8 Regents 2025 - Stark Kraken (combo) 1.0

• Versiones
• 1.0

Hi folks, Odrl here again. :)

Another deck from the recent 8 Regents tournament... This one sparked some controversy, with some people even calling for it to be banned, but it's not actually all that competitive. And as you can see, it's now in violation of the latest RL anyway, although the key pieces remain untouched.

Our original idea for Banner of the Kraken was to play something more like the deck Bobby played in 7K, but there never seemed to be a good opportunity for that. So in the end we actually played the agenda in two dead games, after the round was already won or lost. I played it against Night's Watch, expecting to face Builders, which turned out to be a good call. And the reason is that this is essentially a pure combo deck, and it usually needs quite a few rounds to find all the pieces, so it for sure loses against anything really rushy, and it falls apart against aggro as well.

What are the pieces? Well, Plan A includes six different cards. It needs Jojen Reed, equipped with Knighted so that he can also equip White Cloak, and The Wolf King. Then you also need Wyman Manderly and Aeron Damphair (TIMC) in play. If you have all of that, and you have more cards left in your deck than your opponent, the game is instantly over if the opponent has no way of disrupting the combo. You use Wyman to kill Jojen, Jojen kneels to save himself, then you use Aeron to stand Jojen, and Jojen either draws or discards a card from both players' decks. No limit on Wyman, so just repeat that as many times as you need to mill your opponent.

There is also a Plan B, but it's basically the same thing in a different way. This plan also works with Benjicot instead of Jojen, although Jojen's ability is slightly more versatile and might make a difference in some obscure scenario. For this plan you need Fleet Captain on your mill character, and then you play Every Captain is a King to make them a King, so that White Cloak can be triggered. The card you don't need anymore is The Wolf King. But the mill sequence is the same.

But how do you win if the opponent has more cards left in their deck than you do when the combo pieces are assembled? There are two copies of Citadel Archivist in the deck, so if shuffling both players' discard piles back into their decks brings you ahead on cards left in the deck, that is one possible solution. If not, you need to play Shadow Politics at some point during the sequence to remove a part of the opponent's discard pile, so that triggering Citadel Archivist puts you ahead. If you have the gold and you are doing it with Jojen, you can even draw multiple copies of Shadow Politics to overcome a bigger gap.

Those are all the cards that are actually relevant for the win condition. Everything else is just cards that help you stall the game, and cards that help you survive. And some cards that help you find the pieces. I realised after my game that Lay Waste would have been good too, because I had Karhold in play that was not doing anything, so I could have played Lay Waste on it to search for the only attachment I was still missing. I think Jake included Exchange of Information when he played the second copy of Banner Kraken, which I think was a decent idea. Of course it increased the chance to end up with fewer cards left than the opponent, but overcoming that actually seems to be the easy part. Finding all 6 (or 7) pieces is more tricky.

After the latest RL update, Catelyn Stark (Core) also has to go. Of course she is not essential for the combo, but I did like the prospect of doing the sequence during a challenge in which she is participating, to deny any possible counterplay to the opponent. And of course her ability was useful for the stall as well. But yeah, I'm sure the "supporting cast" can still be optimised anyway.

As for the games, we technically won both, but we probably shouldn't have. I played against NW Builders and found all the combo pieces by Round 6, which was the very last moment when I could still do it before losing. But after the game Argento told me he was sitting on a Milk of the Poppy all game, but it just didn't seem worth playing it. Would have stopped me instantly if he knew the deck. Then Jake played the deck against Martell, against a rushier opponent, but he also found the combo pieces a bit quicker, I think by Round 4. Seemed like he would win "cleanly", but the opponent actually had a Nightmares in hand which, again, would have stopped the combo completely, but he somehow failed to play it. I think maybe due to the confusing "outside of an action window" message, since it was all happening during the marshaling phase.

So in the end this was quite a fun combo to pull off, and the deck can genuinely win if you play it against a certain type of deck. But against the general field? Probably not really viable, too many things can go wrong. :)