30pt Starter Tournaments – ASOIAF First Sword of Daventry

Your Grace. My Lords. My Ladies. My little birds have been chirping a particular tune of late. The Sealord of Daventry has been looking for a new First Sword and several proficient strategists in the art of war have gathered to compete for the title. I have all the details of the event that I am more than happy to share.

Okay fun lore influenced intro over. I attended a 30pts Starter only ASOIAF event last weekend. Single list, 3 games format with the overall winner named the First Sword of Daventry. It was a great day, thank you to Kyle for organising the event and ASOIAF-Stats for providing their APP to record the results.

The Event

There was a wooden spoon, and a prize for 1st place and best painted model/unit. Both prizes were essentially a unit box of your choice from the well stocked range at the store. During the painted competition, the judge also picked a Tyrion model to win a bunch of gaming accessories due to the judge getting a giggle out of his statue compared to the other units on display.

Three games over the course of the day. Game of Thrones, Feast for Crows, and Fire and Blood. Great starting gamemodes for those with not too much experience allowing those who have just picked up the starter to play without too much hassle of the gamemode.

Popular faction choices were Greatjon led Starks, Drogo led Targaryens and Jon Snow led Night’s Watch, but every faction was represented (apart from Neutrals of course).

My List:

Veterans of the Watch (7)
Jon Snow (C)
Sworn Brothers (7)
Watch Captain (3)
Ranger Trackers (6)
Ghost (3)
Aemon (4)

The Games

I played against Graeme’s Umber led Starks in the first game, Joe’s Jeor led Night’s Watch in the second, and Rory’s Renly led Baratheons in the final game.

Graeme’s List:

Stark Sworn Swords (5)
Greatjon Umber (C)
Stark Sworn Swords (5)
Umber Berserkers (6)
Stark Outriders (6)
Catelyn Stark (4)
Sansa Stark (4)

My first game was a close loss. It came down to a slight mistake on my end with activation timing, however any number of small changes with the benefit of hindsight could have changed the game. Graeme fought well and it was a bloody battle. One of the take aways I have from the fight is that although both our lists had six activations, two NCUs vs one and Starks having four actual units did prove to be an issue with the five objective gamemode, however the Watch Captain in Sworn Brothers is super strong and I can see why the attachment is dominant at the moment.

Joe’s List:

Veterans of the Watch (7)
Jeor Mormont (C)
Sworn Brothers (7)
Sworn Brothers (7)
Jon Snow (2)
Ghost (3)
Aemon (4)

The second game was quite fun, it’s not often I get to play Feast for Crows and win, it’s my achilles heel majority of the time. With most people bringing Jon as Commander, as he is considered the best from the Starter Set, Joe caught me off guard with Jeor. when trying to attack Jeor majority of the time it resulted in little damage due to Disrupt and then he would heal a wound easily due to Dauntless. I took my Sworn Sword unit charging them in the rear and performing three attacks to defeat them. I think this game highlighted an issue with the format of the tournament, where just the starters is a great concept but it’s easier to decipher the best faction and Commander from the small pool of choice. I will talk more on my solution to this at the end of the article.

Rory’s List:

Stag Knights (8)
Renly Baratheon ©
Baratheon Sentinels (6)
Baratheon Wardens (5)
Master Warden (1)
Baratheon Wardens (5)
Master Warden (1)
Alester Floresnt (4)

I almost brought a similar list to Rory’s for the event. The Baratheons have a bad starter set in comparison to the other factions and it is even worse for Stannis fans as he doesn’t combo well with the rest of the set. However, they trade these negatives out for pure hardened resilience, they are tough to crack and you will need to play to the flank and rear bonuses. I tried to do this with a gamble with Ghost and it completely backfired due to the Master Warden. However the real MVP was the Watch Captain’s unit, without those I would not have had enough attacks to kill the stags. The Night’s Watch tactics deck is very strong and without it the game would have been hard fought, but since the cards stay in play providing benefits constantly it becomes an issue in the long run for the opponents. Rory was a great player and almost pulled off a draw if it wasn’t for the Watch Captain.

Innovate

If you’re bringing Lannisters, it won’t go well. If you face Drogo it will very likely not go well. If your opponent has managed to squeeze in six activations it won’t go well. I have never played a game knowing who will win before you even set up, however in this format you can easily pick the top performers. Notice how the Stark lists won every game they played unless it was a mirror match? Activations are powerful and certain starters like Baratheons and Lannisters cannot make anything higher than a five activation list with either reduced NCUs or reduced combat units. Strong Commanders like Jon will see play and a better performance than the others in the starter, think Jorah against Drogo, Greatjon against Robb, Renly against Stannis.

How do we solve this problem? Otherwise every 30pts tournament will have the same outcome of results and list design. The concept of the event is to allow new players to easily take part in an event with only needing the starter for their faction, so we would need to keep the accessibility low whilst also allowing an opportunity for a more diverse list representation. 30pts and three games is wise so as not to throw the newer players into the deep end.

My solution is simple, keep it to the Starter Set only apart from your Commander. So for example, if you were bringing Starks, you could run the starter with Rickard Karstark as the Commander and all you would need to purchase is the starter and a heroes box. Since most Starter Sets don’t have enough models to make 40pts lists you would need to grab a box anyways and to get the most out of a Starter the best thing to grab is a heroes box. Hopefully this would allow some more Commanders to be used resulting in a diverse pool of lists and a more uncertain winners podium allowing for the skill of the player to be the focus rather than the best list.

What do you think? How would you improve the format? Does it need improving?

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