A Very AGOT Christmas Part II

And so here continues the tale...Of what, I'm not really sure. But I do feel that I should continue writing (well, hopefully) every year adding a piece here and a piece there.

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Keep safe and bugger yer lord o' light! =]

=======================

Ser Barristan Selmy stood with massive arms folded across his chest. "It will be a dangerous undertaking, my lady," he muttered. He stared at Daenerys Targaryen's face that was seemingly lost in thought. "Our Dothraki Scouts have reported that the Stags, the Wolves and the Lions have joined forces. They are massing at Moat Cailin."

"I'm tired," she whispered softly, "tired so my bones ache and my muscles are like stone to me." Daenerys' head hung low and she rested her brow on one of the tent's makeshift windows. All was quiet out in the night with her tent set a little away from The Great Khalasar's encampment. "I'm sick and tired of the blood-soaked banners, and the noble speeches, and the Horn of Dragons shaking the air in grand defiance. Our path is up to its neck in shit and blood, and a thousand corpses float in the black waste. Each day we become harder and dirtier and meaner. More than once I had to stop our men from the khalasar from torturing some damned prisoner before cutting his head off. And I had Viserion devour one of them for he raped one of the women from Casterly Rock one bright day after a battle. The Arakhs are all red with blood and notched from war, and we die by the thousands no matter how brave we are.

"The horror is always there. The evil that stalks us at night, with dreams and visions, with plagues and pestilence.

"I fear, oh, I fear, not death, not the enemy, but us. I fear that we become like them and if it does not end soon, neither Dothraki nor Westerosi will be naught but the same beast in the same clothing, and all bright heroes a memory scorned."

She turned to face him, her teeth clenched so tight that the muscles of her jaw danced and her eyes hard and dry, for Daenerys, the last of her line, the True Queen and Stormborn, had no tears to give. Selmy stepped back at the sight of it.

"I will do what must be done, ser, because I must, because if I don't, there is noone else who will. For my unborn son, for my beloved Drogo, the stallion that mounts the world, and for my brother whom they call the Beggar King. I who have done nothing unto the Stags and the Lions and they send assassins to hunt and kill me." She bared her teeth as if in challenge to some unseen enemy. "But before I lead my people into battle, I want you to hear the oath of Daenerys Targaryen!

"Should I die or should I live, should I fall or should I fail, with all my power, all my strength, all my heart and all my desire I curse them, they who murder and rape, the destroyers and the power mad. I curse the seller of souls, those wretched Asshai, and the annihilators of dreams. I curse those who have been and who will be the followers of the black path. And I pledge by all that I am and might be and should be that I will hound them, hound them from here to eternity." She did not shout the words, she said them quietly, but with such authority that it chilled Selmy to the core.

Outside, the three dragons, Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal, roared in unison as if in agreement...

A Very AGOT Christmas Part I

Greetings, sers...

It's been a while since anyone of us posted. But given the holiday season, I thought I might just continue the story of what I texted everyone last year. I know, I know. I flooded the phones of those whom I texted. And I apologize for the length of what I sent, more so to those who ended up receiving multiple texts because their phones can only handle so much characters in a message. =]

Let me just post here what I sent as part of my Christmas greeting last year for posterity's sake and to give some semblance of continuity to my succeeding post which will go above this...

==================

The once mighty armies of Casterly Rock lay among the black and charred remains of The Red Keep. Those that survived fled to the North, bringing tales of terror that they suffered at the hands of the Dothraki horde.

"The True Queen comes," they cry. "All that oppose her are Bathed in Flame! None can Hold The North."

Hundreds of miles away, Jon looked down from The Wall, the wind biting through his thick coat. Putting a thickly gloved hand on Ghost, the only other living thing standing watch with him, he ground his teeth and squinted into the horizon.

"Let her come. A new age is dawning upon us. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. Lions, Stags and Wolves must unite and fight together... not from tyranny, oppression or persecution... but from annihilation.

Scouts have reported that Others are Massing beyond The Wall. Stannis has witnessed them firsthand. He understands that if we do not Muster the Realm, all will be lost. His armies gather at the Last Hearth. My brothers, what pathetic few of us that remain, will stand with them when they march to defend The Wall. Kevan Lannister and the survivors are gathering at Moat Cailin. Together with the Greatjon leading the Hordes of the Wolves and the Great Host, they prepare to meet her and those accursed lizards.

So let her come. If we are to meet this end, then let it be such an end with Lions, Stags and Wolves united!"

Thrones on TV

We've heard the rumors before.

HBO taking our beloved books from the ICe and Fire Cycle to the small screen.

here is more proof:
HBO firming up PILOT EPS for Thrones

Away from the game

Fate has conspired to take away what meager time I had remaining for AGOT.

Since getting the chapter packs I have made a total of zero (0) decks from the new cards.

Saturdays is the only time I can really dedicate to gaming for AGOT. And that hasn't panned out to well lately. The drive to make a new deck gets kiboshed by the fact that I might not probably be able to play it.

As I've said sometime ago in another AGOT forum. AGOT can be a most demanding mistress. It is not for the faint hearted nor for the fool who is half committed.

Building decks and being competitive in AGOT demands an inordinate amount of your time and focus. Its not like most card games where you can throw in cards together and say you've built a deck.

To my cohorts in AGOT my apologies. This is not a goodbye to the game but just a vague expression of my current attitude towards the game.

See you next tourney (whenever that is)

Looking For

It's not a terribly long list, but hey. As you all know, my life goal is to make a baziliion jillion Stark decks. I am looking for any spares anyone can, well, spare, of the following common cards.


Eyrie Bowman (Talons)
Like Warm Rain (5KE)
Mindless Brute (5KE)



Just let me know. Thanks! See you all Saturday?

A Gathering Storm

Greetings, sers...

Before anything else, I would like to congratulate Peter for doing well in the tournament last weekend. Thanks to Rich for attempting to post a recount of what happened. Also, kudos to all who joined in our first ever tournament (with a new influx of new cards!) after such a long time. It's been a while and it was good to card-flop in AGOT once again.

Now to get to the meat of the matter. There are a couple of things that I want to bring up. But by the looks of things, this will be a fairly long post/email depending on where you read it. The AGOT is blog is at http://agotph.blogspot.com/ if you didn't know.

The first topic I wanted to bring up is the Booster Draft Format Tournament that I proposed running last week. We can look at doing one either this weekend or the next depending on everyone's availability. As much as possible we should a minimum of 6 players that could join. Now what would a Booster Draft Tournament entail?

1) You need to have the Draft Pack and the Draft Pack Supplement. What's in it? Here's the list:

Draft Pack Card List (11)
6x House Cards, of course
1x DR7 Alliance (Plot)
1x DR8 Counting Coppers (Plot)
1x DR9 Filthy Accusations (Plot)
1x DR10 Taxation Plot (Plot)
1x DR11 Wildfire Assault (Plot)

Draft Supplement Card List (28)
1x C13 House Umber Recruiter
1x C168 Fallow Fields
1x C34 Dissident Crier
1x U170 The God’s Eye
1x C60 Stormlands Peasant
3x U142 Narrow Sea
1x C75 Godly Fisherman
3x U143 Summer Sea
1x C100 Illyrio’s Man
3x U144 Sunset Sea
1x C113 Desert Scavenger
3x C169 Kingsroad Fiefdom
1x U227 On Ravens Wings (Plot)
3x C171 The Roseroad
1x F247 Fortified Position (Plot)
3x C172 The Searoad

2) These are boosters that we will be using for the Booster Draft Tournament.
2x ITE
1x AHOT
1x AHOTa
1x 5KE

3) The overall cost would be PHP800.00. This would just cover the cost of the boosters. The tournament fee (aka administrative fee) is waived.

4) I'm sure the lot of you are familiar with the Booster Draft Tournament mechanics one way or another. If not, please check the link: http://www.agameofthrones.com/PDF/Rules.pdf

5) We will follow the usual process of drafting the rares and uncommons for the winners.

Note: I guess that if folks are a little tight for a Draft Tournament, we can always opt for the regular Constructed Format tournament.


Two is that I wanted to bring up the dreaded issue of legality of cards. I know, I know. Re-engineering existing decks would be a challenge if we are to remove the Winter Block cards. Kudos though to Rich for doing that already with his numerous Stark decks.

As such, we are still allowing the Winter Block at this point. However, I think it would safe to "rotate" the Winter Block out once we have the complete set of Chapter Packs from the Clash of Arms block. We're still missing The Battle of Ruby Ford and Calling the Banners Chapter Packs. Unless there are violent reactions, we can make this the official rule for our local community.


Three would be ordering the remaining Chapter Packs as well as the Core Set. I know that some of us are still reeling with what we spent to get the Chapter Packs and the boxes of 5KE and AHOTa. So we don't have to discuss this in major detail at this point since we are all basking in the new cards that we have and attempting to either integrate with our existing decks or to create new decks. I just wanted to leave in the air for everyone to think about.


Well, this is a long post/email. So I guess I'll cut it short for now. Feel free to respond to this with your thoughts, reactions and ideas.


Signing off...

Now It Comes To War!

On April 23rd the AGOT community celebrated the influx of new cards by holding their first official tournament in months. This is one person's view of that event. Names have been changed to protect the Greyjoys.


To be honest, me? I'm still exhausted. I'm not as young as I used to be, and last night we played til past four am. It was worth it, though: our first tournament, literally, in months. Everyone was excited, and everybody's schedules came together so we had a six-player tournament. It was our first time to play officially in forever, and our first chance to incorporate the new cards from the Chapter Packs. (I know, I had said I was going to write about the chapter packs after my last post on the Core Set. Forgive me.) So we expected a series of matches with both the delight of greeting an old friend, and the anticipation of seeing new tricks and strategies played out.

There were six of us: Gil, Mikko, Aaron, Ron, Peter, and myself. Peter was a surprise addition to the ranks: no-one had anticipated his interest in AGOT to resurface so strongly. And Aaron passed on his Bleach interests in order to join us, so it would be a memorable night, in so many ways.


First off, let me say, that I can only give a limited perspective of the event: I was so caught up in my own games and the new cards that I never even got to look over at the other matches going on. So on to what little I know.



Mikko brought his newly-developed Targaryen Ambush deck, which I had playtested against 2 weeks previously and found very strong. Indeed, it inspired me to rebuild my own Targ deck, no small feat considering. But it's true: Targ got a lot of great cards in the first four chapter packs. Their splendid Ambush characters have a lot to offer. I had also been inspired by Gil's use of certain new Lannister cards, which is one of the joys of playing with people who favor other Houses than your own: both Mikko and Gil had long since identified the standout cards of their Houses and integrated them well. The Targ jumpers, Lannister's Toll Gate, the excellent Pyromancer's Cache, all great new components.



For this tournament, though, Gil brought out his Baratheon deck, the one called The Tank. Iam not sure exactly what all is in it, but knowing Gil I know two things that you can rely on:

1. It's fast.

2. It wins.

However, these beliefs were to be shaken during this tournament, to the surprise of all.


Aaron played Martell, and I know nothing of his deck except that he was looking for Wildlings beforehand. (sorry, man. I looked, but did not find. I have them somewhere, but I didn't bring my Wildling to the night's games.) Peter was running, apparently, a Lannister War-Crest deck, but as these two guyhs were the ones I din't play against, I have little to report on their deck construction, except that at one point I looked over and Aaron had revealed The First Snow Of Winter, and I remember thinking, huh: an XP first? Amazingly for a card that has virtually defined the US environment, First Snow is almost never played over here. Guess we love our weenies.


Ron, in another surprise twist, brought his Martell deck to the tournament. Ron is a devoted squid, of course, and he says he likes to play all his decks like they were Greyjoy decks. Having played against his deck in the past two weeks, I can agree.




Me? Naturally, it was Stark. And I had made some changes to my usual deck. (As you know, I have at least five Stark decks.) I hadn't incorporated that many new cards, but I had a lot of differences. One of the fun parts of getting new cards is finding new combos with old cards, and in this case, I went the extreme route of not only De-Winterizing my deck (in preparation for the eventual Winter rotation, I pulled out all Winter Block cards) but I also tried some 5KE combos that I's always wanted to see in action. Not great stuff, mind you, but hey, it was a new day, why not experiment?



Of course, the most significant loss to my deck was Massing, but there was a lot that left along with it. A lot of my big characters, went too, and it was a wrench to lose them. But it did free up some critical deck space. I was able to go into the tourney carrying a deck that was only about, oh, ten cards overweight. Included among these:


Three Winterfell tutors. I had long felt that these cards, apart from carrying the rare-for-Stark intrigue icon, also synergized well with Stalwart. I also thought they could do well with the new Wolf Heralds, especially in conjunction with Gates Of Winterfell. To further speed through this process, I added:

Three Winterfell Hot Springs. Basically card filters, I thought these locatons would help the Tutors put more cards in my hand. As it turns out, they didn't do so well: Even when I was filtering my deck, it didn't help much. Lesson learned: Draw is better than Filter. Fortunately to make up for the missing Massings I had put in:


Three Watching The Heavens. More resource-intensive than Massing, these cards are still a great bargain. What more need be said?


Bear Island. Just one, it's unique. And it actually never came out in any of these games. Bt I like it, and I don't doubt it'll be a standard, despite its somewhat restrictive absolutely-no-neutrals requirement.


Jaqen H'ghar. Another card that will make the cut, although he isn't as massively game-breaking as the US boards said he once was. His strength doesn't rise above three now because you don't dare put power on him. Still, he's a keeper.


Gates Of Winterfell. I think this card has potential but like the Springs and Heralds, it needs combos to maximize it, and that means more Drae is needed. Wait and see if it ends up staying.



Icy Catapult. By far my favorite addition (I put in three Karhold Master-At-Arms to maximize them) the Catapults were the first cards I picked out of the Chapter Packs. In an environment without Arya's Revenge, you gotta have something, right?



To be fair, the new additions didn't fly as well as I'd hoped, but I'm very glad I tried them. The Winterfell Tutors are solid characters even without using their ability. The Hot Springs, I dunno. Probably they should go. The Heralds can stay, although I feel they aren't AS strong as I once thought. Still, they're good, and the Tutor means that Stark can use them better than most. Jaen stays. Bear Island stays, although it may need help.



It's late now, so I'll leave the rest for another night.

Wants and Needs

Greetings and salutations, sers!

It's been a while since we last posted here and kudos to Rich for posting. And yes, it's good to have new cards. With the influx of new cards, this will hopefully breath back some life into our AGOT community. And let me tell something to you. Size can be daunting...But don't be afraid...At least you can still see it. And I'm talking about our small but solid community. =]

Moving on though, as Rich mentioned, on to deck building! And with that, I wanted to post some of the cards that I need. I just want to try a fun deck that I can have fun with. So there. Anyhoo, here's the list. If any of you can lend or give me the cards just so I can try this deck out, it would be most appreciated. I wouldn't mind trading also, especially for the rare cards. But take note, the rares that I'm looking for are kinda trashy so expect trashy trades too. =P

2x Great Sept of Baelor (R from ITE)
3x Dornish Confessor (C from ASON)
2x Pious Librarian (R from ITE)
2x Septon Chayle (R from ITE)
1x Unorthodox Priest (R from AHOT)


It's pretty obvious that I'm making a crummy Septon deck but hey, I just wanna try it. Even if it is crap and doesn't do well, I wanna try it. Just for the fun of it and just to satisfy my curiousity.

To Ser Meeks: I tried checking for extra Traveling Jewelers from AHOTa but unfortunately, I only have a set and none to spare. =[

I guess that's about it. If you guys can bring the aforementioned septons (and their sept) this Satuday, we will have fun trying this deck concept out. I'll try it and you'll get to fight it. =]

In with the old, in with the new!

Well, we have our first round of chapter packs! And we've been buzzing away happily at them, which is the main reason for this new post...


I want to tourney this Saturday! I want a full-blown tournament! Who can make it? What time can you be there?


I myself will be coming from rehearsals nearby, so I can either come early or catch a movie while I wait. You guys in?


In the meantime, though, I've been going over (and over and over) the new cards we have, and the new cards that we can expect in the Core Set. The Core Set makes its debut this week in the States at a Con, I believe, and so soon we will know what we have coming our way. But they've also already released spoilers, and some of them are quite a surprise. Get ready to dig deep into your old binders, because some classic cards are coming back.




The Streets, as I mentioned already, are making a return, although in a new form that only allows one per deck. No big deal, though, we'll just dig out the old ones and if we find more than one in a player's deck, we burn him alive! Or something less destructive.




WES Eddard is back in a significantly altered form. Adds a Noble crest, Deadly and Stalwart to an already esising Renown and a truly mockable ability. The good news: no one will feel bad about scribbling the new abilities on the face of the old cards, 'cause that was one weak Eddard. We'll see how the new guy plays out though.





Promo Shae is back, unchanged. If you had the old one, you can use her again with no changes, although, really, is she worth it? The best thing about the card was just that it was Shae.





Ice. Westeros Ice, not cheap and not game-breaking, but still, it's back. And, hey, it's nice to at least HAVE an Ice in Standard. I find this card to be too expensive for what it does (no strength boost! Bad, bad ancestral weapon!) but it seems to be continuing the themes of House Stark: Murder, and Really Unimpressive Reprints. (Note: now you can fetch Ice using the reprinted Winterfell Armory. Oh, undiluted joy.)





Speaking of game-breaking, which Ice is NOT, here's one that may be: Lannisport Brothel is back. The NON-UNIQUE Lannisport Brothel. Every turn, kneel a character. Run three, and hey, you've never seen so many guys unhappy about a brothel before!





Blood Of the Dragon. Ummm, yes, it's back. I can't say that I much care, but it is back. With the title Blood Of The Dragon, and a pictue of a Dothraki. Sigh.




Did I mention the Streets were back? I did? Okay.



How about Daario Noharis? And WES Littlefinger? Both in modified forms, but they are even stronger, in my opinion. Although Daario comes up with the better bargain. With Littlefinger, even if he does make 2 Gold a turn, 5 Gold is a lot for a traitor turncloak bastard. Although he does have a Learned Crest. Which makes him a well-educated traitor turncloak bastard.
Daario will see play in every Targ deck, by comparison. Tricon deadly? Dude.




WES Bran Stark. Plot: Kneel to reveal a plot card. Differs from the 5KE Bran primarily in that people can actually understand the card.



Drogon. I&F Drogon with a twist, but he's definitely affordable at 4 Gold. Plus, he can take attachments. So you can put Blood Of The Dragon on him, give him the Dragon trait during challenges, and laugh and laugh. Because, hey, double Dragon.



Westeros Bleeds. Love it or hate it, you'd beter plan for it. Location hate takes a major hit with Winter rotation, and even as it is nobody can effectively police influence locations very much. The only good news for me from this reprint? All that trading I did two years ago isn't entirely down the drain.



And the cherries on the sundae...


Blockade. That's it. Just Blockade. You know it.



Aaand....


Valar Morghulis. All Men Must Die. 2/0/0. One per plot deck. My most recent run-in with this card was playing casual games with Jacob a few months back. His Greyjoy Classic, my Stark Standard. I thought I was doing okay until he flipped a plot and reminded me of the Original Great Unprepared Kill. The original reset. Proof that while The Mother loves you and The Warrior protects you, it's The Stranger who will have you in the end.







More on my views of the Chapter Packs later, I'm too tired to type; and besides, now I wanna deckbuild!

the Arrival

Finally they are here...the chapter packs have arrived!

We have new cards to play with!

Too bad we couldn't play with the un-errata'd Jaqn Haqar.

Ah well.

And some of the cards got left behind. One more week for the rest but we have them and that's all we need.


:)

Chapter Packs

Tomorrow

By the grace of all that's holy.

Hopefully they will arrive

Update on Chapter Packs

Greetings and salutations, sers...

I know that we are all anticipating the arrival of the Chapter Packs as well as additional booster packs for A House of Talons and Five Kings Edition. Based on my last conversation with Edge, the shipment was delayed. As such, we are looking at the cards arriving at the end of the month. I know, I know...We've waited for so long. And two weeks just seems all the longer. But it is arriving. So waiting a little longer is all that we can do.

On another note, the card list (and descriptions) for the new Chapter Pack called The Battle of the Ruby Ford has been posted over at Tzumainn's. You can visit it at the link below:

http://tzumainn.com/agot/cards/set.php?set=BRF


Suffice to say, I am a bit disappointed with this chapter. The cards are a little less than desireable other than Rhaegar Targaryen and, gasp, War Scorpion, an attachment for House Martell. And it's funny that they threw in some trait manipulation for Stark via Old Nan. Unfortunately, majority of the effects that can take advantage of such have already rotated out and the few remaining will be rotating out.

Be that as it may, we can then look forward to what FFG will do with their apparent new base set that should hopefully set things right...

Well, it is late so I will look at posting once more soon...

Sighing out...

Waiting...

One of the hardest things to do in this world.

When you wait you get into all sorts of emotions/feelings/state of mind:
1. anxiety
2. fear
3. wonder
4. impatience
5. worry
6. unease
7. hope

Soon. Someday soon we shall get those chapter packs. And with the new cards hopefully some new life into the local AGOT community.

Waiting kills the energy and the eagerness. And with the same cards to build with for almost the past 8 plus months, energy and eagerness gets killed some more, at least for myself.

I get bored easily. And not having new cards feeds into that. I have always liked CCGs because when the random bug bites me I can just go to a store, purchase a pack and be surprised. Chapter packs have already removed that part of surprise/wonder for AGOT.

In theory the game should be more stable with this move. It should help make the game cheaper. At least I'll be getting new cards.

Until they arrive I wait with bated breath. And hope that a game I truly enjoy playing is not going the way of the Starks. And that Winter for AGOT is not coming.

The Very Real Dangers Of Card Sorting

Well, here goes my first post. Wish me luck! I've been wanting to post something since I learned how to access the site (around Tuesday; goooo, Rich) but I had a recent experience that REALLY made me want to try my hand at an article.


Last week we managed a few casual games, nothing more. The combination of a WoW tournament and a massive Bleach event (or some combination like that) put us well into the wee hours of the morning. A couple of those involved using Matt's Baratheon deck, which is becoming one of my favorite decks these days. Gil tweaked the deck for us a few weeks back, and I've gradually been making a few additional changes that he suggested and that Matt likes. Switching in King Bobby for Claim-Raise Bobby from Winter Ed., stuff like that. The deck runs on renown, and so I've done what I considered a pretty careful search of all the renown characters and renown-granting attachments and power-rush type cards that I have access to. The old favorites I Am King Here are of course a three-of auto-include.



But last week a card was brought to my attention that I'd overlooked. I'd love to post a picture here, but hey, I have no idea how. (If any of the computer-folk wanna help me out on that, it'd be appreciated! But, moving on). The card was Joffrey Baratheon from ITE, the dual-House Baratheon/Lannister version of the much despised, premiere front-runner for the Most Likely To Be Assassinated By Soon-To-Be Family Members fellow that we all hate so much.


Well, this version of Joff costs 2 Gold, has 2 Strength, the Power icon only, the Lord trait, a Noble Crest, and the game text: "Response: after a Small Council event is played, kneel 3 influence or kneel a (Noble Crest) character to choose and discard from play a character with 1 or more power on it." In addition to this, he also has renown, which of course is what caught my eye. I thought I'd pretty much gone over all the renown Baratheon characters, but here was one I'd missed! 2 Gold isn't too much, so I figured I'd toss Jofffrey into the deck.




I was far too tired when I got home around three that morning, so I went to bed with plans to pull the card out of my collection and slip it into a sleeve the next day.






SO: the next day I pulled open my current Lannister deck and went looking for ITE Joffrey. Only thing is, it wasn't there. I was a little dismayed, but not overly so: I also have one other Lannister deck (just one; they're not Stark, for God's sake, for which I have easily four working decks at any given time) so I figured I had at some point or other moved the card there. I could even, very clearly, remember the day I moved ITE Joff out: it was when 5KE came out, and I was putting together a new Lannister deck and trying out the new reducers that work doubly well if you control a King or Queen. Since Lannister has access to a decent King amd an excellent Queen, I figured it was worth it to sub out Renown Joffrey for King Joffrey. The memory was clear in my mind, so I figured I'd go to the other Lanni deckbox and be done with it.



Well, it wasn't there either. It wasn't in my current Lanni deck, nor in my older (but still Standard-legal) Lanni deck. It wasn't in my Lannister card stacks, or in my Classic Lannister cards. (When we rotated out Valyrian Edition, I bit the bullet and went through all my decks, and indeed cards, and separated the Classic cards from the Standard ones, thus bidding a soft farewell to the Valyrian cards that had served me so very very well. Farewell, Blackfish! Goodbye, Edmure's Host! Adieu, Tullys in general! Hoster, you came out one rotation too late to be any damn good at all.)


(Note that I had no fond farewells for my rotating Lannister cards. S***w them, I say. I never cared if the scum lived or died. Hey, I PLAY them, I don't LIKE them.)



But, I was bound and determined to put this renown-puppy in Matt's deck, and I KNEW I had one. How did I know? Because, again, I had the clear memory, this time from when ITE came out, of seeing Joffrey Baratheon's game text and You Killed The Wrong Dwarf together and thinking, what an awesome combo! It's like they were made for each other! I'm going to build that deck! (My deckbuilding skills rarely see beyond the Painfully Obvious.) It turned out the deck didn't exactly fly, and even though I dutifully threw in every Small Council event I could find (Hidden Chambers! Make Way For The Queen! Hand Of The King, for God's sake!) I eventually had to let it go. But, the point is, I KNEW I had one of these ITE Joffreys. Somewhere.



Long story short, I tore my collection apart. I searched trade binders, storage binders, deck boxes, card storage boxes, booster packs, everything. EVERYTHIIIING!!!! My room looked like a rain of flat cardboard had fallen on it. I went through Targaryen decks, Classic Greyjoy cards, Martell, Stark decks (ALL my Stark decks--- Seven help us), my two boxes of ITE, the loose packs that I had bought over the years, everything. I had become obsessed. As happens --- as so often , OFTEN happens with me --- when I get a card stuck in my head, man, I just can't let it go. It will bug me until I track it down. And the worst thing is, in the process of searching, I'll uncover all sorts of OTHER cards that then catch my eye and become part of the mega-search. Stuff that either I never really tried out, or has recently developed a new interest because other cards or developments in the game have given them a possible life.



And so it goes. Once the process begins, it has to play out. If I know I HAVE that card, i'll hunt it to ground no matter what. At the end of the messy, degrading ("Why haven't you bathed today?"), upsetting ("Get out of my room, Rich! You don't HAVE any cards in here!"), and unexpectedly revealing ("Wow. I used to play Heresy?") undertaking, I have a stack of cards that I decided were worth a second look, a room that was unlivable... more than usual, and.... one. ONE copy of ITE Joffrey Baratheon. I found it in a booster pack that had been in the box that I got when I redeemed my Gold Dragon certificates.



That in itself was a mystery. I know I had built a deck around that card, so I definitely had taken it out of the pack it came in. Had I returned it to a different pack for some reason? Had I had two, and kept the spare in the ITE box in case I ever needed a second? Had I traded away the first? Did I still have it hidden away somewhere with a pile of crap cards that had somehow gotten misplaced?



These, I cannot answer. Exhausted and mystified, willing to accept a technical victory but still perplexed and somehow feeling that I had missed something, somewhere, I dragged myself over to Matt's Pokemon deck tin that carried his Bara deck. It was still open. Optimistically, I had been in mid shuffle when I began my mad quest. I shook a new sleeve out of the pack, and placed the latest addition to the renown rush in among its new kinfolk.



Bilbo Baggins in the Lord Of The Rings said, it's a dangerous business, going out of your front door. You never know where the road will take you. I have realized that even if you stay within your own home, your searches can take you to places unknowable. As I finally droppped off to sleep, the ghosts of cards still marching behind my eyes, I was borne down below by one final haunting thought.....


("...all that effort for freaking Joffrey Baratheon?...)

there yah go rich! gratz on the first post. I added the joff pic as requested -- head editor ron

Quick takes

The agot chapter packs orders are in the US already. A couple more weeks and we will be swimming in new cards.

Hopefully some newbies decide to join.

-o0o-

I actually didn't have time to come up with my promised Targ deck so I just gave my semi-new Martell deck more burn.

I kinda enjoy playing that particular deck. It has no draw engine to speak off but I like the tricks it has. I also like the fact that I can pretty much do a board wipe with "Kings and Queens" + "Injurious Poison"

And as the guys pointed out it still feels like semi-Greyjoy.

-o0o-

No tourney. We were only four. And due to scheduling conflicts (late Bleach start) we settled for just a couple of practice games.

It was fun and it gave me a chance to stretch out my long unused AGOT muscles.

Martell again is quite fun when you have the tricks in hand.

-o0o-

Till next time.

Ready Set Go!

First off...

Thank you for the lay-out! I assume it was Ser Gil who muddled around with it. Thank you for the nice graphic of the AGOT women. hehehe


Second...

I have decided that if I have time it will be a Targ deck that I'll be making.

Throwing caution to the wind...preparing for the direst of consequences...

Prepare your swords and get ready to do battle!

A Rush

A power rush deck.

Yes, that was Matt's deck that I used the last time I played AGoT. It was a Baratheon power-rush which didn't apologize for it's speed and cheesiness. It had the staple Bara cards like the Queen of Thorns, renown uniques, huge armies and Winter Mel, the gem of the deck.

If I remember correctly, it was the first time I've ever handled a Bara deck ever since starting AGoT back in the Ice&Fire days. It's the only House I've never even considered trying because of it's mindless strength: grab power aggressively and quickly. It just didn't appeal to me. I've tried all the other houses before. I even dabbled in Greyjoy for a short time, but no House turned me off like Baratheon. After using Matt's deck, however, it changed my opinion. Favoring the control heavy Houses like Targ Burn and Martell Lock for so long, Baratheon Rush was a welcome change of pace. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean I'll play the House from now on, but I may play it more often just to keep things interesting. I certainly need the rush from time to time.

Now if only Targ became decent again...

I want this

If anyone has this for trade... i wants

The new deck challenge

A proposal.

How about we bring new decks the next time we can all play (which if i remember correctly would be 2 saturdays from now.)?

Or we just all bring some common/uncommon Targ deck?

So how about it guys?

:)

A round of applause

Finally light at the end of the tunnel or in this case possibly new cards in the next few weeks.


Thanks Ser Gil for facilitating the chapter packs procurement.

Ordering Chapter Boxes and Packs

Greetings, sers.

We can move forward with purchasing chapter packs! Whoot! It will cost a little bit more as compared to the previous transaction that I tried to do but it has a better guarantee. As such, the cost per chapter box (containing 6 chapter packs) would be PHP2,500.00.

Given this, I would like to verify everyone's orders are still the same:

Rich and Meeks: 1x W5K chapter box
Rich and Meeks: 1x Ancient Enemies chapter box
Ron: 1x W5K chapter box
Ron: 1x Ancient Enemies chapter box
Gil and Aaron: 1x W5K chapter box
Gil and Aaron: 1x Ancient Enemies chapter box

If you guys can bring the money tomorrow (Saturday, May 23), that would be great. Or you can pass by the shop next week on Thursday to give the money to Edge. He will be making his order for Bleach within that week and if we want to hitch a ride with that, we need to order and make payment now.

Do note that the Sacred Bonds and Epic Battles chapter boxes are already out. If you would like to add those to the order, let me know.

Thanks.

GIL

Chapter Packs and Then Some...

Greetings, sers...

Yes, it was a supreme disappointment when I found out (after making payment, of course) that the online store I was purchasing cards from wouldn't accept my PayPal payment given that my billing address, as it is here in the Philippines, could not be verified. Now how annoying is that? They want a US billing address. Sadly, I don't have one and I don't think that anyone in our small but solid community has one either.

And to make things worse, my card was charged after I submitted my paypment through PayPal. Fortunately though the charges were reversed after a week of them (the online store) refunding the payment. Well, that was a hassle to say the very least. And we weren't able to get our cards!

Be that as it may ("nevertheless" in a geek's language), we have another option that we can use as mentioned by Edge last weekend. Since Edge orders Bleach from a friend in the US, we can hitch a ride so to speak and order AGOT stock. It'll be a little more costly though but nothing that would turn a man into the decay of Philippine society. Hehehe. I guess we (or I at the very least) can discuss this with Edge over this weekend. And I will post the verdict here. On the bright side if one would care to look in that direction, we can order all three new chapter packs instead of just the first two.^^

Well, enough of that for the meantime. I'd like to sidestep into another topic. What happened over the weekend, that is. Unfortunately, Ron called in sick. But we still managed to get a few games in with Matt, myself, Meeks and Rich. I know that Rich wanted to write a bit about Matt's Bara deck but I'll steal a little of his thunder.^^ I did promise that I would tweak the deck and tweak the deck I did. I just took out something like 12 cards from the initial 73-card deck given problems with the flop and the draw. And here I thought I was the only one making decks with card counts above 70! Suffice to say, the deck became more brutal. Faster and more brutal. And to a certain degree, I regret tweaking the deck as it has become more consistent (especially winning or at least getting to that point). All that aside though, I'm happy that I was able to help make a deck, particularly a Baratheon one, more efficient. I'm actually thinking of copying it and adding a few more tweaks.^^

And on that note, Meeks ended up playing that Bara deck in our multiplayer game. Suffice to say, he loves the house. Ah, who wouldn't love power rushing and ending the game quick with all that renown. You just need to make sure that you remember that Melisandre's ability can be triggered even if the character with renown claiming power isn't your own. Tsk, tsk. Such is the way of Martell players. :op

Anyways, I think I've done a little bit of my writing. It's early morning and I think I need to hit the sack. Or download porn. Or sleep. Either way, both ideas are good. Or I can do both! Duh. Hehehe.

Until then, let's keep the fires burning bright at The Wall even if Winter is Coming. Daybreak (what a crummy card though) will eventually come to those who can wait...

Wow! I wish we had chapter packs right now!

From the "Sacred Bonds" chapter pack:

* Jaqen H'ghar (S/L/B/G/T/M)

Cost 5

STR 3

M,I,P

Ally.

Stalwart. Infamy. Vigilant. Intimidate. Ambush. Vengeful. Jaqen H'ghar gets +1 STR for each power on him.

(Learned)

wow!

can a character have more keywords in him.

wow!

and while we are at it some Greyjoy lovin:

Herald of the Sea

Cost 2

STR 2

P

Herald.

Response: After you play Herald of the Sea from your hand, search your deck for a character, reveal it, and shuffle your deck. Then, put the revealed card on top of your deck.

Build it and they will come

Ah our recent plans to procure Chapter packs went down the drain.

Hopefully there will be alternatives.

No new cards is death to any card game (except poker, and even then you break open a new pack every so often).

Hopefully we get new cards soon.

-o0o-

In other thoughts, I think that the blog is still the best solution to the "lack of forum" problem. The community isn't big enough to support a full forum.

hopefully the adage "build it and they will come" will prove true in the long run.

Winter is coming.

Quick Update

Finally we had an AGOT tournament again last night after a long long while of not having any.

My "spit and bailing wire" Martell deck went second in the six-man tourney.

It fought Mikko's Martel to a 10 all tie. It barely fought a Baratheon deck in the second game as Matt felt sick. And it lost resoundingly to Aaron's finely tuned Martel. Ending the night with a Draw-Win-Loss record. Not bad I guess.

More later. Pictures later.

Turning to the dark side!

With the chapter packs not in my grubby hands yet it was time to put together a new deck. Any deck.

And so tonight hopefully I get to test my new Martell deck.

Yep that most hated of Houses. And I don't know the first thing about building a Martell deck.

But after years of Greyjoy it was time to start something new.

Its pretty random and I had a hard time cutting down the size but something in there might work.

So we shall see tonight.

Chapter Packs!

Yes! Finally the long awaited text message has arrived!

Ser Gil has placed the order out for our chapter packs!

Finally in a few weeks we will have new cards to play with and a new environment too!

So what's life like after your TCg becomes "not a TCG" anymore?

We don't know yet but in a few short weeks we will find out. Along with the answer to the question "With everyone having the same cards which decks get built?

I can't wait!

In the beginning...

There was an AGOT forum somewhere...but then it crashed.

We moved to skillze and that crashed too.

So to provide a voice for the small AGOT community in our country I have set up this team blog.

As they say...build it and they will come.

Welcome all and enjoy our own little niche that is the AGOT card game.