Doran's Bastard Game - Top 16 Euros 1.0

• Versiones
• 1.0

This is the deck I took to the European Championships (https://thejoustingpavilion.com/tournaments/5280), going 5-2 on day 1 (18th place). On day 2 I lost at Top16 against the new European Champion (who proceded to kick out the other 3 germans that made the cut at Top8, Top4 and in the final respectively. Damn you, @jcwamma! ;) )

I tried out Martell Crossing almost a year ago, at that time with a Lords and Ladies theme with Doran Martell (Core) and The Red Viper (Core). That version was pretty susceptible to board resets and a lot of the time it came down to praying for enough duplicates and Bodyguards. Someone Always Tells might be the best answer to most of the resets (Valars, First Snow, Last of the Giants + Varys) and even cancelling a single plot effect can be sometimes be game winning.

I usually prefer faster decks over more controly ones, so I decided to build an new version of the Crossing deck for Euros. The new bastard package from Sands of Dorne and the last cycle also means that the cost curve is a little bit lower and most of them work better than their Lord/Lady counterparts when you can't get everything on the board.

General game plan: Getting ahead on the board with efficient characters and on power through The Lord of the Crossing. Suriving board resets with Someone Always Tells or by just building up another board after the reset. Finishing the game either with a Doran's Game or some extra power from Crossing and The Red Viper (SoD).

Plots

This deck essentially only runs 6 plots because of Doran's Behest. Cutting to 7 plots is usually difficult enough (one of the reasons The Wars To Come is so popular right now), cutting to 6 is really hard. Only 6 plots also means that you really don't want to run any board resets. You want to build a board yourself and don't want to lose the game because you couldn't finish the game in 5 rounds.

You also need some way to play SAT during the plot phase. Littlefinger's Meddling and Trade Routes are clearly the best candidates for that. Trade Routes often gives you more gold than you need because so many decks are location heavy atm. Meddling also solves the initiative problem and enables the deck to play a lot of events, especially The Prince's Plan. Calling the Banners is in there because it has more initiative than Valar Dohaeris, but cutting that for a second Trade Routes or Meddling might be ok.

Summer Harvest and Varys's Riddle are in there to have something useful to switch into from APDB. Time of Plenty is one the best options for a "save" opener atm and Harvest counters that quite nicely.

In my original draft of the deck I had Heads on Spikes in that last spot. But without any attachments and only 2 locations that get hit by Nothing Burns Like The Cold, that plot is just too good to pass up. One plot that can help with attachment and location problems is worth a lot when you only have 6 slots for real plots.

Events

The Prince's Plan is the perfect choice for this deck because it solves two problems the deck might have: Crossing really needs all three icons and TPP can produce the ones you are missing during the challenge phase when you know what you need after your opponent did his stuff. It also really helps with triggering Doran's Game and let's you initiate the first challenge with 0 str without your opponent completely ignoring it. The recursion is extremely easy to trigger (if your opponent doesn't win any challenges you are probably winning the game anyways).

Doran's Game and Secret Schemes are pretty obvious choices. The idea behind In Doran's Name was to smooth out the economy. Because you really can't afford to fall behind on the board, you need enough econ to get your stuff out. Playing more limited locations will just give you too many dead draws, so I wanted some non limited economy. But in the end I think those slots should be something else. Probably Hand's Judgement or Nightmares but Put to the Sword or Superior Claim might also be interesting because triggering those is pretty easy with Crossing.

Locations

The limited package is pretty obvious but I'm considering cutting Flea Bottom. It's only really good with Shadow City Bastard because I don't have good ways to get guys into the discard pile. And everyone that is able to packs some kind of location hatred. My changes would probably be:

• take out 2x Flea Bottom, 2x In Doran's Name
• put in 1x The Iron Bank Will Have Its Due, 2x The Hand's Judgment, 1x Superior Claim

Characters

I was pretty happy with my character choices. The curve works out pretty well and most of the setups are at least ok. Problematic are the 13 guys with only 1 str. It makes the ordering during the challenges phase really interesting because those 13 chars are useless during the first challenge. Another big problem is the decks vulnerability to burn especially with Blood of the Dragon.

Arianne Martell (Core) and Obara Sand (SoD) are one-ofs because I tried to minimize dead draws. I rarely want to duplicate either of these so drawing a second copy is useless.

Nymeria Sand (SoD) essentially turns dominance into a win-win situation. Your opponent gives you either power or card advantage. You really don't want to do either of these against a crossing deck. Tieing dom is usually the best choice for your opponent.

Ricasso's ability is nice but the deck does not really need it most of the time. It's still a x3 because he's loyal (safe from Breaking Ties) and has the important power icon that the deck is missing sometimes.

I don't think I used The Bastard of Godsgrace's ability once but he's a bastard with renown which can produce two extra power if the Viper is on the board. And if you have power on him he always threatens one of martell's many tricks.

The one character that surprised me is Dorea Sand. For two gold her effect can be really powerful and sometimes game winning. One of my favorite uses for her is to bounce a Ward back to my own hand.

The Tournament

For my opponents I will use the names as they appear on the Jousting Pavilion. I didn't take any notes during the tournament so some of the details might be a bit shaky.

Round 1 vs Deilan ( Tyrell - The Wars To Come) - 1-0

Deilan used The King in the North as his second plot with the Crown. I was pretty happy to see that plot gone so early and because I got my Intrigue challenges through and he ditched some cards to the crown he had no cards left in his hand at the end of the round. My Nothing Burns canceled the draw from his Close Call in round 4 which would have been a Pleasure Barge. So I was able to close out the game during round 4. The game was pretty one sided because of his lack of draw.

Round 2 vs David Kennedy ( Stark - Fealty) - 2-0

David was playing a Direwolf deck and setup a Grey Wind, Chud and Godswood. Greywind is really bad news for my deck. Together with Robb he's able to eat about half of my characters. He opened with Winter Festival (to get some gold and the draw from Godswood) and I flipped my APDB into Summer Harvest which pretty much countered what he wanted to do. He put Strangler on my Ellaria Sand (TRW) so as soon she entered a challenge Grey Wind was able to eat her. I sacrificed her to the Wolf because I had enough stuff on the board that he could he eat anyways and I didn't really want to play Nothing Burns on turn 2. He got out some more Direwolves but no Bran Stark (OR), so his board consisted mostly of military monocons which I'm pretty happy about. I had enough small claim soak and my board was never really threatened even with Grey Wind.

On turn 3 he played Trade Routes to get out Robb Stark (Core) but I was able to cancel it with SAT. AFAIK he didn't run any resets either so that cancel gave me enough tempo advantage to close out the game on turn 4.

Round 3 vs Wedge ( Targ - Fealty) - 2-1

One of the matchups I really wanted to avoid. My setup was ok with The Red Viper (SoD), a 2-coster and a Roseroad but the Viper got immediately killed off by Crown of Gold which killed too much of my tempo that I never really recovered. Two turns later Daenerys Targaryen (TFM) showed up and murdered some more of my guys. I conceded the match when House of the Undying hit the table.

I probably would have lost that game even without the Crown but nevertheless my hatred for "Limit once per deck"-cards grows... ;)

Round 4 vs S. Majdrup Hansen ( Martell - The Wars to Come) - 2-2

One card alone probably lost me this game: Isle of Ravens. My opponent was able to shuffle all my Flea Bottom targets and my Prince's Plan back into my deck. Together with Beguiled this meant that I had no power icon for most of the game. He played it well so I never really had the feeling that I stood a chance to turn the game around.

This loss meant I couldn't lose any more games if I wanted to make Day 2 which was my goal originally. Because of that the next three games where a little bit more stressful. :D

Round 5 vs T. Buda ( Tyrell - The Wars to Come) - 3-2 T. wasn't playing the usual Tyrell Wars but a "Song"-Version with some ideas similar to the deck that Hanno used to get to 2nd place. When he started the game with Randyll Tarly and Margaery Tyrell (Core) I knew that this would get difficult. I had to play pretty defensively because otherwise Standy Randy would have racked up too much power. The flipped The Annals of Castle Black on the second turn to reuse his The Iron Bank Will Have Its Due on the The Blue Bard but luckily for me only found a "The Last of the Giants". On turn 4 he was really close to winning with Randyll, Marge, Blue Bard and Tom of Sevenstreams on the board. I had kept Dorea Sand in my hand from turn 2 because I lacked another Sand Snake to bounce Margaery. I burned through two Greenblood Trader to finally find Nymeria Sand (SoD) and had just enough gold to play her and Dorea and bounce Margaery. That meant my opponent wasn't able to get through challenges with Randyll and I got the win off three unopposed challenges with some renown and crossing power.

Round 6 vs Patrik Koller ( Martell - Banner of the Wolf) - 4-2

A pretty interesting matchup that started with APDB vs. Varys's Riddle. He flipped his riddle into Building Orders which I copied myself by flipping into Varys's Riddle, finding me Dornish Fiefdom when I didn't have any other limited in my hand. Fun times. Most of the game I worked off only marshalling Arianne Martell (Core) and Obara Sand (SoD) and then bouncing in other guys in during challenges because neither of those two can be Warded. He played Dorne on turn two I think and drew a lot of cards with it but I was also able to refill my hand with multiple Secret Schemes. Hitting his Fallen from Favor with my Summer Harvest was pretty lucky and I was able to cancel one of his plots with SAT (I'm just not sure what I canceled). The whole game over Patrik was at zero power while I slowly crawled up until I was able to close out the game on turn 7 or 8 when I got more than two guys out.

Round 7 vs M. Campolucci ( Martell - Banner of the Stag) - 5-2 In this last game of the day my deck actually surprised with how well it performed in this matchup. He setup double Flea Bottom and double Iron Throne and some chud so I decided to just go with Nothing Burns where he ditched his Iron Thrones. That was a pretty good sign because I suspected that he played the usual cancer lancer dominance stuff. I build a pretty sizeable board during the first two turns and got some power so that he flipped into Valar Dohaeris on turn 3. I was able to cancel the Valar with SAT and didn't marshal anything because my board was already big enough. At the turn of the turn he "The Last of the Giants" + Varys'd me clearing the board in combinaton with Marched. But I had enough gold to play out 3 or 4 guys and rack up some more power from crossing. So he Giants/Varys'd me again, clearing the board once more. With Secret Schemes + Dornish Fiefdom I was able to build up another board which he then cleared on turn 5 with Valar Morghulis. He finally found his third Iron Throne but it was too late because I still had some characters left in my hand to repopulate my board for the fourth time this game and was finally able to finish it.

Yay for day 2!

Top 32 vs Gregory Patellis ( Martell - Banner of the Stag) - 6-2

Same house and agenda but slightly different deck. Gregory played a lot more hand destruction with Queen's Men, Seen In Flames and His Viper Eyes. I was pretty nervous and some really bad mistakes where I left some power on the board. I don't really remember the early rounds but I know that I forgot to trigger the The Red Viper (SoD) at least once and that I forgot intimidate once. But I also got pretty lucky and discarded two Varys out of his hand. [EDIT: Whoops, I'm dumb. Of course Queen's Men can't discard characters ...]

But my dumbest mistake: I had two Doran's Games in my hand and Gregory got rid of one with Seen In Flames and for some reason I thought I didn't have any more Doran's Game in my hand so I declared a power challenge with the Viper instead of an intrigue challenge (of course losing the Doran's game to His Viper Eyes ...). Luckily I was still able to close out the game on turn 7 before he could Valar again.

Top 16 vs James Waumsley ( Tyrell - The Wars To Come) - 6-3

James himself described this really well in his report here: https://thronesdb.com/decklist/view/11373/dr-goodstuff-s-green-bean-machine-12-0-euros-2018-1.0

It was a really close and interesting game with a lot of challenge math. In the end I think the only real mistake I made here was not taking back The Prince's Plan on turn 2 because that meant I had a gold left to tie dominance with James, so I couldn't trigger Nymeria Sand (SoD).

In the end I'm really happy with how well the deck performed. It's not perfect and has some bad matchups but it is pretty fun to play and usually has some pretty interesting decision points.

That was a lot of text but if you have any questions or suggestions feel free to comment!