Melee "Regional" 2nd place, ETX Tacoma, WA 5/27/2016 Knights

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
None yet.

Bluebird503 234

This is the melee deck that I chose to take to the ETX "former regionals" melee tournament. It was scheduled to be a regional but FFG decided to change their minds and not provide a regional kit with it. I'm totally fine with that since I think its weird to reward a regional bye for the melee and the turn out was so low on a Friday morning. Honestly this is mostly my friend Jesse's deck that I made some tweaks to the night before. It was really strong and we took first and second. We had 11 people or some silly small # like that.

As for the list I feel like it could use some more optimization.

Cards that are really really good that probably need more copies are Olenna's Informant for those extra challenges. The Arbor probably shouldn't be included at 3 of because its so slow... I'm not 100% sure on this though it is a tough call. I really like setting it up but I refuse to play it turn 1 even. I played four melee games and never saw a third plot so it wasn't great. Gift of Arbor red could be 2 of maybe. Being able to fetch power grab on the vital turn or after a player or 2 have marshalled could be extremely key. Hand's Judgement maybe? if people start playing HJ but idk. I cut the vanguards the night before but maybe having some guys that naturally have renown are much better than having characters that need to have a plot played for them. The tourney plot didn't actually do anything except prevent nightmares on KoF(would have won either way). Maybe -3 arbor for 2 stark reducers and something else. You really want to fast and 0 for 1 gold reduction might be better for arbor. Idk though.

I only used the following plots all day... Noble Cause , Tourney for the King, Calling the Banners, and Clash of Kings. As for the rest.. well I never found a use for them. I really think a higher init plot than clash could be included if one gets released that isnt sneak attack. I think after discussing with people popping your kingsroad on turn 1 is probably often a mistake. You want to win init over the clash player. Greyjoy with Snowed Under might actually be really good against the tyrell strategy tbh.

The optimal play for this tournament was probably to drop after getting my participation prize since I had 3 tournaments to play after this one and I really wanted to do well in those but oh well I stuck it out and exhausted myself a bit. I got a game of thrones plot and stuff for playing although there were no rewards for second place(which I found strange definitely should have dropped :P).

All in all i played something like 34-38 hours of LCGs over the weekend with little sleep and I am fairly happy with my results. If anyone gets a chance to go to Evergreen Tabletop Expo in Tacoma I highly recommend it.

8 comments

xikitins 53

Love this deck! because love rush! I know nothing about melee, and I wonder why this kind of deck works in melee but it does not work in joust?

Bluebird503 234

@xikitins thanks for your comment! One of the reasons that this deck worked for this particular melee tournament and not in say, the joust tournament is the way that people think about the two separate games. I am not a big melee player but if you look at any of the joust decks you will see that they often have more ways to interact with your opponent. Think: Milk of the Poppy, Hand's Judgement, Filthy Accusations, Treachery, tears of lys, put to the sword etc. Now these are very powerful effects in joust that allow you to keep things like knight of flowers and lady sansa's rose in check. Often decks like this will burn out in Joust. In melee these cards are used less often. I'm not sure if they are super rare but for instance I never had my lady sansa's rose countered. The reason for this is that countering/dealing with one player's lady sansa's rose is a losing proposition. If the next player in line is trying to do the same thing your ultimately just deciding the winner instead of propelling yourself to win. Much better to just be the winner yourself right :)?. Control effects are much worse in melee for this reason your really just helping the other 2 players(imo). Also melee has the titles and these can help power rush. You get an extra power for beating up your rival, and you can get the title with an extra 2 gold turn 1(for extra stuff on the board) or an extra power challenge turn 2!

Isian.H 706

did anyone record any of the games?

Isian.H 706

And how were set up's usually? since you have a lot of 3 cost charachters

Bluebird503 234

@Isian.HNone of our melee games were recorded. TBH they weren't that interesting so don't worry, you aren't really missing out on much. Either me or Jesse won turn 2 on each of the 4 games I played in using some combination of big renown character, melee title, and power grab.

Set ups were ok, some were better than others. Pleasure Barge/Titles really help you recover from a mediocre set up. Your looking for big renown guy + little guys or economy. Sansa + Septa is also sweet. Hope that helps.

JuSTiN 2

@Bluebird503, did you encounter The First Snow of Winter? It looks very dangerous for your kind of deck.

Radix 7

First Snow is weaker in Melee, because instead of you having 3-4 characters to your opponent's 1-2, you have 3-4 characters to each of your opponent's. It can help and works in certain decks, but it is far less prevalent when 3 people can smash into you.

How often did you manage to actually have gold for Olenna's Informant?

Bluebird503 234

I think one of my wins was on a first snow of winter turn or on the second turn after it had been played. I play dupes of all of the ladies and it doesn't effect the big characters

I actually had gold on the winning turn a lot @Radix. You usually get enough gold to get out what you need on set up/turn 1. Your turn 2 gold is usually low though. 3-4. If you have 4 its enough for olennas. I would potentially try to fit in roseroads in a future version over arbors since they are not a tempo hit and would help with this.