A Wolf In Goat's Clothing - Winner, 2018 Northampton Regiona 1.0

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Slightly delayed posting, but this is the list I won the 2018 Northampton Regional with. I think after Nimer's Lanni Alliance it was the second Qohor list to win a regional, and the first mono-faction one to do so. Thank you to Alex Hynes, Gabbi Trimmings and Josh Chambers for their help tweaking the deck (Josh in particular came up with the name which is obviously vitally important), to Joe Zimmer for being a willing sparring partner while I tested and tweaked, and to Florian for designing a really cool agenda.

Basic gameplan is to go first, win your challenges, intimidate their board down as much as possible and hamstring the rest through attachments. This was broadly successful throughout the day. One late change I made was to cut a 2nd Nymeria for Syrio's Training; as good as Training was in points, I'd definitely want a 2nd Nymeria back in though. I also think that with the ease that the deck can stand characters and win unopposed, Eddard Stark deserves at least one place in this list.

So what the agenda offers, principally, is tricksy fun. Stuff I've done with this agenda, across both practice games and the course of the day, includes (but isn't limited to):

• Going in for a non-kneeling military with Robb, winning, then trading Wolf King for Nymeria to get Intimidate and still having Robb standing to go in for Intimidate on a second challenge.
• Going in on an intrigue challenge, having Maester Caleotte remove Greatjon Umber's military icon as a reaction, then sacrificing the Bodyguard on him to go and get Syrio's Training to give the icon back, winning military then power challenges with Greatjon and Intimidate, then sacrificing Training to get Bodyguard on him again.
• Setting up Milk on my Tumblestone Knight (gorgeous though the flavour text of "Riverrun is situated at the end of the point of land where the Tumblestone flows into the Red Fork of the Trident." is) to sacrifice for something useful in the first challenges phase.
• Using Honor-Bound to push through a military challenge, sacrificing it for something else, shuffling it back in with Isle of Ravens, winning the power challenge and fetching it again to put on their intrigue character to win the intrigue challenge.
• Going in for a challenge with a character, standing them with Northern Armory, then fetching Seized by the Guard to put on the Armory so that it's blank for the standing phase and the attachment falls off at the beginning of the marshaling phase.
• With my board knelt on a post-Withering Cold round and Wyman Milked so no trigger for my Robb, going in for a challenge with Greatjon, winning it, fetching Brother's Robes to put on my opponent's The Seven character, kneeling them with Intimidate and triggering the Robes to blank the milk on my Wyman and trigger him to stand my board.

I'm probably missing stuff, but this is just a sample of what you can do.

The plots are probably broadly self-explanatory. Pentoshi was a greedy risk as an opener, but it didn't backfire all day. The low plot gold otherwise only hurt me once, in (unsurprisingly) my loss where I didn't see any econ. I'd like to trade Wildfire for Valar D (Wildfire a hangover from when the deck originally had Fat Cat - she was cut for being too expensive), and preferably find room for some draw - with Wyman the deck sings, but without him games can get grindy and rely on some favourable topdecks. For proof, see the final of the Northampton Regional.

Draw deck is also not too out-there. I decided to just run zero events to help make room for attachments. I'd love to find room for something like 3x Winter is Coming 2x Arya's Gift, but slots m8. Character count shouldn't go lower than 32 I'd say, and while one or two of the attachments might be considered 'luxury' ones, they're kinda the point of the deck in the first place, no? Locations were all great, and shout out to Isle in particular. You'll typically get to a point where most of your attachments are in the bin, and you just wait until you're confident you're winning the challenge and shuffle the attachment you intend to search for back in to go find again. Sometimes sequencing can be more complicated than that (for instance, DAKINGINDANORF when you don't have a King yet, or about to not have a King), but it's a broad truth.

Tourney Report

The link to the tourney is above. As you can see there were very few Targ or Martell players, but loads of Stark and Tyrell, with the others about as expected.

1. Round One: Ian - Tyrell Brotherhood We had to start late due to a series of unfortunate events resulting in our tardy entry into the reptile room we were playing in. Despite the lack of a wide window to play in though, this was no bad beginning as the game was quite comfortable. This was the last hurrah for Ian's neutrals deck, only relying on a few select green cards in an otherwise Wildling-heavy affair with Frozen Shore and what have you. Rattleshirt wasn't a huge fan of my attachment-heavy deck, and going first with Intimidate kept me on top. Result: Win.

2. Round Two: Tagore - Tyrell Wars I think this was a netdeck of the deck that won Euros. Early on I was able to deny Tagore the cards the deck needs to work by Qohoring in Seized with 3 gold bestowed onto his Hightower. With that, and with Renly not showing up, Tagore struggled to get enough on the board to keep me down. He made a silly error early, playing DAKINGINDANORF when I had a King out and he didn't, because he forgot Wolf King gives the King trait. Genius. Late on I got the fun of tilting him when I did a military challenge going first, he killed his knelt Renly (who was now out) with the intention of triggering Margaery to fetch someone else, and I got to trigger Qohor first as first player to Milk Marge. Tiggles was so convinced I couldn't be right doing this that he went and brought a new lord out anyway, then had the shameful, ignominious embarrassment of having to shuffle him back in. However, the game went to time with me up like 12-5 in power and Tagore on top of the board at the end. Result: Mod Win.

3. Round Three: Daisy - Greyjoy Wars This was a brutal one-sided beating. I got to do some fun stuff early, but I saw no econ all game. It meant that after round one I couldn't put out bigs (after which I drew Wyman who was then stuck in my hand thereafter). Meanwhile, Daisy dropped Victarion, King Balon, 7g Asha and Euron in some order or another and just rolled me. This was the match where I desperately needed Wildfire to be Valar D, as my only reset would leave his army of terror up against my chuds. Without it, Daisy won without any major issue. Result: Loss.

4. Round Four: Vince - Bara Faith This was also a brutal one-sided beating, but in the other direction. Vince made what he accepted in retrospect was an error in round one, playing Littlefinger to set him up going forward rather than getting tempo on the board. This let me absolutely dominate - sequencing with Intimidate and the attachments meant he literally didn't win a single challenge all game, and I'm not even sure he initiated a single challenge all game. Sorry Vince! Result: Win.

5. Round Five: Ben - Martell Crossing Ben's Martell deck was a lose-to-win sort, but as with others the Intimidate going first was too much and it ended up being more of a lose-to-lose. This is where I got to make the Caleotte/Greatjon/Training play described above. Details of the game are a little sketchy for me, but I just remember getting Cat, Greatjon and Wyman out, and Wyman being an absolute beast while Cat stopped a lot of potential trickery. Result: Win.

With my one loss and my one mod win I finished 6th out of 31 after Swiss, making it to the top 8 cut.

6. Top 8: Rebecca - Stark Wars Rebecca was, sadly for her, in a bit of a bad mood going into this one having just had to play her fellow White Walker Richard in the king of swiss game, and my deck went off to perfection. I got Milk on her Fat Cat and Robb, and pulled Arya's Gift for intrigue claim. I got her board knelt out on the Withering Cold turn with Wyman/Robb to stand mine, and she conceded to end the pain early. Result: Win.

7. Top 4: Daisy - Greyjoy Wars A rematch of my loss from swiss, this one went better in that I saw econ and got Wyman out so my deck got to actually work. I won't go into further details since this one was recorded, instead I'll edit a link in once it's live. Result: Win.

8. Final: Richard - Stark Rains Richard was on an updated version of the Doggo Feast deck he won the Stanton regional with. Both our decks kinda crapped out here (despite good setups and round ones on both sides), but Richard's crapped out several orders of magnitude worse. I won't go into details since this was again recorded, but eventually after some fantastic stonewalling from Richard that rewarded him with awful topdeck after awful topdeck, I was able to trundle over the line. Result: Win.

Overall it's a pretty good deck, but a very fun one. Would recommend.