Crimson and Gold - Regionals Wrap-up

Crimson and Gold: Regionals Wrap-up

House Lannister earned less than half as many wins as Greyjoy and Targaryen during the recently-concluded Regionals seasons, but I promise there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Here are the full Regionals results (compiled by yours truly) if you’re interested in comparing Lions to Krakens and Dragons, but today let’s zoom in from the big picture and focus on Lannister only.

Lannister Regional Results

Totals: 8x First Place and 61x Made the Cut

The Long Voyage (TPoL): 1x First Place and 10x Made the Cut
House of Dreams (ARotD): 3x First Place and 17x Made the Cut
The Power Behind the Throne (LotR): 2x First Place and 20x Made the Cut
Treaty with the Isles (CoS): 1x First Place and 2x Made the Cut
Wildlings (Blood of the First Men (RotO) etc): 1x First Place and 1x Made the Cut
City of Shadows (CoS): 0x First Place and 3x Made the Cut
No Agenda / Ser Kevan Lannister (VM): 0x First Place and 3x Made the Cut
Knights of the Hollow Hill (MotM): 0x First Place and 3x Made the Cut
Knights of the Realm (KotStorm): 0x First Place and 1x Made the Cut
The Maester's Path (GotC): 0x First Place and 1x Made the Cut

Five different agendas earned a first-place trophy, and 10 different combinations made the cut at least once – although the agenda promoting FFG’s new naval mechanic, The Black Sails, is noticeably absent. The Night’s Watch agendas, The Brotherhood Without Banners, Kings of Summer, and Kings of Winter also failed to make the cut – although I can’t say for certain if anyone even made such an attempt.

These results should encourage Lanni players who want to branch out from the old PBtT standby and try something different like No Agenda, KotHH, or City of Shadows. I haven’t yet compiled stats for how often each agenda appeared in a tournament without making the cut, but PBtT was certainly the most-played agenda among those paired with Lannister, and it failed to impress, winning only twice despite a making the cut a fair amount of times.

Of course, it’s been a down year for Lanni regardless of agenda due to the emergence of The Long Voyage, which runs better out of houses lacking draw, like Baratheon. The designers essentially took one of Lanni’s biggest strengths and decided to share the wealth in the form of a neutral, low-drawback agenda. Usually when there’s an over-powered neutral card the mantra becomes “If you can’t beat them, then join them”, but sadly Lanni TLV just can’t compete with the big boys. Part of the reason is that Lanni’s draw cards are no longer quite as special, and the card pool that’s left over – mostly kneel – isn’t as effective when the opponent can either stand guys up with vengeful/vigilant, spam the board with 3+ new characters every turn, cancel the kneel, or ambush around it. But that’s enough gloom and doom for now. Here are some links to Lanni decks that raised the bar and did well over this regionals season:

lanni - hod tunnels 2nd from 20 people regional by icarus911
Lannister PBJ Holy (Austin Regional 1st Place) by doulos2k
Pbtt holy 1st Place by Keggy
Lannister PBtT (Brisbane Regional 1st Place) by SeveredDog
3rd Place IA Regional 2013 by bobenfett

If you also made the cut (top 4/8) at a major tournament with Lannister in the last 2-3 months, I would love to share your decklist, gameplan, strategy, reasoning, regrets, etc. in this column. Please send me a private message here or on agotcards.

Random Spotlight: A House Divided (WLL)

There’s an ongoing debate regarding whether such powerful, yet situational, event deserves increasingly-tight space in a Lannister deck. You can join the discussion here. OKTarg makes the point that A House Divided can be triggered to bounce any character after either player marshalls a character with a trait that he already controls. In other words, a Lanni player can summon his second Lord for example, or perhaps his second Ally, and thus trigger the response of A House Divided. This clever workaround firmly cements AHD into its spot as the best all-around Lannister event because it’s less likely to be a dead draw against decks with few traits in common. Furthermore, the game has recently reached a point where trait-themed decks are more viable – Army, Raider, House Dayne, House Bolton, Captain, and Smuggler are all seeing the light of day. I would put AHD right behind Cersei Lannister (LotR) and The Iron Throne (LotR) in my own top 10 list.

Conclusion

FFG should drop a new FAQ soon, and the next cycle will hopefully include some answers to TLV that will allow Lanni to become competitive once again. Until the new Kingsguard shadows characters arrive, we’ll just have to be content with Lanni’s only card from A Journy’s End, the frankly-embarrassing-for-whoever-designed-this King's Landing Dromon (AJE).

Next time we’ll review the unique versions of important Lannister characters like Jaime, Cersei and Tyrion and speculate what cool tricks their future versions might bring.