FATMOUSE said:

Joust World Champion. And Brett was Melee World Champion.

Although, I wouldn't mind playing an OCTGN joust with my deck against the European champ to see who is really and truly the world champion.

FATMOUSE said:

erick's ego is only going to dabble in this thread -- i'm pretty worn out from four nights of 4-5 hours of sleep in a row, and the stress of the world championship title coming down to a game against rings starting at 10:00 pm the second day of the tourney ate at me for sure, especially immediately following a ~2 hour game in which alec proceeded to build slowly toward 15 power with my own decklist from the DC regional. trying to avoid thinking about AGOT for a few days at least.

speaking of which: this is why i don't give out decklists :-P. that deck is perfectly balanced for what it is, and it's no surprise that alec, known for being a solid player here on the east coast, could pilot it to a victory so long as the matchups fell his way. we knew that our five agenda machine of a targ deck would beat every deck type consistently except for a lanni with a low power requirement that got its draw out early, but our testing showed that my old lanni hyperkneel was a coin toss with bara, and lost hard to fast stark siege and no-agenda targ decks; so when i got paired with alec in the semifinal i knew i was shooting for third in the joust at best, though still in the running for the world championship title. when alec got up to 2 GTM (edit: i wrote 4 earlier... the deck is so good it's illegal!), with a toll gate out, i knew i wasn't getting much further than the 16-17 power i had at the time. it was fairly sweet consolation, however, when alec went on to win the whole joust with one of my own decks, and since i was able to eek out the championship title itself my ego remained intact at the end of the day ;-).

with two world championships under my belt, nate has asked me to write a series of strategy articles over the next year that details how we in DC go about testing for tourneys so thoroughly to enjoy the success we do. his goal is to unleash my ego so as to incite you guys into not letting me three-peat the world championship, which of course i'll be gunning for :-P. ~that said, the whole idea sort of goes against DC meta secrecy rules, so i'm going to have to ponder the offer for a little while. it's actually more the fact that i just hate writing; it takes me forever and i'm too lazy to edit my own work, but i think it'd be good to give the community a window into what we do to prepare (or not prepare in the case of the melee), and what meticulous, summer-long decision process goes into playing a five agenda targ deck for the joust. at the very least, this year i will give you guys the world champion tourney report i flaked on last year (last year i skipped out due to the fact that i hate writing), and hopefully in a timely fashion.

in any case, a hearty congrats to joust champ alec irwin and melee champ brett zeiler -- looking forward to seeing your cards in playtesting.

So I'm curious. If you won't share decklists, did you loan Alec a deck? I don't know how he'd otherwise be playing your deck.

How about we call these decks Corey's decks, since he is the one building the lists?

Hahahahahaha

Dobbler said:

what's funny, greg, is that you're the one responsible for our targ wildling deck; corey and i just refined it by changing the location distribution from your description, filled in the wildlings, and added two more agendas for great justice :-P

and i say "my dc regional deck" because the deck alec played in the joust was reproduced card for card from the list i gave him for my DC regional championship deck, without a single change. (alec was wise enough to realize that DC decks are best left unchaged.) ;-)

during regionals, corey sort of abandoned dan and i until after our DC 1-2, as he found it beneath him to help us prepare for random east coast tournaments that he didn't plan to play in himself, lol. dark times, those, full of uncertainty. he, like casey in our meta, was turned off by lanni's absolute dominance. thankfully he came back to playtesting in time to cook up the direwolf deck that dan played in NYC, having taken a look at the stark box and concluding lanni's time was finally done. (~corey also dislikes when dan and i talk about him on the forums; we should keep this up for a little while longer.)

Congrats to all three Champs (Brett, Alec and Erick) on your success at the tourney. It was great to see such skilled players in action and I learned a ton from watching you guys play. Great job guys!

As for me, I went 4-2 in joust and missed the top 8 by a poor SoS. I finished 10th in the joust after 6 rounds. I played a Stark Siege deck that I thought was idiot proof and as usual I was wrong because I managed to F it up in a critical 4th round game. I will definitely be posting a tourney report, not that my games were ever that exciting but if you have some spare time and are bored...

I will also post my deck list because I am a fan of sharing with the aGoT community though the Stark Siege deck that I ran was pretty standard.

I thought that I would come out to GenCon this year for one time but now I am hooked. I will definitely be back next year to try my luck again.

Oh and I want to see that pic that I heard was floating around of Maester LUke humping Dobbler!

Kennon said:

alec applied for DC meta membership after we took three of the top four at NYC, and i handed him a few lists to play against his meta; it's not an absolute policy, as there are sharing agreements established with jonathan, gualdo, and greg, too :-)

Apparently "Joust World Champion" is a hell of an extra-curricular.

skeletonator said:

it definitely pushed your application into the "accelerated review" pile -- particularly the part where you crushed dobbler ;-)

finitesquarewell said:

Alec had quite the smile on his face as he whooped me. Granted, I saw the same smirk on his face as he beat you.

Interestingly, I felt that my deck's strongest matchups would be against Stark and Bara and I expected to see a ton of them. Instead, I played 3 Martells, 1 Targ, 1 Lanny. and only 1 Stark in my six games.

Haha, I thought my deck matched up best against Stark which I was expecting the most of and behold, my 3 victories were against Stark Seige. Then losses to Martell and Greyjoy. Just couldn't find a way to kill the Viper fast enough and got shut down hard by too many Marauders even with Burning on the Sands and He Calls it Thinking to try to get a breather.

finitesquarewell said:

Before European I'll ask you to test again my deck and help some of my friends... they will need a good deck to compete... I would need it to... but i'm to loyal to grey or stark to play different :-) even if your targa was impressive...

Hope to reach you overseas next year... i totally miss that event and watching the videos hurted a lot!!!

I'm proposing to my friends a "Great lake" tour for next summer :-)

Anyway... i think in september wouldn't be bad to repeat the experience Usa tourney top4 against European Top4 one via OCTGN2... what do you think???

Not sure if this post will actually make it or if it will be crushed by the weight of the egos striding around this thread, but we'll give it a shot.

Congrats again to the champions, and to Erick especially, who holds the title for two years running. Erick, I think you're obligated to write up a tourney report, and if editing is really that big of a deal, I'll take a quick look and add a comma here or there. I'm bummed that I couldn't make it, but I will redouble my efforts next year, and barring any unforeseen disasters, I will be fighting for that joust title next year as well. (I should note that it's a good sign that my wife actually apologized to me that I couldn't attend this year in part "for her sake." If that isn't bonus points in savings, I don't know what is.)

It's also sad that I'll be leaving the DC meta, though I will (hopefully) remain an active participant in that UBER L33T FTW GLHF deck building process that Erick mentioned. (And yes, by that I mean we devolve into 14 year old nerds with acne while bickering over what a "reasonable" cost for Val would have been and why, in most cases, a Vale Refugee is FAR superior to an in-house 1-cost monocon.) ~In any case, I always thought the reason DC tends to do well was that we show up with the coolest card sleeves, no?

What a fantastic Gen Con. I can't compare it to other years, as this was my first, but there's no doubt in my mind that I will expend the effort to try and make it again next year. It was awesome meeting and re-meeting players in the Thrones community, which is unparalleled in collectible gaming.

A hearty congratulations to all the winners, it was an impressive field littered with former and reigning champions alike. Only the very best will rise to the top.

-Lukas

Twn2dn said:

If that was true, then kpmccoy would win every regional and every championship.

finitesquarewell said:

If you need help with the editing/writing part... 1/2 of my double major was English (with Creative Writing) so I might be able to help.

~Oh and speaking of ego stroking.... you guys forgot highlander, with an increase in attendance as well to.... (drumroll) 5 people! (I won the event... so yeah as I rarely win 1st in any competition I am gonna stroke my ego.) I might even email Nate an article... with all the pomp and circumstance a 5 player event needs... :-P

Hey maybe if I get my ego inflated enough... more people will attend next year to deflate it :-P

Nate: I'm just kidding. So you don't need to edit your email filters.

bloodycelt said:

Highlander's schedule conflicted with the Warhammer Worlds and many of the past players chose to compete in Warhammer instead. Highlander was fun and I finally got a chance to meet and play against Jerusalem Jones afterwards. I'm not expecting either Highlander or Kingsmoot to survive after this GenCon.

kpmccoy21 said:

That would be a pity. They might get more people if highlander victories counted to overall champion.

bloodycelt said:

~Why? You'd be the last (and best, right?) Highlander player!

bloodycelt said:

I don't think that will ever happen. Too many people would get upset over it. Some reasons being Highlander and LCG are two completely different things in terms of metagame and the game itself. Also, getting access to CCG cards would be extremely difficult if you don't already have them. FFG no longer sells CCG cards, so it wouldn't make sense for them to really push Highlander in that way. I've never played Highlander, but it seems just like another variant of the game; except, it may bring a sense of nostalgia to players that played back in the "good ol' days."

Personally, I'd rather have more players show up to Joust and Melee than Highlander.

Also, I apologize about for not realizing there are three distinct World Champion titles and not one, lol.

I've gotten back from Gencon and am trying to recover. I've actually have a slight fever and a sore throat now, looks like I caught something there. It was well worth it though even with the lack of sleep. I had a great time even if Eric demolished me the first round of top eight.. There is always next year and I might even try to take the melee seriously next time.

Like always I have a great time playing AGoT with everyone when I go on these trips. I'm glad I got back into the game even though there is only 1 player currently to play with locally. I'm looking forward to going to Minnesota in November but it’s not 100% decided yet right now it looks like I will make it. Hope to see everyone soon.

Mallesh said:

Playing in person is always better, but OCTGN is an extremely good alternative; especially, if you want to play people outside of your meta. It's also how I build and play test all of my decks before physically constructing them. Clicking a few buttons to test out your decks' flops and first few rounds of draw is much easier than having to shuffle over and over again, not to mention the addition or removal of cards.