Always a Bridesmaid Never a Bride. My DC Regional Experience

This year, I once again decided to play a Stark Summer deck for the DC regional and once again I came away with a 4th place finish. Same as last year. I always get the strangest looks from opponents when they see Stark and the Summer agenda. For me, it’s pretty simple, the summer agenda provides a very consistent means of draw for House Stark. You do have to worry about winter, but the folks in the meta’s that generally attend the DC regional do not often play Winter and as a result I felt reasonably safe.

What I expected to see.

I expected to see a lot of Martell (Brotherhood, Martell Control and Martell Summer) as well Lannister, both Hyperkneel and Kneel with Trait manipulation using the new Maester Agenda. I was not disappointed, although I was surprised to see very few Brotherhood decks (only one I believe). I also thought there would be some representation from Baratheon, and in fact I myself almost played Baratheon before settling on Stark.

What I did not expect to see

I did not expect to see much Targ or Greyjoy and I was quite surprised to see 3 Targ decks in the regional (I thought twndn might run Targ if he didn’t run Martell but that was it.)

The Deck

The deck this year was built around Widow’s Watch and Direwolves. The deck ran a lot of 2x unique characters and I would utilize Widow’s watch to dupe the characters thus providing a secure base to place my Direwolves. The deck was much larger in size then I normally run (65 cards), but during playtesting I found that I was consistently thinning my deck with widow’s watch, winterfell kennels, and wolfdreams often ending games with as little as 10 cards left in my draw pile. As a result, I felt justified in increasing the cardpool to include a few toolbox cards that I felt would be necessary.

The Matchups Round 1 – Stark Night’s Watch

My first matchup was against the other Stark player, Byron. Byron was running a Stark Night’s Watch deck with all 3 agendas. Byron was able to play The Wall on round 1 and I knew I had to find away to deal with it. Here is where I made my first mistake of the game, although it ended up in my favor. My first challenge I did a power with Core Set Jon Snow, which Byron let go UO. I played Direct Assault and took control of The Wall. Experienced players will realize that Direct Assault only works on Non-Unique locations. Both Byron and I missed that fact in the heat of the moment. Byron did read the card as well as I, but it wasn’t until later that day, (when I tried the same thing against Corey to steel his DragonPit) that I realized a mistake had been made. In the end, I do not think it mattered, because Byron soon played another Wall which I was able to neutralize with Mance who I had in my hand from the beginning.

Besides that mistake, the item I remember most about this game is that Byron made it Winter, thus reducing my draw to 1 card. In addition, Byron played 2 Deep freezes on my house card requiring me to get 6 additional power to win the game.

In the end, I was successful. Erick called time and I was able to secure a victory by the time we finished the current round. Great Job Byron. It was a deck that I did not expect and had not prepared for mentally. Adding Mance was a last minute addition to the deck, and had I not had him, I probably would have lost that game.

Round 2 – Lannister Kneel/Trait

Round 2 I faced Steve from DC with his lannister kneel/trait manipulation deck. I do not remember much about this matchup other then my direwolves were able to successfully kill Tyrion and I was glad to have frozen moat on the table to blank Carrion Bird and prevent those nasty lion’s gate, raven trait, shuffle back to hand shenanigans. In addition Sansa became a beast when I placed my summer direwolf on here making her a 4 Str Tricon and 6 STR Tricon + renown when Steve did not have a card in shadows.

It was neck and neck, but in the end Steve pulled out the victory and I had my first loss of the day.

Round 3 – Martell

In round 3 I faced Chris, one of my metamates from TN. Chris was running a standard martell deck. I flopped pretty well with a widow’s watch on the board, samwell and a black raven in my hand. This actually put me in somewhat of a quandry as building season and/or time for ravens were usually one of my 2 first plots to play. I normally wouldn’t, but I decided to play Retaliation as my first plot. Luck prevailed because Chris played the plot that reduced claim by 1 so in effect I had a 1 claim plot instead of 0.

Direwolves were again a key part of the game as I was able to burn and kill with Shaggy, greywind and all his buddies. Chris would cancel where he could, but I was able to keep up with cards due to widow’s watch and kennels.

The problem with this round, and all the rounds really, was time. 50 minute rounds was just not enough time for all of the control decks that were in the field. Erick called time and Chris and I worked to finish the round. Unofficially the game ended at time with a draw as each of us had 9 power. We knew a draw would do neither of us any good so we looked at board position and what would have happened the next round. We agreed that if I had one more round, I probably would have pulled it out. We also looked at our strengths of schedules that had been played so far and Chris agreed that I had a stronger schedule to date. In the end, Chris officially registered a full win to me so that we would have a better chance of getting a TN metamate into the final four.

Round 4 – Lannister.

In round 4 I faced Jack from DC and his Lannister deck. I flopped well with Widow’s Watch, Kennels, some 0 cost money (either gold or reducer) and sam. Jack also flopped well and by at the end of round 1 had quite a few characters on the board. I had sam (duped) and another unique duped (thank you widow’s watch) and that was it. The board position was not looking to good on my end so I valar’d in turn 2. Jack was unable to totally recover from the valar, and my 3 draw + kennels allowed me to establish board position quickly after that.

Round 5 – Martell Brotherhood .

Round 5, I was paired with another metamate, Wade and his Martell Brotherhood deck. Wade was 2 and 2 and I was 3 – 1. This proved critical at the end of the game. This game was the most intense game I faced the entire day. It really was an epic battle back and forth. Wade got Beric out on turn 2 with summoning season and quickly put 2 taste of bloods on him. At this point I thought game was essentially done as anytime I would win a challenge, Beric would claim 2 power for taste. Round 3 I played building season and went and searched my bag of tricks for Meereenese Brothel. At 3 gold it was expensive to play, but the only card I had to deal with those Taste of bloods. Wade attacked me this round, I reduced his strength with Shaggy, knelt the Brothel to remove a Taste of blood. Wade, promptly plays, He calls it Thinking, to cancel the brothel. The next round or two, Wade did not have any more cancels and I was able to remove the Taste of Bloods.

Erick again called time, and Wade and I went into the final round. At this point he has something like 12 power to my 10 or 11. The game will be decided in this round. He has Beric with Flaming Sword, Aryanne and some other characters on the board. I have a slew of my own including, Arya, Blackfish, Robb, Sansa (who is like 7 str due to Lady and Summer attachment) and I think Jon Snow. Wade flips To the Spears and I flip retaliation. (I think), anyway Wade goes first. At this point, I’m thinking game is over because none of his guys kneel, but I drew into a Narrow Seas and an At night they howls. I used Arya and the influence on Narrow Seas to take Beric’s renown and the influence on Lord Eddard’s chambers to take Aryanne’s Stealth. I use my direwolves to burn through the first challenge that he initiates. I play At Night they howl, stand all my wolves and use them again to burn through the 2nd challenge.

He has a power challenge left, but no renown on characters. I think I might actually have the game. He initiates a power challenge, I block to prevent UO. I have enough people standing with renown to come back on my challenges and win. However while I blocked the challenge, Wade still wins by 4. At this point, Wade asks me. “What’s your record”. When I admit, I’m 3 -1, Wade determines that he probably can’t make it to the final 4 with a win here, but I can. Wade shows me Superior Claim in his hand, but chooses not to play it. I’m able to win the game due to the support of my metamates.

The Final Four

The final table is no where near as exciting as the Swiss rounds. I’m faced against the first seat, Erick who is running Martell Summer. I actually playtested my deck extensively against Martell Summer and I felt I had a decent chance. In the games I played it was neck and neck but I was generally able to win about 50% of the time. However, today the cards were against me. I had a horrible flop, and had severe difficulty drawing into characters. Erick’s 2 claim plots kept my board clear and he basically steamrolled right over me. Never even close.

All in all the games were great. Congrats to Erick for overall champion, Congrats to Jonathan for runner up and finally a great shout out to my meta for the self-sacrifices made to push one of their own to the final 4.

The Deck List

Erick has the official decklist and will be posting later. This is what I have on OCTGN and may not be 100% correct because I did change cards out at the last minute

House Stark
Agenda – Kings of Summer
Characters (33)
Direwolf Pup x2
Wolfpack x3
Lady x1
Ghost (core) x2
Carrion Bird x3
Samwell Tarly x2
Blackfish x2
Robb Stark (LOW) x2
Jon Snow (core) x2
Sansa Stark (KL) x2
Eddard Stark (core) x2
Old Nan x 2
Arya Stark (core) x2
Jeyne Westerling x1
Gilly x1
Catelyn Stark (low) x1
Mance Rayder x2

Locations (18)
Narrow Sea x3
Great Keep x3
Street of Steel x1
Street of sisters x1
Lord Eddard’s Chambers x1
Widow’s Watch x3
Frozen Moat x2
Winterfell Kennels x2
Meereenese Brothel x1

Events (7)
At Night They Howl x2
Paper Shield x2
Direct Assault x2
Wolf Dreams x1

Attachments (7)
Black Raven x2
Shaggydog x3
Grey Wind x2
Summer x1
Nymera x1

Plots
Retaliation
A time for Ravens
Power of Blood
Building Season
Valar
Red Wedding
Minstrel’s Muse

Thanks for the write-up, always interesting to read tourney reports.

Thanks a bunch for the report. Interesting to see that there was no Bara decks in the field. Does anybody have a theory why that is?

Because all the Bara players were in their closets at home, listening to screamo while cutting themselves over the Heir to the Throne errata and Laughing Storm restriction.

Stasis said:

+1

Trust me, I did that every time a Lannister card has been banned or restricted. It's fun.

Stasis said:

ROTFLMAO!

In spain last 4 major tourney were won by baratheon knights... they are still at the top nowadays but maybe lots of people cannot see this looking only on errata. Today I won a small tourney with Stark Summer... always love to play them...

Stasis said:

ahahahhahahahahahhahahahahah

But about the deck itself, I actually put together something similar to that build to play around with in melee down here a couple weeks ago. The major differences being that I skipped the Summer stuff and just went with Core Set Sansa for my main draw engine. Powering her up with Direwolves is great. I love drawing a card and searching my deck with Widow;s Watch all from playing one unique attachment.

Congrats on taking Stark to a top 4 finish at a US Regional. It always makes me happy to see Stark place high on this side of the pond.

Thanks for posting your deck list as well.

Food for thought: Is collusion among meta mates a good way to determine winner in the later rounds? Does that give people playing metamates an unfair advantage over people playing opponents from different metas? Just to be perfectly clear, I'm not attacking Robb or anyone from the TN meta. They are great guys and good players . Just something that popped in my head while reading the TR.

By the way, for all you people who last summer told me collusion would never happen in Joust, only in Melee, I guess you were wrong.

Kennon said:

~Yeah, because every time a Lannister card was errataed, banned or restricted Lannister dropped out of the top 2 houses in Joust. When has Lannister not been a top 2 House since the switch to LCG? The comparison is disingenuous at best and a farce at worst.

BTW, for all you haters on the Claymont meta and Baratheon players who oppose the FAQ, the real issue to me is the fact that the envioronment never had a chance to deal with Heir and TLS, not that they were resricted. They never saw play with the rest of the cards from the cycle to see if a competetive balance could be achieved. I thought I made that clear before, but obviously I didn't. Either way, the issue is the way it was handled, not that it happened.

kpmccoy21 said:

It is good food for thought, and one of the reasons I specifically included the conversations and comments in the report. As far as collusion goes, I'm not sure that's the right word. ~It sounds way to sinister to me . Still the point is valid, working together is easier to do in Melee, but can still occur in Joust.

Thanks for the report! It was nice to meet you and too bad the only GJ winter didn't get to face off with the only Stark summer. That would have been interesting.

Dan,

Ditto. It would have been a very interesting match. I would have had to hope my Widow's Watch and Kennels could offset the fact that I would only be drawing one card a turn .

kpmccoy21 said:

I was thinking this exact same thing when reading the report. I don't have a problem with it but I thought it was funny people were hating on melee so much for this...

kpmccoy21 said:

Collusion has always been possible in Joust, it just tends to look different than the Melee game. Players conceding to metamates to ensure one moves on has been something I've seen from my earliest days playing this game. Is it really collusion? No, because in most of these cases there was no premeditation prior to sitting at the table. But in the same way two 4-0 players might attempt to take a tie in the final game of swiss, I've seen players intentionally lose. In 2006, Sam Tham (the eventual 2007 champion) conceded to me in the final game of swiss when we were both 3-1. I did not ask him to do it, and I kinda wished he hadn't. But he chose to sacrifice his own glory for reasons known to him. Is that collusion? No. But it is a manifestation of a full level of competitiveness? No.

These type of choices, which are mostly made in the midst of a tournament, have existed for a long time. Regardless of whether you agree with it or not, I commend Orclrob for being honest about it in his report.

Dobbler said:

True, and they are impossible to stop. It just happens a lot less in Joust, and as stated are not pre-determined (that I have seen). Having someone intentially beat up on a specific someone in Melee is quite a bit different than taking a loss based on position in Joust.

It is pretty apples/oranges - it is easy to have someone beat people on purpose, much harder to have someone do well enough AND be lucky enough to be matched up with you to give you games in Joust. Luckily I have never either won or lost a Joust match in due to this (~obviously people must hate me) so never have had to deal with it.

Great TR - fun read and looks like a fun deck! I haven't used Widow's Watch yet, but I LOVED the old CCG Greyjoy location that did about the same thing.

Dobbler said:

I can DEFINITELY say that there was no premeditation.

True enough. This was definitely the most intense game of the day for me. Although I could have pulled out the win, my strength of schedule was very weak and there was no chance on making the cut. The round times were a very short 50 mnutes and the games seemed rushed. In a game this close I have no reservations about conceding to my opponent regardless of whether or not they're a meta mate. This is no different than one of my earlier opponents giving me a full win instead of a timed win when I was winning 14 - 4 when time was called. This decison would increase both my record and his SoS. This is an accepted practice at any tournwment where time is a factor.

I understand giving wins, but I never liked it.

In the fighting game community (specifically the EVO tournament), losing on purpose, or even splitting the pot, is enough for a lifetime ban.

Shadowman said:

I felt rushed as well in all of my games. I would strongly recommend that other regionals consider going the full hour that they allow at gencon worlds.

orclrob said:

agreed, we found out the hard way that 50 minutes is just too short a time for games, and i, too, would strongly recommend other regionals TDs to stick to an hour time limit. i decided to do 50-minute rounds because i wanted to fit in as many games as possible (we have so many new players in DC and such a high fraction of players coming in from out of town that it seemed like doing four rounds of swiss would have made for a much shorter and thus less enjoyable tournament experience than with five rounds), but we couldn't start too early so as to accommodate players driving in from out of town the same morning, and i had to make sure that we were out of labyrinth before their early 7:00p closing time. what i didn't anticipate: some huge fraction of the games played ran well beyond the seven plot mark (whereas just a year ago my guess was that the average was around five or six plots), likely due to so many people playing complicated control decks, and we all felt rather rushed.

orclrob said:

In part, I think the timing problem also has to do with the lack of good game stores in DC and, for that matter, NYC. Last year's DC regionals were actually held 30+ minutes outside DC. It was a fantastic place, but only worked because I personally drove 5 people (who don't have cars of their own) to the store. I've since moved to NYC, so rather than being able to help out, I become one of the "needs a ride" players. In NYC, we've been holding major events at a cafe now for 2 years. The venue is great, but the trade off is that it's expensive to rent, so we have to raise the entrance fee ($20). I'm sure there are other venues an hour's drive in one direction or another, but we'd likely get 1/2 the number of participants.

I think the bottom line is that if you want a great venue that accomodates to the times in DC and NYC, you'll probably have to either go to the suburbs or charge more money to rent more flexible space.

Just for the record, the NYC regionals is scheduled to have 50-minute rounds as well (just playing it safe), but we have more flexibility with the timing, so that we'll likely extend these to 5 preliminary 1-hour rounds, with breaking to top 4 or 8 (depending on numbers).

Twn2dn said:

yeah, this is indeed what it comes down to. most of us in DC live near metro stations and don't own cars, so we maximize attendance if we hold an event at a place on the metro line. but when steve and i looked into renting space downtown for the 2010 DC regional, the prices we were quoted were just totally infeasible. labyrinth is a very cool game store, and in terms of space and location it was an outstanding place to host the event, but between wanting to start later to accommodate out of town players and their early closing time i had to make the rounds 10 minutes shorter than i would have liked to. it's pretty clear that 50 minute rounds don't work all that well, though, so if we do it at labyrinth again next year we'll just have to try to negotiate a later closing time with them.

finitesquarewell said:

Sounds like you guys just need to move to the midwest, where our gaming stores (like Metagames) are the size of large furniture stores, they change their hours to accommodate our large tournaments, and they don't charge us a penny to play there.

Springfield, MO will gladly accept the relocation of your life