I'm not surprised Lannister took top spot again. I was surprised that no one played Greyjoy and that there were three Stark decks. Thanks for the report. Always interesting to know how the events turn out.

Shenanigans said:

Sorry. Yes, 4 Lannister decks. I mis-typed the field, then continued messing up from there.

ASoIaFfan said:

Yeah, ditto on both of these. I don't buy the "it was because the best players were playing Lanni, not that Lanni is the best" argument....This would be more convincing if three Stark decks made final 4. (For major events, people tend to choose what is considered most competitive, and they typically arrive at this conclusion not only be reading on the forums, but by playtesting using the most recent cards before the tourney.)

Thanks Ktom for the info. It's a really good thing for the game when old-timers come back, and I think it says something about the (positive) direction of the game.

Hey, just wanted to say that I had a great time in Chicago. Thanks to ktom for putting everything together and everyone else who made the 11 hour round trip worthwile.

My own views on Lanni is that its a bit over powered right now. The easy draw combined with reusable kneeling effects is harsh. If the reusualbe kneeling was curtailed more then I think a lot of other decks would become more viable for competitive play, which is something that I would like to see.

Twn2dn said:

Please note that I am not saying Lanni is not the best. I'm not even saying the best players were the ones playing Lanni. I'm saying that the most experienced players of competitive AGoT seem to gravitate to Lanni. Of course, the best drivers want the best cars.

What I was trying to get at is that the comparative viability of the other Houses in competition may be hard to gauge when the most experienced players (quite reasonably) come packing Lanni. The fact that Targ came in at the #2 slot (played by a very good, very clever, experienced CCG player who had never played competitive Thrones before) says to me that while Lanni is clearly in the #1 slot, the gap between #1 and #'s 2-6 may not be the gaping chasm that we often seem to take it to be.

Just want thank the whole AGOT community for making this event a fun time, especially for a newcomer like me. Great players, interesting decks, and above all, good times indeed. Looking forward to future events!

Shenanigans said:

The best part of this is that the 'Voice' was Casey! lol

Ktom, thanks for running a great event as always. To those who could make it, we hope you all had a lot of fun, and from this thread, it looks like everyone did. We especially appreciate everyone taking the time to come visit our little area of the AGoT world. It wasn't ChiCON (what could be) but ProfAJ stopping by for a quick catch-up and smile sure made it feel a little more like the old days. The new players, with new ideas and some excellent skills made for a fresh experience which really makes me happy to be a part of this community. The bridge from the old guard to the new face is underway and the future is looking bright.

To all the old-timers, Matt, AY and Luke, it was awesome seeing you guys again and catching up. For all the new AGoT players met, it was my pleasure to meet all of you and I enjoyed our games, discussions and laughs.

For those interested we are working on organizing a league at Xtreme Games, the store is very interested and enthusuastic about supporting the game. We'll have details for you as soon as we have them.

Peace and Hodor.

Yeah, thanks Ktom, once again a flawless event. I had a blast. Was really great to see everyone again and to play GoT again. It'd been a while since I'd played competitively. Of course, I play Casey second round ... Thanks Adam for putting together the deck. I liked it. I was close on the Casey game too. I finished 3:1 not too shabby imo. Was great meeting the new players too. Look forward to seeing you all again.

ktom said:

Yeah, good point...I agree that the #2-6 gap is much closer than it was even several months ago. In fact, some Targ, Martell, and GJ builds win more than they lose against Lanni (in my experience). Unfortunately, I think many of these builds tend to have weaknesses against other decks that act as huge liabilities. For example, my current Targ deck wins at least half its games against Lanni kneel (even shadows Lanni) and does well in other match ups except Greyjoy, which gives me headaches. Longship Iron Victory and Scouting Vessel, which are pretty common around here, create headaches. (I can't burn every character every turn, and a 1 STR character becomes a beast with both of those on the table; meanwhile, Alannys hampers toolboxing.) I could rework the deck to deal with these cards a bit better by adding more recursive burn, like Drogon and focusing on a stronger control build that takes better advantage of Threat from the North, but then I start to lose the edge against Lanni and Martell.

In some ways, the existence of decks that have good/bad match ups may make the metagame calculation more important...and it certainly makes for more interesting tournaments. The DC-meta regionals is fast approaching (May 29), and I still haven't decided which deck to bring. A lot of it will depend on how much Greyjoy, Lanni, and Martell I expect to see there.

In general, this game does seem to be moving in the right direction (more diversity), and it would be great if the environment eventually becomes one that is more rock-paper-scissors than it currently is. (Ideally, this wouldn't be rock-paper-scissors among houses, but rather among builds, with each house having multiple variants.)

First off, thanks to Ktom and the rest of the IL surrounding meta for being such gracious hosts. I'd also like to thank the store and my fellow players for continuing to be one of the most mature, fun group of guys I've had the pleasure to be around.

I'm sure it has been discussed to death, but from a returning player's perspective I enjoy the current meta, and especially the ease of getting into the LCG format. I heard there were a few growing pains, but over all in MI and AZ (places I've lived over the last few years) there have been a good number of "beer and pretzel" type players who don't frequent the boards or care much for the competitive game. The important part though, is that there ARE new players coming to the game, and with ambassadors like Ktom I'm sure we can count on a resurgence in the tournament level play. I'd like to send a shout out to Luke as well, it was great seeing you and I wish we had more time to talk, but we both had long car rides back. Thanks again for the great time guys.

Sorry, I tried to respond to your PM but the web page wasn't cooperating with me. Anyways thanks for the message and right back at you.

Anyone going to post a tourny report? I know the House breakdown, but I love reading details about the games. MVP cards, big swing moves, etc. Anybody? Are the days of detailed tourny reports over?

Yeah +1 on that.

I'd love to see some tourney reports and details of what worked and what didn't.

~But then all the good secret strategies won't be secret anymore!

Yeah, it would be nice. I'm going to give a bit of a write up on the NYC Melee Regional thread sometime today.

Shenanigans said:

Sorry, but I seems to be having technical difficulties.

I wanted to let Shenanigans know that I did get his PM but I can't seem to respond to it. I keep getting an error.

Plus is there no way to edit your posts?

no way to respond directly to a pm. go into your profile, list of friends and send him a message from there.

You can edit posts, not sure if it goes away after 24 hours. You should see a bar atop your post that looks like this:

Lars Edit | Reply #2 | Published on 18 May 2010 - 15:04:41

Lars said:

There is no "Edit" part in the bar that I can see but the rest of it was there. Is there some sort of profile setting that I'm supposed to change?

As far as sending a PM, I tried. I went to my profile clicked on the friends link and then clicked on send message. I just directs me to an error page. I tired with IE and Firefox, neither worked.

Edit

Ok, I guess you can edit posts but only for a certain time. I can't edit my eariler one.

I can't send PM's either, Mallesh, so rest assured you aren't the only one with the problem. I have reported it to the FFG admins, but have not received any sort of reply or recommendation. I think it's been a couple months now I've been waiting to hear something back from someone. At this point I've pretty much given up that anything will be done. The problem seems to affect a small portion of people. Like you, I also tried different browsers. I also tried all the usual tricks I know like clearing the cache and temporary files. I even tried using different PC's. Nothing works. Always get an error when I try to send a PM. However, I can receive a PM.

You may try reporting it to the site admins yourself. Perhaps if they get enough similar complaints someone will eventually take an action to correct it or at least advise how the problem can be overcome.

Best of luck.

I'll make sure to report it. If I get some time I might even see if I can fix the problem from my end.