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Friendly Open Beginners deck: House Baratheon The Brotherhood Without Banners.

UPDATED WITH CARDS FROM Hear My Words pack (3x Lady Stoneheart has been added and 1x Red God's Blessing and 2x The Hand's Judgment has been removed).

Difficulty: Easy

The gameplan:

This deck is trying to get maximum value out of your agenda. Best targets for it are Anguy the Archer + anyone with Azor Ahai Reborn. Try to win as quickly as possible, but don’t use your agenda for renown rush on a character without dupes unless you can win in the round. Other keywords can help you get challenges through (stealth), generate card advantage (insight) and kneel down opposing characters (intimidate). Note that only one intimidate can be used during one challenge. Most of the time you want to go first to utilize intimidate as much as possible.

Plots:

Open up with At the Gates to search up Gulltown (if you are up against others who also use At the Gates, go first if you can, to put in play your Gulltown to force the opponent to marshall his instead). Even if your opponent finds Gulltown you should find yours and marshal it.

Plot 2 is City Festival. It generates a lot of gold and gives you ability to expand your board quickly.

Plot 3 is A City Besieged/City of Spiders. If you need to catch up with your opponent on the board and you don’t want to use your reset (Valar Dohaeris) you can play City of Spiders to get ton of gold. If you are ahead or when you need location control play A City Besieged.

Plot 4 will be A City Besieged/City of Spiders. Most of time you will play the other card that you haven’t use in round 3.

Plot 5 is City of Wealth. Gold, initiative and reserve values are 7 and claim is 2.

Rest of the plots: Valar Dohaeris – good against Aloof and Apart, your only reset.

Parley at Storm's End – useful against high claim aggressive decks (like Wildlings) or to slow down opponent by preventing power claim.

Set up:

Mulligan for following cards: Knights of the Hollow Hill, Melisandre, Anguy the Archer, Ghost of High Heart. But don’t mulligan hands with 4/5 card setup (with 1 economy), just because those cards aren’t in them. It is good to have at least one economy location in your opening hand!

Key Cards:

Lady Stoneheart to controll the opponent's board. Also give's the deck some needed buffer against Aloof and Apart decks, which is this deck's biggest weakness.

Anguy the Archer, one of the best 2-cost characters in the entire game.

Melisandre, to keep opponent’s characters at check.

Ghost of High Heart, +1 STR is really good, and the card selection is useful too.

The Hollow Hill, really good draw engine, just don’t forget on it (always check your cards for actions in dominance phase also).

Tormund Giantsbane, is the best Azor Ahai Reborn target in the entire deck. Intimidate+Renown+Insight in every challenge you initiate

Azor Ahai Reborn, is really good card for allowing you to further your use of keyword abilities you give your characters with your agenda The Brotherhood Without Banners (note that when you give selected character stealth in order to use it, you have to declare that character an attacker, not just add him into the challenge with Azor Ahai Reborn).

This deck plays a lot of unique characters only in 1 copy because they are not that important, and you don’t want to draw dead cards!

Matchups

Night's Watch The Builders – Choose stealth most of the time, to get unopposed challenges through.

Burn, Big Wall, Shadows and other grindy decks – Insight is the best option, because you will need a lot of cards to win. The Hollow Hill is really key in those matchups.

Against decks with not many resets, renown on Anguy the Archer/Azor Ahai Reborn character can close out the game quickly.

Use intimidate when you are first and have stronger board state to further your advantage.

Upgrading the deck:

You can upgrade this deck to have more disruption in the main deck (3rd Milk of the Poppy, Nightmares...) and/or you can recreate its plot deck to have more disruptive plots.

If you change the plot deck awat from City themed plots, you should add at least 2 or 3 economy locations in the deck.

Plots to consider when recreating the plot deck:

Confiscation, Nothing Burns Like The Cold, Expose Duplicity, Barring the Gates, Political Disaster and At the Palace of Sorrows.

This deck is made by Jiří Drábek, which has bursted into the competitive scene with Friendly Open. Jiří (JP Profile), has used his Brotherhood deck to get very good results in the Friendly Open, and is one of the players who's put Baratheon back into the top of the tournament rankings. Friendly Open can be found at Friendly Opens Discord where you can find more decks, discuss with those who made them, and join our weekly tournaments. Hope this decklist will help you, leave a comment if it has, and join us for some thrones at the discord channel :)