This deck has laid flat pretty much everything I've thrown it against so far. Its quite consistent, and really fast out of the gate 9/10 times.

There are a bunch of great starts for the deck, and I think thats part of its strength. Although its not combo intensive, so if you lose a part of the puzzle its not going to completely cripple your game.

Resource and location control and destruction are at the fore. But there are some good tricks for character control as well. Its only real weakness could be mass kill like a Valar when you have no dupes down, etc. Otherwise, your opponent is going to be hard pressed to afford extra effects if they want to keep up with you in board position at all.

Agenda: Kings of Winter

----- Plots (7) -----
A Time for Ravens x1
The Winds of Winter x1
A Song of Summer x1
Fleeing to the Wall x1
Blockade x1
Building Season x1
Fury of the Lion x1

----- Characters (30) -----
Mountain Refugee x3
* Janos Slynt x1
Carrion Bird x3
* Ser Jaime Lannister x2
* Tyrion Lannister x2
* Tywin Lannister x2
* Ser Ilyn Payne x1
* The Hound x2
* Chella, Daughter of Cheyk x2
* Bronn x1
Lannisport Steward x3
Lannisport Weaponsmith x3
* Maester Aemon x1
* Ser Lancel Lannister x1
Castellan of the Rock x3

----- Locations (11) -----
Golden Tooth Mines x1
* Queen Cersei's Chambers x1
The Goldroad x3
Sunset Sea x3
Street of Steel x1
Shadowblack Lane x1
Street of Sisters x1

----- Attachments (12) -----
Taxed Dry x3
War Horn x3
White Raven x3
Summer Tax x3

----- Events (12) -----
Insidious Ways x3
I'm You Writ Small x3
A Lannister Pays His Debts x3
Support of the Kingdom x3

----- Total Cards (65) -----

I'd really like to be able to bring it down to 60 cards, as the milling with Summer Tax and card draw become much more potent when you've got everything running at maximum efficiency.

There are still things I wish I had room to add too. Namely more protection for my big investments like Tywin. I'll probably at least try and fit a 3rd copy of him in here. Bodyguard's are about the only other viable option, being usable on Tywin, Tyrion, and Jaime. Yes, The Hound isn't the best choice most of the time... but he's an absolute favorite character of mine, and until a different version comes out I'll be running him in all my Lanni decks. :-P (He's good cheap Mil strength early when Winter hits at least, sometimes I'll Warhorn him too, as wasting a kill on him can feel unsatifying to my opponent, but they'll want to nix him anyway.)

Great synergies:

Chella with a War Horn and a Mountain Refugee on the table. I've pulled this off first turn more than once. You can kill an expensive location with the Warhorn, and bounce one with Chella's response from her challenge. Then follow up in Power with the Refugee and bounce another with Chella's response. I've even followed it up with a Support of the Kingdom to steal a location all right off the bat, leaving me way ahead on locations. I really should consider a 3rd copy of her just to max it out.

The deck itself runs off a surprisingly small amount of locations on table at once. So flipping Fleeing to the Wall if my other location cards haven't been churning fast enough usually doesn't hurt me too badly at all. I have nothing to spend influence on in here, so the Seas are always just a one-off discount for me. The deck tends to win fast enough that it doesn't hurt in the long run either.

Janos Slint. Typically viewed as a rather mediocre card, his ability combined with resource control has really screwed my opponents on more occasions that even I'd originally anticipated. Targ players and Stark players (with annoying little Arya) will often find themselves without the gold they'd need to cover the additional cost. Wish I could figure out something to sub out for a 2nd copy of him sometimes.

The rest is pretty self explanatory with some of Lannister's strongest cards, I'm Writ You Small, A Lannister Pays His Debts, etc.

This doesn't include anything from the last CP of the cycle, as I haven't picked any up yet. However, I'm not sure theres actually anything in there that'd I'd want to change out. This deck is relatively unaffected by Men With No King... (And good luck affording those actions gold costs anyway!)

Thoughts?

For me there are only two possbile options.

a) You could add two more gold tooth mines to the deck to see if that makes the deck faster - more draw., even at a bigger deck size.

b) You need to drop cards from the charachter and/ or attachemnt section. My preference is too drop two charachters and 3 attachments and see how things go. My advice is too judge from the games you´ve already played, e.g. have you ever had the situation that an additional taxed dry or a war horn was clogging your hand, so drop one of these cards and test again. Most of my winter decks are cut back to two war horns, because i often faced the situation where either another war horn was misplaced (playing against heavy attachment control) or the one war horn in play was anyway more than enough to control the locations in play.

I would test both variants.

Thanks Ben, all great points.

I'd started with just 2 War Horns, and kept feeling like if I'd just got one into play a little earlier or had a backup when my War Horn character died I'd have been even better off. Hence, the inclusion of 3. It's a tough call though, and is one of the considerations for cutting the deck down in size.

I think I'll definitely find room for a 2nd Gold Tooth Mines at least. Probably not three though, not without changing around my plot selection a little.

I really like this build, and I just have a few questions/suggestions:

• Why not cut Tywin? I know he's great for gold once he's out, and the tricon is hard to give up. Still, he seems a little expensive in this deck. If you cut him, you don't need to run Bodyguard, right? That saves you several slots for things that will directly screw over your opponent. Also, in general you should probably keep your gold costs low. That way, it's easier to rebuild after valar, in addition to your setup and first round being faster. (I'm not sure about your meta, but I think enough people will play valar to make this an important consideration.)
• 2x Warhorn is enough. Once you pair down to 60 cards, you'll probably find that everything runs just a little bit smoother and there's no need for a third one anyway.
• Why not run Enemy Informer? Kneeling is really strong when an opponent has only a few characters in play, and that is likely to be frequent if they're having issues with gold much of the time.
• I would replace 1x Support of the Kingdom with 1x Toothmine. (In fact, why not run 3x Toothmine; these things are amazing!) Even though you'd have less location hate, the guaranteed +1 draw every turn is going to get you the rest of your location hate much faster. Also, the scariest locations aren't gold/influence providers, so Support of the Kingdom won't help you there and you have to be able to draw Chella and Warhorn early.
• Lastly, why not run Rains of Autumn? Is it because it hurts you just as much as your opponent? I don't mean to say that you should, and the drawbacks may outweigh the benefits; I am just curious.

Twn2dn said:

Tywin isn't that hard to afford in this deck at all most of the time. And Bodyguards have never made it in to the deck anyway. I have since pulled out one copy of Tyrion though. I've been down to 62 cards for a while after shuffling some things around... I think it was Tyrion x1, Warhorn x1, and a couple other things I pulled. I've been running 2x Mines as well, and I really don't feel the need for 3 most of the time so far. I hit the draw cap most turns regardless. Oh, and I swapped something out for a Tommen from the newest CP too.

Twn2dn said:

Yup. Been done for a while, and every once in a while I wish I had one first turn and it doesn't show up... but mostly 2 copies has been plenty.

Twn2dn said:

Its a possibility, but I just don't have a character slot I'm really willing to give up for them. Most of the time Castellan is good enough to kneel their biggest guy. Its true what you've said about kneel/resource denial, but I usually prefer to run uniques over nons.

Twn2dn said:

Yeah, but its not really about getting the scary locations with Support of the Kingdom, its more about making then so far behind in the resource curve that they can't even afford to bring out their scary locations and still hope to play anything else. The Mines are definitely sick in LCG, and I don't think its a waste to ever consider 3x, but so far I think I've been just as well off with 2.

Twn2dn said:

Rains of Autumn, to me, is probably the worst fit in Lannister of all the houses. All my resources aside from the Streets, come from gold bonuses and not reducers. So a lot of the time, its actually going to hurt me worse than my opponent. And there are just better plots to take over it when keeping that in mind. I've got a Targaryen deck that loves it though, as the only income bonus I have is Drogo's Tent, and everything else is reducers.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've still regularly been tinkering with the deck, and it just keeps getting better. I've got a summer Targaryen deck (my absolute favorite LCG deck), thats undefeated against all other decks aside from this one (its about 50/50), and thats the closest I can get. It needs a perfect draw with Dany's Chambers to keep the seasons in my favor to even have a chance of pulling it out.

Would you mind sharing your Targ deck?