Crimson and Gold - Enemies of the Crown Pt 5

Welcome back to Crimson and Gold. Today we brave the harsh and unforgiving winds of the North to lay siege on Winterfell High School, land of estranged teenagers and traitors.

I take great pleasure in writing the following for you, fellow Lions.

Hate them or not, Stark is a solid, well-rounded house, especially come this chapter pack. (Here comes the sea of Bear Island decks, so be prepared.)


Besides all of their kill effects, Stark has a solid amount of useful draw, location control, and attachment control, which makes them pretty hardy against many decktypes. Besides that, they can pretty much monopolize the military challenge if they want to. That strength however, comes at a price; their lack of a solid intrigue base, which is what we are planning on exploiting for our deck.

Our weapon against the Wolves of the North is a The Power Behind the Throne deck or “PBTT”, which I feel like many other themes, also got a strong boost in this last pack.

That said, this is a bit of a recap from my last article on this decktype, but I think enough has changed around for this to be worth another read. Just keep in mind, that some things will be similar.

Here's what we're running today:


Total Cards (60)

House (1)
House Lannister (Core) x1

Agenda (1)
The Power Behind the Throne (LotR) x1

Plot (7)
Frey Hospitality (LotR) x1
Retaliation! (ASoSilence) x1
Valar Morghulis (Core) x1
Shadows and Spiders (LotR) x1
Rule by Decree (Core) x1
Men of Pride (THoBaW) x1
The Breaking of Oaths (KotS) x1

Character (30)
Carrion Bird (ASoS) x2
Tommen Baratheon (SA) x1
Doubting Septa (LotR) x3
Bronn's Hireling (LotR) x3
Penny (VD) x1
House Payne Enforcer (MotA) x3
Myrcella Lannister (LotR) x1
Ghost of High Heart (WLL) x1
The Mad Huntsman (ASoSilence) x1
Enemy Informer (Core) x3
Yezzan's Grotesquerie (CD) x3
Castellan of the Rock (BoRF) x3
Varys (SaS) x1
Cersei Lannister (LotR) x3
Ser Jaime Lannister (Core) x1

Location (15)
The Goldroad (Core) x3
Flea Bottom (TGM) x1
Sunset Sea (Core) x3
Shadowblack Lane (Core) x1
Street of Silk (LotR) x1
Golden Tooth Mines (Core) x3
Lannisport Tourney Grounds (ODG) x1
The Iron Throne (LotR) x1
Lannisport Brothel (Core) x1

Attachment (3)
Increased Levy (LotR) x3

Event (12)
Condemned by the Council (AToT) x3
Insidious Ways (Core) x3
Misinformation (TWH) x3
Little and Less (ARotD) x3



My general gameplan for PBTT is pretty simple. There is a wonderful world of intrigue powergrab possibilities out there, and cool tricks like Myrcella + Parting Blow, or adding general intrigue-based utility like Terminal Schemes, but nothing will get you the game as quickly as simply kneeling out intrigue with reliable cards, hitting their hand, and resetting the board. Try to make that your focus.

Sweep the leg, Lions!

Crippling your opponent early will make the mid to late game much easier for you, and you shoud be able to close it out with unopposed power from your extra challenge. Condemned by the Council will hopefully be able to deal with any draw engines you can't Valar.


Before, the main problem with this strategy was Greyjoy and Baratheon. It could end up a bust, because you couldn't break through Greyjoy's saves, or Baratheon's dupes. It was enough to ultimately make me discount the strength of the deck. Especially with decktypes like Greyjoy Winter in the environment.

Then Little and Less was printed.

With Little and Less in the environment, Valar can eat through saves, which means Power Behind the Throne's main tool has gotten that much stronger.

Goodbye Iron Mines, goodbye dupes, goodbye Outwit, Goodbye hilarious setups like 2x Iron Cliffs and Maester Wendamyr on a Valar turn. Time for a clean slate.
(The only deck left that I feel really messes with Valar backed by this card is Baratheon Noble Rush, which is still probably the best Baratheon deck out there. It's an annoying fight, but definitely beatable, especially with cards like the Grotesquerie and Shadows and Spiders)

The card also has other uses. If you have first action, play this card on a Martell deck first turn and they can't draw through Flea Bottom Scavenger or The Viper's Bannerman. This can be a huge blow to a deck like Martell KOHH that takes a turn to get started. Play this on Stark Siege and their first turn gets that much less frightening. To be fair, this hurts our kneel effects, but the card is capable of causing so much bedlam in general that this is nothing compared to how much it hurts Greyjoy or Baratheon (at least as far as this deck is concerned, hyper-kneel may be hurting a little).

All in all, PBTT is a rush deck. It wants to explode out on to the board turn 1, and kill your options before you can answer its threats. A key difference between Intrigue rush like PBTT and Military or Power rush decks is that as the Intrigue deck overwhelms the opponent, it kills their card advantage. This makes the usual option, Valar, less attractive as an option to reset the playing field. Because their card advantage is being attacked directly, your opponent can't goad you into overextending by holding back their hand and playing it post-reset.

Now, let's take a look at some of Stark's weaknesses, and see how they apply to the matchup.

Stark still has a tough time with intrigue:
It's better than it has been, but it's still kind of weak. Most Stark decks will have a setup like the Refugees, Horseback Archers Catelyn, Damon Dance-For-Me (VD), some version of Sansa, Maester Vyman (TWoW), and the new Arya or Cat of the Canals. All great cards, but not enough to hold back the wave of intrigue we will be sending their way. Deadly in particular creates a problem for them, because their defenders won't stick around. This means that most times, Stark is going to be behind in card advantage, and with PBTT, this is usually going to be 4 cards discarded at minimum if we decide to start with Retaliation. Knight of Harrenhal (TBC) is a good option for them, but probably wont be able to deal with the amount of cards PBTT can discard in a turn. The intrigue weakness is also bad news for Stark on the Shadows and Spiders turn, not to mention, it's going to be much harder for them to take advantage of your agenda's drawback.

Stark relies on reactive draw:
Starks don't draw for free. You've got to kill things, or block all military challenges, or have knights, or die, or win initiative... So even though in essence, their draw engine is pretty good, like other challenge phase based houses like Baratheon or Greyjoy, it's slow, and not as reliable as Lannister or Martell's options. If you draw into a character and need to play it, it often will have to survive being discarded from your hand the prior turn.

Stark gets a lot of their strength from Response effects
Since the heyday of Put to the Sword and Put to the Torch, Stark's ace in the hole has been Military Challenge responses on their their first turn. Now with the threat of Little and Less, Stark's first turn is much less frightening. Since this deck runs a playset of the card to deal with saves for Valar or Deadly, you can kill 2 birds by also playing it to ruin Stark's first turn. Since Little and Less cannot be canceled, outside of something like an early Confession or Ghost of High Heart, Stark often won't be able to cut through your cheap characters to get to the expensive ones. Fury of the Wolf can still pop up, but it may not be enough, especially with Shadows and Spiders as a potential go-to for first turn. Sometimes Forgotten Plans pops up first turn to get through your Shadows and Spiders. With Little and Less 3/4/1 becomes a pretty weak start.

Stark has a military icon on almost everything
This isn't a weakness at all, but when Yezzan's Grotesquerie (CD) hits the field, that changes. You can stop intrigue and power challenges cold with this guy. Being able to ward off intrigue for the agenda is cool, but the power challenge is where this hurts. Seriously, take a seat, and think about how many useful Stark characters have a power icon with no military. Off the top of my head I can think of the new Arya, renown Sansa, Maester Luwin, Jeyne Westerling, and House Tully Recruiters. I'm sure there are more, but even still, I don't see these characters taking the late game by force.

Don't forget this also works on offense, and is pretty nice on a Men of Pride or Retaliation turn.

Stark has some trouble with kneel
Stark doesn't have a lot of answers to kneel. They don't have Greyjoy or Martell's versatile cancels, (Maester Vyman is nice, but he is one card, and already out on the board for us to see) or Baratheon's level of stand effects. They also can't do much without characters on the board unlike control heavy houses like Targ or Lannister. A knelt Northern Cavalry flank can really change the tide of the round. Also, because of Stark's lack of intrigue options, kneeling out their intrigue option really invites Cersei to come in and wreck house.

Notes:

Retaliation! (ASoSilence): 90% of the time, this should be your first plot. Retaliation makes sure you are in a good enough position to kneel out threats, and gives you 2 claim to try and dump their hand. The Mad Huntsman is pretty amazing on a first turn Retaliation, possibly blocking intrigue and getting you the 2 intrigue challenges by himself.

Ghost of High Heart (WLL): Use her to dump characters whenever you can. Keep the characters off the board and the unopposed power from the extra challenge will speed up your victory quite a lot.

Rule by Decree (Core): First turn, this is a good option against KOHH decks. If you draw into it, toss a Little and Less pre-plot. Your opponent can't cancel it, and if there aren't any other pre-plot actions they can throw at you, you get a huge advantage to start. Other than this new spin on an old trick, Rule by Decree is good insurance. You may not need it every game, but when the other deck starts to get serious card advantage on you, is when PBTT starts to have a really tough time regaining board control.

Shadows and Spiders (LotR): This is good for breathing room vs. Baratheon power rush, or Stark when you don't have a Little and Less handy. It may go without saying, but when the Baratheon player expects a Valar is probably the best time to play this.

The Breaking of Oaths (KotS): This is the Cersei plot. If you're in good shape post reset, or your opponent just doesn't have much of an intrigue force out there, flip this. If you can keep the intrigue down, with Cersei you can get 6 power off of your intrigue challenges alone (8 with Myrcella). Misinformation can also cause some chaos here since your opponent is going to want to capitalize off of the plot.

Yezzan's Grotesquerie (CD) and The Mad Huntsman (ASoSilence):
Don't forget about the Grotesquerie's Infamy keyword if you feel like you need to extend a 1st turn Mad Huntsman for a challenge or two.

Misinformation (TWH):
Lots of uses for this. Block on a Shadows and Spiders turn, give Cersei power, trigger Lannisport Tourney Grounds, get an extra kill on Frey Hospitality... besides that, like Rule by Decree, this card also gives you good insurance, in case you end up matched up against another intrigue heavy deck, (or even another PBTT, where you will get a HUGE advantage if your opponent also didn't slot it.)

Men of Pride (THoBaW):
This is pretty much just in here for gold and claim. I don't like that it weakens Bronn's Hireling and House Payne Enforcers, but it has to be said that it also hits the deadly on your opponent's non-uniques, which can be nice for Cersei or Jaime. This is also a great turn for the Grotesquerie to shine, because they are harder to hit with Stealth or Deadly.

Beware of these cards:



King's Landing (SaS):
This is the only draw engine we can't really hit, and because of the new agenda, there is a good chance Shadows decks will be a rogue deck of choice at tournaments because of their synergy with city plots. There's the off-chance we can suffocate it with King's Landing locations of our own, but just watch out for this in general.

The Laughing Storm (GotC)/Catelyn Stark (AToT):
Love these guys... You can at least kneel out The Laughing Storm, but Catelyn is a dealbreaker. You may have to Valar early if you come up against her.

Threat from the North (PotS):
Not a fun plot for this deck. Just be careful with how much 1STR stuff you put out there VS Targ, since this almost always pops up when you match up against them.

Red Vengeance (PotS):
Definitely annoying. If you have the character advantage, especially with a Doubting Septa maybe try to bait them into using this on the military challenge. This is a favorite of Martell KOHH, keep an eye out for it.


Anyway, hope you enjoyed the deck!

(Just one more Enemies of the Crown to go! I hope you guys have enjoyed this series of articles. It's been fun putting them together for sure. Anything in particular you guys want to read after it ends? Let me know in the comments and I'll see what I can put together.)

And as always, thanks for reading.