UK Nationals Top 4 (Swiss undefeated) - Martell Kraken "Beat 1.0

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• 1.0

The Meta Is Not Stale - (Americans are just bad)

Tourney "Report" here, deck comments and whatnot after the report. Jump to what you want to read :)

Round 1 - Greyjoy Crossing Start on Table 1, being recorded (Knight of the Blackwater Youtube channel will have them up soon!), off to a good start. Let's stay champion of Table 1! My opponent is the brother of another more regular UK player, but tells me he has only played like 4 games of Thrones altogether ever. He did just Top 8 Conquest Nationals though, so he's probably a competent player and Greyjoy Crossing lets you just turn stuff sideways if it plays out correctly. I struggle to actually oppose challenges all game, however keep him off of his LotC bonus thanks to early Nymeria. He overextends and gets Varys wiped, after which I claw back some power, while he still somehow gains multiple a turn with almost no board ever! We finish on Plot 9, he hits 14 power in his challenges but can't get any more, and I pull through the last couple of power I need to win instead. Incredibly squeaky bum time which I didn't want for my first game of the day!

1-0

Round 2 - Gabi - Stark Fealty It took her a few turns to see Winterfell, during which I had done a lot of work. Fast Eddy got bounced on turn 1 or 2 with Captains Daughter which was like all her gold for the turn. Still she had Fast Eddy and some other Renown guy and was racking up the power fast. Unfortunately, on what was a key turn of her hitting roughly 13 power to my 3ish, she used Winterfell on her own military challenge for fear of Vengeance. My swing back allowed me to Tears fast Ned to knock about 3 power away from her, and military claim taking other important Renown dudes meant I was able to claw my way back to the top to win out.

2-0

Round 3 - Wedge - Lanni Dragon Wedge was the first of a few "big" names of the day I faced, and though my deck was built to handle the Lanni Dragon Yawn meta, it's still a very tough matchup. He shits out a bunch of big guys and girls, Mirri, Tyrion, Gregor, Ilyn and Tywin I think are all in play and doing real work. My stall/control elements were holding things at bay on a razor thin edge, but his over extended board played out perfectly into my Varys. I was able to protect Varys with Nightmares on Mirri and an Iron Mines still in play just in case, and he also didn't have Treachery in hand the turn I fired him off, wiping all the big uniques, and allowing me to take full board control. It was a hard game ended by a mix of over extension by Wedge, and never drawing a Treachery (I'd have lost the following turn if Varys had failed).

3-0

Round 4 - Kostas - Lanni Kraken Kostas is a great guy I know from L5R, so it was nice to be back on the feature/recorded table 1 playing him! Unfortunately, this game was not such a close affair as it probably should have. He set up a duped Gregor + Kingsroad, who promptly got Marched to the Wall. He dropped Tywin turn 1 and it took me like 4 turns to kill the bastard even with Nymeria (lots of Treachery and stuff!), despite him really being the only relevant character Kostas saw all game. Eventually I got Tywin dead and I think possibly Tyrion, check the recording! But yeah when his deck sh!ts itself, there's unfortunately not much he can do :(

4-0

Round 5 - Tom - Bara Fealty This game went even worse for him than last game did for Kostas. He mulliganed, and then set up a single Barristan Selmy and nothing else. Barristan got Marched, the turn 1 Stannis got Tears'd on turn 2, and that was basically the only relevant things that happened in that game.

5-0

**Round 6 - Evan the Bearded Norwegian - Martell Fealty I never got to test my deck against Martell. What the hell do I do? Well I set up Varys, who got Milked, and a few turns later he played his own Varys anyway :D Since we knew we were both in the cut anyway, this game was a little sloppy, probably epitomised during Turn 2 when we realised he might not have drawn his 2 cards turn 1! Although it was a slow win for me, he really didn't get above about 3 power all game, and a Varys went off (can't remember whose!), he played only Nymeria the following turn (on First Snow), I had played a Rattleshirt and possibly a Wendamyr or something? Anyway my first action was Nightmares his Nymeria, and that was basically that.

6-0

Undefeated in swiss! Unfortunately FFG's tournament rules are moronic, and run a 6 round swiss with 107 people, which meant there were TWO undefeateds at end of swiss, and James pipped me to King of Swiss based on SOS. I always lose the SOS game!

Top 16 - Timo - Lanni Dragon I like Timo, but now I like him less because he wouldn't accept my suggestion that he concede to me. What a jerk! I bet if we lived in DC he would have :^) So this matchup remains as hard as ever for anyone, and it's really not helped by not seeing Varys or Nymeria all game! I fly by the seat of my pants with Theon and Asha pushing stealthy challenges through and creeping my power up surprisingly quickly considering how slow this deck is in all its other games. It's a bit of a squeaky bum game but I pull it off and send Timo home in disgrace.

7-0

Top 8 - Kevin - Martell Lion I honestly don't remember this game an awful lot. Kevin was a fantastic opponent though, and a real pleasure to play against. That's all I really remember about it! I know he played a billion of those stupid Icon removal attachments, pretty sure at one point I had a Milked Arianne, with 2 Icon Removers on her, who I had to kill to claim then save with Close Call to play another one. Also Nymeria had 1 of each Icon Remover at one point. That was upsetting. The Rattleshirts came a bit late but were moderately helpful I think. Also I managed to play a Palace Spearman and Ghaston Grey on the turn he hit my Summons with Naval. That was fun! Pretty sure this counted as a mod win as well, but really don't remember. This game was recorded so I'll get to rewatch it better when that releases!

8-0

Top 4 - Ryan - Stark Fealty I'm going to spoil this one now, and tell you Ryan won the entire event and is UK National Champion. I feel no real shame in losing to the eventual winner, as my first loss of the day, and am sad this wasn't the record top 4. This game was insanely close. Ryan was playing Wall of 48 Bodies and 12-13 Locations Stark. I knew the deck immediately which meant I knew I didn't have to play around leftover challenge gold, Wards, PttS etc. He does what the deck does best - shits out bodies and Renown characters. Around turn 3 when I drop Varys, he ends Dominance at I think literally 14 power when I varys, and knock him down to the 4 or 5 that exist on his house card. 2 turns later he has racked up another 10 or so bodies on board, and I Wildfire with 3 guys in play to his mess, choose not to Save Quentyn, and knock us down to 2 bodies each (my deck likes a small board!). Time is called on plot 7 or 8. he creeps ahead in power, and I make some massive gains with 3 unopposed challenges. He has a lot of Renown again happening, but I wipe the board with Varys, leaving us both with 2 cards in hand, and only an unduped Arya on the board. He wins 10 power to 9.

I really wish we could have played out that game to the end. We looked at our next draws, and it looks like following turn board would have been Rob + unduped Arya + someone else fairly big vs. Arianne/Nymeria, Rattleshirt and Ghaston Grey. Would have continued to be a close amazing game basically. We agreed before the game whoever won this would HAVE to win the final, and we both thought our decks would beat either of the other 2. It turns out we were right as he came back from a 14-5 power deficit in the final on Plot 8 to win on Plot 10! Can't wait to see the recording and fantastically well done by Ryan and congratulations in order!

8-1 Out.

Props: Az, Matt and Ryan (not the winner Ryan) for helping with testing most of Saturday afternoon and being supportive all weekend. Liam Hall the TO (and the tournament staff). I've butted heads with Liam before, but he ran a fantastic event, ran it well, and was all round a great guy. All my opponents. I didn't have a single unenjoyable round, all my opponents were top notch and I would play any of them again happily. Jon, Mark and Az for minor deck tweak suggestions after the first draft :)

Slops: FFG's Nationals prize support kit is utter garbage. 55 minute semi-final :(

_____

Deck Comments:

I've missed the cut at every Regional this year with slightly modified Netdecks. It was time to build my own. I sat down and thought about everything I wanted/needed to beat, and constructed what I thought was best to handle it. My expected meta was almost spot on - lots of Lanni Dragon or other Lanni varients, some Stark Fealty, and then some mix of Greyjoy or Martell. So I picked cards that did well against very specific things, and then built the rest of the deck around them.

The deck is slow. Very slow. The only "Renown" is Theon's reaction. I was almost always behind on power on turn 3, and many of my games went to time or almost to time. This deck felt like it was on a Razor's Edge all day, if I made mistakes I knew I would just lose immediately, and I'm proud of going a whole tournament with only 2 mistakes that I noticed, and neither were in the game I lost. However on paper this deck is garbage. It is designed PURELY for the current meta, and it deals with it incredibly well.

Captain's Daughter - was down on this card on first release, she's a bad card that is AMAZING in the current meta. Tyrion, Gregor, Mirri, Jaime, Nymeria, Arianne, Theon, Asha, Fast Ned were the main intended targets. She was money all day.

Varys - I never played 1.0, and am now fully on the "Valar can't come fast enough" wagon. In a meta where Lanni Dragon can drop 5 powerhouses by the end of turn 2, you need an answer. You can't just hope your big guys are better, because they flat out aren't. Varys wipe is a crutch until Valar hits, but I think he's honestly the best meta call anyone can make right now.

Pentoshi - Just wanted to make a note this was always a fun Varys turn, the idea being that hopefully you make them go first, they vomit out an extra couple of dudes, and then you drop Varys. For most of the tournament people obviously didn't know I was running him, which was very effective.

Any other questions, comments, flames, or telling me how great I am post below! :D