Lets start this off by saying that my play group consisted only of my wife, a good friend of ours and myself, so there is very little diversity in the decks that we play against so often times our decks end up tech'd against each other. We used to play with a few other people back when the game was a CCG, but when it made the change to LCG we lost interest. I guess one of the most exciting parts of a card game 'seemed' to be pulling the good rares out of packs randomdly, especially when there were not many play groups around for us to get into competative play on a regular basis. With the new book being released and the HBO series we decided to pick the game back up. Even with the LCG format it was difficult to figure out what cards were the best, and what houses were capable of doing what.
Ever since I first sat down with the game years ago, I had been drawn to house Stark, never playing anything else for more than a game here or there when my friends got tired of my current stark deck. I had built a stark siege/bear island deck that was fairly competative against the decks we had built, but when my wife decided to try out a martel summer deck, it started to get crushed every time. Mostly due to lack of intrigue icons against cyvasse, he calls it thinking and paper shield to cancel my kill events and the fact that stark does not have any in-house way to deal with summer. With the release of maester of last hearth I decided that I would play a winter/maester deck and it did better against most of the decks I had to play against. The way I played the deck turned out to be completely against the concept of timed matches. I generally prefer to control the hand and the board, going for card draw instead of winning challenges many times when I had the Valyrian steel link on a maester. In the end of my 4 games, all 3 of my losses came down to having less power at the time the game was called.
First round vs. Dan(from the DC meta I believe) playing Targ/maesters
I honestly don't remember too many great points from my games, but I do remember a maester aemon he had with almost every link attached to him drawing 3 cards a round and discarding my few non chain attachments. The game was tied 6/6 I believe when time was called, but unfortunatly he was able to play the 4 cost location that let him put all characters in dead piles under his control. Since we were already over time I conceeded. The worst part of this match for me was the round before I allowed him to win an intrigue challenge with shadow seer when I had shaggydog in play, that allowed him to jump khal drogo into play, and attach tin link to his maester, dicarding my shaggydog. He was able to force me to defend his 2 claim power challenge, and I ended up with 14 power going into the next round.
0-1
Second round vs Brian(I think) playing martel knights of the hollow hill
I don't really remember too much of this game but I do remember that he was able to use desperate tactics to play the vipers bannermen multiple times, as well as flea bottom scavanger and a few other cards that gave him around 15+ cards in hand during the final few rounds. I would have been very interested to see how this game turned out if we would have been able to finish because he was winning 11-6 when time was called, but I never really felt like I was going to lose this game. That could have been partly because I had not played much against a deck like this before.
0-2
Third Round vs Stag Lord playing Targ/no agenda
This game only lasted 2 or 3 turns because he had threat from the north revealed and I used Meera Reed to blank his influence before he could play hatchlings feast. It turned out after the game it really didn't matter since we both forgot that the feast is characters with no attachments, and I only had a direwolf pup that did not have at least 1 attachment. I was able to use maester of last hearth with lead link to lower his ser jorah by 1 strength and then killed him with greywind, discarding 4 of his 2 strength characters. My military challenge wiped his board and stole one of his gold locations with Mance plus copper link. At the end of dominance I would have had 14 power but he conceeded.
1-2
Fourth Round vs Kevin(Chicago meta I think) playing martel/knights of the hollow hill
Going into this game I knew what Kevin's deck did, he was playing sandsnakes with no use for grief, the one deck I did not have any solution to. I almost slotted 2 hand's judgement into my deck just because of this type of deck, but since I was running winter, and rarely had gold, I thought it would be a dead card for me most of the time. He was only able to play the red viper, but he also put the dupe he summoned on him. I was able to win 2 challenges the first round since he was unable to play his game of cyvasse because of the vipers immunity. i put 2 links on my maester of last hearth, one of them being the lead link. The following round I used the maester pre-plot to give his viper -2 str, and then revealed threat from the north discarding him from play, preventing the use of no use for grief. He marshalled 2 different 1 strength characters during that round, but I let him take them back, assuming that since his combo did not go off I would be able to win the game. After that it was a struggle to continue to win challenges, because of the extra 2 gold he had every round, and I believe the 3 red vengences that prevented me from taking cards from him and killing his characters. Time was called I think he had about 14 power to my 8.
1-3
Fifth round Bye
2-3
So I finished 2-3, but for my first tournament in about 4 years and not having any much practice against some forms of the decks I faced I was able to accomplish my main goal. That being not playing a single game that I believed I was not in to the very end. I know I made a few mistakes from time to time, but also those playing against me made a few mistakes as well. The highlight of the entire day was looking at my wife's face when she came over to tell me she had beaten Erick. She also claimed top martel player, and finished 6th out of the 21 players.