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! =]

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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...

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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.