#MeeraForever - 8RoW 1.0

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Hello, here is another deck I played in the 8 Regents of Westeros tournament. I built this deck some time before the event itself, and I knew I wanted to play it at some point. I opted to play it against played by Dennis Luke as I felt like a typical Bara deck would be easier prey than some others.

"This deck looks like a bad deck, what is it even doing?"

The main objective of this deck is to trigger Tower of the Hand at least once per round. The secondary objective of this deck is to win the game.

The entire deck concept is designed to get multiple triggers from Tower of the Hand. Ordinarily you will get one trigger in the challenges phase to get double use of one particular character. The main targets for this are any character with stealth to help push your challenges through (Alysane, Arya, Meera), or one of the impactful characters (Mr Choppy, Greatjon, Cat).

Tower of the Hand can trigger once per phase, which means Marshalling and Dominance phase triggers are also possible, and indeed can be advantageous. Standing Mr Choppity Chop Chop in dominance to whittle down the opponents board some more is always nice, and the inclusion of The Withering Cold in this deck means that marshalling and dominance phases become opportunities to stand your board whilst your opponent cannot.

"This is all well and good, but how can you afford all of this"

Quite frankly, we're gonna need some repeatable shadows triggers here people. Luckily we have the opportunity to use Greywater Watch every round which will trigger Tower of the Hand in any phase you have a leftover gold, Shadow of the North for extra claim, and also my favourite (and bane of everyones lives) #MeeraForever. Triggering Meera every single round will trigger Tower of the Hand, and will also trigger your opponent as they loudly vent and curse at her perennial reappearance.

Not only do we have repeatable shadows options, but we also have Assault from the Shadows as our agenda. This allows us to place any card into shadows, to then bring out again to trigger the Tower. It can be useful to put The Roseroad or Heart Tree Grove into shadows for that sweet 0 cost trigger your opponent was not expecting, or to hide Ice or Winter Is Coming to protect them from claims. Or you simply avoid spending 2 gold to place your card into shadows by kneeling your faction card to do it for free. That's certainly worth the reduction of one gold per round the agenda enforces.

"Why are you playing all Winter plots? That's a bit silly isn't it."

It's not silly if nobody knows abou-. Ah. Well no, it's not silly really. If you want to be able to consistently trigger the Tower and #MeeraForever, then you're going to need to play a Winter plot every round. Let's run through the plots;

Winter Reserves is crucial. Mainly because it counteracts the gold reduction of the agenda, otherwise I would accidentally cheat every game by forgetting. Don't be a cheater! Winter Reserves is solid economy and boosts your reserves in future turns which can be quite important. If you have your repeatable Meera/Greywater Watch/Shadow of the North online, it is feasible that you will not be playing many cards from hand at all, and so the reserve boost is handy. Do not worry if your board seems smaller than your opponent in the early game. This will soon change.

The Withering Cold has been mentioned already. It's a great plot to slow the game down whilst you focus on building your economy base and getting your board just right. If we already have Tower of the Hand then we have opportunities to make the opponent use up their resources whilst we can mitigate that with our stand effects. Don't forget you can use extra Tower triggers in the dominance/standing phase to stand more of your board if you have the gold available! Alysane and Greatjon are also annoying threats on this turn too, not to mention Mr Choppy with his Weighty Tome of Bastardly Knowledge. Obviously be aware that your faction card and Northern Keep will remain knelt to think in advance whether you need to use them this round or next!

The Stranger is the newest inclusion in this deck and it is very important in getting rid of your opponents big characters. Most of the time you can time it nicely and do far more damage to the opponent than you yourself will take. You must always plan in your marshalling and challenge phases exactly what you want to play just in case you want to flip the Stranger the next round. This plot is not one you can just pick up and play, you need to think ahead! It doesn't matter a great deal who dies on our side. Of course, you'd rather not be killing Chopman v2.0 so don't be gung ho and marshal him early if you can help it. It is annoying if one of your non-recurrable characters get killed, like Summer or Arya but it's not game breaking at all.

The First Snow of Winter is a superb plot for this deck. don't often run this plot, and with the number of 3 cost or lower characters in this deck, you can be forgiven for being hesitant to run it. Whilst we have the ability to put cards into shadows though, we can use this to our advantage, and the inclusion of angry peasants means we can sacrifice our low cost uniques (Bran, Jojen, Reek, Rickon, Sansa, Summer, Shaggydog), Wylla) to put them into play and survive the First Snow. Often you will play A Time For Wolves afterward and recur one of those characters in order to replay them, if you haven't already played it because your opponent rage-reset to try and kill #MeeraForever. If you have already played A Time For Wolves, the Mob is a great way to get Summer off the board so you can play him again.

Winter Festival and The Long Winter are there to gain power and put some pressure on the opponent. If you think your opponent will play their reset, then it's usually a good time to play Winter Festival because it has good gold, avoiding Summer plots so you get the power, and your Northern Keep get maximum value. The Long Winter can get brutal with our 9 stealth cards with and claim raise events. Sequencing challenges on this turn are often a lot of fun, and are a rewarding part of the game.

"Meh, boring. Why do you have too much economy?"

You will almost certainly lose if you do not draw enough economy in this deck. It is most certainly better to have too much as it almost never goes to waste. You can put an extra card into shadows, or generally terrify your opponent with your possibilities. Here we have The Roseroad and Heart Tree Grove because they're excellent for setups with the Northern Armory and shadows cards, but also for putting into shadows for the cheap Tower trigger. Northern Armory is great cheap stand, and the Northern Keep are excellent when you have 7 Winter plots.

"Fine. Why are you running the shit Arya?"

Shit Arya is actually Really Good Arya actually. Bringing her out of shadows as second player puts you in a favourable position to get multiple challenges out of her, with military first and then another challenge afterward. She is a tricon, a good source of card draw and survives the British summer too. Plus she is a natural shadows card which is handy in case you have some excess money during marshalling. Sometimes you'll find that your opponent will claim a duplicate to prevent her from re-standing, but then you have the claim raise events and Poisoned Coin to discourage that ;)

"I thought weird hobbit Ned was rubbish"

Hobbit Ned is a superb card in this deck! You get extra stand for his dominance action, he's big and meaty at 6 STR, he has renown to speed the game up, and his massive book allows even more stand and has the shadows keyword which synergises with our deck!

"You're playing PoS Ned and Alysane but also Reek, you're dumb"

Crikey, Reek terrifies almost everyone nowadays. Is there anyone who hasn't forgotten about him and then had their nice juicy non-loyal reeked? You can also trigger him if you win an unopposed challenge with Bolton Flayer don't forget, and with all the stealth to accompany them, that's certainly possible too. Okay, it does make Alysane a little worse, and you may not be able to do some extra choppy things with Ned. But if you can steal an important character or one with power on it, it is well worth it!

"Do you actually have any proof that would even win games?"

Why yes! I'm glad you asked. Here is the game versus Dennis Luke- https://youtu.be/rFAlvtIPFHY and I have also played it IRL here- https://youtu.be/7pTbVjAtmIk

"You think you're so clever don't you. I bet Reinhard would crush this"

You got me there. Reinhard would crush this. I'm sorry.

#MeeraForever