OK, so everyone's been talking about Lanni Shadows and how its pretty much been dominating tourneys. Well I decided to think of a way to modify my Baratheon deck to have a pretty good chance of beating Lanni Shadows, yet not modifying it to the point that it could beat ONLY lanni shadows. Well here is what I came up with.

Baratheon – Kings of Summer

Plots

Fury of the Stag

Power of the Blood x2

Valar M.

The Red Wedding

A Time for Ravens

A Song of Summer

Characters (37)

Bara Refugee x3

Summer’s Champion x2

Samwell x3

Gilly x1

King Renly x2

Ned x 3

Grimace Robert x2

Stannis x2

Loyal Guard x3

Intrigue Selyse x1

Maester Cressen x2

Banner for the Storm x2

River Bandit x2

No Renown Mel x2

Shadows Marg x1

Carrion Bird x3

Royal Entourage x3

Locations (12)

Narrow Sea x3

Bara Fiefdoms x2

Bara King’s Hall x3

Summer Port x3

Robert's Chambers x1

Attachments (8)

Milk x2

Bodyguard x3

Black Raven x3

Events (3)

Distinct Mastery x3

Now I know that this deck looks like it needs it to be summer all the time, but it doesn't. Its more like an added bonus. I really just need sam and some ravens. If I do have sam out, I really don't care if someone else makes it winter, since I'll still get to draw two cards off of the white raven. Obviously if you get a bad flop then you need the draw a bit more, but for the most part I was getting 4 and 5 card flops. So I only needed to draw a few times in order to get those few extra cards I need to rush with.

Now the "rush" part of the deck is really just renown with a few standing cards, but its pretty reliable. I usually lead off with Fury and then if I've flopped quite a few nobles I'll follow it up with power of blood and power of blood. I can usually get close enough to winning by that point that I can close the game out with The Red Wedding, assuming of course that they don't have a lord of lady. In which case I've hopefully draw enough dupes, bodyguards, or royal guards to weather the valar.

The biggest problem that Lanni has against this deck is Eddard. I usually get him on turn one which means that they don't have enough control to reliably kneel all my nobles, and every time they try I get to draw one card. So a few turns of power challenges with a few renown guys and I'm sitting pretty close to winning.

So what kind of success have other people had with this deckbuild and what differences did you have in your decks than mine?

Stop spoiling our **** deck for regionals! lol

You're playing the same one?! lol

I built a variant of this when seastone chair came out. Since I had already moved at that point, I gave the idea to Zeiler and he played it.

Initial results were pretty good. It was 50/50 against other bara rush, but went well against other decks. Of course that was one or two CPs ago.

I still have my original deck built. I was considering it for regionals just because i really don't have anything else built. I don't know what I want to play, other than I know I don't want to play Targ.

You know I tried playing with the seastone chair, but just felt that it didn't offer enough to warrant running it. It also meant I had to run alliance which then led me to try and fit in other out of house cards to justify running alliance. I really like the other noble tech that's showing up in other houses though. It might be fun to build a nuetral house deck built around all the nobles and noble tech though.

Well, seastone chair is more of an "icing on the cake" card for me. Since its the only OOH card I play in the deck other than neutrals, it's a 5 gold drop. So it really is a turn worth of gold. I was using the location search plot to pull it out quick, but I think I like getting The Iron Throne more. Dominance every turn of the game if they don't do anything about it is pretty nuts.

It's come down to the point that I've considered reworking it, but at that point it feels like I should just go for a bara rush instead of focusing on the nobles like I originally intended. And at that point, I might as well just build another house because I'm so tired of playing bara rush.

BUT SO MANY CHOICES!

Lanny Kneel, Lanny Shadows, Greyjoy Winter, Stark Rush or other variant, Any Martell Variant.....

Staton, that's pretty much everyone's standard Bara rush. If you get a good flop, you can roll. If you don't, your hosed after turn 3. My first LCG deck was bara/summer so I am well aware of its capabilities. I would worry more about Lanni hyper kneel and Targ burn than Lanni shadows. BTW, who was playing Lannister shadows when you were beating them consistently?

Yeah, let me spare you some of the suspense concerning how the deck will play out: Alec Irwin was playing roughly the same list a year ago. He got knocked around a good deal by skilled players playing Lanni, because Lanni owns that version of Bara, on average, when the match up is between two skilled players. He has since evolved to play a list of Bara that probably gets owned by Lanni a bit less often, which involves moving away from summer gimmicks. The Bara/summer deck just doesn't do anything to address the issue that you can just get your board knelt out, so don't expect great things. It also doesn't do particularly well against Stark, a house focused on the same two icons yet which has beefier characters and packs genuinely disruptive tricks.

kpmccoy21 said:

Yes, and Stark, too Martell will be a rough matchup as well, as you have no great answer to an untimely Game of Cyvasse or Fury of the Sun (either of which tends to send a Bara rush deck spiraling out of control for the remainder of the game). And yeah, the skill level of the Lanni player matters a good bit -- the deck doesn't necessarily play itself like everyone on the forums thinks it does, and I've found that the "Lanni shadows" build post-AGH is far inferior in this environment to a less shadows-heavy hyper-kneel build anyway (it's way, way too slow).

I have played against a few people playing lanni shadows. I'm not too sure on what is considered hyper kneel. I know I've played against a few decks that had more kneel than the shadows deck and they weren't running the agenda. But anyway, I was playing against Ironborn who I'm pretty sure is one of the best players I've ever seen and he was playing a lanni deck that wasn't using the shadows agenda, so possibly hyperkneel?, and I didn't seem to have any problems. Other than him I've been playing against Jeppedo from Missouri and Lannipanda from my meta. Both I consider very good players. I would love to test the deck against some other players via octgn though. Just to see if I've been getting really lucky or not.

Stark is definitely the house I seem to have the most problems with and I almost always come out ahead after a valar around turn three or so. Which gives me the one turn I need to get some renown rush going on. I try to keep their hand as low as possible by doing as many intrigues as possible. It should be noted that the stark decks I've been playing against are all Siege of Winterfell, so not much intrigue in the decks. Also, I've only played against one martell deck and I seemed to get the jump on them before they could get anything going. The fury plot does kinda scare me, but I guess I can just hope for lots of dupes to save from being returned to hand!

Loyal guard counting as a dupe really helps in that regard, of course.

I'm kinda curious about a deck just running all of the vigilant that it possibly can. If they can even keep one character up that they can win a challenge with, suddenly I'm facing the whole crew again. Heck, it'd probably be worth running Vigilant Stag even. Has anyone given this a shot?

The problem I had with all vigilant all the time is that its pretty expensive (arena knight and fiery followers are 4 cost) or they're low str (followers are 2str and loyal guard is 1str and I hate the stalwart). The bannerman and vigilant stag work pretty well with the bara uniques since they have renown. Although I think its def worth trying again now that I have seat of power and sally's crew.

You do ahve to enhance teh Fiery followers soemhow - unless you just paln on using them to drive confession - which isn't a bad idea in and of itself.

I'm not a fan of sally's crew to begin wiht, but even granted that and Seat of Power - there really only are so many four cost slots you can reasonably allocate. Baratheon really is all baout the four to six card flop.

agreed. Really don't like the gold curve on a vigilant deck.

but you don't like sally's crew? as long as you have something else to play its essentially a one cost four str dude with mil and intrigue.

Staton said:

I REALLY like Sally's crew. Two characters for the price of one? And if you make it a noble you can chain it into the 3 cost free dude after you play a noble.

Yeah, Baratheon chaining can lead to some pretty sick Marshalling phases, if not such impressive setups. I just played against Josh last night and in the first marshalling saw him pop two Seat of Power and Royal Entourage along with his Robert and Stannis. Along with Loyal Guard and Bodyguard, even Valar next turn wouldn't have been very impressive.

*sigh* and then he won that game off of the plot that I suggested he really should find room for...

Yeah, the distinct masteries really helped too though. I was really worried when you discarded my eddard. I was certain that the lost oasis was going to ruin me. but then I drew into just what I needed! lol I also think that the royal guard on robert saved me against your fury too. You had to return stannis to my hand so I only lost one power instead of four.

Exactly. The Royal Guard sucked.

what do you mean Valar wouldn't have mattered? Only the duoped nobles would have survived - and he would ahve shot hsi laod. i'm sure there wasn't much left in ahdn - and now he's down two of his three seats as well.

This is the main reason i don't like Sally's Crew - w/o Outfox or Narrow Escape - its generally not a great idea to spam that many characters. I think with Seat and a reasonable gold curve - you can still muster a decent threat with Bara, without over extending that much. You already have to extend a lot in setup to get deeper in your deck. Spamming in Marshalling can be exciting, but rarely pays dividends.

I had mel left in hand, along with another royal entourage and a sea. I had eddard but lost him to intrigue claim. If will had valared I would've won on anyway, because I didn't need anything but the characters with renown. He played his fury turn two instead of valar and it kept me from winning. If he would've valared I would've won on turn two instead of turn four.

Husemann said:

What dude does this?

EDIT: Nevermind, I'm assuming you're referring to Royal Entourage, which chains off of Lord and Lady characters. Just happens to be that (all?) nobles are either Lords or Ladies.

Stag Lrod: Staton pretty much has the right of it. I was stuck sitting at 1 influence so I couldn't power the two Red Vengeance in hand and would have lost my own board presence. It didn't make any sense at the time to wipe out my defenders and allow him the unopposed challenge power that he would have gotten off of the two renown nobles that would have been left. When he then managed to follow up with Mel, I knew Valar would have been a bad choice.

Yeah it was the royal entourage. I keep forgetting it's lords and ladys not nobles.

But it still works very well with Sally's crew to 3 characters, for 4 gold.

Well - sounds like you had a situation where Valar was clearly NOT the right play. Nine tiems out of ten though - if the Baratehon player has spent two Seats, chained in Sally's Crew + a Lord + an Entourage - has two or three cards in hand and six or seven on the table - Valar wins the game for you and stops the rush cold.

After the reset mind you - its a pretty good strategy to flood as quickly as you can. I just don't have the timing down on the "delayed rush" deck and find that a stong flop and an aggressive Turns 1,2 and 3 have been more consistent for me. sally's Crew doesn't fit that apporach - YMMV.