We had 22 people - so we tied the California Regional. Lots of people from the boards including a surprise appearance from ktom to save us from losing out on the attendance mark.

The top eight break down was:

3 Stark (2 Siege of Winterfell)

2 Baratheon (1 Treaty with the South)

2 Targaryen (1 with two of the North agendas - Free Folk and Last Giants)

1 Lannister

(There might have been more agendas that I overlooked).

People from the boards in the top eight: ktom (Targaryen), finitesquarewell (Targaryen with the North agendas), kpmccoy (Stark Siege agenda), bloodycelt (Baratheon Treaty with the South), and twn2dn (Stark no agenda).

I played Lanni and went 2-2 (lost in the last round to Ryan who was the other top eight player with a Baratheon Shadows deck). I left shortly after the top eight started, the two Stark Siege agenda decks were paired against each other and that one was over in the second plot. The others were just getting going when I left. The environment seemed fairly balanced from a house perspective, at least (not sure about control vs rush vs midrange breakdown). I think there were

7 Stark (4 Siege, 1 Winter)

6 Baratheon (1 Martell Treaty)

3 Lannister (2 Shadows)

3 Martell

2 Targaryen (1 Free Folk + Last Giants)

1 Greyjoy (Winter)

I might more later, though I'm sure others will fill in a lot of the details.

(EDIT: I made this post accurate so that no one will get confused, though you can now see a better breakdown at agotny.net).

Man, sad to see that Stags didn't make the top 8. I thought we had his deck running fairly well.

Also quite awesome, and random, to see ktom there! and in the top 8 to boot! I'm pretty pumped to see that decklist too since there's no agenda.

Schrecklich, you said 22 but there are only 20 decks in the breakdown that you submitted. Can someone else confirm that there were indeed 22 participants in the tournament?

In addition, great to see Stark break into the top 8 in a big way...seems Siege of Winterfell really boosts their power grab potential, not to mention all the ways Stark can kill! kill! kill! now. I am really looking forward to seeing what GenCon shapes up to be field wise.

Syd

This was an awesome event! I played Martell (though I'm pretty sure there was another person playing Martell, so there were at least two of us) and went 2-2. Two wins against Stark decks - Kevin (?) with the Siege of Winterfell Agenda and Nacho with the Kings of Winter agenda. 1 loss against Lannister (Will) with the Shadows agenda and 1 loss against Stark (Dan) with no agenda. Sorry, I don't know their names on the boards (we should give out nametags with everyone's forum names at these things). Both wins were tightly fought matches that could have gone either way and were among the most entertaining games I've played. Both losses saw me being batted around like a tether all as I flailed about ineffectually trying to accomplish SOMETHING. Will's Lanni Shadows deck, in particular, was extremely effective at shutting me down with kneeling starting on turn 2. Man that was irritating (but very instructive)....

All in all I'm happy with my showing given the level of the competition present. Thanks to LetsGoRed for organizing it, and congrats to all who made it to the top 8!

Syd said:

Syd said:

Lots of Stark and Martell I bet.

Syd said:

I listed twenty but then I said there were two more. It looks like one of them was a second Martell deck. By "off one here or there" I meant that maybe it was 5 Baratheon and 8 Stark instead of 6/7 (though I'm actually pretty sure there were at least 6 Bara players - Ryan and Jason/bloodycelt in top eight, and John, skeletonator, Stag Lord, and Pete from NY).

Keep in mind that all of my first post was from memory (though my memory is pretty accurate regarding the fact that there were 22 because we were counting and double counting and calling people to try to find a 23rd - there were a couple local players who were maybes who didn't show up). I'm sure Jason will post the official results soon.

By the way, JeffK, I'm Will, who was playing the Lanni Shadows deck.

I want to thank everyone who showed up to today's regional event for making it such an awesome experience for a new player such as myself. Of the twenty some odd folks present I only got to meet and play with a few of you, but the one's I did were awesome sportsmen and truly made me feel welcome in the community.

I've only been playing the game for a short time and today was my first competitive event. It was exciting to see such a myriad of different decks and concepts represented there, as my biggest fear was a one sided metagame. I'd have to say that Dan's deck impressed me the most.

Thanks again to everybody who showed up for making me feel very welcome and at home with the Game of Thrones LCG community. It was awesome playing with you all, and I was honored to be one of your top 8.

schrecklich said:

Jerk.

Seriously, that was a nasty deck, albeit frustrating to play against. It was a well deserved win. Congrats.

JeffK said:

Well, despite that win, I still finished 2-2 (as did Paul, also playing Lanni Shadows). I think today's results further confirm last week's Regionals results that the Stark box (and perhaps other factors as well) has really shaken up the environment. I think Lanni is still good (it had the same top eight advancement percentage as Bara and just behind Stark), but it seems like other houses have caught up. Perhaps a new dominant deck will emerge after people have had more time to digest the Stark box and the last couple chapter packs of Defenders of the North.

So this is my deck: it got 4-0 in swiss and beat two of the fear of winter decks, and my lost to ktom in the elimination rounds is more to the fact that Targ just owns this deck... and I didn't realize it until I was facing hatchling feast + threat from the north. But the deck is VERY FUN to Play, and you should notice it is a variant of Staton's deck he posted earlier.

House

House Baratheon x1

Agenda

Treaty with the South x1

Characters (19/30) < 19 distinct characters that are used like so, the rest are dupes/ pretend to be dupes, become attachments, or are events in character form. I'm pointing this out since it is a REAL liability of this deck.

The Red Viper (POTS) x3
Arianne Martell x1
Renly Baratheon (AToR) x1
Robert Baratheon.(CORE) x1
Stannis Baratheon (CORE) x1
Melisandre (CORE). x2
Vale Refugee x1
Ser Arys Oakheart (POTS) x1
Maester of Lemonwood x2
Flea Bottom Scavenger x3
Loyal Guard x3
Banner for the Storm x2
House Messenger x3
Eddard Stark x3
Ellaria Sand x1
Orphan of the Greenblood x2

Locations (17)

Narrow Sea x2
Aegon's Garden x3
Street of Steel x1
Shadowblack Lane x1
Street of Sisters x1
Seat of Power x3
Summer Sea x2
Lost Oasis x2
Water Garden x2

Events (7)

Distinct Mastery x3
The Battle at the Wall x2
Wars Are won with Quills x2

Attachments (6)

Bodyguard x3
Taste For Blood x3

Plots

Take them by Surprise x1
The Power of Blood x2
Fury of the Stag x1
The Red Wedding x1
Valar Morghulis x1
Uneasy Truce x1

I played it primarily because I could not get my other decks to actually survive lannister kneel, let alone stark military. And I noticed it was storng on octgn vs. fear of winter so, since the deck worked better than the others at the time, and it was FUN to play. And I hope since it's a rush deck generally fun to play against I went with it. Again I tip my hat to Staton for posting his deck earlier.

The big difference you will note is I injected Martell into the deck to give the deck speed.

Faster Draw: Scavenger, House Messenger, Battle at the Wall

Power Mitigation: Ellaria Sand

Speed: Viper, Taste for Blood.

Anti-Stark: Wars are Won with Quils, Uneasy Truce

bloodycelt said:

So this is the deck that surprised me by going almost undefeated with a treaty...

You guys have my permission to post this deck on the wiki. Just give me and Staton credit for it. (Including his original may be a good idea... its a good deck in its own right).

If you need a "licence" :-P here is one:

/*
*
* "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
* <bloodycelt> wrote this decklist. Some portions based on Staton's decklist.
* As long as you retain this notice you
* can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
* this stuff is worth it, you drin a beer in my honor.
*
*/

(Sorry but i thought of all places putting a bara deck on a beerware licence is too funny to pass up).

So what was up with the random Vale Refugee?

Thanks to LGR for a great event and to everyone, old and new, for the great games. It was nice to meet so many new players and catch up with some old friends.

Nice to see 2 Stark and 2 Targ in the Top 4. And you know, finitesquarewall, maybe we shouldn't have do the 3/4 consolation game - those Targ mirror matches are brutal.

And because someone has to say it, the 1st turn Fear of Winter can be pretty brutal, and the follow-up with Blockade/RBD can add, but I didn't feel it was decisive in any of the games I played. It is strong, but not a broken thing. Honestly, you can see it coming a mile away and play various plots to mitigate the whole thing (Valar and Uneasy Peace come quickly to mind). The power of it seems to be overblown to me. Now, the arguments that "I feel like I have to play certain plots, I have to plan for it when I build my deck and I have to play a certain way" are certainly valid points, but that's what happens in an LCG environment. I really don't see the difference between this and other strong, popular strategies that all but mandate certain counter strategies.

Congratulations to Dan (Twn2dn) for being the champion! (FYI: Dan was runner-up at Black Friday last November.)

Thanks to the NYC+LI meta for turning out in force and to everyone who traveled across state lines to participate. Yes, we had 22 players. A tie with San Fran. ~I think the two banners are perpetually in moribund state; we may need ktom to rule on whether we keep our own or both have to send ours to the other.

And speaking of ktom, a huge thank you for making a 13 hour trek to attend and, in doing so, saving us from post after post of lame San Fran smack talk. (And since I usually "decide by committee" on rules questions, I shamelessly deputized him as a judge when he probably thought he could relax and just play.)

I've posted on www.AGoTNY.net final rankings of the players (based on final score and SOS) with their house and agenda identified as well as all match results. Yes, that's right, I came in dead last to take the "Sansa award". It must be unprecedented for a TO to finish last (well, unless Stag Lord did it at some point. )

LetsGoRed said:

Great job on the Regional NYC! Looks like you all had as great a time as we did.

Since you put it up to vote, I say we switch banners. That would be more fun than us having to look at our own Meta's drunkenly signed signatures

Oh, San Fran only sends lame smack talk down to Southern California

and great goal Paraguay as I type this!

Ah, so just to update my post with the deck break down, I have the exact numbers below. It seems I was missing two Martell decks from my initial tally.

The decks played were:

7 Stark (4 Siege, 1 Winter)

6 Baratheon (1 Martell Treaty)

3 Lannister (2 Shadows)

3 Martell

2 Targaryen (1 Free Folk + Last Giants)

1 Greyjoy (Winter)

and the top eight went like:

3 Stark (2 Siege of Winterfell)

2 Baratheon (1 Treaty with the South)

2 Targaryen (1 with two of the North agendas - Free Folk and Last Giants)

1 Lannister

Quaters (with approximate seeding):

6 Stark (Siege) by Steve over 3 Stark (Siege) by Kevin/kpmccoy

8 Targaryen by Kevin/ktom over 1 Baratheon (Martell) by Jason/bloodycelt

4 Targaryen (Free Folk, Last Giants) by Erick/finitesquarewell over 5 Baratheon by Ryan

2 Stark by Dan/twn2dn over Lannister by 7 Steve(probably Dj Suckapunch above?)

Semis:

Stark (Siege) by Steve over Targaryen by Kevin/ktom

Stark by Dan/twn2dn over Targaryen (Free Folk, Last Giants) by Erick/finitesquarewell

Finals:

Stark by Dan/twn2dn over Stark (Siege) by Steve

Congratulations, Twn2dn, and well done! Thanks for the report. Sounds like a good turn out and a lot of fun was had by all. The Wolves have finally taken a bite, eh?

I want to thank everyone in NYC (especially Jason) for hosting such a great event. It ran very smoothly and, if I remember correctly, we were ahead of schedule after the very first?

I will post a full deck list of the Stark deck I ran at some point, but a few spoilers are that it:

• Ran no agenda (just old-fashioned Stark goodness);
• Typically played Fear of Winter or Blockade on the first turn, and the gold-curve was optimized to deal with round-1 Fear of Winter;
• Played lots of direwolves, including 2x kennels and 1x Wolfs Dreams (I tried to get a second copy in at the last minute, but nobody happened to have an extra copy for me to borrow); and
• Played 3x Erick's new Blackfish, which is an outstanding card. Combined with the Tully Guards, I often outdrew even Lannister players

And one last note...since I will be moving up to NYC in late August/early September (confirmed), this was my last regionals (and win) as a DC-meta player

had a great time....fun day in all and great to see so many people playing thrones.

We had lots of new to newer players which is a good sign of a healthy environment (and sales) so I was pleased by that.

Also wanted to comment on Fear of winter but ktom said it well so i'll just add a the in game things i saw since I played agaisnt the stark version of it twice. beating it once and losing to it once by one power that should have been earned in the epic phase, but the deck had a bad driver (me )

1st game against this i had to mulligun and was nervous as i supsected what was coming. mulliganed into a viper and a palace fountain. Almost didn't marshal the viper as I was afriad of a surprise marched to the wall...but risked it. not surprisingly an epic event got played preplot. I flipped power of blood, 1 card played was an orphan (got rid of the icons on refugee for an unnopposed intrigue challenge). end of plot phase power was 8-7 him, though it could have been 8-8 if i had done my epic challenge or even 7-6 me if I had not tried to kneel him a bit more in the challenge phase in prep for the epic phase). second turn he flipped RBD (i had 8 cards) I discarded 4 and the best one was a milk. post plot he played another epic though I had flipped power of blood again as i had no save in my hand (would come back to haunt me). I played a oakheart mainly to get rid of one of his military icons and a taste for blood. end of challenges phase power was 12-10 me . he pulls his 3rd character out of shadows to push for domence (won him the game) end of epic phase power was 13-12 me (with winter feastival in my plot deck...boy was i steaming about forgetting the first epic challenge). no saves so valar next turn and a few turns later (with some more misplays as i was still thiking about the epic phase...) the game was over, but not because of fear of winter.

2nd game was polar opposite. 6 card flop with 2 refugees, 1 orphan, lost oasis, some 3 coster (ellaria maybe), and a sea. opponent also had a 6 card flop of mostly weenies and host of the bear. I redraw into viper (and a bodyguard! where were you last game?) and flip rains of autum (don't think he had gold producers out, but wanted to save Power of blood). my one card is viper....i'm pretty happy. during my intrigue challenge I pull the epic that he just drew...game is pretty much a breeze from then on, especially with a 2nd turn valar running into a 2nd turn power of blood. lost oasis and viper get 6 power a turn w/out doing a military challenge

nothing in my deck was added specifically because of fear of winter. in fact there was one change between this regional and D.C. and that was to be able to handle lanni better.

I am curious to hear more from the players that made top eight. While I wait, I'll give a really small tournament report that's really just my impressions of some deck match-ups based on what I played against.

I was playing a Lanni Shadows deck. I just wanted to play with a bunch of the cool Shadows cards (Venomous Blade, Arya Stark, Kingswood Trail, Black Cells, Tyrion, Qyburn, Queen of Thorns, Varys, Syrio, Littlefinger, and the City plots) and felt like Lanni was the best fit since the Weaponsmith and Steward give a nice gold boost to pay for all the Shadows marshaling and Golden Tooth Mines is just a nice card to have access to. I added on some of the standard Lanni kneel cards so the deck still felt a bit like the typical Lanni kneel deck.

Round 1 I played against a Stark Siege deck with Fear of Winter and Blockade on the first two turns. That was rough and at one point I was down about 12-0 in power, but I eventually established enough of a board presence to fight back and take control of the game. It was a pretty close game and I feel like the match is probably close to 50/50. If he had had the Syrio plus multiple epic battles combo, I would have been toast. That combo with Siege of Winterfell is really hard to beat if you can't answer Syrio with a 3 Str stealth guy or a Flame-kissed or something.

Round 2 I played Bara Treaty Martell (bloodycelt's deck). He got out The Red Viper and cancel Eddard early, each with dupes. I'm looking around for answer, but to me it is almost impossible for Lanni to beat a Bara rush deck heavy on nobles once they get Eddard out protected by a dupe. He really hampers all of Lanni's control cards. The options I know of (and had access to) for dealing with him are City of Soldiers and Valar, but it's hard enough to buy time for City of Soldiers and play around two Power of Blood turns that adding in saves makes it just about impossible to deal with Eddard. I don't know that it's impossible for Lanni to beat this style Bara deck, but in the games when they play a protected Eddard it feels like it.

Round 3 I played Martell and drew all my standard Lanni control cards. I kept the Red Viper under control with City of Sin, City of Spiders, and Alchemist's Guild Hall and basically just drew more kneel than he drew characters so that this game was more frustrating than exciting.

Round 4 I played against Bara again. This time it had more of a Shadows element which meant he was outdrawing me with King's Landing, but the real problem was that he got out cancel Eddard plus Margaery and Robert each with a dupe or a save, so all of my disruption was severely weakened.

So from my perspective, noble heavy Bara with Eddard has a pretty good match up against Lanni. Stark vs Lanni seemed kind of competitive, but maybe my opponent drew less epics/Syrios than average.

Oh, also, just curious what the general community feeling is on this - after I finished my game in round 1, I started watching the game next to me. The players finished round 7 and were starting round 8. One of the players had picked up all 7 of his plots during the plot phase. I pointed out that he had to leave his last plot in the used pile, and his opponent told me that outside comments were not allowed. Is it a common consensus to let rules errors stand if neither player in the game notices them?

I don't know about everyone, but I would certainly want someone to comment on our game if a major rules violation was occurring in my game! I'm pretty sure I've done that more than once on someone else's game too.

Also, congrats to twn2dn! I'm not looking forward to facing this guy if he goes to GenCon! I also like the variety of decks we are starting to see in top cuts. I wish there would've been 5 rounds before the top cut though. I just like that more than four rounds. Let's me feel safe even after I've lost a game, or even two.

Glad that there was quite a large group representing for the Stag! I've played against Bloodycelt's deck and know how frustrating it can be to play against. If you don't have a ton of control, you have to pretty much hope for milk (or hope you're playing with Targ!).

Agreed that Bara Nobles with Eddard x3 is a hard matchup for Lanni. Although I think that lanni might be the toughest matchup for a fear deck. I also think that the GJ Fear deck is the better between them and Stark. Being able to snipe locations with the GJ Epic Battle is just awesome. Especially when following up with Blockade.

Just wanted to say that the tournament was awesome, and I had a great time. Jason, thank you for hosting the fantastic event. Dan, once again, congratuations on winning the tournament. It was also amazing to meet the all-knowing ktom! Who I will never be able to thank enough for clarifying my understanding of this great game. It's too bad we didn't win the competition with the West Coast, but I'm alright with tieing Both groups exchanging posters is definitely cool.

Greetings all. Yesterday was a great tournament, thanks to all that put it together.

I played Stark - Siege of Winterfell and took second. Dan's Stark completely dominated me in the finals after a few play mistakes on my end. Being my first final I think I was a little nervous/tired/drained from the day and just didn't play very well. He probably would have had me anyway though.

Here's the deck I used:

Plots:

1x Fear of Winter

1x Blockade

1x Storm of Swords

1x Rule by Decree

1x Fury of the Wolf

1x After the Mummer's Ford

1x Valar Morghulis

Characters:

2x The Blackfish

1x Arya Stark (Shadow)

1x Varys

1x Osha

2x Ser Jorah Mormont

3x Syrio

2x The Hound

1x Hodor

3x Shadowcat

3x Northern Scavengers

3x Wolf Pack

3x Guard at Riverrun

3x Direwolf Pup

3x Carrion Bird

3x Vale Refugee

3x Hungry Mob

3x Bolton Refugee

Locations:

1x Lord Eddard's Chamber

2x Great Keep

2x Frozen Moat

3x Narrow Sea

1x Street of Steel

Events:

3x The Battle of the Whispering Wood

3x Distraction

3x Battle of the Bay

2x Battle of Ruby Ford

The deck worked just as expected. First turn Fear of WInter with at least 1 epic battle. (Only game I lost prior to the finals I didn't pull an epic battle even with a 6 card flop) Followed by rule by decree. This not only allowed me to half my opponents hand but gave me a chance to unload my hand, with 4 gold I could usually play everything else in my hand and usually a Valar had gone off by now.

Third plot was usually blockade (if needed, 1 or 2 games were over plot 2) or Storm of Swords depending on the board/hand situation.

All in all the deck worked great. Against Dan's Stark I was over matched, but feel if we played best of five he might have only won 3-2.

Husemann said:

Because it amused me, and I didn't have time to go hunting for a third orphan.

Granted modification will be in order if I use this later on, it really just doesn't work well vs. Targ.