Murderdeathkill. 4th place Kingsmoot Tournament

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Sail and Sword 0 0 2 1.0
Wolves with Tentacles 0 0 0 1.0
Murder-Death-Kill= Win! (Thronerunner Episode 9 - Stark/Krak 4 1 1 1.0
Stark/Kraken - 3 Core Set Melee Deck 1 2 0 1.0

afishisborn 215

This is the deck I took to Uncle’s Games, Bellevue’s Kingsmoot tournament on 10/24/2015. Quick shoutout to Jakodrako for running a great tournament, especially for such a young game. All in all, 31 people turned out. I’m sure I’m wrong, but I didn’t see anyone else playing .

It’s not even remotely subtle what this deck aims to do. Establish an early lock with Sneak Attack and never let go. Asha Greyjoy, Theon Greyjoy, and Arya Stark give you lots of room for an early stealth drop with which you will use alongside boosted claim from Winter Is Coming and targeted kills from Put to the Sword, Throwing Axe, and Ice. Also an important drop is Grey Wind. Intimidate lets you go all out on military challenges and simply kneel whatever threat is still left standing, while his challenges ability lets you pick off claim fodder before they can soak up the death.

You’ll also notice immediate similarities to the Shock & Awe deck currently rocking the hall of fame. I feel like we are of similar minds. That, or the current cardpool limits deckbuilding somewhat. Ah well. I’ve been playing far too much Stark for probably my own good, and after trying Banners of the Watch, Rose, and Dragon I settled for Banner of the Kraken.

I had barely had an hour of sleep before the tournament (working nights sucks), so my recall of the night is somewhat muddled, but after 4 rounds of swiss, I was undefeated. I had played two Greyjoy and two Targaryan houses, and in all cases I had managed to keep up a silly barrage of high-claim coupled with periodic pokes. My first opponent was Kody, a prominent figure in our community and with whom I’d been playtesting these decks. His Greyjoy had slaughtered me in most of our testing, thanks to Risen from the Sea keeping his characters alive and threatening and just generally meeting my aggression with at least as much. This time, unfortunately, his draws did not give him the presence he needed to keep me down, and a ridiculously twice-duped Theon Greyjoy attacked with Grey Wind to keep his state down. I’d consider our decks evenly matched, but the rng was on my side. The ensuing games went similarly, with an early stealth presence enabling Winter Is Coming and Put to the Sword to keep my opponent’s table cleared. A fortuitous challenge knocked out a Dracarys! that might have spelled the game in one case, but otherwise, the deck played solidly and put me into the upper echelons of the bracket.

The final round of Swiss paired me against Brendan, who was playing Fealty Baratheon. I haven’t much to say; as much pressure as I put on him and as much as I inundated him with murder, Stannis Baratheon nor Melisandre never left the table (though every single other character he played died horribly), and I was choked out over a grand total of 8 turns of pain. At one pints, Counting Coppers blessed me with Robb Stark, my ticket out of this horror, but unfortunately, he fell immediately to an claim, and I never recovered. He played his deck expertly, keeping me just barely at arms reach while I gnashed at his head. Once he had won, I turned over the top card of my deck, only to see a taunting Milk of the Poppy, especially awful given that ~~he didn’t run Confiscation~~ (Edit: Yes, he was running confiscation). Sad day.

No, not really. It was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to how the game will evolve from here.

9 comments

omegalife2002 36

Great deck man! It’s always a crazy game when we do testing. I really do love this deck. :)

celric 414

Nice deck man. There was another Stark that Joshua played. It was Banner to the Rose and it eshewed the murder to go for renown/power rush. I believe it went 3-2. Pretty good showings for the “weakest” house.

afishisborn 215

@celricNice! I noticed that when I ran Banner of the Rose, I won my games more off of renown than straight board control. The Knight of Flowers in particular is just so stupid good… so good.

Old Gods & The New 627

Great to see Stark GJ murder doing well… and lets just agree that we both have great minds! ;-)

The two major differences I can see are Milk if the Poppy (which I dropped because I wanted things dead, not crippled) where it looks like I had For The North instead, and that the Bran/Summer combo is gone for just more Ironborn dudes.

How do you see those changes? I’ve liked Bran a lot as he shields your better guys from removal - do you not feel you missed him at all?

Tsarcastic 485

Great deck, and it was a pleasure playing against you. One small correction, though: I was running Confiscation in my deck. I think I played it on Turn 6 or 7 to remove a Throwing Axe from Asha Greyjoy or Theon Greyjoy. But even being able to play Milk of the Poppy for 1 turn to temporarily disable Stannis Baratheon and stand your field really would have turned the tide for you. Really anything could have turned the tide, though. That game kept going back and forth, and could have gone either way.

Horse625 1

Any reason for running just one Ice? I feel like it’s ten times better than Throwing Axe. Not saying take out Throwing Axes for more Ices, I mean you kinda need both because you don’t know if you’ll have stronger Starks or stronger Greyjoys on the field going into each game. But like I could see dropping Alannys for a second Ice.

Also, I feel like any given deck should be running either Confiscation or Rattleshirt’s Raiders right now just for Milks. Any reason why you’re not running either?

afishisborn 215

@TsarcasticRight, I forgot about that! I don’t think it made a difference, since Theon spent the entire game sitting on his hands, haha.

afishisborn 215

@Horse625Gonna be honest here, the main reason I’m only running a single ice is that I thought I had three in an earlier build, so I removed one to make room for the throwing axes. Turns out I had only had two prior. Whoops!

That said, I think one Ice is actually fine. There really aren’t too many good targets for it in this deck-Arya is the best, but if she gets milked than both she and the Ice are just wasted.

That brings me to your last point, which is the lack of Confiscation in this deck. Really though, Milk of the Poppy doesn’t hurt me much. Arya is the only character who gets severely nerfed when her text is turned off, everyone is still a decent body, and I’m all but guaranteed to still have some stealth on the board if Arya, Theon, or Asha get hit by a sudden opiate addiction. If I really need to turn a milked character back on, I can discard them to Marched to the Wall and then play another copy from hand, but even that hasn’t been necessary.

afishisborn 215

@Old Gods & The NewI’ve never been particularly impressed by Bran. If your opponent sees Bran on the table, they’ll likely just hold onto their troublesome events until they drop a Wildfire Assault a turn later. Saving Bran in that case is almost never the right choice. In the meantime, he doesn’t advance my goals particularly well; I have enough small bodies as it is, and with Sneak Attack, I’m often just making a single challenge in a turn anyway. And in general, shielding my guys from removal becomes less important once I’m the only player with guys on the board.

Having said all that, the one game I lost would have been easily mine, had my opponent not hit my Put to the Sword with Seen In Flames. I might have to revisit him. But Summer would probably still stay out.