Late Iowa TR - 2nd Place

[ShivesMcShivers 0]

A quick introduction to some of the new players on the board.  I started playing Thrones during Winter block and quit when the game transitioned to the LCG format.  The game has moved back into a diverse enough enviroment that I feel I would enjoy playing again, so I decided to play a couple regionals this year so I could travel and hang out with some of the old school guys.

The problem here is twofold.  1) I don't own cards AND 2) I don't really know what most of the cards do.

 

Lucky for me I know Clu.  He gave me free reign over his card collection to build whatever I wanted.  So what did I do?  I borrowed a deck from Nate.  Turns out he is a pretty good deckbuilder

 

 

Round 1 - Dany - Targ - Dragons

As the round is starting Dany and I chat casually and she mentions that she is a magic player just getting started in Thrones.  This is her 3 or 4th time playing.  I reassure that this is my 3rd time playing in the last year and off we go.  She leads with a Viserion and an Astapor and some shadows cards.  This is actually pretty bad for me since Viserion wrecks my entire decks game plan.  I play out a frozen moat and Wendmyr and pass through challenges blanking Viserion when he attacks.  At this point she has several unique cards in play and is down to one card in hand.  So I Valar second turn saving my Wendmyr and she never recovers.  She continues to draw copies of cards which have died and I (luckily) intrigue her Maegi's Promise's.

Win 19-0

 

Round 2 - LordofBrewtown - Baratheon Renown

As I sit down across from Jason I am surprised to see him reveal a Baratheon house card.  I assumed he would play Martell and the 2 of us would sit around complaining about the flavor text on Broken Spear (It's from a Catelyn Chapter).  None the less off we go and he playing characters and attachments only on set up.  I have locations and Wendmyr so I figure, "What the heck" and Valar first turn.  Jason seems unphased.  He starts his first marshall with 3 0 cost locations and gets quite a bit ahead of me.  He is also starting to pile up some renown power here.  I can tell by the way he is using non-unique renown guys with no saves in sight that he is not playing Valar himself so I decide to go nuts and just throw as many chars into play as I can.  I start to dominate the challenges phases and on the back of Rise of the Kraken I come out on top

Win 19-9

 

To be continued...

 

 

[ShivesMcShivers 0]

 Round 3 - The Shiek - Martell Brotherhood

Adam is the midwest  "Martell Endboss" and I lose to him more often then I win.  At least until this game.  Adam has a turn 1 Beric with a dupe but I start strong with a gold tooth mines and guys who stealth.  I don't remember a lot about this game other then he sees very little card draw and I prioritize intrigue challenges.  I win get a full set of unopposed challenges with Rise as my plot and close the game out relatively quickly.

19-2

 

Round 4- Ben - GJ - Kings of Winter

This game is a total ball buster.  Its winter right off the bat with Wintertime Marauders and Support of Harlaw tearing my face off.  On top of that he has River Blockade and shuts off my Iron Mines.  He whittles me down to a point where I have no non-unique cards anymore.  There is a hole in his plan though.  The intrigue challenge seems ignored entirely.  I bide my time winning int and power challenges to stay in the game until I can finally manage to deal with the marauders.  After that I can play a little freely since I have 12 cards in hand to his 0.

Don't rememeber the final power count here.

 

Round 5 - Eric - Lanni - Maesters Path

 

Eric and I take an ID and go eat.

 

 

To be continued...

[ShivesMcShivers 0]

 Top 8! 

Quarterfinals - goshdarnstud - Lanni - Kingsguard

Most of this round is already in his report so I am not going to go on too much about it.  I spend most of the first 10 turns trying to draw an Iron Mines so I could Valar in a way that left me on top.  I found 2 of them in the last 10 cards of my deck.  Sweet.  The other cool plays of the round include using Ours for the Taking on his Lions Gate to make his Beric a raven, only to lose the challenge.  I did the math in my head over and over on this and still lost.  I think we forgot to discard a power off Beric which gave the unaccounted for +1 str but at this point, who the heck knows.

 

Semi-Finals - Nickler - GJ - Maester's Path

Again a game covered in someone else's report.  I saw the black raven in my opening hand and decided to keep based off that.  I play Take them by Surprise and seeing Nick's Time for Ravens I choose him to go first.  He gets white ravens and makes it winter followed by a Wintertime Marauder, Wendmyr, and some chaff.  I play my black raven and just kinda win.  This is the worst match up in the entire room for me and I win this game maybe 20% of the time.  Hooray for good fortune

 

Finals - Eric - Lanni - Maester's Path

It's unfortunate that I can't save some of that good fortune for this round.  I lead with a 6 card set up but I just cannot get out from under the thumb of Maester Luwin and his Copper link.  My locations become ravens and go away while Eric milks the card advantage machine that is Luwin.  In the end, the combination of shadows Tyrion (who always got renown) and Luwin shuts me down.  I'm not sure where I lost this game other then the fact that I continued to draw Skinchangers when I really needed something less clunky.  In the end I figure if I don't know what happened, its likely that I just got outplayed.  Oh well, thems the beats.

 

Props - 

Nate French - This guy lets me borrow a deck even though I'm constantly an ******* about things.  I suppose I'll have to work on that

Clu - An amazing friend and a more amazing person.  I wouldn't play this game if not for him

Staton/Katie - Trolling one is fun and chatting AGoT with the other is almost as fun.

[goshdarnstud 0]

ShivesMcShivers said:

I think we forgot to discard a power off Beric which gave the unaccounted for +1 str but at this point, who the heck knows.

 

 

Oooooo good point.  I have no idea but that would make tons of sense if it were true.  Like I said in my post by that time a crapton (technical term) of errors were made.  Either way hella fun time.  Though if I never see another wildling Theon deck again it'll be too soon!

[9thimmortal 1]

Congrats and good to see you back in the fold, Shives...~even w/ the game designer's deck

[criticalhitgames2 0]

My cards not good enough! could you post a loose recreation of the deck? I thought it was pretty interesting. And congrats on second place and returning to the game!

[Maester_LUke 0]

rings said:

Congrats and good to see you back in the fold, Shives...~even w/ the game designer's deck

And with Kyle's finish at MO, the first of two "Regional Joust Runners-Up" piloting them.  I think the cars still have more to do than the driver... but a well-tuned car certainly helps.

[Staton 1]

 Nice job shives! Glad to have you back in the game! Although i must say, I'm not sure which one of us is getting trolled and which one of us discusses thrones.

[ShivesMcShivers 0]

 Here is what I can remember of the deck:

Greyjoy -  The Last Giants - The Free Folk

Characters - 

1x Craster

1x Gilly

2x Mance RoTo

2x Orell the Eagle

3x Skinchanger

3x The Wilding Horde

2x Val

1x Varamyr Sixskins

3x Carrion Bird

1x Wex Pyke

3x Scury Cutthroat

1x Theon Greyjoy

3x Refugee

1x Euron ASoS

1x Maester Wyndamere

 

Locations - 

3x Refurbished Hulk 

3x Gatehouse

1x Aegon's Hill

3x  Iron Mine

1x River Blockade

2x Frozen Outpost

1x Frozen Moat

2x Masey's Hook

3x  Gold Tooth Mines

1x Sunset Sea

1x Street of Sisters

1x Street of Steel

1x Land Beyond the Wall

 

Events - 

2x Ours for the Taking

 

Attachments - 

3x Climbing Spikes

1x Black Raven

 

Plots - 

Rise of the kraken

Building Season

Song of Summer

Valar

Alliance 

Retaliation 

Take them by Surprise

 

Thats as close I can get 10 days later without having built it myself.  Sorry!

[Maester_LUke 0]

After playing the deck through 8 rounds, is there anything you would have add/subtracted/altared #s of?

[ShivesMcShivers 0]

 I really really did  not like the skinchangers.  I was almost always disappointed to draw one.  The GJ queen would have been a nice addition in one of those slots and  nearly anything to deal with attachments.  I feel like I literally lost to copper link in the finals.

Still, I am not one to criticize something that was given to me and did so well

[Maester_LUke 0]

ShivesMcShivers said:

 I really really did  not like the skinchangers.  I was almost always disappointed to draw one.  The GJ queen would have been a nice addition in one of those slots and  nearly anything to deal with attachments.  I feel like I literally lost to copper link in the finals.

Still, I am not one to criticize something that was given to me and did so well

I've still never played a Wildling deck and everytime I pull the cards to assemble one, I'm left feeling a bit "eh" on the Skingchangers.  Alannys is almost always awesome.  (Bael the Bard to make her a Wildling for a turn?  Yes please.   And I noticed that one of the Wildling decks elsewhere played "Let my Porridge Fly" as attachment control.