Joe's Feelings on the Meta At Large

I agree that the current meta is stale, but the new agendas and Valar should shake things up considerably and make new deck types viable. I'm seeing a lot of experimentation with Winter and Varys decks in my area, and those games have been a lot of fun. That said, I'm taking either Stark Fealty or Lanni-Dragon to a tournament today, so the new stuff isn't quite to competitive yet.

I think part of what your feelings about the Meta and cardpool are depends entirely on the types of people you are playing with.  I haven't been able to get the time or money to travel to tournaments yet, and my local group contains more players who are Nedly or Shagga than are Jamie.  Two players pretty much hate bannering as they want to prove a faction can win on its own, to varying levels of success.  They will complain if someone else is playing a banner they view as "would never work together" (though I had to convince them the end of last season on the show made my Targ/Kraken kill deck as Nedly as it gets right now...other than the whole Drago is dead thing).  I have a few other friends who are faction loyal and stick with those factions regardless of their current power level in the card pool.  I'm a weekly wild card, pretty much designing a new deck concept and surprising people with it weekly.  It leads to a lot of different play styles in the group and keeps the decks from getting too stale.  All 6 of us will be doing our first local tournament of sorts (not a championship level tourney, just a small one) soon, so I'm looking forward to it.

The other thing that keeps it fresh for us is Melee.  We probably play more melee than joust.  The ability of the entire table to check a deck that runs away with the game early makes play much more balanced.  Lanni flopped the much lauded Tywin/reducer setup...that's nice.  A few military attacks or a marched or two later and the group has decided to put their game on hold for a few.  The Lanni player has learned he almost has to slow play his deck if he really wants to win.  The group will communally bring him back to earth otherwise (making cards like the boy king actually good for him recently).  

We've played weekly for months and other than a few ruts while waiting for the second cycle to begin have seen little of our enthusiasm for the game dampen.  Perhaps its just the lack of competitive level play, perhaps its people who are valuing fun and theme over cut throat winning, perhaps its just that we're all friends to begin with and the company is as important as the game, but I don't see our group getting stale on this great game any time soon.

Joe, its funny that you were looking to your exhibition games with wama to find interesting decks in the meta. Kevin Shi and I played a great game in top 8 - my deck vs martel fealty. You should have been checking out the top tables my man.

Seth, I would have but there was no NW in that game

I think part of what your feelings about the Meta and cardpool are depends entirely on the types of people you are playing with.  I haven't been able to get the time or money to travel to tournaments yet, and my local group contains more players who are Nedly or Shagga than are Jamie.  Two players pretty much hate bannering as they want to prove a faction can win on its own, to varying levels of success.  They will complain if someone else is playing a banner they view as "would never work together" (though I had to convince them the end of last season on the show made my Targ/Kraken kill deck as Nedly as it gets right now...other than the whole Drago is dead thing).  I have a few other friends who are faction loyal and stick with those factions regardless of their current power level in the card pool.  I'm a weekly wild card, pretty much designing a new deck concept and surprising people with it weekly.  It leads to a lot of different play styles in the group and keeps the decks from getting too stale.  All 6 of us will be doing our first local tournament of sorts (not a championship level tourney, just a small one) soon, so I'm looking forward to it.

The other thing that keeps it fresh for us is Melee.  We probably play more melee than joust.  The ability of the entire table to check a deck that runs away with the game early makes play much more balanced.  Lanni flopped the much lauded Tywin/reducer setup...that's nice.  A few military attacks or a marched or two later and the group has decided to put their game on hold for a few.  The Lanni player has learned he almost has to slow play his deck if he really wants to win.  The group will communally bring him back to earth otherwise (making cards like the boy king actually good for him recently).  

We've played weekly for months and other than a few ruts while waiting for the second cycle to begin have seen little of our enthusiasm for the game dampen.  Perhaps its just the lack of competitive level play, perhaps its people who are valuing fun and theme over cut throat winning, perhaps its just that we're all friends to begin with and the company is as important as the game, but I don't see our group getting stale on this great game any time soon.

I am talking specifically about the competitive scene. In my local game store, there are no Lannister players. There are people who play Lannister in tournaments, but there are no people who play Lannister at our game nights, because they know how mean it is to do that.

And that's not to say that our play group is not competitive. It's just we all enjoy building and playing decks that can win and also aren't the same thing over and over again. We have an extraordinarily accomplished player in our meta who plays Stark Fealty in tournaments but during game nights will bring a Varys choke or a Tyrell Sun deck and still wreck people with it. It keeps the game interesting. NW KoW has been very popular the last few weeks, for obvious reasons.

I do enjoy my game nights way more than I enjoy the competitive scene because I will come up against a Tyrell Sun deck or a Martell Rose deck or a Greyjoy Winter deck or a Targ Summer deck etc. It makes the game interesting and new and a lot of fun.

I've never personally gotten into melee, mainly because I don't play a faction that generally does well in melee. I have played Tyrell in a few melee games in the past and that was fun. But our game nights people are generally more interested in Joust, just because that's the actual game type of the typical GNK or unofficial tournament. Occasionally, an unofficial tournament will have a melee variant if it's very very large (Like Varberg Morghulis), but if you go to a typical unofficial tournament, or even a Regionals, you're playing Joust.

My favorite house is winning

What are they winning?