My brain is still a bit scrambled from playing and TOing all day, but I managed to place 5th in our regional here in Cincinnati. We had a total of 24 players show up, it was great to see that the guys I met last year in Chicago came down, we had players from Toledo, Lexington and Detroit! We played 5 games before cutting to top 8; I don't have the complete stats with restricted cards and Agendas, but heres the House breakdown:

Greyjoy - 6 players
Bara - 5 players
Lanni - 5 players
Stark - 3 players
Targ - 3 players
Martell - 2 players

I took a Stark Kings of Winter deck that I have been tweaking for a while; I felt it was inherently strong against some builds I expected to see a lot of, most notably GJ Winter and Lanni PBtT. Sorry for any mistakes I make here, feel free to correct me if you played against me.

Round 1 vs Tim Clark playing Lanni PBtT

We had similar setups and Round 1 STR, but he had mostly Intrigue icons and I had a good spread of all 3 icons; the cards in my hand didn't matter to me since I managed to play everything I wanted in Round 1 so his I challenges didn't bother me at all. After Round 2 I had definite board control due to 2-claims and he played Valar on Round 3 as I expected; he never recovered from the Valar and I won pretty quickly with the help of his Agenda.
1-0

Round 2 vs Brad Chester playing Targ Maesters with a BUNCH of Chains

Targ burn was one of the weak spots for my build and Brad went 5-0 in the preliminaries. He grabbed a Linked Advisor with At the Gates and I pulled a White Raven in Round 1; it started out well with me using Meera to blank out his only Maester for the first 2 Rounds so those Chains stayed put. I was ahead for a bit due to my shenanigans and his deck seemed to be going pretty slow, his Art of Seduction got my WInds of Winter (no problem here with having with 2 claim and -1 STR on all his guys for 2 Rounds) but also delayed me getting back to my Valar and he won in Dominance on Round 8 with a giant field of guys. It was really enjoyable, a brutal back and forth game.
1-1

Round 3 vs Kenny Barrett playing Targ KotHH

Kenny's deck was solid and he went on to win the event with it. He got out a Brothel and Tourney Grounds fairly early and kept my Frozen Solids at bay and used his only early game terminal burn on Meera. I drew virtually no locations, and he just ground me to a halt before pushing on to 15 power.
1-2

Round 4 vs Dave Coppoletti playing Greyjoy Maesters

Daves from my meta and I've seen his deck work; swarm plus saves plus cancel my triggered effects is bad. Setup was pretty even but he he only got a few saves out and I kept them under control while removing his chains. Stealth helped me murder his hand, he didn't get any useful cancels, and he conceded once he drew nothing that could prevent the win.
2-2

Round 5 vs Dodd Harris playing Lanni PBtT

I had a bad setup with only 3 cards and no discounts, but I had some pretty powerful control in my hand. I worked on his hand a bit with Ghost of High Heart and threw away a Refugee to Bronns Hireling to draw a card, then destroyed a Treasury and a Goldroad with Caches on each and got a duped KL Catelyn to shut down I challenges. I controlled the board in P and M for a while and refused to go anywhere near I because of Misinformation. Cersei showed up around Round 5 or 6 when I had even more protection for Cat, and one of us had to Valar toward the end. It ran to 9 plots in a relatively short amount of time but a ton of Stealth guaranteed me the win eventually.
3-2

At 3-2 I didn't look great going into the cut, but I had only lost to Brad who was 5-0 and Kenny who was 4-1. To my surprise I was 5th after the cut and although Sandy made it too, after he dropped to get some sleep I was the only one left of our local meta.

Rob Jones (?) playing Stark 3x Wildlings

I chose not to get Winter first Round and Meera was only good for 1 card; he had a Frozen Outpost + W character and Maester Luwin as targets and I went after Luwin. If I had blanked the Outpost instead he would have shuffled his deck and it would have been a very different game. He won my M challenge due to the Outpost and next Round he played Val and used her to discard Price of War and two No Quarters. He also attempted to kneel a L character to cancel my Time for Ravens with his Retaliation, then said he had revealed the wrong plot. Even if he was bluffing, Outwitting my Valar would be pretty awful, but he needed 21 power to win so I held it as long as possible. Val continued to be of little use to him, discarding more kill effects while I drew into nothing useful either. He finally spent his Outwit and I Valared the next Round, saving a duped Ghost of High Heart while he saved a duped Val, after which I couldn't recover and he simply overwhelmed me.

Brad and Kenny faced off with the two Targ burn decks and then Kenny played Rob for the win. As a Targ player who could never make a KotHH deck work quite right I'm extra thrilled to see Targ win! Thanks to everyone who came, especially anyone who drove in to make the ~10 AM deadline, hope to see you all again next year!

Lots of fun guys, thanks for hosting a fantastic regionals. I hope to see you guys in the upcoming Chicago regionals. Mallesh, Casey, and I had a blast.

We still cant believe all three of us from DETRIOT (313) made top 8, lol. The game shop was amazing, super friendly and clean. If I have any complaints at all, its that during swiss, my meta mates had to play each other. Anyone who travels for these tourneys knows how lame it is to have to play someone you play with on a regular basis. Mabye in the future, Event runners can keep this in mind. Thanks again guys, Cincinnati can count on us to be there anytime they want to host a tourney. Btw, I wanted to send a shot out to Greg, had a lot of fun playing your Bar M deck, I added some stuff to it, made lots of bad plays, and still managed to make top 8. So glad Targ won that one vs Wildlings. Grats

btw there were 5 meister decks in total, 4 made top 8

Matt (Store owner) decided to base the first round Swiss pairings on registration order, assuming this would be a good indication of city of origin (essentially pairing top to bottom. We kept it in mind, but juggling 24 people was a more daunting task than expected, for sure. Next year I'll make sure to put 'city' on the list to avoid potential match-ups. Thanks for the compliments and the critiques. Most of all, thanks for coming!

Was an absolute blast, thank you to all the Cincinnati meta members who made me feel right at home. And a special thanks to Mickey for being a good sport in my first matchup, instead of getting frustrated with my lock he just laughed and we had a great time playing. Was a truly wonderful experience at the tournament, I am already looking forward to next year. The LGS owner was very generous and friendly and the store itself was perhaps one of the nicest game stores I have ever been to. Here's hoping you guys have another tournament before regionals season again next year!

Oh also shout out to the rules guys who both managed to play and make rulings all at the same time, I know I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in that position.