Hi, guys:

Currently I have 3 core sets, King's landing expansions and a few of Brotherhood expansions. Also, I have all the big box expansions (Lords of Winter, Queen of Dragon, etc.) Can anyone give me some advice as to how to build a Lannister deck for 1 v 1 battle? There are so many Lannister cards right now and I just don't know how to make most use of them and keep the synergy as high as possible.

Thank you very much guys!

If you don't want to try anything new and creative, you should be able to build a solid kneel deck. The KL cycle will let you do a Shadows build if you want - either way, you want to get any Lannister cards that kneel opponent's characters, usually some combination of Enemy Informer, Castellan or Alchemist GH, Cersei, Jaime, Lannisport Brothel, Flogged and Chained, maybe even Shae and Joffrey's Guard, and use events like Distraction, The Lion's Will, You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf, To Be a Lion etc. Another option would be a Clansman deck based on raised claim, but that is generally regarded as a weak build and a mechanic that isn't filled out yet.

Skowza said:

Thank you for your help. It seems following your instruction, I would have a very strong deck that aims nothing but kneeling as more as possible, which will extremely upset my opponents. Hahaha, excellent!

Another question: what's the weakness of this kind of kneeling deck? I guess it must have some weakness otherwise this game is not balanced. Usually, my opponent will be Targ. The dragons are just too powerful. If their queen is in play, they don't need to kneel to attack! Come on, and if they win (usually they will), they will discard my locations, kill my characters... like beasts.

Based on the cards that you have I would build something similar to this. Obviously tweak it to your liking.

House - Lannister

Plots -

Loyalty Money Can Buy

City of Lies

City of Soldiers

City of Spiders

City of Sin

Fortified Position

Valar Morgulis

Characters -

Tyrion Lannister(KL) x 3

Cersei Lannister(KL)

Bronn

Maester Aemon(CS)

Grand Maester Pycelle(CS)

Chella Daughter of Cheyk

Ser Arys Oakheart

Enemy Informer x 3

Castellan of the Rock x 3

Lannisport Weaponsmith x 3

Lannisport Steward x 2

Carrion Bird x 3

Qyburn

Varys (KL)

Syrio Forel

Mountain Refugee x 3

Painted Dogs x 3(if you have these, if not 2x Cersei's Attendant)

Gold Cloaks x 2

Shagga son of Dolf(if you don't have him, then Jamie Lannister(KL))

Tommen Baratheon

Events -

You killed the Wrong Dwarf x 3

Insidious Ways x 2

I'm You Writ Small x 2

Distraction x 3

Locations -

The goldroad x 3

Kingdom of Shadows x 3

Kings Landing x 2

Golden Tooth Mines x 3

Lion's Gate x 3

Alchemist's Guild Hall x 2

The object would be obviously to kneel as many of your opponents characters as possible, get tons of gold, and draw 4-5 cards per turn. Use I'm You Writ Small for some suprise deadly when your opponent block a challenge with an important character and Insidious Ways for surprise STR buffs and card draw.

Good luck!

~Nathan

ktei2008 said:

It won't do well against any deck that floods the board; a Stark weenie deck, for ex, will put out more characters than you can kneel. Lanni does well in Intrigue, not as well in P and M. They don't have many Renown characters, lack attachment control and location destruction. As widowmaker pointed out, the City plots run really well with Shadows Lanni. They will also have a problem against any opponent that can stand characters en masse, a Dragon deck will probably run At Night They Howl to stand all the Dragons at once, and they are not very good at removing problem characters from the board (hence they just kneel them instead) so for ex, once Daenerys is out you can kneel her but she still allows the Dragons to attack without kneeling and there is little you can do about that.

widowmaker93 said:

Thank you so much~ Really appreciate it.

Skowza said:

This game really have so many great players like you guys who like to share knowledge. I love this game! lol

Skowza said:

absolutely agree. However lately there have been a few cards come out that allow Lannister players to remove troublesome characters from the board instead of just kneeling them. You can run Lion's Gate with You Killed the Wrong Dwarf, then play Dissension out of the new Targ box to give a character the Ally or Mercenary trait and then discard them from play. Other than that there is not much in the way of character removal that Lanny has. Obviously like I pointed out earlier use I'm you Writ Small in the right situations to take out characters like Catelyn(LOW) so that she can't keep jumpiing into challenges among others. And Arys Oakheart can discard Ally characters as well with the YKTWD and LG combo.

But like Ktel said, Stark with some standing effects will be a problem or if they are running Seige of Winterfell as their agenda since you just can't kneel all their Military Icons and that is your weakest icon for Lanny.

If you really want to tech against your buddy's Dragon deck then just run Paper Shield as well and that should help to mitigate the At Night they Howl standing.

Good Luck

Here is my Lannister opinion, especially if you don't want to run a kneel-only deck: Run lots of intrigue based characters, and draw effects like Gold Tooth Mines. Add some good income locations, including Shadowblack Lane and Street of Sisters. Focus on card advantage, and hitting their hand hard. Use Lannister Pays Debts on their characters that have duplicates. Then reveal Valar Morgulis.

Simple formula, very effective if you can achieve it. Nothing worse than having no hand and no characters.

jmccarthy said:

Man, this is 'evil', haha... Great, I'll try this tonight.

jmccarthy said:

Just one question: I can see such a deck will probably give me a lot cards and make my opponent cry for cards; but I'm just a little worried about one thing: I remember in core set there is one plot that forces you to drop cards to 4, if you hold the most cards...

That plot is called Rule by Decree .

It does indeed force you to discard, provided that you are the player with more cards and hold more than 4.
But you can choose which to discard and in any case this plot's effect cannot be cancelled, so there's not much you can do about it... other than playing cards not to have too many in your hand, I guess.

I love Rule by Decree, I even use it in Lannister. It is evil. I run three copies of The Battle of the Blackwater, and three copies of You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf. If I have either in my starting hand I play that card pre-plot, then flip Rule by Decree.

As for your opponent using it, I don't worry too much about it. Use your best events as you go, save a few for reserve, and the Lannister tricks that don't work against this opponent (or cards that don't fit the current situation) will be discarded. With plenty of Lannister draw, it will not hurt badly, even if you discard 5 or 6 cards. By this point, your opponent should have very few cards in hand, so it won't really matter...