Growing Strong through Fire and Blood 1.0

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• 1.0

Silly Kern!

Have you tried it with Illyrio? Perhaps taking out Rattleshirt and Wardens like you suggested?

@Psycozis I thought about using Magister Illyrio, but 5 gold is a significant cost for a character that then requires two additional gold for any value. With Arbor Knight, Highgarden, and my event cards, keeping two gold around for an additional stand (of which there is already quite a bit) didn’t make sense. If I were to add another 5 cost character, it would probably be Littlefinger.

If you play against a whole lot of Baratheon kneel decks, then it might make sense.

I love it!

For a combo deck, you’ve got to include Left and Right.

@Stormborn Not really. I think a lot of people go wrong with combo decks because they try to do too many at once. Specifically, Left and Right are not valid targets for Noble Lineage, so their inclusion hurts the usefulness of one of the combo pieces. They lack versatility and only have synergy with each other, which means there would be one more combo that you have to find in order to not be playing inefficiently.

Yeah, that’s great reasoning, thanks.

I could see Wardens of the Reach being replaced with an Unsullied as you are considering to keep the same cost ratio and icon spread in tact. With the limited reach locations that might be available with this style, it seems as though it might be a bit more reliable 4 strength or better; at least offensively.

I keep looking back on decks of my own with the Rattleshirt’s Raiders as well when I put a singleton in. On occasion I find myself holding it in hand and choosing something else to do that turn. Even when I do find it as that one of. I keep thinking of pulling it from several decks of my own. If Syrio was going to be a 4-cost it would have definitely replaced this in spot in several of my decks. The extra gold for it though has me wondering.

I think Wardens of the Reach is better than Unsullied. I don’t have any burn effects, so lower STR isn’t a benefit and since I am likely to have at least one The Reach location in play (I have four, two of which are my primary targets for Support of the People), they are going to be equivalent. The further advantage is that by keeping the card count to a minimum, I get increased value from Rose Garden, which incidentally makes Wardens of the Reach even more affordable.

I think that when Syrio Forel is released next week I might cut a copy of Varys and go with one of each. Syrio giving stealth is very good and he is another good target for Noble Lineage.

I could even see making room for Syrio (or other cards) by cutting some of the third copies, especially the third copy of The Knight of Flowers which is less important to the win condition than Randyll Tarly.

Yeah, the Rose Garden as a means to lean towards Wardens of the Reach is a fair reason over Unsullied. I tend to lean towards them as one of my favorite armies, just on the fact that they scale without the need for a reliance on other cards in a deck and the defender can no longer chump block with reducers and cards like Bastard Daughter. But, fair reasoning.

Plot wise. What do you think of A Game of Thrones vs Calm Over Westeros. A Game of Thrones is excellent against Stark and Greyjoy. Also what about Supporting the Faith + Paxter Redwyne: they won’t be cancelling your Tears of Lys and will be effective against the new 10 gold plot. Finally, what about Jousting Contest which you can use to push through your renown and win challenges on defense.

Good suggestions @Stormborn, thank you for indulging my weird deck fix by actually considering it. I did think about A Game of Thrones, but Calm Over Westeros has a few advantages. First, it has more gold, so that’s good. Second, it protects me from one challenge type (which could be the challenge). Last, it can protect me even if I have little or no presence. Calm Over Westeros is just more generally useful for protecting my board, my hand, or my power total. A Game of Thrones can shut two of those challenges down, but not as consistently. It would be better if the deck were trying to slow the game down, but that isn’t really important for this deck.

The other plots are definitely good suggestions, but with Jousting Contest you can only challenge with one character (so you won’t be able to use both Randyll Tarly and The Knight of Flowers). Similar to A Game of Thrones, the combo with Highgarden is used to slow the game down, which once again, isn’t really something we need to do with this deck. With only one copy of Highgarden this isn’t a particularly likely combo to get anyway.

Supporting the Faith with Paxter Redwyne is definitely a strong consideration, the main problem with it is the lower reserve value on Supporting the Faith. Since we have Pleasure Barge and The Mander, being at or near the usual reserve of 6 cards is likely to occur throughout the entire game, so dropping down to a reserve of 4 could be really bad. The effect also isn’t game-winning, so the potential drawback of needing to discard 1 or 2 cards more than usual isn’t made up for by the effect, especially because, like Jousting Contest, it really only works with one specific card and without it, the plot is just a weak choice. If you were to use Supporting the Faith, I would definitely increase Paxter Redwyne to three copies.

Something I neglected to mention: I think Wildfire Assault might be good for this deck. It meets one of the needs you identified in your suggestion to use Jousting Contest (helping to push Renown characters through), but would still allow me to use two or three Renown characters in a single challenge.

In practice, I never really found myself in a situation where I had more than three “must have” characters in play, and even if I did, I have yet to play through all seven plots with the deck. So Wildfire Assault can be left un-played.

I would target Building Orders, Marched to the Wall, or Calm Over Westeros as the plots most likely to remove for Wildfire Assault.

Marched to the Wall has the worst overall synergy with the deck, but it is so important to have it in order to keep people from setting up 7 cost characters alone or to punish opponents that are unable to draw enough characters. But it doesn’t really accomplish anything the deck needs to accomplish, so I could see it being cut.

Building Orders doesn’t hurt your opponent, so that makes it a little weaker in some regards, but it works so well with Pleasure Barge, it’s like Counting Coppers, but with more gold. It’s also great for finding that Seal of the Hand you might desperately need.

Calm Over Westeros is probably less important for protection, because your game-winning characters all have icons and can just defend if you have a weaker board position. But, the versatility of being able to protect your hand while giving 5 gold makes it tough to cut.

Thank you so much for you detailed comments. Marched to the Wall is very important so that you can use Varys even if your opponent has dupped a big character.

I’m not sure if Wildfire and Varys would be too much but you make an excellent case for adding Wildfire.

I’ve played about 8 games with with this deck now including 2 last night against Bara Fealty and Greyjoy Sun. I’ve mainly been experimenting with the plot deck.

You are absolutely right about A Game of Thrones. Even against Bara and Greyjoy, it was a dead card that hurt me more. The extra gold from Calm Over Westeros is very useful and I think I can play only one other economy plot with Calm.

I didn’t have Marched to the Wall against Bara and it would have made such a difference so I think you always have to include it as it can win you the game.

I’m also thinking about replacing Confiscation with 2x Rattleshirt’s Raiders to create an extra space.

Deck wise I’m considering the The Queen of Thorns as playing against her, I realise how good she is as she can trigger on attack or defence and with the Handmaidens, she can do a surprise win on defence when she is knelt. Although it’s hard to find space for her so I may have to make some drastic cuts, maybe the 3 cost locations and Support of the People or the 2x Milk of the Poppy that I have added.

This is not disagreement, because that may very well create a better deck. But I think that if you go with The Queen of Thorns, then it is a different deck. You could find room for it by cutting Merchant Prince and Noble Lineage. Probably Fealty or Banner of the Rose (aka no agenda) are better if you want to utilize The Queen of Thorns.

But the combo with Handmaiden is pretty cool, so if you want to keep Banner of the Dragon, then I would suggest removing Merchant Prince and Noble Lineage and maybe add 1 copy of each Dragon (to keep 12 cards in the deck). This gives you at least 3 more card slots (The Queen of Thorns?) without having to modify anything else.

Yup. I will go for Dragons and QoT dropping Merchant Prince and Noble Lineage. Cheers.