That Sinking Feeling of Impending Doom (SC Winner) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Won the Dream Wizard's Store Championship (Maryland, US) with this deck yesterday, thought I'd share this out since it plays pretty nasty. It's a pretty classic stall and grind control deck, but the depth and versatility of the toolbox available to it super great right now. Real long and precise to pilot though, so I think I'ma be retiring from it for a while after the one tourney.

General strategy:

It is crucial to survive the first three plots or so, if you outlast their first wave of characters and soft control events your toolbox should be set with so many interactions and so much denial you can pretty much lock them out of the rest of the game.

Riddle and Fallen are the easiest openers, go second and plan accordingly. Carefully stall and build for your Marches, Dohaeris saves your bacon against a fast vomit renown deck. Ideally you throw trade routes plot four or five for an immense amount of money, throw a secret schemes and flood the board with control effects. Having Black and White and Flea Bottom down with a Spy in hand and floating 5 gold to deploy either of those or just wait and reload the location is super fun.

Greyjoy's probably the hardest matchup solely because of Euron's existence, and rush will always have a chance to clock out before you can control them enough. To my experience so far this deck has a decently positive matchup against most other aggro-control decks and most all-good-cards type decks.

There are a great many cards I wish the deck had room for. I'd love Viper's Eyes, a third Flea Bottom or a second Water Gardens, but the proportions are all really tight. I think the Iron Throne is probably the most easily changeable card in the deck (Isle of Ravens? I sometimes wished I could reshuffle my wad of Areos and Spies off the bottom of my deck); I'd consider switching Tumblestone Knight to a second Bran; I highly recommend not increasing the cost curve of the character suite any, this deck needs the cheapies.

Cards you prefer to see early:

ECONOMY, Bastard Daughters, Varys, Ghaston, Venomous Blade, Frozen Solid

Cards you prefer to see later:

Water Gardens, Harrenhal, Secret Schemes, Jaqen, Arya

MVPs:

Areo, Dornish Spies, House of Black and White, Bran, Jaqen, Arriane

Quick Tourney Breakdown:

R1 versus Martin (NW Rains) W: We both drew alright early, but he didn't have the intrigue to threaten Rains; I slice up his Aemon with VB + B&W and his deck isn't fast enough to threaten before the late-game clamps come down in my favor.

R2 versus Jeff (Greyjoy Rains) W: I can't believe I won this game. I drew very poorly to start with little speedy control to help versus his Euron. I play super defensively, denying rains and unopposed but not being terribly productive. He hits 14 power on plot 4 I believe. Lots of crazy things happen, and I eventually win 14-13 at time at the end of plot 10.

R3 versus Bill (Lanni Crossing) L: I drew alright but was relying on my setup flea bottom and T1 Ghaston to slow him down and he draws all 4 NM/Treacheries straight off the top of his deck, slowing down my slowing of him. He successfully protected his triple-duped Jaime and took it home before the lockdown closed.

R4 versus Will (Martell Fealty) W: We're running essentially the same deck concept, but mine has Frozen Solids and B&W, so I win.

T4 versus Bill (Lanni Crossing) W: He draws great again (Tywin setup; every single soft control event again, my T1 Ghaston and my T2 Ghaston both get treacheried). I do a better job of corralling him this time, but I think only a misplay cost him this game. I froze him at 13 and held him there with icon stripping and judicious Areos while I clawed past him.

T2 versus Todd (Targ Rose) W: He has an excellent setup and majestic first marshaling phase. However, one Ward, one VB, and one FBed Spy later he's down to zero military icons with only Drogo and Desdemera on the board. It was slow because my deck is slow but I had pretty immediate control in this one.