The Green Manchalishi - Manchester SC winner

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
The Green Manalishi (with the Golden Rose Crown) 73 48 35 1.0
Inspiration for
The Green Manchanorwichi (1st, Norwich Regional, 7-1) 29 19 19 1.0

cobrabubbles 400

Obviously, this is a very close imitation of Wamma's Stahleck build (http://thronesdb.com/decklist/view/7046/the-green-manalishi-with-the-golden-rose-crown-1.0).

The deck is an absolute marvel, incredibly fun to play. I started dabbling in it after he published his list in November, and have since won a couple of local events with it as well as the first leg of the weekender at Fanboy3. And I'm still learning things from it, about balancing short term and long term tempo, about pacing, about the relative value of draw and economy. I feel more able to engage with the fundamentals of the game with this deck since I have since the halcyon days of 1st ed Clansmen. It's super flexible, with no true bad matchups that I've found. Can't recommend it enough.

Not gonna do a full rundown, Wamma's writeup tells you most of what you need to know, but I guess I'll briefly cover some of the changes I've made.

Plots: Obviously the biggest change since Stahleck is the addition of Valar, which is great here. Balancing the tempo loss and possible death of your big hitters against your long-term economic position relative to your opponent can be a challenge, but most often you can make it work for you. And you also have the tools to switch up a gear and end the game by turn 6 if your own Valar is gonna bone you. Some of the maindeck changes result from Valar, most obviously Bodyguards, and also it contributed partially to cutting the kill events as they're either less needed when Valar works for you or less effective because everyone's packing saves.

Riddle over Strings and Calm over Song are both recommendations from the mustachioed maestro himself. Strings is super slow in Rains (you don't get to use a plot until the challenges phase the round after it was flipped) and has fewer targets than Riddle anyway. Calm can be awkward if you go first and find yourself wanting to trigger Rains but also wanting to keep the claim reduction, but that comes up rarely enough that it's as good here as anywhere. It's also a very nice play into First Snow, which can occasionally be a problem.

I was sorry to have to cut Unexpected Delay as I love the card, but I found that having to play both it and Valar (usually across rounds 4-7) was just messing up my mojo too much and making it difficult to keep tempo into the late game, even if it was a pain for my opponent. I also cut Banners for Noble because Banners is worse in the Valar meta and I wanted an opener that could leverage an economy advantage from setup better than Trading does. Clash went in both to help with speeding up the late game and as a high-initiative replacement for Banners. I do miss Summons occasionally and I think it's a fair pick, but for me it's just not quite versatile enough.

Regarding the schemes, as most people have established by now Filthy and PBtT are mandatory, they just give you so many options in challenges. I went with Wildfire and Plans in the floating slots, but either of those could well go out for Game of Thrones or even Pulling if you want maximum plot-fuckery shenanigans. I only used Wildfire once at the SC, to kill a Fiery Followers for a laugh. Turned out to be a mistake as my eagerness for bants resulted in flipping out of Clash before I'd made my power challenge. I expect it's pretty useful against big-stuff Stark, non-jumper Lanni or similar Tyrell decks to keep their bomb-vomiting under control, but on the day AGoT would have served me better. Plans went in pretty much solely as anti-NW and Bara tech to deal with Winter Festival and Feast for Crows. Again I never used it properly on the day, only flipping it once just to get a Caswell's trigger and break BAMF lock, but then I never played against a true stall deck.

Speaking of NW: The NW matchup is an interesting one. Rains -> Filthy and Informants are good tools for working around the defence and kneeling the Wall once or twice a game, but you don't have enough disruption to really kill that strategy (let's face it, almost no-one does nowadays). So you have to try and ramp up the pace quickly (another reason Clash is great), and dig for Nightmares. I love 3x Nightmares in every deck, but if your Wall matchup is shaky it is absolutely mandatory. I also threw in the Scouts, my only notable change to the character base, because I didn't trust myself to play well enough to beat NW without a little extra help.

New Cards: Ghosts of Harrenhal brought some (literally) sweet tools for Tyrell. I didn't have time to test them before the SC but threw them in anyway because they seemed fun. Peach should be useful in theory but for whatever reason I only ended up using it twice on the day despite drawing it a lot. It's certainly a flex slot although I intend to keep trying it - I like that, like Highgarden, it gives you a silly way to mess with NW by getting more use out of your characters than they expect. Brienne only got turned on once (I guess I'm just not her type), but was a solid body whenever she hit the table, as you'd expect.

Another sort-of-new card to mention is Caswell's Keep, which I think is really underrated. It actually won me a game, letting me dig through aggressive BAMFing to find characters to keep up with considerable attrition from Tyrell-Sun. Getting to fire it off Rains is great fun - you can either line up a loyal card to draw with Renly or Bumps, or set up your own draw in advance so you're free to mess with your opponent next plot phase. I generally use it on myself unless my opponent is obviously lacking in econ or bodies. I can see the argument for that being suboptimal, but hey, this is Tyrell, being more proactive just feels right.

Final card thought - shout out to my main fool Butterbumps, who is the MVP of the deck. Cheap draw is just SO good in a deck like this. I've hit the legendary 4-draw with him and Renners just once. The rush was real.

Er, apparently I don't know the meaning of the word briefly. Oh well. Regarding the tournament itself, for anyone interested, I played against:

  • The once and future King Jack Machin, playing a Greyjoy Stag he hadn't looked at before the game
  • Josh Chambers, the Jankmaster to my Jankawan apprentice, playing Tyrell Stag control
  • DBUKFEBMNCHBBTTGANGGLP, playing GJ Rains
  • Steven 'You may remember me from that glorious hour you spent introducing me to The Maester's Path at the Stahleck legacy tourney' Christian, playing the aforementioned Tyrell Sun
  • Fellow Team Scotland member and generally hilarious Wurzel Gummage impersonator Tony 'cockbongo' Makos, playing Bara Summer

Then in the cut I played Steve again, Dave again, and Wedge, the machine-man who needs no introduction, in the final (he was on Tyrell Summer). I was very-very-almost undefeated, but went to time tied 11-11 against Tony and lost the tiebreaker at 28 cards in deck to his 31. Not sure this was what the devs had in mind when they said they didn't want the old mantra 'Draw=Win' to hold so true in 2.0, but hey ho. I was also undefeated in the local tournaments I played this at. It has lost games of course but I've never known it to get totally crushed.

Okay enough rambling. TL;DR: just play the damn deck, it's amazing.

Peach Out xx

12 comments

jcwamma 2842

Lovely work Rowan. It has my hearty endorsement ;).

Markdrive82 124

bravo Rowan! Paramours still going strong in 2.0!

OldShrimpEyes 426

"apparently I don't know the meaning of the word briefly" - this surprises no one. Good work though man and congrats on your win!

Jai 1

Great edits, and a very clear thought process. I've been working on developing this deck myself - I can't bring myself to take out Unexpected Delay, it's blown out so many unsuspecting opponents in the past, and it's an amazing check to people just playing naked bombs (or Catelyn) pre- or post-Valar. Though I suppose the more people who see it coming, the less effective it'll be. Hmmm...

Been experimenting with Jacqen as a third bomb, with (I'd say) fairly decent results. Perhaps it's a little win-more, but I do want to try him out with more Peaches - seems like there's potential for a Mirri-like murder engine. I did manage to pull off the dream of Jacqen INT win//Kill//Rains//PBtT//Stand//Informant//Kill, which is basically 1 in a million.

Last thing: agree completely on Butterbumps. I love that little bastard.

citra78 1

Good to see its not just the Norwich meta getting ravaged by this deck, wp Rowan!

cockbongo 1

"I only used Wildfire once at the SC, to kill a Fiery Followers for a laugh. Turned out to be a mistake as my eagerness for bants resulted in flipping out of Clash before I'd made my power challenge."

Absolutely no comment required.

NastyJack 1

Awesome version of the deck! I've been playing it a lot and really enjoying it. One question though. I've got a tourney coming up and I'd like to play Highgarden, Caswell's Keep and Renly's Pavilion. Do you think playing one copy of each with a straight swap of the two Offer of a Peach for two Support of the People would be a good move?

Thanks again for the writeup.

cobrabubbles 400

@NastyJackI'm planning to cut one Peach for a Pavilion myself. I'm always a fan of All Power To The Soviets and it fits in well with the deck's proactive style. Personally I'd just go for 1 copy though, otherwise you'll have to cut other stuff for it and I'm pretty sure every other card in here is better than the 2nd Support.

NastyJack 1

@cobrabubbles I had already cut the Little Bird for the extra space but I could see why that wouldn't be optimal. The bird is so powerful on Renly, Brienne, KoF and helps against Martell.

sidge85 40

I piloted this deck, with a couple of small changes, to a 6-0 SC win at the Huddersfield, UK tournament yesterday (17 players - No Tyrion's Chain)

Biggest change was replacing Forgotten Plans with A Game of Thrones and I must say that AGOT saved me a couple of times when I could shut down an opponents challenges phase giving me opportunities to find more answers before next challenges phase. Not sure I ever required to use Wildfire from Rains but it would stay in regardless.

Deck has so many answers that even in games when I felt I had lost I was able to crawl back into the game and get the win.

Wins against Stark Fealty, Targ Fealty, Greyjoy Wolf, Stark Fealty in Swiss. Then Stark Fealty (4th round opponent) and Bara Summer in cut. Won the final with about 10 power on Randyl :)

Great deck, 5/7, perfect

cobrabubbles 400

@sidge85 - Banging! Congrats dude!

AGoT is pretty good, agreed, and especially in that field with plenty Stark and Targ. I think the 5th Rains slot just has to be a meta call (if a weak one) until we get another generically good scheme.

sidge85 40

@cobrabubbles

I found that AGOT worked very nicely with An Offer of a Peach (a card I had seriously underestimated until I read the card properly as I was getting it confused with Brienne's requirements).

On those occasions when my opponent attacked with 2 characters to prevent a defensive Rains trigger, it was great to push out their big guy and defend with Renly to flip into AGOT. :)

It was also clutch against a Stark Fealty player when I was staring down a 2 claim mil and an ice! I was luckily going first and was able to flip into AGOT completely nulifying their challenges phase allowing me to confiscate Ice the next turn.

Having said that, yes I agree that it's probably meta dependent and it may be one of the first plots to once more schemes are printed.

As an aside, flipping Varys Riddle on your opponents Valar can be hilarious if you're set up for it :)