My meta buddy Bronsons pointed out to me yesterday that decklists from Gencon were up on the support page. Did I just miss these? Or, was there just no announcement? Just incase others didn't know they were up, here's the link:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=10&esem=4

Thank you FFG fo taking the time to post this info. I personally really appreciate it. It's nice to see the break down of the houses as well!

Nice! This will make breaks at work much more interesting =)

Yeah, don't remember seeing this at all.

Good find.

Those weren't there just the other day. Nice to see them up though, was wondering about them.

Huh...good to see! No huge surprises (at least for me), but very good to see.

There are some mistakes: Dobbler's list has 6 x Seductive Promise and rings' has only 56 cards.

Rogue30 said:

~So that's how the good players get to be so good.

LetsGoRed said:

~i mean, if a card is good, it stands to reason that you should play more if it -- right? that's my philosophy on deck building, anyway

~ So on that philosophy I would have won with a deck that is just 60x Lannister House Card?

~If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying.

Mixed feelings.

It's nice to see the top 8 decklists because it gives insight into how to play the game and do well in competitive play. the downside is that we just introduced 8-10 players at our local card shop to the game and people are already starting to copy cardlists verbatim. there are players like myself that are just trying to learn to play well and get the timing down and make strong plays. i'm playing with Core Set only, for example. Granted, I have three copies of it, but I'm not using the cards from the expansions until I bring my knowledge level up to speed one expansion at a time.

it's rather difficult to even learn to play the game well when there's such a huge discrepancy in a deck's overall effectiveness when you compare "core.dec" to "the deck that won GenCon."

It's really nice to see the decklists, but it's really boring playing against them and pretty much scooping after turn 4 every time.

That reminds me of something I overheard at MtG tournament once (I wasn't playing):

4th place guy: "How didn't I win? I was running X's championship deck!"

Friend of 4th place guy: "Because the top 4 players were running the same exact deck!"

That kind of sucks though. If they are like the 4th place guy who just spends money and copies other people's deck lists without trying to figure out what is really the best deck to play, then I'd probably just stop playing with them. If they're just having fun though, then just let it ride out.

Consider it a learning experience. They may not be as strong as the players in the top 8, but you can still learn something about the game playing against strong decks. It may be difficult to see what those lessons are when playing a core deck, but ask yourself "Why do the core decks do so poorly against these?" Is it because of hyper-kneel, epic burn, the fact that you don't have a character reset? If you can answer those questions, then you're probably ready to move on to decks that include the chapter packs. You may even find yourself beating top 8 decks once your decks become more sophisticated. Personal experience has convinced me that that a much stronger player will tend to beat a weaker player, even with a weaker deck.

In the end it shouldn't matter if you are winning or losing. If you enjoy the people your playing with you'll have fun. If you don't enjoy them, then you won't. My experience is that ~98% of AGoT players are a lot of fun to play with, regardless of who's the better player. Maybe you've stumbled upon that ~2%. If so, try to convince them to stop acting the way they are, or just move on to playing with the other ~98% that is awesome.

Perhaps it's too late if people have already rushed out to scoop up chapter packs and expansions and don't want to be limited in what they use, but if you have several people starting at about the same time, it might make for a good situation to run a League using FFG's original League rules (last I knew, they were available on the Support page). You don't need to use all aspects of those rules necessarily, but something along those lines. Over a span of several weeks you slowly build up a pool of cards that you may build your deck from, starting with a very modest amount (say, 1x Core set and 1x of two different chapter packs) and adding a new, different chapter pack at different times along the way. Each person has their only "personal" card pool since they pick which chapter packs they have. But once selected, they can't swap a chapter pack out and replace with a new one. If you do this, I suggest you reduce the minimum house deck card count from 60 to 50.

rings said:

So, you will keep it secret what was those 4 cards?

I fully support decklists being made public. Knowledge yearns to be free!!!

I can understand if one wants to keep one's decklist a secret leading up to a big tournament, but once you debut it, it becomes public information. One should have no expectations of privacy or secrecy once they run a deck at a public tournament (especially a high-profile one like GenCon). And once the decklist is "released to the wild," it will further the community's understanding of the environment and encourage further innovation in deck designs.

Sure there will always be "kiddies" who copy the deck verbatim, but there are many of us out there who will use this knowledge for good. And if it turns out that any random kiddie can win tournaments just by copying that deck, then maybe there's a balance problem in the current environment.

Rogue30 said:

Jeez, that was a long time ago and I haven't looked at cards in some time.

I am 99% sure I had Iron Mines in there (X3) and I didn't see that. The other one I am at a loss.

I don't mind these being printed - although I feel for the guy who is in the meta copying decks. Don't worry, another chapter pack and the Bara box will change things dramatically again

To be honest, none of the decks really are very surprising - maybe Dobbs running Castellean out of house.

The Castellan tech was one of my favorite little advancements I've seen in the game in awhile. Dobbler had mentioned it to me and by the time I was tweaking my deck I had 3x Castellan, 3x Vendor of Venoms, 3x Bay of Ice, and Littlefinger. The Castellans brought great control, I had ample triggers for them and the cards I added to trigger it gave me extra draw and otherwise very handy characters. Putting your first turn's power on the Vendor so you can play a second turn Fleabottom Scavenger to draw 3 is fantastic!

Too fancy-pants for this game

Here is that play in reality:

Turn 1a, Dobbler puts out the Castellean for 5 (I don't think he played Alliance that turn) and gets a kneel out of it.

Turn 1b, I put out an anti-ally card to get rid of that card that just read: pay 5 to kneel a character.

Haha, well, that's what happens to Dobbler. I mean, really though, how many Anti-Ally cards are there? Two? And I have cancels for Oakheart if I think it's worth it.... All in all, I think it's worth it.