The Skagokey-cokey (King of Swiss, 8-1 Worlds)

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
"How netdecking made me KoS (by SoS) at Stahleck 2018" 13 9 4 1.0
Trading with Skagosi (9th and 43rd at Stahleck Joust) 6 3 0 1.0
No Alarms And No Surprises Please (1st, UK Grands 2019) 47 26 11 1.0

jcwamma 2860

You put your Summer in, your Summer out, in-out-in-out max your Fat Cat out etc.

This is the deck that went on an 8 game winning run at worlds (10 if you cheekily count byes), kinging the swiss and making the top four before suffering a timed loss to your new world champion, Lennart.

Strategy is basically as follows: Skagos is good, let's use that. I presented a rough draft of such a deck to my deckbuilding friends, a draft that was all over the place. It was on 3x Riverrun Minstrel and the like, but wasn't pure fat Cat voltron. It had Winter is Coming, but nothing to really push the attrition. I don't even remember the plots, but I'm sure they were awful too. Then, through the help of Joe, Darren, Tagore and Chris Sweeney, plus probably input from other yooks that I forget (sorry), we ended up here.

A game mostly follows this rough pattern. Early on, try to control the table by virtue of Stark having good cards to do that. With Wyman, Umber Loyalist (especially if you blank it with Meera prior to leaving play), Summer and the plots, you can usually keep a full hand.

Often round two or three, but sometimes as early as round one, a route to establishing dominance will open up. If the opponent is getting lots of chuds out, you don't overcommit with econ chuds and the like, deplete their hand (Winter is Coming on intrigue), focus on maintaining dupes if possible, and Valar, trusting that your perpetually-full hand will let you recover better. This can also be done even with dupes thanks to 2 cost Arya, who you can obviously Skagos in if needed and you have the other. If the opponent is going big with heavy hitters, you can use Marched and Ramsay (sometimes twice thanks to Skagos) to clear their board, and use winter is coming on the military challenges to keep the board thin.

Why Fealty? In a word, tempo. A lot of good decks can get an early lock in and keep it there, between Targ aggro; other Stark decks going first with their own Intimidate and Winter is Coming; and A Pinch of Powder. The extra gold can be vital. It is also really useful if you have to Valar early, with Wolves Sansa, Summer, Meera and Umber Loyalist all being cheap loyals. And later on it's fine, reducing Robb and Cat and Wyman is fine. It's fine.

Let's lay this out like I did for the Euros Tyrell deck. Cards roughly break down into these modules (the more cards appear in, the better!):

Econ module:

  • Fealty
  • Trade Routes
  • Time of Plenty
  • Close Call
  • Northern Armoury
  • Heart Tree Grove
  • The Roseroad
  • Great Hall
  • Winterfell Steward

Skagos module:

  • Skagos
  • Flea Bottom
  • Isle of Ravens
  • Ward
  • Frozen Solid
  • Wyman Manderly
  • Robb Stark
  • Catelyn Stark (both)
  • Arya Stark (both)
  • Sansa Stark (both)
  • Summer
  • Umber Loyalist
  • Ramsay Snow
  • Meera Reed

Flea Bottom module:

  • As above except for the attachments, Isle, Robb, Ramsay and Catelyn
  • Winterfell Steward
  • Bran Stark

Board presence/attrition module:

  • Greatjon Umber
  • Ward
  • Winter is Coming
  • Ramsay Snow
  • Arya Stark (faith)
  • Marched to the Wall
  • Valar Morghulis

Card Advantage module:

  • Close Call
  • A Time for Wolves
  • Exchange of Information
  • Time of Plenty (sorta but not really but work with me here)
  • Wyman Manderly
  • Umber Loyalist
  • Arya Stark (core)
  • I Am No One

Stand module:

  • Northern Armoury
  • Wyman Manderly
  • Robb Stark

Power module:

  • Catelyn Stark (wolves)
  • Sansa Stark (core)
  • Robb Stark
  • Dacey Mormont
  • Eddard Stark

Nightmares and Hand's Judgement are important cards and should be included in every deck you can fit them in module:

  • Frozen Solid
  • Bran Stark
  • Meera Reed (Yeah this category didn't translate too well to the new deck but oh well)

Tournament report is tough just because there were so many games and a lot of them had similar flows. I'll try to answer anything about specific games; in the meantime I'll just say thanks to my opponents for giving me exclusively fun games, every one was a blast. My opponents were as follows:

  1. bye
  2. Alex Anderson - Targ X
  3. AJ Valle - Martell Fealty
  4. Tamas Albeck - NW Wars (livestreamed by ffg, may be in their archives?)
  5. Chris Thompson - Targ X
  6. Luiz Gustavo Bretas - Targ X (livestreamed by ffg, may be in their archives?)
  7. bye
  8. Collin Weir - Lanni Dragon
  9. Michael Arroyo - Greyjoy Wars
  10. Franke Roders - Tyrell Alliance Goat Dragon
  11. Lennart Paga - Martell Wolf (livestreamed by ffg, may be in their archives?)

(all wins except Lennart, obviously)

Any questions please ask below and I'll try my best to answer them until I inevitably get lazy and forget after a while.

Thanks for reading!

15 comments

Don Drogo 1

Congrats good performance ! Did you try this skagos deck with a small direwolf module inside the skagos module including both Shaggydog character and attachment or even the summer attachment to tutor summer and other bran to stand summer or shaggydog ?

Martozar 305

Congratulations to your result! Your games was really great, watching you piloting tge deck was really satisfying :)

I've tried something simillar recently and I'm not sure how to deal with other Starks with this deck. Running 3 Skagos with no attachment hate means you have dead draw after they FroSo it, so maybe you'd suggest to cut it to 2 with so many draw? And how did Exnhange worked for you? In my version, I run 2xWolf King and even with 7 attachments it wasn't possible to have 3 cards all the time.

Harren 561

Congrats man! Really nice deck. Hope to see you in Stahleck ;)

uBaH 140

Was really lovely to watch all you games James.

UrosK 13

Great job! In my opinion, you didn't really lose vs Martel Wolf, you weren't behind when the game ended, you lost on the tournament time rule which is a consequence of this game not having a competitive scene developed enough for games to be properly played to 15 power each and probably tournaments lasting more days with bigger rewards.

jcwamma 2860

@Don Drogo I thought about the direwolves but for a more midrange deck like this I think they take up too many slots. I'd love to try that stuff in maybe a Qohor list where you can turn attachments into the direwolves and then into characters.

@Martozar I made a decision before the tournament to just accept the attachment downside and not let it have an effect on the composition of the deck. Too many decks aren't running Frozen Solid after all, and I wanted the dupes for the expected plethora of Greyjoy matchups that I didn't then get. I also really wanted to find it as soon as possible, and with the Umber Loyalist you're less bothered about drawing extra unnecessary copies as you would be in a deck with tighter draw and no discard outlet. As far as Exchange goes, I liked it just because when you get a Ward and/or Winter is Coming it's very satisfying. It's slightly worse in this deck than I'd like because of the duplicate locations (getting an unnecessary Flea Bottom or Skagos is a feels-bad moment), but still, card draw is card draw.

Thanks to others for the kind words! And it's true @UrosK but on the other hand all competitors knew the time rules going in. Untimed games tend to be a lot more favourable to the slower decks, and it's to Lennart's credit that he was able to be ahead on time not behind. The practicalities of longer tournaments and the logistics behind FFG hosting larger tournaments is always going to be awkward, I fear.

teamjimby 2020

Congrats on the great run! I'm surprised you aren't running at least 1x Winterfell Crypt. I've found it to be excellent targeted removal with Skagos. You have plenty of Skagos targets with 4+ printed STR, so you can easily remove a Hizdahr, Asha, Drogo, Tyrion, etc.

jcwamma 2860

@teamjimbyCrypt is obviously really powerful, but it kinda boils down to "slots m8". Crypt always feels nice to have more than necessary, and the question ends up being "what's the cut?". If anyone found room for it I definitely wouldn't question its inclusion though.

America 166

Nice run, dude. Good work with the deck.

Vince 131

Congrats wamma! Impressive run! I was so heart broken between the intrigue claim of Winter is Coming and that last turn against Lennart :D. It's been a pleasure following your tournament! We want more now!

mqsi 206

@jcwammaThanks a lot for posting this great deck! I took it to Stahleck and managed to make King of Swiss with it (losing immediatly in Top 32...). I only made two changes:

  • minus Exchange of information
  • plus You win or you die
  • minus Sansa Stark (Core)
  • plus Ser Jason Mallister

jcwamma 2860

@mqsiglad to hear it worked for you! How did you feel about the changes, in the end?

mqsi 206

@jcwamma well, I am quite happy with you win or you die over exchange of information because in the few testgames I only liked it as opener when I already had a solid board and prefered to get my hand full of cards instead of overcommiting to the board. In games where I did not want to play it as opener, I did not feel it gave me enough value later in the game. For the other change, I am not convinced though. I was not able to discard a single shadow card with mallister, but I often ran into situations where I wished I had a second sansa, tough I personally think I might run a second WotN Sansa. Anyways I think Mallister needs more testing to show his value with regards to shadow hating but he I guess he is always worth his money.

mqsi 206

so I did a small tournament report, in case anybody is interested how the deck did at Stahleck 2018: thronesdb.com

mqsi 206

hm. something went wrong. so next try:

thronesdb.com