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