first of all i want to thank everyone who deserves a spanking... i mean thanking. thanks to Clu (who also may or may not deserve a spanking) for being awesome. your consistent level of dedication to the players and the community is always inspiring to me. thanks for putting up with me and the ffg folk as well as putting us up for 2 nights. thanks for the food and the beer and a place to commune before the joust on saturday. thank you's go out to everyone who came in from out of town. there are too many of you to make sure i remembered all of your names so i will just say it was great that you took the time to attend. thank you to all the local players who rolled out the red carpet for us as well. a big thanks to the crew at critical hit games for staying open late and for opening early for us ne'erdowells and for making us feel at home. thanks also to the shiek for the green "pyromancer's piss" salsa and chips and to whomever brought the chocolate bars. thanks to nate french for driving and thanks go out to him and damon stone for being great company on our trip down and up.

my deck:

house : greyjoy

agenda : the maester's path

restricted card: fear of winter

plots :

a time for ravens x1

at the gates x1

the power of arms x1

the winds of winter x1

valar morghulis x1

retaliation! x1

fear of winter x1

characters:

alannys greyjoy x1

carrion bird x3

craster x1

distinguished boatswain x3

island refugee x3

leyton hightower x1

maester aemon (core) x1

mance rayder (TWoW) x1

tarle the thrice-drowned x1

theon greyjoy (KotSea) x1

wex pyke x1

wintertime marauders x3

the hound x1

randyl tarly x1

asha greyjoy x1

oldtown scholar x2

samwell tarly x1

euron crow's eye (ASoSilence) x1

locations :

aeron's chambers x1

gatehouse x3

longship iron victory x2

river blockade x1

river row x1

shadowblack lane x1

street of sisters x1

street of steel x1

the citadel of oldtown x2

the iron mines x3

events :

paper shield x3

beware the sphinx x3

attachments :

apprentice collar x2

copper link x2

horn of dragons x2

white raven x3

pale steel link x1

burned and pillaged x3

to be continued...

so, you may be wondering, what is the deck supposed to do. well, it is ultimately a mix between winter choke and trait manipulation from maesters. the plan was turn 1 to go grab maester wendamyr with at the gates to have a maester that could stick around almost indefinitely based on his save and all the other save i have in the deck. generally i would need to wait to see if my opponent would make it summer or if i drew into anything winter based to play the white ravens. an early pale steel link provides a good way to jump in a white raven when needed and the copper link gave me trait manipulation for the carrion birds and horn of dragons. once it was time to drop the winter hammer and burned and pillaged, i could then do more nasty things particularly with ASoR Mance to make their locations kingdom locations (if they were not already) and take control of them with mance. wintertime marauders were just gravy to pull attachment/character/location control duty. the best way to accomplish these goals, i found, was making alannys greyjoy a maester with the apprentice collar and giving her the copper link. with that set up i could at any action window kneel her at 4 strength (with the help from the apprentice collar) to discard a card from my opponents hand and trait something to be used later on in the phase. with cheep and strong characters i would then take advantage of my 4 claim 2 plots and my saves were right where i needed them when valar morgullis was played.

on with the tourney...

round 1: Goshdarnstud will have to help me out on this one because i left my notebook in nate's car when we got back and it had all my opponents names and info, but i am pretty sure it was one of his meta mates (i think his name was david?) playing Targ Summer agenda.

i was super confident in my machups against summer. with my winter tech/resource denial i was set up well to combat it. this one was mine all the way. i had the horn of dragons turn two with my opponent playing with the 3 new dragons. when i wasn't taking those i was hitting him with alannys for a card and then a claim 2 intrigue. first turn he made it summer and turn two i made it winter and dropped horn of dragons. it wasn't long before he needed to valar. valar came and went leaving me with 3 characters to his one (thanks to iron mines/wendamyr/citadel of oldtown). he tried to make a push with pyat pree late game, but at that point i had the copper link and horn of dragons out and there wasn't much to do about it.

1-0

round 2: Tim Peterson playing Martell Summer agenda

going into the this weekend i was terrified to face another martell summer deck. thankfully i got a friendly game in with luke reed on friday night wherein i asked him to play his lcg days deck against my new greyjoy/maesters. we went 6 plots and i feel like i controlled most of the game (which is strange to say when it comes to greyjoy vs. martell) and ended up winning. i came into this mach-up with high spirits knowing my winter tech and trait manipulation had worked in the recent past. tim's deck seemed to be the type of deck i saw four of at lcg days (the top 4, that is) so i generally knew what to expect. i wasn't wrong either. cyvasse and burning were there to confound me. he threw a few cards back to my hand but it wasn't enough to stop my income denial and once i locked in winter and won a few intrigue challenges + alannys. he was just down to top decking one card a turn. in the end i got him in about 6-8 plots (that game was just a blur to me). anyways, first two rounds, two summer decks, two wins.

2-0

round 3: Brian G. playing Lannister Beric/Infamy with The White Book as his agenda.

once i saw beric with devious intentions i knew the only way i was going to win was to get rid of devious with a marauders or steal beric with the horn of dragons. that.... didn't happen. ^__^ the play of the game for him was playing let my porridge fly to dump my copper link from wendamyr (~seriously, who plays that plot???). after that it was his game to lose. winter tech didn't put a big enough dent in his massive income and he was out drawing me by two cards a turn with two pyromancer's caches. i dragged the game out to 8 plots, but in the end i didn't have enough stealth to keep his beric from claiming unopposed, renown and an additional power with flaming sword. this was by far the best game i had all tournament. props to brian for playing a hell of a game (and tournament).

2-1

round 4: Josh Staton Playing Stark Boltons

i find that the problem with boltons isn't that you lose them to your opponent for losing a challenge its the deck almost makes you overextend. by the end of the second round josh must have had 7 characters on the board with an average strength of 4. thankfully he didn't have out enough intrigue to stop me from running in and dumping a couple of two claim random cards from his hand. once i had him top-decking. i valar'd and after saving was left with winter mance with a collar and a copper link on him. over the next two turns i was able to kill what he put on the table thanks to fear of winter, as well as steal his only income with mance + copper link. he conceded round 7 with his reset being wildfire assault and not valar.

3-1

round 5: Jessie "Complord" playing Targ Dothraki

i wasn't sure what to expect from complord's deck when we sat down to play. it was straight targ so my assumption was that there was no summer based dirtiness. it didn't end up mattering much. my deck moved faster than it had all day after a HUGE mistake on turn one. the first challenge phase i ended up going first due to complord's retaliation and made it winter with the white raven. i was so busy screwing with my chain attachments and setting up my winter tech that i didn't notice that he had a blood-crazed screamer on his side of the board. after i finished my challenges i had no military icon left standing. he whacked me for two, two claim military challenges. thankfully wendamyr was out with a citadel of oldtown and an iron mines. with left us sitting in a relatively even state after turn one. from there the burned and pillaged played out with a beware the sphinx for some fresh cards and multiple claim two turns for me. he just couldn't come back from lack of income.

4-1

cut to top 8...

the rankings were as follows:

1 - Eric "Finitesquarewell" playing Lannister with the Maester's Path Agenda

2 - Jeramiah "Shives McShivers" playing Greyjoy Wildlings (both agendas)

3 - Nick "The Nick-ler" (me) playing Greyjoy Maester's Path

4 - Tim Lyons playing Lannister

5 - Tim Peterson playing Martell Summer Agenda

6 - John Pauly playing Baratheon Shadows Agenda

7 - Brian "Goshdarnstud" playing Lannister Infamy-Beric

8 - Adam "Shiek" playing Martell Brotherhood Agenda

Quarter Final Matches:

Eric Defeated Adam

Jeramiah Defeated Brian

Tim Peterson Defeated Tim Lyons

Round 1 of Top 8: John Pauly playing Baratheon Shadows

i knew this was a bad match-up for Pauly and so did he. first came the winter raven then two burned and pillaged and in a shadows deck, no gold means no shadows. i actually had it where he received no gold to marshal characters with for two straight turns. i also played fear of winter at the same time he played city of shadows so he could only put one card into shadows. it was a brutal game that ended turn 4 or 5.

5-1

meanwhile the other games were still going strong. i had to sit and watch Brian and Shives play for an hour and a half! neither of them could do much but beat their heads against eachothers wall of strength and stealth. no offence intended to Brian, but i was hoping Shives would win. he and i played two games before the tourney started and i rolled him twice without much complication and i had already lost once to Brian, so i know he could beat me. after all is said and done, Shives emerged victorious which meant...

Round 2 of Top 8: Shives and his greyjoy/wildling deck of doom!

i have played against this deck more times than any other deck at this regional. Shives borrowed the deck idea from Nate French. i routinely play against Nate at the FFGEC in Roseville MN. i couldn't beat the deck. ever! of course that was when i tried to beat it with my targ burn deck i was working on for lcg days. i can only blame myself for nate's addition of the +1 strength agenda as the first time we played i almost beat him with my burn deck. after the +1 there was no contest again that i came close to defeating nate and those pesky wildlings. that is, until now. i had already beaten it twice today in casual play and planed to repeat my play from those previous wins. alas all good things must eventually come to an end. i got over zealous and times for raven's to grab a winter raven plot one. Shives made me go first. my marshaling i made it winter with a wintertime marauders and some other winter tech. Shives turn to marshal... a black raven! NNNNNOOOOOOOO! because i had already used my raven search i just had to hope to draw into another which didn't happen. his locations multiplied in front of my very eyes thanks to out of house dirtiness and the refurbished hulk. he dumped characters out and pushed with rise of the kraken turn 4 or 5 to dash my hopes of getting to the finals.

5-2 overall, 3rd in joust.

as you all have probably already seen, Eric beat his meta mate Tim Peterson in the semi's and controlled the wildlings out for first place in the Joust.

~ do you wanna maybe let someone else win this regional season Eric? ;-). Congrats on regional win #3. you are at the top of your game ser and with a deck you literally threw together 30 minutes before the tourney started because you forgot your Martell deck at home. as a matter of fact, i hear he also won the melee held this afternoon.

i will leave it to those in the know to post house/agenda/restricted card distributions. all i can say is i did wwwwwaaaaayyyyyyyy better than i thought i would. again thank you to everyone who made it and i hope to see you all again in a week down in Springfield!

now if you will excuse me, i need to go call Kenny Loggins............

Because i'm in the DANGER ZONE!

*edit* round one of qualifying i played against michael hantsch. *edit*

Good job, Nick. Congratulations and props for representing us MN meta folks down there in Iowa with a strong showing. Good luck in MO!

The Nick-ler said:

Yes, 'twas I who suffered the wrath of your mighty Allanys Greyjoy.

But seriously, Allanys was an absolute all-star for you against me, although being choked out of summer didn't help either. Your deck was sharp and you played it very well. Congratulations on your excellent tournament.

Thanks for the report, and grats for the strong showing with a creative Greyjoy deck.

Big props man... I'm happy I didn't play you yesterday. Friday night was beating enough, though my newly svelte Targ deck might have been more of a fun match up.... Save from Flame-Kissed, *******.

The Nick-ler said:

I'm suddenly curious, since the Pale Steel Link is a "put into play" affect, does it avoid the White Raven's "and discard all other Raven attachments from play" text?

The Nick-ler said:

qft.

The Nick-ler said:

Coming ASAP... and as for Springfield, I will look for you ser, on the Trident... er, rather at Metagames. >

The Nick-ler said:

ROTFL... and going to look at Zeiler's facebook avatar.

Maester_LUke said:

Why would it? The Raven attachments don't specify "After you play ..."

Congrats on the top 3 finish! Great TR explaining both decklist and results. Good luck this weekend in MO.

Grats on the finish and great TR Nickler, I actually have been playing a slight variation of this very deck on OCTGN after I saw you post it on CardgameDB (with fear of winter added just like you did) it's quite the beast. If you get a good flop you can just completely control the match, it's a very brutal deck!

Only a third of the cards in the current CP cycle are out, and we're already seeing Maester based decks doing exceedingly well at tournaments. Things might be getting not pretty.

Yup, maesters is going to bet nasty! Great TR Nick and well played through out the day. always a pleasure hanging out with you during tourney season!

Great TR - wish I could have seen the GJ Maesters go ballistic!

Congrats on a cool deck and a well-played tourney.

Nick, congratz on such a great finish and thanks for posting the tourney report.

Also, congratz to the Iowa regional for getting 28 for their Joust tournament. Thats a wonderful turnout with only Kublacon exceeding it in attendance in the States. I really wish I could have gone!

Thanks for the post Nick. It was great to meet you in person even if we didn't have the opportunity to face each other across the table.

Chris