Direwolve Fealty / Tournament Winner Store Championship 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Aggressive Direwolve Deck that resolves heavily around Bran Stark (OR) and Summer (Core) / Flea Bottom

This is about the 30th iteration and probably my most playtested deck i've ever done. It went 4 / 1 due to me making a crucial mistake in one game in turn 1 against Martell. The matchup would have been winnable definitely though otherwise.

Why not Nightswatch ?

Most people think that Nightswatch is a perfect fit for Direwolve decks because they offer some protection against Valar / Wildfire Assault with Craster and to some extent with Maester Aemon (Core), other notable includes are obviously Craven or even Ghost (Core) This comes at a hefty price, you have to include 9 cards that simply prevent you from being more aggressive, it also hits your already weak economy even more because you can't include Fealty. Case in point though, Ghost (Core) is a unique Wolf which means you can protect him with dupes, which in turn is great against Valar, thats about it though, i prefer Wolves of the North on the Board any time of the day.

How to protect against Valar / Wildfire

1 Card in this deck CANNOT die at ANY cost in this deck: Summer (Core) she is your insurance for pretty much anything nasty that happens to Arya Stark (Core) / Bran Stark (Core). She can be summoned from the discard through Flea Bottom, the Plot A Time For Wolves, and Wolf Dreams. Bran Stark (OR) can be revived multiple times either from the dead pile with her or from discard so you shouldn't worry to much about him. Your main goal is to keep him in the game as much as possible when he's around, don't be afraid to sacrifice / kill him when he's milked, summer will get him back. He's uselss without his action.

Protection against kill board resets is limited but it's there. Grey Wind is extremely important once she's out, she's twice in the deck so you can fish the dupe out if you need it to protect her from Valar with Wolf Dreams A Time For Wolves (to slow mostly). You have a Wildfire Assault yourself which seems counterintuitive, but there's nothing wrong with letting Arya / Bran die in an emergency as long as you can fish them back with Summer (Core) later on. If you expect a Valar to hit and Summer is not out, play A Time For Wolves, go first, let Valar resolve, put Summer into play, and take Arya or Bran back into your hand.

Maester Luwin protects Bran from Valar and even Wildfire Assault

If Summer (Core) is out and you expect the reset, Marched to the Wall just to be sure so you can discard her.

Economy

Economy is the toughest thing for Stark Decks right now along with Card Draw. We have a limited card draw on the surface but we use our gold mostly for recursive cards with Flea Bottom and Summer (Core). This is why Fealty is the agenda to go. If you bring Donella Hornwood out, you can marshal your Wolves of the North for a nice 3 Gold only. The Kingsroad is your lifesaver if you have a bad econ draw and need a way to get your Roaming Wolfpack out.

Combos

Your goal is to suppress, kill and whoever isn't dead is busy kneeling in fear. We either suppress with the Roaming Wolfpack or we harass stuff with Wolves of the North and then kill whatever is affected by it with Grey Wind, use her twice with Bran Stark (OR) or even better with Jon Snow (WotN). Bonus points if you bring Summer back from the discard with Flea Bottom and then sacrifice her back into the discard with Jon Snow (WotN) to trigger Grey Wind again. Won't happen often as we include Jon Snow only as a one off in the deck, he's to easy to counter with milk for this to be reliable.

Location Hate

Unfortunately you need to have a way to deal with locations. Luckily Put to the Torch is a prime include into this deck as it can get rid of The Wall and usually military strength is definitely not a problem. 1 Frozen Solid for some flexibility, and more hate against Flea Bottom

Nightmares and Varys

Nightmares deserves a special mention in this deck as it is with the Begging Brother the only defense you have against your worst arch enemy: Varys. You CANNOT allow Varys to trigger with a built up board so save your nightmares for the moment where he enters the board. You can cancel the "The Last of the Giants" combo with The Pack Survives but if he comes out as a normal character you need to have a Nightmares at hand. That's how i lost my Martell game, i had my nightmares ready, varys was out and attacked my opponent on Military, of course he discarded it with His Viper Eyes, the moment i noticed it was already to late and i lost the whole board.

Milk of the Poppy is a useless card in this deck as we want to go first, if we go first, we can't attach it to Varys, a good opponent will know that or just discards it next turn with confiscation.

Targeted Kills

Economy is extremely tight so i favoured the unusual approach for no targeted kills. There's no Put to the Sword in which is definitely a downside against Varys but the economy is always so tight that i feel like i usually do have that one gold / fealty for Winter Is Coming but not for Put to the Sword

However the keyplot here is Wildfire Assault - we assume a couple things: We want the intiative... we probably get it with that. We assume 3 of our characters are stronger than my opponents. One Roaming Wolfpack even with just one Direwolf Pup is almost unstoppable. It also allows us to recycle a milked Bran Stark (OR) and Arya Stark (Core) if need be.

Another reason is because you don't have your targeted kills it can proof very difficult to effectively suppress a very wide board. Let's narrow it down and then work from there.

Scoring: http://thejoustingpavilion.com/tournaments/4099/scores

Game 1: WIN VS Lannister / Rains of Castamere

Game 2: WIN VS Nightswatch / Kings of Summer

Game 3: WIN VS Lannister / Lords of the Crossing

Game 4: LOSS VS Martell / Banner of the Stag

Game 5: WIN VS Stark / Fealty