Frozen Seas - 2nd place Northwest Gaming Center SC 1.0

• Versiones

Took this deck to my local store championship and came second, losing the final game due to a major error on my part.

Notes:

• Helya does not combo with "weapons at the door" the way I thought she did. That was a big error on my part and should definitely lead to Helya being switched out.
• I added a single Iron Fleet Scout at the last minute which was actually really useful.

Game 1 - Greyjoy Banner of the Wolf - Win

• Had a strong start, my opponent played a few elite characters who were heavily duped whereas I flooded the board and applied a lot of pressure.
• Opponent managed an immense valar killing Balon w/2 power when I was 1 away from winning. However I topdecked fishwiskers and won an unopposed power challenge to win the game.

Game 2 - Tyrell Kings of Winter - Win

• The deck function exactly as it was supposed to. I eliminated both Highgarden and The Mander on the first turn before he could use either. From there I managed to maintain a lot of pressure.
• Pyke was amazing and made it so that my Rattleshirts (the only military icon i had all game) was actually extremely effective.
• Opponent made some errors in consistently making me go second which locked him out of some options for getting challenges through by needing to defend a small boardstate.

Game 3 - Lannister Rains of Castemere - Win

• Again a strong start with the destruction of both Tower of the Hand and Golden Tooth on the first turn.
• The low reserve off of the first turn REALLY hurt his deck as it had a strong jumper module.
• The gold choke also hurt him a lot as he said afterwards that he was frequently 1 gold off of the card he needed to play.

Game 4 - Lannister Rains of Castemere - Loss

• Lost at the top table. Opponent managed to get out Tyrion and Twyin very early with some chumps for claim and bodyguards. Even though he spent the whole game with no locations I couldn't dislodge them.
• Once again the low reserve off of the first turn really hurt him, even though he didn't have a jumper focus.
• I was actually in a very strong position after the first turn but made an ENORMOUS error on my Early Frost 2-claim turn. I forgot that rains could trigger off of defense and my first challenge was an intrigue instead of mil or power. He shut me out and triggered rains to play "game of thrones" meaning I couldn't make any of my other 2-claim challenge and hurt his small boardstate. I'm still beating myself up about this one. I feel like if I hadn't made this piloting error the game would have ended very differently.

Four primary axis of the deck in order of priority:

1. Location Hate - remove key pieces with extreme prejudice. Harranhal/Winterfell/Red Keep/The Wall/Arbor are all essential pieces to most popular decks. We do not sow/put to the torch/newly-made lord are the solutions offered here. No Euron as I felt his cost was too high for weak winter econ.

2. Aggressive mil challenges to keep the opponents board small and burn through saves. First Snow offers some board-clear potential. Weapons at the door allows for targeting with seastone and removes debuffs. Alternatively 2 claim plots can apply pressure to small boardstates. Seastone Chair, can also be used to kneel key pieces if Aeron comes out.

3. Reserve-hate via Alannys/KoW/Wraiths combo to apply pressure. In every game I opened with wraiths into Early Frost and it consistently hurt my opponent in a big way.

4. You should be able to go first when you need to, Ahead of the Tide is a great card to compensate for low winter initiatives and you've got Salty Navs/kingroads to help set things up as well. Snowed under + ahead of the tide is a great way to guarantee first turn.