2017 Store Champ Winner (7-1, 24 players) - Post Valar Lanni 1.0

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• 1.0

Following a 2016 season of decent results (SC- 1st, 4th; Regionals- 1st, 2nd, 8th; Nationals -2nd) with Lanni Sun, I made two decks for the 2017 competitive season to address the post-valar meta: Targaryen Fealty and Lanni Kraken.

While banner kraken seems like an obvious and uninspiring choice, the card pool remains such that dependency on big characters is still large, and a save/loss of a 7 or 6 coster could result in an irrecoverable tempo loss. I eventually decided to go with Lanni Kraken due to my familiarity with the Lannister house, and went 7-1 on the day.

A short report:

Round 1 - Martell Fealty (won) I had two iron mines out the first turn, so I did not expect a second turn valar by my opponent, which hurt him more than it did me.I quickly dumped my entire hand on the board by playing the highest econ plots to reduce the impact his attainted attachments had on me. Although I was losing out on intrigue challenges (both offensively and defensively), my superior board position helped me close the game quickly.

Round 2 - Targ Summer (won) My opening hand saw both hand's judgment. Despite the less than optimal setup, I decided to keep it due to the weakness of tyrion, little finger, asha, theon (and even jamie and victarion if Dany is out) to Dracarys. Expectedly I made use of both hand's judgment to cancel two dracarys within the first two plots. That was crucial as that meant my opponent basically knelt a character out for nothing, allowing me to defend/attack more easily. While Isle or ravens allowed him to recycle dracarys, he never saw them a third time.

Round 3 - NW KOW (loss) A wraiths in midst opening coupled with KOW meant that I had a reserve of 3. A set up of white tree and KOW meant that I had little economy in the first plot to play around with. despite a relatively good hand, i had to dump cards and struggled to get into the game. In plots 3 and 4 meagre contribution was also played, resulting in me losing 3 gold. The choke was real, and I lost steam quickly after the 3rd plot, with the Wall and 2xwinter festival giving lots of power to my opponent.

Round 4 - Lannister Fealty (won) I always feel confident against other Lannister decks and this was no different. We opened agressively with my opponent playing march to get rid of my 3 cost character in exchange for her reducer (gregor was her other character). My second plot was another march to get rid of my reducer and her 3 cost character. I did so to force her to be defensive with her double duped Gregor. While I had a tywin and Jamie out by then, my opponent had the duped Gregor and Jamie. I took the first in not defending the military challenge, and lost my own jamie to a PTTS. It was a huge tempo hit to me, but i swung back with a military challenge against her 3 remaining characters. Surprisingly, she took the second dupe off her gregor, which allowed me to play tears against him. the loss of a 7 coster was too hard to recover after that.

Round 5 - Lannister Rains (won) Was happy to see another Lannister again, which predictably ran Queen Cersei. However, he didnt see her this round which meant he often had to overcommit to try to trigger rains, which allowed me to swing back easily on the offence.

Ended Swiss 2nd place.

Quarter Finals - Lannister Rains (won) A rematch against the same player, who bemoaned meeting me yet again (indeed I love playing against other Lannisters). We both had our two 7 costers before the first marshalling phase (gregor and tywin for me and cersei and tywin for him). He chose to play Cersei while I chose to play Tywin. Our other 7 coster both got discarded for claim during the first plot. With Cersei out, my opponent could trigger rains every plot and I allowed all his intrigue challenges through, preferring to hit back and rush on power with the greyjoy banner. My hand emptied pretty quickly, but I was able to captalise on Lannister's power weakness despite an equivalent board state to reach 15 power first.

Semi Finals - NW KOW (walkover) Fortunately for me, my greatest fear gave me a walkover.

Finals - NW Fealty (Won) Opponent had a duped aemon, haunted forest, and white tree by the first challenge, and the wall by the second plot. He also had lots of intrigue icons and the ravens which meant that it was hard for me to whittle down his hand, or kill many characters. Instead I focused on getting UO challenges through to kneel the wall and for the uo power, as well as on my renown characters. While I had craven played on asha (instead of tywin), thankfully my opponent did not draw another copy of negative attachments, which meant that my gradual power creep from uo and renown caught up with his stalling game.

Conclusion: I was very lucky to meet the decks in this tournament that didn't have an answer to my deck. Despite Lannisters not getting as many good cards (imo) in the recent cycle) compared to other houses, I attempted to address it's problems with i) direct kills, ii) power icon weakness, iii) valar by bannering kraken in a more defensive deck compared to bannering sun.