Ok, so I just got home about an hour ago and I'm actually pretty cashed out from such an amazing weekend but I wanted to go ahead and give a shoutout to everyone that made it so great and let you guys know that I'll be posting more details tomorrow along with my decklists.

I'm very much looking forward to reading and help post a bit on this.

Overall this weekend was very taxing on all of the players. Very little sleep for most of us with an addition of very fierce games, this weekend was absolutely awesome.

I have already taken apart my joust deck, but I'd be glad to recall what I can when needed.

Alrighty, I'm going to break this up into a few chunks in order to keep it a bit more manageable on my brain. Which is a good thing as I didn't take any physical notes this year, unlike normal. So, when I inevitably get something wrong and/or forget it or you entirely, I very much apologize.

Part 1- In the Beginning

Friday:

I woke up early on this fine day of PTO from work to meet a few friends who came over to my place to watch the World Cup opening. We cooked some breakfast, had a good time and watched Mexico tie a game that it really should have had in the bag with the way they were controlling the field. Anyway, on to more AGOT things.

I made it to the store around 4:30 and met Dobbler, Zeiler, and Darryl who were already on location working on decks and playing games. I picked up the Stark box and flipped through everything. There's just a much different feeling and way of processing the new information when holding the physical cards as opposed to reading electronic spoilers. We bummed around while other people showed up and a few of us went to hit Qdoba for some pregame food while Greg finalized readying the cubes for draft (ie great amounts of shuffling and separating). We started just a bit late as we waited for the Illinois guys to get in and settled, but it was worth it as we wound up with a perfect 16 players- a full count for each cube. I managed to draft what I thought was an absolute bomb of a deck. In the first rotation I wound up with gems like save Viserys and Winter Edtion Cersei. When I looked at my first pack of the second rotation, I knew what deck I was drafting- the first card was the Lannister-Targaryen Alliance. How freaking perfect was that? By the end of the draft, I had a full slate of burn from Immolate to House Septon, ot House of Warlocks. And I managed to wind up with the utterly bomb AHOTa Eyrie! I felt extremely confident in my deck, despite having been sandwiched between Staton and Dobbler during the draft who I'd been afraid would ****** up everything I wanted before it came to me.

Round 1: Kyle- Lannister

I think Kyle was straight Lannister, though I'm a bit uncertain. The game started off decently for him, and he managed to get Casterly Rock into play to match my Eyrie, but I think one of the biggest things was that I kept getting extremely lucky on my intrigue pulls; discarding his Plots Within Plots and other powerful cards. In the end, win to me.

Round 2: Staton- Baratheon

Somehow we managed to let Staton draft a straight Baratheon Knights deck. Yowza! Early in the game, I knocked out his Tourney Knight with Spider's Whisperers so that I could slow down his out of house Knights. Unfortunately he appeared to have every stand card in the game with Squires, King's Robert's Hammer, and Endless Vigilance out the wazoo. I wasn't able to get any terminal burn online and my Corrupt Goldcloaks + Eyrie just wasn't enough to keep him down entirely. Win to Josh,

Round 3: John- Stark?

I forget exactly what house John played now, though knowing his tendencies, I think it was probably Stark. I know that he'd drafted the other cube's Eyrie so we had a very quick and simple "setup." Beyond that I don't recall anything major from him this game, I just wound up getting everything I didn't against Josh. The Corrupt Goldcloaks had all the burn backup they could dream of so John just couldn't keep a character on the board, so this one went to me pretty quickly.

All in all, it was a great deal of fun and the tough decisions when some of those packs came around were agony. I just wish I'd managed to draw any terminal effects against Josh to make it more of a competition. Still, it was fun and after a bit of chatting, we headed across the street to Waffle House for a midnight run since several players had not eaten since lunch. With a belly full of tasty, greasy food, we retired for the evening. Some of us to sleep, some to build decks until who knows what hour of the morning.

Stay tuned for Part II- Joust

Part II Joust-

Decklist time:

For those of you who wondered, I did not actually play Lannister this weekend. Greg had been trying to tell me for some time that my Martell build was the better deck and discussion on the Lannister Draw Dominance thread lead me to finally abandon my house of many tournaments and go with the House of the Sun. The deck does a variety of things, but one thing you may notice is that a central theme is indeed offing my own characters for fun and fortune. Something that you my remember me writing about in an article here before. Here's a decklist if you care to take a look.

Martell

Plots:

To the Spears!

Wildfire Assualt

The Winds of Winter

Winter Festival

A Song of Summer

Fury of the Sun

Fleeing to the Wall

Characters:

Darkstar

Pit Viper x3

Orphan of the Greenblood x3

House Dayne Skirmisher x3

Maester of Lemonwood x2

House Messenger x3

Ellaria Sand

Paramour x3

Fleabottom Scavenger x3

House Dayne Knight

Obara Sand

The Red Viper PotS x2

Dornish Paramour x3

Harmen Uller

Ser Arys Oakheart

Sarella Sand

Arianne Martell

Attachments:

Venomous Blade x2

Taste For Blood x3

Locations:

Water Garden x3

Summer Sea x3

Shadowblack Lane

Dornish Fiefdom x3

Lord Doran's Chambers

Crossroads x2

Lost Oasis x3

Events:

The Prince's Wrath x3

Red Vengeance x3

Parting Blow x3

Saturday started off with guess what? More World Cup watching! Jeppedo and I watched some of that morning's match as we readied to hit Metagames a couple hours before the tournament to make sure we got everything in place for everyone and had time to make sure our decks were finalized. Good thing we did go early too because there was a slight problem and the decklist sheets were nowhere to be found in the store. Thankfully some quick work in Excel eventually corrected this problem and a bit late once again as everyone filtered in and finalized thier written decklists, we began. Major props by the way to Ben, who was the only player to completely and joyously surprise us with his attendance.

Round 1: Kyle- Lannister Shadows

Kyle was playing Dobbler's deck, so I knew what to expect and I knew that this deck of mine easily had the best matchup of any of mine against it. Fleeing to the Wall just hurts that deck so much. Also to the Spears is a huge boon in letting me do as much as possible with as few characters as possible while simultaneously negating The Black Cells. In addition I've got enough control to keep up in the short to medium game and more renown in order to keep it shorter. I was somewhat worried that someone who's playstyle I'm not as familiar with was piloting the deck, but it turns out that Kyle got off to a rather slow start. He did wind up with quite a few locations, but once he hit 7, I flipped Fleeing to the Wall and was able to swoop in for the victory because he just wasn't lucking into characters.

1-0

Round 2: Paul- Lannister

Paul's Lannister build is a location control heavy build that a couple of us in the meta have been helping him work on, largely expecting to see more location heavy builds like the Lannister or Stark Shadows decks. He managed to knock me around a bit with some well played Condemned by the Council, but I discarded his Support of the Kingdom and stopped him from locking out my resources. He wound up having to play his Scavengers of King's Landing for a character and lost another card when I flipped my Fury and returned him to hand in order to force the replay and loss of another card. In the end, Paul's hand was decimated and held on to my locations. With that edge, another victory was mine.

2-0

Round 3: Wrecking Ball- Greyjoy

It looked like WB was playing some variety of Greyjoy Winter control as I saw a white Raven and Marauders as well as Alannys Greyjoy. Unfortunately for Andrew, my opening hand contained all three Prince's Wrath and I lucked into a smattering of other control with Orphans and Parting Blows. The Marauders were never able to challenge and despite losing a card or two to Alannys, I kept a solid lock on him as the Martells claimed more and more power then won with the reveal of Winter Festival. After the game Andrew said it was one of the most frustrating games that he's ever played and I'm not sure if I should take that as an insult or a compliment.

3-0

Round 4: Kevin- Greyjoy Nightswatch

Wow, this one was bad. Kevin was running some kind of obscure Greyjoy Nightswatch build with the Military and Intrigue agendas. Knowing that he needed 19 power and coming off my recent win against Greyjoy, I was feeling pretty confident. Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on Epic Battles. He opened with a pre-plot Epic Battle and then the Fear of Winter. With double 2 claim military challenges against me, I lost most of my board position. Combine it all with Theon Greyjoy for the next couple turns and I finished the game with one or two cards in play. Yowza, that is a brutal deck that completely caught me off guard.

3-1

Round 5: Lukas- Lannister Shadows

This was a more even game as Lukas really did manage to keep up quite a bit of control early in the game. Particularly with a well done Head of a Dwarf to force my power low. I flipped an early Wildfire and chose to kill the character it was on even though that only left me with two characters so that I could knock it out before it became a large liability. He had a second Head of a Dwarf in his hand, but luckily I pulled it on an intrigue as well as a Castellan on another turn. We had a good bit of back and forth, but strangely for a Lannister deck, he just couldn't get his draw online. Without enough draw my Messengers and Paramours kept me ahead of him and the Martells claimed another victory.

4-1

With a 4-1 record, I went in to the top 4 as the #2 seed and unfortunately played #3: Staton- Baratheon Kings of Summer

I'd played against this deck before and knew it was a tough match for me, so I was really dreading this. Enough icon control can tangle up the brothers well enough, but Eddard Stark can make this very difficult. So of course, I end the first marshalling staring at Stannis Baratheon, Eddard Stark and a Summer Champion. With the Champion being the only thing that I can safely and reliably target, I spend most of my time keeping him out of challenges and trying to attack Staton's hand. Eventually, I'm able to return Eddard Stark to hand with my Fury and thus deprive Josh of a little power, but it was too little, too late. Melisandre joined the board and then Red Wedding ended the game.

With that loss, I wound up playing the recently defeated Greg for the 3/4 place game. Dobbler- Stark Seige of Winterfell

My most depressing game of the day. I think he opened with 3 or 4 epic events before the first plot, then followed up with Fear of Winter. Syrio Forel allowed him to take advantage of each and every military challenge he generated and he gained 9 or so power that turn along with eliminating what I played on setup. Second turn brought the blockade around just like I expected and I was done for.

4th place it was. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. And not even the Maid of honor- more that one way at the end of the line that's standing on the floor and not even the stairs so no one ever notices her. Yup, pretty much par for the course as far as my larger tournament performance goes. Overall though-

Props: Everyone that attended from out of State (especially Ben who surprised us). Icon removal (Prince's Wrath saved my bacon). Fleabottom Scavenger (not as often as my non tourney games, but I was never sad to see it). Red Wedding (that card is so good).

Slops: Not having enough power icons in my deck (that would have made a huge difference against Staton). The whole Fear of Winter/Blockade/Rule By Decree thing (Easily the most annoying NPE I can remember playing against since Story Events. Getting ally my stuff knelt or losing their icons before they get to attack is harsh. Never being able to play anything and forcing me to essentially play with my Setup for 3 turns is nigh unforgivable. Combine Epic events for more challenges during the Fear of Winter turn.... *shudder* Something needs to be done about this.) Red Wedding (losing to that card really sucks)

Ok, that's all for tonight folks, enjoy the read. Tomorrow, some about Civil War and the funniest game of Melee I've ever played in my life. Also, drunken shenanigans. And if you're really lucky, my melee report and decklist as well.

i cannot wait to see your "analysis" of our civil war game. obviously you won't be able to quote, well, any of it, without either intense censorship or getting yourself banned. either way, your take on the quality of play is sure to be enjoyable. also, Wrecking Ball's eyes were awefully itchy on the ride home, maybe he should've checked his pillow that night, hehehe...

Kennon said:

Take it as a compliment, the loss was frustrating because of Winter festival, you weren't frustrating.

Will, I'm sure you are intentionally trying to forget our 3rd/4th place game, but I actually had 12 power by the end of the first turn, and would have won the game first turn had you not knelt my blackfish.

Dobbler said:

I find this ridiculous.

Why was I not playing this deck all weekend? lol

Dobbler said:

in hindsight i realize i should have pushed to get something like "cannot be knelt by opponent's card effects" on that thing, too... ;-)

Hmm...

I have a feeling there is going to be a LOT of stark military decks in play at NYC.... great.

bloodycelt said:

You had better hope that its Stark Siege of Winterfell decks. If people really start looking, they'll build a Stark Defense deck and that is almost impossible to beat. At least unless you build your deck to beat it, but I haven't had enough time to figure out just what that is.

Hmm... I dunno. You mean like Fox's deck? I beat it with my Martell's without making any changes. Wow, Bear Island hurts though.

Also, I just realized that through some twist of cosmic Karma, I ended up playing against every Lannister in the tournament as some sort of penance for not using them myself.

LOL. That'll teach you. And no, I meant more like a deck that has a balance of icons to defend with, lots of characters, Riverrun, and stuff like Questioned Claim and Desolate Passage to really maximize their defense potential. I think that Fox was onto the right idea, but needed to give it that extra few tweaks to make it really work.

o_0: Its actually really hard to build a defense deck around riverrun. Both intidimate and underhanded assasin can muck up someone's day.

Eddard can't cancel lost oasis' kneel effect btw since its a passive and not a triggered effect. (The triggered effect he could if it gave a noble stealth).

I agree that stark defense is nuts... but some of what I would put in as standards in my decks can screw with that.

I think a murder rush with riverrun as a closer is a more apt strategy.

whispering wood + fear of winter + robb stark can lead to 5/6 character deaths turn 1. Then either blockade or respect turn 2 with riverrun should end the game quickly. (And dont forget the claim 2 intrigue challenge...)

Staton said:

Indeed.

There is a lot of undiscovered potential from Stark at the moment.

.

I think the point of a defense deck isn't to shut down every challenge against them, but to limit the challenges their opponent can win. The ability to dictate to your opponent what challenges you are going to let him win is HUGE! And Riverrun is really only in there for the kill. You only need one turn with it. I think that Den of Wolf will be key to a deck like this. Repeat the challenges phase and get it to go off twice and that's probably game. I'll try to get a decklist going.

Oh snap! Repeating challenges after all of your opponent's characters have been used up so they can't win anything at all is brilliant!

Hmm... it looks like I get distracted too easily and thus didn't come back to wrap up my tourney report like I expected. Since several more days have gone by my recollections of specifics are that much more vague, but I'll see what I can do.

After wrapping up the Joust portion of the event, several people went to get food, play rematch games, or build decks for the next day. Those that weren't otherwise occupied were eager to give Civil War a try (most of those who played Saturday night had never played it before at all). I had managed to build 4 Civil War decks (Targaryen, Baratheon, Lannister, and Greyjoy) with cards ranging from Westeros to 5 Kings Edition so there were cards that some of us hadn't seen in many years and some of us hadn't seen at all. I hand crafted the decks, not with all the power cards like the Cube draft was, but with synergistic and fun cards that I though would really highlight the historic strengths of each house. We wound up with 10 players interested so, rather than splitting into two tables of three (not a fun way to play multiplayer, IMO) we decided on a table of 4 and a table of 6. Yes, two 5s would probably have been better. Regardless, the Baratheon table wound up with Staton, Katie, Ben (I think he posts as Boba Fett?), and..... Lukas? Was he the other player at that table? Anyway, it sounded like they had a good time and a lot of fun with the older cards.

On the other hand, my table consisted of me, Wrecking Ball, Kyle (Lannipanda), Paul, Mike, and Darryl. For any of you that have not met Darryl before he is one of the funniest guys I have ever met. He's really been growing at Thrones over the las few months but has a bad problem with not reading cards. Which lead to probably the funniest single moment of the weekend.

While I was passing out plots and making sure that the decks were set, my table decided that they wanted to draft the plots from one big pile. Despite the extra time involved, I acquiesced and Darryl wound up going first. After passing the plot deck to the next player, Darryl loudly and excitedly proclaimed "I just picked the BEST. PLOT. EVER." Knowing that he's a newer player and likes impressive, splashy effects (and also knowing that I threw in thins like Summons, Building Orders and Trading With the Pentoshi), I asked "Oh yeah, did you grab Trading With the Pentoshi?" Confused, Darryl replied "No, what's that?" as Mike proceeded to take the plot that I just mentioned. Upon seeing and actually reading the plot, Darryl groaned and said something along the lines of, "But Counting Coppers draws!" Needless to say that the instant he wasn't paying attention, the rest of the table agreed that no one would draft Counting Coppers and we would leave them all for Darryl. Haha, ok, so it probably doesn't sound as awesome here at the moment, but after all the tension of fighting our way through at least the 5 rounds of Swiss in Joust, it was the funniest thing all weekend- which continued with proclamations based on the Lannister Draw Dominance thread that "Draw = Win!" and of course "Hey, what's the best plot ever?"

Sadly, the rest of the details of the game blur together (and as Lannipanda mentioned, much of it isn't repeatable on a public forum) but I'll tell you, having Darryl and Kyle together at the same table is a brilliant and hilarious combination. I know that Mike kept getting hammered and then building back to the best board position at least 3 times, but after one exceptionally brutal play against him after another, decided to out of the game. I also know that On Raven's Wings got Rakharo in play for me, and at least two players then spent the rest of the game dead focused on trying to remove my 25+ strength character from the game. Massive things to Wrecking Ball for not letting that happen. In the end, most everyone folded from the game as we had drawn out the entire deck and the game wasn't really going anywhere. So some of us retired to Greg's for more deck work, and some of us retired to W.F. Cody's Bar and Grill..... but that's an entirely different story for an entirely different place.