Bloodthirst Is Back: 3rd in SG Store Tourney 16/4/2016 2.0

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Man. Thats a lot of events and locations!

Which decks you played against?

I picked up Game of Thrones about a week ago and this deck is something very similar to something I was trying to get working, biggest changes being the Varys addition, as I tended to value the board a bit more.

This is because I fell for the trap of running Stannis, which i'm relieved that you also dropped. I've moved on to Martell control now (even more "lame" in the sense of my side doing nothing), but I was wondering what your reasoning behind running Rebuilding over 'A Game of Thrones'. Then again, your only icon removal is Nymeria so I suppose that makes sense

With all the Varys and Marched would you consider Reinforcements over Rebuilding to get back Mel/Nym or do you find Rebuilding to be a very strong plot for re-using your events?

@dibatAGoT as a plot is currently not very strong now due to the overwhelming Lanni presence across all metas. If Stark / Greyjoy makes a strong showing, there is an argument to put it in instead of say, Filthy Accusations.

@AFredeI found the 5 Gold and Initiative of Rebuilding Useful the whole day. The effect is even sweeter if I have a shadowblack lane out: most of my matches I actually realized that Opponents usually don't want to military me (Viper's Eyes / Shireen / Bastard's Daughter / Davos) and I might consider dropping In the Name of Your King! to 2x. With Shadowblack Lane, I usually prioritize Seen In Flames as it's Hand Control - discarding Opponent's chars - and triggers Melisandre. Once Opponent's hand is gone, Even-Handed Justice serves as a lock. Consolidation of Power is there if I'm trying to close the next round.

Could it be... a real 2.0 control deck?! Exciting!

I'm wondering, do you really need Wildfire? With your First Snow (and probably your opponent's too, there's a lot of it around), how often are people reflooding the board enough for Wildfire to matter? Would that be a good cut for the second Marched?

@cobrabubbles I have intentionally wildfired my own Bastard Daughter and Shireen Baratheon before just to clear the last card in my Opponent's hand or act as a pseudo kneel for that round. I think it's possible to cut it, but again, more testing is required.

@Oxymoronicaah yeah that makes sense, I might test without it for starters though. Also, what d'you think of Unbowed Unbent Unbroken if you can find space? Most people don't lead with the power challenge, so you can take a hit on one of the other two and guarantee your Red Keep trigger with UUU. Particularly nice on a Game of Thrones turn, even against Lanni, because it dictates challenge order. But maybe that's not quite good enough to be worth running, I'm not sure.

From the new pack, Nightmares looks like a great card for this deck, particularly if you were considering Milk already. Kingswood could also be good but it's a difficult one to find slots for - would you look at including it?

@cobrabubbles Not very fond of Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken primarily because 1) Can't be found by Shadowblack ; 2) Does not impact the board in a significant way. More on point 2: as a Control Deck, Card slots are really important and every slot has to impact the board meaningfully - kneel a character or remove an icon etc. UUU just seems like a 'Lose Less' card rather than a 'Lose to Win' card (See Vengeance for Elia in upcoming CP).

Nightmares looks great, but it's currently a worse off milk because 1) The effect is not permanent and there's nothing you really need to change mid-challenge especially in this kind of deck - See again, impact of certain cards in a control Deck; 2) It costs 1 gold which is similar to Milk of the Poppy. If it cost 0, and the economy wasn't so tight already, there might be an argument to playing it in the far future (Maybe when Dark Wings, Dark Words gets printed again).

My thoughts on Kingswood - it's deceptive because while it looks good on setup, it's impact will only be felt much later when Power Challenges become more valuable over time. (No one really does Power challenge first few rounds unless you're a rush deck, but The First Snow of Winter has largely kept that in check; and you shouldn't be losing Power Challenges in any case thanks to The Red Keep. The only situation where this trumps Red Keep is perhaps when weenie decks make a comeback and they try to get you to throw the occasional Power challenge with a reducer OR if the Greyjoy rush deck is very prominent in your meta. (And even then the concern won't be the reduction in Power str. but the Stealth)

Good points. I might try UUU anyway though because I enjoy it :)

I think the biggest point in favour of Nightmares is that everyone and their mother is running Confiscation at the moment. If you play milk, it's your only confiscation target, so if you use it on a Dany or Tywin you're probably only getting one turn's use of it anyway, and you have to find another copy to achieve the desired effect (until it dies to any other attachment control they have). Sure, everyone's running event cancel too, but if they burn a Judgement on your Nightmares rather than one of your discard or denial events then you're pretty happy.

I think it is also relevant that Nightmares happens at Action speed, because of the prevalence of Lanni jumpers at the moment. You can't Milk a Gregor/Tywin/Jaime that they jumped in with their events, but you can Nightmares it after they've spent the event.

Oh and on top of all that, Nightmares can also blank locations, and this deck has no location control as is. Particularly useful against Wall decks which can stall as well as you can, but gain power faster.

Question on Moonboy. With the discard mechanic what advantage does he give you over a character like Gendry that has benefits for winning dominance?

@AceidolThere are pros and cons of using Moonboy over Gendry (and vice versa). Moonboy is great at setup, and his drawback is much more manageable than Gendry's. I'm happy to use Moonboy as Claim, and Insight (important!) works on both Defense and Offense. Gendry is poor at setup, yet he survives The First Snow of Winter. However, if I'm going to continually clear the Board, the Power on him doesn't really matter. Economy can be a problem sometimes (doesn't run any economy plots). Also, I do find that more often than not, in the first few rounds I'm losing Dom unless I have an The Iron Throne. So I marshall Gendry just to sacrifice him. In terms of Gold-wise, if the deck is running as it should, Opponent usually has more gold than me (no chars to play, no meaningful events to play out), so Dom in the early stages can be problematic.

If I have stabilized and controlled the board maybe in plots 7-8 (Yes my games have run to plot 10-11 before), then I can see an argument for Gendry helping me to close the game.

you are playing at least 20 more characters than needed to be called "bloodthirst"

What are your thoughs on building orders and support of the people?

@FedericoFasulloif they ever print a finisher like 1.0 TRV, I'd be more than happy to cut some stuff :D

@HasrBuilding Orders (and Summons) is not in a great place now because 1) Rickon's everywhere! 2) There are few locations you really want to search for unless it's The Red Keep. 3) Even then, you're not really impacting the character count on the board or affecting the board state or challenge decisions. So unless they print a really significant location or attachment, I'd be a little hesitant to put it as one my 7. Feel free to try it out and tell me how it goes! :D

With regards to Support of the People, I'm rarely winning power by 5 consistently, so most of the time it's a dead card. I do see it's merits though: perhaps in a deck with more consistent characters I'd be willing to add it in. A different version of this deck with either Stannis Baratheon or Robert Baratheon might make Support of the People more consistent, but more testing has to be done.

I have a question: Did you ever run into some gold problems? Only see 2 plots that generate 5 gold. If you have to play Nymeria or Mel that turn you prolly cannot play anything else.

@RemkoLootenOccasionally, but the draw helps to smooth it out. The deck doesn't have to play Mel / Nym round 1: it's end game comes usually after one cycle of plots, so planning far ahead and reading the board carefully is crucial here.

I'm also curious about eco in connection with Varys. Unless you have 2 Roseroads up and running or a Kingsroad ready, he can't come out with most of the plots. Isn't it a problem?

BTW I like your idea a lot.

@Csontiit is! I think one of my initial plots was Trading with the Pentoshi but I can't remember which one I took it out for. (Probably a Confiscation depending on the Meta)

I was thinking that too, I slotted Calling the Banners when I tried the deck out on Tuesday, as it almost always gives enough gold to play Varys, and it gives you initiative so you can play second, which is always good on a Varys turn.

@cobrabubbleshow did the deck work for you? Are there any areas or matchups which you find it lacking / can be improved?

Well I've only managed to play a couple games so far due to business, so can't speak to particular matchups. Main thing that stood out to me is that it can be kind of crippled by draw variance, you need every card you draw to have an impact so seeing the location dupes early game can really hurt. For that reason I'm really tempted to run Summons when I next try it, just to try and get round the characterless draws that sometimes happen.

All that said though, when it works it really works, high-skill but great fun :)