To be a lion…
By Justin Shearer– February 3, 2012
So, I’ve been working on a new Lannister deck and I thought I would share my progress with you all.
I’ve been playing around with Lannisters for a while and haven’t yet found a build that I was completely happy with. My Lanni Maesters could dish out a beating, but all I could see when playing the deck was the ways it could be improved.
So, I started playing with Power Behind the Throne, the new agenda from Lions of the Rock. It gives you an additional Intrigue challenge, but punishes you for losing. In my first outting, the drawback just proved too painful, so I went back to Maesters…
…but still, all I could think about was how powerful the effect on the new agenda could be, especially when paired with the new Cersei Lannister. 
So, I started piling cards up – the ‘definites’, the ‘maybes’, the ‘wouldn’t that be interestings’ and a massive pile of jank. My build would centre around two or three copies of Cersei, 3 copies of the new Myrcella (I’d ordinarily only run one, but she should never be killed, only discarded for her effect), 3 Golden Tooth Mines, 3 You Killed the Wrong Dwarf, four or so gold weenies, 3 Enemy Informers and Castellans for my restricted card. My resource base would be gold roads, chambers, shadowblack lane and treasuries. I also had determined my plots.
My first iteration had way too many events. I had the new House Divided, Terminal Schemes, Double Bluffs and such in there. Just too many. My setups were horrible. I trimmed down the events and tried that. Still poor setups – I found that my averages costs were just too high. Too often I was running into Treasury + Golden Tooth Mines setups… yuck.
My solution was to add many more cheap locations. This didn’t really help as all I did was shift my deck to almost half locations. What I had was a couple of really effective characters with a great amount of control… but prone to terrible 2-3 card setup phases.
It also became obvious that the setup issue was hiding another problem. I was relying, very heavily, on Cersei. Most of my other characters, while good, would struggle to push through challenges or really make the most of my agenda. I also noted that, even though it appeared like I had a lot of draw, most of it was represented by the Golden Tooth Mines which served to compound the setup issue and also meant that I would be spending a lot of my early game resources on expensive locations.
So, I started digging through my piles of cards again. I remembered my experiences playing with a Lannister Shadows deck and remembered a few cards: Tyrion 
Lannister, Littlefinger and Kingdom of Shadows. Each of these cards adds to the deck in a key way – Littlefinger makes excellent use of the agenda and the Kingdom both adds resources (replacing the expensive Treasuries), but also offense through its special. I already had Varys, Qyburn and a Pyromancer’s apprentice in the deck, so I could then easily justify a couple copies of Tyrion. CoS Tyrion is just incredible in this deck, especially with the Kingdom allowing him to attack twice. One a couple shadows entered the deck, I took out one of my less integral plots for City of Lies (to help flush shadows cards out of my hand to avoid choking on them early game, since they’re expensive and can’t be reduced), and added King’s Landings (losing one Mines in turn). I also switched around my events to include 2 copies of Insidious Ways, thereby ensuring that I will be hitting the draw cap almost every turn.
I’m a little character heavy, but I’ve managed to address the problems of the first draft. My setups are much improved (averaging 4-5 cards) by the cheaper resource
base (and the addition of a number of cheaper characters that weren’t discussed above), I have much more reliable draw and I have included a number of heavy hitters.
Check out the list below and tell me what you think…
The Power Behind the Throne
2x Insidious Ways
3x You Killed the Wrong Dwarf
2x Terminal Schemes
1x Queen Cersei’s Chambers
3x The Goldroad
2x Golden Tooth Mines
2x King’s Landing
3x Kingdom of Shadows
1x Flea Bottom
1x Shadowblack Lane
1x Twilight Market
2x Sunset Sea
1x The Iron Throne
1x Lannisport Brothel
2x Tyrion Lannister (CoS)
2x Pyromancer’s Apprentice
2x Lannisport Weaponsmith
2x Lannisport Moneylender
3x Mountain Refugee
3x Doubting Septa
3x Castellan of the Rock
3x Myrcella Lannister (LotR)
3x Cersei Lannister (LotR)
3x Enemy Informer
1x Ser Arys Oakheart
1x Qyburn
1x Tommen Baratheon
1x Silent Sisters
1x Littlefinger (SaS)
1x Varys (SaS)
1x Syrio Forel
1x Ser Jamie Lannister (Core)
1x Lady Genna
Breaking and Entering
Frey Hospitality
Search and Detain
City of Lies
Shadows and Spiders
Retaliation
And of course,
Valar Morghulis.
There is only 6 plots.
Thanks Israel! The 7th is, of course, Valar Morghulis.
Your welcome.
When I get my hands on Illyrio’s Gift I’ll want to try and put Painted Dogs in, I think. They seem like excellent weenies.
Robert runs a deck very similar to this, and it’s terrifying to me.
Opening with Breaking and Entering with the Power Behind the Throne Agenda feels terribly good. Easily two 2-claim Intrigue challenges with fairly high initiative. If you add Myrcella Lannister to the mix, you’re getting 3 Intrigue challenges on T1. There goes your hand, and you probably gained a location or attachment (or 2 or 3).
The plot synergies available here are nuts. I think you’d be crazy to not run A Game of Thrones!
Breaking is better on paper than in practice. But, I feel 2claim is more useful than non-kneeling and that’s why game hasn’t found a place. Cersei and Littlefinger can already attack without kneeling and the kingdoms allow any shadows unit to swing twice.
The only real plot I’ve considered is Fear of Winter. It does mean cutting the castellans but it has a lot of synergy with the shadows elements and heavy intrigue.
I’ll vouch for Breaking being ridiculously good in practice. I don’t see how it fails to deliver – and around here it never has!
In my limited experience, there’s very few relevant attachments and locations to be hit by Breaking. For the most part, few decks – except maesters – play many attachments and the ones they do play are difficult to utilise. There’s just too much attachment control around and, of course, attachments hurt setups.
Summer and Winter decks play ravens, but you wouldn’t want those. Maester decks aren’t vulnerable. There’s a few that are nice to hit though, for sure – things like Taste for Blood, Burned and Pillaged, Frozen Solid… but they’re also very cheap and don’t tend to sit in someone’s hand for long.
Locations are similar – you don’t see too many expensive locations and, since most locations are resources, they don’t tend to sit in the hand long.
As a first plot, you have the best chance of hitting them. I like the plot, don’t get me wrong, but at the end of the day, 90% of its use is that it is 3/4/2.
I noticed the Two Champs guys built a similar deck and used Power of Blood. It is an interesting idea.