wolves.dec (Top 8 at Dortmund Regional) 1.0

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• 1.0

Made Top 8 with this deck at the Regionals in Dortmund, Germany, after going 4-1 in swiss. Won against Lanni/Wolf, 2x Lanni/Kraken and Targ/Fealty. Both losses (swiss and first round in the finals) were also against Lanni/Kraken. We were 33 players, 5 rounds of swiss, cut to Top 8. A lot of Lannistar and Martell, some Stark, no Tyrell, no NW. One of the 2 Bara players managed to win the whole thing.

Main plan of this is to kill everything your opponent puts out. Usually you want to go first and kill as much as possible, so they can only retaliate with the one or two characters that survive. Most of the time you don't care about or challenges. You should be able to wipe your opponents board before he can get to 15 .

Game Plan

I have no economy plots in this deck and usually mulligan for some economy. You really want at least one limited location or Winterfell Steward to get out enough stuff on turn 1. The Kingsroad is ideal because your first turn is crucial. Which characters you have in your setup doesn't really matter because almost all of them have . Turn 1 is almost always Sneak Attack, to at least get some gold. Put the stuff out that guarantees you getting the military challenge through, ideally with Winter Is Coming, Ice or Grey Wind to increase your effective claim. I actually opened with Wardens of the North in one of my games because I had to setup Catelyn Stark with Ice after my mulligan and wanted to get Catelyn into the military challenge. That worked pretty well, but I still lost that game because I decided to Ice Asha Greyjoy instead of Syrio Forel.

The deck has a lot of stuff to mess with your opponents events and triggered abilities in general. Against most of the popular decks at the moment (Lannister, Martell, Targ) you really want to have Bran Stark out or a The Pack Survives in your hand to cancel their kill events or their cancels (Treachery, The Hand's Judgment etc). This deck also has a lot of ways to push Catelyn Stark into your military challenge. Wardens of the North, Winterfell Kennel Master + Lady on Cat, Syrio Forel. This is especially important if you expect a Treachery on your Ice or stuff like Vengeance for Elia. It also helps wonderfully to deal with Iron Mines or Bodyguard. Winterfell has a similar function. You have some Winter plots that allow you to use your events while preventing your opponent from canceling them. Just be careful when your opponent also flopped a Winter plot. ;)

Card Choices

Most cards in this are aimed at murdering your opponents characters as efficient as possible. 3x Ice and 3x Winter Is Coming are obvious choices. Grey Wind is another card that lets you kill more people. Most of the time if you don't need him to push your challenge through he can eat some reducers or other cheap stuff. But in combination with Wolves of the North he becomes especially deadly. During my testing I often was able to eat bigger characters (like the opposing Robb Stark or Mirri Maz Duur) that were brought to digestible strength by one or more Wolves of the North. Yes, you can stealth one character with multiple Wolves.

Like Warm Rain might seem like a strange choice but in the current meta are a lot of important characters that want to make challenges to trigger some kind of effect: Mirri Maz Duur, Tyene Sand, Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen just to name a few. And because you kill all of their smaller characters, your opponents usually will only have their big characters left to make these challenges. And even if you can only kill a small guy, it's still worth it because that is one less dude your opponent can use for claim.

I put Famine in when I added the 3rd Winterfell to have another Winter plot. I took out the 2nd Sneak Attack, but after the tournament I think it might make sense to cut Wildfire Assault and go to 2x Sneak Attack again. I never really needed Wildfire and most of the time used it to clear out one or maybe two characters. And it can actually hurt yourself when you go into the 7th plot and have a larger board.

Rickon Stark is just in there to get better setups. If you get the combo with Shaggydog off, that's a nice 6 strength for 3 gold, but Rickon is one of my first claim targets usually.

Lady is a nice, cheap boost, for strength and the other direwolf effects (Wolves of the North and Direwolf Pup). It also the best card to sacrifice for The Pack Survives. And as said earlier it acts as a activator for Winterfell Kennel Master.

I used A Time For Wolves mostly to search for Summer and resurrect Arya Stark or gain another use out of Bran Stark. But sometimes you just need another strong character and tutor up Grey Wind or Wolves of the North. It's a really flexible tutor in a deck that heavily runs out of cards in the mid to endgame.

Problematic Stuff

One of the strongest cards against this deck might be Syrio Forel, especially paired with heavy hitters like Tywin Lannister or Ser Gregor Clegane. Because we rely heavily on stealth and don't have extreme amounts of strength, it can get really hard to win your military challenges. And that means we lose. Good thing is that Syrio is fairly expensive and they need another strong character to have a shot at defending. But it might be worth it to cut Wolf Dreams and something else to get in 2x Nightmares.

Because we sometimes sacrifice our characters (The Pack Survives, Bran Stark) and rarely are able to defend against the retialating challenge, our own board can get pretty thin against aggressive decks. Just try to use your Summer in a smart way and "cheat" some extra life by letting Arya Stark die and ressurect her with a new duplicate. And don't be afraid to use the duplicates on your own uniques. This deck does not need a specific character to win the game, if you lose your Robb or Grey Wind it's not the end of the world.

This deck started out as a experiment to see if it's actually possible to build a functioning direwolf deck. While testing I found it a lot of fun to play and it plays differently than most other decks in the current meta. It also has a good shot at winning against everything I tested it against. And you never have to fear Naval Superiority ;)