Tyrell /stag - 3rd place Leiden SC 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is the deck I took to a small store championship (11 player) last Saturday (link: http://thejoustingpavilion.com/tournaments/2931).

The deck looks a lot like the infamous deer garden, but started in a different way. I wanted a control deck to leverage Valar Morghulis with a lot of economy and a lot of saves.
This directed me to Tyrell main house, with The Arbor and 3 additional saves/dupes in the form of Lady-in-Waiting (which, together with Bodyguard, makes for 6 additional saves). To make use of the save of Lady-in-Waiting I needed to leverage the lady trait, and what is the best lady available? Melisandre (Core) in my book. So I went for the stag banner and added most the ladies I could find x3 (notable exception is the queen of thorns, which I find to expensive for what she did. Renly is so much better). Then added some kneel, draw and some dominance power. I even found room for Hobber and Slobber for some lady jank.

Round 1: Targ fealty (Egbert) - win A new player with a fairly standard Targ deck. He played well and we were quite balanced in terms of power, though he did manage to crown Melisandre (Core). In turn 3 he made a mistake, he used his only dupe of Daenerys Targaryen to save a Waking the Dragon and I had 2 characters with saves and a arbor. I wanted to save Brienne of Tarth too, so I waited another turn for Valar Morghulis, which he also did not expect (he played Close Call). Then Valar-ed in turn 5 (against his Famine) and cruised out the game.

Round 2: Martell winter (Donovan) - win Nice martell jank with a bit of choke. Arbor setup helped me against the choke and The Iron Throne and Chamber of the Painted Table combo helped me gain the power I needed. Against my dom and kneel my opponent stalwartly fought on but his draw abandoned him and after a Valar Morghulis I had more characters left and cruised to victory.

Round 3: Tyrell wolf (Erik) - loss No Arbor on setup did not help, though I did get a lot of kneel. The wolf package proved to much however. With the added power gain, stealth and a guy called Roose Bolton.

Round 4: Bara kraken (Philo) - win Full on Dominance deck. I was a few power ahead in plot 4, because he could not find his The Iron Throne (even with 2 Building Orders plots) and I was able to stop the draw from The Red Keep. He played A Feast for Crows when he through he could win dom due to board presence but I copied building orders with Pulling the Strings and found my The Iron Throne, which got me the dom edge I needed (and cost him about 8 power that turn, due to dominance, Chamber of the Painted Table, Gendry and Ritual of R'hllor).
This got me my place in the top 4 with (as 4 players where on 3-1) and earned me my nice Robar Royce playmat and a nice deckbox.

Top 4: Stark fealty (Chris) - loss I saw no Melisandre (Core), kneel and no The Arbor. The full on aggressiveness of Stark meant I couldn't get a board out. Needless to say I got slaughtered. Roose Bolton](/card/04081) and Ice added to the pain. My board got wiped (except for Ser Davos Seaworth (Core), who doesn't die). But I could not do anything to stall him.

Afterthoughts: The deck is great fun to play, Though I thinks it currently to dependable on the "Arbor" setup. I might need to tweak the plots to handle this a bit better (If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to share them).

Thank to all my opponents for the great games and "de tafelridder" and Onno for organizing.