Boats crafted from Valyrian Steel (Winner, SSI EU Bracket) 1.0

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• 1.0

This is the decklist I used to win the Second Sons Invitational European Bracket.

Firstly, thank you to Aaron and the others who arranged it for doing so. While the exclusive nature of the invitational was obviously divisive, I still appreciate it being put on - it’s not taking a slot away from another tournament or anything, it was just an extra source of content for the community, and therefore I think a wholly good thing. Thank you also to my fellow Europeans, none of whom decided to take Sea of Blood in any form, and who in total took 15 different decks out of 16 players (with Tyrell Kingdom of Shadows the only duplicate). It made for a healthy and varied environment, giving me many different types of opponents!

This list I actually wasn’t particularly happy with going into the tournament. I made it on a whim, knowing categorically I was using Dark Wings, Dark Swords as my agenda but not much else. Eventually I decided to go with Greyjoy because I feel like the Boats deck, which post-restriction I feel comfortable playing without being an uber-tryhard (I should stop lying to myself, I know), has a ton of fun attachments. But the likes of Fleet Captain and Support of Harlaw that are clearly boat-adjacent just don’t fit in a normal deck. This is what I love about the agenda - you get to include a bunch of somewhat obscure, lesser-played cards and put them to use.

I wasn’t just using the agenda because it’s fun though - it’s also really strong. Yes, you have to include a bunch of attachments in your deck; yes you can’t run more than 1 of each of them; yes, you have a larger deck size. But if you’ve got a flow of attachments going, you will often be drawing 2 or 3 extra cards per round, more than making up for the downside. Or you’ll be gaining a gold each time, getting these effects on the cheap. Either way, it’s seriously powerful, and if you don’t believe me, take a mosey on over to The Annals of Castle Black and check out the agenda’s frankly-bonkers QR score since its release.

Now the specifics of this deck, I’m not super-happy with. My first draft had Wildfire as its only reset, and I found myself lamenting the lack of Valar. At the same time though, Wildfire with attachments-laden bigs is really good, and the high initiative suits the go-first approach the deck has. So I did what any sane person would do - cut their gold plot instead and went with two resets. And subsequently in loads of games with this deck I’ve been seriously lacking in gold, badly in need of even a 5g plot to see me through. If you were to play this deck I strongly recommend adding a high gold plot - playing You Win Or You Die for economy sucks, really hard.

There are other small details that could be improved - I included Plundered because I thought it’d be cute in some matchups (The Wall most obviously), and occasionally you can sacrifice it and use the gold to drop a Seal of the Hand, or heavily-bestowed Seized by the Guard, and that’s nice. But it really should be something more useful like Strangler or Dragonbinder. It also needs another econ location - a late cut was the third Iron Gate, because I felt like I had enough draw and wanted a third Risen with my switch to Valar. For some reason I thought the draw to cut was the one that was also econ rather than going down by 1 Alannys or something, go figure. To be fair, it is on 33 characters out of 75, another facet that could be, uh, maybe considered suspect.

Otherwise the deck is pretty solid, for the slapdash way it was thrown together. The low character count looks dangerous, but keep in mind you’re pulling cards out of your deck with the agenda all the time anyway, so you see enough to get the job done. Following Team Greyjoy’s Qohor deck from the UK Thrones W.A.R., I remain enamoured with the Maester/Outwit tech and have it present here too, something I’m very happy about. Overall it did the job in this tournament against high quality opposition.

All my games were recorded, so rather than do TRs I’ll just provide links. If you have any questions about decisions made or anything else similar, feel free to ask here and I’ll do my best to answer.

Round Of 16 Vs Franke Roders (Greyjoy Kings of Winter) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4VsGsdHJ2g

Quarterfinal Vs Ryan Wood (Tyrell Kingdom of Shadows) - OK so this one was recorded, but it’s not uploaded. I recorded it, narrated all my thoughts and reasoning and all that jazz. It was then the most dire game you can ever imagine. Ryan’s deck crapped out so hard that I won it in dominance phase round 3, with doing all three challenges unopposed and winning dominance all three rounds. (The rest made up for with renown from Victarion.) Then to top it all off I found out that the audio wasn’t recording, so I have a bad mute game not worth uploading, whoop whoop.

Semifinal Vs Reinhard Schefcik (Targaryen Valyrian Steel) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXXIcefci4g

Final Vs Alex Trigonakis (Targaryen Knights of the Hollow Hill) - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/507000607

'Champion of Champions' Bonus Game Vs North American Bracket Winner Colt Humbert (Night's Watch Valyrian Steel) - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/507827451