We're up and running here: http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/podcasts/_/game-of-thrones-podcasts/

If you had subscribed to us previously through a podcatcher or RSS reader, please not the change in our feed to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/2ChampsAndAChump

This will help us keep better track of how many people are actually listening. Also, we've been resubmitted to iTunes and Zune now that our RSS feed issues have been cleared up, so I'm hopeful that we should be approved and available for subscription through their directories any day now.

topic? or themes of the convo?

Sorry about that. It's our post Days of Ice and Fire episode, so I once again apologize for the audio quality. This was once again on the road. I've run a filter to take out much of the road noise, but it leaves our voices sounding rather tinny. Topics are generally the performance of our decks and general tournament report style talk.

Evidently, we're considerably less popular this time around.

Kennon said:

Haha, I listened to the podcast earlier today. The audio quality seemed worse than the first, but maybe it's just me. I know you guys were on the road, so I understand. The bits on making minor, but costly mistakes both in joust and melee was good discussion for novice and experienced players alike. I'm looking forward to the GRRM interview.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. I liked the idea of the Any Phase robert with Val.

Just for the record, I think these podcasts are great. I have them set on auto-download to my phone now, so I don't know if that registers with the "number of downloads" ticker, but nice work.

On a side note, what's the mission/goal of this podcast? Do you plan to try to inform the community of recent developments/strategies that you see, or is it purely a topic-specific entertainment podcast? (You seem to do both so far.) The only reason I ask is that it might be cool if you guys considered focusing on a particular theme or house for each podcast, in addition to looking at tourney results, etc. For example, "what makes a good draw engine" or "how to build a Lanni deck that doesn't feel like every other Lanni deck you've played against." You guys might be taking a different direction with this though. (For the record, I really like the pre/post-tourney analysis and musings.) Either way, a little more structure in general wouldn't hurt. If you did decide to focus on a particular topic, you could break the episode into (1) new community developments/tourney reports/reviews of latest chapter pack; (2) topic of the day ("how to deal with Beric," etc); (3) upcoming developments ("will dothraki/sandsnakes be viable builds?" etc.). You could even conduct short interviews of well-known players, like the upcoming OCTGN champ.

I'm just throwing out a few suggestions here. I actually think what you've got so far is great, and I definitely don't mean that these ideas are necessary or anything. (I also agree with some of the other posters that the sound quality of episode 2 is poor, which might make it a bit less popular. But I'm guessing this is the exception to the rule.)

Our next podcast (not the GRRM interview) has already been recorded and it will have a much different feel from the first two. The sound quality is drastically improved by use of some additional equipment as well as the ambient-noise friendliness of my kitchen. We also are more "topic" driven, in a way similar to the suggestions of Twn2dn. I would expect most of the future podcasts to feel more like the yet-unreleased podcast.

However, that being said, I do think the travel-to-and-from-a-tourney recordings serve a purpose, and I expect we will have more of those the next time we travel to a large event. We will have to see what we can do to improve the sound quality the next time we do that.

Dobbler said:

I enjoyed it! Hard to hear major portions, and I zone out as soon as you said 'now on to melee', but other than that thanks!

Yes, we're much more structured for the episode that will be out next Friday. Of course, on the flipside, I think we're considerably less funny. We'll have to see what can be done to rectify that when we record again this weekend.

I liked it. Loose the filter. The road noise was a bit annoying in the first one but the filter made your voices definitely harder to hear easily than the previous background noise, even after I did some equalizing to normalize it a bit.

I'd be interested in hearing some of your thoughts about the current ascendency of aggro and rush against control and what control decks you think could take on Bara Rush and Wilding Aggro in a head to head match-up. Also if you don't think there is any control deck that could pull out a win at 50% of the time what do you think is missing?

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On another note, if you want to stay funny but add more structure create a loose agenda to follow, just topics that you want to make sure you hit and in a rough order. IF you spend a lot of time on one you can always edit it down if you feel it is not informative or funny. If you bring up new stuff and never get to other things, no worry, just include it in your next bit. Also I don't know if you are trying to do everything in a single take with minimal editing, but you may find it easier to just choose a topic, discuss your thoughts on it until you collectively have nothing left to say and then put a pause in and move on to the next topic. Piece the show together in editing removing chaff and any bits that don't fit you can add into the next show.

A bit of good news, I've been notified that we've been approved for iTunes. The email says that we should be searchable in a couple days. I'll let you guys know when we turn up for sure in the search results.

Also, yes, we've been trying to do the episode largely in one take, though there are obviously a digression here or there that needs to be edited out (like my rants about bad drivers) but since I've already got quite a few things on my plate, the less editing that I have to do the better. Thankfully, we really can lose that filter next episode (due out next Friday, not this one) since we won't be on the road. The next time that we do a road trip podcast like that, we'll try to come up with a better plan to get the audio quality improved. If nothing else, a higher bitrate should help as I realized afterwards that I was recording in a low bitrate, compressed format.

Right now your podcast is available on iTunes although only the first episode.