Stark Fealty: 5th place at GenCon 5.0

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This is the deck I took to GenCon this year. I made the T8 cut going 8-1 in Swiss, but lost to the eventual winner.

I have been running a version of this deck for quite a while winning a store championship and a regional with it. It's fairly standard Stark, but I'll highlight below a few of my non-standard decisions with reasoning behind them:

1. 2x Heads on Spikes: I was concerned about the mirror match and HoS gives me a leg up. If we have the same board, we should be gaining power at about the same rate, but HoS lets me get a bit ahead. I also ran them to help counter Lannister as many decks are running key uniques at 3x. HoS allows me to hit their Tyrion/Tywin/Jaime/Gregor/Mirri/Ilyn/Whatever and throw a wrench in to their plans.

2. A Time for Wolves: I was a little late getting on this train. I was running Snowed Under for a while to combat opponent's Winterfell, but was convinced this plot is simply a better Winter option. Getting Summer or Lady on demand is quite good.

3. 2x Rattleshirt's Raiders/No Confiscation: Before the tournament, I made a meta call. In my estimation, current decks either run no attachments (making Confiscation a dead plot) or run all the attachments (making Confiscation inadequate for combating them.) As such, I opted to run 2x Rattleshirt's Raiders instead.

4. 2x Jory Cassel: I expected a lot of people to be teching against Stark, particularly running Winter plots to get around Winterfell. Jory allows me a bit more character protection on big Winter turns and even gives me a bit of power if I need him.

5. No events: I expected a decent number of players to be running Hand's Judgement. By running no events, HJ became a dead draw for them. Stark has enough tricks on the board that I didn't feel I needed the tricks from hand. Also, Stark is very gold hungry and I never felt like I could reliably keep 1-2 gold on hand to bluff/play events. Lady allowed me to use excess gold if necessary.

6. 2x Little Bird: I figured there would be a lot of Martell/icon stripping. If they can strip my Catelyn of her Intrigue icon, they can do a lot of mean stuff. I would sometimes throw a Little Bird on her preemptively to protect her from an anticipated Nymeria or Attainted. In non-Martell matchups, it's good on Eddard/Robb/Blackfish/Syrio/Jon Snow making it never a bad card. (Also good on setup.)

During Day 1 Swiss, my only loss was to a Baratheon deck that milked Robb early. I was unable to find Rattleshirt's in time to get my stand engine online. By the time I felt like I was stabilizing, he had gotten too much power with Chamber/Iron Throne for me to come back.

During Day 2 Swiss, I beat the same Baratheon deck/player I lost to during day 1 Swiss (you can be paired up with someone you played day 1). That game, he had some bad breaks with draws and I was able to put it away. It was the 9th game and he was undefeated at that point, so we both got in the cut.

I also beat the eventual champ's Lanni/Dragon deck with some very good top deck/"heart of the cards" pulls. (I top decked Summer/Milk on the turn he Wildfired, allowing me to rebuild quickly and stop his Mountain from putting away the game/gaining power.)

In top 8, I replayed the Lanni/Dragon deck knowing that he had a lot of tech against Stark. He was running Milk, Nightmares, AND Treachery with Winter plots to have a big turn to get around Winterfell. He flopped Mance Rayder/Chud/Roseroad, played Mountain turn 1, Tywin turn 2, Mirri turn 3 with enough treachery/Milk/Nightmares to get around my Catelyn/Winterfell/Jory protection. The game ended quickly after that.

Overall, I'm happy with how the deck played. Looking at future cards, I'm looking forward to playing Winter Festival to give more reliable power rush over HoS. For any tournament, I think you'll have to revisit the Confiscation/Rattleshirt's decision as a meta call. I think I made the right call for this tournament, but with shifting decks, it's good to reevaluate.