Knights of the Harpoon (3-5 at Stahleck) 1.0

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• 1.0

The Deck:

I just had this idea like a week before the tournament and had absolutely no time for testing it. Tyrell KotR feels so boring to me and I wanted to spice it up, so I thought what to best combine with Tourney Lance and The Knight of Flowers (Core), and that is harpooning. And so the idea was born.

The characters are filled with lots of Knights and the good support cards like Hightower Spy, Willas Tyrell (FUtG) and some harpooning in The Fowler Twins and Margaery Tyrell (HoT). Most essential of the knights are Ser Garlan Tyrell (HoT) for the claim raise, Green-Apple Knights of course and Ser Cletus Yronwood for initiative. Garlan does have some nice things to discard here, like House Dayne Escort, The Red Fork and dupes of The Arbor and Redwyne Straits.

The locations are just the previously mentioned Fork for more initiative and econ, where Gate of the Gods is also draw.

In terms of attachments, the Tourney lance is for more harpooning shenanigans, Highgarden Destrier and Oathkeeper for STR boosts, War Scorpion too but also for some safety. A Pinch of Powder is just a utility tool

For events I just went for cancels and Dornish Revenge for more harpooning.

My plot choices were:

• At the Gates for a big eco start from Gates of the Moon
• City of Secrets for a good draw with decent initiative
• Marched to the Wall for all the small characters I can spare, best case Dayne Escort.
• Name Day Tourney for power-creep mid-game, KOF, Willas, Garlan, Margaery and Ser Bryce Caron all are lords for this
• Valar Morghulis as my reset. I chose this over VD even though I have GAKs because these are about the only non-unique character I care about keeping in play.
• Strained Reserves to deny the opponent a comeback from a slightly disadvantageous board state. Also the 2 claim being absolutely amazing value.
• A Tourney for the King to close the game with lots of power from Knights, extremely high initiative.

The tournament:

1. Stark Fealty, missed there was a Rickon Stark in setup and Opened AtG, lost pretty quickly

2. GJ Winter, an amazing match. Due to early Arbor and GotM I managed to out-eco the choke and got a lucky second Arbor right after Nightflyer struck. He had to play VM on his own unduped Euron, Vic, Ralf board against my 6-power KoF. He could've won that game but made a mistake from Winterfell and I still had a spare Scorpion to cancel the Military challenge. In the end, Garlan in Strained reserves got me the power swing I needed after 10 rounds of play.

3. Targ SoB, I knew from a test game on Friday that I could win that match-up, but not against Francis Côté with a perfect start. Lost initiative because of The Maiden and couldn't build up any board state and not even Strained Reserves could slow him down.

4. Bara Wolf, got outrushed by Fast Bob in 3 turns. He was duped turn 1 and had Justin Massey with him.

5. Martell Aloof, a long hard-fought victory. Early dupes saved me against the opponent's VM and even though Willas and Garlan had milk attached, I won initiative often enough to always harpoon Red Viper before it could attack and then got a Military claim out, which let me get rid of Old Hawk. My own VM got cancelled by Someone Always Tells but that round I won dominance as my 15th power. Was an amazing game

6. Martell (can't exactly remember agenda, think it was Summer or Fealty), long story short, attacking alone is very vulnerable against Ghost Hill Elite, lost significantly at the end.

7. GJ Stag, probably was a BigVic voltron deck, but he didn't get into play and the Attachments all went on Left-hand Lucas Codd, who I just harpooned every round. Opponent played his reset being Wildfire too early and my knights overran him.

8. Stark Brotherhood, Lost initiative all the time again and Former champions finished me off rather quickly.

Conclusion:

In the end I was rather happy with my result. Last year I went 2-6 and Stephen told me that that was an okay start and next year I should aim to get 3 wins, the year after 4, and so on until I can compete with the best. Thank you all for this amazing tournament, especially Schwaig, Philine and Helmut for organizing it and I can't wait to be back next year for more.