Words are Wind - Populating a Meta

Words are wind, especially these words: an AGoT LCG opinion column

Populating a Meta: How Chicago Got its Groove Back



I’ve been involved in the competitive *1 AGoT LCG scene for about a year and a half now. As I would imagine happens to many, I started playing because I love the books, kept playing because I enjoyed the game, and am in for the long haul because of
the community.

I was introduced to the game by a friend in graduate school who had been playing for some time. After playing with him, myself and two other friends bought our Core Sets and a couple of chapter packs. AGoT (the LCG and board game) became our preferred non-D&D nerd activity. For a couple of years, we had a great little gaming group going.

The real hiccup came when, due to graduation and geographically-varied employment, our gaming group got stretched a bit thin. The original AGoT player left the game entirely. Not too long after, one of the others started losing interest. I knew the real death knell was when he stopped buying the new chapter packs.

So there I was, with a metagame (“meta”)*2 that consisted entirely of two people, myself and my friend Brian. While both of us were (and still are) enthusiastic players, playing against only one person, even a great friend, even switching up decks a lot, can get tiresome. Perhaps luckily, we were only able to get together to play every
month or so at the best, so we didn’t get the chance to get that tired of playing each other.

It was around this time that we started seeking other venues in which to play. We began attending official events, including GenCon 2010, ChiCon Snow, and the Iowa 2011 Regional. It was at these events that I started meeting and getting to know “the community.” After a handshake greeting and shuffling of decks, the conversation usually
went something like this:

ME: Are you on the boards?
OTHER: Yes, I’m Boardname. What about you?
ME: I’m Shenanigans.
OTHER: (nervous laugh) Ohhh yeah, I’ve seen you on there…(trails off, focuses
on the game intently)

Despite a number of such awkward introductions, I started to become familiar with (and to) the community, or at least that’s what my accumulation of new Facebook friends indicated to me.

Through Brian’s efforts, we also met and got to know several other Chicago area players, with whom we were able to meet up very occasionally. These gentlemen were, to the best of my knowledge, all that remained of Chicago’s previous CCG-era meta.*3 It was great meeting friendly and experienced players, but we remained too few and too spread out*4 to do any truly regular playing.

Now other than the obvious effects of making new friends and improving my deckbuilding/playing, I discovered that the community had a number of very distinct metas: Missouri (“Valar Midwestous”), Iowa (“Knights of the Corn”), D.C., New York, California, and many more sub-communities. While I definitely enjoyed playing against
and socializing with these folks, I also found myself rather envious of the camaraderie and intra-community recognition enjoyed by those within one of these metas. On a more basic level, I recognized that by being part of such a meta, these players had better access to deckbuilding and play advice, the latest AGoT news and strategy, and most importantly, people to play the game with. The Iowa meta, being so near, generously adopted us, but we were just too far away to be a regular part of the play group. Brian and I even had a running joke with the Iowans about how small our meta was, e.g. “looks like half the meta is showing up for the event.”

With this in mind, and an upcoming casual AGoT gathering at home of one of the aforementioned Chicagland players, plans began to formulate. On the way to that event, Brian and I were talking and he mentioned that a couple new players were going to be there. It was then that what started as an offhand, joking, comment from me changed into a serious suggestion mid-sentence.

“Wow, that puts us above five players; we should think about naming this meta.”

We’d had our eureka moment; Brian and I immediately started tossing around ideas, settling fairly quickly on “Da Wolf Pack” for several reasons:

1) Its transliteration of the Chicago (South Side) accent;*5
2) If the U.S. = Westeros, then Chicago seems like a pretty decent analog for Winterfell/The North, so the (dire) wolf seemed a good mascot/symbol;
3) The name is a pun on the name of one of the meta’s guiding lights; and seemed a fitting way to salute him.

After that, everything fell together pretty quickly. A group on Facebook, some old leads off the FFG boards, and we were off and running. Brian hosted our first official get- together at his home, and we had eight people show up to play.

As of now (January 2012) we have about ten Chicago-area members, all of whom are relatively active. We just hosted a small tourney (12 players) which drew people from Iowa, Wisconsin, and all parts of Illinois. As a meta, we’re spread out all over Chicagoland/Illinois and we don’t yet have a dedicated FLGS to congregate at, so our gatherings are mostly at member homes, but they’ve all been a lot of fun. No matter what our logistical issues, it’s definitely exciting to have both an identity and a “home” as a gamer. Hoot su!*6

- Shenanigans

*1 I only say “competitive” to describe the environment, not my performance within it.

*2 “metagame” or “meta,” is a gaming term used to refer to general environment of a game. It is used to refer both to the people with whom one usually plays (e.g. “very few people in my meta play Stark”) as well as on a larger scale to indicate the environment of
the game as a whole (e.g. “The metagame is currently big on location destruction.”)

*3 “CCG” refers to a collectible card game, the most well known of which is Magic:The Gathering. In 2007-2008 AGoT switched from a CCG format to the LCG format (“Living Card Game.”)

*4 One of the problems that I found in our attempts at meta-building was geography. It’s not uncommon for two people who both (accurately) refer to themselves as “from the Chicago area” to live two hours drive from each other. Other metas from smaller metropolitan areas seem to be more centralized.

*5 For those unfamiliar with the geolinguistic breakdown of Chicago, the South Side accent is that most generally recognized as the “Chicago” accent by those outside the area, in no small thanks to Saturday Night Live’s “Superfans.” The less famous, but no
less prevalent, North Side accent is characterized by more flat vowel sounds, such as the “a” in “Chicago” being pronounced like the “a” in “bad,” as opposed to the South Side pronouncing it with an “aw” sound, like “awl.”

*6 “Hoot su” is the closest thing we have to a battle cry, and comes from one of our member’s mistyping of “Hoot Suite” on our Facebook page. We thought it sounded close enough to the Old Tongue to work for us Northmen.

Addendum: It has been suggested by my fellow Small Council writers that I take on the role of AGoT Q&A man/advice columnist. For this column, I’ll be answering questions posed by them. For future Q&A, feel free to send your AGoT (and general life) questions to me in a message here at cardgamedb.com and I’ll answer them in a semi-serious manner (no rules questions please; I’d just forward them to Ktom anyway.) Be sure to put “Words are Wind” in the subject line.

Q: What are possible uses for the Banner for the North?
A: As a proxy for another card or alternatively, in an early version of my clunky melee deck from GenCon 2011.

Q: What is the best house to play Brotherhood out of?
A: None, alternatively Martell or Neutral. Seriously, there is too much bounce, attachment hate, and blanking in the current environment for Brotherhood to see much play. I say this, of course, as a man who lost (modified) to a Brotherhood deck at this year’s Days of Ice and Fire Joust.

Q: How do I speak to girls?
A: At your own risk.