Lanni Kraken - 1st Place at Red Saturday 1.0

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Thanks for posting and congrats on winning! I've been running a Lanni Kraken for a while now and am worried how much changes I'll have to do come Valar Morghulis so I was keeping a close watch on your games. I got a couple quick questions.

1) You didn't have a problem not running any Milk of the Poppy?

2) Did you consider putting in Aeron Damphair (TIMC)? He seems like a good card to include in a Kraken banner post Valar.

1. Thankfully it didn't hurt me too bad not having Milk of the Poppy. The only characters I saw all day that I really wanted to Milk were Melisandre and I just dealt with the kneel and Nymeria Sand and I already had so much board control in that game she didn't matter at all. I would like to get Milk and/or Nightmares back into the list but for my first time playing with Valar Morghulis I wanted to go a little heavier on characters.

2. I considered Aeron Damphair (TIMC) but to be honest I was just too lazy to make a proxy for him. lol... Not sure if I would of found room for him anyways as the cost curve of this deck was already high. I guess the best option would be to cut 1 Ser Jaime Lannister (Core) for a 1x of Aeron, but I kind of want the Renown.

Makes sense to have more characters and all those economy plots to recover after Valar Morghulis. One last question. How did you do against Valar and was it worth including it yourself?

Nicely done, Tom! Are we going to see a tournament report from you?

x3 Hand's Judgment is an interesting call that we don't see very often anymore.

Again, well done. I was keeping up on Jousting Pavilion, and you went through a murder's row great players. Winning here is no small feat.

Just wondering, any specific reason to play Newly-Made Lord? Were there locations you were trying to snipe out? Was it a meta call against other GJ/Banner Krakens to take out Iron Mines? Or was there something else that I am missing.

Or meta call against lanni decks running Tower of the Hand?

@gershomcz- I'm pretty sure I was only hit by Valar Morghulis once on the entire day and it was in the finals and it hurt but I was able to stay in the game... I used Valar on many opponents and it helped quite a lot. Usually I would try to get to a point where I had 2-3 mains I could save between Bodyguard, Iron Mines and Victarion Greyjoy's power and then I'd just pop their board. Even with 0 claim on a Valar turn I could sometimes get 2-3 power from unopposed challenges which was still great.

@Sokhar-Thanks! I will try to work on a tournament report but it was a long weekend and now being back to work I am going to struggle to find the time before I just lose all memory of the individual games lol. The 3x The Hand's Judgment is just my play-style. In hindsight they probably should of been Milk of the Poppy or Nightmares.

@Beknirvana- Thanks! Newly-Made Lord is one of my favorite cards for Banner of the Kraken. On the day he took out The Seastone Chair, Gates of Winterfell, Tower of the Hand, and Mountains of the Moon. Some other important targets that I just didn't see on the day would be The Red Keep, Iron Mines, Plaza of Punishment, Highgarden, Great Kraken etc. I can't claim that I predicted Lanni decks running Tower of the Hand at all lol.

Thanks for a thorough drubbing in Round 3. How did you like 3x Ser Ilyn Payne?

@ozrix Thanks for sharing! Why Shae over Pycelle? Didn't you miss that draw?