Crimson and Gold - Regionals Edition: Part 2

Welcome back to Crimson and Gold.

Kublacon is over, and even though the Lions did not triumph, it was good times.
The tournament typically draws players from the Bay Area, Chico, Sacramento, and SoCal metas. Generally, if you want to compete in NorCal, this is the tournament to do it in.

Just in case you were curious, here's how the top 4 broke down:

#1 John Deatrick(Fieras) - Baratheon: Treaty to the South
#2 Jeff Lebow(Freerider) - Martell: The Maester's Path
#3 David Hopper(Happy Cheese)- Targaryen: Knights of the Hollow Hill
#4 Ram DeLeon(?)- Lannister: City of Shadows

Given my last article, I thought I would share my experience with you guys and give you some insight into my match-ups.

Sadly, I went 2-3, but even so, it was quite the learning experience. I had the second highest strength of schedule in the whole of the 30 person tournament, so I got some good insight into different decktypes from highly competitive players.

I was running a Lannister City of Shadows deck, partly because I'd never run one before, and partly because I liked what it potentially brought to the table against Laughing Storm shenanigans. I've already made some tweaks to it that I will mention later, but here's what I brought to the tournament:

Lannister - City of Shadows


Total Cards (60)

House (1)
House Lannister (Core) x1

Agenda (1)
City of Shadows (CoS) x1

Plot (7)
City of Lies (CoS) x1
City of Spiders (TftRK) x1
City of Soldiers (TBoBB) x1
Search and Detain (HtS) x1
Valar Morghulis (Core) x1
Retaliation! (ASoSilence) x1
Loyalty Money Can Buy (QoD) x1

Character (29)
Lannisport Weaponsmith (Core) x3
Lannisport Moneylender (LotR) x2
Carrion Bird (ASoS) x3
Tommen Baratheon (SA) x1
Lannisport Steward (Core) x3
Joffrey Baratheon (TftRK) x1
Ser Kevan Lannister (LotR) x1
Silent Sisters (KotS) x2
Syrio Forel (TftRK) x1
Ghost of High Heart (WLL) x1
Ser Arys Oakheart (PotS) x1
Cersei Lannister (AToT) x1
Varys (SaS) x1
Qyburn (SaS) x1
Jhalabar Xho (TWot5K) x1
Pyromancer's Apprentice (TBoBB) x3
Littlefinger (SaS) x1
Tyrion Lannister (CoS) x1
Tywin Lannister (TTotH) x1

Location (20)
The Goldroad (Core) x2
River Row (QoD) x1
Twilight Market (AToT) x2
Sunset Sea (Core) x2
Street of Steel (LoW) x1
Golden Tooth Mines (Core) x2
The Iron Throne (LotR) x1
Lannisport Brothel (Core) x1
Alchemist's Guild Hall (TBoBB) x3
Tunnels of the Red Keep (CoS) x1
King's Landing (SaS) x1
The Black Cells (TftRK) x3

Attachment (5)
Bastard (LotR) x2
Pyromancer's Cache (TWot5K) x3

Event (6)
Condemned by the Council (AToT) x3
You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf! (Core) x3

~~

The deck is Shadows distilled to pure control. There is no real shadows subtheme here, except for cards that power the Alchemist Guildhall and Black Cells.

If you can get 4 cards in the shadows early for free, you're usually in a pretty good spot.

Second turn City of Soldiers isn't bad against several characters in popular decktypes :Ghost of High Heart, Tommen, Val, Ice Fishermen, etc... and it's easy to find use in it when used as a third plot when you can up the STR total to 2.

Best case scenario, you get an Alchemist Guildhall, 3 Black Cells, and a Lannisport Brothel out. You also have YKTWD to back you up. Once you do that, you can swallow 5 of your opponent's characters with one shadows activation. 2 is usually crippling, and 3 is usually enough. Post Valar Morghulis, I've noticed this is very hard to come back from.

CoS Joffrey is also nice removal if you ever get a noble to pop up, since there are 6 Small Council events in the deck, (and YKTWD is an easy way to guarantee the character has power.)

I didn't feel King's Law was common enough to be necessary to tech against (I didn't see it once). City of Lies is a great opener as well (generally beats Rule by Decree, Search and Detain, and usually guarantees first turn initiative)

The deck runs 8 income weenies, which is kind of a lot, but I found that income weenies create an interesting early game situation.
-They can force an early Threat from the North, which I didn't want popping up later
-First Snow of Winter is fairly negligible against it 1st or 2nd turn, since you still get the gold bonus.
-They take some of the load off of the locations for income (i.e. Fleeing to the Wall isn't as scary)
-They create an incredibly efficient first turn if they were drawn in setup. You can still have challenge presence and play a few cards in your location base.

That said, there are a LOT of 1 strength characters in here, and because of that, I was afraid of matching up against Targ all game. Equally scary was the threat of Favorable Ground, and while Alchemist Guildhall can deal with influence to a degree, if it ever slipped through and I had overextended control locations, there goes the deck. (Thankfully I didn't get hit with this at all)

Here are the matchups I had:

Danny: Martell KOHH 1-0
It's always good times playing against Danny, and thankfully in our 3rd joust meeting ever, I finally managed to beat him. I was surprised to see him sit across the table from me with a Martell deck, he's usually got Stark in full force. Not that it mattered though, because even though he wasn't playing his favorite house, his game was on.
I got lucky and drew into Iron Throne early. Iron Throne was the MVP of this game for me by far.
It caught Danny by surprise a few times as he played Arys Oakheart and Orphan of the Greenblood, and I was able to cancel them each time.
Alchemist Guildhall was huge too, I was able to lock Arriane Martell with it most of the game, and then Lost Oasis when he had the initiative.
Endgame, I was two power away from winning, and was able to win an unopposed intrigue challenge with Tyrion giving him renown. There was still 1 Red Vengeance floating around somewhere, and it might have gone differently if I had been forced to do a power challenge.

Christian : Stark CoS 2-0
I was looking forward to playing against Christian since our debate in Joey's last tourney report, and though he'd mentioned not showing up for Kubla, he was able to drive down with Ram last minute. He's a cool guy, and a Lion at heart.
This one is all a story of Lanni draw, and the awkwardness of the CoS mirror match. I drew into Tommen and the Cache early, and was able to hit my cap each round, for at least 3 rounds. It gave me control over the challenge phase since I also drew into YKTWD. Carrion Bird on turn 2 or so was able to discard the White Raven from play, protecting me from Winter. Christian played King's Landing, but ended up not being able to use it because I was up on King's Landing locations for as long as it was out. The Shadows mechanic coupled with the rule of the first player getting the first response created some interesting situations here, like Meera being able to blank a control location before it could be used. Christian also made good use of Horseback Archers Catelyn near the end of the game, blocking a 2 claim power challenge that would've sealed the game in itself. I also saw Hidden Chambers on his field, which made me horrified of what was to come if he drew into all the parts of his deck.

Luke : Stark Siege 2-1
Luke is the man, and this was a great game. I was sort of leery, because Luke is a melee genius, and this was my first match-up against him head to head. I otherwise did come into this match confident, because I usually do well against Stark, however, CoS starts out a little slow, and this proved to hurt against Siege. That said, this match didn't end up a blowout for either side, and was my favorite match of the tournament.
First turn against Stark Siege is always interesting, I chose City of Lies as an opener, because worst care scenario, Fear of Winter comes up, and I will get initiative. Best case I can put 2 cards in shadows and outside of Fury plots, probably get initiative anyway. Fear of Winter popped up, but I still had enough control to hold him back to 2 power a turn for the first few turns. Eventually I got wrecked by a combo I'd never seen (Lucas Blackwood + Icy Cataput + Greywind) Ouch. He got an unopposed military challenge and the tables started to turn. I drew into a key Alchemist Guildhall, but he drew into Frozen Solid, and that was that.

Joey: Targ KOHH 2-2
This is a game that will haunt me for awhile. I set-up some weenies to try and bait an early Threat from the North, which I got. And then made a newb mistake and played some more weenies which were immediately discarded. I bet you know what happened from here, and there isn't much to talk about really. Even though he didn't draw into a ton of influence early, Joey had a hand full of burn all game, which kept me from playing my cheap characters. I had enough control in my location base to cause an issue post-valar, but I had to use mine early to reset the field. Hatchling's Feast to Assault from the Plains -> Thundering Cavalry sealed the deal here.

Hackman: Bara No-Agenda(?) 2-3
Finally some Bara! I was happy to see this. I was expecting much more Bara than I saw, so I was ready for this one. Unfortunately I took a big risk here that didn't pay off in the end.
I'd already heard that this deck pulled the Citadel Law > Rule by Decree > Threat from the East with Laughing Storm combo off on one player earlier, so I was a bit freaked out by it.
I took a 4 card setup that contained YKTWD as insurance, so I could kneel out The Laughing Storm and avoid the Rule by Decree at the same time if I won the pre-plot dice roll.
Thankfully he didn't have the combo at all, but first turn, Hackman played Apprentice Collar on Val, which upped her strength and kept her from getting hit by Turn 2 City of Soldiers. Hackman also hit my Lannisport Steward early with dissention, which was my only gold, and a huge blow early on. The sad part about this game, is that I never drew into my control at all.

So... all in all, not a good finish for me. But in case you missed it, you Lions will be happy to know that Ram from SoCal went all the way to the Top 4 with a Lannister City of Shadows. Congrats to him!

Cards that proved incredibly useful:
Silent Sisters: I was never upset to see these guys. That power icon was always useful, and though they were discarded because of their ally trait a few times, they were usually rendered free because of my plots.
Apprentice Guildhall/Black Cells: This is fairly obvious, since it's the basis of the deck, but these cards were always amazing.
Iron Throne: The first game alone made this card more than worth it.
Carrion Bird: A last minute edition and well worth it. Claim soak, stealth military, and raven control were all useful at certain points in the tournament.
You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf: Key control opportunity at least twice, and game winner once.


Some Tweaks I've made since:
+ Toll Gate: Stark Siege seems to be a problem, and this card will help. I played 3 games with it last night, and it's fit right in.
+ Mountain Refugee: A nice way to get some cheap characters above the 1 STR mark.
+ Meera: I didn't know she gets around the penalty for the agenda. Wow. Nice for frozen solid too, which is what I originally put Tywin in for.
+ Kingdom of Shadows: A little bit more gold in the location base may not be all bad, I only ran into Fleeing to the Wall once.
- [KL]Tywin: I only got to play him once, and when I did, he did nothing. He clogged up my hand in the game against Targ too, just too expensive overall. (at least for the gold curve of my deck, which over time, isn't that high.)
- King's Landing: Ended up redundant, and an expensive dead card most of the time. If this wasn't based in Lanni running the Cache, it wouldn't be the case, but I ended up having better options than this.
- Halls of the Red Keep: Every time I drew into this, it didn't give me enough effect to be worth it. This is very nice against Targ, but I'm not sure if I run enough shadows to have enough just sitting in the shadows area to get consistent use out of it.
- Lanni Jalabhar Xho: Hilarious when it works, but a dead card most of the time. If Bara was out in full force like Martell or Targ seem to be now, I would probably keep him, but his selective usefulness+ally trait ended up getting him the cut.

Hope you guys enjoyed the report. Now that regionals season is coming to a close, next time I'm probably going to write about something with a little more flavor. Anybody have anything they would like me to touch on, and possibly start a discussion about? Otherwise I have a few ideas.