BitterMace (1st place SC) 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This is the deck I won a small but mighty store championship with. Basically,Mace Tyrell is pretty good, and so is renown. Summer Harvest should definitely be Calm Over Westeros (a change I almost made beforehand that would have smoothed the road quite a bit), but other than that the deck is pretty solid. I like Flea Bottom with Mace, because it adds some redundancy to the ambush tricks, lets you use your Mace triggers on other things (one of my favorites being keeping a FB character around), and protecting Hightower against Nothing Burns.

Game 1: Lanni/Kraken (Pillage): W

This was a box Tywin Lannister (LoCR) pillage control deck, and it very nearly derailed my day before it really got started. I was able to drop in Mace with Bitterbridge turn 1, but he dropped Ser Gregor Clegane and hit one of 3 5 costers to kill my House Florent Knight and set up a Marched to the Wall on a duped Mace turn 2 (with the third copy safely pillaged away). However, despite his continual control of what I drew due to Tywin, and Tris locking up several of my better characters, I was able to squeak out a win on turn 6 or 7 thanks to the sheer mass of renown I had. Neither of us ran Valar, so the boards got quite big, which is usually to the Tyrell player's liking, and King Renly's Host was able to do some big work intimidating Gregor for a turn to let me stabilize and then blocking some big challenges.

Game 2: Martell House of the Red Door: W

This game was against my meta-mate AJ, so while I knew I was in for a tough game at least I knew the deck very well, since I'd played it quite a bit too. Lucky for me, since I knew to mulligan an normal dream setup of Rose Garden and The Hightower because of his Nothing Burns Like The Cold. Of course, I then made the mistake of discarding a second Hightower to my Olenna's Informant, only to get it wiped out with Nothing Burns the next turn. Of course, he made the mistake of doing a military challenge and letting turn a Garth the Gross into Renly Baratheon (FFH). Outside of those misplays it was a good game, but the passive power gain of this deck is just not a good matchup for Martell, especially this deck (which I otherwise really like).

Game 3: Targaryen Fealty: W

And then the 'final' was against Jesse, so while it may only have been an 8 person tournament I was certainly going to have to earn my victory. This is the game that opening Calm would have let me basically coast to a win, but since he had Khal Drogo on setup instead I had to sweat it out. He was able to blitz me pretty early, going up I think 10-1 at one point. But then Mace did his thing, and I was able to fend off his challenges while popping in characters from Bitterbridge, Mace, and Flea Bottom to just rack up the power - when the game finished I had 2 power on my housecard and 13 on Mace.

Overall a pretty good run, even for just 3 wins. The deck is very strong, and helpfully resilient to some mistakes. I think it's going to stick around for quite a while, in one form or another.