the game's richness, the better. Plus it's been a while since we've had some melee in the city, so I'm really looking forward to it and the challenge of building a deck using the limited card pool rules.

I'm definitely in - I want to try and round up a few of the young guns from LI as well. Melee rocks and is probably the best way to keep growing the NY meta - say what you will: this game works best in multiplayer format - it provides the most immersive experience.

I'm still not sure that restricting greyjoy players to Kings of the sea + core Set is the best approach. Couldn't you let them do KotS + thee CPs if they want? The resource thing will be screwed up any way you cut it though - since GJ only got 1X of each card in their expansion.

So, is this open to 100% new players? As in, I don't have any cards, have never played melee or joust, and haven't even finished Feast for Crows yet? I only started reading and learning about the game about a month and a half ago, but I'm really interested in trying it out.

Lavina, it is. Email me at [email protected] with your name and that you would like to borrow a deck for the event and I'll see that one is on hand for you to use. If you haven't already, I suggest watching FFG's tutorial video for the game on the AGoT LCG support page here; I think FFG did a very nice job with it. A pdf of the rulebook is also available on the support page if want to take a look.

FFG has put up an announcement for this event on the AGoT LCG "mini" site. It spells out the deck building guidelines and has time/location particulars.

how did this go? I was trying to drum up suport for this amongst our newer players but i couldn't get any of them to go up there w/ out me....silly little buggers.

It went well. We had four tables of four (I think...the fourth table might have just had three). I won't try to gauge skill level, but there was a wide range of experience level, from the more competitive Manhattan players who usually play joust to the Brooklyn players some of whom have been playing for a couple months (I think) but play melee almost exclusively to a couple players who had picked up cards recently but had not had a chance to play the game against other people yet. I think that overall it was a positive event for AGoT in NYC. It helped that Princes of the Sun had just come out: it seemed like AGoT players were giving The Compleat Strategist a lot of business (at least four or five people purchased Princes there, plus other things), so hopefully that bodes well for more events in the future.

As for play itself Paul (winner of Black Friday) and Pete (another NYC player) tied for first. Both won their first tables and were tied for most power in their game and on all tiebreakers when time was called in the second round. Game play was a bit slow with so many new players so the two rounds of melee took up basically all the allotted time from 12:15 to 5:30 (with about a 25 minute break between). The atmosphere was pretty casual and friendly so hopefully all the new players walked away hungry for more thrones.

I'd comment on the actual metagame ramifications, but with the deck building guidelines I'm not sure how relevant it would be to other players. Plus I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing in melee. My games were a lot of fun, but in the end I still don't feel like I can look back and see what strategies I could have used to get ahead or where the winning player made key moves to get ahead. I think the houses were pretty evenly represented other than Martell. I brought Baratheon and Greyjoy decks. When I looked at the sign up sheet and saw that three people had already written down Greyjoy, I went with Baratheon (since with the deckbuilding rules the Greyjoy decks were going to be pretty similar). In my first game we had one of each of the four Core Set houses and in the second we had two Stark and two Baratheon.

I thought it went very well. We had 15, so we did have one table of three players, the rest four players. The Manhattan and L.I. "regulars" delivered six I believe, the Metro Wargamers had a similar turnout and then there were a few who found it from the announcements online or flyers at the shop. Will (schrecklich) gets the prize for travelling the farthest. I had originally proposed three rounds, but Mike (BrooklynMike), the MW organizer I was helping put this together with, suggested we make each round 2 hours, which meant two rounds. It ended up being a very good suggestion as the games did tend to run that long as we had players of different levels of familiarity with the game (and, at least for me, it had been a while since I had last played melee and was pretty rusty and slow finding my groove) and decks that probably had less game ending fire power than if built without limits. At the risk of tooting my horn, the limited card pool seemed to work out well. Decks were sufficiently interesting and some cards that don't see the light of day much got into the action, the recent adopters of the game didn't have to break the bank getting a lot of chapter packs in short order, and it made it more feasible for some people to build a couple decks so loaners were on hand for those people who asked to borrow one. And, as Will mentioned, I think the store should be pretty happy with the day they supplied (thanks to Mike's efforts) $50 in store credit (which Peter and Paul (Red Terror) split) but with the Martell expansion hitting the shelves that day they sold several (I'd guess at least six and probably several more than that) and some of the new players picked up various chapter packs, adding up to a healthy dose of AGoT sales. It was too bad that the Core Set is sold out and the shop didn't have any on hand as they might have sold some of those as well. I'm optimistic that some of the people who participated who aren't AGoT regulars will, at least on occasion, be interested in joining in on the meetups we have.

Yeah - it was really an awesome event. I like melee SO much better than joust and I had more fun at this than I did at Black Friday.

I'm sorry but in my opinion - mulitplayer had always been the way this game plays best and it was great to see so many people enthused about it. we ahd 15 players - only two less than BF and almost all of them were form Ny - save schechlick from CT. The two tabels I palyed in both featured players of varying skill levels and it was just great to see them getting immersed in Martin's world.

The limitd card pool did balance the field and made for a fun environment, but I would like to see more CPs available next time - given the limitations of the card pool there was basically no location control save for fleeing and locations dominated all the agmes I played - especially Winterfell Castle adn Scouting Vessel. I would have liked ot have had a few more options to deal with tehm.

But it was just a great afternoon - I am excited about the growth in the lcoal player base and I am really excited about where the game is right now. affordable, accessible and still featuring all of the chrome that makes you feel like you are expereincing ASoIaF.