A story of moving Gold - Stahleck 2nd Place 1.0

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The 17th of November 2022. After several hours I am getting out of the car putting both feets on the ground of this well known city at the bottom of the hill ... the hill I had to live without seeing it for such a long time. How many years has it been? I don't remember but it has been way too long.

It was dark and cold when we - me and my team - grabbed our proviant and equipment together and started our march to the top of this hill. Concentrated looking on the mud before my boots I realized a movement at the corner of my eye, but when I looked nothing was there.

While putting one feet in front of the other I tried to ignore the stories coming back to my mind, stories about ghosts in the fog on this hill. An old man who was running a game store has told me that these ghost were once the persons who failed the deck check, doomed to watch there friends and family playing games and that there souls are still around avaricious watching all the new and younger players.

My hand grabs to the inside of my jacket to the pocket where I remembered my decklist to be. A shiver runs down my back as I think that I will definetly check my list once we arrived.

My eyes are wandering to the top of the hill, to our destination the famous and renown castle ... Stahleck. For a moment my eyes are getting wet as they barerly ever witnessed a sight more emotionally charged like this for me and so many people like me. A pure beauty of stone and hopes of all the players I got to know over the years. Finally ...finally we can come home again!

Hey folks,

the weekend is already over and what can I say, it was a blast like always. Even more because of all the faces I haven't seen for such a long time and I missed so much over the last few years. I missed the feeling of shuffling cards, I missed the road trips with Werner and Christian discussing which of the 61 cards to drop, I missed to constantly actualize Jousting Pavillion, I missed counting cards in the decks after the time call, I missed asking for prechallenge actions, I missed everything! Around Two months ago I started to get back into the game as Stahleck was coming closer and at first I want to cheer for the design team. According to fun the game is in a better state then it has ever been in my opinion. I like most of the new cards and I think you are really doing a great job. I was very undecided about what to play at the castle since I haven't played for so long. I tested around with Martell Shadows, but my build wasn't strong enough. I changed to Martell Mummers, since I wanted to play something close to my old Martell Wars decks and since the host and secret schemes are restricted I needed something else to draw cards and win challenges with. It went very well in the few testing games I made, but then Sebastian sent me a Lannister Free Companies Deck and wanted to get my feedback for his build. I started to thought about it, mentioned and changed a few things and then I was suddenly in love with this deck. I tested it a lot and changed even more and Sebastian and me were discussing all the time about different card choices when we finally (two days before Stahleck) came out with the same list. The Idea of this deck definetly belongs to him, I think I changed things like Cersei, Heads on Spikes and the Iron Throne. I'm a bit sad that he was lacking a lot of luck in the tournament hasn't seen the Iron Bank in so many games. He is a great Player and a great Person, he could have sitten on my chairs during the tournament aswell and I'm very happy to got to know him through this deck.

The Deck:

There are so many Keycards that I can't really list them. I would say the core of the Deck is The Iron Bank and Casterly Rock which guarante you a huge amount of Gold together with Vargo and Cersei's Informer.

Use Vargo to move gold on any Lanni character and you can spend it. With him Cercei's Informer becomes something like a 1-cost-Character.

Setup Iron Bank and the Informer, draw unbridled and use the agenda plus event and the informer in draw phase et voila Iron Bank with 6 gold and you can even already spent 2 from it and still reach the plus 5 gold in turn 2. Sounds okay, doesn't it? Since with the Rock unbridled is in the worst case a better non limited Kingsroad, the deck can run with only 3 limiteds.

The starts can be very explosive with Unbridled so you can play Win or Die into counting Coppers early.

Bronn is also very useful, basically every military challenge with claim 1 doesn't matter. You can play a good Valar M out of Lannister and reach a lot of strength if necesarry even after the challenge is announced with Vargo. Flea Bottem is also very obvious and strong in this deck combined with informer or gold mines and the Hound as the Begging Brother.

Interesting cards on the first look that didn't make the cut are Septon Utt (binding your bestow-gold for inside is bad most of the time since you can spend it) and Fever Dreams (Pay 1 for a card and use bestow/rock/anything on it makes 2 gold on a card to get 2 cards for the next turn so net 1 card... sounds meh to me).

We (especiall Sebatian) played Your King commands it instead of Heads on Spikes earlier, which is quite usefull since you can dominate the board in a lot of cases with cancel and a strong Tywin plus flea Bottom and the Hound, but also recover very fast with the Iron Bank and, Casterly Rock and the draw plots. In this combination I also had some good experiences with Ser Robert Strong making it a 4 against 2 Board with Win or Die followed.

Anyway we dropped it since the Deck is very slow a lot of situations and we wanted to add some speed so heads+Cersei made the cut.

If fools is seeing more play (which I think it should since the crazy amount of draw is very good) Ashmark could be considered also a Lay Waste is very good against Frozen Solid/Seized/Milk but can also find key locations ... what can I say finding space in here is very tough.

I will not go to the whole Matchups I have played and just discuss the different Matchups I see for this deck and which Matchups I expected.

The Matchups

Stark: The Fealty/Wars Winter-Style is okay most of the time. Don't put too much gold on your bank unless you have the iron throne, because of Frozen Solid. Spam the Board with your superior economy or valar them if you have Bron and they have no dupes, cancel everything and win the game. The X-ing, I am No One, The Crone Style is the real enemy since you can't do much here. If your Valar fails they will just reset with dohaeris and you can't negate their third challenge most of the time. It's close to be an auto loss, small guys rush in general is a big problem, which is the reason we concidered ashmark.

Greyjoy: The Big Guy, Boats are a 50/50 Matchup I would say which most of the time depends on saves, dupes and canceling the saves. Pyke into Marched is very dangerous on turn one if you can't stop it, the less aggressive Greyjoy Matchups without Pyke are okay most of the time.

Tyrell MFG: Find your seized very early and play it as soon as you see oldtown and you are fine most of the time. The Iron Throne also helps a lot, if Randyll isn't there it's obvious otherwise I would go for Wardens of the Reach. Red Keep is also very important here if you see Highgarden. Don't waste your Begging Brother Gold on Randyll unless it's the challenge phase. However Sebastian made different experiences here in testing :D

NW Big Guys: The AAA-Matchup is close to be an auto loss unfortunately, since you have no Valar Dohaeris and if you are going to do the power race you will mostly loose to rat cook stealing it. The only chance I realized in testing is basically Valar Mogulis on there important Power-Icons before they find all the dupes with Watch has need. Most likely in Plot 2, because a lot of the time they are playing there second maiden. Guess What happened in my Top 32-Game :D If your Valar is getting canceled, you just simply loose.

Baratheon Kneel: Begging Brother saving the day! Hunting Accident ruins the day. In testing I did very well against Baratheon with all the cancel, Valar-Bron and so much economy that I could win dominance, I basically never lost. Surprisingly for me my Baratheon Games were very close and I should have even lost my first one, if he is doing the things in the final round.

These were the matchups I expected to be at Stahleck the most and which I prepared for to aim the cut. I knew that the fools Decks are very difficult to handle since I've experimented with it myself and in testing I din't have a chance against them, but I expected only a few good fools decks to be there, since it's hard to play and I think a lot of players to dislike them and the mechanics. So I decided to take the most-likely-loss for consistency (no Ashmark for example) not weakening my other matchups and hoping the fools decks would get beaten by someone else, which didn't happen :D Anyway I had a lot of luck already in the tournament, a lot of my games have been very very close and there was way more then one game I think I should have lost, but I somehow didn't except against a very creative and cool NW-Rains Deck with Put to the torch, Put to the sword and Watchers on the wall which completely destroyed me piloted by Radek and obviously Harren in the final with his very strong Greyjoy-Fools, who took the Win home. I haven't seen all the cards in his deck, but his build was looking very very good and consistent and he also piloted it like the machine he is. The victory was well deserved congrats Harren! Take my sword, melt it down and add it to the others. You paid the iron price for it.

Finally I want to thank all my opponents for the amazing games, I want to thank the community for still playing this game, I want to thank the design team for giving us that sweet delicious cards, the Stahleck-Organisation-Team for doing all the great work and organising my sweetest holidays, I want to thank Sebastian for sending me the initial list and optimizing it to the top together with me, I want to thank David, Christian and especially Werner for spending all the time in watching how I move gold from one card to the other. You all make this game one of the best experiences of my life, which I realized in the last couple of years.

See you at the very latest next year at the castle!