Battle Hymn - 11-06-2011

11th of June, in the year of our King 0001, Games Garage.

Oh well, a most deadly series of games yesternight, with me on the losing end, and quoting YY - "forced to choose between the lesser of three evils turn after turn." You guys wanna know how bad it is, here we go~

Game 1

I arrived at GG just in time, when YY, LF and Fad just ended their 3 players game. (with Fad looking suspiciously like what I'll be looking like a couple of hours later) I've just completed sorting out my cards at home and have hastily (though not without thoughts) assembled my new decks, and pretty eager to try them out. Unlike with Vtes, I've yet to develop the kind of commitment to read and understand the selection of cards in AGoT, and is still sticking to the more conventional deck types to play with and build. In time, I hope that this will change and I can start working on AGoT the way I deal with Vtes~

I pull out my shiny Stark Night's Watch deck for my first game, that was based pretty much LF's "The Wall" version, with the Starks providing the slaying option with their events. Fad was playing his Lannister Joffrey deck, YY his Baratheon Melisandre and LF her Targaryen Dragons.

Now LF was ahead in the game most of the time, an early Summoning Season, which traded with my Building Season, got her Dany and Viserion. Running the Heir to the Iron Throne gave LF a good attack capability, though my Wall and Defenders did keep me relatively safe for a while. YY threw down his entire hand during setup and has an excellent spread of property, giving him a good +4 gold every round pretty much right from the start. Fad was sitting too far from me for me to notice. He had yellow cards.

Despite holding 2 Defenders in hand and had the Wall in play in round 1, I couldn't get my Night's Watch to do much. Granted, my defense was reasonable, losing only 1 character and about 4 powers throughout the whole game, but my offensive capability was moot - I've gained a total of only 6 power (including the one from Half-Hand's Renown) from the game, while everyone else was pooling to over 10.

LF's Dragons was able to attack again and again without kneeling, thanks to Dany's encouragement, and I only managed to eliminate Viserion with a Routed Charge, but soon Drogon and Regal was all over the place. YY, though he was without many characters in the early game, and had lost Melisandre (taken back with Many Powers Long Asleep), got back into the game with all his Shadow thingy and Acolytes. Fad was too far for me to see, except that he got many powers on his House card, and had knelt my Half-Hand with his Brothel once.

After a while, everybody was in the position to win - LF had 13 power, YY had 12 or 13 I think, and Fad had over 10. LF won Initiative and chose to be player one, I played Focused Offense. thinking that the 2 Defenders should be enough to fend off some attacks. Unfortunately LF played Fear of Winter - pretty much making me the prime target, not to mention that I was the last player. However, YY played Shadow Politics and declared that LF only had 1 chance to get her 2 power before YY can take his action to initiate an Intrigue challenge. (I kinda don't really get that card, coz it seemed that it is only going to give the player an additional Intrigue challenge as an action, but not immediately, will request for FAQ)

Anyway, LF didn't target me as YY was supporting me, and went after Fad, failing to win. YY then won the game, how he did it I forgot, coz he didn't target me, and the action was far away on the table~ I did however, ended up with only 3 powers and was far from being in the game~

Game 2

Though Bann had arrived, he wasn't feeling too good for the game, so we continued with another 4 players game. This time I pulled out my Lannister Brotherhood Whitebook.

The table was horrendous. 2 Martells, LF's with the White Book, and YY (I think) the King of Summer. Fad was still fighting the table with his Lannister.

This was a most defensive game for pretty much everybody. Generally few attacks were issued, and everybody, except me, had big big guns up their sleeves.

LF had Ser Arthur Dayne, armed to the teeth with a selection of attachment, supported by Selyse and the Knight of Flower (and eventually somebodies else); Fad's Joffrey had (eventually) 3 Devious Intentions stacked on him with 3 duplicates and a good number of power on him, making him a double digit STR character. And I lose count of how many Sand Snakes and characters that YY had.

Again, I struggled to survive. With Beric and a triplicated Tywin I was able to hold off for a while, with 2 Wildfire Assault being played I managed to get to 8 powers before the final round where everybody will win if I attacked them.

A Bungled Order was played by YY, but I messed up and attacked him before trying to lose and reveal my Valar to level the playing field. That pretty much gave YY the game.

The game was a lot closer then I could describe here, battle reports don't do justice to the close fights that we had (and much table talk) for the game. A highlight of this game was the many alternatives that Joffrey tried in that single one round and pretty much nothing worked, since the Martells would win with Taste of Blood and Renown regardless. So of course, I suffered the wrath of the double digital Joffrey - most of the time.

And the table was full of data request - "How many blues do you have again? What do you mean by 23 on him alone?""You have deadly? All of them?""Who can I stealth? Who don't have stealth again? You remove who's what?""You target who? Why?""How many power you have on Joffrey? So how many STR he has?""How many cards you have in hand? Need to count one ah?"

Great game. It was way closer than I could do justice to. Of course, I wasn't part of the threat~ again~ :)

(o.o)