Twynn, Banner of the Mirri (Reading, UK Regional Winner)

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Lanni Dragon 0 0 0 1.0

MatsuPeke 45

Mirri is evil. Tywin and Tyrion are dangerous and unbalanced but hey "Money is my superpower" is as much Lanni's thing as Batman's. But Mirri, she is evil. Nerf Mirri, for the Seven's sake!

Anyway, this is the deck in case it helps anybody (albeit frankly it's a bit late to be of much use, just never got around to it... it is not like there's any secret tech here!). Even if multiple versions of this theme are already out there, there is always a bit of a personal twist I guess. It was a Regional, with over 50 people I believe, and I went undefeated (one Mod Win tho) so it must have something right, innit?

On the deck composition:

The plot deck is boring. It is efficient. Does what it needs to do, pays the Confiscation tax, gets moneys to put them fatties out. Used to have Heads on Spikes (love it!) and other fancier plots but... comes back to what's efficient and you will see this setup in pretty much all Lanni/Dragon decks for a reason.

I do not think there is much to be said in the Targaryen cards either, those 12 cards almost come attached to the Banner of the Dragon card out of the box, really (btw thanks to Ryan Jones' deck in this very same site for opening my eyes to Viserion as a slot filler! For some reason I am dragon-blind :) ).

I play a lot more events that people seem to, and the whole negation set (Milk, Nightmares, Treachery)... ultimately, those big, scary characters do all the work, so investing a good chunk of the deck in stopping your opponent from stopping them sounds sensible to me (probably should pack the 3rd tHJ but I could not find the room!).

It is not terribly fun to play, frankly. It is efficient and things play together well with other things, it flows very well and that is enjoyable enough, but wears thin quick... however it handles Martell comfortably with pretty much anybody important having Intrigue icon as baseline, Bara with too many characters being important/scary to let them shut down all your tricks (starring the Fat Bastard from Pentos as Mel's Worst Nightmare), and Stark with Mirri and Tears (plus Treachery/Nightmare/Milk to allow them doing their thing vs Winterfell and Catlyn) so it is surprisingly hard to give up on ;)

I do not have a report, which is a shame and I apologize to my opponents but, well, I did not expect to get that far and took no notes, which combined with my shitty memory... if you are that curious, you can see about half of my games (and all the ones after the cut) thanks to my friend Ben's youtube channel "Knight of the Blackwater", however:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD9I-7Nn-UKBqYEdrAPyhMA

(Rules are one head shake and a drink each time I forget to collect gold on Tyrion or renown on The Mountain. Rolling of the eyes is optional)

3 comments

Davemcc 1

What about dropping a Targ Loyalist for a 3rd Hands Judgment? Also , why only 2 Tears and 3 Ptts, instead of 3 Tears and 2 Ptts? Im fairly new player so my questions are more for learning purposes.

MatsuPeke 45

Hi Dave, it is all a bit down to how you play but I will give you my reasons, and you of course can apply what makes sense to you:

To take one Loyalist out, you have to consider you need to pack 12 Targ cards to fulfill the Banner requirements. Hence you can only trade for another Targ card (I have exactly 12)... Targ banner has good cards (Mirri, Illyrio, to a lesser degree Jorah) but not a lot of depth. So you will find the same 12 cards, pretty much, in most decks with this Banner. I personally tried a couple of Crones (if only to take one Mirri out, she is great but difficult to play if you used Trading already) but they work so rarely. Anyway, when playing Lanni you probably want your Banner's 3 reducer guys anyway for another, perhaps more important reason: there is no better start than Tywin plus Rose Road, but you need another body to avoid your opponent opening with Marched to the Wall. And there is no other body for 1 gold... so you are increasing your chances of a God Mode start this way, basically.

About a 3rd Hand's Judgment: Having one in hand is a great source of confidence, but it does nothing on its own. So you have to think of why you want it, and there are 2 reasons: either your events are too important and need protection (eg: I would always pack 3 in Targ because I want my Dracarys! to always hit) or some event out there that you can afford to keep the money aside for harms you a lot. This deck does not care that much about its events (well, no more than others), and uses expensive events (so opponent might not have the cash available to cancel anyway) for that use you need Hand's only when your opponent got his so it is statistically improvable, but hardly impossible. So 2 would sort of do, mainly to protect my Treacherys, really... For the second usage, the trick is the money. Most of the ones I would like to stop take 2 gold, and given that I like to go first and do my PttS or pump Janos for intimidate or save for a Burnmen or... well, the point is saving 2g for his turn (or even the claim step of my own challenges for Elia's, as I will probably have used the gold for PttS or Janos etc already!) is difficult. The one cheap event you could aim to stop (and the reason a lot of decks go for 3 Hand's) is Tears. But it is only a problem for Gregor and against Martell, and even so you can usually (if you care enough) ensure you win Intrigue on defense.

3 PttS and 2 Tears vs 2 PttS and 3 Tears: PttS is 'better'. It is difficult to cancel (see above paragraph), works on the spot so going first you immediately remove resources that could cripple you in a counterattack, and Lanni can generally pull it off between Tywin and Gregor (and Jaime for a free +5!). So I would not downgrade PttS to 2 to make room for Tears... but why not run 3 and 3? This is a deck about killing people, in the end. Problem is in the current meta (or rather, what was current for this tournament) Stark, Martell and Lanni are those to beat and the last 2 have very few targets for Tears (albeit Nymeria and Gregor are great targets) and Stark will Winterfel/Cat your Intrigue challenge most of the time... so you will find Tears sitting in your hand way too often. Still think it is worthwhile to pack enough Tears to see at least one in a game (for other Houses and also because opportunities might arise and kill is, in the end, what you are trying to do) but not so much that it clogs your hand. A difficult thing to balance off but deck composition is the only tool you have to manage variance to a degree so you can only try :)

This went much longer than I intended, but I thought you would want to know the full reasoning rather than my opinion reinstated. Hope it helps!

Davemcc 1

That helps a lot actually! After remembering 12 Targ cards are required, I feel more like a noob tho. The Ptts vs Tears makes a lot of sense also, especially seeing how impactful the cost of the events effect the outcome. This was very useful information, thank you! Kind of helps me in actually how I play as well, knowing when to play, and the importance of the cards themselves.