WARNING!!!! This is a long post! Thanks for indulging me by reading….

I first decided to come back and play this game around the first of the year. I ordered three of every card but never had time to open the cards because of work. In March, I played five games with Deathjester26 (using his decks and not knowing the card pool). Those were the first five joust matches that I played since GenCon 2008. One month later, I was playing in a tourney at a nice little convention in San Diego called KingdomCon. A nameless friend gave a decklist to play (Greyjoy Wildings) and built it and played it. There were a lot of cards in it that I didn’t know and/or feel comfortable with (i.e. what’s this Val cards…she sucks! LOL) so I tweaked it a little to fit what I knew. My tweaks weakened the deck and I went 1-2. I was like “Did you really think that you could come back and play this game?” Sad panda!

Over the course of the next month, I got back into the game and deckbuilding. I built 12 decks. Some were pretty good (Stark Siege with Direwolves, Greyjoy Winter and Lanni kneel) and some that were average or sucked. I even had a very weird, but fun, Neutral Refugee deck that was based on the Chosen Few contest that FFG sponsored. That deck had ZERO good cards in it and it won over 80% of the games that I played with it. I easily played 100+ games with my friends in the L.A. and S.D. metas. I have a great group of guys to play with in SoCal. Also, I’m fortunate enough to have a great group of friends that still play the game to talk shop with too.

Going in to Kubla, I had a Lannister deck that I liked a lot and did really well in SoCal, but I still wasn’t happy with it. I made a Lannister Shadows 63-card deck that I liked, but felt it could be clunky. I played it the two days before the Kubla Regional at Kubla with Matt Ley, Greg Atkinso, Jesse Mariona and other friends. I ended up hating my deck. So….Friday evening, before heading to the draft, I re-vamped the deck. I took out the Shadows Agenda and 16 cards from the deck and added in 13 cards. Then, I took out the Castellans of the Rock for three Pyromancer’s Cache. 19 cards were no longer in the deck that I came to Kubla. I wanted to make the deck more efficient and increase my chances of draw with relying on the shenanigans of manipulating King’s Landing. Then, because the deck was now 60 and every major tourney and/or Regional/Gencon that I’ve played in the past I’ve never run a 60-card deck, I added in Raff the Sweetling for the heck of it. I never used his ability, but he was an old-school, cheap unique guy to add to the deck.

So…before I get to the Joust, I want to thank everyone who made the weekend a blast! Lucas Sydlaske (Syd), Danny Machado (cha0s), John Dietrick (Fieras), Joey Kreins (phoenixember) for running all of the events, and of course, John Kraus (deathjester26) for his Maester Chain Challenge. For those who haven’t seen how you “earn chains” find John’s rules in the Kubla threat. This is the third time that I participated in his Maester’s Challenge and the first time that I actually tried to win it. John ordered a very sweet playmat with “Maester art” for the winner.

So…even more before I get to the Joust, let me tell you about the other events at Kublacon. For those who have never been to or heard of Kublacon, this is a moderately-sized four day convention and thanks to the members of the South Bay, we had six AGOT tourney/events to play in. Please excuse my bragging below, but I performed way better than I expected and was proud to do so well with just five weeks of playing the game after 32 months of hibernation.

#1 – Friday Night Booster Draft with some ‘homemade” Classic put together by Syd. Thank you to the THREE PEOPLE who passed on The Eyrie and those who passed on Under One Banner, Casterly Rock (+ gld & influence) and The Riverlands. I easily counted over 10 gold every turn so I played characters from all six houses! My favorite play was using Storm’s End (win Dominance and get a card in discard pile back) with Robert’s Wine Cellar to steal a character every turn. I finished the event 5-0 (including the finals) and won the draft!

#2 – Saturday morning & afternoon Joust. I won this event with a combined 7-1 record (including the finals). Full report at the end of this long post! Thanks for still reading!

#3 – Saturday Night (after the Joust) Constructed Tourney using the rules of the Chosen Few Contest that used the same rules as FFG’s contest. Make a deck using cards from the Core Set, The Greyjoy and Martell Box Sets, and any one cycle of Chapter Packs. I used King’s Landing and made a Stark Shadows deck. I went 5-0 (including the finals) and won the tourney.

#4 – John Kraus awarded the Maester’s Chain to the person who accumulated the most achievements over the course of the day in the Joust and the Chosen Few tourney. I earned every link (minus 2-3) and won the Maester’s Challenge and a brand-new playmat!

#5 – Sunday morning Melee. I didn’t play in theis event because Melee sucks! Just kidding! I do enjoy Melee, just not tourney Melee. Besides, I was soooo frakkin tired from three very long night of staying until 4 am (or later) and waking up at 8 am. And I just played in two long tournies the night before. Being the smart-ass that I can be, I told everyone that I needed to give other people a chance to win something! LOL. John Dietrick (Fieras) won this event. The one thing that I do hate about Melee is how “hurt” (for those who don’t speak teenager, “hurt” = “have their feelings hurt” LOL) people are after the tourney. It’s just a game people!!!

#6 – Sunday Evening 2 vs.2 Tourney. My partner was Lucas Sydlaske (Syd). We had some very cool synergy in our deck. I ran Targ burn. He ran a Stark Direwolf deck. He ran Winter. When it was Winter, he’d play Threat From the North and I’s play The Winds of Winter. Next turn, we’d alternate. It was a very nasty combo! Anyway, we went 3-0 and won the tourney.

I played in five tournies/events and won them all! I lost one game the entire weekend. Thanks to the people at Kublacon who were very nice to me and let me beat them so I wouldn’t go back into retirement! It was nice to know that this old guy can still play this game a little bit and that I still have a lot of great friends in this game!

Now that the stuff you don’t really care about is out of the way….next comes the Joust tourney report…..

And now....my tourney report!

My deck was a simple Lannister deck that hd a mix of cards. Some people reported it to be a Clansmen deck. Besides the 3x Mountain Refugees, I ran Chella, Timmett and Shagga with ZERO cards that benefited Clansmen. Chella was a studette by bouncing many locations, especially a Golden Tooth Mines with a Pyromancer’s Cache in one game. The best “Clansmen” play was playing City of Sin on a couple of occasions when I knew my opponent had to play Valar. I took initiative, became the first player and knelt my Timmett to keep him from dying. Even though these very cool characters were in the deck, it was not a Clansmen deck. It has also been described as a Trait Manipulation deck. I ran three cards (three copies of Lion’s Gates). Three cards don’t make a deck Trait Manipulation. I would call it Lanni untility. It had kneeling, draw, gold, kill, etc. Just a bunch of everything.

Round #1 – I played Rich Thompson (perpetual noob) running Targaryen Summer. Rich is a fairly new player and actually did well with what he drew. I kept my initial seven cards and flopped three characters (one was Chella) and one Gold Location. Good set-up but I was unhappy with it because there was no card draw. Of course, I never saw any draw cards and was kicking myself for the decision. Anyway, with all of the kneeling (City Plots, Distraction, Enemy Informer), Rich never did many challenges against me. He played Valar early and he never recovered. I won fairly easily. Record Now: 1-0.

Round #2 – I played Danny Machado (cha0s) running Martell Summer. Danny’s deck was very similar to most Martell Summer decks (aka Brutlaff-clone-decks) but I really like the changes he made, one card in particular. I got out to an early start, but once again, my four-card nice start at the beginning of the game produced no card draw and I couldn’t keep up with Danny. I lost in 5-6 rounds. Record Now: 2-0.

Round #3 – I played Brooks Mitchell (thekingg21). Brooks is a very good player and Sactown’s best player. Just like I did, Brooks just came back to game after quitting around the time that I did. Brooks has won Regionals in the past, placed in Top 8 at Gencon and we have faced each other in many Regionals over the years. I have to give Brooks HUGE props for playing the Greyjoy Alliance with Lannister deck. His deck is a very good, cheap, efficient deck using the best of both houses. The +2 gold that it gave me every turn though was a huge advantage for me and I controlled the game from the start. When my Chella took care of his Golden Tooth Mines (with a Pyromancer’s Cache attached), I had big card advantage and won the game on turn 4. Record Now: 2-1

Round #4 – I played Greg Atkinson (Dobbler) running Targ Summer with a very creative and different build. I was able to slowly build a lead while Greg waited for his key card to be drawn. When he finally got the card and played it, he was in great shape. Unfortunately, this card that he wanted to replay with the Plot Regroup on the next turn, was covered up by a two-claim Intrigue challenge that I won. After that, I finished off the game. Record Now: 3-1

Round #5 – I played Alex Esposito from San Diego. Alex was running a Lanni kneel deck with many similar cards as mine. However, he also ran the Maester’s Agenda with all four chains attached. This was close to a mirror match. We had a lot of similar cards but I think my characters were better. Alex had Maester Luwin out on the first turn (as did I with At the Gates). I killed him with A Lannister Pays Its Debts after Luwin had 1 of the 4 chains on him. Later, on a 2-claim intrigue challenge, I pulled two out-of-house (Cressen and I think the other was a Lemonwood) and Alec never played another Maester and still had three chains to remove. I felt that I had the early advantage and would win because of card draw. I had a Golden Tooth Mines with a Pyromancer’s Cache in play along with a King. Unfortunately, Alex played the Lannister traitor and knocked off my location and card draw! Doh! Bastard! LOL On turn 8 (or 9), I was the first player and thought I could push through the victory. Unfortunately, I only ended up with 14. It was Alex’s turn to challenge. He only had Littlefinger available, but Littlefinger won two unopposed challenges, including taking apower of off my house card pushing Alex to 15. Alex considered taking the Collar Chain off to make Littlefinger a master and then putting the second one on him. Had he done this, I would have played Valar the next turn and he wouldn’t have a master to put the final link on. He didn’t move any links and I didn’t play Valar. So, with the score now Alex 15 and me 13, we went another round. I was first player and snuck away with the victory. I was very glad that Alex made the Top 8 too. He ended up with the #8 seed and unfortunately had to play Joey’s undefeated deck. Record Now: 4-1

Quarterfinals - #4 (me) vs. #5 (Matt Ley). Matt was running Lannister with Knights of the Realm. We had very similar decks but I ran the City Plots and he didn’t. We both were drawing three cards a turn by the end of round 1. It was a very even game, but I was ahead of Matt most of the way. My control cards appeared first (Distraction, Dissension, A Lannister Pays its Debts) and I was able to get to 15 first and advance to the semi-finals.

Semi-Finals - #1 (Joey Kreins – phoenixember) vs. #4 (me). Joey was undefeated and kicking ass all day. The most power he gave up in a game to this point was 5! Joey was running a version of Erick Brutzlaff’s Martell Summer deck with a few Plots changed (as far as I could tell). I had a terrible draw and mulliganed. After the mulligan, my amazing flop was….TWO FRAKKIN CARDS IN SHADOWS!!!! I had no characters or locations in play. I was screwed. I had no chance to win this game! Joey got out to a big lead, around 10-0. I tried to kneel his Intrigue characters (with the City Plots) and keep his Intrigue from hitting me. I also tried to keep Maester Luwin standing or a 3-STR intrigue character standing so as not to get killed by A Game of Cyvasse. Joey played most of his hand and I tried to get through a few intrigue challenges to hit his hand more. Joey had made it summer and had three cards left in hand when the key play of the game happened. Joey had two Maesters of the Sun in play. Pre-Plot, I knelt one with You Killed the Wrong Dwarf. So, when I played Valar, he could save only one character. His two best characters in play were Ellaria Sand and Arianne Martell. He chose to save Arianne. I think it was a good choice since she has extra claim built in and I have very characters with Renown in the deck. However, since he was running three copies of Ellaria Sand, it may have been better to save her. Anyway, he saved Arianne by discarding Darkstar from his hand (doh!). I had saved three really good characters in Shadows (two that were there from my initial flop) and had a handful of cards. I was very careful which cards that I played up to this point. On my marshalling, I played Enemy Informer to kneel Arianne and Distraction to kneel Darkstar and he didn’t do a challenge that turn. Next turn I played City of Soldiers and killed Darkstar. After that, momentum was on my side. I turned the game around and came back to win! After my crappy start, I couldn’t believe that I won!

Finals – vs. Lucas Sydlaske (Syd). Luke was running a Stark Direwolf deck without the Siege Agenda. He flooded the board on the flop and the first turn, but didn’t have anything menancing going on. I didn’t have a great start but was never really out of it. I kept hitting Luke’s hand with Intrigue. The key play for me was when Luke made it Winter. The -1 gold never hurt me but hurt him bigtime. Chella bounce a Great Keep and a River Row and Luke could never play either copy of Robb Stark that he had in his hand. Once I played Valar, Luke didn’t have much left to play and the game was mine from there. Amazingly, I had won another Kublacon Regional. I never expected to place in the Top 8, let alone win. The whole weekend was a nice return to the game and gave me the confidence to actually play this game again. I was really worried about coming back and sucking! It was nice to not suck this weekend. LOL

I could not have won without the constant game-playing of my L.A. meta: Ram DeLeon (JediJesus), Jim Kelly (Laughing Tree) and Ben Tully (scarletnite). Big thanks to these guys. Of course, I would never have come back if it weren’t for John Kraus (deathjester26). Big thanks to Johnny. Thanks to the SD meta, especially James Speck (Branson), Alex Esposito and Ryan Jones (ryansd). Great group to play with. Thanks to Matt Ley and Greg Atkinson for all of the games that we played Thursday and Friday and inspired me (though they didn’t know it) to change 25% of my deck. Finally, huge thanks to Jonathan Benton for our conversations and tweaking that helped so much with this deck.

Also, thanks to all of my old friends in this game who have contacted over the last month or so or said something nice or encouraging on the boards. You guys are the reason that I want to play this game again. We have the best gaming community in the World and I’m glad to call many of you friends!

With all of that out of the way….here is my deck….

LANNISTER – NO AGENDA (61 cards)

Plots

At the Gates
Fleeing to the Wall
City of Soldiers
City of Sin
City of Spiders
The Red Wedding
Valar Morghulis


Characters (33)

3x – Mountain Refugee
3x – Carrion Bird
1x – Tommen Barathoen
1x – Lannisport Weaponsmith
1x – Lannisport Councilor
2x – Lannisport Steward
1x – Syrio Forel
1x – Ser Lancel Lannister
1x – Raff the Sweetling
3x – Enemy Informer
1x – Joffrey Baratheon (King of the Seas)
1x – Ser Arys Oakheart
1x – Ser Balon Swann
1x – Mance Rayder (Defenders)
1x – Cersei Lannister (KLE)
1x – Varys (KLE)
2x – Maester Luwin
1x – Qyburn
1x – Ser Jacelyn Bywater
1x – Chella, Daughet of Cheyk
1x – Shagga Son of Dolf
1x – Tyrion Lannister (KLE)
1x – Timmett Son of Timmett
1x – Ser Jamie Lannister (KLE)
1x – King Joffrey’s Guard

Attachments (3)

3x – Pyromancer’s Cache

Locations (14)

3x – Golden Tooth Mines
3x – The Goldroad
3x – Lion’s Gate
1x – Shadowblack Lane
1x – Street of Steel
1x – River Row
1x – Alchemist’s Guildhall
1x – Lannisport Brothel

Events (11)

2x – A Lannister Pays its Debts
2x – I’m You Writ Small
2x – Dissension
2x – Distraction
3x – You Killed the Wrong Dwarf

Thx for the report!!! It was great to read about this great tourney!

A great read, Bruno! I didn't know the details of Alex's last turn. What a close finish! I had a great time hanging out and I'm glad the LA meta is back in full effect. See you Monday for the first league night!

Congrats on the fantastic return to the game! Excellent TR! It's good to see California thriveing again with strong AGOT communities.

Congrats and thanks for this enlightening, exhaustive and entertaining tourney report (see the alliteration there?). That must've been the most triumphant return to any game since Mario Lemieux.

How the hell did you get in 100+ games in little more than a month? You must have a very dedicated meta and a very tolerant wife. I have been playing this game since September, and I have a grand total of 86 joust games under my belt, and that includes OCTGN (yeah, I do keep stats, I'm anal like that). ~No wonder you had to cut cheerleader practice.

And not only did you win the Joust shortly after such a hiatus from the game, you did so with Raff the friggin' Sweetling in your deck. Admit it - you did that just to utterly humiliate and debase your opponents: *thundering voice* "Witness, Brief Mortal - Not Only Can I Swat You And Your Feeble Deck At Will, I Can Even Do So With Raff The Friggin' Sweetling. HawHawHawHaw" */thundering voice*. I shudder at the thought.

Anyway, congrats again. You're my hero now.

A great time, and congrats for doing so well! I still can't believe someone got to 15 on your and lost due to Maester Chains. That is great.

~I just wish our game would have been exciting enough to not be the smallest mention in the article. Next time!

Welcome back, and see you soon at GenCon.

Thanks for the awesome report and congratulations!

rings said:

Congrats, and fantastic tourney report!

Ratatoskr said:

I play for near 2 years and I guess not exceeded 100 games. ~Life sucks.

@mathlete: if you would play now, would you still include Fleeing to the wall? Did Raff the Sweetling help you at all? Great report.

Twn2dn said:

I think that deck, the one that lost with 15 Power because it still had chains on the agenda, mostly had them for the Carrion Crows, Apprentice Collar, Copper Link combo. The deck itself was light on Maester characters, which is why it got stuck right at the end.

Just an aside - my Fleeing really worked well. I never play the card except in big tournies, but it has rarely let me down *shrug* Mathlete didn't get to play it against me (or vice versa).

I beat 2 Targ decks and a Martell deck (Barely: 5-14) in the joust. Both my losses were to Lannister semi-clones. (Rings and Ram).

I felt like there would be a lot of Targ (there was) and I think targ matches up well against my bara deck, so I decided to go with Lanny.

I think with a few tweaks to the lanny deck, it will be pretty good. For starters, pyros cache over castellan is one quick change I can make to improve it. Also, river row needs to go in. Not because its a reducer I need, but because its kings landing. My kings landing shadow draw was shut down in BOTH losses. I lost both Lannister matchups because I lost the draw battle. Overall it seems like a really good deck right now though.

Repeated adulation, good ser... what a return to the game... did you take a big swig of milk (of the poppy) a la the Indy 500? You are the true Maester... when are you gonna grow out your Pycelle beard. ~Or bring back the 'stache.

Curious like the others if Fleeing made a difference in any control on control match-ups. And your choice on Guild Halls with the Castellans, I'm never sure how many of the former I should add, given they are both Limited Responses . I'm sure this will prompt more play from Chella. Love the Timmett v. Valar turn (1st Player Timing FTW)... did you have much luck with Red Wedding? That's a plot I pulled late in my Martell build, with Ellaria and Arianne in my deck.

Looking forward to seeing you at GenCon. Any chance you'll visit Pitt & make it to Origins this summer?

Pokmagok said:

This is exactly what happened. I only had Aemon, Cressen, and Qyburn, and the one Apprentice Collar on the agenda in my deck. With Aemon dead very early and Cressen discarded from an intrigue challenge, my options were very limited. It was either wait to draw Qyburn, or win three challenges in the same turn, since I knew he had a Valar. The best opportunity I had was when John was knelt out except for a Lannisport Counciler, and I had Jaime (core), a Weaponsmith, and a Castellan. Had I done it right, I would have won all three challenges and gotten every link off. However, I made the mistake of not intriguing first. John had 1 or 2 cards in hand, and I sent both the weaponsmith and Jaime (non kneeling even though I didnt need to, it would have been UO anyway) on a military challenge. John then played A Lannister Pays his Debts and killed Jaime, and my ability to win 3 challenges in the turn. It was a great match, one of the best I've played in.

Congratulations on the win(s)! Excellent report -- I really appreciate the deck list at the end. It helps us lesser mortals learn more about deck-building from the champions. [Also glad to hear you are coming back, I've lurked off and on for many, many years and thought you always had excellent insight on the game and deck-building in general.]

Maester_LUke said:

~Mathlete is clean shaven, since he says 'the lack of drapes matches the lack of carpet'.

Just an aside, I thought Ram's deck wasn't really very close to Mathlete's and mine, but I didn't have a close up view - his seemed to have a ton of kneeling effects. Mathlete's had a moderate amount of kneel, and mine barely any. While as similar as any Lanni decks are going to be, they were also pretty different in playstyles (kneeling compared to direct control).

True story though - one of the reasons I like playing Lanni is due to many of their locations having the King's Landing trait - makes things more difficult for those people running King's Landing.