The Only Good Board is a Dead Board: Winter OCTGN League Win 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

I played this deck, or variations of it, through the elimination rounds of the last OCTGN League. It is a control deck that wants to repeatedly reset, attack the opponent's hand, and bounce or military claim characters until the opponent has no characters left on the board. A board empty of characters means I'm on my way to victory. It's a deck with a lot of answers, and prioritizes different cards depending on the matchup.

Matchups:

Night's Watch

This is actually a good matchup for this deck. Getting the Tower of the Hand and Harrenhal (FFH) combo is your goal. Night's Watch has no good answer to it. You can bounce Maester Aemon (Core) every turn so your military claim goes through, or just bounce the character they need to defend your next challenge. Between The First Snow of Winter and Valar Morghulis, you can board wipe them before they get to 15 power. Plan for a long game, and expect them to gain some power while you build your combo and hit with resets. I had many games where the Night's Watch reached 13 or 14 power before being locked down.

Martell

Surprisingly frustrating matchup. His His Viper Eyes is great for picking out your combo piece or the big character you want to bounce in and out. They also make triggering Rains difficult and can hit back with intrigue claim if they play Nymeria Sandor Attainted. The key to winning is leveraging your superior big characters. Getting your big characters out with a save is a priority over assembling your combo. Save your Treachery for Ghaston Grey. Hand's Judgement is a great counter to some of their event shenanigans.

Baratheon

A tough matchup. You have no answer to the Table and Chair power gain, but they have no good answer for The Tower Harrenhal combo, so it's a priority. Focus on not falling too far behind on power early, then use resets to get a small board so you can bounce and military claim their chuds so you can March their lynchpin characters. Use Treachery and Nightmares to stop The Red Keep. If you let them gain a card advantage, you've lost. The Tower is great for bouncing saves off of Melisandre (Core) so you can kill her with Valar

Tyrell

Generally a favorable matchup based on your superior character quality. Expect to Valar either turn 2 or turn 7, and save a Treachery for Varys if possible. You can play your big characters without saves, but only if the Tyrell player has them also. The Tower helps a lot to bounce saves and set up a favorable Valar. You have good counters to all their challenge shenanigans. Watch out for a sneaky Put to the Torch.

Greyjoy

Greyjoy and Banner Kraken are the worst matchups for the deck. They have saves, location hate, and power rush: the three things this deck is weak against. The strategy I've found works best is to hit their hand early with Wardens of the West and keep enough stuff on the board that they want to Valar early, but will have few cards to recover with. I added The Hand's Judgment for this matchup. Countering We Do Not Sow or Risen from the Sea can win a game. This is probably a game where you use Valar on turn 2 against a no save setup or don't use it until plot 7 and hope the game doesn't last that long. Value The Hand's Judgment, dupes, and Bodyguard on setup more than the location combo.

I will go into more details on the remaining matchups and later.