Standing The Watch 2.0

• Versions
• 2.0
• 1.0

Overview:
Standing The Watch is built from the ground up to be an -heavy flood deck that will leave your opponents choking in the weeds. Your goal is to gain pure card advantage, and to overwhelm the board and the other person's hand with an onslaught of bodies that makes Wildfire Assault hardly more than a one-turn setback. You'll eventually set up windows for strong or plays that need to be identified and pressed with one of your 2-claim cards.

Your key to pressing these advantages is baked in at every level, from characters and attachments to locations and events. Let's break them down.

The and selection:
Here we have a bit of an oddball deck, in that it's one without a true centerpiece character. When everyone is meant to complement the deck's overall theme of inundating the board with bodies, I found in testing that it doesn't do to try and support high-gold s like The Queen of Thornes. The most you'll spend is 6 gold for either Randyll Tarly or Jon Snow, and you'll likely only ever need one out at a time. Trying to slam both onto the board is not a priority. Putting small, cheap bodies on the board is. And since we're looking to flood with low-gold, low-strength bodies, I've thrown in several standouts among the s that make this proposition even more enticing. Margaery Tyrell and Heartsbane are glorious because they turn your little weeds into giant thorns. Both give sizable strength bonuses, and either one will stand Randyll if he's in the fray. You'll find that other characters like Maester Lomys and any member of packing Longclaw provide a fantastic disincentive for your opponent to come at you with you too many challenges, (even more so if Highgarden is online and you have options of messing with challenger math).

, , and breakdown:
Sticks, eyes, and hats, they're how you win the Game of Chairs, and in early iterations of this deck, I've found at least of those departments to be sorely lacking. There can often be a considerable disadvantage when you run Standing The Watch, but instead of trying to plug that gap, I tailored the deck to embrace it. You'll feel vulnerable and might have to give up an unopposed military challenge or two while you work to spam characters, but in the meantime, your priority is to hammer challenges. If you get off one successful challenge every turn, you are doing your job. The military threat is very likely to be there against you, but by owning the intrigue game, you can reduce your opponent to top-decking, and if you can do that BEFORE they launch a Wildfire Assault, you'll find you're likely in a fairly commanding position.

ing and planning:
And that gets us into our plot selection, and counter-selection. Our notable plot cards here include Calm Over Westeros and our two 2-claimers: The Winds of Winter and Sneak Attack. Looking at money, Calm and Sneak provide us with a solid purse of 5 gold each; Winds of Winter only nets us 3, but by the late game when it will make its biggest impact, our economy should be up and running to compensate, or we'll have so many bodies out, the gold becomes largely irrelevant.

Most important here is the control elements these s provide. They're key to exploiting those windows I mentioned earlier, with both Winds and Sneak blowing a hole wide open in your opponent's front once you can reliably swing the challenges, and Calm for slowing down anything that might potentially devastate your board while you set up.

Marched to the Wall makes an excellent counter-play if you smell a Wildfire because it leaves them at 2 characters while potentially saving one of your unique s from the cleansing flames.

A Noble Cause is in for the cash, Summons, for a body-based answer to any problems you might be having, and Building Orders to get either your strength/stand engine or your location engine up and running. And speaking of...

Card advantage; it's all about , , :
Card advantage: We want it. We need it. Let's get it. 3x The Mander will ensure that we can accelerate our card draw and supply ourselves with enough Green and Black to start owning the board space. Plain and simple, The Mander is your rocket fuel toward a solid win.

And remember the uncertainty of combat math? Highgarden, when paired with your characters like Lomys and anyone with renown, provides a nasty wrench for a First Player considering an attack to whittle down your later challenge possibilities.

In the of emergency:
Rounding out our suite, we look to the deck's events. A meager three of them, waiting to serve you. Since challenges can sometimes go unchecked for upwards of two turns, Tears of Lys all of a sudden provide a fantastic way to get hard-hitters off the board and give you time to set up. You should have no problem winning an challenge with the number of eyeballs in this deck, but finding a non- target isn't always reliable, so 2-of feels good for the Tears.

And finally, 1x Growing Strong. When you see it, it will likely win you a challenge your opponent thought was in the bag. And from then on, they'll need to respect the possibility you're holding another. Even just the threat of another is enough to give them pause.