ChiCon III: My First Step Into a Larger World
by Michael Hurley
Last weekend I played in my very first public A Game of Thrones CCG (AGOT) tournament, at an event known as ChiCon III: The Battle for the Bowl of Brown. This was an amazing experience that not only changed the way I think about AGOT, it made me aware of what a great community of players there are that enthusiastically play this game at very high levels.
I started playing AGOT in August 2007 when I landed a great job at Fantasy Flight Games. Until then, the only other collectible card game I'd played was Magic, and that only briefly. Being a big fan of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, I was very excited to see what FFG's games were all about. After playing a couple of games with people in the office, I was hooked, and got in on the intra-office AGOT league. This was right about the time the Five Kings Edition of the game was released, so everyone in the league (about 15 people) bought a display of boosters and a starter pack and started building decks. I immediately took to both House Greyjoy and House Stark. Soon, we started working our way back through the entire Iron Throne and Winter Edition blocks, expanding our card pools and holding regular tournaments. Eventually, we created what was essentially a miniature standard legal environment.
On January 8, a bunch of us received an e-mail from Luke Reed with the subject line "You've taken your first steps into a larger world…" It was just a short note with a couple of links to info on upcoming AGOT tournaments, but the message was clear, and I decided to accompany Luke, Erin, and Nate French to ChiCon III.
I'd been playing Greyjoy since the beginning of my AGOT days, and it was the house in which I owned the most standard legal cards, so I built the best Greyjoy deck I could imagine, which had a warship/warcrest theme with a lot of saves. I decided to avoid the Kings of Salt and Rock agenda because I have enough trouble keeping a deck at 60 cards, let alone cutting down to a mere 45. After borrowing a few key cards from various people around the office, I had my joust deck. I was quite pleased to end up with two wins, three losses, and one draw with that deck. Not a great tournament showing, but not too bad considering it was my first.
I wanted to play something different for the melee, so I also threw together a last-minute Stark murder deck with some plots I thought would be fun to play in a multi-player setting, such as All Men Must Fight (5KE U216) and Trial by Battle (AHoT U139). I had a great time killing things, but I wasn't grabbing much power and ended up finishing last at both tables.
I got fairly lucky in the Saturday night super draft. Everyone seemed to be passing on Greyjoy, so I scoped up enough cards to not only build a single-house deck, but also enough to cut down to only two copies of each card so I could run the Threat from the East (ASoT U144) agenda, which was also passed to me. This turned out to be a good way to go because everyone was also given a War of Five Kings chapter pack, which meant people were going to potentially have extra card draw with Pyromancer's Cache (ACOA F13). I ended up with one win, one loss, and one draw in the super draft.
One of my more memorable moments of ChiCon III came in my second super draft game. I was playing against another pure Greyjoy player (I wish I could remember his name, I'm terrible with names!). I brought out my Longship "Foamdrinker" (ACOA F6) early in the game and declared a military challenge with just one of my characters. I expected my opponent to simply defend with his weakest character and lose, since if he tried to win the challenge by defending with multiple characters, my "Foamdrinker" would have killed someone more important. He did have a Derelict Hulk (AHoTa U38) in play, so I knew if I used "Foamdrinker" it would be a one-time thing, but it might have been worth it to knock off a big character. Instead, my opponent played the event From East and West (AHoTa C118) and took control of my "Foamdrinker." Then, he defended and won the challenge, and knelt "Foamdrinker" to kill my attacking character. Finally, he discarded his hulk from play to discard my "Foamdrinker" from play before it could return to my control. So much for my first attempt to use one of the new chapter pack cards!
ChiCon III taught me more about this game than I could ever hope to explain in any reasonable amount of time. But, I'd like to take some time to highlight some of my most important lessons. I still have so much to learn about this game, but perhaps the following observations will help other new players take their game experience to a higher level of skill and enjoyment.
- Extra Card Draw is Golden: One of the most common mechanics I saw people leveraging was drawing additional cards beyond the usual two drawn during every Draw Phase. This is so useful that the game has a "draw cap" rule that prevents a player from drawing more than three additional cards each round. It's important to remember that there are other effects that can "put" a card in hand, or into play, which are not considering "drawing" and therefore aren't limited by the draw cap rule. An example of a card that can "put" a card into a hand is Cape Kraken (5KE R94).
Drawing extra cards every round gives you more options during your Marshalling Phases and increases the chances that you'll get a key character, location, or event in hand when you need it. Also, because your average hand is bigger, it decreases the chances that an opponent will be able to pull the most important card from your hand as part of an intrigue challenge claim.
Two of the most common ways to draw additional cards are the events Massing at Twilight (ASoT C127) and Watching the Heavens (ITE C216). It's important to note that both of these cards have received errata that changes their text from "put" to "draw," and therefore playing just one of these events causes you to hit your draw cap for the round. There are many other effects that let you draw additional cards, including characters with card draw effects, such as Golden Tooth Guard (5KE C40) and Dornish Alchemist (ITE C114); these can be particularly useful because they fill multiple rolls in your deck. There are also plot cards, such as Bounty of the Realm (ITE R223), that have card draw-like effects.
- Cancels are Huge: It seemed that every person I played against at ChiCon III had multiple cancels in their decks, and they used them. Canceling an opponent's event, character ability, or other triggered effect can not only prevent you from suffering something nasty, it throws a wrench in your opponent's plans. An excellent and frequently played example is Paper Shield (ITLP F45), which is a fixed card available in the Iron Throne Edition Legacy Pack and therefore easy for anyone to acquire. Also, don't underestimate the value of canceling an opponent's effect that would let him additional draw cards – that can prevent him from gaining the extra edge he needs to get ahead.
Knowing that cancels are so useful, and commonly built into decks, you may be able to anticipate when your opponent has a cancel he can play. I got to thinking about these possibilities when I stumbled into the following situation during one of my ChiCon III joust games: I was playing my Greyjoy deck, and my opponent was playing a Martell control deck. During the Marshalling Phase, I had two events in my hand: Watching the Heavens (ITE C216) and Risen from the Sea (ITE C187). I wanted to play Watching the Heavens to get some additional cards in my hand so that I had more options for spending my gold, but I didn't have the three influence. Instead, I knelt my Saltwater Scholar (AHoT C26) to pay the cost of the event. Sure enough, my opponent played a Paper Shield to cancel the event. Had I knelt influence to pay for Watching the Heavens, his Paper Shield could not have canceled it. However, this situation turned out to be only a minor setback for me because I was now in a better position to play my Risen from Sea with little fear of it being canceled (the chances that my opponent had a second Paper Shield, or other cancel, were pretty low). Drawing an extra three cards is nice, but saving a key character from being killed (and then boosting his strength) is even better.
- Resource Denial Can Be Just as Good as Kills and Cancels: So, you sit down to start a new game, and you see your opponent is choosing to start with three copies of The Eyrie (AHoT R102) in play instead of placing cards during setup. You do a normal setup, then reveal a high initiative plot, such as Take Them By Surprise (ITE R231), make yourself first player, then drop a High Tide (5KE C76) on your opponent's Eyrie, which blanks its text box before he can count the +3 gold even once. Your anguished opponent is now stuck with no extra resources and effectively zero cards in play, and you are well on your way to a swift victory (can you even resist cackling evilly?).
Denying your opponent the resources he needs is a powerful way to play. Since most resources come from locations, this is commonly referred to as "location hate." But, taking away an opponent's gold isn't the only possibility. Influence is a critical resource for many card effects, and if your opponent has influence in play, you have to assume he needs it for something. Of course, the key thing about influence is that, unlike gold, a play must kneel influence to gain its benefits. Therefore, you can deny an opponent the ability to use his influence by kneeling it before he has a chance to do so himself. Two good examples of cards that can do this are Collector of Favors (5KE C140) and Vat of Wildfire (5KE C30). But why kneel a location when you can just discard it from play altogether? Wildling Emissary (WNE C150), Bringer of the Storm (5KE C87) and The Iron Throne (ITE R167) all have effects that discard locations. Of course, even better than discarding your opponent's location from play is taking control of it for yourself! The Stark character Northern Sentinel (ITE C15), the Greyjoy attachment Foothold on the Shore (ITE U64), and the Stark/Baratheon event Direct Assault (ITE U178) can each help you pull this off.
Plots Can Control the Game: When I first started playing AGOT, the only things I really cared about in my plot deck were lots of gold and high claim. If those plots happened to also have text that benefited my current situation, that was just icing on the cake as far as I was concerned. I rarely paused to consider the potential downsides to plots such as Conventions of War (5KE U222). Don't get me wrong, with six gold and six initiative, CoW is a great plot, and for a long time, it was my automatic first choice in every game. But CoW is not without its downsides. First, it limits every player to only two challenges, which can be very helpful if you don't have a great setup and are lacking some character icons. But what if you have a good setup and your opponent doesn't? In that situation, you don't want to be limited to two challenges, you want to take advantage of his weakness and get in three challenges right away. Besides, the better you get at deck-building, the less frequent bad setups should be. Second, CoW has the Kingdom trait, which can really limit your flexibility if you also happen to be running other Kingdom plots. For example, Benjen's Cache (ITE F242) and On Raven's Wings (ITE U227) are both incredibly useful deck-searching plots that have Kingdom traits. Both Benjen's and Raven's also have the text "When revealed, if there are 1 or fewer Kingdom cards in your used pile, search your deck…" This means if you're running all three of the above plots (or another Kingdom trait plot besides CoW), you are forced to play both of your search plots before you can play CoW. If you play CoW too early, one of your search plots will be wasted. That's probably not the kind of self-imposed limitation you want to worry about; plots can control the game, but not always in the way their owners anticipate.
There are many plots that can be considered "destructive" to your opponent's plans, and learning to utilize them well can really help you maintain a strong position. Playing plots such as Outmaneuver (WNE R229), Outfox (ITE R228) or Forgotten Plans (ITLP F49) at the right moment can ruin an opponent's strategy. Outfox is a particular favorite of many players, including me, because it cancels popular search effects (such as Benjen's and Raven's described above) and many popular reset effects including The First Snow of Winter (ASoN R145) and Wildfire Assault (5KE F241).
- Be Careful About Overextending: One of the harder lessons for me to learn (one that I'm still learning, actually) is not overextending by putting too many cards into play too quickly. I'm not so much talking about dropping a great setup and then following up with a big first-round Marshalling Phase – if you can do that, I think you should. By overextending, I'm referring mostly to the cards played in the third through sixth rounds of the game. As the game progresses, you are building more and more resources, and hopefully you have some extra draw that's keeping your hand full of good cards. It can be very tempting during this "middlegame" period to just play everything you can afford. The big problem with this style of play is it keeps your hand small and creates a situation that begs for a big reset, such as Westeros Bleeds (WNE R212) or Winter Storm (AHoT U137). Such resets are, of course, inevitable. Every player has at least one in his or her deck, but few have more than one. This means players will be very reluctant to play a reset too early in the game, which is what makes a big setup and first-round Marshalling Phase usually a safe and effective play. But, the longer the game lasts, the more likely a reset is to occur. When a reset does happen, you want to be able to recover as quickly as possible, but if you've emptied your hand of cards the round before simply because you had 12 gold to work with, you won't be in a very enviable position. Of course, you'll have to adjust your strategy to account for your current opponent's strengths. For example, you probably don't want to keep great characters in you hand if you know you're going to be losing a lot of intrigue challenges.
Speaking of resets, another great ChiCon III moment I witnessed was an incredibly effective reset/recovery played in the second round of the melee (the multiplayer event) by former AGOT world champion John Bruno. This was a four player game with three people playing House Stark (John Bruno, Charlie, and myself) and one person playing House Greyjoy (whose name I cannot recall, sorry). At the end of the fourth round, I think John was barely in the lead with 10 power on his house card. The Greyjoy player had eight or nine power on Balon Greyjoy (5KE R82), Charlie had at six or seven power on his house, and I was in last place with four power. There were a lot of good characters in play on all sides, including John's Septon at the Eyrie (AHoTa C100) and his Ser Waymar Royce (ASoN U102). John also had a Winterfell Barracks (WNE R21) in play. I wish I could say I foresaw what was about to happen, but I didn't. In the fifth Plot Phase, John played Winter Has Come (WNE R239), which kills all characters in play without the possibility for saves. All characters except for John's Septon and Ser Waymar Royce that is, because they both had the text "cannot be killed." John later explained this was the reason he hadn't been trying to win power challenges against Charlie — John needed Charlie to have at least six power on his house so John's Septon at the Eyrie wouldn't be killed by the reset. So now, the board is mostly wiped of characters and John discards his Winterfell Barracks to search his deck for Eddard Stark (5KE U8). Because this was the fifth plot, this version of Eddard came into play with strength six, deadly, renown, and wasn't going to kneel to attack or defend. The rest of us brought out what little we could in the Marshalling Phase, but John was able to use Eddard to win two challenges with renown, one of which was unopposed and the other of which was against the player with the multiplayer title card that John opposed. This gave John the last five power needed for the win.
The A Game of Thrones Community is Full of Great People: Everyone I met at ChiCon III was a generous and good-natured person that made every minute of the event enjoyable. I want to extend a special thanks to ProfessorAJ for hosting such a big gathering in his own home, to ktom for a great job as tournament official, to Joe "JerusalemJones," Andy "Anders," and Brandon for being good hotel roommates, to Nate, Luke, Erin, and Nick for encouraging me to attend, and to all the great players I faced off with in the Battle for the Bowl of Brown. See you next time!
Michael Hurley is Senior Editor at Fantasy Flight Games
You may also want to check out Nate French's R&D Journal article,
The ChiCon Phenomenon
