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1
Crimson and Gold - FAQ 5.0 and Regionals Preparation
May 01 2014 05:05 AM |
scantrell24
in Game of Thrones
Small Council Crimson and Gold scantrell24
Hi everyone, I’m Steven, also known as scantrell24, and you’re reading Crimson and Gold, a series of bi-weekly A Game of Thrones LCG articles about House Lannister decks and strategy. If you’re new to the game, check out the pinned comprehensive guide on the forums which should answer many of your questions about this game. If you’re a seasoned veteran, then just keep reading! Everyone, regardless of your experience, is encouraged to comment at the bottom. I’m always looking for feedback to improve future Crimson and Gold articles. Thanks!Control decks are far from dead, but they’re sharing the spotlight now with a wide variety of Aggro, Rush, and Tempo decks. The current Game of Thrones metagame is diverse to the point that every house has at least five legitimate contenders.
Furthermore, every house can access efficient card advantage engines, including Crossing the Mummer’s Ford, Ser Jaime Lannister, and Samwell Tarly to name a few. I’ve seen many games where players start a turn with 2 or 3 cards in hand but end the turn with 5 or 6 cards. One-claim intrigue challenges barely make a dent, so while the restriction of heavy control cards like Bleeds made challenges matter again, in some ways that shift was counteracted by the emergence of the Rivers, the return of Samwell, and the introduction of Summoned by the Conclave, which makes it easy to find Jhogo, Flea Bottom Scavenger, and Quentyn among others. House Lannister’s traditional domination of the intrigue challenge isn’t relevant, which helps explain why my Lannister decks have struggled since the FAQ release, compiling just an 8-17 record compared to 8-3 for Greyjoy, 4-5 for Martell, 8-1 for Stark, and 4-5 for Targaryen (I’ve only played a couple of games with Bara so they’re not included). Has anyone else found Lannister to be lackluster lately? So far the results recorded in the Annals of Castle Black support my pessimistic outlook, with Lannister’s qualification ratio fifth ahead of only Baratheon.
The restrictions of Pentoshi Manor and Ser Preston Greenfield, cards that were included in most Lannister deck as 3x and 2x respectively, hasn't helped either. That’s an 8.3% chunk of each deck gone, or 10% if you kept 2x Preston and dropped 3x Castellan or 3x Cache instead. I would have rather seen Pentoshi errata’d to unique, but what’s done is done. As for Preston, he helped fuel Jaime obviously, but also Alchemist’s Guild Hall and Tyrion, two lynchpins of many Lannister decks. Lanni Knights of the Realm should keep Preston, while No Agenda should strongly consider him.
On the flip side, the Mountain Refugee came off the list, which is a boon for HoD Tunnels and decks looking for good setups like Power Behind the Throne. Retaliation was also un-restricted, and it’s an excellent choice in houses like Lannister that prefer marshalling second. However, many other decks will run Retaliation as well, forcing us to marshall first. Hopefully when they do flip Retaliation you’ve chosen Cersei’s Scheme to make them pay for it!
Let’s Play Choose the Restricted Card!
Here are most, if not all, of the Lannister Agendas that stand a reasonable chance of making the cut in a Regional, followed by the top restricted card options for each deck. Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments. (I’ve left out Conquest because that’s a unique situation.)
No Agenda – Ser Preston or Castellan
Power Behind the Throne – Fear of Winter
HoD Tunnels - Ser Preston, Pentoshi, or Cache
Kings of Summer – Castellan or Pentoshi
Knights of the Realm – Ser Preston or Narrow Escape
Knights of the Hollow Hill – Pentoshi or Cache
Tier 2
We’ve already one City of Shadows deck make the cut in a 47 person Regional, so anything can happen. Sometimes you have to flip deep into the binder and dust off some unexpected cards to find the right mate tech, or just to catch your opponent’s off-guard. I expect that we’ll see a few more surprising results from some of the following decks. Perhaps Kings of Winter gets too popular for its own good and Song of Fire trips it up?
City of Shadows – Ser Preston
Wildlings – Narrow Escape, Pyromancer’s Cache or Search and Detain
Night’s Watch – Narrow Escape, Pyromancer’s Cache or Search and Detain
Defiance –Castellan, Pentoshi, Cache or Preston
Song of Fire – Pyromancer’s Cache
Rising and Falling
Harry the Riverlands is nearly an auto-include while the Refugees run rampant, but Tommen and Enslaved take a hit whenever Viserys rears his ugly face. Dissension is popping up again, so Janos and House Payne Enforcer, among others, are riskier than they were before. Can you think of anything else on the move?
Lannister Deck Lists
If you’re looking for sample lists to model your own builds after, or if you want to test against the top Lanni builds, I’ve published post-FAQ 5.0 decklists in many of the Lannister deck threads on the forums.
Conclusion
In future articles I’d like to analyze individual games by including screenshots from OCTGN, pre-match expectations, round-by-round thoughts, and post-match conclusions. Does that sound interesting? If so, what matchups would you like to see? Thanks for reading, and best of luck this tournament season!
- Reldan, Amuk, bigfomlof and 7 others like this
11 Comments
I know you left it out but i do think Lanni Conquest to Martell has a pretty good chance at winning a regional. I haven't played a ton of games with it yet but the fact that it was a control deck and it was actually able to keep up with Targ Dothraki in terms of board size....That was actually pretty impressive to me.
its closes to aggro but instead of trying to destroy all the characters or someones hand it is just pushing through challenges to win challenges. at least that is my brief definition.
It could go Ghaston Grey to slow you down if it needed to, or it could go smashy with Arianne high claim if needed, or it could go fast with the renown knights if needed. Basically, it has different "gears" that it can cycle through given the situation.
In Lannister, my Tempo deck is PBtT. It has lots of kneel to limit my opponents options in the early game. Making my opponent lose extra cards from hand also slows them down.
In the mid or late game, it can grab 7-8 power in a single turn with some combination of LotR Cersi, LotR Jamie, Maester Creylen, and/or Sitting the Iron Throne.
An Aggro Deck will kill your four cost character and make you marshal something else next round.
A Tempo deck will bounce the four cost character to your hand, an put you a turn behind what you meant to be doing when you re-marshal him later. Added benefit if you used seas or other non-repeatable effect when you marshalled him.
You're effectively using the power and board position of your opponent - that becomes rendered moot when you win the game before they do - as just another resource to manage.
Aggro wants to be the deck posing all the questions. Control is the deck that wants to answer all the questions. Tempo is the deck that only seeks to answer the right questions.