Hello all from Athens and welcome to my joust TR.
I wanted to write this report sooner, but with my semester finals right around the corner my time is really limited. This is also the reason why i didn’t include a report for the melee tournament. Be advised that this is a very long post so brace yourselves and bear with me .
I shifted from Magic to playing AGOT about 2 years ago when a friend of mine introduced me to the game. Since then we have been playing and improving week by week and i would like to think that we have come a long way. A big contributor to our improvement is also the Athenian AGOT community which is really competitive, with both quality players and quality decks.
Going into the Nationals i was thinking to myself that anything over 2-3 wins would be great, so as you can imagine i was ecstatic with my 4th place finish . The format of the tournament wouldn’t be the classic swiss/top8 but the double elimination (bracketed) format. In this format we all start in the winners bracket and whoever looses a game goes to the losers bracket. If he is defeated again he is disqualified. Now that you have a general idea, it’s time to dive in to the good stuff.

The deck

I was known among our community for being a “summer child”, cause of my preference for the houses of Martell and Targaryen. I was piloting a Martell(summer) deck with great success for many weeks until the GG errata and after that a Targ(burn), so naturally everyone thought that i would be fielding one of the two houses at the event. However since the unrestricting of “The Laughing Storm” i had been working on two different deck archetypes. Baratheon(MP) and Baratheon(Wildlings). The reason behind this is that i wanted a strong, relatively easy deck that gave me a lot of options and could deal with most of the popular archetypes. The Bara(MP) deck, although it had the devastating decree-threat combo, was dismissed due to great unreliability against burn and stark kill. So i started working on the Wildlings and the final deck that i used is this

The force beyond the Wall

House (1)
House Baratheon (Core) x1

Agenda (3)
Blood of the First Men (RotO) x1
The Free Folk (BtW) x1
The Last Giants (TWH) x1

Character (33)
Crow Killers (ASitD) x1
Gilly (RoW) x1
Mance Rayder (RotO) x2
Orell the Eagle (ASitD) x1
Osha (AKitN) x1
Rattleshirt's Raiders (AKitN) x1
Skinchanger (WotN) x3
The Wildling Horde (TWH) x3
Val (RotO) x3
Varamyr Sixskins (AKitN) x1
The Queen of Thorns (TftRK) x1
Melisandre (RotO) x1
Free Man (TftH) x3
Marya Seaworth (KotStorm) x1
Zealous Collector (CtB) x2
Robert Baratheon (KotStorm) x1
Silent Sisters (KotS) x2
Veteran Knight (KotStorm) x1
Brienne of Tarth (PotS) x1
The Laughing Storm (GotC) x3

Location (19)
Aegon's Garden (Core) x3
Bay of Ice (KotS) x2
Flea Bottom (TGM) x1
Kingdom of Shadows (KotS) x3
Kingswood Trail (CoS) x2
Massey's Hook (ASoSilence) x2
Street of Silk (LotR) x1
Street of Sisters (Core) x1
Street of Steel (Core) x1
The Black Cells (TftRK) x2
The Land Beyond the Wall (EB) x1

Event (5)
Paper Shield (QoD) x3
The Price of War (KotS) x2

Attachment (3)
Climbing Spikes (AKitN) x3

Plot (7)
Breaking and Entering (LotR) x1
Retaliation! (ASoSilence) x1
Rule by Decree (Core) x1
Search and Detain (HtS) x1
The First Snow of Winter (ODG) x1
Threat from the East (QoD) x1
Valar Morghulis (Core) x1

The deck is a pretty standard Bara wildlings deck with a lot “meta” teching though and a “controlee” side. First of all looking at the characters you’ll see that i have some odd choices included. The “silent sisters” are there to round up my intrigue icons and to help me against burn. “The queen of thorns” is there also for the icons and the potential power grab with “kingswood trail”. Robert is there too for the extra power grab and let me say that he is brutal in conjunction with wildlings and a claim two plot. Lastly there is “Zealous Collector”, which i think is a really undervalued card. He was my first meta tech since a lot of people here in Greece play with maesters. Yeah he is fragile and has somewhat steep requirements but what he offers is just amazing. With the new kingdom locations coming up i expect him to make a lot more appearances in the future decklists. Moving on to locations you can see apart from the standard locations for the wildlings (Massey's Hook)the control side of the deck which was also a meta call. As i said many people here play maesters and denying them their toolbox in the challenges via “The black cells” is really strong. Also many of the non-kneeling characters around the decks (Viper, new Cersei, Flank, Littlefinger) have one thing in common, and that is a power icon. So “Kingswood trail” was in my opinion a decent counter to them. The attachments and half of the events were dedicated to location control, which i think is really important as many games are lost and won by locations that are able to shut down the biggest threats on the table. Lastly i included three copies of “paper shield” mainly due to three reasons : Stark kill events, HCIT and Game of Cyvasse and Bara-MP “citadel law”. As far as the plots are concerned they are common choices mainly focused on control and a delayed rush. If i would have to design the deck again i would probably try to fit “forgotten plans” in, removing “B&E”. Apart from that i don’t think that i would make any other changes except maybe a little more character control through events or more draw.

The Event

I would like to apologize in advance for any mistakes that i might make in my descriptions, as everything comes strictly from memory.

-1st round against THE BYE [1-0]

Here in Greece we played weekly tourneys that gave us points for the spring league and the top finishers were awarded with a first round bye for the Nationals. I was lucky to have a high enough place to get one of those and with it a much needed relaxation before starting to play in the big event.

-2nd round against Papanikolas (Baratheon MP) [2-0]

Papanikolas is a very good and solid player, always fielding very strong and interesting decks. He is also a great guy to play with and so the game, although we were on our toes, went really smooth. When i drew and saw Val+TLS in my opening hand i immediately kept it without thinking anything else as i knew that this would give me the edge against his first turn combo. Also i made a call that turned out to be correct in guessing he didn’t run a reset, cause i saw the steel link which meant he probably run threat from the north and standing locations. So we both had a 4 card setup with TLS down. It turned out that had i not have TLS down he would be able to pull off the Decree+Threat combo and it would have been a very different game. Using Val i managed to get a very early hand advantage and capitalizing on the fact that he didn’t run a reset i was able to flood the board allowing me to win 90% of the challenges and not letting him move most of his chains. The game was over somewhere between the 4 and sixth turn as the sheer card advantage from the first turn is amazing and really hard to combat. A highlight of our game was when he used “citadel law” to reveal preplot “city of sin” to kneel my TLS and then revealed “Rule by decree”.

-3rd round against Charalampelis (Greyjoy MP) [3-0]

Charalampelis is a player that i hadn’t met until our game. He didn’t play in our weakly tourneys so i didn’t know what to expect from him. Since it was his second time playing competitively i tried to keep the game as close to a friendly match as it can be, although i stayed really focused because he had already beaten 2 very competent players in the past rounds. I had a decent flop of 3-4 cards including many locations. After the first couple rounds i had Val and Mance duped in the game, some other wildlings and many locations and shadows but no cards in hand. He had Asha down which was not yet active, maester Wendamyr, and two Conclaves, some locations including a blanked Longship Iron Victory and three cards in hand. Needles to say that either turn 3 or 4 would be reset time. I thought he wouldn’t go for it this turn because his only save was Wendamyr so i chose as my plot Threat from the North To clear his hand and then proceed to play valar myself next turn. My choice was game winning it would seem as he played valar counting on the To be Kraken’s in his hand to cancel my saves and stand Wendamyr to save more people and come out stronger. With his hand gone however and me retaining better board presence i was able to finish the game one or two turns later at 15 with Mance blanking all my agendas due to Marya Seaworth and Massey's Hook. Highlight of the game was me discarding two TLS through Val being one gold short to play them.

-4th round against Vlasopoulos (Targaryen Kings of Summer Burn) [3-1]

At this point i had satisfied my wishes of two wins so i was a bit more relaxed on my remaining games. Vlasopoulos is a long time card player, which makes him a solid player and a very good deck builder and i knew that this match would be rally close. Though none of us knew it at the time he would be the eventual joust champion after three more games. The game started out good for me with some strong characters and a wildling horde which was safe from his burn. After a few rounds we both had no cards in hand and where top-decking. After the first couple of turns that i had taken the lead he valar’d to deal with my big army. Although i had the answer in the form of an 8str Silent sisters that singlehandedly won my challenges i knew that if i didn’t draw any army soon he could take the game with Rhaenys’s Hill (that empties my dead pile negating the sisters advantage). Unfortunately i didn’t draw anything of much use the next turn and after his Rhaenys’s Hill he took control of the game and won without me being able to do much. What i should have played, though i figured it out after our game, was The first snow of Winter as it would counter his Hill and give me back some card advantage. Although i lost we both enjoyed a very good game that had a lot of power play. Highlight of the game was my continued luck in the random discards relieving him of all his hatchlings feasts before him being able to play them.

-5th round against Papanikolas (Baratheon MP) [4-1]

Off to the losers bracket then, meaning that one more loss meant game over. I was paired again with Papanikolas and unfortunately for him the game went pretty similarly to our first if not worst for him. He had a really bad setup of one card post mulligan in the form of a Conclave. So using my Search and Detain first round to return it to his hand was pretty brutal. He could have come around though if not for my lucky pick of “King Robert’s Hammer” from his hand of 6 cards for my 1st turn intrigue claim. Other than that the game was pretty similar to our first with me capitalizing on the fact that he ran no reset and flooding the board finishing the game in the first turns. It was a shame that Papanikolas had to face me twice though, because as it turned out i had the only deck fully prepared for his combo.

-6th round against Papathodorou (Targaryen MP) [4-2]

So now i was in the top 4 and really happy with my performance. Papatheodorou is a very good guy and a good Targaryen player. He is sworn to Targaryen burn and has almost never changed his allegiance to another house. I knew i would have to stay really focused for this match, but the long hours of this tournament have started to wear me down. Thus making me do a couple of mistakes that cost me the game from the start. First of all i kept a really weak hand with only 2 cards setup, one of them being TLS and the other The black Cells. Now i can’t really figure out why i did that, maybe i wanted to try to discard something good with a 1st turn Threat from the East, but the truth of the matter is that i was really tired and not thinking straight. I managed to stay in the game long enough through my control locations but the lack of good draws ( Sisters or the Horde ) and my weak setup eventually allowed my opponent to overpower me.

Final thoughts

Although sad that i didn’t advance more, i am extremely happy with my results in this tournament. Props to our melee and joust champions as well as all the people that came to this two day event to have fun and make a claim to the Iron Throne (should have come way more people to the joust event, but what can you do). Also big thanks to our local game providers for hosting such a fantastic event. I hope that my report though really long was in the end interesting. Thanks for reading!

Andrew