ChiCon - Mundelein

For the last several weeks, local Game of Thrones players have been discussing attending the tournament in Mundelein, Illinois. Unfortunately, we weren't able to lock down a roster of who was going, when they could go, etc. Late Thursday night, I decided to drive up and stay with an old college friend in DeKalb on Friday, and then another old gaming buddy in Round Lake on Saturday. Jerod decided not to go, Luke and Sarah drove to AJ's on Friday, and Andy drove up alone on Saturday morning.

PRE-TOURNAMENT
I got a bit of a late start on Friday, and didn't get to DeKalb until 9 pm. I linked up with Paul, got a Gyro at the old Cat and Mouse, and went to Lord Stanley's for a couple drinks. Ran into some old friends, closed out the bar (I only ever do this on visits to DeKalb), and fell asleep on the couch.

Saturday morning I got up and started driving toward Mundelein. I'm not terribly familiar with the area, and was forced to follow some Mapquest directions. I had made arrangements to meet up with a friend from Elgin, Az, for brunch. We found a nice pancake place down the road from AJ's (Elly's, I think), and I shoveled a massive omelette into the fuel compartment. The food was good, albeit somewhat standard for that type of establishment. The service was great - the most on the spot waitress I've had in years - and the place was packed! I struggled to work though some changes I wanted to make to my deck while Az and I talked about poker, work, friends, and other relative topics. Finally, I packed up and headed for AJ's.

MY DECK
A note on the deck - I have been struggling with what to play for a while. I played Stark War of the 5 Kings at Madison, and it got me 2nd place. Since then, I've worked on Baratheon rush, Lannister trait, and Targ burn decks. I've played the Lanny deck to some pretty good finishes. In the last couple weeks, as I've thought about this tournament, Jerod and I have both been working on location-based characterless/lite decks. I was really worried about the viability of most of my decks against this type of build. It came down, then, to Stark or Bara, and the former won out due to it's greater capacity for location control. I still wasn't happy, though, as I felt I didn't get to spend enough time tweaking that particular deck. The deck focuses on building on early military dominance, with a lot of immune to events characters to make it resilient and irritating. It's also mostly Tully, so it can abuse the Blackfish and Edmure's Host pretty well.

AJ's place is amazing. He lives in a pretty nice little residential neighborhood, in which he has a nice house. The real standout feature, aside from the people who live in the house, was it's basement. AJ is a sports/media junky, and there are a variety of tv's in the basement, all tuned to different sports events. The walls are covered with sports memorabilia. I felt a bit out of place, as the only sport I follow is soccer, and that appeared to be one that AJ was not into. Aside from the TV's AJ has a nice assemblage of tables on which to game, and an abundant beverage service area.

AJ let me in, and gave me the quick tour. The only people I knew there aside from the Iowa group were people who had been at the Murder tourney in Madison, including Ktom, Madkasel, LOB, and Capt. Obv. I got to meet quite a few more, and I'm sure I'll leave people out of this report, for which I apologize. AJ had provided food, but I was stuffed... it was just a hint of the generosity that was to come, though.

TOURNEY
Round 1
We all got signed up and ktom generated the pairings. I found myself sitting across from Adam, of Chicago, with his Martell Small Council deck. I got off to a pretty good start, and had a nice army going. Adam got a couple early Massing at Twilight, and my 2 claim intrigues and 3 claim military challenges (blue steel dirk) didn't seem to make enough of a dent. He drew into SOT Darkstar, and drew even more cards. Even after several high claim military challenges, he was still keeping up. Finally, I felt I got over the top, and then, of course, I ran into wildfire assault. I didn't draw anything to deal with Darkstar, and I quickly fell to Adam's rapidly enlarging team. This felt an awful lot like Madison, as I lost in the first round there, too... Also, like Madison, my first round opponent had a good deck, was a good guy and a good player, and would go on to do pretty well himself...
Round 2
*Note: I think I may have messed up some of the rounds... not absolutely sure what order I played people in, oddly...
ktom called out "Jason...vs....Jason!" and LOB and I sat down to play. Again, it was Martell, Threat from the East. LOB had a poor draw, mulled, and didn't end up with anything great. He had a 2 card drop, with no locations. I hit him with two claim military off Gathering Storm on turn 1, and he never really managed to get back into the game. In fact, with the light location draw, Threat from the East was somewhat brutal to him. He was a good opponent, and we had some constructive discussion about deck design and some of the cards.

Round 3
This round I got to play someone from the SW Michigan Meta for the first time. The Mountain that Pwns actually is, I think, my favorite screenname on the boards, and I had to complement Matt. He was playing Baratheon. Things seemed to start pretty quick for him, as he used Roberts Deathbed and Tourney Season to go get the Lanni and Bara tourney grounds. However, this was another case of me getting on top with high claim military and never looking back. TMTP had a really hard time winning jousts against my 6 str immune to events no attachments armies, and also had a hard time defending against my large forces. This was somewhat like round 2. Matt's a great guy, and we had a fun time playing and talking, even though it didn't go so well for him. I think that the Michigan group will do pretty well with a guy like this at it's center. I was impressed with his enthusiasm for the game, his friendliness, and his apparent ability to get the people around him together to do things.

Round 4
I was actually pretty happy to hear the pairings this round. I got to meet Madkasel and talk with him a little at Madison, and he seemed like a great guy (an impression which has been augmented by the posts he's made on the AGOT message boards). I figured this would be a fun round. Drew was playing Stark also, Threat from the East? (I don't remember the agenda, but a post online says this is what he was playing - Threat doesn't usually bother me too much, as my deck playes out pretty quickly). I don't remember a lot about this game. It was pleasant, we had a friendly chat going. We both had decent draws and got characters out, and traded some challenges back and forth. I should ask Drew if he remembers what won this for me. Maybe it was fat Blackfish.

Round 5
I finally got to play someone I'd played before. I got paired with Nate French, who I'd played in draft when he came through Iowa. Nate's a really good guy, and this was shaping up to be a full day of pleasant games. Nate was undefeated, too, and coming off a win over Mathlete. He was running Baratheon, by the way, no agenda, with an Asshai theme, a slightly tweaked version of a deck designed by Staton. He swayed my Fish, but Bran kept things interesting, taking his characters during challenges. High claim plots drained him down, and the Tullys cam out on top. I have a feeling, though, that Nate wasn't trying his hardest in this game, as he had decided to drop before top 8, as he couldn't win prizes. I like to think I deserved it, though...

QUARTERFINALS
I made top 8, at 4-1, I think I was 2nd seed, but I'm not sure, I might have been third. The nice thing was that Mathlete was on the other side of the bracket. I was paired up with the host, running Stark/Targ treaty. I got an amazing draw this game, the best all day. I flopped five cards, including three tully characters. I drew into all 3 of my Edmure's hosts, and had them all down on turn 2. This was a nightmare for AJ, as he had not included anything in his plot deck to blank text boxes/remove immunities. Consequently, his burn/Arya's Revenges/Festering Wounds were no good on them, and he couldn't really get out enough military to compete. He searched up some Plazas of Punishment, but ended up using one on a newly recruited Blackfish, keeping all my hosts on the table. The game took a long time, for some reason (AJ did have to get up and pay for the newly arrived pizzas), but the early dominance of the Hosts held up.

SEMIFINALS
Newport Harry had dispatched his opponent fairly quickly, and got to watch most of my game. He graciously offered to let me wait for a while before playing, but I decided it was best to get it over with. If I lost, maybe I could still get in the draft... NPH tried to pump up a false sense of security for me, saying I was sure to win, but I wasn't having any. I guess I should have been more polite and listened to him, maybe things would have gone the way he said... I mulliganed out of a bad hand, into a slightly better hand with no resources. I ended up drawing no reducers or gold producers the entire game, and had to rely on plot gold only. I also drew only one immune to events character, which proved telling. NPH had quite a few of the same characters as me, including several immune to events guys, which he used in conjuntion with story events. I hand't really seen this done before, so it was pretty cool. I had a slight edge over the first few turns and, after a couple 2 claim militaries, I thought I had the advantage. Unfortunately, I chose that turn to March to the Wall. Well, NPH had decided to launch his Wildfire Assault at the same time. When the dust cleared, we were each down to 2 characters, but he had gold/reducers and I didn't. Also, he was going first that turn, and one of his characters was Robb... Things went rapidly downhill for me from here, as I wasn't able to play more than one (little) character per turn. After the game, NPH told me that I had missed Robb on two successive 2 claim intrigue challenges when he had only 3 cards in his hand...

So, I was out, so close to the match with the champ... Well, hopefully I'll get another chance someday. I ended up in third on tiebreakers, and got 4 packs, 100 GD, a book, and three promos for my trouble. Oh, AJ covered my gas, too, which was HOT.

DRAFT
I did in fact get done in time to enter the draft. I ended up seated at a table with Savil, LOB, Nate, Jeff from Mich., Madkasel, and I forget who else. I think Adam and Complord. I opened up Westeros Bleeds, which is a hot pick, but has never worked out for me in draft. Either I'm winning or it gets intrigued out of my hand. I second picked Student of Subtlety. After that, I took a Stark Army, a Targ army, and a Baratheon army. I wasn't getting consistent runs of cards from my right, and I couldn't settle on a house(s). The second pack gave me another Student, and a Dornish Lancer, as well as a second Targ army, sending me in that direction. Unfortunately, I wasn't getting passed any of the Targ removal. In the end, I constructed a serviceable but unspectacular Marell/Targ deck, with lots of massive armies. I didn't have a lot of "flair" for it, though.

FIRST ROUND
I got paired against Nate French again. This rematch was unfortunate, in a way, since we'd already played that day. Also, I'd beaten him twice now, and figured he was due revenge... I got a decent start, but quick burn and festering wound from Nate kept anything decent off the board. He kept himself ahead of me, and emptied quite a bit of my deck with the Lannister Iron Throne (including my second Student of Subtlety). I drew Bleeds, but miss-played and put a character down when I shouldn't have. The Bleeds reset the board, but left me with only two characters in hand, and three cards in deck. Nate had plenty of characters in hand, though, and I scooped. Right after, he showed me Harrenhall, so I didn't really have a chance anyway. The last time we played, I housed him with Harranhall and the Lanni Throne, so it was very fair turnabout. Nate went on to win the tournament, too, so I can't feel too bad. Wish I would have gotten another round in, I guess.

My friend Eric was waiting up for me, so I took off. The wors fog I've ever driven in was infusing Lake County on Saturday night, and I had to drive about 4 miles an hour, with no clue what was going on 18 feet from me... I didn't even recognize the area the next morning. Sunday I taught Eric to play AGOT, gave him a demo deck, and headed for home. Hopefully, the next time I'm up that way, there will be one more person at the tournament...

Well, this is long enouch as is. Thanks for reading.

GG, GL