The View From Flea Bottom - An Ottawa Regional Tournament Report

When the lords and ladies assemble for a tourney everyone comes out to watch the champions of the day. When Jamie Lannister or the Knight of Flowers take the field the crowd closes in to watch the action. This is the closest most of them will ever get to combat. Even the poor ones, the weak and cripples will catch a glimpse on the fringes of what glory might taste like but what noone ever realizes is that most combats don't take place on the tourney grounds. No, in the streets of King's Landing, the fiercest fighting can be found in the slums and hovels of Flea Bottom. Watching a street urchin stab another for a crust of bread; seeing a man beat another to a pulp for stealing his woman. These are the daily combats one can witness in the seedier arenas and so if you'll allow me to take attention away from the champions of our times [http://www.cardgamed...ttawa-regional/] let me present to you a tourney report, not from the top but rather from the bottom.

Round 1:
Looking over the decks present, I was aware before things started that many Lannisters would be taking the field. As a staunch Lannister player myself running a PBTT deck I knew that most mirror matches would be a gruelling slugfest in which whoever gained the upper hand first would likely eke out the win. My first round pairing was with Erik, a player I had played once before, and today he was running a Lannister deck using the Maester's Path with about 9 chains on it. This game was a close match with a rather large board presence from the both of us from the get go. I got Cersei out early and she was helping me achieve my intended goal of destroying his hand. He got some heavy hitters out including Leyton Hightower (GotC) and The Conclave (CbtC) before I managed to get him down to zero cards. I was one power away from winning at the start of the round when he drew into the perfect two card combo: Slander and Lies (HtS) and Archmaester Ebrose (CbtC). With those two cards he managed to siphon off four power from Cersei and caused me to time out resulting in a modified win. It wasn't the victory I wanted but it was victory nonetheless. This was a great game that remained as a great tug of war between the two of us. As someone who hasn't played with or against many Maesters, I learned from this round that keeping track of all those chains is very exhausting. Still I was pleased with my start and advanced to the next round.

Round 2:
And here it was, round two faced me up against Jon playing another Lannister deck. He was also running PBTT but with a heavy emphasis on shadows/kneel. Remember how I said that the early aggressor would get the victory in a mirror match? Well when he flopped Castellan of the Rock (BoRF) against my Cersei. I thought I might be able to kill him off early and get things in swing. For that reason I played Fear of Winter (BtW) first turn and popped out Ser Jaime Lannister (Core). He responded with an Enemy Informer (Core) to kneel two out of the three of my characters. Well, there goes my board. From there the game went downhill quickly. He was in total control the entire match and I never had a chance to establish any board presence. I also foolishly held off on Valaring early because I didn't want to kill my two power characters but if I had things may have turned out differently. I doubt it, because Jon is a pretty good player but a man can dream, can't he? This match lasted three rounds max. Still, moving forward I was 1-1, and could still make top four if I could regain some momentum. We finished early enough for us to get a casual game in between matches.

Round 3:
In this match I faced my first non-Lannister deck of the tournament. Adam was playing a Greyjoy Mill deck focussed around the new Euron Crow's Eye (TGM) and Corpse Lake (TBC). He was also running the Knights of the Hollow Hill (MotM) as his agenda. Once again, in this match I first turn Fear of Winter'd him to discard two copies of Corpse Lake and some other key cards. I was pretty pleased with myself. I also managed to completely destroy his hand and keep Euron off the board with A House Divided (WLL) thus clogging up his draw. Ha! I guess all those positive traits aren't so positive now! This card is an all-star and I intend to put it into all my future decks. Despite my perfect control of his hand he still managed to get an equally perfect mill engine running. Both our decks were running smoothly in their assigned goals but neither one was directly contributing towards the win condition. That was until he managed to draw his third Corpse Lake and cleared the board (well at least my side of the board, curse you Greyjoy saves!). From that point my small lead was eroded away and Adam came in swinging for the win. This was another tense match that was very close until the last minute sprint. So going to round 4 I was 1-2. I might not make it into the top four anymore but could I still finish strong?

Round 4:
It was Lannister vs Greyjoy once again this round (what is this, the board game?) and I was facing Chris running Winter with the Maester's Path. I had heard about Greyjoy choke online and knew that this would be a tough match. In preparation I had included some reducers but I really didn't have any solutions to the ravens. He flopped an excellent start (five characters or so) but mine was decent so I didn't do an early reset. That was a foolish move as his military presence allowed him to completely control my board and from there the match went downhill. With it being winter and me not drawing any income or reducers it's no surprise that I couldn't really recover from that. Chris played this perfectly (so long as he remembered his chains!!) and despite the rough match I still had a lot of fun. Part of my enjoyment of this game is seeing how everyone can have vastly different focuses that can all be successful. This was my first run-in against a season's deck.

Closing thoughts:
So there it was, after four rounds I had finished with 3 points for one modified win. This placed me dead last, thus making me the proud recipient of Canada's first regional Sansa award. In spite of my disappointing performance I still did manage to make top eight so I did get some nice house cards and a print . I had a lot of fun from my first regional and I'm looking forward to the future growth of our Ottawa meta. I enjoyed playing with everyone and it was good to see those I didn't have a chance to play against. Congrats to our winner, darknoj, I saw his deck in action and it looked like a doozy to both play and play against. I also want to thank Jordan for organizing this great event, it's awesome to see AGoT getting increased support locally.

Things learned:
This experience taught me a lot about playing the game, for example, I need to try and remember which chains do what. If I was more familiar with them I would've had more time to make decisions in my rounds against Maesters and thus avoided my first round time out. I also learned not to play an untested deck built the night before at a tournament. Yeah, that may have been an obvious lesson but it's one I've learned the hard way . I've also confirmed something I've thought since the release of the Lanny box; I hate the Power Behind the Throne agenda. It's very matchup dependent to be super successful and aside from Cersei (and Maester Creylen) winning intrigue challenges, much like mill, isn't really a way to victory. By focussing heavily on intrigue icons, as the agenda encourages you to do, you tend to have a rather myopic deck that isn't really capable of winning power challenges which I've found to be the game changing challenge. I think some of it has to do with my play style too as this deck wants you to be aggressive but requires you to keep enough characters standing to maintain defensive wins. I have the tendency to overcommit to challenges which ends up costing me power via the agenda. This leads into me to my next point, the drawback may as well not be a decision for your opponent. Unless they're running some events that could save really save their bacon, most of the time the correct choice is to claim power rather than draw cards. Well, this entry has gone a bit long and has meandered from tourney report to rambling editorial. I'll end off here and hope you all enjoyed this report.