"A Little More Conversation" Melee at Craster's 1.0

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Melee in Norway was amazing! The first chance I'd had to play this format in over two years. I wanted to make sure that I built a deck to engage as much as possible with newer players as well as battle with more experienced table talkers.

This is the list I put together with the aim of opening my mouth more at the melee table and hopefully playing cards that interacted with other players.

The main aim of the deck was to keep the table as balanced as possible and not let anyone run away with the game. You trigger the agenda to give Insight early on and then Renown from round two. Intimidate can also be useful.

Cards like Dragonstone Convert offered good talking points... "do we need to stop Doran's Game or perhaps a Soup Claim or even a Lady Sansa's Rose?"

Mel's trigger was also a good discussion point. You can use this to balance out the boards.

3 copies of "Hey My Delena" kept the table honest, and every time she was marshalled she got a chorus to the tune of the Macarena.

Poor Fellows are great value in melee as are non kneeling Crow Killers. Thanks to Storm for encouraging me to include these, as well as Mrs Davos who can be triggered any time a player uses stealth.

Sweetsleep makes me feel uneasy with its 'item' trait, but its a very good card in melee, due to Voltron's and Qohor

The plots are very melee focused. Opening Harvest won me 11 gold in each of my 3 tables. If you trigger Insight with The Brotherhood agenda round 1, it can be worth flipping the second Harvest round two. Or maybe more control is needed at this point?

More control comes from Forced March, Parley at Storm's End and Grand Melee, which works particularly well with your Azor Ahai Reborn attachment. Duel and Riddle also offer some interesting talking points for the table.

If I was to run this again I would probaly swap out Grand Melee for The Pointy End, which I think is a fantastic melee plot. Pointy End is so good in melee that I would also switch Azor Ahai Reborn for plain old Soup Claim myself.

I dearly hope you get the chance to play melee soon yourself, and that you all consider attending Craster's Keep next time around. I can't recommend it highly enough.