A little late, but I haven't had much time in the last week to write this up.

Here is my fifth place deck for Days of Ice and Fire. It is essentially a power rush deck, using as many out-of-house nobles with renown as possible. It runs a few Brotherhood based cards, as the deck was originally built as a BWB deck, but about two weeks before the event I decided to try the deck using Infamy instead. It has a few combo cards to claim extra power, like using Joffrey in conjunction with the kill plots, or Anguy the Archer if I'm lucky. The hope was to get enough characters on the board so that on turns 3 and 4 I can drop Power of Blood and keep them on the board. The Alliance with Lannister was so I could play Devious Intentions for Infamy, keeping all the power off my house card, and the GTMs for draw. I was very hesitant about the Alliance and giving my opponents a slight advantage, but for the most part it didn't actually hurt me. The two decks I feared the most were Lannister Control/Kneel and Maester decks.

House: Neutral
Agenda: Alliance w/Lannister

Plots: 6
The Power of Blood x2
The Red Wedding
Stay of Execution
Building Season
A Song of Summer
Wildfire Assault

Characters: 32
Littlefinger (KLE 84) x2
Ser Jaime Lannister (TfC F4) x2
Joffrey Baratheon (Core L36) x2
Tywin Lannsiter (Core 40)
Robert Baratheon (KLE 46) x2
Stannis Baratheon (Core B72) X2
Maester Cressen (Core B77) x2
Renly Baratheon (TfR F64)
Eddard Stark (KLE F41) x2
Sansa Stark (KLE F61)
Robb Stark (Low F8)
Jeyne Westerling (TfR F6)
Khal Drogo (DotN F9) x2
Daenerys Targaryen (SoO F9)
Viserys Targaryen (Core T108)
The Red Viper (Pots F1)
Arianne Martell (Pots F2)
Gylbert Farwind (SoO F7)
Jon Arryn (KLE F57) x2
Beric Dondarrion (BwB F17) x2
Anguy the Archer (BwB 117)
Lady Stoneheart (BwB F58)

Locations: 13
Shadowblack Lane (Core L144)
Street of Steel (Core S139)
Street of Silk (Core B149)
Golden Tooth Mines (Core) x3
The Roseroad (KotSm F44) x2
The Searoad (KotSm)
River Row (QoD F41)
Queen Cersei’s Chambers (Core L60)
Hollow Hill (BwB F78) x2

Attachments: 8
Devious Intentions (CoA F94) x3
Flaming Sword (BwB F119) x2
Bodyguard (Core T150) x2
Longclaw (DotN F55)

Events: 9
Distinct Mastery (Core) x3
Whispers From the Hill (BwB F79) x3
The Hand’s Judgement (KLE F59) x2
Nightmares (LoW)

Total cards: 62

By this point, most of my games are sketchy. Round One I played against a Martell/Knights of the Hollow Hill deck, with a player who said he was pretty new to the game. The nice part about these decks is my opponents want to use their House Card for influence, so my Agenda didn’t hurt me. I was able to get enough characters with Renown on the board early, along with Devious Intentions and pretty much kept control of the game. 1-0

Round Two was against Jessie and his Dothraki Heir to the Iron Throne deck. He chose not to do Intrigue challenges. On the flop I had Jaime Lannister and the Hollow Hill. My first plot was A Song of Summer. His was Fear of Winter. I didn’t have to worry about losing cards from my hand, so I played a Golden Tooth Mines and let Jaime die for the Military challenge. The next round I played Stay of Execution and dropped Robert with a Devious Intentions. I figured I’d be able to get enough power to stop his Mil challenge…except I forgot that Khal Drogo had deadly. Fortunately Robert returned to my hand, but that was 6 power lost. The next two rounds he played Power of Arms both times, and I played Power of Blood. I also played Robert and another Devious Intentions. I was able to go first each round, and Robert was able to keep claiming power. By the sixth round I was able to get Eddard Stark with a dupe in play, and Robert had 12 power on him. At this point Jessie conceded. 2-0

Round Three was against Andy Mills and his No Use for Grief deck. Round One he played Counting Favors, round two was Summoning Season for his Viper (I grabbed a dupe of Jaime Lannister, who was in play) and Round Three, well, he never got the event and I rushed to victory. 3-0

Round Four was against a Stark deck, and it started out strong. My opponent started with Rickon Stark in play and opened with At the Gates, searching for Maester Luwin and a Knight of the Red Fork. I played my Building Season and he grabbed Bear Island. He also had Reek in play, and enough STR to win the intrigue challenge. I had Beric (with a Burning Sword) and Khal Drogo (with Bodyguard) on the board, so I used Nightmares on Reek and used Drogo and Beric to defend the Military Challenge, keeping any Power off my house. He couldn’t use Bear Island on my characters that round (yay it doesn’t hit characters with attachments). Turn two I played Red Wedding, and he chose his Sansa Stark and my Drogo (he didn’t want to lose Rickon yet), played out Roose Bolton and a few other characters, I dropped Dany with Devious Intentions. This time Drogo won the Power challenge, I killed Reek and had to use the Bodyguard to save Drogo for the Mil challenge, letting Bear Island do its thing. The next round I dropped Power of Blood and he dropped Red Wedding. Dany went from 4 power to 6 as Roose had to die, played some more renown and won the next turn. 4-0

Round five was against Chad and his Lanni kneel deck. I got Jon Arryn on the first turn, and when he died I had to choose between playing Robert (in my hand) or the Viper (in my discard pile) and picked Robert, as he had no cards in Shadows. Every turn after he had shadow cards, and I just couldn’t get enough on the board to avoid all his kneel. By the time I drew Eddard, I didn’t have the gold to play him. 4-1

Top 8

I went into the top 8 as second seed (woot!) and got paired against Lucas Reed. I have beaten Luke only a handful of times in all the years I have played against him, and knew this would be a tough game. He was playing Martell Maesters and had Ghaston Grey and Arianne Martell on the board first turn. I had Eddard with Devious Intentions and Viserys. So instead of using GG, he played Game of Cyvasse and knelt Archmaester Marwyn for 4 STR. Eddard bounced back to hand, Viserys for claim, no cards on the board and Lucas has three chains on Marwyn. Turn two I play the same two cards, he drops Eddrick Dayne. After using GG twice to return Eddard to my hand (he could only cancel it once) I broke my cardinal rule and conceded to him. Having his control lock on the board so early was more than I could come back from.

I was very impressed with how my deck performed. It has done very well locally, and it was great to see it perform just as good in the tournament. A few changes I would likely make would be to add Maester Pylos to control cards in shadows and Ser Aerys Oakheart, with both his renown and discard ability. It does have a few other weaknesses (return to hand effects hit me pretty hard), but the hope is to win on the third or fourth turn.

Awesome! Your deck was far and away the most intriguing idea I heard in the Days of Ice and Fire reports, and I've toyed around in the deck builder a bit, trying to see what I would come up with based on this whole Neutral Noble rush idea. It's great to finally see the deck, check how far off I was.

Hmm how were the setups for such deck ? With Alliance not working weren't you quite badly hurt during it ?

Great TR and congrats to the top 8! It's always a pleasure to see you and nice work on the neutral deck. I wussed out the night before to run Martel instead of the best house card no one is playing!

michaelius said:

Alliance has been errataed - check the FAQ.

michaelius said:

The errata for alliance allows you to ignore OOH to "place or play", so that, at least, is a non-issue.

EDIT: ****, beat me to it... by quite a while. I must not have scrolled down all the way .

It can be scary, because often I am only playing a single character during setup. Thankfully, I never say Marched to the Wall or Search and Detain. But any deck designed to get rid of attachments hurts. The trick is to win, and win fast. It worked for 4 rounds at least.

WolfgangSenff said:

Ahh now it makes sense

So would you include Lyanna Stark and Jhalabar Xho from the next chapter pack in the deck? And if so, what characters would you replace with them?

Thanks for the report, and well done. I wouldn't have been brave enough to play that :-)

I would add 2 Lyanna Starks, and possibly not replace any cards, or perhaps Anguy (who never came out) and a Jon Arryn. I only ran two of him to increase my chances of drawing him. Jalabar not so much.