House Greyjoy
Treaty with the South
Plots:
Search and Detain
Fear of Winter
A Time for Ravens
Building Season
Retaliation!
Valar Morghulis
The Winds of Winter
Characters (38):
Wintertime Marauders X 3
Lost Spearman X 3
Ellaria Sand X 1
Ser Arys Oakheart X 1
Samwell Tarly X 3
Island Refugee X 3
Newly Made Lord X 3
Myrcella Lannister X 3
Alannys Greyjoy X 1 (the old version)
Refugee of the Citadel X 3
Ghost of High Heart X 1
Ice Fisherman X 3
Baelor Blacktyde X 1
Carrion Bird X 3
Distinguished Boatswain X 3
Edric Dayne X 3
Events (2):
Iron Lore X 2
Locations (17):
River Blockade X 2
Street of Sisters X 1
Summer Sea X 1
River Row X 1
Sunset Sea X 1
The Iron Mines X 3
Ghaston Grey X 3
Longship Iron Victory X 1
Longship Black Wind X 1
Gatehouse X 3
Attachments (5):
Burned and Pillaged X 3
White Raven X 2
Remove their income and return anything they manage to play to hand, while you flood the board with Refugees and Boatswains- fusing the annoyance of Ghaston Grey with the irritation of choke. You could play it with either House card, I went with Greyjoy to use Iron Lore to protect GG. Martell may be better but it was originally built as a Val deck, so I wanted to be able to play everything in Marshalling. The change to Fear of Winter happened later, and I never reconsidered my choice of house. I don’t think GG was ever discarded, so the Iron Lore mainly recycled Iron Mines and Seas.
I wasn’t too worried about the Treaty’s drawback as I thought I would either choke them before they got to 10 power or not at all, and GG could remove renown characters. 62 cards because I didn’t have a chance to test it and I couldn’t decide what to remove. I found I was short on draw and income, so I’d probably swap some of the more expensive characters out for more draw. I thought I could get away with only 7 income locations as I had a lot of cheap characters but it hurt me a few times. Probably swap the Island Refugees for Orphans, I had plenty of Military/Power icons usually. I would also be tempted to run it as Martell, with Game of Cyvasse and Venomous Blade, swapping Fear of Winter for Regroup to bring back GG if I lose it.
Tourney Swiss
First game was against Circadia, with a Greyjoy The Maester’s Path/Unopposed deck with 6 chains. It looked like game after he played Scouting Vessel plus Rise of the Kraken (combined with a duped The Knight in play and Steel Link from the agenda) but Newly Made Lord sunk his battleship. Cir got his 10th power on the 6th turn but still had two chains on the agenda. I accidently cheated twice. Once by including the Sunset Sea from Lions of the Rock instead of the Core Set, and once by looking at Circadia’s plots. Circadia was good enough to accept these were accidents (the plot one was, the sea inclusion was part of my master plan).
1-0
2nd round was against Enrico, playing Baratheon Knights of the Realm. I kept a three card setup because I had Edric out and Myrcella in hand. A first turn Building Season got GG, and from there Enrico couldn’t do much. He managed to steal a Winter Marauders with Seductive Promise but I GG’d them back to my hand. I also got lucky and turned over Search and Detain when he played Red Wedding to save my Newly Made Lord from death.
2-0
3rd game was WWDrakey, with a Baratheon Wildlings deck using all three agendas including the errata’d one. I had a six card setup with five characters so I flipped Fear of Winter and got off to an early lead. I got my Winter/Choke tech running quickly but Ghaston Grey didn’t appear until I Building Season’d it in the 3rd round, and was Climbing Spike’d in the 4th. I did manage to return the No Shadows Robert to hand and promptly discard him in an Intrigue challenge.
3-0
4th was Dmitri, playing Stark City of Shadows. I made it Winter first turn and reduced his income with that, an Ice Fisherman and a Wintertime Marauders discarding his Great Keep. After that he rarely had enough gold to use his shadows cards, and Myrcella bounced a few characters back to hand. He Valar’d on the 3rd turn and never got any more characters into play.
4-0
5th game against Mikesommi, playing Martell TMP. My lack of income hit me hard here as I setup with no locations and never found any. Mike quickly played more maesters than I could control so I Valar’d in turn three, and chose to cancel the Narrow Escape he played. He had flipped To the Spears! and played a Conclave + Maester of War which took him to 8 power. I needed a miracle to win or a Myrcella to stall, but I didn’t get either.
4-1
I made it to the Top 8 as the 4th seed on the EU side. The other top 8 decks were four Martell Maesters, a Martell Brotherhood, a Martell Summer and a Targ Summer. Fun fact: If the Targ player was using Summer Seas every deck used Martell cards.
My first match was against Jonathan Benton, playing Martell TMP. We played best of three in all the Top 8 games which turned out to be lucky for me as I got trounced in the first match. I drew Edric only to have him discarded in an Intrigue challenge and couldn’t keep Winter active, so I couldn’t stop the Chain madness. Aemon + Steel Link + Inn of the Kneeling Man = kneeling for the Valyrian Link, then using the Gold Link next phase, then standing again to use Lead Link in Challenges. The next two games went much better. I got Myrcella early in both, and Winter also stuck in the 2nd game with several Burned and Pillageds to remove most of his income.
My Top 4 match was against Rachel, playing Martell Summer. There’s a video of me losing at twitch.tv/staton70. Venomous Blade was very effective against my characters, especially Carrion Birds and Myrcella. Loyalty Money Can Buy made my opening Fear of Winter much weaker, though that didn’t stop me making that same opening 2 (or 3?) times. Lack of income was a problem again. We had a lot of connection problems too.
3rd place matchup was against Darknoj, playing Martell Maesters as a rush deck, with Conclaves, Former Champions and House Dayne Cavalry grabbing loads of renown. I got Winter and GG running quickly and Wintertime Marauders and GG kept his board controlled, so I won both games. I then lost a friendly match against the super secret deck he’s taking to regionals (hint: Greyjoy Knights of the Realm… using OOH sand snakes)
So, third place! Anyways, thanks for reading my essay, thanks to Staton for running the tournament, and thanks to my opponents for the great matches (~except for the ones where I lost). This is the first tourney I’ve played in and it’s been a lot of fun.
