A song of jank and oldtown 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Please note this deck was designed before Oldtown and Annals were both on the Restricted list.

I have long sought to throw away the rulebook on how a deck can be constructed. That near-rigid structure of ~32 characters following a nice curve, 10 economy cards, a few safe locations, a couple of Milks and 10 events, filled with Nightmares and Hand’s Judgements, is not for me. Decks like Builders and play-to-lose Martell Stag give me hope that different deck make-ups are possible, even if these 2 can be less fun to play against. For me, Banner decks have generally become less competitive as the card pool has increased but are still much more fun to construct than Fealty or Wars, for example.

This deck is not going to be particularly competitive but it does go a little way towards “breaking the wheel” without being full-on combo. Some might have thought the gap between Nights Watch choke and Tyrell songs was too wide but that sounded like a challenge, and I gladly accepted.

The Blue Bard is a key character to how the deck functions, ideally he will leave play 2-3 times to give you a hand full of songs to play. Marched is helpful for this, though can also be saved for after one of your Valars. Veteran Builders have a similar role, but this time to trigger Oldtown multiple times a turn, especially when combined with Flea Bottom, and a couple of power challenges thrown in. Hopefully by then you have already seeded your draw deck with Caswell’s Keep or The Bear and the Maiden Fair so each trigger is a guaranteed power. And of course you can afford all the songs through a combination of Highgarden Minstrel and Dareon, who helps keep your opponents marshalling to a minimum after the resets. The Knight of Flowers loves songs to help get that Renown flowing, with Tom O’Seven being able to stand him. Jaqen is there to deal with any problem characters, and Mace is something of a luxury for power gain or to replay your Bard / Informant (we also need someone strong in the dead pile for Lord Renly’s Ride).

I’m sure the deck could be better optimised (suggestions welcome) and is limited by not having any of the usual cancels / structure but hopefully it shows my thinking and I also welcome links to other decks that don’t follow the normal structure.