Here's what I've heard from dobbler, longclaw, mathlete, and cha0s concerning the two US regionals that went down today. Big congrats to John Bruno for winning Kubla (he won the joust today; not sure if tomorrow's melee counts for the title), to Wade Freeman for winning Tennessee, and to everyone else who performed well enough to be satisfied with themselves at the end of the day. :-)

Tennessee Regional

-- 13 players total: 4 Baratheon, 3 Martell, 2 Stark, 2 GJ, 1 Lanni, 1 Targ
-- Five games of Swiss, cut to top four
-- Wade Freeman beat Jonathan Benton (longclaw) in the final to win the whole thing
-- Wade was playing a Bara/Wildling deck that included a lot of stealth and ways to stand guys; 4-1 in the swiss
-- Longclaw went undefeated in the Swiss with Martell/Summer, same list as my DC regionals deck

KublaCon/California Regional
-- 30 players total; I hear there were a lot of Lanni, Martell, and Targ decks, but I don't have the exact house distribution
-- John Bruno won with Lanni kneel (no agenda) in what sounded like a fairly epic return to the game
-- Specific decks I know were played by some of the top finishers:

Dobbler played Targ/Summer
Bruno played Lanni kneel (no agenda)
Rings played Lanni/Knights of the Realm (sounded like a typical Rings deck, filled with plenty of Rings-ish, high-impact Lanni events and a wad unique characters)
Cha0s played Martell/Summer
Syd played Stark/Direwolf/Winter
Joey (Joe?) "Brutzlaff clone" with Martell/Summer (some guy who made a point of advertising that he used my DC regionals list and made a few changes to "make it better" -- *chuckle*)

-- The top eight after five rounds of Swiss, loosely reconstructed from what I know:

5-0: Joey "Brutzlaff clone"
4-1: Bruno, Rings, Cha0s
3-2: Dobbler
Syd was somewhere in there, not sure where exactly
Two others, not sure who

-- Elimination rounds:

Quarter-final:
Bruno beat Rings
Dobbler beat Dan
Joey beat ?
Syd beat ?

Semi-final:
Syd beat Dobbler
Bruno beat Joey

Final:
Bruno beat Syd

Wow. I'm impressed by John Bruno. Winning the biggest Regional of the season so far after being back in the game for just a few weeks. Thumbs up! I feel it's adequate to quote "Rambo III" here: "Who do you think is this John Bruno? Is he god?" - "No. God would have mercy. He don't." I guess the win also says something about how viable Lanni Kneel still is.

And Lanni KotR? Interesting. I'd love to hear some thoughts about that one.

Grats to the winners, and especially mathlete - a glorious return to the game indeed. Looking forward to more detailed reports by the participants.

Ratatoskr said:

My guess would be that it involved a bunch of Kingsguard characters. At least that's an idea I had for a Lanni deck.

Congrats to Wade and Mathlete on their impressive wins.

2nd again to Longclaw. I'm sorry, man. Any more planned Regional appearances for you? It's a tough way to go twice without a victory to redeem it.

Nice to see Bara win a Regional Joust, but was it more Bara or Wildlings? That's the decklist I want to see!

Ratatoskr said:

qft.

congrats bruno!

Epic Bruno!!! Congrats!!! ;-)

I’m gathering info and tracking stats for a post-season write up. A few questions (sorry there are so many...any help would be fantastic):

TN
Any idea what Wade’s restricted card was?
What plots did Wade run? (I'm tracking all the plots run by the joust winners during regionals.)
What were the agendas (with house combination) at TN?
What houses/agendas (and players) were in the top 4?

Kubla
Anyone have an exact house/agenda breakdown?
What was Bruno’s restricted card?
What plots did Bruno run?

I know these are tedious, but will be interested once all the data is in (I promise). Thanks in advance!

Twn2dn said:

Why am I hearing Count Rugen's voice?

"So, let's just start with what we have. what did this do to you? Tell me. and remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel?"

Thanks for taking the time to put this together Dan... if we can integrate things with some of things we're hearing from Europe, I think we'll see an overall increase in competitiveness. "The Seed is Strong."

Maester_LUke said:

Twn2dn said:

Here is what I remember from the tourney.

I played a Stark Armies Seige Deck. I made it to the final table but lost in the to Wade.

Round 1

vs Bara Wildlings using both wildling agendas. Pulled off a win after he thought that Lethal Counterattack was Winter is coming. Was 1 of 3 times I heard of a plot phase At the Gates vs Valar occuring in the tourney.

1-0

Round 2

vs Greyjoy Choke using Knights of the Hollow Hill agenda. I managed a great setup and never allowed his choke to take hold.

2-0

Round 3

vs Martell Summer using Summer agenda. This was Longclaw's deck. He played valar on round 5, crippling me into my first loss.

2-1

Round 4

Vs Martell using the Knights of the Hollow Hill agenda. a well timed narrow escape made my opponent empty his hand and that led to the win.

3-1

Round 5

Vs Lanni kneel/trait- using maester's path agenda. I had enough stand tech to keep my armies rolling after being knelt out in the challenges phase. Trait manipulation looks like so much fun, especially when you have a maester black raven that can make any other character a raven and be bounced back into the opponents deck.

4-1

I finished 2nd in the swiss section meaning that i was matched against the Bara Wildlings again. He learned from his mistake the first game and was able to get ahold of my Bolton characters.

House/ agenda look like this from what i can remember

Bara- Knight, Wildling, Whitebook, unknown (i want to say hollow hill)

Martell- 2x summer, hollow hill

Stark- siege, unknown

Greyjoy- Hollow hill, unknown

Lanni- maesters path

Targ- unknown

Top 4 were Bara Wildlings, Martell Summer, Stark Siege, and Bara Knights(i may be wrong on this one).

Sorry for the spotty memory, it was a long weekend with little sleep, but the most fun I had in a long time.

Zombie is correct on the top 4

The Targ deck was Kings of Summer.

Twn2dn said:

1) Wade ran Pyromancer's Cache as his restricted card.

2) Not sure on all the plots but I know he ran Alliance and possibly At the Gates

Anyone have an exact house/agenda breakdown?
What was Bruno’s restricted card?
What plots did Bruno run?

I know these are tedious, but will be interested once all the data is in (I promise). Thanks in advance!

I dont have the exact breakdown but it was about half Lanni, a few Martell, a few Stark, a couple Targ, and I think one Greyjoy and one Bara.

Thanks guys, these are really helpful. Just a recap if anyone knows the rest of the plots in Wade's deck other than Alliance and At the Gates (Wade, care to chime in for posterity's sake?).

Also, if anyone has any info about Kubla...namely, overall (exact) house/agenda representation, Bruno's restricted card and plots, that info would be fantastic.

Thanks!

I will have the exact breakdown for you guys tomorrow. (As soon as Jester gets it to me).

Targ was extremely prevalent in the joust, as was martell and lannister. I think 4 of top 8 was lannister.

The melee was a 4 house final. Greyjoy (me) took first, stark (matt (not rings)) in 2nd, bara (syd) 3rd, and lanny (chaos) 4th.

I will bring more news when i am less exhausted.

phoenixember said:

I dont have the exact breakdown but it was about half Lanni, a few Martell, a few Stark, a couple Targ, and I think one Greyjoy and one Bara.

So I've been playing this game for about 4 months, and my first match up at Kubla was with John. :-( I know that he was running Gates of the Citadel, City of Sin, City of Spiders, and I think City of Soldiers. That's about as far as I got before he beat me. I think I had maybe 3 power on my house card. Anyways it was pretty cool to watch him play, even though I got thrashed by kneel.

Fieras said:

The "Matt" in the Melee was Matt Rogers (from Sactown), not Matt Ley for those wondering which Matt. Melee was the only tourney that I didn't play in. I was too tired from the entire week of staying up late (at home and at Kubla) and needed a break for the day. I don't want anyone to think I had an objection to Melee. I actually planned to play but only had 4 hours sleep and needed a break! I played in two long tournies on Saturday. I won the Joust, which was eight games/rounds altogether and the Chosen Few tourney (three rounds of swiss and two rounds of finals), which finally ended around 1 am?

My Joust-winning deck was a Lannister deck with No Agenda. My 7 Plots were four City Plots (At the Gates, City of Sin, City of Soldiers and City of Spiders), Valar, Fleeing to the Wall and The Red Wedding. My restricted card was going to be the Castellan of the Rock but I changed it Friday night to Pyromancer's Cache. I'll post the full deck and a report Tuesday. I'm with Fieras....too tired!

so who exactly won the regional title in all this? :-)

Melee: Me (Fieras)

Draft: John Bruno (Mathlete)

Regional Championship (Joust): John Bruno (Mathlete)

Chosen Few: John Bruno (Mathlete)

2v2: John Bruno (Mathlete) and Lucas (Syd)

Maester's Challenge: John Bruno (Mathlete)

Fieras said:

So there's no overall champion? Or rather, the overall champion is the joust winner?

Twn2dn said:

My restricted card was Pyromancer's Cache and my plots were:

Valar Morghulis
The Red Wedding
Retaliation!
Lineage and Legacy
At the Gates
City of Soldiers
Alliance

finitesquarewell said:

The other two in the Top 8 were Ram from Los Angeles and Alex from San Diego running different Lannister decks. So the first round in the Top 8 was

Mathlete (Lanni) beat Rings (Lanni knights)

Dobbler (Targ dothraki) beat Danny (Martell)

Joey (Martell summer) beat Alex (Lanni)

Syd (Stark direwolf) beat Ram (Lanni)

....

Kubla was fantasic fun. Great to see players from all the California metas large and small over the weekend and special props to Dobbler, Rings and Wyndwalker to make the long trips just to be out here.

"So there's no overall champion? Or rather, the overall champion is the joust winner?"

No ''overall champion'' prize. The Regional Champion was the Joust Champion.

If you totaled all events combined (we had 5 events (Joust, Melee, Draft [cube+ITE packs], Chosen Few, 2v2) plus the Maester Challenge) the overall champion would have been Mathlete.

Thanks guys, this is really helpful!

I am with the others. I will try to write up something detailed about my matchups and my deck, but I will say that I took 2nd place in the Regional, having the privelage of sitting opposite Mathlete at the final table. I am really happy with my performance...the field out here was incredible this year, and despite all that I had my best showing at Kubla yet. I was running a Stark deck, no Agenda. It was a Season/Direwolf deck with lots of tech designed to counter the favored houses (Martell/Lanni).

I also took first in the 2v2 event with my partner, this new/returning player named Bruno...he did well, for a noob

I took 3rd at the Final Table of Melee, which was a very tough/competitive group of players. I was playing Bara, so I think I was the perceived threat most of the game (despite having no locations and never more than 3-4 characters on the board).

I took 4th overall in the draft event friday night, and 5th overall (after a playoff match) in the Chosen Few event.

So I played in every event, and took a 1st, a 2nd, a 3rd, a 4th, and a 5th place. Call it kismet.

More detailed report to follow. There is some speculation as to how a Stark deck made the final table. The answers are not that exciting, I think I just figured the right kind of deck to bring to this tourney. More to come when I have more time to write.

What a great weekend...

Syd