Well I thought I was starting to improve in my deck building, but after looking at the last championship deck I clearly still have no idea what I am doing. Below are some questions/comments I have and hopefully someone here can teach me a thing or two.

Re: Erick's Deck http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_nrep.asp?eidm=17

1. He is using the wildling agendas, but only 50% of his characters are wildling. Why such a low % ?

2. Varamyr Sixskins - I get it that this is a cheap wildling character, but with no other creatures in the deck to trigger his ability arent there other wildlings that might be better?

3. Varys (S&S) - Complete loss for words here. Is discarding an ally character really worth a 2+1 cost shadows card in this deck? What am I missing?

please give me some tips here. i feel like there is some basic deck building philosophy pointers that I am missing. is anyone aware of an article or thread somewhere that discusses 'deckbuilding 101' or something?

First be aware this was for last year's event not this year. One of the Wildling Agendas has since been banned from competitive play making Wildlings no longer the monsters the were at the time of this tourney.

Thru the agendas all of this decks Wildlings gain stealth and are plus 1 strength. Also the first Wildling played each round costs 2 less gold.

1. He is using the wildling agendas, but only 50% of his characters are wildling. Why such a low % ?

So, in this deck he has 16 Wildlings and 19 non-Wildlings. It's all about costs strengths and synergies. Now every Wildling in the deck is +1 STR and has stealth, but we can only reduce by two the FIRST one played each round meaning after that first one you gain no additional cost benefit to playing a Wildling other than the +1 str and stealth, which is good but most Wildling characters are pretty basic so the other characters will help fill in the lacks that even str and stealth won't fix, like lack of renown or other special abilities. This deck uses Wildlings as offensive heavies and the overabundance of stealth to win challeneges and the non Wildlings to provide additional abilities and support.

Of those 19 non Wildlings 6 are cost 0 characters. One jumps into play as a defender in intrigue or power challenges. Five are sources of draw - 3 being the Blackfish who is also renowned. So that leaves 5 non Wildlings. Robb Stark at 3 copies is in there I assume for the renown and to increase the strength of all Wildlings. Core Eddard is renowned and deadly and stalwart as well (though that may not always be a good thing. Varys is useful as a direct character removal and can be held in reserve in shadows till needed. Jeyne kneels to search your deck and put either Robb or Mance Rayder into your hand. Ser Jorah is a 2 cost for 3 str character with all icons and stealth (It's pretty much impossible to find a better character for the cost).

2. Varamyr Sixskins - I get it that this is a cheap wildling character, but with no other creatures in the deck to trigger his ability arent there other wildlings that might be better?

Why do you need his ability. In this deck he is a 2 cost character with 3 strength and 2 icons, and if you have no other Wildlings in hand to play that round he is free. Does he need to be more? There are not that many cost 2 or lower Wildlings available. Many are 3 cost or more. Cost curve is very important to deck buildling. Much like Ser Jorah this character is great for what you pay for him at least when playing these agendas.

3. Varys (S&S) - Complete loss for words here. Is discarding an ally character really worth a 2+1 cost shadows card in this deck? What am I missing?

3 cost for 3 str with 2 icons is pretty much the basic standard 3 cost character. If such a character also has some minor ability or trait that makes them even better because normally if you want a 3 str multi-icon character with decent abilities you should expect to pay 4 gold for them. Think Core Eddard, Stannis, Robbert, Jaime, the Dragons. Varys is 3 cost for 3 str with stealth and also provides targetted character removal. Limited to ally trait cards only but for 3 gold you not only get a good character but you can remove a character of your opponent's. It's like winning a military challenge without having to make the challenge. Never underestimate this guy, he is great almost beyond words. Same goes for the similar Ser Aerys Oakheart. Go to one of the card database sites and search for all legal LCG cards with the ally trait. There are a lot. Sure they are generally not going to be the best cards on your opponent's side but even if it's not a great character getting rid of the guy your opponent plans to throw away when they lose that military challenege means now they'll have to kill something better.

please give me some tips here. i feel like there is some basic deck building philosophy pointers that I am missing. is anyone aware of an article or thread somewhere that discusses 'deckbuilding 101' or something?

There are some older threads around with good advice and I believe that both the cardgamedb site and the Agotcards site have deck building suggestions for new players. Let's break down Erick's deck and at the same time I'll go over my general advice to new players learning to deck build:

Math Matters: Deck building isn't just an art form, it's a science too. The key to a successful joust deck is a good setup. One on one games are all about speed. Melee is often more forgiving of a slower deck because your opponents may not want to over extend early while they get a feel for the opposition. When playing joust though it's all about having more than the opponent - more cards in hand, more cards in play. Card advantage (ie: having more total cards in hand and/or in play) is key, whatever it's form. The first form of card advantage in the game is setup redraw - or the more cards you place in setup the more cards you get to draw. So if your opponent places 5 cards in setup and you place only 3 sure you both spent 5 gold, but he has a 2 card advantage over you in the total resources of his deck he has seen. Planning for setup is all about costs, and probabilities. A good joust deck should be able to setup 4 or more cards most of it's games. Some of the best ones will average 5 or more cards most games. This doesn't mean that you want to play only cheap cards though, because most of them are weaker than higher cost cards. With a swarm rush type decks it's often easy to overextend (to overcompensate because each card is individually weaker than your opponent's) and get hammered with a reset like Valar or Wildfire. Many cards also specifically target weaker cards like Venomous Blade, The First Snow of Winter, Field Spikes, and Flame Kissed.

Characters:

Your deck should be about half characters (so 30ish)

10-14 should be cost 2 or less. Of these try to have at least 6 be cost 1 or less. 3-6 cost 0 characters is even better.

No more than 8 should be more than cost 3. Of these no more than 3 should be more than cost 4.

The rest of your characters will be cost 3.

Erick's deck has 35 characters (So slightly higher than average)

Of those characters 10 cost 4 or more gold, but 3 of those were Wildlings and could be reduced to cost 2 if they were the first Wildling played that round.

16 of his characters were cost 2 or less, and of those 7 were printed cost 0. One was printed cost 1, and some of the cost 2 characters were Wildlings and could be reduced to 0. Also, Catelyn Stark cost nothing to put into play via her ability and though cost 3 she would never be payed for.

Locations:

Plan to play 15-20 locations.

10-14 of these should be "resource" locations - Gold providers, card cost reducers, and/or influence. Choose the ones that best fit your deck. Try to play no more than 6 limited locations. 8 limited at the absolute most.

The remaining locations should be played for their abilities. I would suggest no more than 3 total locations of cost 3 or more, even for ability locations it's good to balance your costs.

Erick's deck has 14 locations (slightly below average)

Of his locations 10 are cost reducing locations, but remember 1 of his his agendas is also a cost reducer and he has a higher than average number of cheap characters.

Events/Attachments:

These will basically take up the remaining room in your deck. I tend to lump these together because neither can be placed during setup (except for shadow attachments or events or attachments with the setup keyword).

Attachments are great because their effects are either permanent or repeatable but they only stay in play as long as the card they are attached to does. As with the books it is never a good idea to get too attached to any of your characters or locations so assume that attachments won't last too long. Assume that an attachment (and the character/location beneath it) will last no more than 2 rounds. If you feel the attachment is worth the cost for that much time then put it in the deck. Unless you are playing a deck type that can reuse discarded attachments play no more than 3-6 attachments in any deck.

Events are great because they mostly have no cost (except the ones that say they do) and will always come from your hand directly and thus be a surprise. The drawback to events is that they are one used once and then gone for good (in general anyway), so they have to be good. I like to play 6-9 events in most of my decks, generally 3 copies of each. Only play less than 3 copies of an event if it's an event you don't expect to want to play more than once a game and is an event you'd play in response to an opponent's actions or board positions (Narrow Escape and Westeros Bleeds are good examples of this type of event)

Erick's deck has 4 attachments and 9 events. All 4 attachments are cost 1 and 3 of those only 1 would be played on his own cards. He has 3 copies each of 3 different events. One that allows him to bring back into play all characters killed or discarded in a phase so that he can negate the damage of a reset plot played by his opponent. Too Be a Wolf requires he stand a character to search his deck for a card, so it's basically a free standing effect, as playing it doesn't cost him a card (because he replaces it the used event with a new card that doesn't count vs draw limit). His final event allows him to take control of an opponent's non unique location of his opponent's which he can use to steal his opponent's resources or most dangerous locations (assuming it's not unique)

Plots:

You always only get 7. I suggest one reset plot just in case you need it. At least one plot with high initiative unless you always want to go first then add more high initiative plots. Make sure you have at couple high gold plots for the early rounds to be able to unload your hand (or 3 or more 4 gold plots). Then pick the rest based on what is most helpful to your deck. Try to keep the average income of all your plots at 3 or higher. If you have a fast Baratheon renown deck you're probably want more high initiative plots and plots that make it harder for your opponent to attack you, or Power of Blood so all your noble crest renown characters can't die. If you're playing a Targ burn deck you probably need lots and lots of gold. A Stark deck may want plots that allow extra military challenges or have high claim.

Erick's plots were a very nice Stark mix of high gold, high initiative, high claim, Valar for his reset, with 3 special effect plots - Fear of Winter thrown in so he could take advantage of a better board position for one round, Power of Blood to protect his nobles with renown vs a reset, and the Minstrel's Muse to grab a bunch of extra power from winning dominance (which doubles as a great high initiative plot).

Hopefully this will help you get started, and give you some understanding into the thought process of how this deck was put together.

i feel like you should have charged me for providing that information. fantastic read. i am in your debt.