Edinburgh 2015: There's Nowt as Free as Folk

On the 23rd of May we will be hosting our annual Edinburgh Invitational (don't let the name fool you, everyone is invited!), at the Games Hub in Edinburgh.
A regular joust tournament, with rounds and cut depending on attendance, and a host of excellent prizes for everyone, including the Spring Kit, alt art cards, deckboxes, playmats, house cards, and two special prizes: A Night's Watch Dragonglass Dagger set, by Valyrian Steel, for the winner and a promotional G.R.R. Martin card as the Valar Morghulis prize, to the player who achieves the most opponents' character kills during a single game!

After the tournament, and with the opportunity of my 30th birthday, everyone is warmly invited and encouraged to join us for a Wild(ling) night out in Edinburgh. Inebriation, dancing, carousing and joviality is ensured and most likely crash space can be provided for anyone willing to stay the night.

So take the time this Spring to visit the Lands beyond the Wall and I promise you won't regret it.

Further details for the event can be found on our Facebook page (just search for 'there's nowt so free as folk')

Or you can always PM or email me at togashi_mouchliazo AT hotmail.com

I'm free on the Saturday, but working on the Sunday, so with great sadness I'll have to skip the night out. But if I can make it to the tourney I will!

1) Checked work diary and discovered I'm off for whole weekend!
2) Began looking up flights from Stanstead.
3) With a sudden gnawing sense of dread, checked the calendar in the kitchen.
4) Crushing disappointment upon realisation I'm due to attend a wedding.

I told Even I'd write a report for this, but I also said I'd do it on here to force him (and others) to join the forum. So here we go:

Firstly I'd like to say thank you to Kostas for running an awesome tourney with incredible prize support. Secondly I'd like to point out that I slightly cheated, but i think I'll detail that further down.

The deck I was running was a fairly janky Lanni conquest Targ deck. I have noticed that Dave Stromes is running Lanni conquest Targ though now, and would love to see his list. I can't believe it has as much jank as mine though.

Round 1
James. Stark NA - Meera
Before the tourney I was discussing with Even what my worst match ups would be and thought anything winter would be pretty awful due to the deck being quite expensive and relying on a sprinkling of summer tech. I had some good luck in the game though and James didn't draw in to many characters and i was able to control what he did get out. I also saw none of my summer cards so didn't have to fight the season battle too hard
1-0

Round 2.
Usman. Greyjoy SoI - Fear of Winter.
Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. Choke and zero chance of ever making it summer. I was just hoping the game wouldn't last too long so I could get on with round three as I felt I couldn't win. Turn 1 I opened with city besieged to get rid of his river blockade and one of my presumably useless lions gates, then realised I'd not be able to use at the gates on subsequent turns. Usman opened with blockade so my highest gold plot was also wasted. Fortunately he had only marshaled two refugees and two other guys so a dissension, a YKtWD, and an enemy informer was enough to stop him challenging me t1. Usman then chose to try to hit me with two claim plots for the next couple of turns instead of making it winter which allowed me to get a little use out of the lions gate and wasn't too choked to fight back. Eventually my draw got me too far ahead and he couldn't recover after his own valar. It was also this game that Kostas sat next to me and pointed out that Meereen tourney grounds were house Targaryen only. Whoops. Somehow neither I or anyone I'd tested against had noticed this. Normally I'd have to play the rest of the games with two blank cards in my deck, but as this wasn't an officially sanctioned tournament, i was allowed to swap them out for a couple of borrowed cards for the remaining games. I don't think the replacements had any effect on my results, but I do feel a little guilty.
2-0

Round 3
Even. Targ HoD LDC - Long lances
This was a deck that formed part of my extended practice session the night before and I had convinced and helped Even change from a NA deck to HoD so it could more consistently abuse flame kissed/dosh khaleen. Most of my characters are strength 2 so I knew this could be tough. We both set up one character and a few locations. unfortunately my guy was Jhogo and his was Missandei. Marched to wall hurt. The upside was that it would now take til T3 for his To be a dragons to be online which gave me the chance to get lucky with my intrigue challenges and pull two from his hand.around turn 3 or 4 he played Fleeing to the wall to my Time for Ravens. He made me go first as it's normally the best choice against a deck with kneel. Once I'd grabbed my black raven, he asked if i was running blue birds. He had realised his mistake in letting me choose the order of plots and I realised that I'd chosen the wrong coloured pigeon and lost a lot of locations. In the end though, my superior draw against an opponent not drawing into many characters allowed a fairly comfortable win.
3-0

Round 4
Kostas. Martell HoD Dorne - Negotiations
On paper this should have been my easiest game of the day. A deck playing hundreds of allies should have a hard time against a deck running dissensions and bouncable Jorah and Arys. That's not what happened though. I saw none of my ally hate and he spammed the board with a lot of dudes with annoying abilities and threw 2 claim plots at me. After barely surviving the first turn despite a pentoshi manor and using up 2 YKtWDs, i decided to put the harpy's scourge in my hand to good use. Threat took out his 1 strength guys and i threw all but one card in my hand at taking out most of the rest of his board in challenges. After those two very long turns in which we trying to out trick each other i started to get the upper hand. Kostaas wasn't running a reset though so scooped once my board got to big.
4-0

Kostas dropped after swiss which meant i got the fifth place finisher in the cut and allowed all the 3-1s to make the cut

Semi-Final
Tony. Bara KotR - Preston?
This was a game of two halves. I had a seven card set up, but it included to economy. Tony, though was able to use the normal bara seat of power, narrow sea, dale, and brightwater man at arms to get a huge board presence t1. The only kneel I had was a YKtWD, which I stupidly used in marshalling just so that arys could appear from shadows and cause it to be wasted. T2 he burnt through two harrenhal triggers to stop me giving marg the ally trait and despite the fact i had a summery gilly, a kingsroad and 4 or 5 other characters on the board i couldn't win a single challenge on attack or defence. This was in large part to a combination of black cells, a second man at arms, and margaery blanking things. He had played Retal, so i felt with pentoshi, I would be able to declare no challenges, put no pwer on my house card and be able to stop him winning either Int or Mil. My plans were ruined when he cancelled the pentoshi with harrenhal, put two power on my house and won three 2 claim challenges against me. things started to get better after that. He could no longer stop me giving traits to marg, which allowed me to get Jorah out and have a knight presence on the board. Harrenhal had slowed me down to start with, but had also trimmed his board. Somewhere around this time Arys had also died which meant i could kneel things in marshalling with out it being a waste of time. He was then forced to Aftermath on T4 or 5 and despite having a large board I continued to play stuff out - not a mistake - I really wanted to ygritte his jaime and conspiritor his 4th(!!) man at arms. So despite never getting the summer encampment/daario combo that would have made this match up hilarious, I was able to come back to victory.

Final
Even - the rematch
Unfortunately this was a little anticlimactic. Even mulliganned into a 1 card set up and I was clever enough to learn to keep a blue bird to save my location base. I did have to scream at myself (causing the whole room to look over) for repeating the same mistake over and over in forgetting to play betrayal when i actually have nights watch/wildlings on the board. particularly annoying when your opponent flips take them by surprise. I think the game only lasted as long as it did though because Even never had any power to steal and he did his best with a terrible start.

I will take a moment here to mention the incredible prize support that was distributed amongst all the attendees (16, I think).
Kostas had managed to not only supply a games night kit, but a huge stack of alt art valars, a signed alt art dany, a large number of very nice custom thrones coasters, some ccg sets of house cards, stark power counters, a valyrian steel set of a dragonglass dagger and arrow heads, a bunch of stuff that escapes me, and the now traditional travelling trophy AGoT Wood.

A huge thank you to Even and Alix for putting me up all weekend. And for them, Tony, and Helen for playing cards all day Friday and drinking gin with me. Thank you for everyone who came out Saturday night as that topped off a great weekend with just the right amount of rum. Though too much sambuca.

A final shout out to my new favourite card - Summer Tommen, for helping me find the most evil cards at just the right time. And to FFG for putting Giant's Lance in the final pack as it'll nicely replace the tourney grounds that I'll have to take out.

Wedge - you're perfectly justified in not knowing whether my restricted was Preston or not as I didn't see the bastard once during our game. My big mistake was trying to hammer home a victory with the 2 claim on Fallen from Favor as it all went tits up after that.

Great tourney though and congrats: i'll get you one day mate. See you soon.