Forging the Chain - Being Competitive in Your Meta

Being Competitive in Your Meta (or Getting over your fear of Proxies)

Welcome back to another installment of Forging the Chain. This week I'm going to discuss a topic which is critical for newer players, fielding competitive decks for your meta. Depending on the group of players you play with, this can be accomplished in different ways. If you are playing with a few friends and you each have a core set and one house box, go ahead and build the best deck you can from that limited pool. I've taken this approach with a number of games and it has been quite fun. However, after a while the limited aspect of the game became rather boring and we moved on to other games. If you are playing with a group whose goal is to play the best decks you can and improve your skills, you are going to need access to all of the cards, and that's what the remainder of this column will focus on.

The most obvious way to acquire all the cards is to buy them all. If you are going to take this approach I highly recommend buying them in bulk. You will often see people on the FFG trade forum selling entire collections. You may also find people selling their cards in larger quantities on Ebay. However, I would not recommend this approach to a newer players, unless that player has oodles of extra cash. For you have no way of knowing how long you will stick with any game which you just discovered. I suggest making sure you plan on sticking around long term before making such a large investment.

A second option is to play exclusively online via OCTGN until you can isolate a deck you want to play and then attempt to acquire all the cards in your deck. However, this is difficult as singles are not easily purchased. You will essentially be isolating which chapter packs contain the cards you need for your deck, and I can assure you it will be many of them. Also, you are limiting yourself to playing exclusively online while you try to determine what you should purchase.

The third option is what I recommend: buying what you can afford and using proxies for the rest. Let me start by saying I realize many newer players were turned off by that last statement, but please bear with me as I elaborate why proxies are necessary. I'll begin with my own experience. When I started the game, I bought one core set and the Stark house box. I built a terrible deck with it that I hoped would be just competitive enough to learn the game. I joined our local group of guys for some games and promptly got whipped. In addition to being new to the game, everyone in my meta owns every card and builds high quality decks. Moreover, one is a world champion and many others have either won or placed in the top four in Regionals. It was clear that a deck made of such a limited card pool just wasn't going to cut it. So, I began looking at the chapter packs to determine what I needed to buy to be competitive. I quickly realized I had to purchase a bunch of chapter packs and those locked me into one deck which I was building with no experience with the game. I was at a bit of a loss. What was I supposed to do now?

Thankfully, I noticed one of the top level players was using a proxy. So, I asked him about it and he informed me that while he owned every card, he had many decks and some used the same cards. So, he had to use some proxies. After further questioning it became clear that since singles are not readily available, proxies are perfectly acceptable, except in tournaments. The next week I built a deck online and then made proxies for the cards I did not own. I printed out about 40 cards for the deck. Yes, this is a staggering amount of proxies in one deck, but it helped me make a reasonable deck. I still lost most of my games, but I was able to have better cards and more answers for other good cards.

Ok, so you are still not convinced you should use proxies huh? Let me lay out in a more straightforward manner why you should use them.

1.) I'm not advocating not buying the cards. FFG has produced an excellent game and I think you should strive to purchase every card. However, unless you are independently wealthy, a gradual purchase may be necessary. I suggest buying every pack as it is released, one core set, and the house box for the house you are using. Then try to purchase packs here and there which supplement your decks. For me, this was easy. I started playing a lot of maester decks and bought the maester cycle. This provided me with about 45 of the cards for my deck.

2.) Everyone uses proxies. This is not Magic where some people make their living off of selling singles, and proxies are frowned upon. In AGOT they are encouraged. If your play group has not come around to their use, please have them read this article or send me a message.

3.) Even players who own every card use proxies. Samwell Tarly is a critical card in any season deck, and there is only one of him in his pack. So, if you want to build a Greyjoy choke deck and two summer decks are you really going to buy six packs of The Raven's Song just to acquire those six copies of Samwell Tarly? Of course not, you will buy two packs and proxy the rest.

4.) Two critical chapter packs are completely unavailable. In order to truly learn this game you will have to play season decks and the black and white ravens are gone. So, you will have to print them or never play (or learn how to play against) critical decks like Greyjoy Winter, Martell Summer, etc.

5.) In order to improve, you need to learn how to build and play tier 1 decks. To be honest, this is simply not possible without owning nearly all of the cards. You may be able to cobble together an effective deck that competes with most tier 2 decks, but tier 1 decks are just too efficient. In order to truly compete in this game, you must be able to pilot a tier 1 deck and know how to play against them. If your meta only plays tier 2 decks, you will be in for a rude awakening when you encounter a slew of tier 1 decks at a major tournament.

Making Proxies: I create a Word document with .5 inch margins on all four sides. Then I search for the card on Card Game Db and mouse over the name. I right click on the image that appears and copy it. Then I paste it into the Word document. Next I right-click on the image and choose format picture. I click on the size tab and make the height 3.45". I'm able to fit 8 cards per page. I then bring the file to my local copy shop and have them print it, making sure scaling is off. Voila, beautiful color proxies.

Well, hopefully I have convinced you to build the best deck you can. There's nothing I enjoy more than facing a high quality deck, by someone who has scoured every card searching for the most efficient use of their resources. Until next time keep improving!

Tiny Grimes recently migrated over to AGOT, in January 2012. Although he has not played the game long, Tiny spends far too much of his time playing and thinking about the game. He has played in two tournaments, placing first in a 15 person local event and 3rd in the first regional of the 2012 season (32 person event - Kingdom Con).