"Sea of Watch" - Winner Norwegian Nationals 2023 at Craster 2.0

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• 2.0

I wanted to share this deck I played at Northern Schemes at Craster's keep last weekend together with a tourney report. First of all many many thanks to Nevja and Zinnie for organizing the whole thing. It was a truly amazing experience, thanks as well to all who were there. It was a great privilege to be part of the group.

Second, great many thanks to NiL with whom I have developed the idea and built the deck.

The two main themes of the deck are resilience and reset control . The reason being that we started developing it when the meta was flooded with Martell 321. It is a ranger deck which I had not played before and I did not play a lot of Sea of Blood before. It is really fun to play, but needs some practice to get it right and it is not fast, but rather a "comeback" deck, which is my favorite type of deck.

The game plan has two general options:

Open on Maiden/For the Realm/Late Summer Feast.

Trigger SoB in T1/T2 to get a blood token and hopefully Tricksy Bird. Get a maester (typically Aemon) in T2 with Here to serve. Play Tricksy Bird in the plot phase by spending a blood token . You learn your opponents plot line which is extremely helpful. And you want them to play their reset next.

1) Either to cancel it (particularly VD) with Outwit and then gain board dominance with strong rangers, and Ser Jaremy Rykker for power icons.

2) Let them run into their own reset and survive it better than they (particularly VM or The stranger) with Aemon and many dupes. Flip The Stranger the round after or after that to finish even more juicy targets.

Power gain
Power gain is generally slow, except for Longclaw and Qhorin , there is only 1x The Wall and Grenn who can turn games around, and sometimes Benjen although I did not marshal him in this tournament.

Characters
Rykker is the key character, even more important than the Great Ranging . Aemon is important as well, but you almost always get him. I tried 6-cost Jon, but would take him out for another Wildling Jon.

Economy
Classical economy is quite tight with only 9 economy locations and only 1 with a gold modifier. This might seem strange if you want to play expensive events and flood the board and dominate your opponent after controlling their reset and many plots that are 4 or less gold. But there are several cards that have implicit economy. Forest Patrol comes in for only 2 gold at 6 STR, Old Forest Hunter can create one or two direly need gold, Sea of Blood is reduction for events, Kindly Man as well and finally I Pledge My Life and Honor Forest Patrol can bring in big guys for little money.

Events
For the first time in my life I played only 60 cards. Number 61 is definitely a third copy of Fresh Recruits , the most important event with which you want to get your key characters and dupes. I Pledge My Life and Honor is a great event on defense getting big guys or more dupes. The Watch Has Need is more efficient character tutoring. You Know Nothing is one of my favorite events. Sometimes you really do not need it, but it can win you games on its own. The Watcher on the Walls is sometimes useless or sometimes wins you Semi-final and final (see below). 14th event would probably be a third I Pledge My Life and Honor

Control
I have not used any of the Begging Brothers in this tournament (did not face trigger heavy decks), but I would leave 1 in (almost any deck). Defensive Debris sounds interesting, not sure it is worth it, never used. The idea is to use it against events especially things like Nightmares, Superior Claim. Doran's Game. Political Disaster against locations together with 1x Jade Sea Dromond. Milk of the Poppy is still one of the most important cards in the game. Maester Mullin for key challenges.

Possible cards to cut/replace: 1x Benjen
1x Begging Brother
1x Defensive Debris
1X 6-cost Jon Snow

Tournament:

In total I canceled 3 x VD, 2x Counting coppers, one failure on MKC, and one Tricksy Bird with a VM going through. The deck performed over its curve, I think. I. was quite lucky in matchups and setups. 50-60% win rate is more realistic.

Round 1 (Stark Fealty, loss) : Amazing and close game. Without opponents Winterfell I might have had a real chance here.

Round 2 (Stark LotC, win) : Great relative setup, VD cancel through Tricksy Bird, Board dominance and still I was way behind in power, but could turn it around.

Round 3 (Tyrell LotC, win) : Good relative setup, VD cancel through Tricksy Bird, devastating The Stranger. Board dominance and still I was way behind in power, but could turn it around again.

Round 4 (Greyjoy Fealty, win) : Decent setup, Watcher on the Walls to pull Risen and then The Stranger for Raider Euron with intimidate as a great problem. PD discarded 300 warships. Way behind in power, but could turn it around as I had dupes and saves and Zinnie did not, so he could not flip VM. No good target for his Pyke.

Quarterfinal (Tyrell Fealty, win) : Heavy Tyrell good stuff. Could have outdone me in board presence and power gain easily. Tricksy Bird into opponents VM, milk on Varys, board dominance, The Stranger to seal the fate. Behind on power most of the time.

Semifinal (Martell Alliance Qohor, Dragon, win) : Amazing deck with Sword of the Morning and newly freed Queensguard. I played rather defensively to avoid too many Qohor triggers and the combination of threat from The Watcher on the Walls and control through Mullin kept Edric with Sword of the Morning in check until I flooded the board the and won over time. No resets in this game.

Final (Stark AAA, win) : Cool deck with crazy power gain potential on The Crag. I gambled a 7-cost Jon setup with King's Road, hoping for no Marched in an AAA deck, because I had 1 Milk and 1 Watcher on the Walls on the hand and I suspected Leo would be able to outdo me on military. The milk went on King Robb first round. I marshalled The Wall the only time and even with a great MKC reset from Leo that put enough pressure on Leo that he had to risk a big military challenge which ended in three 6+ cost chars dying and me winning Craster's. Such a great event!

Thanks to all opponents, the games were amazing!