First Tilt - Budget Deckbuilds - Lannister Hyperkneel

Welcome back to another edition of First Tilt! This week we embark on a new series (yay!) We're calling this the Budget Deckbuilds series. What we're going to do for the next few months is explore specific archetypes from each House and show you how to build a somewhat competitive deck with the least number of CPs possible. The goal will be to allow you, the new player, to try out some of the most common archetypes for each House without spending a lot of cash in the process.

Some archetypes are going to be expensive no matter how you slice it because the specific archetypes themes are scattered throughout a myriad of CPs. Others lend themselves better to budget buildouts. As we share each one, we'll list out the CPs you'll need and we'll make suggestions on how to improve the deck if you're willing to spend a little more coin.

Since Paladin and I aren't experts in every single House, we've enlisted the aid of other members of the AGoT community to help us put this series together. We'll add our 2 cents as we see fit, but we'll be giving credit where credit is due to the excellent assistance we'll be receiving from solid players throughout the community.

This week, we travel across the Narrow Sea to get help from one of the Quill and Tankard Regulars, WWDrakey. He has put together a very fun (and VERY inexpensive) Hyperkneel build. This build only uses FOUR (count'em - 4!) Chapter Packs. Yep, you got that right... a nice bevy of control for just a few golden dragons.

Without further ado, here's WWDrakey:

Lannister / Budget Hyperkneel

Plots (7)
Wildfire Assault (Core)
Snowed Under (Core)
Cersei's Scheme (TPoL)
Valar Morghulis (Core)
Breaking and Entering (LotR)
Edict of the Rock (LotR)
Men of Pride (THoBaW)


Character: (28)
Ser Jaime Lannister (Core) x1
Ghost of High Heart (WLL) x1
Ser Lancel Lannister (TPoL) x1
Chella, Daughter of Cheyk (Core) x1
Arrogant Contender (LotR) x1
Bronn (Core) x1
Cersei Lannister (LotR) x3
Ser Jacelyn Bywater (Core) x1
Ser Kevan Lannister (LotR) x1
Castellan of the Rock (BoRF) x3
Myrcella Lannister (LotR) x1
Enemy Informer (Core) x2
Doubting Septa (LotR) x3
Cersei's Attendant (Core) x2
Ser Gregor Clegane (WLL) x1
Lannisport Weaponsmith (Core) x2
Lannisport Moneylender (LotR) x3

Attachment: (5)
Widow's Wail (LotR) x1
Dragonbone Dagger (THoBaW) x1
Enslaved (THoBaW) x3

Event: (10)
Distraction (Core) x2
Insidious Ways (Core) x2
I'm You Writ Small (Core) x2
A House Divided (WLL) x2
You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf! (Core) x2

Location: (17)
Golden Tooth Mines (Core) x2
The Iron Throne (LotR) x2
Queen Cersei's Chambers (Core) x1
Shield Islands Dromon (LotR) x2
The Goldroad (Core) x3
Street of Steel (Core) x1
Sunset Sea (Core) x2
Shadowblack Lane (Core) x1
Lannisport Brothel (Core) x2
Lannisport Treasury (LotR) x1


Deck Construction

The Core Structure

Constructed using: 2x Core Set, 1x Lions of the Rock, 4x Chapter Packs

The deck has been constructed based on a very 'classic' Hyperkneel Chassis, which is probably nearly as old as the LCG itself... Basically the core cards of that chassis are:

• Gold weenies
• Castellan
• Enemy Informer
• Wrong Dwarf and Distraction
• Valar Morghulis
• Golden Tooth Mines
• Lannisport Brothel

The principle of the thing is to have more resources (both gold and cards), then leverage that advantage through soft control to stall your opponent until you can successfully grab a chokehold of the game.

As is usually smart in a competitive deck, I've combined the soft control with splashes of harder control, in order to help leverage the advantage from the soft lock to grab better overall control of the game. This is mainly seen in running two resets, adding a decent amount of deadly and especially including You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf and Enslaved. For the sake of efficiency most of the characters are powerful uniques (with a nice toolbox set of abilities and good stats).

The usual bases-to-hit for a competitive deck (character attachment control, location control) are filled out using A House Divided (especially aimed at Maesters, Beric etc.) and Shield Islands Dromon. Of these House Divided is a pretty straightforward power card, but I might explain the Dromon a bit. Due to wanting to keep the deck setup optimized (and including Enslaved), I was looking for a suitable location control to help alongside Chella. Now, after a bit of playtesting I found that the most important timeframe for the control was the early game, so the Dromon was pretty much a perfect fit. Even in the worst case scenario it helps to protract the game, which is what Lannister tends to like. It's also an extremely good card choice against KotHH decks, which may otherwise be a bit problematic.

Honestly, the Iron Throne is a silly good competitive card (also mitigating several of the deck's harder matchups), and I was torn between 2 or 3 copies of it. Ended up with 2, so I could also have more repeatable kneel with the second Brothel.

Working around cardpool limitations

Now, the lack of a third Core Set is probably the thing that hurts this deck the most. Raising GTM and Enemy Informer would be an instant upgrade, really. However, to offset that one lacking Mine, I made sure to have plenty of supplementary draw (Widow's Wail, Septas, Insidious Ways), so that you can more easily push the draw in the early game in order to get your engines running.

While the sole Arrogant Contender, Gregor and Ghost of High Heart might not be my first picks for a Hyperkneel deck when working from a full cardpool, they very adequately fulfill their designated roles (two good challenge pushers and one utility), so I don't feel that they take away from the deck's efficiency all that much.

The quirky parts

Now, perhaps the most outlandish part of this deck are the plots. So I think I'll have to justify these a bit.

The double-reset (Valar+Wildfire) is an older habit, from around when Hyperkneel was really the king of the Hill, and I found that it worked pretty nicely for this deck as well, since you could thin the board earlier on via Wildfire and thus hold Valar as a later reset... preferably catching your opponent napping with it.

Cersei's Scheme is really an important improvement for the deck, allowing one more turn of easy soft control. Definitely a card that should find it's way into most Hyperkneel decks from now on.

Breaking and Entering and Men of Pride are here to function as solid 2-claim plots, so that you can turn your soft control into actual dominance through high claim challenges. The only issue with Men of Pride is to be careful not to use Writ Small on a non-unique while it's out, otherwise the plot is just gold, also hurting specific cardtypes nastily (Martell Armies, stealth weenies etc.).

So far, pretty obvious. Now, the really curious part is the combo of Edict of the Rock and Snowed Under. Edict of the Rock serves both as an alternative starter (Men of Pride being the other option), which nicely helps you get dual mileage out of the kneel effects you have in hand on Round 1 and also it sets up a bit of a combo with Snowed under. This is especially nasty against House of Dreams decks that need their location to kneel to trigger. If they trigger it first turn, you can often follow-up with Snowed Under in order to bounce it into hand (preferably with a Dromon waiting). If they don't let you bounce the location, then you've got a win-win situation, with them having 2 rounds without their HoD effect. Edict also ties up the influence from KotHH decks, slows the tempo of the game down, and also sets up Voltron decks for a strategic bounce with Snowed Under. Usually I tried to hit my own Enemy Informer for the second bounce when possible, so that I could re-use their kneel effects. Snowed Under also does wonders setting up a good board for a Valar or Wildfire, maybe bouncing their resources and one of your 4 characters to hit you back to equilibrium.

I could see Rule By Decree or Shadows and Spiders to also fit one of these slots, but I just found the added control the two plots offer to suit the deck a bit better.

Another quirky part is probably the 'No Agenda' part. Kevan doesn't do much, when you're most often wanting to go second. House of Dreams for a Brothel would be an option, but that wouldn't really raise the efficiency of the deck, just lead to worse Setups. This way you're at least hurting both Stark (NCF etc.) and BS (Armies). Draw isn't an issue.

Matchups

A short list of specific good / bad matchups, from the top of my head.

Easier Ones:

• Black Sails, of any kind (It ain't pretty. I kept BS several times without a single search for the whole game)
• House of Dreams (especially kneeling ones, but the others are also so slow to start, that the deck can more securely grab control)
• Other Maesters (A lot of the effects in the deck can wreak havoc on Maesters, and they rarely have good enough location control to counteract them)
• Baratheon Rush (Stall & stall, and wait for the steam to run out. Then Valar, cancel dupes with Throne and win.)
• Power Behind the Throne (An intrigue heavy deck that can easily handle Cersei can be a bit of a pain for a deck that relies on Cersei and doesn't want it's opponent to win intrigues...)

Harder Ones:

• Martell Brotherhood (Will often depend on getting a bounce effect/Iron Throne, until then stall like there's no tomorrow. If you aren't profiting yourself by attacking, then don't. Wait for a chance to hit Beric in any way.)
• Martell Quentyn (When it works, it can be pretty painful for the soft control. Draw, not letting them draw, and hard control will help.)
• GJ Maesters (The combination of cancel and location control from one of these can be a bit brutal, 3x Enslaved does wonders though)
• Martell/Targaryen KotHH (This can be a bit difficult, but you need to concentrate on hitting their hand whenever possible. Dromons help grab control of the game earlier on. Iron Throne is essential in cancelling the draw from Martell. Enslaved is good for Street Waifs. Edict hurts both decks by choking their influence. Dragonbone Dagger/Writ Small/Widow's Wail are partly for countering Flame-kissed and other burn.)

So, there you have it, a solid Hyperkneel deck with great detail, thanks WWDrakey! Be sure to let us know your own experiences with the deck and what you might change in the comments!