Stark Wars to Come (6-1 Knoxville Regional Winner) 1.0

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• 1.0

This is the deck that I took to Sci-Fi City in Knoxville, TN. 18 people showed up for the tournament, and everyone there were really good players! For this tournament, everything up to The March on Winterfell was legal.

The basis of this deck is nothing new or revolutionary, it just uses the good Stark characters to dominate the challenges phase and continue to trickle in card draw to maintain that advantage. People had asked me to post a tourney write up for this list. I will say that I was constantly tweaking this deck up until the night before the tournament, and I'm still not convinced it's optimized, especially the plots.

Begging Brother: I only saw them in one game vs Shaun, but they ended up helping me in that matchup to stop a lot of shadows shenanigans for a few turns. Probably need more playtesting to see if they are worth keeping in.

Last Hearth Scouts: amazing cards that did a ton of work for me. With shadows, flea bottom, and ambush being incredibly prevalent, it is incredibly useful to stop surprise challenge strength. In some matches, they were more pivotal than Robb for their ability to stop shenanigans.

Varamyr Sixskins: This guy ROCKS. He has a crazy amount of flexibility, The ability to choose what form is best for the current board state cannot be understated. Need to win challenges but worried about burn? Go Bear mode and buff his strength. Need more cards? turn into an eagle. He works best when you're going first, and most of the time I found myself using him as a wolf for the intimidate. Plus how can you not use Wolf-mode when you're playing stark! Just don't forget your trigger!

Wyman Manderly: The other beast of this deck. I didn't see him as much as I had hoped in my matches, but he is undeniably a strong character. His reliable card draw is invaluable, and he helps trigger Robb to stand relatively easily.

Rickon Stark: His ability is definitely very limited, but he can potentially stop Asha, Aegon, and Margaery. Most of the time he's just an easy set up, claim soak, or Grey Wind victim.

Put to the Torch: This was a last-minute include into the deck, but boy did it do work for me. Originally, I had included it because I was worried about a prevalence of The Wall. Stark is in a great position to use this card, utilizing stealth or just pure brute force to win military challenges. Being able to destroy an opponent's key location is game-changing.

Match-Ups

Game 1 (win): Stuart King (Lannister banner of the Rose). This was an interesting variation of the common Lanni Crossing deck that uses Heads on Spikes and Tyrion's Chain to rush up to power. He included some Tyrell knights for a little more staying power after the initial rush. In our match, he managed to shoot up to 12 power very quickly. I was forced to play defensively the whole game to stop him from getting his event triggers off. Winterfell and Catelyn Stark (Core) were key to holding the tide until eventually I had a strong enough board to push back and win.

Game 2 (win): Sandy Barnabas (NW Builders). I won this game because Sandy did not see very many characters all game. At the start of the game, he had set up two Messenger Ravens, and a Builder at the Wall outfitted with a Practice Blade. I stole the builder with Ward, and proceeded to use him + Winter Is Coming to kill his draw engine. The nail in the coffin was when I was able to use Bran to cancel The Watch Has Need because he forgot to Milk Bran beforehand.

Game 3 (win): Jesse Carpenter (Stark Wars to Come). Jesse's deck was an aggressive military focused deck with Robb Stark (AtSK). I started out the game strong, using Greatjon Umber and Arya to kneel his board repeatedly for a few rounds. The game quickly swung back in his favor when The King in the North stopped me from using Winterfell, allowing a huge board wipe. From then he had board control, but I managed to slowly re-establish my position and stop him before he closed the game. The final score was 15-14.

Game 4 (loss): Josh Vengchiem (Targ Crossing). Josh's rush deck completely caught me off guard, rapidly winning power. I was forced to Valar turn 2 to kill Danyand Drogo, but he very quickly repopulated the board and won shortly afterward. I made a couple of dumb mistakes and allowed him to get burn through on some key challenges. I forgot that Daenerys Targaryen (Core) gives -1 strength, allowing him to burn my Greatjon Umber.

Cut to Top 8

Quarterfinals: Shaun McCallum (Baratheon – Banner of the Dragon). This was a super innovative deck that used lots of Shadows and enters play abilities and Spears of the Merling King to recycle key characters. He was dominating the match and got very close to winning. What turned the game around was Winterfell and Barring the Gates to allow for a 2-claim Winter Is Coming military to kill Robert and Aegon, with him unable to save the characters. Begging Brother helped wrap up my win next round to prevent his character abilities, allowing me to easily dominate challenges.

Semifinals: Jesse Carpenter (Stark Wars). Rematch #1. We both set up Manderly. However, I was able to Milk his Manderly, allowing me to get the card advantage for the rest of the match. Eventually, he forced me to reset the board with Valar Morghulis, but I was better able to repopulate the board thanks to Manderly. Being able to intimidate his intimidate characters with mine was very helpful this game. I also had really good intrigue pulls throughout the game, sniping both of his Put to the Swords.

Finals: Josh Vengchiem (Targ Crossing). Going into this match I was honestly terrified because of how poorly the first match went. He set up Viserion and Jhogo. I was able to steal Jhogo turn 1 with Ward, and that immediately swung the momentum in my favor. I was playing really safe the whole game (probably too safe honestly), and overcommitting to challenges to protect myself from burn, because I didn't see Winterfell all game. Because of this, I was able to continue growing my board state, but Josh continued to trickle closer to 15 power. At the same time, I was able to control his locations thanks to Put to the Torch. Varamyr Sixskins helped me push through the military challenges to allow me to burn Plaza of Pride two separate times during the match.Nothing Burns Like The Cold helped me kill his duped Flea Bottom. Last Hearth Scouts was also pivotal here. For most of the game, he just sat and didn't participate in challenges (I didn't dare put him into a challenge and get burned), but he helped stop any other ambush shenanigans that Josh may have had planned. Eventually, Josh ran out of card draw and had no answer to deal with my huge board, as he was not running a reset plot, and I closed out the match.

Overall, it was a great set of matches vs a bunch of really good players. I didn't end having to play vs a Wall deck, or any Tyrell matches. I was also fortunate because not many of my opponents were running Valar Morghulis, instead favoring Wildfire Assault or Valar Dohaeris which was a lot easier for me to deal with. I don't think I had any easy matches, and many of the games ended up being very close.

If you have any questions about anything else, feel free to ask below!