GJ Rains: Regionals Arnhem Runner Up 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

First of all thanks to Ruben and the great Dutch meta for hosting the Arnhem Regional. All of you have been a great inspiration for setting up our own organised play in Belgium.

I wanted to take a deck to Regionals which I was comfortable playing. Seeing a different GJ rains deck got me a TOP 4 spot in Store championship I decided to stick to the House and agenda.

Key cards: King Balon: Free challenges and a way to always kill Renly

Appointed: Good on Asha, King Balon and Victarion. Never angry to see one

3x Sea Bitch: The best GJ card atm in my opinion. It feels so good to steal the wall, the red keep, tower of the hand, the boneway, winterfell,...

EURON: So good in the mirror match, stealing iron mines = op restrict

TOURNAMENT REPORT

Round 1: Syb - Bara Fealty My nightmare matchup in round 1. Not that the deck is weak against bara, but I always seem to crumble against the kneel. Luckily for my Syb doesn't see Mel all game. So I manage to control the challenges phase by going first and triggering rains. That way his Robert stays out of my way and I can close pretty quickly

Round 2: Kenny - Tyrell Crossing I knew this was the most difficult matchup for the deck. It all comes down to a good Valar and Wildfire turn. Unfortunately for me, he sees too many dupes and bodyguards too soon. The decks is a Knights and Ladies themed rush and his Marge gains too much power too quickly. I try to stall but to no avail.

Round 3: Franke - GJ Winter I get off to a great start, finding a few Great halls. But start to run out of steam pretty quickly. I make a huge mistake when in the valar turn I forget the +1 gold i get from Littlefinger which leaves me one character short of killing off his Vic. I had the right cards in hand but just miscounted. Stupid mistake, empty board and no way for me to come back. To be continued...?

Round 4: Ruben - Stark Fealty I know I needed to win to even have a chance to get in the cut at this point. But seeing Franke and Kenny were doing both great I was hopefull to get in on SOF. I don't remember much of the game against Ruben, I think I was able to control the challenges until Winterfell appeared. Ruben gained the upper hand and I was expecting a valar to clear my board. To my great surprise he didn't play it because he thought i would counter his play by going valar myself. Apparently he forgot I played Valar 2 turns before... I drew a few saves and Ruben scooped.

So I went 2-2 but my opponents performed great! Getting me in the 8th spot of the cut.

Top 8 Franke - The Rematch I was super happy to get a chance to redeem myself from the earlier mistake and boy did this game go perfect for me! I had Euron out turn one and started stealing Iron mines all day. This left me in a great spot and was able to valar and kill his whole board while keeping mine alive, only to steal more Iron mines the next turn.

Top 4 Thijs - Lanni banner of the watch Thij was going for the title of Belgian Slayer seeing he kept one of my mates out of the top 8, beaten the other one in Top 8 and was now ready to destroy me in Top 4. But things didn't turn out the way he planned. He played an amazing deck, some kind of random rush generator with tyrions chains and heads on spikes. Luckily for me he never hit on his tickles, mountains or spikes so i was able to cruise my way to vicotry

The finals: Jamie - Bara Fealty. 7th seed vs 8th seed in the finals. Talk about the curse of Swiss. Bara Fealty. One card setup (King Balon). I tried, but this game was over before it even started....

Had a lot of fun exploring GJ Rains. I think this build is very well equiped against most decks (targ, lanni, wall) but is vulnerable against Rush.