Stark intro deck 2.0

• Versions

A deck I’m building to teach a friend the game so below find a review of the reasoning and strategy behind the deck

Plots:

A Noble Cause is one of the highest gold plots in the game and will allow you to play some big characters on the table, even if you’re starved for economy. This card allows you to drop either Eddard Stark or Robb when you need them

Calm Over Westeros sometimes your deck needs to take a breather and this card provides it by reducing 1 of your opponents challenges claim value by 1. Solid gold and immunity to Naval Superiority make this a strong opening plot.

Confiscation is nice as it provides an on-demand answer to removing Milk of the Poppy from your characters. Decent’ish gold as well.

Fortified Position is a lifesaver when you need a turn to regroup from your opponents strong character effects (e.g. Greyjoy stealth or Baratheon kneel). This blanks all textboxes on all characters for a turn so it’ll also hurt your resource production (by eliminating Winterfell Steward’s cost reduction ability).

Marched to the Wall is a great plot when your opponent has a board of strong characters and no “chump” to send off to the wall. This card is included to prevent opponents from setting up with just one big character.

Sneak Attack has arguably the best stat line in the game as it provides 5 gold, 11 initiative(best in the game) and 2 claim. Of course, there’s a catch… you’re only allowed to launch one challenge on the turn you play this :(. Typically this is either an excellent opener for someone caught unaware or an excellent closer.

The Winds of Winter is a classic closing plot due to having 2 claim (like Sneak Attack) but no restrictions. It’s the lowest gold value in the deck so it’s best used as a coup de’grace to finish off an opponent.

Agenda

Fealty: This is the generic agenda that came with the core set and allows you to kneel your faction card in order to reduce by 1 the cost of any loyal card you play. Stark has lots of loyal characters running around and not a lot of special tricks for getting them into play so I feel this is a good fit for this deck.

Strategy

The Starks use a pretty simple strategy, kill everything that opposes you. They’re one of the more military heavy factions and a lot of their cards are designed for emphasizing this strategy. This means that to win with House Stark you’ll need to move fast before your opponent can establish a decent enough board state where they can soak what kills you manage to land. To that end you have two claim 2 plots which will you to kill twice as many characters, 3 x Ice, which allows a targeted kill if you win a military challenge, and Winter Is Coming, which allows you to bump up the claim value of one of your challenges. In an ideal world this means that you’ll be to kill 4 of your opponents characters in one challenge, which absolutely can be game changing. The Starks most glaring weakness is the lack of icons in the faction which means they’ll typically have a hard time opposing those challenges.

Cards of Note

Milk of the Poppy should be attached to one of your opponents bigger characters who happens to have an annoying ability (characters with Stealth, such as Theon Greyjoy, or with renown, such as Tywin Lannister, make excellent targets for Milk of the Poppy).

Gates of Winterfell is the deck’s primary draw engine and should be played at the earliest opportunity. 80% of the deck is cards which means that 4 out of 5 turns this card means you get to draw an extra card.

Ice is possibly the best weapon attachment in the game due to its unrestricted targeted kill ability coupled with a rather minor requirement to trigger. There’s a reason why this deck is running three of them.

Like Warm Rain is one of the only way House Stark can effectively deal with . This cards lets you kneel a direwolf (even a pup!) to kill a character who participated in a successful intrigue challenge. If your opponent plays fast and loose they could lose a rather large character this way.

Advice

_Setup: _

Cards not to start on the board with: Arya Stark, as she will not gain her duplicate and thus not have a icon. This denies you a free body if you lose a military challenge and denies you your only stealth in the game. Best to keep this one in hand to play on turn one. Littlefinger is a great extra draw and an extra gold per turn, but you lose the draw if you play him during setup. Better to play him on turn one after you have some smaller military on the board.

You could be tempted to open with Eddard Stark or Robb Stark but doing so could leave you vulnerable if you don’t have any other character in hand. Ned and Robb are this deck’s beast characters and you can’t afford to waste setup having them Marched to the Wall or killed by a first turn Tears of Lys if you can help it.

As you’re running a rush deck you’ll need to ensure you have enough upfront to win challenges. If you get a handfull of expensive / non-Winterfell Stewards it may be better to mulligan for something better.