Tabletop Games Chester UK Winter Championship Melee Winner 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

This deck came top in a Casual-level, eight-player Melee tournament. I’m not professing to be a great player - there was a lot of luck involved - but there aren’t many Melee resources out there so I thought I’d share my experiences.

Core and TTB were legal (TRTW is sadly not available in the UK yet).

The Meta?

I was travelling on my own for the event, so didn’t know what the local meta would be like. This was also my first tournament, and my first ever melee game, so I was rather going in blind. From the little information I could glean from the internet, I felt that that Greyjoy was popular for the ease of finding unopposed challenges, Lannister was popular because of its just a good faction, and some people were having mixed success with Night’s Watch Decks. I also suspected Targaryen, being big in Joust, would also show up.

My Deck

I’m a massive hipster and don’t like playing the deck that everyone else is playing, even if it puts me at a disadvantage. I’ve always had an attraction to Tyrell, with is slippery challenge maths. Since I could only find a couple of records of it’s use, once as a banner and another time as the Main Faction in a reverse-bannered Night’s watch deck, it satisfied my desire to be different.

Tyrell’s strengths as I see them are: - a solid defense with Left, Right and Highgarden - a good icon spread in general, leaving fewer holes in my defense - great deck search through Olenna’s Cunning - above average economy - two solid routes to victory through The Knight of Flowers’ jousting hi-jinks and Randyll Tarly’s standing tricks - reasonably easy extra challenges through Olenna’s Informant - and of course, the many unpredictable strength boosts

The defensive aspects and the strength boosts in particular felt like they could prove useful for Melee, with the potential for making me an unattractive target.

Overall, deck plays fairly straight-forwardly: get out the big hitters, make challenges and gain power steadily with renown. Rush to victory using Olenna’s Informant or Sneak Attack (but not both). I did debate putting Superior Claims in but never got round to it.

The Tournament

The field was largely inexperienced, including a few people who had never played Melee before (myself included) and several who hadn’t been playing Thrones in general for more than a month. Everyone made mistakes and we were all fairly gracious with take-backs, provided the game hadn’t progressed on irreversibly.

Round 1

Opponents: - To my left - Ben with Night’s Watch Fealty - Opposite - A gentleman whose name I forget running Stark Banner of the Kraken - To my right - Matt with Greyjoy Banner of the Sun

This was a really tight game and also a rather slow one, going well beyond time with peoples inexperience and tough decisions causing everything to drag on. I forget the specific setups that people had but I remember Ben had The Wall and Castle Black out early but didn’t have the greatest set of characters to mount the defense, the Stark player had Robb Stark and Vanguard of the North out most the game and never needed Robb’s ability as there was a war plot played each turn to keep the vanguard standing, Matt had Balon Greyjoy out turn one, which I promptly milked, and had at least two Iron Fleet Scouts to boost him come the inevitable Confiscation. I had The Queen of Thorns out in my first marshalling phase, and she proceeded to spew out cards for the rest of the game.

I made a major mistake early-game, forgetting that just because I’m the third player doesn’t mean I can go ham in the challenges. Ben took advantage of me overextending, leaving me with just Randyll Tarly and The Queen of Thorns. Randyll got marched, leaving me with minimal board presence. I still had a decent hand to recover with, and The Queen did some work to get me back in the game.

At twenty minutes to time I was sill on 2 power but had been able to table-talk away any attention, including vaguely promising gifts of Margaery Tyrell’s buffs if people stay on my good side, so was back at full board strength. I managed to simultaneously be the last player, draft the Hand of the King title and have an Olenna’s Informant in hand. This could well have been the last round and I had the ingredients to spring for victory. As the TO gave a five minute warning I became the active player in the challenges phase. Under the pressure of it all, knowing that I had a chance at victory, I misplayed. Across my three power challenges, courtesy of my title and an the informant, and two renown characters I should have raked in loads of power, but I mistargeted those challenges and only scraped six together, pulling my tied first with Matt and the Stark player, who immediately won dominance to put him in the lead.

We entered our final round just before the TO was going to call time, and he ruled that we should finish that round - a call he later regretted as it took 30 minutes. I played Sneak Attack and took the last player position in the hope of the best choice for my single challenge. Matt played Calm Over Westeros in the final round naming power. That -1 claim won him the game as he kept his twelfth power and stopped me from gaining mine.

The final score was 12-11-11-11, to Matt, translating to 15 points for him and 8 for the rest of us. If the game had ended the round earlier it would have been 9-8-8-5 with the gentleman in green winning, altering the overall points enough to leave me in second place. I’m not complaining.

Round 2

Opponents: - To my left- Matt, again, with his Greyjoy Banner of the Sun - Opposite -Alex running Greyjoy Fealty (I think) - To my right- A second gentleman whose name I forget with Lannister Fealty

The headline moment from this game would be me hitting the Lannister player with a two claim military challenge (as the Master of Ships) turn one killing off his claim soak, followed by Matt’s sneak attack killing off both his Cersei Lannister and Ser Jaime Lannister and leaving him with an empty board. He never really recovered, but his defensive The Hound use did help him rebuild slightly (up until the point where someone stealthed past him and killed Tyrion Lannister, really rubbing salt in the wound).

Both Greyjoy players had Balon Greyjoys and Great Krakens out early and were running round absorbing silly amounts of power. Thankfully I had Randyll Tarly, Highgarden, Left and Right (though I did throw them under the bus on a Wildfire Assault turn) and a reasonable pile of gold to act as a bit of a deterrent, and that seemed to be enough to keep me in the game.

With one player essentially solely there as a source of power for the others and two Greyjoys having fairly optimal games, this game was much quicker than the last. For the third plot I’d gone Sneak Attack knowing that I’d not got long left, hoping to get a single good power challenge against a rival. I won the initiative, made the lanni player go first (no challenges) in the hope of picking up a decent title and picked Crown Regent. My intent was to redirect a challenge into me so that I could feed my renown characters and prevent other people getting power. (I am aware this is not how that title works, but everyone was playing that way and when the TO realised,it was too late to make a difference - we were, at least, all being consistently wrong so it was fair in that respect).

I redirected Matt’s power challenge with Balon Greyjoy from the Lannister player to me. Randyll Tarly blocked, and I played Growing Strong to break the strength tie. The Hand’s Judgment hit me. At this stage I had to Highgarden - there was no way I could win and I didn’t want to feed power to someone who was about to win. At this stage I misplayed again - technically the challenge is still going and I win, giving Randyll renown power, but instead I said that the entire challenge was cancelled. Doh

This was all enough to stop Matt from winning, but it had rather overextended me, and Alex then came in and went to town on me, winning the game and stealing my power.

The final score was 15-14-11-0 in power, or 15-7-3-0 points, to Alex, Matt, me and the Lannister player respectively. That missing power would have given me an extra point, which is a shame.

Round 3

Opponents: - To my left- Matt, for the third time, with his Greyjoy Banner of the Sun - To my right - Harry with Targaryen Banner of the Sun

Alex would have been on this table again, but he had to leave.

Harry had just come from the other table having dominated the game with Khal Drogo and his Drogo’s Arakh, leaving most of the others with less than five power. I was very familiar with Matt’s deck. Ideally I didn’t want either of these decks to get going.

And neither of them did get going. Harry never saw his big characters, as far as I can tell. Matt did get Balon Greyjoy, Asha Greyjoy and Theon Greyjoy out but Harry milked Balon on the first turn and I did on the second after the inevitable Confiscation. He never saw the Great Kraken, which would have helped and ended up throwing Balon away to Wildfire Assault.

Another thing that helped was that Harry seemed to massively misread the board state and got it into his head that Matt was a much bigger threat. I wasn’t going to complain or point out that we had a similar board position and I had the bigger hand, so Matt took a whole round of pummelling from the two of us.

I comfortably won that final game. I think Matt ended up with 5 or 6. We think I would have still won had Harry not thrown a spanner in Matt’s works, but that would have given him enough extra power to win overall.

The final scores for the top end of the tournament were 26 to me 25 to Matt and 23 to the Stark-playing gentleman from round 1. Congratulations to both of those though - they both deserved to win. I acknowledge that had a lot of good luck.

What would I change

I never played a single summons, so two seems overkill. I’d probably switch one for A Clash of Kings or something like that, that helps me gain power quicker.

I’m umming and ahhing about Sneak Attack - in my head its a great closer, but in practice the single challenge limit means I miss out on power from renown and rivals. I do like the initiative though, and it is a great early game plot with it’s five gold.

Obviously The Road to Winterfell is out now, and Lady Sansa’s Rose would make so much sense in this deck. I don’t know what I’d remove though. Maybe Maester Lomys - I like the idea of him as a defensive deterrent, but he’s always one of the first characters I get rid of come military claim time. I probably also don’t need a second Wardens of the Reach - there are a load of The Reach locations in the deck, Wardens ends up being cost effective, its just a bit on the expensive side at 4 gold.