Bring out the Mace (5-3 in Stahleck Joust 2017) 1.0

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Hello eveyone!

I'm publishing the deck I brought to Stahleck which actually turned out to work pretty fine although I didn't made the cut due to some mistakes on my side and the great rivals I faced during the Joust tournament.

Since I saw Mace on the HoT box I thought it could be a great card to build around outside of the usual Tyrell decks so I got into it with plenty of versions and changes during my playtesting with my meta colleagues from Madrid.
I ended up with this version which makes use of some of the Lannister toolbox wich also provided a plan b in case Mace Tyrell was not enought to finish the game (Jaime + Olenna's Informer is a great plan b).

Now onto my report and rivals I have faced during my games which were all pretty good and had a lot of fun.

1 - Win vs SadYear (FR) - Night's Watch Fealty

The first match was against a NW fealty deck which I though it could be a defensive type based on The Wall as the win condition so, based on this, I mulliganed hard looking to setup Mace combo as early as possible but, instead, I got Hightower which has been one of the greatest surprises of the deck during the tournament.

As I started to draw a lot thanks to Oldtown Informer and ambush chars Mace came on turn 3 which allowed the deck to gain power gain speed. Thanks to Flea Bottom and Mace action coupled with two good Heads on Spikes hits I was able to get pretty fast to 15 power.

2 - Win vs Tobias K. (AT) - Greyjoy Banner of the Dragon

This one was a pretty hard match due to the fact that Tobias gained the upper hand pretty quickly. I went on aggressive starting with Heads on Spikes instead of the Late Summer Feast and, although one of the hit, the other didn't so Tobias was able to get ahead due to a strong presence on the boardand me not getting Mace. However, plan b rised and Jaime was able to get a hold on the powere difference while nightmares got the job's done to stop Victarion.

In the decisive turn Tobias made a mistake by not kneeling the Flea Botton (I believe it was because there was a Rise of the Kraken revelaed and he wanted to get value out of it) which allowed me to use again the Emissary of the Hightower to use the Nightmares again and blank Asha to stop stealth. Balon got killed by Podrick's ability which felt really great and, at last, Mace came when I was at 12 power so it closed the game.

3 - Loss vs Henri L. (FI) - Targaryen Lord of the Crossing

I faced against a great deck (World Champion Deck) with a good player behind so this one was pretty though.

This game was pretty paired and he got a really strong start with Plaza of Pride and Flea Bottom from setup which, coupled with the draw he got later (Second Sons, Barristan Selmy...) made it really difficult on my side to keep up.

Since the characters were not copied and he had relatively little hand I took a bet and played Mace with no copies in order to catch up in power and I got close to him thanks to him. I forgot that this deck run Valar (I don't know why I though that and, with Daenerys on board with no dupes, I thought he will hesitate to drop it with such a board advance which would have allowed me to trigger Mace enought times to win the game.

However, he revealed Valar and wiped the board which eventually won the game for him due to a good discard pile coupled with Fleat Bottom.

4 - Loss vs Brainu (FR) - Targaryen Lord of the Crossing

I think this match is one of the most I have enjoyed in the tournament even with the loss on my side. You don't get to play against the champion of the Tourney of the Hand so I went all out to enjoy the game.

The mistake I made here is that I though this would be the World Champion's deck and so I played around it based on the previous match experience. My strategy to force his Valar so I could marshal Mace worked out but, as I said, this was not the usual deck.

During the decisive turn he didn't marshal anything with 3 gold left so I though going out to close the game before we cycle plots since the Valar on his side would probably repeat the previous game result and I was left with only one gold left with a Hand's judgment to cancel a possible nightmares. But, to my surprise, he played the Last of Giants event into Jaqen that killed Mace which I should have predicted.

5 - Win vs Tze L.C. (SG) - Lannister Lord of the Crossing

It was a real pleasure getting to play against some from far away and it was one of the Silent Sisters!! It was pretty exciting.

As for the game itseld he played Harrenhal on setup so the way of winning the game was to control it from the beginning since this kind of deck runs low income plots to gain a lot of value on Harrenhal + tower of the Hand.

I mulliganed hard for nightmare and, to my surprise, I got it coupled with Flea Bottom + Emissary of the Hightower so that really made the game for me.

6 - Loss vs Fabian B. (DE) - Night's Watch Lord of the Crossing

This was really difficult match on my side and I really got bad luck on Head on Spikes which removed two Longclaws instead of getting the chars.

I didn't see eithr Mace or Jaime besides having a good draw which, eventually, won the game for him once I used my reset due to Qorin controlling my board really well coupled with the unopposed challenges made by John Snow (WotW).

7 - Win vs Rowan G. (UK) - Lannister Lord of the Crossing

This is the second game I enjoyed the most since it was an original deck that relied on an effective jumper tech which was amazing since you really couldn't expect what to find out.

Unlike the game agains Tze I could't really control Harrenhal so I had to play around the possible effects in challenge phase which was a really difficult task. The Hound (Ttb) on his side made it really difficult on my side to gain any power from challengues so I had to rely on Mace to close the match.

8 - Win vs Tomasz G.(PL) - Targaryen Fealty

We did not have anything to gain so we took it for funsies and, in my case, started thinking about my choices on the deck and how it could have been improved.

The game itself didn't have a lot of history since I got two really good head on spikes which, coupled with Mace ability, won me the game pretty fast.

And that is my report! Regarding what I would have changed if I read right the metagame I would have probably included more Tyrell renowns to speed up games. However since I was expecting more stranglers, milks and nightmares to control the rise of Tyrell decks I really didn't want to bet on this.

As to what changes I would make once The archmaester's key hit the metagame I will try to fit the Iron Bank which looks like an amazing late game tool (probably swapping it for a kingsroad). Valar Dohaeris does not really change the deck although you'll have to play around it.