Pillaging your discards (3-2 at Kill in the Kingswood) 1.0

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• 1.0

The new wall seemed like a fun card, but as usual, I wanted to approach playing with it differently and was intrigued by the idea of using pillage and the Nighttime Marauders to seed the discard pile with characters to take. The idea was to increase the consistency of having targets available to pull. Also it gave me Iron Mines to be able to offensively use Valar M without necessarily wiping my own board completely even though I don't run many dupes. With The Wall its pretty easy to repopulate your side of the board quickly anyways and since you already made the investment and took the tempo hit to play it pre-reset usually, it really can be a high impact play.

In testing this deck was an amazing match versus Targ/Wars (you take and kill the Second Sons or Tris them away and you can take/kill nearly 90% of their unique characters too so they end up drawing dead towards the end of the game), Amazing versus Martell/Wars (when you play/take their Shadow City Bastards their icon removal gets a lot weaker. When all their 3 drop effects are taken to your side from the discards it makes it hard for them to disrupt your challenges too. Its just a good matchup), a coin flip against Tyrell and Stark depending on what you hit with the wall early, and a slightly sub par match in the mirror. I didn't really get much testing against Bara or Lanni as, well, not many people are playing those right now.

So how did it do on the day, 3-2. Go figure. I'm a game above .500 again. Right like I usually do. I kept both my streaks of never having a losing record and never having the same Faction/Agenda combo as anyone else in the field going on the day, though, so I wasn't really disappointed. I honestly thought I was throwing away my winning streak by bringing this deck, so I was glad I was wrong.

Round 1, Jesse Carpenter, NW/Wolf- Loss

Yeah, the mirror is not good for me. Jesse opened with a Ranging Party in play and a Recruiter which made it really hard to get a board state when I was light on econ. I had The Wall and Queenscrown out, but it whiffed first and second turn. He just did not have enough of his own characters in the deck for me to consistently hit when I needed to. In the end he was able to play my discarded characters more effectively than I could his and he smartly did not over extend when he had the early board advantage. I clawed up to around 9 power at the end of the game, but I could not make up the early deficit I put myself into.

Round 2, Seth Baker, Martell/Red Door Starfall - Win

Remember how I said this was a good matchup. Yeah, I was right. He opened a shadow city bastard and a reducer. I dropped a recruiter turn 1 to take it. I hit the wall and queenscrown by turn 2 and took another shadow city bastard. He regularly fed me a steady stream of 3 drops in his discard...not all by choice once I started using my Marauders. Add to that a Seized on his Flea Bottom and this was a landslide. 15-3, I believe.

Round 3, Roy Rogers, Tyrell/Wars- Loss

Well, when you have all 3 walls, 2 guarding the realms, and both yorens all in the bottom 18 cards of your deck your ability to play out of my opponent's discards becomes a little less consistent. I hung in there despite this and managed to take it to 7 plots and a 15-9 finish. Close Calling Mace back to life (he died to my valar) was the finishing dagger that let him close. Roy played it very well too which made it impossible to Tris away the Septon like I kept trying to do, the one turn I was able to get it in the discard he was first player and could use Flea Bottom to get it back out before I could hit it with Tris. Doh. My best hope of winning actually became that he was down to 7 cards in deck when we ended. Yes, you read that right.

Round 4, James Restaino, Lanni/Wars - Win

Remember how having no wall and few steal cards can be a problem...apparently I am only slightly right on that. When you draw all 3 of your milks in the opening hand you can sort of slow down Lanni enough to stay in the game. He opened Janos, Cersei, Hound and a few chuds turn one. I immediately milk Cersei. I get a few pillage characters out and a recruiter to steal a chud to use as claim each round. He is taking an early lead but after his conf turn 2 I am second player, so when he plays a duped Tyrion now both him and Cersei get milked. I get the hound out of hand with a Marauder, My queenscrown is sending all his dupes and bigs into his discard pile and he keeps drawing into chuds or locations which aren't quite as effective due to the nature of my deck. Then he makes the critical mistake. He literally says out loud, I don't think you run Valar M in that deck, its probably D. He takes his dupes off Tyrion and Cersei over two turns. Yep, I dropped the Valar next turn. The game went rapidly in my favor from that point on. 15-9 final score.

Round 5, Patrick Ontome, Greyjoy/Alliance-Qohor/Sun - Win

First, it was great to see 3 of the DC guys leave the beltway and come out for an event away from Labyrinth Games. That needs to happen more! They are great fun as a group and we don't see them often enough.

Patrick did well early game, managing to get my queenscrown with nothing burns (and a milk), hitting the wall with a Sow from a unblockable Core Balon challenge, and generally being a pain for my location package. I was able to steal and use his Shadow City bastards though, and I had enough draw between Arry and a Raven I was able to redraw into another Wall a few turns later. He got out Asha, who was a pain, but I was able to Varys into Marched since she had a bodyguard to get her off of the board and rebuild. Eventually it was just card advantage that won out for me. I never got deep enough into his discards to get a good target with the wall, but I also never really needed to in order to win. 15-5 finish I think.

Thanks to all my opponents on the day, thank you to Roy for letting me crash at his place last night, thank you to Jesse for buying a fucking ton of beer for me (which I bought a few rounds in return but still) and to everyone who was at the after party for making it a fucking great time as always when we get together.