Speak to the Hand! - Irish Regional Winner 1.0

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• 1.0

This game is so much easier when Ben Fox is on the other side of the continent!

My meta mate destroyed all my decks with Targ in our pre tournament practice to the point that the day before the tourney I still had no idea what to run! I was toying with Stark or maybe Greyjoy when I remembered why Targ's popularity died off the first time - Lannister. Ser Ilyn to chop dragons, First Snow to bounce them, lots of big bodies that were resistant to a single Dracarys!,Tears of Lys for the Khal, plus treachery in case of House of the Undying shenanigans!

So I stuck 3 Great Halls and every Unique character I could find into a deck, realised my expected set-ups were terrible, found Federico Boccati's excellent Rains deck, modified it to my style of play and away I went!

First round - James, Targ Fealty - loss Who is this young man, never seen him before in me life. No shiny gamer bling - mush be a noob. An easy win for me then to ease my way in! Nope, future king of swiss schooled my ass! I lost 23 golds worth of characters to Dracarys! and Crown of Gold. Managed to fight it out to plot six, but he won it in Dominance. Maybe I should have cashed in my store championship bye after all :(

Second Round - Decky, Tyrell Crossing - Win Down at the bottom table, not looking good. Decky floods the board with Knights and chuds, though his side is weak in intrigue icons. Chella with Valerian Steel Dagger stealths her way through to trigger Rains into Wildfire as well as poisoning the Knight of Flowers. Chella is now has ST8, stealth, renown, & intimidate in intrigue challenges! Decky's board is just Core Marge and Robar Royce which First Snow sees off and he concedes at the start of turn three.

Third Round - Jonny, Tyrell Crossing - Win Jonny gets off to a good start setting up and marshalling Brienne, Renly, Robar and a chud. However, Royce gets chopped by Ilyn, the chud claimed to mil, Brienne poisoned and Renly marched! Randall tried to make a fight back, but he got poisoned too! Sweet, sweet poison...

Fourth Round - Tony, Targ Fealty - Win Tony is the island's residence Targaryen loyalist. I was pretty worried considering the pasting I got in the first round. Luckily he didn't see any economy or Khal/Dany. Plus I finally had a Hand's Judgment in hand to cancel a Dracarys! Cersei wrecked his hand, Rains into Wildfire followed by military claim wrecked his board. He had to Valar turn 3, and with it out of the way Tywin and the Hound came out to play with the Mountain the following turn :p He conceded after I treacheried Drogo's Bodyguard.

From a rocky start I had made it into the top four. Sweet!

Top 4 - Gar, Greyjoy Fealty - Win Got the god step up of Tywin, Reducer, Roseroad. Felt I had to be Valar-ed first turn, but dodged that bullet as he opened Riddle into my Summons. He had set up 3 guys all under 4 gold so I was planning a turn two First Snow. Except turn one he marshalls Euron followed by Balon and Victarion turn two! Eek! That said I had Tywin double dupped, Cersei with bodyguard, Chella and Lorch down. The plan was to Nightmares Victarion to dodge intimidate, Kill one of the brothers Greyjoy with Mil claim, poison another and march the remainder, except he had two Risen and I could only cancel one, so I couldn't board wipe him next turn. However, Gar reasoned that with both Tywin and Cersei each having a save and him having used two saves the last turn, this was the perfect time for me to Valar, so if he Valar-ed too we would both be board wiped! Except I didn't have Valar in my plot deck at all. Through to the final...

Final - Tony, Targ Fealty - Win ... to face Tony again, after he had beat the king of swiss James in a gruelling 8 plot Targ on Targ slug fest. He got a better start this time with Dany, Aggo, & a Crone to my Jaime, Tickler, Red Cloaksx2. He had seen me Summon for Tywin so he intrigued with Aggo hoping to Crone Tywin into the dead pile. I blocked with pretty much everything, forcing Tony to kneel Dany and Dracarys! Jaime. Not to kill him, just to force the challenge through. Would he pluck Tywin...? Drum roll... Naw, just a burned men. Little did T know there was two Tywins in hand, if he had hit either it was a completely different game, but Dupped Tywin came down the next turn and he kind of ran away with it. I can't really remember much of the game but Rains did some work. Flipping into Riddle to trigger his counting coppers was so good. I think I closed the game out with the Winds of Winter playing two hand's Judgements I'd drawn off his counting coppers to say "No shenanigans from you!" "Did you not hear me the first time, Nope!"

So yeah, Lanni is still good! I was probably lucky to dodge all the Stark in the field (and that both last year's finalists were in Prague for the War of the Night King!). Thanks to all my opponents and Dungeons & Donuts for hosting. It was great craic as always.

King in the North, King in the North, King in the North...