Quill & Tankard Regulars - Special Stahleck Edition

Quill & Tankard Regulars - Special Stahleck Edition

A group of the Tavern's most hardened wastrels and layabouts, with an unquenchable thirst for beer, coffee and heated arguments assault Castle Stahleck. Wherever there's a drinks-locker to be raided, rules to be argued and ridiculous excuses for poor performance to be made... expect the Quill & Tankard Regulars.

Introduction

This year, a reinforced Quill & Tankard Regulars team travelled to Castle Stahleck in Germany for the European A Game of Thrones Championships. Our aim was to conclusively prove that knowing the rules of the game not only helps you win games, but also makes playing that much more interesting.

When travelling to Stahleck, the first obstacle is actually getting there. You see, castles were usually erected in elevated positions, in order to discourage hostile knights and make any uphill charges in full body armour an unpleasant experience. Unfortunately, that still works today.

Castle Stahleck is located on a gentle hill on top of a murderous precipice that would put the Eyrie to shame, above the picturesque town of Bacharach. Getting there takes a short hike up a few stairs a sheer endless death march compared to which crossing the Red Waste is a cosy stroll. Since Thrones players often tend to be more geek fit than regular fit, the end result isn't always pretty. Of course, if you're one of those adventurous people who enjoys a refreshing stroll along the city walls, or dashing uphill when you're 5 minutes late for a final... you'll love it.

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The Tourneys

On Friday afternoon, just a short hour or so after our heroes reached the castle, the Melee tourney started with 66 participants. Three rounds of swiss were played, and the top 16 advanced to the semi-finals. You can find complete stats and results for the Melee here.

The semis finished up around 1 AM on friday night, and the Melee final took place on the following Saturday morning, beginning at 8.30 and ending right before the Joust started. Let it not be said that we go easy on our champions over here. It is probably not surprising that none of the players at the final Melee table did particularly well in the Joust...

The Melee was won by István, a first-time Stahleck player from the budding Hungarian meta running a Martell deck. He played the table beautifully, giving the impression of an easy-going, laid back trickster, joking around, having a beer, then another one (remember, this was like 9 in the morning) and going out of his way to appear non-threatening. Well, it seems he knew all along what he was doing, and by the time people realized he had a shot at winning, it was already too late to stop him. Now, that's how you play Melee! From a Q&TR perspective, the Melee went pretty damn well. Both Anette (our reinforcement) and WWDrakey made the cut, and WWDrakey even made the final table and took 2nd place!

Right after the Melee final, the Joust started. 130 players from 14 nations vied for victory. You can find detailed results and stats here.

The field was somewhat smaller than expected. At one point it looked like up to 160 players might be participating, but late cancellations and no-shows brought the number down somewhat. Still, this is the biggest AGoT tournament in history, edging out last year's Stahleck Joust by ten players. The size of the field posed a serious challenge to tournament organization, and spurred TO Wolfgang to find a creative solution. The field was divided up into four groups (named Winterfell, Sunspear, King's Landing and The Eyrie) which all played a mini-tournament with six rounds of Swiss and a cut to Top 8 each. The 32 players who made the cut in their groups then played single elimination rounds.

The field was dominated, both in terms of participation and results, by the strong metas from Spain and Italy, which also had some Meta-decking going on. Three Madrid players brought a Stark Kings of Winter (TWoW) deck they had created together and all made the cut, coming in 1st, 1st and 2nd in their groups. Four Italian players played a GJ Maesters deck created by Master Deckbuilder Vincenzo Solazzi, and they all made the cut too, and one of them won it all.

Like the Battle of Waterloo, the final was a close-run thing. Veteran Stark player Humberto Jiménez came within a hair's breadth of winning, but Stefano Montanari from Italy was able to stall him at 14 power and ride the aforementioned GJ Maesters deck to victory.

Some more observations:

• As was the case last year, GJ was clearly overrepresented, and Stark clearly underrepresented in Top 32.
• Targaryen Knights of the Hollow Hill (MotM) was a popular deck type, and it did OK too, with a 4th place and three more Top 32 representatives, but overall it did less well than many people expected. Also, fears that there might be a netdecking frenzy in the wake of John Bruno's Worlds win proved unfounded.
• People who thought the restriction of Search and Detain (HtS) would be a "soft ban" of the card need to think again. Third most popular restricted card in the field after Fear of Winter (BtW) and The Maester's Path (GotC), and the gap to TMP is fairly close.
• Lannister The Power Behind the Throne (LotR) did not do as well as in Worlds, but it did not do badly either. The house seems to be in better shape than many thought.
• Baratheon, OTOH, seems to be in the doghouse right now. It takes a stellar player and Master Deckbuilder like Chris Jankiewicz to steer a single Bara deck into top 16, and that seems to be pretty much all the House can hope for these days.
• The deck of the tournament was clearly Greyjoy The Maester's Path (GotC). Eight in the field. Seven made the cut. Four in Top 16. Two in Top 4. One took the crown.
• Overall, the level of play was very high. Even in the mid-list regions of the field you could expect to find very slick, efficient decks steered by competent players. Big names can be found all over the standings, another indication of how competitive the field was.

Decklists and individual tourney reports from the Quill and Tankard Regulars, such as there are, can be found here. Including an inside report on the final table from WWDrakey!

Rules Issues

This being a column centered on the rules, we'd like to get into some issues that came up at Stahleck regarding that aspect of the game.

Peculiar card interactions: There were a lot of small rules-things we ran into at Stahleck, that usually don't matter that much, but in an extremely tight competition can mean the difference between winning and losing. Examples?

• Infamous! (LotR) cannot stop a win in a game, it only happens after the power is placed.
• Long Lances (THoBaW) interact quite funnily with Castellan of the Rock (BoRF) and Queen's Guard (TBC), timing-wise. After a Lannister player plays a Castellan of the Rock, triggers it, and the passive for Queen's Guard happens, there is still a Response: opportunity for a Targaryen player to stand his knelt character via Long Lances as a response to Castellan entering play.
• The cannot be saved text on Threat from the North (PotS) actually matters in some cases, like, say, with Moqorro (VD).
• When you use Rhaenys's Hill (TBoBB) and among the characters you're putting into play is a Queen's Knight (TWot5K) along with non-Knight characters, the Queen's Knight will jump back to your opponent's hand during the passive step of that same action window. Erm, yes, one of the Quill & Tankard Regulars actually managed to do that wrong in a tournament game. Sorry, Maru. I don't think it would've mattered.

Decklist accuracy: Correct decklists have always been taken very seriously by the Stahleck TOs. This year, the decks of all 32 players making the cut in Joust were checked for legality and congruence with the submitted decklist. While all decks were found to be legal, there were some discrepancies between decks and decklists in several cases. Luckily, all of them were very minor. However, following past precedent from previous years, the judges penalized all of the offending players by reducing the number of power required by their opponent to win in their first Top 32 match (by one, due to such minor infractions).

Dealmaking in Melee: Dealmaking in Melee, especially in the upper echelon tables was extremely vigorous. All fine by itself, but for some reason nobody was breaking any deals. Even when they were clearly allowing another player to win! C'mon, this is The Game of Thrones we're talking about? Find your inner Littlefinger and stab you friend in the back! We even heard that people hold grudges for broken deals for years, which really didn't sound at all right. If deal-making is seen as too binding by players, we feel that something should be done about it. One drastic, but interesting, possibilty is to forbid binding deals in Melee all together, so that the game is played more through the mechanics, and less through social coercion.

Hidden Information: The current hidden information rules we have in AgoT create some odd situations. The rule is that if you are doing something in a zone that your opponent cannot see (hand, deck) you must do it if you can. At one Joust table, an opponent was always asking when he triggered his Maester Luwin (FtC) on how many hand cards the other player had in hand. Was he avoiding the Kings of Winter (TWoW) Agenda by not taking an event from the top or not? With the current rules, these things get a bit awkward. Players have no way of knowing things like this and calling a judge every time is a little bit too excessive for such a minor issue.

Props & Slops

WWDrakey:

Props:
- The people from my Melee games for creativity in decks and some really hardfought games. Especially our Melee Champion – for drinking like a Finn (at 9 AM), acting like a Gentleman and playing like a Demon.
- Baratheon-fanatic Gilles for his awesome Red Priest's Robe, and our local Kuopio meta for supporting with deck testing.
- All of the guys (daffodilfish and others) who mentioned that our Q&TR articles have been helpful. That was awesome to hear!

Slops:
- The Portugese Meta for breaking tradition and not playing the Heavy Drinking With the Portugese plot card this year.
- People who, when asked to explain the text on a foreign-language card mid-game, proceeded to modify it completely.
- Some Judges for not taking their position seriously, only enforcing game state/rules when convenient for them, or making rough decisions hastily without consulting others.

Ire:

Props:
- Wolfgang, amazing tournament with really awesome loot.
- WWDrakey for his position in Melee! So close. Could have gotten a (neutral non-unique Maester) Quill & Tankard Regulars card...
- British meta, all of you guys were great. Fellow Small Council Member JCWamma for taking a Greyjoy deck to the Top 32 in Joust, and both him and Becky for our Sunday evening feast with the aptly named Big (and one Small) Slaughter Plates all around.
- The drink locker with a good variety of drinks and beer (Melee just goes much better while you are drinking at same time).

Slops:
- The players who were running around the judge tables when we were checking the validity of the top 32 deck lists. Got to a point where we were yelling players to stop scouting.
- People who didn't tidy after themselves. Come on guys, don't leave your dinner plates and food trash on the dining tables that are going to be used for the Joust Swiss rounds.

Ratatoskr:

Props:
- Wolfgang, the Prince Who Was Promised, for making it all possible, and Yannick, the Knight of Flowers, who ran a smooth tournament and provided me with stats updates for the live blog.
- The British and Italian crews who made the final evening so memorable. Especially The Daffodilfish, who introduced me to the BEST.GAME.EVER: We Didn't Playtest This At All. To think we wasted an entire weekend playing stupid AGoT when we could've played this instead...
- Federico Pasolini for not being the bubble man (just barely)
- Tomdidiot for being gracious in defeat :Þ
- The Munich meta for being such great friends and opponents.
- All the community for being this awesome.

Slops:
- I know this is lame, but I can't think of anything worth mentioning. Everything and everybody was awesome.

Antti Korventausta (WWDrakey) is a self-proclaimed Finnish AGoT philosopher and nitpicker, who also used to practice Quantum Mechanics, but found that it paled to AGoT in both interest and complexity. As a Stahleck regular and judge, he sometimes has oddly vivid dreams of understanding portions of the game. In AGoT, he'll play anything as long as it's suitably twisted... often ending up with something that has horns on it.

Helmut Hohberger (Ratatoskr) started playing AGoT in September 2010 and has never looked back (although his wife has, longingly). As a German, he loves rules - and I mean *loves* 'em. Try triggering a Response at the end of a phase on his watch, and he'll probably invade your country. He has actually read the FAQ, and was made a judge at Stahleck and at various other events. He sometimes answers rules questions on boardgamegeek and the FFG rules board. Some of his answers haven't even been contradicted, corrected or expanded upon by ktom - there is no higher accolade for a rules board morlock.

Every Maester needs a Raven on his shoulder. As a Finn, Iiro Jalonen (Ire) got pulled under the waves by Krakens years ago, and has never looked back. A self-inflicted Shagga and active member of the global AGoT community, he has always strived to know the rules of the game, in order to make them do ridiculous things.