Martell Lion Shadows - Sansa prize at German Nats 1.0

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• 1.0

Finally, the report everyone has been waiting for: the Sansa prize deck at German Nats.

First off, hats off to Alex for organizing the tournament, it was a fantastic time at a great venue. Loved seeing familiar faces and meeting some new ones!

For this tournament, I felt like playing shadows. After waffling for several days from Martell Lion to Lanni Sun and then back again, I landed on the Martell Sun version of the list, mainly bc Lanni draw makes me sad, and Dorne is a cool card.

https://thrones.tourneygrounds.com/tournaments/8410

Martell Shadows is in a weird place. Arianne is in a similar slot to Cersei, but she simultaneously feels less impactful than Cersei, and also harder to trigger consistently. If Tyrion was non-loyal, we’d be in there like swimwear. But alas, we are not. Martell shadows is a greedy, gold-hungry deck that does noting for the first two plots in 75% of games, and no matter how much gold you save with Shadow City, you’re always 1 or 2 gold short of a “great” turn. But enough whining, it’s a fun deck and it’s almost there. Maybe it just needs a better deckbuilder ;)

Round 1 - David Tegtmeyer - Prince Tarle

By far the best game of the day off the bat, it should have been streamed. After a NML blew up my Sunspear on plot 7, we ended the round at 14/14. David flipped Heads on Spikes for a 25% chance to win it and missed. I still had some hope, but he topdecked Acolyte, and i couldn’t stop his Fanatic from winning him the game.

Round 2 - Ilja Muromez (Ivailo) - Fealty

A familiar Berlin meta face! This was a great game, I had hopes that sniping one Pyke with Viper Eyes would let me pressure his board and hand enough to win it, but GJ is great at drawing more big characters (and another Pyke) and playing them. I think if he didn’t see another Pyke I would have had a shot, but the combo of my locations getting bounced and big renown guys did me in.

Round 3 - Fabro - Banner Dragon

This game was over in ten minutes, he had duped Renly with Queensguard on T1, and Randyll on T2. Despite my valiant efforts to set up an impactful Marched on T3, he had already gotten to 16+ power on T2. Rush decks are probably one of shadows’ worst matchups, and he played well!

Round 4 - Magnus Sandelin-Nyhagen - SoB

At this point, both Magnus and I knew we were out, so we cracked a few beers (not our first of the day) and had fun. I drew super poorly this game, so his big dragons had their run of the board. Killed and marched a few big dragons, but couldn’t compete on power.

Round 5 - Feurbart - Hollow Hill

Another Berlin player, this was a fun game. Unfortunately Merc jumpers are pretty good vs attrition, so he gradually pulled ahead and I couldn’t stop him.

Lessons from the deck: The deck likely needs 3 of Doran's Game to have an actual wincon, and 3 Edric, he was always fantastic whenever he was on the board. Plots could probably be improved, I always felt like I wanted double Marched in a lot of games. Arianne and Doran are situationally good but not as impactful of a lynchpin slot as Cersei and Tyrion, so you probably don’t need more than 1 or 2 of each. Penny should probably be at 3x along with Poisoned Coin. Probably should find some slots for Varys/LotG as well.

Overall, even though the deck didn’t quite get there, it was still a super enjoyable tournament with a great crew! Can’t wait to see everyone again at Stahleck, where I definitely won’t be playing shadows ;)