Absolute Power Grab (3-2 at Dance With Dragons) 1.0

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• 1.0

Sharing because I want to see more innovation in Bara.

This deck was my project for the last month and a half. Its good. It would be really good if Tyrell were not so bad of a match for it (is any deck a good match against Tyrell right now?)

What does the deck do and why does it work? It steals power. If you have ever been annoyed by the Table/Chair combo, this is that ramped up by 2-3 additional levels and by making your renown no more safe than your faction card power. Stormlands Fiefdom made this happen. If you can get a few pieces going and win an offensive power challenge each turn you can take 3-4 power consistently and win dom for swings of 4 power for you and -3 power for your opponent. Use the fiefdoms to protect the power on your seven characters, or if you have the power stashed on a duped character like Mel or the Bastard (7 pointed Star making them "The Seven" is fantastic) then you can just use your fiefdoms to keep their renown stealable.

Its a straight forward concept that requires a deft hand to make work. its a constant balance between protecting your hand, preserving board state (you frequently take tempo hits to set up the location package so you almost always play with a smaller board until after the resets) and winning power challenges to advance your win condition. Fortunately, The Bastard, Faith Militant, and Table/Chair all work on defense as well as offense.

Quick Tournament report: Round 1: Used my Bye from SC season. I probably should say the deck went 2-2 on the day if I am honest about it.

Round 2 Michael Arroyo, GJ Wars, win Got a Throne, but not the Table, never saw the Bastard, but won big? Yup. 15-1 Got my kneel package and 7 pointed stars to make R'hllor believers convert. Selyse as player 2 was a giant swing to kneel his whole board. That it was on his YWOYD turn was even sweeter. That I could then flip into Valar D, keeping 3 characters to his 2 and still having a hand with 2-3 R'hllor cards made it gg.

Round 3: Matther Gehman, Tyrell/Wars. Loss This game was all him. He ended Turn 1 with KoF, Big Marge, and 2 Scheming Septons for Characters, Hightower and Oldtown for locations. Septons made Oldtown a 100% hit rate. Marge got milked, but was still a big body to oppose power challenges with. He found Mace turn 3 and just passive gained his way to victory. I could not get a challenge through for most of the game. The only reason I even kept it close was getting out the High Sparrow to slow the draw and money gain down. It was not enough...and then he got bounced to my hand by Breaking Ties and he was able to run up a bunch of power and draw while he was gone. It was bad. Of note, Scheming Septon should never have been printed.

Round 4: Matt Schwarzenbach, Lanni/Brotherhood. Win Don't scoff at his deck as he also did well on the day...just not in this game. My mulligan got me Table, Chair, Two Fiefdoms, and a Rose Road. +3 econ and my power engine in setup? He played well, but I got my kneel in my redraw and had control the whole game long. Begging Brothers kept his tricks to a minimum, I made him over commit to the board to be able to even make challenges due to kneel, the reset wrecked his board with 2 7's a 6 and 2 5's out on his side where I only recycled Selyse and a chud or two. I won at 15-4, and could have made it more lopsided if I cared, but I let everything go UO on the last turn as there was 0 chance it mattered since I was at 14 to start the turn, just needed dom to win, and he could only take 1 power from me.

Round 5: Jameson Webb, Martell Wars, Loss

No offense to Jameson, but this was flat out a variance loss. He started with Dorne and a Ghaston Grey, stalling my attack...okay, I have Brothers Robes in hand to deal with that starting turn 2, though. He hit it on int claim 1/8 pull at the time. He then proceeds to see Hotah and Shadow City Bastard the next turn. I was paralyzed all game unable to block, attack, or put real pressure on him at all. Never saw a Begging brother or I could have managed the effects too. Martell was a plus matchup in testing, largely due to the robes and Brothers. Losing one to claim and the other not appearing made it heavily a minus match. Loss was 6-15, most of my power coming from Dom.

I had been paired down from round 2 on, so I had zero chance of bubbling into the cut as the only 3-2. Oh well.

It was a fun experiment and I had a great time in NYC as always. I at least got best of house and another set of the regionals top 16 Bara tokens which will now be gold tokens for me (and no I was not the only Bara deck. NW and Stark were the only single player factions at Dance).