Actually, I Think I'll Take that One (3-0, winner 8p GNK) 1.0

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• 1.0

Dany: My brother used to say the only thing the Dothraki knew how to do was steal things better men had built.
Jorah: It's not the only thing. They are quite good at killing the better men.

Welcome to the wonderful land of second cycle AGoT, where the Watch is still strong, despite literally months of being a punchline. I've been playing Night's Watch pretty much 90% of the time ever since I bought into the game back in May-June of 2016. And boy, has it been a fun ride to the top of tier 1. After having some success in a couple of tournaments with your standard NW Fealty Wall deck, I decided to bring something different to our latest GNK. I had already heavily explored the Wildling Winter theme, and so decided to try my hand at the Night Gathers... archetype. I did not expect to have so much success with it, however.

Before I go any further I should give all credit for this deck to Dan (aka Daye Kaniel, aka action_johnny) who I shamelessly ripped off for this, which was to be a starting point in a Night Gathers... deck of my own design. The only changes I made were to cut Fast Eddie for Qhorin Hypehand, and Arry for a second copy of Arya (to fulfill the banner restriction). I take no credit for any of the brilliance of this deck.

You may know of Dan, and the amazing podcast Decklist and Chill, of which he is one part of, one of my absolute favorite AGoT podcasts. I highly recommend listening to that episode (ep 6) to hear him discuss this deck in detail.

Qhorin for Ned: I had one major reason for doing this:

1) Qhorin is cool and I wanted to play 3 copies of him

Of course there's plenty of after the fact justification for this choice. Sure, you're dropping one of the best renown rush characters in the game for Qhorin. But Qhorin still has renown. You're essentially trading Ned's extra power ability for the chud slaying that Qhorin provides. I think I actually like chud slaying in this deck archetype better, to be honest.

Let's face it, what does Qhorin do, practically, to your opponent? Makes them over-commit to military, for one. Clears their chuds and controls their boards, of course. All pretty solid, to be honest. I want to be keeping their board small so that my Marched is hitting better stuff. And let's face it, you're not playing Night Gathers... to marshal someone's reducer (although I have done this many times), you're doing it to hit their Tywin, their Balon, etc.

But... you are removing Yoren targets. Sure. In practice, this wasn't a problem for me. I had both Yoren and Qhorin in every game I played so far, and they haven't interfered with one another yet.

That's about it really. If you want advice on how to play this deck, you can ask. I don't have particular advice except this: intrigue is king, keep a hand advantage whenever possible, and don't be afraid to Varys whenever you see an advantage. Oh, and Ward is incredible, and always follow it up with Fallen from Favor or Marched to the Wall in case they flip Confiscation to get their character back.

So let's get to the games!

Match 1: Targaryen / Lord of the Crossing: Robert L.

I hadn't played Robert in a couple of weeks but he's got the Targaryen burn deck pretty well cornered. No Varys this game, but a 4x March and lots of bloodriders getting stolen. I mulliganed and had an absolutely terrible setup: Donella Hornwood and a Kingsroad. Robert had setup Rhaegal and Jhogo. Doing what pretty much anyone would do in this situation, he immediately Marched into my opening Riddle. This left a clean board with my Kingsroad intact. I played out a Ranging Party and Yorened his Rhaegal. Pretty solid military presence from there on kept the board small. On turn 2 I marched Yoren and dropped him again to grab another chud. What swung the game was when I managed to pull his Aggo out with Night Gathers..., and after a fourth March on turn 3, had pretty firm control of the board. It helped that he was doing a Beggar King style build and didn't have very many bomb econ plots. 1-0.

Match 2: Greyjoy / Lion: Shane C.

I should mention that Iron Mines and Risen from the Sea only save from kill effects, not discard (cackle). Shane and I had played in a few high stakes games before so we knew each other's style pretty well. After a pretty unmemorable setup (He setup Balon and a chud, of course), I opened with Time of Plenty into his Summer Harvest. He had 8 gold and initiative. Right where I want him. After he chose to go first, I knew his marshalling would determine if I would Qhorin to clear out some chuds and hit his Balon with a March, or if I would do a very early Varys. He answered that by dropping a duped Euron and some solid locations, including an Iron Mines. I knew that I had to Varys right away before he could find his other copy of Balon and lock in that board. I also knew that I would be fine with having Euron on the board for the most part, because I could march him afterwards (in retrospect, probably the stronger play), or milk him (which is what I actually did). So after some back and forth, Varys goes off, Balon is gone, and Euron is sitting on some Milk and not having a good time. I flip FFF on turn 2 and play Night Gathers..., using a pair of Ocean Roads and a Roseroad to pull out Balon and also drop a Ranging Party + Steward. He removes Milk from Euron either that turn, or the turn thereafter via Rattleshirt's. The rest of this game is kind of fuzzy, but I remember drawing another Milk in time to put Euron out and closing it with the help of a few Yorens. Qhorin also did work. Oh, and I had run out of characters on the final turn and decided to Ward his Fishmonger. Fun times. 2-0.

Match 3: Targaryen / Kraken: Matt Z.

The final match of the GNK tourney was against Matt, our excellent organizer for all things Thrones in the Las Vegas meta. Matt had come off from playing Stark in Thrones WAR the week prior and was kind of burned out on it, so he had gone back to the Dragon for some therapy. This game was an extremely close, back and forth game that hinged on three key moments.

After setup and turn one, Matt had a bodyguarded Dany and a chud, vs my Qhorin and Bran Stark. I flipped Marched, and he flipped Valar Morghulis. This caught me quite off guard, but I had to decide whether to resolve my March first to save a copy of Qhorin from the dead pile and let his Dany get away, or resolve his Valar first to get Dany off the board. I ultimately went with the latter, as I was holding Night Gathers... and wanted to be able to pull her out. Matt shocked me by actually deciding to kill her so that he could get Bodyguard back (he was holding on to Khal Drogo). I recovered fairly easily, but had a lot of dead copies of Bran Stark clogging up my hand afterwards. White Tree taking his money helped well enough.

The second key moment was when I managed to hit Victarion Greyjoy with Intrigue claim, and then marshalled him the next turn with Night Gathers.... He would end up winning me the game. I milked Drogo, then drew another milk on the very turn Matt confiscated the first one.

At this point I was starting to build an advantage in power, hand, and board state. Matt had deduced that I was almost certainly playing 3x Ward, because why else would you banner Wolf in this archetype? He was right of course, and had been playing around that all game. But at last, he had no choice but to play out Theon to try to get some advantage back. I flopped Counting Coppers and found Ward. And then executed the Play that Was Promised, the Nedliest of Nedly plays, Warding Theon Greyjoy. This was the third key moment that swung the game in my favor. By plot 8, I was able to pull out the win. 3-0

PS: After the game he revealed that he had drawn both other copies of Dany, making that early decision to be a very regrettable one.

So there you have it, the "official" record, of sorts. I played two other friendly games with this deck, both victories. Matt and I had a rematch after everyone had left, which was an absolutely hilarious game featuring his Thrones WAR deck. It revolved around Harrenhal (FFH), Roose Bolton, and Widow's Wail. Let's just say I had my board completely wiped by that combo not once, but twice, and would have had it happen a third time had I not had the sense to stop playing efficiency characters to try to rebuild post reset. I can say with certainty... the Roose is Loose. And that jank looks like a lot of fun.