First AGoT Tournament

So I had my first A Game of Thrones tournament yesterday in Tulsa at the Team Covenant store. It was 4 rounds of joust. I used a Stark Siege deck, themed around House Bolton and ended up going 2 - 2. All in all it was a really enjoyable experience, the people at Team Covenant seem like a really good group and I'm looking forward to my next touranment.

My first match was against a gentleman (I am horrible with names, Sorry!) running a Greyjoy deck. He was almost as new to AGoT as I was, and when I say almost, it was his first tournament as well, but not only was it my first tournament, it was my first game. His deck seemed focused around mill. Unfortunately for him the Starks can hit very hard, and after the first challenge of the match he had no characters left alive, and while he did eventually start building back up (thanks to Greyjoy saves) he never got into a position where I was threatened. Time was called and I won, something like 10 - 2, which is really closer than it sounds because like I said he was starting to build back up but the outcome was never in doubt.

My next match was against one of the employees, Robert. He seems like a good guy and he really, really knows his stuff. He was running a Lannister power behind the throne deck. I'd like to say I made it hard for him, but yeah, didn't happen. He made my first military challenge count for nothing by not allowing their strength to count, then he took my hand apart with 2 claim 2 intrigue challenges. Before I knew it I had lost, and I'm not even really sure how it happened. Still, this is one of my best learning experiences.

So I'm 1 - 1 going into my third match, which is against yet another Lannister power behind the throne deck. However, I've learned a little bit from my first game and this time I reveal a plot to allow me to get 2 military challenges off second round. I attack with two armies the first time and he blanks it, as expected, then I attack with an army and a unique so that I can play both of my events to kill characters, as well as triggering the unique character's ability (Halfhand), so I got 4 kills off that one challenge (maybe 5 with the Bolton attachment, I don't really remember). After that he used Valar, which I should have expected but didn't. Still, I was able to build back faster. After we finished he just commented that I had a lot of good cards, as though my beating him had nothing to do with intelligent play, which kind of irked me because I did play as well as can be expected of a person playing their third game but que sera sera.

So 2 - 1 at this point in the tourny, pretty good huh? Then I draw up against a guy I got to see play the first time I watched. Turns out he's been playing since it was a CCG. He has cool power tokens and a house brick thing from back in that time. He's playing Lannister as well but this one is a maester's path. The game goes as expected, he's using the city plots, which was neat, I'd only ever seen the "go fetch a maester" plot, so I was curious what the others did and he let me look through the plot deck and explained some stuff to me after the match. Really cool guy. (And his name is on the tip of my proverbial tongue, dog gone it.)

So lessons learned:

1) When you have a game plan, stick to it. My game plan going into the tournament was always to use a plot to go fetch Dreadfort and play it turn one. I think I did that one game. Not that it would have mattered a whole lot, and it certainly wouldn't have changed the out come of game 2 or 4, but I might have given a better fight if I'd drawn more cards.

2) Have a reset available at all times. Again, I don't believe this would have changed the outcome of game 2 or 4, but again I think I could have given a better fight if I'd done this. I'm not sure, at this point, if I'd rather have Valar or wildfire, but one of the two is definitely going in my next plot deck.

3) Another part of what I learned was just getting experience. I've studied and researched House Stark a lot. But I had no idea what Lannister really did (besides make money) and I had a vague notion that Greyjoy had a lot of saves, but that was the extent of my knowledge. Researching other houses and the cards that they run will be helpful to me, but since I'm still trying to learn my house (well, my house for now, I think eventually I'll probably end up in either Targaryen or House Martell, in MtG I love playing control, just not blue control so I'm going to have to see what fits me here) that's probably going to take me a while.

4) The Bolton's traitorous ways always had me on edge and I was probably not as aggressive as I really should have been. Still, I have no intention of giving up on them, though I'm definitely not going to take them into melee.

5) Resources. By turn 4 or 5 I had tons of resources. I think I sent back 4 - 5 gold one turn. This is connected to my not going and fetching the Dreadfort in part, but it is also connected to the fact that I took out some dupes of the Boltons so I drew less Boltons to fuel the Dreadfort. I'm really wanting to get my hands on the new Bolton though since he'll help up my count for Dreadfort as well as not turning against me.

6) Cancelation seems like it would be really good in this game. Events were a big blow to me a couple of times, and if I'd had something as simple as "paper shield" I would've blown through them. Unfortunately, I can't find my paper shield that came with my core set (and I've been so careful about keeping everything together, not like I have a lot at this point).

I'm going to try and put together a Stark Knights deck for the Thursday tournament because Boltons in melee is a really bad idea, IMO and because I want to see what a more typical Stark deck might be and act like.