A Gift of Noj - GenCon 2016 Melee Top 16 (14th place before 1.0

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• 1.0

I made the top 16 (14th place) at the GenCon 2016 North American Melee Championship. The story behind this deck is this deck: my best melee performance was at Worlds 2015 where I went 2-2-2 with Darknoj's 2015 GenCon Top 16 Melee deck (Bara TMP). Before GenCon this year I asked Jon what he was playing and decided to play that. I changed exactly one card, going up to x2 Heartsbane because I misplaced a Lady Sansa's Rose between Brooklyn and Indy.

My pre-cut record was 2-3-1. I could have won my first table if I had been stricter and made my opponents un-March their characters so I could count one more gold (I was first player), since they marched before I could properly decide what order plots resolve. But I was too busy being hungover and trying to calculate if I could close that turn to notice until I thought it was too late. Since I did not do this I was one gold short of playing a top deck LSR, which would have allowed me to win. Instead, Sean Becker ran over us all that turn with a Targ-Dothraki deck for the win.

The second game saw Keb drop a Lightbringer on a triplicated King Bob first turn. The other Tyrell player (whose name escapes me, apologies) saw the writing on the wall and made deals to place himself second (I was a close third). In my third game James Booker (America on CGDB, I believe) saw his deck crap on him which gave me a window to win on turn 2.

In the cut I ended up at a table with all friends. It was the only game of the day where my deck did not really give me many options. Bretton Reis's Tyrell-Rose on the other hand fired on all cylinders and he took the win into the top table.

Overall Tyrell knights-rush is extremely strong. My games showed that it can pretty easily close on turn 2, while Noj's games showed that it can play from behind and slow play while looking for that opportunity to close. Highly recommended, would play again. I'll also be talking about it more on the next Second Sons episode.