I almost ended that topic with a question mark, but I wanted to sound a little more authoritative. Though I have nothing to add, I just hoped this would catalyze the first updates on attendance and house/agenda breakdowns.

From Erick:

21 players

6 targ

5 stark

4 martell

2 lanni

2 bara

2 greyjoy

7 the maester's path

3 kings of summer

2 alliance

2 siege of winterfell

2 kothh

2 none

1 city of shadows

1 kings of winter

1 knights of the realm

Wow... surprisingly low turnout from what I'd heard they were expecting. I'll be interested to see the outcome. Time for Twn2dn to start on his next Thrones Times so we can aggregate DoIaF, Black Friday & Stahleck.

WolfgangSenff is doing updates on his blog:

http://www.cardgamedb.com/forums/index.php?/blog/12-wolfgangsenffs-blog/

EDIT: BTW, I'm rooting for the guy who's running GJ KoW (Fatmouse?)

EDIT #2: And for Gualdo, of course. Sorry, my American friends, but we Euros must stick together.

Lots of Targ compared to the norm, I guess new Selmy is bringing them up. No Neutral though, breaks my heart.

Twn2dn (targ maester) beat Gualdo (Stark Siege) in the finals.

OrangeDragon said:

Congrats to both Dan & Andrea. (~but mostly to Dan) >

Congratulations to Dan on the win and all the other players who placed. It was a party!

OrangeDragon said:

~**** it Gualdo, you couldn't even beat a Targ deck? Nobody loses against Targ! You suck!

Okay, so I ended up having to stop doing my updates because *all* my games started going to time. Only the last one, in which Dan rolled me, was done quickly. I think that was the last one, anyway. I'm not going to do a real report for this one, because I once again scrubbed out (2-3), and was annoyed by that, but I did want to point out/ask some interesting things.

1) First off, does bringing Meera out with her ability count for triggering Alchemist's Guild Hall and Black Cells? This seems to me like it's broken, if so, but at the same time, even though Meera says, "To bring her out of shadows", I would argue that the ruling on the City of Shadows agenda and Hidden Chambers means that Black Cells and AGH were not intended to be able to be fired. I'm fine with it either way, and I have to really thank the guy who played this (JackT here on the boards, I think), because he conceded as we slowly reached time - I had turned the game into my favor pretty considerably, but at the same time, he didn't have to do it, and I appreciated it. I would definitely have done the same for him, and did so for another player later in the tournament.

2) Stark is *strong*. Meera may be a bit too strong. In my first match, I played against Stag Lord and by the second turn, I'd made it winter and had begun looping Arya and Meera. That's pretty much game over against any deck, or at least a vast majority of the decktypes out there are going to get killed by that. Stag Lord was able to still keep it close, and this was actually by far my most fun game of the day - it was just very back and forth, but not tense. Winning against him was fine; losing against him would still have been fun. Thanks Stag.

3) Gualdo is awesome. He may be one of the funniest, most sociable people I've ever met. Against Brian, he kept saying, "Oh, I loves your powers! I loves them!" I could not stop laughing.

4) I should not play in tournaments when I'm extremely sick. At Days, I had a terrible allergy attack and didn't have any good preventative medicine for that, like my Flonase (it had just run out before I left, and couldn't get it refilled). The card dust killed me. This time, I dunno what happened - maybe caught something on the bus? - but I had a severe, pounding headache the whole time, my nose was really stuffy (which, now that I have my Flonase, almost doesn't happen even when I *am* actually sick), and I was getting the chills...the CHILLS. Friggin' eh that was bad. Stasis and Brian can testify to my going to bed not only with all my clothes, but with my jacket on, and covering up.

5) Friends don't let friends (who have sleep apnea) sleep on the floor.

6) Dan/Twn2dn is a *really* good player. So was the other Dan, but I didn't get to play him; I expect the results would have been the same. My deck was particularly weak to Targ burn, so it wouldn't have been pretty. I beat Stag Lord first round, lost to Fatmouse in the second (I think), beat JackT in the third, lost to Brian in the fourth, and lost to Twn2dn in the final round. Out of those games, only in the final one did I never even have a shot. I had fun the whole time though, and over the course of the weekend, Twn2dn really opened my eyes as to how to play the game. His use of Narrow Escape on simple 2-claimers was key for him to keep out enough chuds to just eventually beat Gualdo, despite Gualdo having a crap-ton of characters. I think that took some serious improvisational thinking, because he got crushed for burn early on - couldn't find *any* of it for four rounds - and then once he got it, he'd kind of already stabilized a bit. It was out of this world.

7) I am once again reminded of just how awesome this community is. I know everyone always says that, but there wasn't a single scrub at this tournament, and none of the games (of my own) except against Dan were blow-outs, which is saying something about the metagame, I think. I appreciate that.

8) I'm likely playing decks I'm more familiar with from now on. Enough of this janky stuff. I did get a chance to pull off several of my combos, and that was cool, but still too likely to just get out-drawn, and to not have a hand at some point. (I pulled off the somewhat funny turn-Luwin-or-Blackfish into a creature pre-plot with the Valyrian Steel and Copper Links, then use Maester of Last Hearth + winter to save them when I Valared, or I knew my opponent was going to, such as when no Stark char left the game). I also pulled off winter + Meera in almost every game, and against JackT, I was able to pull her out, blank his Arya (he was playing City of Shadows), and then when she died to claim, put Meera back into shadows and leave my own Arya out for challenges - and she was, of course, stealth and deadly.

9) Try not to make changes right before the tournament without a lot of testing. I added some winter stuff, which worked out well; what did not work out was the fact that I removed my Abandoned Forts - they would have been clutch most of the day, whether I'm facing Stark or not. They have a neat trick where you can use the Copper Link to turn someone into a Bolton character, then return them to the opponent's hand. it's surprising, and painful.

10) If I want to play in a real tournament, I have to go to Europe. There's a chance I could take a job offer in Poland, but I don't think I'm right for it (it's in my company, so if I said yes, there's no chance they wouldn't send me). That said, I'm almost certainly coming to Stahleck next year. 80+ people? There's no way I'm missing out on that.

Thanks all. Good night.

Kyle

Thanks for the report, Kyle! ~Also, it is entirely not your fault that I sat in front of of the computer for hours yesterday, staring at the screen with empty eyes and an ashen face, hitting F5 incessantly and muttering "wahy doesn't he update? why doesn't he update?" My wife was worried a bit there...

WolfgangSenff said:

WolfgangSenff said:

Gualdo is indeed awesome! I have a mad man crush on him.

WolfgangSenff said:

What Winter tech did you run except for Meera, Arya and Maester of Last Hearth? I played a casual game at Stahleck against my friend Michael Mateju and his Stark Maesters deck, and he ran White Raven and the Search plot pretty much for Meera and Arya alone, and he said it was totally worth it.

WolfgangSenff said:

This year, it was 120 in the Joust. The next big thing is in March in Madrid. I think it's the weekend of 10th/11th of March. They expect 100+ players.

There are rumors that my company will need to add an office somewhere in the eurozone, I have hinted that I wouldn't mind going over there to help start things up for a few months or more.

bloodycelt said:

Tell 'em to set up operations in Munich. The beer is good, the mountains are near, and the Thrones meta is small but dedicated. If that doesn't convince them...