As some of you know, I have been working on an unofficial newsletter for AGOT, and I have (finally) finished the first issue here: http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/thrones-times.html/_/thrones-times-v1/

In this 4-page issue:
• 2011 Regionals results, including the 10 US winners, house representation by region, and plots used by this year’s champions
• Strategy articles and “Dear Ktom,” a section inspired by “Dear Abby” (Ktom, if you read this, I hope you like it!)
• Guest articles by Greg Atkinson and Kevin McCoy
• Upcoming events info
• And more!

I’m not sure how regular this newsletter will be…probably only 2-3 times a year, if I can find the time. I hope everyone finds the statistics, strategy, and guest articles as interesting as I have.

If you have comments/suggestions, or if you would be interested in writing for an upcoming issue (either someone after GenCon or in the fall/early winter), please respond to my CardGameDB blog here http://www.cardgamedb.com/forums/index.php?/blog/10/entry-53-thronestimes-issue-1/.

I hope to have a more formal feedback space soon, but I will try to check these comments fairly regularly in the meantime.

OK, it looks like you can comment on each issue separately. For this first issue, please post any constructive criticisms, suggestions for content, etc. here: http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/thrones-times.html/_/thrones-times-v1/regionals-edition-vol-1-june-2011-r1

Thanks!

No mention of the melee or overall winners?

Also, it looks like some of the percentages aren't in the PDF for the "By the Numbers" section.

Very interesting to see an actual breakdown on the top plots! Lol, I wish we'd had this info broken down nicely for us as we recorded 2C1C and talked plots after Regionals season. It would have been very useful.

Per the Opinion piece, item 4- "Allow organic, creative solutions to form"

If the decision was made based on playtest feedback, I think it's worth acknowledging that the playtesters are doing their duty then. No game is perfect, but I've read many complaints on the board here (and made some myself) about card X, Y, or Z being broken and no one understanding how it made it out of playtesting. This time, things swung the other direction and likely playtesters working in the "Future, Future League" to crib a term from M:tG saw situations that the greater community wasn't privy to at the time. Should the cards have been allowed to do their thing for a few months until those situations came up publicly? That's a tough call- by waiting, you swing the pendulum back the other way. *shrug* Overall, it wasn't optimally done, but I personally rest easier knowing that it likely means the playtesters and R&D are cracking down to try to keep a closer watch on things.

All in all, it was a great read! I'm very much looking forward to seeing this continue.

I am really impressed, great job.

With regards to what Kennon said (and hopefully not hijacking the thread here) concerning The Laughing Storm/Heir To The Iron Throne, I do agree with the designers. Yes, it robs the community of being able to competitively play a bunch of bossery all together out of Bara, and yes that disappointment probably made people go "bara doesn't have the chops" so people didn't run it. I do agree with their decision even in light of this; being on the restricted list or Targ only doesn't stop you from playing hyper rush builds in casual play just for the fun of it, so you can still experience the play you waited 6 months for. What it does is curve down the amount of community rage. Consider the following oversimplified alternate reality:

Every "Aggro" player (or player who sees the Bara Hyper Rush as the best option) plays the new power rush build. This gets all the control players mad. Then, after regionals or some amount of time they put the cards on the restricted list just like they were always going to. Now all the rush players are mad. So you have a whole community that is mad. Doing it this way gets the same end result, with less hurt feelings. I am sure they did it for a reason. I'll play it in casual play, matched up against my Raiders.

Anyways, amazing article. I really liked the questions for ktom part about Paper Shield too.

Belated Pre-Script, after seeing MF's post: Great job Dan... we've always needed a broadsheet for the game. Blogs are nice but this was shiny.
Kennon said:

It would seem that this is primarily directed at the Joust game, or as mathlete put it, "the only game that matters." I don't think anyone doubts the enjoyment or fun that can be had from melee, (well, except for rings) but for many people the de facto winner will always be from the joust. <see "A Knight's Tale.">

Kennon said:

This sounds like a good submission as a "letter to the editor," as I'm guessing this is going to be read by people that don't necessarily come to these boards.

I don't know if you were part of the playtesting group at the time, and/or if you had a voice in the decision, but I'm inclined to agree with Kevin in this instance. I don't know if it was ever clarified or explained that the Agenda was originally meant to have the "House only" text, it was supposed to have been added during playtest and didn't get it before printing, or further playtesting with newer cards while still pre-release (much like The Blackfish wasn't supposed to be House Stark only... but it's a legacy of evolution). IMHO, what's the worst that could happen had the 2.3 errata waited six weeks, until after regionals? Saltcliffe's abuseable combo wasn't out yet, most TO's wouldn't have let Drogo's Tent schenanigans happen (and really, does anyone think _that_ would have decided games), Martell & Lannister would have had to kneel or bounce TLS to discard cards <I'm not claiming it's not undercosted, but that it's manageable, and might still deserve restriction> _and_ more people would have chosen (been forced, in some people's parlance?) to play Baratheon? Was Bara (GJ?)/ Heir to the Iron Throne deck so strong that none could resist it? Would it have been more dominant than Lannister in previous years? More prevalent?

I never did experiment pre-errata, so I can't speak from my own experience, but I've heard knowledgeable players suggest that one-turn wins were possible, even probably in a tourney, but not likely in a given game. I'm assuming, given any number of codicils regarding skill of the respective player, the actual quality of the deck-builds, the relative strengths of the starting hands/flops/re-draws, and inherent balance in "match-up" between the rush deck and it's opponent house/build, that it was likely Bara would have been strong (winning percentage/presence in the top 4/8), dominant (actual regional wins), and prevalent (played by a larger percentage of the whole field). But I don't think it would have been any "worse" than the situation in the game's history (Lanni @ 1st GenCon, Targ at it's most burninating, Martell in this years Regional season).

I will agree with the author's perspective that a bias can be seen in the game against rush, but I don't necessarily think that's invalid. The potency of rush is more difficult to balance than agendas, and they seem to be of particular interest right now. How often do you want someone to get the first turn win... or how frequently should they be able to win turn two. Can the decks win after turn three? A lot of this comes down to a person's play style. Do you like the NPE of the game being over if 2 turns if you couldn't manage to _stop_ your opponent's headlong-flying-leap-off-a-cliff-to-victory? Is that any worse than the I'm-locked-on-turn-3-but-I-have-to-wait-another-half-hour-to-lose situation, even if you'll be going through the motions of playing characters and claiming a few power, without a real chance at turning the game. In general, the history of this game has favored the later, and I know my playstyle has grown to enjoy and accomodate (or was it the reverse of that?). I don't particularly like being on the losing end of either, and I generally avoid offering a concession in the later case, even if it gets us back to playing a second competitive match, if only because I know how much _I_ like being the spider toying with the prey in my web.

Historically, we've had Lannister, Targaryen, Targaryen, Lannister/KotR, Martell/Treaty-Baratheon, Targaryen/DotN, Greyjoy/Winter, and Lannister/(did Alec have an agenda?) as champions in Joust, and none of them could rightly be considered Rush... the may not all have been classical control builds, but kneel, burn and discard (aToS Loras, Wintertime Marauders) were prominent across the spectrum. You can make the claim that most of the "best" players (read: most techinically skilled) have a preference for control, since it's more dependent on drawing the game out (not to mention drawing cards), where in-game decision is going to have more opportunities to determine the outcome than the precise content of the deck, which is a much greater determinant of whether a rush deck has the pieces to win ASAP.

In the end, I don't see how a Rush-heavy regional season would have been deleterious, other than pushing some people out of their comfort zone, and perhaps having a few more wild cards win the tournies. Arguably, the first round bye at GenCon isn't terrible important for the good players to reach the cut (I wonder what percentage of out-rounds at GenCon are composed of players who finished #2-#4 at a regional?). The errata would have come anyway, and players would have seen the "Doom" that might have threatened otherwise, rather than complain that they didn't see the need. At worst, the playtesters and developers could always have gotten a notarized letter stored with an accounting firm to be opened on June 15th that said, "See, I told you so."

Yeah, I probably started a whole thread derail there, which wasn't quite what I meant to do.

Also, if you'd like to keep up the newsletter at something like... say a quarterly release schedule, I'd sure love to help in any way I could.

Maester_LUke said:

*shrug* I think that the melee game is worth discussing and analyzing as well. For instance, Baratheon and Greyjoy typically have much better showings in melee than joust. Is this something we should acknowledge? Perhaps a couple houses in the game are just more and better geared toward melee, much like Lannister and Martell seem weighted and geared toward their usually strong joust showings. I would say that there's a decent argument to be made that this is an acceptable method of reaching a semi-varied metagame (though of course, all houses being roughly equally strong in both formats would be the ideal).

@Kennon...

On "overall champions": Yeah, I thought about doing this. I finally decided to go joust only for several reasons. First, all the regionals had joust events, so we were really comparing apples to apples here. Second, quite a few houses aren't represented well in melee, whereas for the most part, all make joust appearances. Third, I didn't have all the figures for melee, and this would have been a bit of extra work (in the interest of time, I wanted to get something up sooner). Finally, I personally still prefer joust...though from a reader perspective, this is not a selling point. Since this was a volunteer thing though, I figured I'd stick with what I like

All this said, I may do the "overall champion" in the future and find a way to incorporate melee into some of the stats. I'm reluctant to include melee in the "By the Numbers" or any of the stats other than simply listing the winners though, since there tends to be a lot less variety in melee.

On "missing stats": I think you may have misread this (though my fault)...the houses that don't have stats next to them are the same as the one above. I tried to avoid repeating % for multiple houses, as I thought this would be hard on the eyes. If this was confusing though, maybe I'll just write the stats next time or find some other way to represent this.

Helping with future issues: This could be a big help. I'm not sure yet how you'd be most helpful, but likely just gathering data. It takes me some time to layout all the graphics, make sure all the text breaks properly, etc., but I don't think that's something anyone can help with. I'm expecting to GenCon to be a bit easier in terms of getting data, because at least I would get it all from the same place. Also, finding authors could be helpful too. In fact, as we get closer, I may ask if you can solicit a few article ideas from listeners of the 2 Champs and a Chump podcast, or even just ask around. It wasn't that hard to find content this time around, but it might not always be so easy.

Thanks!

Great newsletter. I love stats and so that part was right up my alley. However for Minnesota you had Bara highlighted as the joust winner. Considering I just netdecked Luke's deck for pre-GenCon play testing, I'm pretty sure I grabbed the Martlel house card.

I don't think this is a thread derail at all kennon. We are probably going to see more diuscssion fo the newsletter here than at a competing site. Many people frequent just these boards, and they certainly have the widest exposure. i know that i am not creating an account for a game on multiple platforms and will restrict my comments on the newsletter to psotings here at the Main forums.

That being said: great newsletter. all the content was well rpesnted and enjoyable and i agree with Luke - blogs are Ok, but a correlated, data rich site liek this will be very helpful.

Kpmcoy's article really shone. He summed up well the point of view for many players who were offended by FAQ 3.2 And Luke's follow up post sumamrizes my thought and feelings really well. Very well written and rpesented luke. i'llonly add that my anger was priamrily that concenring Laughing storm and that the community wasn't abel to settle what had been an intense and lengthy theoretical debate. It had never been done before - never had a spiled card (and a champion's card no less) been throttled before it actually had seen play. Passions had run high - but there was no resolution in play. We were cheated of teh chance to see if the card was as dangerous as soem were suggesting. i perosnally doubt to this day that TLS woudl ahev ahd a signifcant impact on the 2011 Regionals. i am rpetty confident that Martell summer and Lannister kneel woudl still ahev done disproportionatley well and teat GJ winter would have started to dominate second half. But we'll never know - becuase the decison was made FOR us, not by play results and it set a troubling precedent.

Heir was never as a big a deal and should be treated separtely formt eh TLS issue. In melee, this coudl ahve been a problem and with fear restricted, i don't think anyone was really up in arms about it going to hosue Targ only - despite the misunderstanding fo this position by several posters. Teh issue was TLS, compunded by the months long debate preceding his release, and the pre-emptive way it was handled. It does feed a perception on design bias, and I think the harm it has done far outweighs any good. Tahnks to KpmCoy for stating the argument so clearly.

I loved the newsletter - thanks!!!

~I think they concentrated on Joust because it is popular, and not just played to get the overall champ title Although, having total newbies win a few regional melee titles does show that it is the better format for...um...something. (I just like getting Kennon worked up - I hope he wins a Joust title soon so he can stop acting like he loves Melee so much and it is skill-based)

I don't mind the conflicting side on TLS and the restricted list, but some of the 'logic' is a bit flawed. The part about the champ card especially - the restricted list just came out and there are only X number of champ cards even available, and I don't think one person would say any of the others are remotely as generically powerful. Some of the other points I certainly see, although I thought it was a good regional season...~I thought Stag Lord was done talking about it?!?

goshdarnstud said:

Ah crap, not sure how that happened...well, I actually suspect it had to do with all the cut/pasting I did of the shading boxes, which actually isn't text shading...I had to create a separate grey box for each of those and then position it behind text. (Tedious business, and done at 2am can result in a few errors...darn!) At least I got it correct on page 1!

Let me know if anyone sees anything else. I'm probably already driving Darksbane crazy with all my requests for new web pages, re-uploading newsletters, etc. (I'll give people a little while, and then shoot to post a revised version sometime this evening or tomorrow.)

Kennon said:

This is a very good point. Since most folks here focus on joust as the main game (great reference to "A Knight's Tale" BTW) we openly acknowledge Martell as the top house. However, when was the last time that Martell won a major melee event? Maybe there was one recently that I'm missing but there aren't many if there is one. Flip that to Greyjoy and it swings that other way. Just food for thought.

rings said:

Yeah - well, y'know. ~ Obviously i'm still not over it.

rings said:

How many Melee titles were won by newbies (that were part of a championship)? I can think of 1. The Melee title in MN was won by Kennon. The Melee title in Iowa was won by Butzlaff. Neither of them are newbies.

And its not like a Joust title or two over the years haven't also been won by newbies.

*Sigh*, the melee bashing starts to get old after a while. Seriously, there are GoT Metas where all they play are Melee. I heard from people in California and people in Oklahoma where they are Melee only metas.

Most people consider Erick Butzlaff one of the best players in the game. He has never won a Joust championship at Gencon. But his skills shine in both the Joust and Melee formats, and as such he has walked away with the overall championships the last two years.

Dobbler said:

Seriously though, the skill requirements were not one of the factors in me deciding to include melee/joust stats in this issue. The fact is, there is very little deck variety in melee, and even when houses are different, the strategy is all pretty much the same...rush to get power. Of course, the gameplay is different based on whether it's Baratheon or Martell, but at the end of the day, both are probably running Power of Blood and a handful of other plots. Even the prettiest charts of very predictable stats wouldn't be all that interesting to most readers. Until the community as a whole feels differently about melee, or until there's enough deck variety to support truly interesting articles, it's hard for me to justify focusing this niche publication's content on an even smaller group of people.

All that aside, there are areas where I probably could/should have incorporated melee. For example, at regionals that had an "overall champion" based on joust + melee, I'll likely list that person as the "winner" rather than just listing joust winners. I didn't do it this year, because it would have taken a few extra hours to get the data, and then double check with all the hard-to-reach metas/organizers about related stats. Another idea is an article that compares a house's joust vs. melee personas could be pretty interesting. (Kennon, if you're interested, I may ask if you'd like to write that for GJ.) So while there is room to move in this direction, I didn't feel it would be *as* interesting to most readers.

Hope that doesn't offend anyone...that's just my guess about the audience.

Twn2dn said:

I read the newsletter and enjoyed it, Twn2dn (aside from the error about what house won joust MN, which has already been caught by Goshdarnstud, I believe). I am your target audience.

Not to bash, because I know there are many who enjoy it, but I don't have much interest in melee from a competitive standpoint. I enjoy playing it for fun mind you, but not competitively.

Thanks for your efforts on behalf of the community. I look forward to your next issue, whenever that may be.

Dobbler said:

Oh, I do it mainly to kid. I will just remind you that Melee attendance before they changed the rules always ran at about 33% of the Joust. *shrug* If you like it, more power to you *shrug* Won't stop my from shying away from it, and it won't get people talking about it any more (look at the threads below this one...how many talking about Melee card power levels again? ~Or did I miss the thread asking for more powerful Martell melee cards?).

Erick is considered one of the best players...because he is good. His record in Joust in major tourneys shows that. Do you think Nate isn't good because he never won? Doubtful. ~I don't think Erick would enjoy you saying he is only considered good because of his Melee record (although I don't want to put words in his mouth).

first off,

Now, what Dobbler was saying is that Erick is good because he wins at both, not just joust. He is definitely not saying Erick is bad at joust. He is saying winning a melee championship is just as hard, I think harder personally, than winning a joust championship. Rings, I know you hate melee. Maybe deep down you look at it and see the blackness the fellowship saw within the balrog, stretching out like black wings to touch the walls of the chamber they were in as it stood on the mouth of the bridge of khazad-dum. The best player in the world* is Erick because he is consistently at the top. If you came in second in every major tournament, you would be the best player in the world (unless the same person was beating you in every final). And I am not just standing up for Dobbler because he butchered my name like he was carving steak fresh out of the side of a cow last 2C1C.

Melee and joust are a different game. They are. Lets all accept that and move on. I feel like a babysitter. If I won a regional melee I would be jacked. If you told me it "didn't count" because it wasn't joust afterwards, I'd either laugh at you or sucker you. Nobody here is bashing the joust, we are not. As for melee attendance, thats probably because people don't like to be in control. If your playing to win, you don't want to lose because someone decides to screw you over for the fun of it even if it won't help them. People don't like that. If you accept it as part of what your doing, and learn to deal with it and avoid it and do it when you have to, melee can be fun. If you are against it from the get go, your going to have a bad time. That might have something to do with the attendance.

I like both. They are different. Build a different kind of deck, play a different kind of game, and enjoy it. Just because someones better at one than the other doesn't make them a crappy thrones player. We all just need to hug this out.

See you on the field of honour, I will be the guy losing games with Raiders allied to... wait for it... neutral house. amidoingitright?

*excluding myself

Since the quote feature here blows so badly....

@Twn2dn- Again, I don't want to belittle your work. I think it's a fantastic starting point. But in regards to melee coverage and variety, I really think you've got a good case of self fulfilling prophecy at work. Without coverage taking a look at the top table at each of the Regional melee events, how do we know that there isn't any variety? What about the plots in joust? Was the breakdown chart a surprise to anyone at all? Or decktypes? Everyone is running control of one kind or another. Does that mean there wasn't variety or that the builds themselves don't matter?

Off hand, I recall that the final table with me at MN consisted of Dobbler (Lannister/ White Book, which was actually all about Beric with infamy and a ton of trait manipulation to remove or steal opposing power characters), Nickler (Lannister/ White Book- appeared to have some of the same trait manipulation but also some way cool plot shenanigans that I thought were pretty brilliant.Who actually last saw a Rookery used?), Clu (Baratheon/ KotHH? I don't remember much other than it certainly wasn't standard rush. Recursion and Location destruction as I can recall), and myself (Greyjoy/No Agenda- closest to a straight rush deck at the table, though I had no copies of Power of Blood at all and instead was mainly focusing on the replacement effects of Holy characters and saves for card advantage as well as Power of Faith for explosive turns.

In MO the final table consisted of Darryl (Lannister/ No Agenda?- This felt like more of a Lannister good_stuff.dec. A little kneel here, a little trait manipulation there, kind of a jack of all trades), Kevin (Greyjoy/No Agenda- essentially netdecked my winning Greyjoy Holy build with a couple slight tweaks like including Thoros of Myr), Dobbler (Targaryen/ KotHH- This was a total burn control deck. I watched several times as he took out multiple characters on all sides of the board on multiple turns. I sure don't recall any rush aspects, just powerful, powerful group removal), and myself (Greyjoy/No Agenda- again, same deck as MN).

Those sound like some pretty varied tables to myself, though I can't speak to what the final table at Iowa consisted of. Sure, you could argue that there were two Greyjoy Holy builds at MO, but I don't see anyone out there arguing that Luke's Joust win in MN isn't "really" worth anything since all he did was copy Finite's deck and make a couple tweaks (not that I do think that at all, Luke. ) or that the joust metagame isn't worth analyzing because everyone is just off running some kind of control and probably out of Martell anyway.

@Rings- *shrug* You're still conveniently overlooking the fact that there were not equal rewards for playing in melee for YEARS. There's a precedent set there that's quite unforunate. In fact, the first Melee winner that was promised a card, has still never gotten to design one. (Props to Andrew or Charlie. Crap, it's been long enough now that I forget which of you it was.) Remind me to start scheduling our regionals here with joust on Friday evening with no official prizes and Melee as a full day extravaganze on Saturday with all the prize support and the only points necessary for the Regional title. I'm curious what that will do to attendance.

@General Audience- It just irks me to tell any players, and in particular winners of premier events that "You don't matter," be it overtly or covertly. Regardless of whether or not I won an event like I did this year, I think it's pretty poor character as a community for us to do that to people. I don't see folks out there telling Finite that his Regional joust wins don't count because the field wasn't large enough to matter. I don't see people telling Alec that his joust victory isn't worth talking about because they just personally don't like Lannister kneel. I think we're all big enough men and women here to realize that ignoring or belittling a group or victor of any format doesn't help the community as a whole.

Which is, again, not to say that I'm angry at Twn2dn. It just happened that reading the newsletter is what made it finally click for me how the community at large has been for quite some time.

Also, just an open question out there for rush players. Why aren't we talking melee more for your sake? We've had a big post as a referendum on rush, and another on Baratheon's best card. Since Baratheon is a huge force to be reckoned with in melee, why isn't this something worth considering and discussing further?

Ah well. I'm off to go jog, and then tonight I think I'll split off some of this discussion into another thread or two. I have some ideas on further discussion relevant to melee as a whole and houses/cards in particular.

Mathias Fricot said:

Bwahahaha! First thing to make me really laugh out loud on the forums in weeks! I love it!

Kennon said:

Regardless, and philosophical debates aside, my next issue will prominently feature melee. This will be in large part because there will be A LOT of melee players together at GenCon, so that the pool size is significant enough to make generalizations. (As great as the MO regionals were, two or three regionals isn't really enough to make accurate generalizations unless they're collectively above a certain size.) I think there will also be a lot more reader interest, given FFG's focus on the overall champion.

For the third issue (in Nov/Dec?), I'm not sure whether melee will feature as prominently. It really depends on (1) how people react to an issue with a stronger melee focus (so the next issue will be a test), and (2) what happens in competitive play more generally. The newsletter is designed to cater to people who play this game more than just casually. I like the idea of encouraing readers to think more creatively and competitively about melee, but I'm not going to print content that (most) people find less interesting simply to make sure I give melee and joust equal play. As with any product, it comes down to consumer demand, and my impression is that demand for a product like this is much more focused on joust.

I lost one game at our local game night last week. It was a melee, and it was a melee where I did a 12 power swing in one turn out of Baratheon (but forgot to support someone to get the win). Honestly, juggling so many different moving board positions is extremely hard, and extremely fun.

Here's the long version of my opinion piece from Dan's newsletter. http://www.cardgamedb.com/forums/index.php?/blog/7/entry-48-how-did-the-faq23-fail/

I have to agree with Rings. Most people who play Melee at large events only play melee if it is part of the overall champion. If we went back to melee being a side event at GenCon like the Hand tournament, you would get fewer than 20 participants most years. If we included Classic Highlander or the Greyjoy Melee variant in the overall championship, we'd see increased participation in those events. i don't think more people enjoy playing melee at large events for the sake of playing melee. they just want the points towards overall championship. Lets not kid ourselves. I remeber playing melee the first couple GenCons when there was no overall championship. Turnout was horrible.