Good afternoon Forumites,

After many many failed attempts to build a good competitive joust/melee deck. My meta is NOT helping due to the fact that I hardly ever get to play test anything. Yet when I compare my deck builds to those I've found on the internet I seem to see that my overall deck construction is just different than those that win tourneys/regionals/worlds. So I started this thread to bring up some of the more blatant differences in between my decks and those that win in an attempt to get information as to why/how these win as well as they do when mine continually fall flat.

1) Deck card totals. 60 vs More. this has been a major arguement in almost every Card game there is. One side of the board feels that to get the most "value" out of a deck it needs to be kept to 60 cards, and no more. This will allow you to get to your cards (mathematecially) faster, while the other side of the house says that decks that are not limited to the 60 card max do just as well. Thoughts?

2) Multiples: Here is where I get my most confused. Piggy backing from my first point, if you maximize your multiples of a card in a deck, you are mathematically more likely that you will draw that card faster. Yet, in a 60 card deck, that leaves you only 20 cards at most that have dupes, and even less if you include the maximum number of copies of a card in a deck. this in my opinion seems to SERIOUSLY limit a deck since you need to split those 20 cards among char, loc, events, and attachments. That's 5 per type give or take. How do you know when you include multiples of a card, or just leave 1x of a specific card?

3) General deck building: We all know that to win a game you need to either get 15 power before your opponent, or stall them long enough that when time is up, you have more power than them. Since that is the end goal, how do you begin to to think of a way to build a deck? Do you stick with theme/abilities, or do you look at the strengths/weaknesses of each house and build from there?

Please understand that each of these questions should be able to be applied to any deck built, and I'm more looking for Deck building 101 type information and maybe more advanced info, but hopefully we will be able to get some of the Regional/worlds winners to pipe in and give us their feedback so that those of us who aspire to their greatness might actually be able to give them a challenge when the next tourneys roll around.

Also, I Want to thank everyone in advance for considering replying to my post with their insights and knowledge, and I look forward to seeing you all across the table in the future.

Oh boy, this is the second time typing this. but ok.
This is a concept I had learned in VtES, but it think it applies here.

In a 2 player game like magic or joust. You build your deck to get your power cards/combos out. Get into a dominating position and keeping it. You most definitely keeping to 60, keeping only what is critical to your game, and in multiples. You build the deck to be consistent, and you let the deck run its course.

However in a multiplayer game, you build the deck to be strong and adaptable. I am more likely to include singles of strong uniques, not bothering with duplicates (unless its key to the deck), everything is more fragile in a melee game. The deck may not be as consistent, but it should be adaptable. the point is: it is up to the player it "pilot" the deck, cause the journey is going to be different every time.

Im still of the opinion that you should always stick to 60 cards, and there will be some cards which are just so good you are going to run 3.

Should a deck never be less than 60 cards?

For a deck to be legal it must contain:

1 House card

7 Plot Cards

and a minimum of 60 Deck cards.

Theres always the maesters path to make it effectively slimmer...

Winged_Human said:

I try to keep it as close to 60 cards as I can. Sometimes there just happens to be 61-63(I will never go over 63) and it seems to work just fine. Greg Dobbler's 2nd place World Chapmionship decklist had 63 cards in it if I counted it correctly. So it must be ok to run more.

Winged_Human said:

Thrones is unlike any other ccg out there. Yes, in other games you want to run 3x of all your power cards so that you ensure that you get them more often. Thrones is not like that. Unique characters are something that you rarely ever want to have three of. Usually one will suffice due to the fact that once a unique character is killed, it is "dead" and cannot be played again. There are exceptions however, If you build your deck around a certain character or few characters(like the 1st place Gencon World Champion deck, which was build around Robert Baratheon from the King's Landing expansion) then you may want to run 3x of that character and then build some protection into your deck to ensure that your opponent does not kill that character. It all depends on what you are building your deck towards. Non-unique characters matter less but typically if I am putting a non-unique in my deck it is going to be 2x or 3x. Hardly ever can I justify 1x of a non-unique character. Locations, events, and attachments are a different monster. typically events want to stay around 2x - 3x, locations can be however you see fit, but for the basics like the limited +1 gold locations, the Seas, and Streets you want to run as many as you can. If you have a special unique locations that the deck needs then run 2x-3x of that. Attachments you can get away with running 1x(unless you are Targ, then 3x Flame kissed and 3x Dragon Skull is a must, same goes with Stark and their Grey wind & Shaggydog attachments. 3x of each).

Winged_Human said:

Basically I want to look at all the cards and say what are my houses strengths? How can I build around those. Then say where am I lacking? Do I need more characters with a certain Icon? If I'm building Targaryen burn do I need more burn cards? Do I have enough direwolves in my Stark Direwolf deck? Do I have the right amount of duplicates in by Bara Rush deck? Theme decks tend to be something that I stay away from with a few exceptions. Stark can make a vicious Direwolf deck and can run Armies very well. Maesters with their new agenda can be put into almost any house without going too heavy on the Maester characters. Bara can do Knights well, so can Lanny. But each house has a major strength/theme that they tend to build towards. Targ burn(str reduction), Lanny - kneel, Stark - military strength, kill, and search effects, Greyjoy - kill saves and unnopposed challenges, Bara - power rush, Martell - toolbox control. Start there are see where the decks take you.

widowmaker93 said:

This is some great info, yet it brings up another Question for me as well. When building a Deck Do you Min/max it's strengths with it's weaknesses, or do you try to even out a deck to defend against all comers (Attch control, land control, paper shield (event control). And are there certain cards that you feel should be in EVERY deck? i.e. Paper shield, Pyro Cache, etc?

Thanks again everyone your insight has been immensly helpful, so much so that I'm going back through all my deck builds and tweaking them with all the new info. Please keep the conversations coming, and feel free to disagree with anything said I personally would love to hear both sides of the arguments. Or even bring up some of your own.

Winged_Human said:

Well, it's very hard to build a deck to defend against everything that you could face. There are many Neutral cards out there that are very good against every house and against all types of cards. One of which you mentioned already: Paper Shield. Every house is going to play events and this is a card that can easily be slotted into a deck to protect against opposing events and noone will ask you why you put it in because it is just that good and very versatile. But the real question at this point is "if I add this card in, what am I not putting in that I could use to better synergize with the rest of the deck?" It just depends where your priorities are. In Thrones, card slots are very valuable so maximizing the synergy in your deck should be first priority, IMO. The best thing to do is to play the deck with the cards that you think you want in it, then if you find that a certain card is not working the way you want it or cards are just sitting in your hand because there are other cards that you would rather play with that limited gold then that is where you can start cutting cards and finding better ones that fit.

Here is a good example of building a deck and deciding on which events to put in. This will be a good example of defending against all comes vs house synergy...

As we all know, to win the game you have to have characters in play. That is the only way you're gong to get to 15 power. So the best house at taking out characters is Targaryen with all their burn so let's start with that house. And we've just look at the events that go into a standard Targaryen burn deck..

Top events in a Targ burn deck..

Forever Burning - 3x

Hatchling's Feast - 3x

Field of Fire - 3x

That is a good number of events in a Targ deck running burn because you will also be playing about 6 attachments so you don't want to compromise the Setup of the deck.

Now with these events I have no attachment control(coincidentally Targ has plenty of good in house attachment control, but just ignore that for the sake of this post), no event control, and no location control. So I have nothing that will stop my opponent from playing problem cards of those types. If I want attachment control I could put in...

2-3x Ill Tidings

For event control of course there is the always good

3x Paper Shield

and for location control I would use...

2x Condemned by the Council

Now I could easily put in these cards and take out most of the burn cards, but that would seriously hamper the point of my deck's main focus. So for me, I forgo the "defend everything" take and just go for the "if you have no characters in play, you can't win and it doesn't matter what locations, events, or attachments you have" approach.

Hope this makes sense.

widowmaker93 said:

I'd just like to note that VtES also had unique characters & locations, while the consequences of having multiples weren't the same as Thrones, It was still a big consideration on how many to have in a deck.

Over the years of playing old-school thrones, here are a few things I found useful.

-Try to shoot for 60 cards, a few over is probably fine. But how often do you really draw all 60 cards in a game? It's just clogging your deck.

-Make sure you have enough card draw to stay afloat. Lack of card draw is probably the #1 reason people lose games.

-If you find yourself overloaded with events, try to splash some of your toolbox cards into your character base (ie. something like pyromancer's apprentice instead of condemned by the council) this will usually give you some breathing room. Save your event slot for the big stuff.

-If something costs 5+ gold, it had better change the environment or set fire to your opponent's side of the table or something similar when it comes out. Otherwise there's probably a better option. This also goes for 2+ cost attachment cards.

-Don't don't don't play your deck before the tournament. Just play something else. It's not worth giving up your tech early.