First Tilt - Selmy's Knights

Not only have I not posted any articles here on CardGameDB in awhile, when I do get back around to it, I steal someone else’s franchise. I suppose you’ll just have to deal with it!

On a recent forum thread (here), a few interesting topics were raised. Basically, an intrepid new player found the bravery to ask for some help building a decent deck from his limited cardpool. Not surprisingly, a few members jumped to the rescue and posted a deck list for him. This speaks to the friendliness of the Thrones community at large, but it also speaks to the voluminous task that faces any nascent player—how do I make sense of all these cards? Which do I buy? And then—I only pick 60????

I remember when I first got into Thrones. Very much like the player here, I posted some blogs on a community website and got connected with a veteran player interested in helping me out. Playing the Arthur Dayne to my Barristan Selmy, Nathan Bradley guided my Wildling deck from seriously the most awful thing you had ever seen to a limited cardpool masterpiece that took 5th place in the Tulsa regional that year. What Nathan did for me was invaluable—he didn’t just hand me a list to play, but he took the time to walk me through the principles behind the choices. Since then, he's gone on not only to be a Thrones buddy but a good friend of mine--another great benefit of this game and its community. There are some great articles on this site about tournament-level building, but I thought it might be nice to have a primer for those just beginning this amazing game in order to make their learning curve just a bit less steep. Here’s some principles that I hold dear in deckbuilding:

1. PLAY WHAT YOU LIKE
Especially when you’re new, you can get caught up in trying to run the best possible deck out there. Nobody likes losing, for sure, but I feel strongly that a person should play a house they like with a style they like with cards they like rather than just chasing the latest tournament netdeck. If you can be disciplined to do this early in your playing career, later on you’ll be that guy breaking cards nobody thought much of when they came out.

2. TAKE IT EASY
You don’t need a full cardpool to play Thrones. Did you get that? You DON’T need a full cardpool to play Thrones. Sure, the full cardpool in any LCG is awesome, giving you more options and depth of play, but you really can play just fine at a local level with a smaller investment. Just buy what you can, when you can, and be content with building decks from there. For my aforementioned first tournament, I had 2x Core, a Queen of Dragons box, a Lords of Winter box, and the Defenders of the North cycle. That’s it, and I was able to build a fun, solid deck. That still holds true—sure, you likely won’t win any regionals, but a solid deck and a good eye for play can make up for cardpool shortcomings.

3. HAVE FUN
For real, don’t forget this. Building decks and learning how to make them run is part of the allure of any customizable card game, and Thrones is no different. Build and play, play and build and just keep on trying. That’s how you’ll get better, and that’s what’s fun about the game anyway. Whining about how you’re not good enough yet is No Fun.
So with those philosophical missives out of the way, let’s now turn to a quick look at what makes a deck playable. Notice that I didn’t say “good” or “great” or “tournament level” because that’s a different nut entirely. I’m looking to guide you from awful to playable so that you can enjoy the ride a bit sooner. Getting great is something you’ll have to do for yourself, and then show me how when you get there. There’s quite a few things to keep in mind here, so we’ll talk some principles and then build a limited cardpool deck together to see how we might apply the theorycrafting to a real life situation. Are you ready? Well, I’m not either, so we’re in this together.

DECKBUILDING PRINCIPLE ONE: NEGLECT NOT THY SETUP

While high cost cards are flashy and are ultimately what seems to end up winning games, Thrones is at its core a game about card advantage. Your first opportunity to gain the upper hand on your opponent card-wise is during the setup phase. This means that you should build your deck with setup in mind. (NB: If you’re using Knights of the Hollow Hill, not only is this setup advice moot, but most of the rest of it as well. I don’t recommend starting with this agenda since it turns a lot of Thrones principles upside down—a reason I like it, but you can really start leading yourself down some blind alleys if you start trying to branch out from a Hollow Hill beginning).

So what are some ways to build to setup? First off, take note of the cards you can’t play on setup: events, most attachments, and cards with 5+ cost or more. As a general rule, I’d suggest that you try to limit yourself to 12 non-setup cards in any given deck. This will reduce the chances of a dead draw in your opening hand. As you gain experience, you can play around with this number, but since events, attachments, and expensive characters tend to have the shiniest effects, it takes real discipline to shoot for 12. Try to exercise said discipline. I promise you that you won’t regret it.
Second, try to take special care to include a careful ratio of Limited cards in your deck. This is a bit harder when your cardpool is smaller, but I try to keep 5 Limited cards at most in my decks. Since you can only play one of these on setup, you don’t want to draw more than one and clog your hand. On the flip side of the coin, that Limited keyword can protect from nasty effects like Favorable Ground, so don’t shy away from including some. There’s a reason that they are restricted—they tend to be good.

Third, look at your cost-curve when constructing a deck. You should have a healthy amount of 0, 1, and 2 cost cards. These are the ones you’re generally looking to get into play early. The best place to grab that 0 cost is in your income base. I like to aim for around 12 income cards (to me, income cards are gold producers as well as cost reducers). Your deck might fiddle with this number, depending on what you’re trying to do, especially if you’re playing Lannister, but 12 is a good number to shoot for. Your in-house Sea should be an easy 3-of in your decks, as should the neutral streets—Sisters, Steel, and Shadowblack Lane. Since you’ll be aiming for a wide icon spread anyway (and since your cardpool might not give you better options) go ahead and grab three. That gives us six. You’ll then want your in-house gold producer or your fiefdom at 3x as well, depending on if you need the influence. There’s nine. Your chambers typically gives you the tenth, and the two more can depend on your cardpool. Some Kingsroads, Kingdoms of Shadows, other Streets not in the Core set, or even good ol’ Roseroads can fill this out.

You’ll also want some low cost cards in your character base. Why, you ask? Well, you will lose military challenges at some point and you’ll need someone to die. Making that claim cheap and easy will keep you well-able to afford characters on the board to protect your heavy hitters.

DECKBUILDING PRINCIPLE TWO: IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CHARACTERS

When I started Thrones, I was an event junkie. All I wanted was events. They were flashy, changed the game, and were the type of thing I couldn’t get enough of. Then, at some point, I learned that events don’t win games (see Hollow Hill caveat above). CHARACTERS win games. This is why you need to spend the most deckbuilding time early in your career focusing on what characters you want to include. While there is no magic number to shoot for, I think less than 30 in a new player deck is too few, regardless of the style of deck you’re playing. Don’t believe me? Watch interviews with the World Champ Aioria—he played something like 5 events in his worlds deck, reinforcing that it is indeed all about the characters.

The other thing about characters is that yes, they’ll die. This is why you MUST be disciplined about another thing—include ONLY ONE OF EVERY UNIQUE CHARACTER. I capitalize for a reason, and it’s not to impress the Germans. Rather, it’s to emphasize that multiple uniques are a seductive trap. I’ll go into this a bit more:

--since you can’t play another unique after it dies, and since everything in Thrones dies all the time, you’re just asking for your second and third copies of a unique to be dead draws—literally and figuratively. And, since you’re new, you’ll want every card to have an option for you. Further, since limited card pool decks often struggle to draw large amounts of cards efficiently, each one you can’t use hurts more than it might in a tournament deck.

--Stacking lots of uniques removes the diversity from your deck. Though it might seem like a good idea to maximize your odds of getting a certain character in play, the tough reality is that singular character based decks just aren’t a good idea in the current meta. It’s better to have two characters to choose from than to have double odds of one—what if you needed the other one in this situation?

--Duplicates seem good, but they’re not really. Generally, you’d rather have two dudes in play than one with a dupe. Dupes are also somewhat easy to cancel and they don’t help against burn.

--Isn’t there an exception to this rule? Well, yes there is. I’d say you can play more than one of a unique if they are INTEGRAL to your deck. (Hint: there’s not more than one integral character in your deck) You might also play more than one unique if you have easy and reliable ways to recur them from the dead pile. For example, you might use three Ser Jaime Lannister (TK) and also use On My Oath (TK) to get him back if he happens to die.

DECKBUILDING PRINCIPLE THREE: DRAW EQUALS WIN

Yep, that about says it all. The more cards, the more options, the more stuff, the more chances you have. Ensuring proper cardflow is the toughest thing for limited cardpool decks to do, so you might look for ways to cheat that: good setup, emphasis on hand protection or hand destruction techniques (such as emphasizing Intrigue challenges), higher claim plots (to make your challenge wins count for 2 cards per challenge), and basically playing every draw effect you can get your hands on. Depending on the deck, I want 5-6 repeatable draw effects in there to make sure that I get one into play early.

Alright! Now that we've got the very basics out of the way, let's look at this list here that I've quickly put together using the following sets:

2x Core (you can use one but then you need to find something else for the second copy of Golden Tooth Mines and you really should be looking to go up to three rather than down to one)
Lions of the Rock Deluxe
The Kingsguard
City of Secrets
The Battle of Blackwater Bay
Chasing Dragons
Where Loyalty Lies

Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder

Lim Pool Lanni

Total Cards: (60)

House:
House Lannister

Agenda: (0)

Plot: (7)
1x On My Oath (TK)
1x Valar Morghulis (Core)
1x Breaking and Entering (LotR)
1x City of Lies (CoS)
1x City of Soldiers (TBoBB)
1x A City Besieged (CD)
1x You Swore an Oath (WLL)

Character: (30)
1x Ser Arys Oakheart (TK)
1x Ser Barristan Selmy (TK)
1x Ser Boros Blount (TK)
3x Ser Jaime Lannister (TK)
1x Ser Kevan Lannister (LotR)
1x Ser Mandon Moore (TK)
1x Ser Meryn Trant (TK)
2x Ser Preston Greenfield (TK)
1x Tywin Lannister (TK)
2x Doubting Septa (LotR)
1x Cersei Lannister (LotR)
1x Chella, Daughter of Cheyk (Core)
2x Arrogant Contender (LotR)
2x Lannisport Moneylender (LotR)
2x Lannisport Weaponsmith (Core)
2x Enemy Informer (Core)
1x Tyrion Lannister (CoS)
1x Yezzan's Grotesquerie (CD)
2x Watchful Servant (CD)
1x Ghost of High Heart (WLL)
1x The Hound (TK)

Attachment: (3)
1x Widow's Wail (LotR)
2x Increased Levy (LotR)

Event: (8)
2x The Only Game that Matters (LotR)
2x You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf! (Core)
3x A House Divided (WLL)
1x Muster (Core)

Location: (19)
2x Golden Tooth Mines (Core)
1x Shadowblack Lane (Core)
1x Street of Sisters (Core)
1x Street of Steel (Core)
3x Sunset Sea (Core)
3x The Goldroad (Core)
1x The Iron Throne (LotR)
2x Coin Mint (LotR)
1x Lannisport Treasury (LotR)
1x Lannisport Brothel (Core)
1x Tunnels of the Red Keep (CoS)
2x Alchemist's Guild Hall (TBoBB)


We're building this deck around Ser Jaime and his Kingsguard. Since we'll want every draw effect we can, Jaime is a natural choice. We can safely include 3x of him since we can get him back with his personal plot, On My Oath. The rest of the plot deck helps with your income (City of Lies), control effects (City Besieged, City of Soldiers), board resetting (Valar Morghulis) or heavy claim (Breaking and Entering; City of Soldiers). You Swore an Oath can help on defense, but is easily replaced.

Our characters are build with setup in mind. Most of them can be set up cheaply (like our gold weenies or our septas) or semi-cheaply (like all of our shadow cards). We have a few heavy hitters in the form of Tywin and Cersei, but we've kept our costs down. Splitting cost, like for Jaime and Tyrion, can be helpful as well since you can pay for them over two rounds. Those cards that are easily set up also double as stuff to die for MIL claim (and that will happen).

Income for shadow decks is weird. You can't use as many icon reducers as normal since so many of your cards go into shadows first. Thus, I've given us a lot of gold production, including Increased Levy (which can be set up) and Coin Mint (which can be an accelerator, but also lets us get stuff out of shadows earlier in the round than is normal. It also can be fun with Ser Barristan's ability). Coin Mints can't be set up (well, they can, but they don't get any gold that way) so use wisely.

That's why I've been judicious with events. You'll want to use these effects wisely since you won't have that many shots in your gun. A House Divided is among the strongest in the game, and the Any Phase kneel of YKTWD still makes tournament decks years past the Core set. The Only Game that Matters can save your bacon against a Stark or Greyjoy player.

See, that deck's not too bad, is it? Extra control is added with the Guild Halls, the Enemy Informers, and the Lannisport Brothel. Sure, a lot of the cards could be more efficient, and the deck is truly crying out for Kingdom of Shadows (and maybe even a Little Bird). Adding Knights of the Realm as an agenda will also help a lot with the draw resiliency, but I think you could take this to a game night and not get embarrassed. Not bad for a small investment! And to be honest, you could even invest less....

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the principles I've outlined here and maybe even a few on the deck itself.

Oh, and if you want to serve as the Knight for a young deck squire, or if you're a common born lad or lass looking to carry the armor for someone Landed and Knighted, post below. That's how I started, and though I wouldn't pretend to be a top tier player, I wouldn't be here without Nathan's help. You'll never know who you might connect with until you reach out....

As always, thanks for reading.