Tyrell Lives 1.0

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This is the deck that I used to play in yesterday's SC in Leiden, the Netherlands. There were 11 players, so not a big tournament, but much fun!

This deck earned me my first place in the cut (both as king of Swiss and first time ever) and afterwards even the win of the SC. I remember being told that Tyrell was the worst house when I started playing about half a year ago. So much has changed with the last few packs. :)

I played an earlier version of this deck two weeks ago in a similarly sized kit tournament in Amsterdam and ended up near the bottom of the list, but I was confident that a) making fewer mistakes, and b) Tyrion's Chain being legal now would help the deck's performance.

Renly's Pavilion is an absolute power card in this deck. It allows you to stand Randyll, allows a 2-strength bigger kill for Roose, makes the House Florent Knight more useful (hypothetically especially after a Valar turn), and all of that next to the overall flexibility it gives you in the challenges.

A description of the match ups that I meant to be brief:

Round 1 - Loss (Donovan - Martell Winter) This game started not very well. I accidentally forgot about the low reserve on Trading with the Pentoshi which cost me quite a bit after my opponent revealed Wraiths in Their Midst and then played double His Viper Eyes (one of which I cancelled with Bran). Luckily I had the Arbor at setup so I had both Randyll and Brienne in play. A second turn Heads on Spikes took Roose from my hand. I don't really remember the rest of the game, but somehow I managed to make it close by ending at 13 power.

Round 2 - Win (Egbert - Targaryen Fealty) I had the Arbor and Harrenhall on setup. My starting hand didn't see many strong characters; just Brienne who would have died after my opponent finished marshalling with about 7 characters in play including Khal Drogo (after him having played Nightmares on Harrenhall). I decided to just marshall some more locations and play Valar the next turn. Non of his characters were duped and he never could get back anymore.

Round 3 - Win (Sebastiaan - Tyrell Stag) I don't remember much of this game, but it was a long one with lots of challenge maths that often turned in my favour. The game finished in turn 6 with both of us still having a Valar in our plot deck.

Round 4 - Win (Chris - Stark Fealty) Again a game that I don't really remember. Chris was my first opponent in my first tournament earlier this year and I was happy to play him again. I'm glad to have found the Thrones community to be a friendly group of players, both locally and less so. A well-timed Nightmares from me on a first turn Ice-d up Arya allowed my Rattleshirt's Raiders to do their job, which gave me the option of putting down a stable board.

Semi-finals - Win (Onno - Martell crossing) Quite possibly the hardest game among my wins. His opening hand contained 3 copies of Condemned, so no power icons for me. A protected pair of Randyll and Renly survived my Valar and managed to close out the game on a near-loss.

Finals - Win (Rematch against Chris) I had the Arbor and Renly's Pavilion on setup, and saw almost nothing but more economy in my early draw. I sacrificed Randyll to his Harrenhall and crowned Bran to make Brienne a good defender. The little boy even managed to win a power challenge against the Blackfish with a little help from the Pavilion and A Song of Summer. Although Chris had Winterfell and Catelyn one the board at some time, I was lucky to find the right pieces (among them Roose) to break open his defence. I won the game by drawing a timely Syrio Forel on the last turn - an addition I made to the deck only the night before.

Thanks for reading if you managed to make it this far, and a big thanks for all the friendly players!