First Snow of Winter

Editor’s Note – The above pic is actually from GenCon 2007, after Sam Tham (far right) beat John Bruno (far left) in the joust finals. It’s as close as we could get to a pic from his 2005 win. Also featured are past champs Matt Ley (center left) and Greg Atkinson (center right).

W: Today we’re privileged to bring you another quick Q&A session, this time between myself and two time AGOT World Champion, John Bruno. Though he has retired from active AGOT competition to focus on Star Wars Destiny, John was kind enough to take a bit of time to chat about his first champion card.

W: So, First Snow of Winter was your very first card design, created way back in the CCG era of the game. What can you tell us about the deck you played to win that year?

B: Not surprisingly, the deck that I played with and won was a Targ Burn deck! There weren’t “jumpers” back then, but Targ had a number of kneel characters as costs to events back then. Targ burn and Cannot Be Killed Dragons were pretty amazing!

W: Resets or board wipes have traditionally been a big part of AGOT. Did you set out specifically to create such a plot or was there some evolution to get to that point?

B: When I won in 2005, the only immediate reset Plot was Wildfire Assault. The first CCG rotation had happened and Valar Morghulis and Threat from the North were no longer in the game. There was a Plot card called “Winter Has Come” which did what Valar did [ed. note – same as 2ED] (but had 1 claim) however, it had the “Others” trait and could not be played until you played two other Plots with the “Others” trait. There were a lot of weenie-rush decks and I wanted a reset to slow weenie-rush decks.

W: Without spoiling any NDA privy information, do you recall how playtesters reacted to the plot?

B: To be honest, I was very fortunate. I really only worked with Eric Lang. I was a part of playtesting back then, and they really didn’t have much interaction. My Plot card came out EXACTLY as I wanted it, and as I submitted it, except for one thing – a Trait! I wanted my Plot to have the “Others” trait to work with Winter Has Come. It was believed that it was too strong to interact with the other reset card.

W: I know you play a lot of games, was FSoW inspired by anything from another game or a specific scene from the novels?

B: My card, text or card name, was not inspired by anything. I just wanted to design a card that was a reset that I felt the game needed. At GenCon SoCal in 2005, Eric Lang and I sat done and talked about the card design. He liked my design. He gave me a piece of paper and said “write down 10 names for the card”. I gave him 10 names. He crossed them all out. He said try again! Lol. I wanted the card to be called “Size Matters”. He laughed and liked it but told me that double entendres would not be approved. Lol So, I submitted five more names and He liked “The First Snow of Winter”.

W: I think you have the dubious honor of starting the trend of featuring the champion dying in the art. How did that come about?

B: FFG had decided that the 2005 Champ would be the first person to be depicted in the art for their Champ card. Once I decided on the card text and “First Snow” as the name, I told Eric Lang that I wanted the art work to be members of the Night’s Watch beyond the Wall in heavy snow and being attacked by The Others/Wights and only the strongest/largest NW surviving and I wanted to be one of the NW dying. I was also able to choose the artist. I chose Thomas Denmark since did the original art for Valar Morghulis and he was someone that I had met at Kublacon many times. I sent him a picture of me and an art description and the rest is history!

W: Did FFG ask you to weigh in on updating the plot for 2ED at all?

B: I was “retired” from the game when the LCG first came out. I retired in 2008 after Gencon of that year, the last year of the CCG championships. When FFG decided to re-release my card in LCG 1.0, Damon Stone called me up and we discussed how to update the card for the LCG. He listened, took in my input and we came up with the 1.0 design. Btw, I was involved playtesting and discussed with Nate French about the 2.0 design. Playtesters gave their input. I talked with Nate again and we came up with the 2.0 design.

W: Do you have any other interesting thoughts or anecdotes about your win in 2005 or The First Snow of Winter?

B: In 2005, the first time that I won, it was the first two-day, qualifying tourney for Worlds. The first day, you played 6 rounds of Swiss. After those six rounds, the Top 16 made the cut for the second day. The cool part was, on the second day, you could play a completely different deck! I had won four Regionals over the year (including the Origins Cup) with four different Houses. I was hoping to go 6 for 6, so I played Stark on the first day. I played the Agenda, Knights of the Realm. I was the 12^th seed and made Day 2. Now, the only house left to play was Baratheon, but I hated Baratheon, so I went back to Targaryen (No Agenda) and won all four rounds of Swiss. It was fun playing a different deck the second day!