Canadian Nationals 2018 - TO Report

Marshal: Alex “Istaril” Hynes

Organizational details:
The event was hosted by BreakoutCon2018 (in partnership with 401 Games) at the Sheraton Center in Toronto on March 17^th-18^th. It included a day 1 joust (swiss), day 2 cut with a melee side-event. The fee for attending the FFG-nationals part of the con was only 20$, which allowed you to play in any FFG Nationals-run events. To my knowledge, 26 players took advantage of this (24 playing in the melee day 2, 2 in Destiny). The venue was suitable, clean and with nearby affordable parking. Space was adequate for the Day 1 Joust event, although space constraints resulted in minor changes to the side-event as it was running. Facilities were clean, and providing water was much appreciated. Streaming support was limited on day 1 due to bandwidth concerns, but those logistics were solved, and teams were able to stream the Thrones cut (and a melee game) on day 2. Special thanks to Rob St John’s for recording Day 1 games and Streaming on day 2! I did not explore the rest of the con, although a few other attendees did.

Registration was handled by the convention but involved a two (independent) part registration for badge and then for events that was decidedly unclear, and a nuisance to reconcile the two lists. The tournament organizing team provided great support, with resources (Banner, tape, paper, printer, cutter, computer, internet access, cutting table slips) that allowed me to run the entire tournament “solo”. They regularly checked in to see if I needed any assistance. Having to leave the tournament room to access them wasn’t ideal, but made perfect sense given the layout.

Promotion began much later than expected, due to lack of confirmation of support from the distributor – once it was confirmed, there was considerable doubt as to whether prize support would arrive in time. Thankfully, it did, but this was known a week in advance of the tournament. If FFG wants to continue to allow Nationals to be run at any point in the year, it is unacceptable for the kits to be unavailable a third of the way through the year. Product availability in Canada made it impossible to run a 2^nd edition draft, compounded by the awkward registration system making it unclear how many takers would play to avoid being left with excess draft product. Lines of communication for me as a TO were not entirely clear, leading to some very late breaking information (e.g. I only found out there’d be no official melee support very late).

An important change I wanted to highlight is that this year is that TOs, such as myself, are actually paid by Asmodee Canada. This is clearly commendable, but has left me with some mixed feelings regarding some of the leeway I’ve used (abused?) as a TO (e.g. using Jousting Pavillion over Tome, policy on unofficial game components). Note, in practice this didn’t create any conflicts, and weird feelings about it are more of a theoretical unease when I think of myself as working for the community, not for the company. I think it'll take me a little while to untangle what I really mean here, so I’ll leave it at that. The money all went to cover expenses (read: beer on Saturday, my gas+parking, shipping out a lost jacket) related to running the tournament, so everybody wins.

The Tournament:

Joust: The joust had 40 players, with 15 travelling from the USA (Michigan (7), Ohio (2), Wisconsin (2), New York (2), Indiana (2)), 9 from Montreal, 1 from Quebec City, and the remaining 14 from Ontario (as far as Sault Ste-Marie). We had 5 no-shows. One player claimed a regional bye from 2017. All 8 factions were represented, with a bias towards Tyrell (11) due to a team of 5 players all bringing the same deck. Six 55-minute swiss rounds were played, with a 1 h break for lunch after round 2, finishing exactly on time at 17:30. The Top 8 cut on day 2 started ~15 minutes late due to overlap with a melee round, and was won by Jake Platt (Wisconsin) on-stream, in a highly technical mirror-match final running not too far from its 120 minute time limit. The tournament was run using “The Jousting Pavillion”, with the full record available here: http://thejoustingpa...urnaments/4965/. Full standings were accessible online, and posted on paper before the final round to confirm seeding prior to round 6.



Melee: The melee had 24 players, all of whom had played in the Joust. It was played as a relaxed tier event, starting 105 minutes (one round) before the cut on Sunday. Players in the cut were awarded an automatic 6 points towards the second round, and one made the final table based on a 21 point total. The tournament was run using an excel spreadsheet. All 8 factions were represented, with the following breakdown and points totals (not including final). The final was a hard-fought 6-plot match ending in a king-making UO as a player out of reach of winning had to make a decision about whether 1^st or 2^nd player won (Alex O’Shea, Toronto, Lanni/Crossing). Players in the joust cut whose game 1 ran to time were provided with food/drink so they could move on to the cut. Custom rules were in place to address 3 player tables (No Crown Regent, No Supports). Because of space constraints, I had to create one 5 player table instead of 3 3 player tables for round 2.

30 lanni/crossing*
30 bara/rose
21 martell/crossing
21 bara/crossing
21 Targ fealty
17 tyrell/wolf
17 nw/brotherhood
15 nw/castamere
11 tyrell/wolf
10 Greyjoy/greensight
9 Stark/kos
9 Martell/hrd
7 targ/?
7 stark/kow
7 nw/crossing
7 lanni/greensight
6 stark/rose
6 stark/kraken
6 Greyjoy/greensight
6 Not Recorded
3 nw/brotherhood
2 tyrell/kos
2 martell/crossing
1 martell/rains



Prizes:
Participation: All participants in the Joust, and all in the Melee received the official alt-art Milk of the Poppy. All participants in the Joust received an alt-art Renly, courtesy of the Insight and Renown Podcast.

Placement: Top 32 received Stark acrylic faction cards. Top 17* (see notes) received House Bolton tokens. Top 8 received Nationals Playmats, as did the Melee winner (TO mat). Top 4 received wooden House Mormont house cards. Finalists received a full playset of Zaragoza house cards, courtesy of **** Vazquez. Winner received a 2018 Nationals Trophy. Top of each faction in Joust and in Melee each received an in-faction Zaragoza House card. Bottom placement received 3 wonderful alt-art cards, courtesy of Roy Rogers. The highest placing player with Annals in their plot deck received an artist-signed print of the Annals of Castle Black. All 4 melee finalists received a GRRM 1^st edition promo, and a playset of 2017 Nationals promos (Jaime Lannister) (TO’s).

Bad Luck Prizes: A heads on spikes signed by Nate French or from Banter Behind the Throne (TO’s) was awarded to people who were particularly unlucky in some way; one player played combo thrice, another received it for a losing a cards-in-deck tiebreaker, and all players missing the joust cut on Strength of Schedule received one, with the 9^th place receiving an additional alt-art. Post-report, I reached out to the player to whom I made a bad judge call to offer them a prize too.

Unsworn Apprentice: Players attending their first Premier event (regional+) received, in order of standing, their pick of full playsets of official alt arts and a Thrones box, provided by the TO. Three players claimed this prize.

Wandering Crow: A random draw (one entry for every km travelled) was performed amongst all players from out-of-province for a 2017 Nationals Playmat (TO’s)

The Long Plan: A Nationals 2014 Playmat (Martell) was up for grabs for the best “submarine” (2 losses and winning remaining 4 games, or 3 losses and winning remaining 3). No player claimed this prize.

The Rain in Spain: I had 12 lovely Power Behind the Thrones promos from Kikke Vazquez, and 12 Rains players… So each player playing rains was awarded an alt-art PbTT.

Original Story: The TO handed out 1^st edition GRRM promos to players playing unique decks he hadn’t seen or expected to see in tournaments before; Bara Brotherhood, Greyjoy Greensight, and a Tyrell/Watch.

TO Questions:

• Can I trigger Highgarden Ministrel off a Rat Cook used to take it. No; it’s blank at the time.
• Which happens first, bestow or reactions (Garlan vs Hightower). Bestow.
• If I use Rat Cook on Tris, are the cards he’s taken still not playable. Yes
• Can I treachery Winterfell. Yes
• Does Forgotten Plans also prevent the Forced Reaction on Annals. Yes.
• If Mace blinks a 3 cost in marshaling, will it be affected by First Snow of Winter. Yes.
• Can I kill a lord/lady with red wedding on the challenge I flipped into it (Rains). No.
• If my only attacker dies before defenders declared, does challenge fizzle. No.
• If recruiter for the watch dies to wildfire (target=Shireen, who dies), do I get to trigger the Shireen I own? No, Interrupt precedes her (and Recruiter’s) death.
• Can a Begging Brother dying to Valar cancel a Tinder Marg trigger. **Yes (I answered incorrectly, should be NO. See "the bad").
• What happens if I use Red Vengeance against a 0 claim attacker. He suffers 0 claim.
• Does Blessing of the Maiden clear an existing Milk of the Poppy. Yes.
• If a character is LotC boosted out of Dracarys range, when does it die. During the challenges phase, as soon as the challenge ends.
• Who controls the dupe on a character who changes control? The owner of the Dupe.
• If a character with Boy King gets sacrificed for TO the Rose Banner on a King in the North turn, can Taena trigger? No.
• Can Begging Brother cancel Dolorous Edd? Yes.
• Do I have to cancel “I never Bet against my family” before or after my opponent reveals his bottom 5 cards? Before.
• Who selects characters to preserve first on a Valar Dohaeris turn? First player, but they all leave play simultaneously.
• Can I trigger Minstrel off a cancelled event? Yes.
• Can Knight of Flowers react to interrupts (Hand’s Judgement) played to cancel the ones played to cancel a to the rose banner, in order to boost strength before To the Rose Banner resolves? Yes.
• When is a player eliminated with 0 cards; upon failing to draw, or on drawing the last card? Drawing the last card.
• If two players draw their last card simultaneously, who wins? FP decides.
• Melee: Varys’s Riddle vs Summer harvest? First player decides conflict based on the reference plots chosen by the Riddle and Summer harvest players. The Riddle player is not obliged to choose the summer harvest player (setting x=0)
• Melee: Does crown regent choose the target for the redirect? No.
• Melee: Can Master of Whispers choose not to resolve claim against the loser of the challenge? Yes.
• Melee: If you Varys’s Riddle, are you obliged to choose a When Revealed effect if one exists? Yes.

TO Interventions:

• An Isle of Ravens was used on a King in the North turn, and I was called to the table. I restored board state, placing the event back into discard and randomizing the deck.
• Due to a typo (case-sensitive team names, apparently), a player was paired against a meta-mate in round 1. I manually reassigned the BYE rather than go for a complete re-pairing.
• A player noticed they had been given a full win rather than a mod-win for a previous round. This was adjusted during the following round.
• Decklist checks were performed to check any illegal joust decks. None were found. Deck checks were performed on all top 8 players to confirm the cards they brought matched the list they had. All had.
• One player counted out their cards before a cut match, noticed they were missing one (it had changed control last round) before drawing setup hand. The card was retrieved.
• An attained was found on a No-attachments character. The error had occurred several rounds earlier. The attachment was placed in the discard pile, the game resumed from that state.
• Two joust cut players had their melee round 1 tables go long. Food was provided for them to prepare them for the cut.
• A true-tie for 16^th resulted in an oddity (See bad), but 17^th place was also given a set of House tokens.
• A jacket was left behind, but was mailed to its owner the next day. A steward at the wall was found in the wrong deck, but the relevant players have been put in touch.
• Actively intervened in the final to re-order and re-clarify the order of the stack (and opportunity to interrupt) in a chain of Hand's Judgements, as the board situation was getting very complicated.
• After writing this report and catching my rules mistake, I contacted the player involved to send them a bad luck prize.

The Good:
Tournament rounds happened quickly, with an average of 5 minutes downtime between time being called and the next round starting. Additional prizes were very well received. No players declined to be recorded or declined to appear on the stream. We had 0 players drop in the swiss, although 1 declined to play in the cut to participate in another event. 3 players were attending their first formal-tier FFG events. 24 players participated in the melee, and the event seemed to be an enjoyable one (and something to do while travelling companions wrapped up the cut!). 30 players attended the supper/drinks after the swiss, and several stuck around (And even ventured out to Karaoke).

The Bad:

• In reviewing my notes, I see I gave a wrong answer to a judge question (See above), assuming it was a save-related one. It didn't affect the outcome of the match (Thankfully), and I reached out to the player to apologize and offered a bad-luck prize.
• Running the melee from a spreadsheet wasn’t ideal for drops/additions due to the cut and led to some delays in pairing.
• Running the melee/joust cut without a second organizer wasn’t ideal - It worked logistically but meant I couldn’t actively judge all the cut tables adequately.
• 3 players forfeited matches (2 combo mirror matches, 1 player choosing not to play combo), and one cut player dropped (didn’t want to play against combo and wanted to play in destiny. Where, sadly, he lost to combo).
• In handing out top 16 prizes, JP listed players in one order. Later, it changed the order. This is because 16^th and 17^th were tied for SoS and eSoS, and something caused the randomization between those places to flip. Thankfully, this was caught the next day, and 17^th place (now 16^th) was provided with Top 16 prizing as well.
• One custom prize (Print of Duel) wasn’t available due to the donor’s move. Once it’s found in a box, we’ll address that!
• I forgot to get a picture of everyone!

A few stories from the event:
- Combo #5 (A very long list of ladies): 5 players brought a very similar Tyrell/Lion combo deck to the joust, a deck created by Jake Platt (winner). The combo generally took the field by storm (3 making the cut, 2 in top 4 and making the finals), although a few players were prepared for it, most – even those with answers in their deck – didn’t have any way of gauging the weak points of the deck to disrupt it. The final was extremely technical (and superb) play, but not very approachable viewing for new players.
- The very Red Wedding: One melee table had two players flip The Red Wedding on the same turn. This means that a challenge win could result in two lords/ladies dying. It was a bloodbath!
- Consolidate your… losses?: At the melee final, a player at 14 power chose to play consolidation of power on an opponent’s character rather than their own. The audience audibly reacted, but the player didn’t realize what he’d done until the next plot phase. His face was… priceless.