Just got back from Fanboy after four decent games (of Thrones, har har har). Still got my misplays and mistakes ringing around my head so thought I’d make the effort of writing them up and putting together some kind of cohesive thought to record it all.
I was playing my standard Lannister City of Shadows deck, which rapidly swings between quite adequate with glimpses of good and downright awful. I’d like to get to the consistent point of not terrible.
What was new about the deck?
Well my first mistake of the day was forgetting that I’d made changes to my plot deck, but not actually made proxies for the replaced plots. So before Ben arrived, I was sat there with just three plots. I’ve dropped the Cities for something a little more versatile, with it being a shadows heavy deck City of Lies obviously stays.
The new plot deck is as follows:
- City of Lies
- Cersei’s Scheme
- On My Oath
- Valar Morghulis (instead of Widlfire Assault)
- Forgotten Plans or Art of Seduction
- Men of Pride (4 gold, 2 claim, what’s not to like? And killer against ANC)
- Marched to the Wall
I’ve considered a few other options, (All the Gold in Casterly Rock, Rally Cry, Secrets and Spiders) but Marched seems to be the best fit.
I liked this plot line up at lot, eventually I decided on Art of Seduction over Forgotten Plans. It’s a good way of securing an early victory if you want to put off a Valar and know you can push enough power through. And I’m pretty terrible at predicting plots.
My Mistakes
There were numerous, but the ones that stand out most in my memory are as follows:
- Playing both Joffrey and Tommen on setup, and therefore neutralising both of their abilities.
- Forgetting use Joffrey’s ability even when he was ‘turned on’
- Playing Cersei one round I knew I’d lose a Mil challenge instead of the unkillable Arya Stark.
- Forgetting to double draw from the Cache when I had a King in play.
- Over committing with two Caches on turn one when I knew my locations were quite vulnerable.
It wasn’t all bad though, I won two of the four games we played, and think I provided a stiff enough competition for Ben to get to grips with his nasty Targ KOTHH deck.
What didn’t work
This deck used to have three Refugees and three Gregor’s Dogs in it, but the Cache bumped the Refugees out, and now the Dog’s just annoy me. I’m just not winning/losing enough intrigue challenges to reliably pump them up and the fact they work quite nicely with Penny just makes me think that Penny is another expendable card.
I’m also currently running two copies of Lashing Out, which I’ve only ever been in a position to play once, but forgot about it and currently lost it for Intrigue claim, doh. So I think at least one copy of this is out, probably for some cancel in the form of the Hand’s Judgement, or dropping in a A House Divided for some more character control.
A lot of the time I seemed to be desperately short of Shadows cards to use City of Lies, or reliably killing a Kingsguard early enough to bring him back with On My Oath. Obviously I’m waiting for the spoiled Robert Strong to fill this gap, but might consider dropping in the kneel something 0 cost one. Or another copy of Preston, because it’s Preston.
Also on the list for coming back into the deck is a copy of Black Cells for some more control and another copy of Tunnels to boost my Str some more. Arbor guardsman is starting to seem a little too expensive for too little reward as well, so might bump the single copy of him out for Painted Dogs to counter some burn and because they’re 1 gold cheaper.
Summary
The deck is getting close, but not quite there yet. More games, probably some on OCTGN to test new changes and I might have something half decent for the next Store Championship in Huddersfield.