Anybody get any word? How many players? What's the House breakdown? Man - where is the info from GenCon?

Probably all on Facebook, which is a shame since I just about refuse to use it, lol.

FATMOUSE said:

Same. Sigh...

What's Facebook?

Stag Lord said:

Are you going to keep making that joke until someone bites?

LetsGoRed said:

~ From Stag Lord, it might not actually be a joke.

(But yeah, I'd bet he's going to keep making the joke even after someone bites.)

What's going on over there?!? Someone post an update!

well i think there were around 43 players. enough for 6 rounds. i played my bara treaty deck and got 3w 3l. when i left eric and someone i didnt know were fighting for the 6w 0l pos in the swiss. dont know what happened after. posting from cellphone sux btw.

My birds tell me that Alec beat out Erick in semis and then went on to win the joust, but I don't know who he played in the finals. Erick then beat Matt Ley for third place, giving him World Champion status for two years running. Also, Erick was the only undefeated (or maybe just one of them?) in the swiss.

Though I suspect they will be posting decklists at some point, rumors are that Alec played shadows Lanni, Matt played Martell wildling, and Erick played Targ with 5-6 agendas. Man, that's a man after my own heart...committing to 25-27 power is a liability, but it sounds like it really played off! Glad to see Targ perform so well, even if Lanni won again.

Congrats to all!

Congrats to all indeed.

Targ with 5-6 The North Agendas...Yowzers.
A well-deserved defense of title.

Some more info sent from bloodycelt's phone:

"At least 4 martell decks.
My bara treaty deck.
Staton ran his bara deck posted in the forums.
A lanni kle joffrey voltron deck.
Stark shadows.
Greyjoy winter.
Casey ran a lannister wildling deck.
Targ summer.
Jon breton ran a targ wildling deck.
Rings ran martel (could be one of the four)
Dobbler ran targ.
I think eric[k] also did targ, not sure.
Lars ran lannister."

I confirm targ deck with 5 agendas for erick since I tested it with him all this week before he left for Indianapolis...

So a win for Lanni. With all the other houses performing better recently, that doesn't seem as frustrating as it would have a year ago.

schrecklich said:

I guess it depends who you ask. I personally don't mind that a Lanni deck won (congrats Alec! I'm sure YOU and the deck you played both contributed to Lanni taking the joust at GenCon!), but after LoW came out there seemed to be an overwhelming sentiment that Lanni was brought down a considerable notch. The Wildlings also gave Targ a considerable boost. I think the reason why we didn't say Lanni perform as well in the latter half of the Regionals was because of this sentiment.

For one, less Lanni decks were played. The ones that were played either weren't fully optimized for Lanni hyper-kneel/control (which is very important) and/or were played by less skilled players than the stronger players that were playing Lanni previously. Stark Siege rush was also on the rave a couple of months ago, a deck-type that can take Lannister on pretty well. I'm guessing there was very little of Stark Siege at GenCon though as Targ provides a really difficult match-up for it.

My point is Lannister was/is still a very strong House when most of the community began feeling that they no longer were. It's just that other Houses are stronger now too and Lanni decks have to be extremely optimized to handle them (I heard that Alec's deck was very similar to the Lanni deck Erick ran and won the DC Regional with, and Erick's deck is the most efficient Lanni deck I've seen to date in LCG. It's no wonder why he's never posted it on the forums despite saying a couple of times that he eventually would, lol.).

Lanni took both the European event and GenCon. Both had Lanni errata. GenCon was post-LoW and Defenders, and the European event was pre-LoW (I think) and about 4/6 of Defenders. I heard GenCon had 43 players and I think the European event had 43 players as well. I hope that this finally puts to rest that the Lanni errata were bad choices. Something I still hear from (mainly new) Lanni players.

Anyway, I agree that it probably is less frustrating (is it even frustrating at all this year?) that Lanni took it this year and not last (it came in 2nd last year). Overall, I think the game is much more balanced than it was a year ago. More work still needs to be done and hopefully the Bara box and Brotherhood will do that.

Congrats again Alec! Also, congrats to Erick for a repeat on being the Overall Champion! I wish i could have been there!

FATMOUSE said:

That wasn't the European championnship but "only" the spanish one. European event will take place in earl october.

I agree with you than the lanni's erratas weren't the good choices. Lanni finish second in French championnship (35 players) and won both the world's and the spanish' ones. IMO, banning the guilds and errating CbtR should have been much better...

Well, I'll finish congratulating Alec. Thanks to have proven that the Lion still bite.

Arthur Lannister said:

Oh, thanks for clarifying the European tournaments.

CbtR was banned and AGH was errata. Should there have been more or other errata/ban choices made instead? Not sure/probably not, I think it's ok for now. I just get disgusted when people complain that CbtR was banned and AGH errata. Lannister, as has been demonstrated, is still very strong without them. Pre-errata AGH was too strong with Shadows and CbtR was the easiest and best form of attachment control in the game in a House it shouldn't have even been in (for LCG at least). Anyway, if people want to talk about Lannister more or the status of Houses in general, someone should start a new thread.

Who came in second in Joust? What House/Agenda?

My point was that it's pretty impressive how well FFG has managed the metagame with new releases and bannings/errata, at least judging by balance between houses (I'd still like to see a bit more diversity of archetypes within each house). Lanni was widely regarded as the best house last year, to the point that many players were fairly unhappy with the competitive environment. You might think that Lanni winning the joust World championships a year later would elicit more negative feelings, but to me at least Lanni's win doesn't even register as any sort of indication of a problem.

A thread on the state of relative house power would be interesting at this point, with GenCon behind us. I think I'd like to hear some tournament reports first though : )

Actually my view currently is that the metagame is like rock-paper-sissorrs.

I was trying to post this on my phone from the Con but the iPhone doesn't play nice with the fancy formatting (and I couldn't figure out a way to do it in plain HTML).

Second place was no agenda Martell, played by DeathJester. Third was FiniteSquare's Targ wildling/NW (5 agendas), and fourth was Rings with Martell Wildlings.

I was running Martell Wildlings and lost to Rings in the final 8.

I was running good ol' bara rush. I lost to Finite and Deathjester in the swiss rounds to make the top 8 as the 6th seed. I then had to play Deathjester again in the top 8. Seriously, you're a great guy John, but I hate playing you. lol Really close games, but Burning in the Sand is pretty much going to make me run 3x Hand's Judgement from now on. So I lost to Deathjester, so probably got 6th or 7th overall. A success on my part, but I wish bara would've done better. ~I'd also like to point out that I beat Alec, the world champ, in swiss.

~Before Erick's ego enters this thread Alec was Joust Champ, not World, lol.

I was running lanni treaty martell.....I couldn't figure out which one I wanted so stuck them both together (~not a bad thought as individually both decks made it to the finals!).

Alec and I had been talking for weeks how lanni kneel had kind of been put in the corner and forgotten about and really only needed a dance partner to ask it to the floor to be good again. I just couldn;t bring myself to play straight lanni and with all the agendas out there I figured -5 power wasn't as big as a draw back (~it would have made erick gor from needing 25 to 20). Siege was a minor concern, but won my one game against siege (2nd round) by controlling the heck out of it for 3 turns and dropping viper. I lost t orings in the first round (using val to get both darkstar and old bear (by by valar ) out was just too much too fast for me without having the viper out. 3rd round was against a targ dragonpit burn deck using the two hills that put cards is dead pile to steal later. This was a weird game (with viper dying turn 2.....) that i somehow won 15 to 2 in like 11 or 12 plots..... then a 30 minute break was announced and I had a buddy playing in a cool heroscape event (dragon wars) in 15 minutes so i dropped (~giving Alec the freedom to win it all) to go play that as I hadn't really enjoyed any of my 3 games due to the compromise of my deck.

But on to Alec. He has worked really hard to get better at this game since joining about 2 years ago. Its amazing to see what he acomplished (~though not having army of the faithful in his deck last year might have produced similar results ) and it will be fun to say I get to beat the world joust champ at least once a night from now on in our thrones meet ups

Congratulations Alec! Great job with a build that is very strong but needs a skilled and perceptive driver to handle properly. soudns like a greta event and a very succesful Chamiponship!