Forging The Chain - Gencon Prep - The Agnos 500

Welcome to another edition of Forging the Chain. With Gencon rapidly approaching I thought I would discuss my most important piece of advice going into a big tournament, testing, testing, and yes that's right more testing.

The name of this article stems from an individual from another card game who boasted that he tested his deck 500 times before an event. He was roundly mocked for such an outrageous claim, but I understand what he was actually claiming. While clearly he could not have played 500 complete games in a short window before an event, it is possible to simulate partial conditions. Therefore, before every event I strive for the Agnos 500.

The goal of performing the Agnos 500 is to become intimately familiar with your deck. By the end of testing you should strive to know how your deck performs in each of the known matchups and have a clear plan of action. For instance, if your opponent flops the Laughing Storm, what plot are you going to play? If your opponents plays Greyjoy choke what is your plan of attack. After testing you will know it is not a good idea to assume that your 4 gold plots will allow you to play those beefy 4 gold characters every turn. Extensive testing will also make you more confident. One of the worst feelings is when a game gets going and you are losing and do not see any way of recovering. If your testing was thorough you may start losing a game, but you should know precisely what you need to do to turn the game around. That doesn't mean you will always find the correct cards, but at least you know what you are looking for rather than sitting at the table hoping for a quick death.

Due to the absurd lateness of the FAQ it may not be possible to reach the Agnos 500 for Gencon. However, by following these steps you should enter the tournament confident and knowledgeable about your deck.

Step 1: Do a ton of sample flops and first turns with your deck. How many cards are you flopping? What should you expect? This is important information when you get into a tournament game. If you got a 4 card flop with mediocre cards can you risk throwing it back? What are the odds you get a 2 card flop after your mulligan? While these aren't technically games, they certainly are a valuable method for reaching the elusive Agnos 500.

Step 2: Random Testing. Play a ton of games with the deck, against all comers. Whatever you do, do not stop the game if something bad happens because "it's just testing." These are the games where you learn the most. With my current Gencon deck after Step 1 I was thrilled with the deck. The flops looked great, I got a great first turn, and my draw engine was usually cooking. However, after a bunch of games against random players I realized that if my draw engine didn't show up early and I was forced into topdecking I often struggled because I drew too many attachments, events, and locations. Essentially, step 2 led me to realize that while my flops were amazing, there were not enough characters in the deck to deal with a worst case scenario.

Step 3: Tweaking the deck. Give yourself enough time to try everything. During this step you should talk to friends for ideas. What would they add to the deck? I have a circle of people I talk to nearly every day whom I bounce ideas off of. Many of my ideas are terrible, but at least I know I tried them all. During this phase you should continue to play as many games as you can, continually repeating steps 1 and 2.

Step 4: Testing Correctly. Now that you are pretty satisfied with the deck you need to get serious about testing. Until this point you've just been playing games for the sake of getting acquainted with the deck. Now you need to learn how it fares against each matchup. This is the most difficult part of the process as it requires a number of factors. First, you need to accurately predict the meta. If you spend all day testing against Dragons, White Book, and raider decks, you probably will not be prepared for a field full of tier 1 decks. Ok now here is the really tricky part. After identifying the meta you need to actually find someone who has a current good build of each of these decks. Moreover, you need to find people who are good at playing these decks. You will get a false impression of how your deck fares in a certain matchup if your opponent plays the deck incorrectly or includes the wrong cards.

Step 5: Don't switch your deck! Whatever you do, at this point do not switch away from your deck. It can be very tempting to decide at the last moment that you want to use a different deck. The ironic fact is that this usually stems from having so much knowledge about your deck. You have such a good idea of which other decks you struggle against that fear can take over. I faced this issue before my first regional. I tested a Greyjoy maester deck for about a month and loved it. However, I realized that it really struggled against Brienne, who prevents saves. Moreover, my play testing partner was playing a Stark Knights deck and seeing the power of Brienne, he put three copies in her deck. So by testing against each other so much we were inadvertently teching against each other and seeing so much Brienne nearly caused me to abandon my deck the day of the tournament. Thankfully, I added a Milk of the Poppy instead specifically to handle Brienne. How many times did I face Brienne in the event you ask, as you might have guessed 0. Turns out what I really should have been afraid of was Bruno playing Martell Knights of the Hollow Hill. The simple lesson is, don't let your knowledge scare you away from a good deck. Harness that knowledge to crush your foes. You worked hard for that knowledge don't cast it aside easily.

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 three tournaments, placing first in a 15 person local event, 2nd in the 2012 Pasadena Regional (32 players), and 3rd in the first regional of the 2012 season (32 person event - Kingdom Con).