Shock & Awe 1.0

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• 1.0

I am of the opinion that any deck that has no draw engine should run Counting Coppers. Especially since you don't even have Littlefinger in your list. Having cards/options in the mid to late game is too important for consistency to pass up on it.

Have you played any games with this version yet?

My gf played your deck against my targ fealty, on a BO3, i won 2-1. BUT mistakes were made, i have to admit with optimal plays she could have won the serie. Really fun deck to play and to play against. Thanks for sharing ! Regarding counting coppers, second game was quite long, and despite havin a really good board position the deck struggled to close the game, maybe due to being in top deck mode for the last 3 turns, with 2 unused kingsroad on the board. I don't know if it is really needed, this needs further testing. Good Job !

@agktmte I've only played a couple of games yet - it will get a better runout tonight. The two results were one blowout win when I swarmed all over early game, and one blowout loss when I drew a couple too many dead cards (as @camping said I had 2 unused Kingsroad in play) and couldn't power through them to the rest.

This really is precisely what the experiment is about. By sacrificing some mid-long effectiveness do I improve my short-mid effectiveness enough to compensate? Counting Coppers could be essential, it's just rough to lose any of those aggressive plots. Confiscate could go, though it leaves Arya exposed.

BTW, it's worth remembering Aeron, who is a form of card draw when he's rocking.

@camping - I'm glad you like it! It's definitely a deck that you CAN make mistakes with, and one that you benefit from playing a bunch of times and getting familiar with the pacing of how you generate the critical murders that send you over the top. It's nice to have a way of playing Stark, though!

@Old Gods & The Newit's why i'm gratefull for sharing the list. My gf is a diehard stark fan, and after our kingslayer tournament she was a bit depressed, now she feels she can play her favourite house and still kick some asses !

@Old Gods & The New Thoughts on ditching Wildfire Assault for Counting Coppers?

@agktmte

Absolutely not, Wildfire Assault is 100% vital. There are basically two games this deck wins:

1) the game where you start well and apply constant multikill pressure until your opponent is locked off the board.

2) the game where they start better than you and plays loads of soak, where you establish Stealth then Wildfire and begin your multikill pressure.

Without wildfire I think your win % takes an easy 5-10% hit.

I played a bunch of games vs the Hunting Accident Lannister deck and won 3-2. Three of the games were decided in setup (2-1) as if he doesn't get a good start I pretty much auto win. The other two were longer games, in one my card draw finally gave out while in the other he never got his card draw running and my efficiency and recursion gave me the edge.

Results vs Gate version inconclusive. In not many games were the new GJ cards critical, but in only one game did I feel I was lacking card draw, and even then Gates would have just seen me losing more slowly as it can't race Lannisport/Pycelle.

Also played 1 vs Bara Fealty, won comfortably.

Is this deck the 'best' deck in your opinion? In my testing the deck has been good but not great, mediocre setups / draws can get out played in certain match ups.

I tested it against Targ / Martell and won 3-0 or someone, not a big sample size but something. I agree that less big guys and more efficient small dudes is the way to go, that's why I think Targ / Martell and decks like these are ponent.

@barnie As I said to @agktmteI think there are two key 'modes' to the deck regarding whether you play the Wildfire game or not, and then there's a tertiary mode of just trying to battle through as best you can in the games that don't fit either of those mode archetypes.

Now I've been an aggro/rush player across many games for 20 years so it could be that I've most naturally picked up the right playstyle for those modes more quickly than other players, and I would agree that there's more subtlety to it than just going full zerg rush every time (though zerg rush does get the job done a lot!).

The thing is, bad setups hurt every deck and this is not immune to that. Every deck is going to punt some games to mulliganning a bad hand into a bad hand. The first thing is that I think this deck does that LESS often than most due to the low cost curve, and the second thing is that I think this deck punishes those bad hands of your opponent MORE often than any other deck. What this deck does is raise the bar for what a good hand actually is for your opponent because of just how hard you can hit in T1 (both claim, kill, and kneeling locations to stop them playing characters). Usually a three-character setup is pretty good, but against this deck that's only just getting you out of the danger zone. It's a great leveller - you hit Baratheon just as hard as any other deck, pretty much.

People constantly say that it's not got card draw, but I believe there's card advantage from different areas. Any time I hit Claim 2 from my plot I'm +1 card. Any time I recur a character with Summer or Aeron I'm +1 card. Any time Bran has Insight I'm +1 card. Any time Grey Wind eats a dude I'm +1 card. Any time you play a character but I render it pointless with Stealth and you throw him in the dead pile I'm +1 card. There's more than one way to skin a cat! But if you like card draw too much then you can sacrifice some tempo and go back to the 36-Stark version with Gates of Winterfell triggering 60% of the time, a friend of mine is running that version still and they're both viable.

Just keep the deck around in your gauntlet and keep trying it. That's what I did and found it gradually moving up the rankings to be the deck that I played most often as my 'main' deck.

How have you felt that the deck does against Varys? Has he ever lost you a game that you weren't already losing?

@ingsve first I have to say I haven't played vs Varys much. I've played vs Hunting Accident with 3x Varys a lot, but I think most of the time they know he would die before Dominance so only play him as a last resort.

I do have a fair number of dupes, though, and I don't make much of a habit of mindlessly spamming dudes onto the board if I don't need them.

Yes, if they've got Varys and a lot of claim soak they might get to trigger him, and I might not have dupes out when they do. I doubt it would be an auto-loss though if that does happen.

@ingsveThe last Varys game that I can remember was about a week ago. It was vs Hunting Accident and he had a duped Tywin down that I couldn't quite eat into through the soak so he was holding his own despite my attacks. He hadn't seen Lannisport and I killed Pycelle, so neither of us hard card draw and we were trading blows quite evenly.

Around turn 5/6 I finally started to overwhelm him with my constant murder and he turned to Varys, with the intention of Varysing and saving Tywin. I made him claim the dupe of Tywin so when Varys died the only thing left on board was my Arya Stark without a icon.

But I'd seen Varys coming as he had first Marshall and so held back and was ready to relaunch the next turn with Asha and another dude, so even though he'd Varysed I was all set to carry on stealthing and murdering while he struggled to play anything good as his guys were all dead already.

His Varys actually marked the point where I took control of the game rather than the point where I lost it!

`@Old Gods & The New Ya, from the looks of it, it seems like the kind of deck where it's hard to play Varys to change the tide of the game at least. When you have the advantage Varys would even be vulnerable to claim perhaps before he could be triggered. An deck that uses Varys offensively might do better since you have a lot of non-uniques. Then again the low cost curve means you can probably repopulate and gain control easier than other decktypes.

Well, if you knew the exact contents of the deck and knew it didn't have Milk of the Poppy, you could sneak out a Varys through A Game of Thrones. Not sure how to build around that plan yet, though.

I do like the deck, though. Stealth is just so good.

@fozzy fosbourne yeah I'm not claiming it's completely immune to Varys, just that a lot if the time you make it pretty difficult for then to use Varys, with a small window to find and use him.

I just finished fourth in a tournament with a deck that’s remarkably similar to yours. How important do you find Confiscation? I’ve found that in general, I don’t particularly mind if my opponent drops Milk, as I’ve got enough stealth to make up for a neutered Asha or Theon. Arya gets hit bad by it, and if you’ve chosen her as your Ice target, than damn, but even then, I don’t feel like I’ve been set far back.

How does the lack of Milk of the Poppy treat you against Baratheon? I’ve found that that is by far my hardest matchup, so much so that I’m considering running a third in mine.

Final thought: In my deck, I lean somewhat more heavily towards the side of things, so I’m thinking about cutting one Blood Orange Grove for a third Iron Fleet Scout. Any thoughts on that in particular?

@afishisbornhaha - I think I loterally posted the opposite questions back to you on your deck page :-)

I think Confiscation is important just because Arya is that vulnerable. It’s usually a 4 gold plot that basically puts a stealth MIL card ‘into play’ for free by reactivating Arya, and that’s trenendous value.

I think I might like your double Sneak Attack approach over my Winds, need to try that. Would ALWAYS have 2x Marched though.

I like your Milks. I left them out of my deck for a reason - I want characters dead, so throwing a Milk on something for a turn before it dies anyway seemed poor. However I’m getting to the point where I feel like I beat most decks that dont stick their huge dude down and keep them alive (as you lost to Stannis) and maybe I do need contingency Milks after all - For The North hasn’t been pulling up many trees so Ive space.

For the others - I think I prefer Summer\Bran over random Vikings so u would keep the Heart Tree Groves. I do note your extra card draw though, which is a potent thing I need to give careful thought to.

Grats though - I def think Stark/GJ is the best deck people aren’t trying out.

@Old Gods & The NewI might have to try replacing a one Sneak Attack with a second Marched to the Wall (remember, only one double plot per deck). I often have a wealth of easily forgettable targets for the march, so I could see putting in a second.

As a new player who is determined to play Stark, thanks for this thread. This is exactly the kind of deck I wanted to play since day 1. Any advice on deckbuilding/playing something like this?