The French nationals took place the last weekend of november.

29 players showed up for the joust. The classement at the end of the 5th round ;

1 Prault Frederic "Arthur Lannister", Lannister
2 Jean Harold "Katagena", Stark
3 Hymczak David "Duda", Stark Agenda Hiver
4 Hontebeyrie Sebastien "Tara", Stark
5 Moinereau Lionel "Lionel Lannister", Lannister
6 Kulaga Gregory "Astrobatordorak", Targaryen Agenda Ete
7 Billot Bertrand "Boddenar", Lannister Agenda Ombre
8 Moulin Michel "Comm", Targaryen

9 De Vaucresson Quentin "elwe", Lannister Agenda Ombre
10 Balisson Franck "Godevin", Baratheon
11 Barthes Julien, Stark
12 Fournier Franck "Gourry", Stark Agenda Hiver
13 Lhuillier Romain, Lannister
14 Peyrede Yannick "Mirgwael", Martell
15 Lefebvre Gregoire, Lannister Agenda Ombre
16 Arnaud Pierre-Yvain, Lannister Agenda Ombre
17 Descamps Vincent, Targaryen
18 Donier Matteo "Alekyne", Greyjoy Agenda Hiver
19 Balisson Teo "Loyum", Lannister
20 Rondeau Richard, Greyjoy Agenda Hiver
21 Balisson Charli "Ser Pierre", Greyjoy
22 Miquel Fabien, Stark
23 Texier Christophe, Greyjoy Agenda Hiver
24 Dewavrin Nathanael, Greyjoy
25 Berthion Joseph, Stark Agenda Hiver
26 Dewavrin Mathieu "mathaplo", Targaryen
27 Bisiaux Hugues, Greyjoy
28 Lahinirina Eric, Baratheon
29 Sneed Gilbert, Lannister Agenda Ombre

I copied and pasteds, so Ombre = shadows, Hiver = winter, ete = summer

Top 8 :
En quart de final :
Prault Frederic "Arthur Lannister", Lannister wins against Moulin Michel "Comm", Targaryen
Moinereau Lionel "Lionel Lannister", Lannister wins against Hontebeyrie Sebastien "Tara", Stark
Hymczak David "Duda", Stark Agenda Hiver wins against Kulaga Gregory "Astrobatordorak", Targaryen Agenda Ete
Jean Harold "Katagena", Stark wins against Billot Bertrand "Bobdenar", Lannister Agenda Ombre

En demi finale :
Prault Frederic "Arthur Lannister", Lannister wins against Moinereau Lionel "Lionel Lannister", Lannister
Jean Harold "Katagena", Stark wins against Hymczak David "Duda", Stark Agenda Hiver

En finale :
Prault Frederic "Arthur Lannister", Lannister wins against Jean Harold "Katagena", Stark par 2 manches à 1

French champion in joust : Prault Frederic "Arthur Lannister" with a lannister kneeling deck.

Day 2 the melee. 16 players showed up. Results :

1. Astrobatordorak with a targaryen city of shadows built around king viserys with lots of attachements. His real star was in fact queen of thorns protected with pentos.

2. Tara with a "classic" baratheon deck

3. Mathaplo with a targaryen built around Rhaeny's hill (he could have won, his deck was excellent for melee)

4. Fenrir with a greyjoy holy deck (a very nice one)

5. Katagena with a stark kingsguard deck (and king in the north)

6. Elwe with a baratheon triaty with the isles (lots of save to protect my renown characters, also lots of kings and queens to play the big bara and greyjoy armies)

7. Joseph with a martell kingsguard deck

8. Nathanael with a greyjoy winter deck.

Only one lannister was played, lots of baratheon and starks.

For the overall week end the best players were Katagena (2nd in joust and 5th in melee) and Astrobatordorak (6th in joust and 1st in melee).

Wow - another Top Four with two Lannister decks there and another big tournament with a Lannister champ. Interesting.

Thanks for the TR - good to see Stark with some success - they seem to be pretty lightly regraded on this side of the pond, but its nice to see them doing well.

Wow! did the French Nationals have a better tournout than GenCon this year? It's great to hear the game is still doing well in France.

Will any of the Stark players in the top 8 be posting deck lists? Stark doesn't seem to be doing nearly that well on this side of the Atlantic. Congrats to all the winners.

holy wow, 29 players? you beat out the worlds joust nice work on that. any plans to post decklists?

That was a great feast, with many players (we were all surprised when we saw 29 players in the place !) and a very good mood. It has proven that AGoT still have a large community in France, and that's good !

I'll post the joust champion's decklist in the appropriate section.

Here is the decklist:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

Coming soon: the movie of the final Lannister/Stark

I finish second of this national championship with Stark family. I'm going to post the decklist here and in Tzumainn in the week. 5th place for the multi with Stark Kingsguard... I'll post too

Nice. Thank you for sharing the results. Looks like shadow mechanic is finally established in the format. The shadow mechanic seems to love reset plots and control deck archetypes. I wonder if the relative unvulnerability of the shadow area will be good for the game feeling in the long run.

Old Ben said:

I think a shadow reset plot wouldn;t be a bad thing, especially since the bonuses for leaving so many cards in shadows seems to be growing and almost forcing you to run shadows yourself.

I personally wouldn't enjoy the game at all if it comes down to who has and keeps the most cards in shadows.

Lars said:

i actually agree here; i don't want to see shadows become an essentially protected area full out outstanding characters on which you've made downpayments; even the existence of the targ and lanni shadows decks makes cards like kneel-all-day robert and the new renly sort of crappy. i, too, think the shadows area should, at the very least, be a little more interactive with the game, and accessible by your opponent beyond the few crappy cards we have to deal with stuff in that area.

I'll join the chorus here - there definitely needs to be a little more Shadows hate than we got in the KL cycle. A crappy, expensive Baratheon Army and a conditional event? There needs to be more - a lot more. If for no other reason than that it really does empower resets more than htey already are in a game with limited draw.

I don't think I agree, at least not completely or as shadows exists in the current environment. The underlying assumption is that shadows cards are currently unbalanced or overly strong, and people that play them take advantage of their benefits with impunity. But this just hasn't been my experience. In fact, most players avoid playing lots of shadows in a deck because shadows cards tend to be gold intensive (can't reduce costs as easily) and there are limits about when and how many cards a player can take out of shadows. At Black Friday, I think my Targ deck was the only deck that ran more than 10 or so, but I could be wrong about that.

Now, I might change my opinion if a bunch of great shadows cards are printed, but as it stands, I think the major concern has more to do with a few "select" shadows cards that seem overly good for the price:

• Tyrion : This guy is really, really good and very scary to play against, especially when Kingdom of Shadows is out. (Tyrion is probably the best shadow card in the game.) I wouldn't be surprised if people complain about shadows simply because of this card. His response ability should require the player to pay 1 gold, but se la vie.
• Varys : This guy is very good when he's good, but very bad if your opponent doesn't have any allies. Overall though, his strengths/costs seem pretty balanced.
• Syrio : This guy isn't overly powerful, but his ability is very useful. It might have made more sense for him to be a 1-STR character with stealth so that he's more like a Carrion Bird that jumps in and out of challenges. (His ability to block the opponent's Carrion Birds and then stick around after Valar frequently makes him an MVP, I think.) It would be more thematic/balanced if he was a good attacker but a poor defender.
• Venomous Blade : This card is amazing, and it's going to wreak havoc on the field when the Martell expansion is released. This should probably have the same cost as Dragon Skull (s3).

Maybe I missed one or two, but I think the above four cards are the most likely to have a "bad" impact on the environment. I suppose King's Landing Assassin could get pretty "unfair" when Threat from the North comes out, but at this point I think this card's low strength and high cost balance out its effect. (It's hard for me to see how generic shadow cards like Shadowcat and Pyromancer's Apprentice are unbalanced.)

Most important (and key to this debate) is what types of solutions people are talking about, however. Because most players run only a few shadows cards (under 10), any "response" or "anti-shadow" effect would probably have to be fairly immediate and/or severe to be playable in a well-round deck that hasn't been designed for the sole purpose of slaughtering shadows decks. Would that mean a character that says "Players must pay +1 gold when bringing a card out of shadows?" Or possibly "Cards that come out of shadows come into play knelt?" Or are people thinking we need more of what we've seen out of Bara, only neutral and/or on characters with better stats?

Such solutions would definitely add new risks to playing shadows, but these cards probably wouldn't see a ton of play anyway unless the effects happened to be on characters that were good enough to run without the ability. Yet even without seeing much play, the mere existence of these types of anti-shadows mechanics would probably deter players from running the shadows agenda and/or playing shadow-heavy decks. And again, I just don't see shadows-heavy decks as that unbalanced at the moment.

add Alcemist's guild hall to the list.

Plus i don't think the argument is this card is so good, or this effect is just killer. i think the argument is that shadows should not be a way to avoid one of the basic tenets of the game, all cards are fragile and shadows adds a built in, easily exploitable, protection (i keep tyrion in shadows safe from INT claim until valar is played). you add in the multiude of benefits that having shadows cards provides (you didn't mention tunnels or dragon pit, and cat stark, all reward for letting you plop meaningless cards into shadows and finte already mentioned turning off the bara characters) and the need for a shadows reset is pretty much there. In a couple of games i felt like either i or my opponent needed to keep/have (more) cards in shadows. my turn two win was facilitated by my opponent not leaving cards in shadows so its not like this is x shadow card beat me, but just how i see the game evolving.

I do not see such a reset hindering shadows cards effectiveness as shadow cat can be brought out of shadows as soon as it is put into shadows and you still have a 2 gold 2 STR stealth character for a deck that is lite on Mil challenges. You're just not making him a super card because you're not leaving him in shadows until he pumps tyrion, kneels a character w/ ACH or adds a 2nd stealth to make syrio pop back into shadows. furthermore you now have to balance your need to leave it shadows for cards that are either helped or hindered by cards in shadows and the possibility to have it be wiped out by the reset.

Twn2dn said:

No, this isn't the underlying assumption (at least not on my part). I just think that any "area" of the game should be accessible to your opponent, especially one into which you can put card effects with downpayments; but I don't believe that the downpayment system is too powerful. And the shadows effects definitely aren't too strong, or cause imbalance in the game; for any given card type, one can name cards like those in the list above that seem imbalanced, and I understand that. Rather, every other "area" of the game is very readily accessible to your opponent. The hand gets ravaged by intrigue and other discard effects; characters die to claim and other kill and discard effects; locations get discarded; greyjoy has a whole theme built around discarding cards from the opponent's deck. Even the dead and discard piles aren't safe, though admittedly we don't see much of that going on in LCG (Qyburn being the only example that comes to mind immediately); but obviously that doesn't matter because those areas purposefully aren't accessible to the player, generally speaking.

Shadows is relatively new, so thus the dynamics of its "area" are not yet well established in the game; however, going forward, I think it should be treated just like any other "area" in the game in that there should be plenty of ways for your opponent to ravage it, as opposed to the few and relatively crappy ways we have in the environment. At present, shadows is much more safe relative to any other "area," as I've described above, and that seems like it shouldn't be the case in keeping with how design makes the other "areas" accessible.

Hmmm, I guess we just disagree, and I'm in the minority. It sounds like it's more a matter of principle that shadows is untouchable than an issue of balance. To me though, the concern with untouchable play areas is balance, and if the mechanic is balanced through other means, then there's no real problem. I see where people are coming from though, and if enough future cards increase the value of simply having cards in shadows that shadows-heavy decks become dominant, I'd definitely get behind more anti-shadow tech. (Also, I admit that it seems somewhat unthematic for the shadows area to be untouchable. Using the books as a guide, players should be able to influence that area heavily...for example, all characters can go in and out of shadows and shadow characters can kill each other...but for gameplay reasons I can see why the mechanic wasn't designed this way.)

LarsI definitely understand what you mean by shadows cards affecting cards in play via Dragonpit and Tunnels. Yet those cards are in play so you can deal with them; once they're gone, there's really no benefit for merely having a bunch of cards in shadows...especially if they all have gold costs and therefore can't be brought out of shadows pre-challenges. If there were so many of these cards that merely keeping cards in shadows for the effect began to change the gameplay experience, however, I could see this being a problem. Until then, it seems to me that Tyrion/shadowcat/etc. should be able to sit in the shadows until after a reset. If you couldn't do that, then how would the benefits of shadows outweigh the mechanic's inherent costs? (While you can keep Tyrion and Shadowcat in shadows, you can't bring them both out in the same phase. So if you have no cards on the board and your opponent has a 2-claim plot out, shadows can be a liability.)

Going back to solutions, what types of suggestions do you guys have that would fix these problems? Despite my knee-jerk reaction to oppose strong anti-shadow mechanics, I could definitely be convinced there's a need if future card combinations make shadows more abusable.

I think it would be a step in the right direction if there was a better Shadows hate event card than the one we currently have.

By the Light of the Sun

Response: After you win an I challenge, the losing opponent must choose and discard one card in Shadows that he or she controls.

Compare to

Condemned by the Council:

Response: After you win an I challenge, choose a location controlled by the losing opponent. If that location has the S crest, return it to Shadows. Otherwise, discard it from play.

Both have the same condition to play, but CbtC allows me to choose the location. I may conceivably choose one with a zero or 1 gold cost, but I'd say most times its going to be a location that cost my opponent at least 2 gold if not more, so it's on par with the "financial" hit that BtLotS represents when it knocks out a Shadows card. BtLotS lets my opponent choose the card to leave, that's a lot less impactful since he knows what else is in his deck and what cards are important and not important to him given the current state of the game. At a minimum, I think BtLotS should have been discard at random. And whereas BtLotS is the only Shadows hate available to everyone, there are a few location hate options to choose from based on what your deck can/cannot do easily.

I don't think the issue is Shadows, or the strength of Shadow crested cards, or the synergy that can be created, I think the problem is the meta has not properly taken Shadows into consideration yet as a full part of this game. People seem to build decks with the knowledge that they may be facing a Shadow deck or a particular card or two, but from the comments on this thread and others, it is still a very conscious decision. It hasn't become a truly accepted fact the way Lannister kneel is, or Stark Tully/Blackfish, Targ burn, Martell iconless, and Bara joust used to be. Every competitive deck is (or was) built knowing you were going to face one, or more, of these decks during their height. We can go back and see people dismissing Shadows as gimmicky, or not worth the 2 gold and delay. It is still the new mechanic, the interloper, having to be reevaluated.

I think the problem is that outside of a couple of cards seen to be pretty good (or Tyrion who was seen to be crazy good if built right), Shadows was dismissed. Horribly undervalued. Now that decks running Shadow cards or based around shadows are being shown to be very effective, people are going to the other extreme. I'm a little saddened by the calls for a Shadows reset. What happened to us? When did we start relying on Nate to solve our problems when strong decks started cropping up based around a couple of cards or a theme? Instead of a Shadows reset, why not just control the cards that depend on Shadow cards? We have location hate and character hate. If they are keeping cards in Shadows to gain benefits get rid of the location or character.

When we embrace Shadows as a continued part of the game with its own strengths and weaknesses, I expect that more strategic deckbuilding or tactical play solutions will solve most of the problems/anxiety being expressed.

Yeha twn2dn - my assumption was never that Shadows cards are overly powered - I'm not at all sure that is the case. It is that they become an untouchable resource, safe from claim, intrigue, resets, and (for the most part) from triggered effects. Like Lars says - it chanegs one of the fundamental and most appealing aspects of the game - no one is safe, like in the books. Right now - they are a little too safe.

dormouse said:

I for one never dismissed shadows. I have some issues with King's Landing assassin being the uber card that a lot of people discussed on the boards, but not becuase it is shadows but becuase you are overpaying for a 2 STR character that requires a lot of effort to use his overpayment correctly.

I like shadows, think it is an interesting mechnic and have at least a little bit in every deck i've built since they came out. I've playued against Tunnels many times and can handle the deck type. If i had gotten a location control card i might have been able to stop dragonpit on the 27th. Again there is not a specific card that i feel needs to be stopped and yes some of the effects can be stopped (well maybe delayed) but you are still missing the point of the asking for a reset or hate card, why have we created an area of the game that breaks a fundamental rule of the game? 2 gold is not a large amount of gold to protect a key item of the deck (especially for someone like Syrio who is 0 gold to come out and can keep running back into shadows to protect himself, outside of lanni kneel how am i suposed to employ character hate on him when the only time i see is for a brief moment in the challenges phase?) and to reiterate I am not asking for a reset or shadows hate card because i am annoyed at one deck or card, or that a certain deck got made, or that Dan came in 2nd with a shadows deck.

Old ben asked a question, "I wonder if the relative unvulnerability of the shadow area will be good for the game feeling in the long run." and 4 of us answered in the negative. It had nothing to do with deck types and everything to do with the phrase "relative unvulnerability"

Part of my response is based on the way the game is played with shadows cards (as one of my meta metas called it, you're not playing a game any more, you're just flipping cards face-up all day long) and I foresaw "build a deck to stop it" argument so i added "I personally wouldn't enjoy the game at all if it comes down to who has and keeps the most cards in shadows[]" to my rational (also ask dan how much he enjoyed playing his deck. He looked pale and exhausted by round 3).

We'll have to disagree. The cards that benefit from keeping cards in Shadows are as easily targetable as anything else. There is no inherent difference between a card that gets stronger for cards in Shadow than one for gold in your gold pool. The gold pool is equally hard to empty out with no plot reset available.

I have no issue with shadow hate cards themselves, but a reset seems to be the go to answer for all the games ills rather than building around it, or asking for a card that punishes in a more limited format. The reset is the easy answer. It lets me severely curtail or even cancel an opponents deck design for a turn or longer with little investment on my part. I'd rather see a card that puts a random Shadows card back to hand or reveals a Shadows card and places it under your control until the end of the turn and then puts it back into your opponents shadows area, or a plot which for a turn removes Shadows from the game with no new cards being able to be played into or brought out of Shadows and no cards counting as in Shadows, so like nullifying a season, you've got one turn of respite.

We have three cards in Arya, Syrio, and Venomous Blade which pop in and out of Shadows and are therefor hard to get gone. A reset for those three cards though seems like serious overkill.

As to the amount of fun Dan had playing his deck, I'd like to know. I play decks like this because they are hard to manage every decision has to be weighed and balanced against what I have in play, the boost it gives other cards being in Shadowse, versus the effect or use I get out of it brought out of Shadows, plus the gold it takes to put something in and bring it out versus putting a card directly into play. If I wanted a deck that was more straightforward I'd play Greyjoy UO, Lanni Hyperkneel, or Stark Military. The tough choices, the thrill of keeping all the balls in the air is part of the appeal for me. If Dan didn't enjoy playing his deck I feel sorry for him. It is a tough choice between playing a deck you believe is fun versus playing one you think has an advantage in a tournament. I usually opt for the fun. Winning is not more important than me having fun with the deck, even if it means losing. I guess I'm more Shagga than Jaime.

My problem with Shadows isn't with Shadows so much as it is with the feeling that every deck is going to rely on something gimmicky (Winter / Summer, Shadows, and maybe different North Agendas) and that's going to create a metagame where games are going to be increasingly decided by what deck people bring. Not that it isn't already like this now, it is to a large extent, but I could see this getting worse.

I like Shadows otherwise as it gives every house a way to get around Valar. Keeping a few cheap guys in Shadows seems reasonable to do in anticipation of Valar and I like it that houses can bounce back form it more effectively whereas before it felt that outside of Greyjoy and effective use of Power of Blood that many houses were left flat footed.

I don't really care about the cards that are powered up by the number of cards in shadows, but I agree that the relative safety of shadows does seem to be a bit against the spirit of the game. With Military and Intrigue challenges, your characters and hand are never safe (plus there are other cards like Valar and Rule by Decree). There are also a growing number of attachment and location control cards. Right now, if you had a key card to your deck with a shadows crest, you could pretty much just it into shadows and forget about it until you needed it. I don't think this unbalances the game in any way right now, but perhaps in the future it depends on what shadows cards are printed in later packs.

dormouse said:

actually there are 2 plots that directly affect putting gold into the gold pool. Blockade and Rains of Autumn.

Furthermore, cards that benifit from the amount of gold in the gold pool are inheriently weaker then cards that benifit from cards in shadows. Compare Tyrion or Alcamest's Guild Hall to Core Set Littlefinger. If those two lanni shadows cards said pay 2 gold to trigger their effect you would have to save two gold every turn at the expense of having another card in play. Instead you pay two gold, have a card in play (there are enough s0 cards) and trigger. Excerbating the situation is the fact that there is a plot (what you seem to be against their being one anti shadows) that makes shadows easier and cheaper by playing 2 cards into shadows for free and letting them sit until optimized. If Tyrion costed 4 gold, and said pay 2 gold to trigger him i wonder how much he would get played. Instead you pay 4 gold for him (at two different times to spread the cost with no interest rate and at an advantage as you protect him from resets and int claim) to get him in play, where he provides a trigger for himself, and then you still have as many other triggers for him as you want without having to sacrifce paying gold instead of having a card in play.

CaseyVa said:

So you don't want the board to be a fragile and dangerous place and every deck should be able to run extreme aggro and have no penalty for over extending as long as it mixes in shadows cards to be able to bounce back from valar. Stag would really be complaining about swarm decks then

to me that just screams of the game evolving into whoever has the most cards in shadows wins. I'd start loading my deck with 0-1 cost weenies for the flop/1st turn and have an overly control plot deck. Flop my weenies and open with city of lies, only paying gold to cards in shadows and one location, while 2nd turn 2 claim repeat city plot, 3rd turn is fleeing and 4th turn valar, start emptying my shadows (which is now extensive) in draw, marshalling, domience, standing, and taxation phases. 5th turn blockade and i still have more liekly then not have 0 cost characters in shadows. For good measure 6th plot kneeling cities plot and 7th turn 2 claim killing city plot.

Sure i've gotten around valar, but i'm not really playing the game i'm just flipping cards face up.

I think I lost you somewhere in there, Lars. Are you saying that would be a dominant deck type in the current environment? Sure it would win some matchups, but I can't see as how it would be particularly dominant. Maybe if you were the only one allowed to play resets. But I'm not seeing as how you can keep fueling both Shadows and enough swarm on the board with enough draw to make it consistent. Especially against a Lanni deck playing Blockade, Wildfire, and Valar. Which just so happens to be the deck winning all the tournaments these days. And when Threat from the North comes out, Targ will be an auto-loss.

Shadows is effectively time intensive and has a slowdown effect on your deck's strategy, which to me is the biggest drawback. That's why it works best in uber-control decks like Lannister and Targ. You have a chance to slow down your opponents to the point where they don't jump out ahead and beat you before your powerful effects like Tunnels or Dragonpit build up. With that slowdown keeping the balance, I don't see the need for a reset "just because no other states are protected." I'd hate to see a reset come along and neuter a whole cycle's worth of a mechanic.