Kansas City SC 2017 3rd Place 1.0

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• 1.0

After my loss in Tulsa, I felt that I still wanted to play control in Tyrell, bit that the kneel of Baratheon would be superior to the Martell icon control. Overall, I made a straight pull of the Martell cards to sub in Baratheon.

Round 1 – Lannister/Winter This was a deck that I was a little worried about due to their ability to equalize the economic advantage that I like to leverage with The Arbor. Between reducing my income with their agenda and plots as well as increasing their own with Tywin and Tyrion, it can become much harder to stay ahead of that race. Still, I gambled that he was not heavy on saves and opened with Trading with the Pentoshi. He ended marshalling with both Core Tywin and the Lions of the Rock Cersei along with a couple of chud, while I dropped the Arbor and just enough midrange stuff to defend challenges. Unfortunately for him, I flipped Valar Morghulis t2, sacrificing some middling characters of my own to knock out two of his biggest beatsticks and his biggest method of equalizing my Arbor income. From there, I dropped Melisandre to keep kneeling his most effective remaining character and kept moving toward the win as he just couldn’t get over the hurdle due to his own low income and dead draws.

Round 2 – Greyjoy/ Lords of the Crossing After my dual loss in Tulsa to Stark Lords of the Crossing, I had made the switch from Banner of the Sun to Banner of the Stag for just this sort of situation so that I could try to use kneel to keep them off of power long enough to leverage my superior income and draw. Unfortunately, I had a fairly poor draw and he was sitting on four saves (2 Iron Mines and 2 Duplicates) by the end of the first marhsalling phase. Past that initial blitz, I stripped his hand and he drew little of further impact, but I was unable to hit Tears of Lys or Jaqen to try to chew through some saves. Still, with his small board, I was able to get up to nine power or so though Balon carried the day for him.

Round 3 – Baratheon / Fealty This one did worry me a little as I felt that he may be able to push over the top of me with judicious Robert Baratheon use, particularly if he was able to get some variety of stand on him. Oddly, we both opened the early turns with Melisandre and double Seen in the Flames in hand. Mostly, it was a game of careful trading of kneels back and forth, as he also ended the first marshalling with Core Stannis in play. This lead to some interesting decisions on how hard to press or defend challenges for each of us. Luckily, I feel that I came out ahead of this exchange for the first few turns due to a Fiery Follower on my side of the board. Also, he was unable to locate the Robert I feared, so I was able to grind out challenges, despite my inability to reset the board for several turns due to a duplicate and two Bodyguards on his side of the table.

Top 4 – Greyjoy/ Lords of the Crossing Oh no, paired up against super rush again. This time I felt that I would need to play a little different and attempt to change the usual pacing of our matches. I traded out my opening of Trading with the Pentoshi to try to keep him off of having two power characters on the first turn. Along with opening a solid hand of kneel, I felt this would be beneficial. While that worked, he did unfortunately still open on a plethora of saves. I worked to keep his intrigue knelt out to deny both that claim and his ability to utilize his agenda on a third challenge, which kept the game going until the 4th or 5th turn. Unfortunately, I had only been able to draw two military icons by that point and he had knocked off my Melisandre with Seastone Chair on the prior turn. He moved into Rise of the Kraken to close as I scrambled to keep him away from 15 power. Alas, a Shipwright made short work of my clutch Highgarden and challenges looked to go his way. We did have one awkward moment where a spectator pointed out to my opponent that they had missed claiming an additional power from Rise of the Kraken on a challenge. While I was losing this game anyway barring some kind of superb draw on the next turn, it is worth noting that my opponent won the game at exactly 15 power, meaning that it could have been drawn out for that final turn without the additional power that he initially forgot. So, while I’m not angry, it is worth reminding everyone to never point out something optional when you’re watching a game.