[Melee] Blood on the Casterly Rocktower – Top 16 Stahleck 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

Even back when I was playing regularly, there were never enough melee decks posted on here, so why not, eh? This is the deck I played at Stahleck this year, winning two tables in Swiss and finishing second at another to make the cut.

Having no particular goal of doing well in the tournament, and not having played any meaningful amount of Thrones since Stahleck 2024, I chose the faction and agenda for fairly simple reasons. Lannister for its plentiful supply of straightforwardly powerful characters, any one or two of whom might be enough to form the backbone of a winning table, and Valyrian Steel for access to both tricks and, most importantly, draw.

To put things incredibly simply, I would say that the main reason I was able to get the results I did at the tournament was that I was consistently at or above my reserve thanks to the agenda. Being able to get repeatable free draw from attachments like Noble Lineage, Water Dancer's Sword and Mountain's Man ensured I had the flexibility to respond to whatever chaos happened in the next plot phase.

Plot deck

I opened At the Gates in every game to get the Great Hall. This consistent economy was vital to the stability of a 75-card deck. If I had Great Hall on setup I'd just go and get a Roseroad instead, with a Kingsroad as plan C.

Summer Harvest is there as a secondary economy plot, which most of the time you shouldn't need but it can be important to know you have access to at least seven gold.

Varys's Riddle is, in my view, a plot you should always carry in melee. Its value in deal-making and responding to a variety of threats in concert with other players is unmatched.

Heir to the Iron Throne would often be my turn two choice. Characters like Taena and Joffrey are in the deck purely to soften the setup curve and let you turn them into one of your bigs using this plot and quickly create an impregnable board.

False Spring is here because we're running Cersei as our restricted card, so you can use it to close the game in the plot phase.

Coordinated Attack is the plot you flip to try to close the game in the challenges phase. With non-kneeling characters like Cersei, Jaime and Myrcella, it's easy to find openings to trigger it without expending the resources you need to actually capitalise on the ability to do additional challenges.

Valar Morghulis is the plot I was most uncertain about bringing, because two money and zero claim can set you back too far to recover if you're not careful, but I found that I had the economy to support it well enough, and sometimes there really isn't a sufficient solution to a threatening player beyond 'kill everything'. It probably should be said, though, that the time I flipped it in the tournament, I had a duped Tywin on the board, and that was quite important in making sure I had the money to stay stable afterwards.

Draw deck

Most of what's going on here is just 'good stuff' that I don't need to explain. That's certainly true for the characters - it's all about the big uniques, although both Myrcella and Tommen are important as they can support a bigger character through a potential Dohaeris and potentially be made into game-winning threats themselves through judicious application of cats.

The least essential characters are Anguy and Ser Meryn, who are mostly just there to be curve-balancing unique bicons, but could potentially be turned into something like Advisors to the Crown just to make setups a bit easier. It would be nice to find room for a second copy of Gregor, too, who was cut down to 1x just to avoid overloading on bigs but was always really good when he hit the table (remember that you can use his ability to target characters anywhere on the board).

The attachments are where most of the cool stuff happens. Some, as mentioned, are mostly there to be cheap and repeatable agenda triggers, but you also get a bunch of generically useful melee tricks. Being able to drop a surprise Reckless, Strangler, Milk or Sweetsleep makes you able to open doors for yourself or shut them for others in a flexible way. Most of the time, as I said, you want to use the agenda to draw a card, but you also have the opportunity to, say, bring in a Green Dreams and react to gain a fourth gold, which now lets you ambush the Hound as a surprise.

The locations are almost entirely about stability. I included Small Council Chamber because unrestricted power gain is nothing to sneeze at, but I never marshalled it once all day because it was usually more important to play a character and keep my board busy enough to win the challenges I needed in the first place. It's probably just a card that makes your opponents more scared of you than you want them to be. I'll probably cut it if I play this deck again. The Gold Mines were invaluable, though, ensuring I saw as much of my deck as possible.

Simply never come to a melee table without The Dragon's Tail; if it isn't the first three cards you put in the deck then you're doing it wrong. I also think any conventional Lanni goodstuff deck should be on 3x Daring Rescue – it's unrestricted power gain that isn't visible to your opponents and doesn't require challenge participation. It was the 15th power in both of my wins.

I ran 2x Pays His Debts because it's always been a bit of a pet card for me but realistically you need both Tyrion and one of his siblings in play to trigger it, and I never had a chance to do so. I'd replace it, likely with something cheaper and generically useful like Nightmares.