A Tournament Report by 2014 North American Champion Jonathan Andrews

As World Championship Weekend approaches, we will be posting articles each week with tips for players on how to prepare for their next large tournament. Whether you’re planning on attending Worlds or following along through our online coverage, these articles are a great insight into how some of the best players of your favorite game prepare for major tournaments.

Today, we are joined by 2014 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game North American Champion Jonathan Andrews. Jonathan shares how he prepared for the 2014 North American Championships and how important it is to prepare in a systematic manner.

Jonathan Andrews on the 2014 North American Championship

Since I covered my Gen Con experience in Alex Hynes and my Game of Thrones podcast, “Beyond The Wall” Episode 29, I thought I would do a little something different and talk about how I prepared for the event.

For major events like Gen Con I like to test decks with one or two other people for two reasons; one, it’s hard to for me to playtest alone, and two, a second set of eyes is always great. However, this year I had a problem in that all my normal deck-building partners were not attending this illustrious event. I was a bit disappointed, but I eventually managed to coax Steven Simoni and Aaron Glazer to help me get ready for the event.

Practice Like You Mean It

As we playtested, we discovered that Steven and I have very different play styles, which made it impossible for us to agree on a deck. After two months of playing various decks a few times each week, we were no closer to picking a deck for the event.

This was not a wasted effort. In fact, I remember a study from the 1950’s I researched for a paper which proved empirically the correlation between practice and performance. The study further determined that not only does the amount of practice affect performance, the quality of practice has an equal, if not greater, impact.

How does this relate to playing A Game of Thrones: The Card Game? Players preparing for an A Game of Thrones tournament should practice with their decks using a tournament mindset if they want to perform to the best of their abilities. For example, focusing on every practice game as if it is taking place in a tournament will establish tournament habits in your overall play.

This means that when preparing for a tournament, you should maintain a serious and competitive attitude. If you prepare for a tournament in a sloppy, unfocused way, those sloppy, unfocused habits will migrate into your tournament play. Perhaps not immediately—you will be able to focus on the first few games in a tournament—but as the day wears on you will be more inclined to slip into bad habits. It is okay to have a good time, but make sure you take your time and think your actions through just like you would in a tournament setting. This is what my playtest partners and I have always done. We treat all of our playtest games seriously, and we always try to make ‘the correct play.’

These winning habits are key to going far at Gen Con, or any other large tournament. The mental fatigue a player starts to experience in the later rounds is significant, and the more tired you are, the more you begin to operate on ‘autopilot.’ Practice is about programming this autopilot with good habits. Even with all my pre-Gen Con preparations, I experienced this mental fatigue and some poor play in my final game, but I believe that my earlier elimination games were won partially because of all the practice games I had played and all the good habits (i.e. winning habits) I established in those test games. To summarize, playing a ton of games against skilled players who were using the most competitive decks in the metagame was very good for me.

Sharpening My Blade

All the practice did not, however, get me any closer to picking the perfect deck, and the tournament was only nine days away. So, I decided to step back and think a bit. I remembered one of the cardinal rules to deck building: all decks have limitations and no deck can do everything. The best you can hope for is to have a deck that is powerful and consistent. A deck does not have to handle every situation, it just needs to be able to beat the common decks you expect to see.

With this in mind, I chose to pull out an old Power Behind the Throne (Lions of the Rock, 48) deck that I had built previously and tweak it slightly. My minor tweaks included adding Daenerys Targaryen (Ancestral Home, 76) who could pair with the Game of Thrones (Lions of the Rock, 53) plot to destroy my opponent’s board presence, and the addition of a second copy of some of the stronger characters already in the deck.

I decided to take the deck for a test run at a small tournament in Montreal. I chose the tournament because I believe that the Montreal meta is currently one of the most competitive groups in North America. The deck performed great at the tournament, going undefeated, and just like that, my choice for Gen Con was locked in.

With my changes, I believed the deck could beat Stark and Greyjoy easily, and I thought that these two houses would be over represented during the elimination rounds. Boy, was I wrong.

Knowledge is a Weapon

Even though I had anticipated the meta incorrectly, all my playtesting gave me a great understanding of the best decks around and a good idea of what could beat them. For example, I knew that opening turn one with Fear of Winter (Beyond the Wall, 40) after kneeling some of my opponent’s key characters before plot choice with events would assure me victory early in Swiss rounds. During the elimination rounds, especially against Martell decks, I knew that a Fear of Winter opening could cause me issues since their Fury of the Sun (Ancient Enemies, 30) plot could be so devastating against my deck. Many of my opponents would also have an answer to Fear of Winter, such as
Forgotten Plans (Kings of the Storm, 50).

This knowledge allowed me to change my strategy each game and helped me win some games I would not have won otherwise. Thanks to this, I ended up going 10-1 in the Joust, losing only in the finals. With my 1st-place finish in the Melee the day before, I was lucky enough to win the Overall Championship and the chance to design a card!

The 2014 World Championship Weekend is Approaching

Thanks, Jonathan!

Jonathan took a methodical approach that anyone can replicate when preparing for a major tournament. The combination of quality time, good competition, and analysis is a tried and true approach that can lead to great results.

Check back next week to hear stories from our Star Wars™: The Card Game and X-Wing™ North American Champions. Be sure to tune in to our coverage of the 2014 World Championship Weekend starting Thursday, Nov 6th, as players from around the world battle for prizes, fame, and the right to design a card in their favorite game!

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