Forging The Chain - Getting Ready for Success

Welcome back to another edition of Forging the Chain. My apologies for taking such a long sabbatical from this column that I enjoy so much. The real world can be rather demanding at times. Unfortunately, these commitments are still demanding my attention so this entry will have to be short and sweet. With Gencon quickly approaching I wanted to give a brief rundown on how to be a successful AGOT player. If you are an avid reader of these column you may notice that some of today's advice has been offered over a number of previous columns.

1.) Practice - The best way to improve your AGOT skills is by playing the game. For many this consists of a weekly (or bi-weekly) gathering. While playing 3 games every two weeks may be enjoyable, it is not going to help you improve quickly. Over a matter of years you may gain a fair amount of skill with the game, but the simply put: in order to improve you must play more games. I highly suggest playing on OCTGN. The quality of players you will find is rather mixed, but any game is better than no game at all. I've played far too many games on OCTGN and this has helped me improve my game much quicker than playing once every two weeks at the Comic Bug would have allowed.

2.) Practice correctly - This advice is a bit more difficult. Not only do you want to play games, but you want to play games correctly. That is, do not ask for or accept takebacks. This can lead to frustration, but trust me it's worth it. There is nothing more frustrating for me than playing against a great player like John Bruno and having the perfect plan, but then making a boneheaded play which ruins my plan and costs me the game. For example, recently I was playing a Targ burn deck against his Lannister deck. He had Cersei out and I was keeping her under control by playing 3 Forever Burnings every turn and then getting them back with my boatload of influence locations. Each turn I thought, "hmm should I play Threat this turn?" Finally, I decided the time is now. If I play it this turn I will win the game (and I was correct in my decision). However, for some ridiculous reason I forgot to get my Forever Burnings back. When we flipped plots I realized my mistake and sheepishly asking Bruno to let me grab them now. He smiled and said, "No sorry, that is 3 phases ago and plots have been flipped over." Of course he was right, but I was still furious. I wasn't mad at Bruno, but I was furious with myself. We had played a long game and I blew it on a ridiculous mistake. The point of this story is that in a tournament, no one will allow you to take back this mistake so it is better to get used to either making less mistakes or working around them in your practice games. Be vigilant with yourself on this matter. I find that if I ask for takebacks in casual games 9/10 time people will say yes, and I'm so competitive it can be hard for me to resist asking for them. But I cannot stress this enough: resist, resist, resist!

3.) Build Good Decks - This is a really tricky subject for many. I've heard many a player talk about how he/she wants to craft their own deck and not play the flavor of the month. However, I have heard these same players complain endlessly about how they lose every game and cannot figure out why. The simple answer is: most theme decks made by inexperienced players are terrible. I realize this is a hard pill to swallow, but it really is the truth. While off-beat theme decks and can be fun and interesting, you will lose with them unless you are an excellent deck builder and player. For instance, if you are Jimm on OCTGN you can seemingly throw together 60 random terrible cards and make a competitive deck. However, whenever I try this approach I get obliterated by decks that are actually good. So what you may be left with is either losing with your bad deck (and please stop complaining about it, as it gets old) or make a good deck.

4.) Understand and Embrace the Meta - This is probably the hardest part of the game for newer players. What needs to be made clear is that this game is much more like chess than checkers. It's not simply a race to put the most strength on the board, kneel your characters, and win the game. Control is not only a part of the game, but it is extremely strong. I've recently run into a few players that will complain anytime their card has its icons stripped, is knelt, or is bounced from the board. Moreover, people complain endlessly about how strong Greyjoy choke is. However, here's the dirty little secret Greyjoy choke is actually weak right now. Sure it wipes out less experienced players who are playing weak decks. Therefore, you might see a few place in the top 8 in regionals. However, once Greyjoy choke runs into the great players running efficient decks equipped to handle the mechanic, choke usually loses. While the same cannot be said for other forms of control like icon stripping, bouncing, and kneeling, all decks need to have a plan of attack for these decks. You cannot build a deck based around putting out one or two cards with dupes on them and no cancels and expect to win the game. You need a plan for handling the diversity which is the meta. If I get a chance to write another article before Gencon, I will focus on the different deck types which are popular in the meta right now and how to handle each.

Until next time, have fun and 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 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).