Going into the tournament, I was between 3 decks. I decided to go with Greyjoy Winter. It played the easiest and it was consistent. It’s a pretty standard deck with choke, some discard, and cancel. No big tricks. I expected to see a bunch of Greyjoy and Martell, and I was surprised at the amount of Stark decks.
Round 1 vs. Joey (pheonixember) playing Stark no agenda
Last year at Kubla I played Joey in the swiss and the first round of the cut, and got absolutely destroyed both times. I was looking for some revenge. Joey had a terrible 1 card setup, I had a great 5 card setup. I played Fear of Winter and Joey played Muster the Realm, and I drew into a Wintertime Marauders. Joey did a good job defending my challenges with his events, but I eventually got Baelor (nullifying every card in his hand) and Asha out, and Valared plot 6 with 3-4 saves to his none. He drew no characters and conceded, and I got some sweet Kubla revenge
. 1-0
Round 2 vs John Kraus (deathjester) playing Martell KoTHH
John and I always seem to get matched up in tournaments, and always have some great games. This one was no exception. My setup was a Dagmer, a Boatswain, and a few locations. I feel I had a great proplay on the Building Season. John got Ghaston Grey, and with two To be a Kraken in hand, I chose Flea Bottom, to combat the Ghaston Grey. John couldn’t keep up with my 2 claim plots, and I eventually won. 2-0
Round 3 vs Dan Machado (ser cha0s) playing Stark Siege of Winterfell
Dan was playing epic events with lots of cheap stealth characters. I drew all my expensive characters and made a big mistake, making it winter when I really didn’t need to, and couldn’t keep up with the high claim. 2-1
Round 4 vs Chris (imrahil327) playing Stark Knights of the Realm
I had Theon killed early, which is always great. Theon discarded Kyle Condon from the top of the deck after stalwart put him there (that was awesome). This game I had my choke going full early. At one point it was winter, I had The Sparr out, and 2 Burned and Pillaged out. 3-1
Round 5 vs Jason playing Greyjoy Kings of Winter
I hate mirror matches. My setup sucked and Jasons was great, but he had no saves out. After thinking about it, I knew FoW was going to happen, so I valared. However, I screwed up my one card. I played a Boatswain, when I should have played Euron (I had two narrow seas and an iron mines). Instead, I got hit hard by 3 straight 2 claim intrigue challenges and got choked out and could not recover. 3-2
Round 6 vs David playing Greyjoy Kings of Winter
David was playing a deck that Bruno loaned to him. I learned from my mistakes in the last mirror match, and felt in control the whole game. 4-2, with my 2 loses against two 5-1 players, I made the cut to top 8 with the 6 seed.
Quarterfinals vs Tiny Grimes playing Greyjoy Maesters
Tiny was able to control challenges way better than I could, with Black Iron Link, Steel Link and LIV, and got his draw engine going early. I had to valar early, but it really didn’t help, the +4 strength was difficult to deal with. We both had Theon dead, which was some great fun. The game went maybe 4 or 5 plots before I lost.
Congrats to John Bruno for taking the crown. Thanks to John Kraus for running the event. The house cards from FFG are really awesome. I had a lot of fun meeting new people and seeing friends again. Thanks everyone for coming down!
