5th place Dutch Nationals. "The king may never die" 1.0

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This is the deck I made to play during the Dutch nationals on 17-09-16.

I had been toying around with Bara but found that key characters either died to the murder decks around, or the kneel package was being negated by Rob/Jon or Tyrion/Illyrio. So I decided to add the kraken banner as defense to kill, however the deck then under performed to the sungarden and NW craven decks. So I decided to also add the dominance package to have an answer to those decks, as well as going from 3 selyse to 3 cressen. And thus I ended up with this deck. After noticing the high number of kingdom plots I decided to also add the stone drum, a card that performed very well every time I drew it.

As for the tournament, I expected Stark and Lanni/Dragon decks to have fallen out of favor, which in the case of stark definitely was the case. As for Lanni/Dragon... I mean they were present, but their performance varied wildly. As a whole I believe "old" Lanni decks under performed. Only 2 Lanni/Dragon deck made the top 8 and 1 Lanni/NW deck which included the wall. Martell also seemed to be having an off day, with Martell decks significantly under performing.

On to the matches.

Round 1 against Lanni/winter. My opponent was playing the vaberg top table deck, however a turn 1 seen in flames to remove the only jumping event he saw all game ruined his first turn. After milking tyrion, and him not seeing rattleshirts, Big Bob closed the game without to many difficulties.

Win 1-0

Round 2 against bara/kraken The mirror, yikes. He did not play the dominance package and managed to have a turn one board with bob and asha against my melisandre and Selmy. Asha kept taking unopposed and I had to keep using my kneel triggers on bob as I kept losing initiative. I never really stood a chance after I failed to get a painted table with my building orders and failed to get bob with summons.

Loss 1-1

Round 3 Greyjoy Wolf Don't remember much about this round, other then I milked 2 of his stealth characters and kept balon knelt. I got to 15 on plot 3.

win 2-1

Round 4 Stark fealty I had to play stark fealty, a matchup thats generally bad for me if I don't get dominance running quickly. I took an agressive mulligan to find either the iron throne of the painted table and managed to set up the iron throne and a single character. My opponent set up King Rob, which was a big relief. No annoying stand to worry about! Kneel and bob kept control over the board and a few iron mines meant not worrying about ice. His combo of king rob, lady, nymeria and core cat did kneel a lot on my side, but he was unable to accumulate any real power after milking his renown.

win 3-1

Round 5 against the sungarden A dreaded match up for me, which I only won when he grabbed mel with vipers eyes instead of the chamber of the painted table. The table managed to keep swinging power to my favor and a duped selmy managed to ride out the varys to get some renown. I finished at 15 right when his marched would have wiped my board on plot 8. Yet still, it wasn't the closest match of the day.

win 4-1

I finished 5th in swiss as the best Bara.

Top 8: Lanni/Watch An absolute nail biting match against Franke was the highlight of the day. He setup tywin reducer against my theon fiery followers. Immediately on the backfoot I summoned to a mel, however after being unable to find her setteling on a cressing who got immediately milked. I think he saw 3 craven en 2 milks in the first three turns, pretty mutch negating everything I marshaled. I played confiscation to free up cressen, but he won initiative and as a first action immediately milked him again. After I got the dominance package running I started making a comeback, I just needed rhollor cards to deal with Tywin who had an old bears raven. However, for the first time that day, my deck just did not give me the cards I needed and I only saw the fiery followers on setup and a lightbringer during turn 3. This allowed Franke to keep obscene amounts of gold and win any challenge after stealthing Bob. A well deserved win for Franke after he played a near flawless match. I think in the end, if I had drawn a rhollor on the last turn I would have won, but I did not.

Loss

It was a truly amazing day, and I had fun opponents all day. A good reminder on why I play thrones :)