Third AGoT Tournament

So I attended my third A Game of Thrones tournament, and really I did my worst at this one. I was running the Stark Knights deck that I wanted to try out. The tournament was 2 rounds of melee and 3 rounds of joust. In my first 2 melee games I just couldn't balance making everything work together and so I ended up in 4th place (out of 4) in both rounds of melee. Its hard not being able to take time and read everything but when you're playing slow as is and there's 3 other people, all doing complicated stuff, it just makes it hard. Definitely got to work on learning the cards better. And on to Joust.

My first opponent in Joust was Jeremiah with a Baratheon knights deck. Now I have to inject here, that in my hour of deck tweeking before the tournament I decided I wouldn't run into another knights deck, so I went down to 14 knights in my deck, so going up against another knights deck was my worst nightmare, especially Baratheon who has an abundance of good knights. (IMO: Stark Knights are generally just okay, though I do like the House Tully theme I've got going on with it.)

But the setup worked in my favor, I was ahead on knights and so I get to draw 3 to his 1, which is pretty much how it goes the whole game except for the turn where he uses valar where we both draw 2 and maybe one other turn (I think we went 8). Even so, this was a very close game, he gets out a Robert that can stand himself repeatedly, and Melisandre who can power grab like its nobody's business, and suddenly I'm looking at an opponent who has 14 power (5 on house, 5 on Robert, 4 on Melisandre), an attachment to give Robert additional strength equal to the power on his house and a laughing storm. Oh, and its the beginning of the challenges phase and he's got initiative. A single lost challenge and the game is over (renown on all 3 challenges).

But I manage to win every challenge, then turn around and force a claim 2 military challenge through killing Melisandre and The Laughing Storm and winning some room to breathe. An interesting situation arose through that though, I had The Blackfish out, so when I won the military challenge I drew a card. Well, I drew into a kill event that triggered on winning a military challenge. Neither of us was sure rather or not I could use that event, and even Robert (guy running the event) wasn't sure so I didn't. It didn't really matter though, I had an army and he'd just lost 4 power. The next turn I'd "kill" Robert, though he'd use some card to save him by returning him to his hand, but even so, there was nothing I could do.

He did play well though given what he was up against, he drug out the game through the 7th plot, hoping that my 7th plot would be Valar and wipe my army so he could get back in the game, but it wasn't and so I shut him out.

My second game was against Zach (I hope I spelled that right, there's several different spellings, I know) with a Targaryen burn with a lot of shadows stuff. Targaryen burn is a deck I want to build and so it was nice to see it in action. I dominated early on but I ran into Valar and struggled to recover from that. I think if I'd had narrow escape this game might have been a blow out, but I didn't.

I struggled to come back, and I think I might have pulled it off but the weight of his locations were too much. (A location that gives everyone -1 is very hard to deal with.) I had frozen solid but I just wasn't drawing into it. I think if I'd had price of war to deal with the locations while I still had the momentum this game would have ended in my favor. (For those keeping count, that's 2 cards, either of which I think might have been enough to give me the "W".) Still, he played expertly and didn't give up when the chips were down, so who can say if it would've been enough or not.

My third and final joust game was again against Dennis's Lannister Maester deck. He opened with an at the gates to find Maester Aemon. That was expected and I opened with a 2 initiative 2 claim plot to get the initiative and force through kills. However, he made a mistake in that he knelt Maester Aemon to change plots, grabbing the art of seduction. He played a couple Lannister money maker guys to use as claim, but I pushed a power challenge through and used seduced by power to steal one, forcing him to use Maester Aemon as claim on my military challenge.

He uses Valar on the second turn, and if I'd had narrow escape, I think I'd have won this one as well. He starts building up the Lannister gold / draw schemes, while I dominate the board militarily but the weight of his locations are just too much for me to over come. Again, I feel if I'd had price of war I could have won this game. It is worth noting that he had to draw into his final Maester in the deck to remove the last chain from the Maester's path, but he did so just in time.

So, over all, I think I did pretty decently, the two joust matches I lost were hard fought and I don't think I lost because I made any horrible mistakes. I'm definitely going to have to get ahold of both Narrow Escape and Price of War, which is unfortunate because I don't have much interest in House Baratheon or house Greyjoy, though its better than having to get something from the House Lannister boxed set I suppose.