The Grand Melee - Playing Control in Melee - Part 4: One Card to Kneel Them All

Hello and welcome back to The Grand Melee. This week’s instalment was originally going to cover multiple houses and how each of them can bring control (or at least try...) to a Melee table. But after a bit of thinking I realized that I had enough material for a full article for at least two of them. So without further ado let’s start with House Lannister.

The House of Lions has a lot going for it in terms of control, but here I will focus on its main strategy, kneel. Lanni Hyperkneel is a Joust staple. It combines the lannister wealth and draw to create massive amounts of character control. While the resource aspect is still welcome in Melee it is not crucial thanks to the Titles. Character control however is always useful. Maybe even more so in a Melee environment where not only House Baratheon fields a high amount of renown characters. These days many Melee decks features one of two massive beat sticks to overpower their opponents. Think about cards like Knight of Flowers (SaS), Rhaegal (QoD), etc... House Lannister’s method of choice to deal with these characters is to kneel them every turn so that they can’t take part in a challenge. Because Lannisters have so much draw at their disposal, they can are nearly always sure to have one kneel effect at hand every turn.

The weakness of kneel lies within that statement “... ONE kneel effect...”. This is enough in Joust where you only have one opponent, but in Melee, you potentially have three big characters to handle or more. So can kneel be a viable control method in a Melee? My honest answer is maybe. As I mentioned in my previous article, it might help you control the flow of the game, but it will not make you win it alone. You will never achieve a total lock-down like you can in Joust. Furthermore, most kneeling cards tend to affect only one character. This means if you have three opponents, each with a strong character, you will have to pull-off three kneeling effects per turn. In other words, you are spending three cards, to control one card of each opponent. In the long term, that’s sort of card-disadvantage is not sustainable. Keeping that in mind, let’s have a look in more detail at what a kneel deck can do in Melee.

First of all, there are ways to reduce the number of characters you have to kneel each turn. All you have to do is reduce the number of people who can attack you right? Fortunately that is quite easy in Melee. Just pick a title that is supported by one of your opponents and he won’t be able to attack you. Ideally, this will be the person that doesn’t have any characters you want to kneel (i.e. possibly no renown characters). This will leave only to opponents that can threaten you, meaning maybe only two big characters to kneel. Also it will force your support to attack them which he is likely to do anyway if you soften their defences with kneel. House Lannister can even take this one step further with cards like Myrcella Lannister (ODG) or Varys (TGM), giving you more Title manipulation and potentially less people to attack you.

Another way of doing this is to use the plots that impose conditions on winning challenges I spoke about last week. If you flip Shadows and Spiders (LotR), all you have to do is handle the intrigue challenges to completely lock down the table. This can be difficult, but if you have a bit of kneel in place on the table and grab the Master of Whispers Title it might be possible to pull off. If you do it means you have free reign of the table for one turn whilst your opponents cannot do anything. Come to think of it, this would be a nice finishing move once you are in place.

But back to kneeling itself. If you manage to get a support each turn, you only need to deal with two opponents. Enter the Queen's Guard (TBC) after whom this article is named. Yes he is a 2-Str ally but that’s not important (I’ll tell you why later on). He single handedly solves the card-disadvantage I mentioned before. If he is on the table, you only need to trigger one kneel-effect per turn. If you have repeatable draw effects, like the Lannisport Brothel (Core), things get even worse for your opponents. Your kneel-effects are now effectively advantageous for you. One kneel effect you trigger can kneel two characters (or even three with Flogged and Chained (TftRK)). The best thing about the Queen's Guard (TBC) is that he works with every kind of draw whatever its source. Think City of Sin (AToT) for example. Even better, is ability is passive, making it practically impossible to cancel.

So yes, he is a 2-Str ally, but that doesn’t really matter. First, because what he brings you is worth it. Second because Venomous Blade (TBoBB) is hardly played at all in Melee. And third because you are Lannister and can cancel most of the ally-hate out there (The Iron Throne (LotR), Death by Payne (SaS)). Also as an added bonus I nearly forgot to mention he is a knight, meaning he can participate in your draw with the Knights of the Realm (KotStorm) agenda and you can fetch him in your deck with Muster (Core).

So this card alone has made kneel a viable Melee strategy. He works especially well with repeatable kneel effects like the Lannisport Tourney Grounds (ODG). However you will still find a way to grab the win quickly. You might be able to slow everybody down, but you are not free of having a single character escaping your grip and doing enough challenges to grab the win. You need to grab it before they do. Fortunately, the Lions have a few renown characters that can do the this job for you. I will leave you with that thought as I am now off to build this deck. See you next time!