London regional winner - tourney report

Saturday the 9th I went to my first regional tournament - given the good results in the store championship season (1st, 2nd and 3rd with different evolution of the deck) and the 3rd place in Amsterdam I decided to bring my HOD Thunderer choke/aggro to Dark Sphere. Here is how it went:

1st round Ian "khal" Pollard - Lanni conquest Martell - W
Ian is a fellow cornish paramour and we had already met twice in the store championship this season (1-1 so far), this was a very unfavorable match up for Ian as my winter, marauders and newly made lords didn't allow him to have enough gold to get is castellan kneel/ghaston grey bounce machine going.

2nd round vs Michael Clarke - Stark Aloof and Apart W
Michael is also a paramour, I was surprised by his deck choice as he's been playing stark maester for a while. As soon as he flipped the first plot (fury of the wolf) he started vomiting armies and high cost char (bastard boys, roose bolton, tully armies and more) I knew I had to hit his hands as much as i could (thank you kingsroad) to hold on the first 2-3 turns and set up my economies/saves for the valar turn. After the valar, I had the sparr and marauders on the table and Michael deck didn't have enough draw/economy to respond to my attacks.

3rd round vs James "Bambi" Bamfield - Lanni DWDW W
3rd paramour in a row...what the hell. This was by far the most fought game I had in swiss. The game started very well for me as I had a ton of economy in setup while Bambi didn't have much, on top of that i cancelled his at the gates plot. River blockade, sparr and winter made the situation very though for him as he was running city plots so often he had only 2 gold. However, and this is a testament of how well he played, Bambi managed to stay in the game for 8 plots thanks to his events and kneel (he drawcapped most of the game) and always hit me with the power challenge. Last turn we were 13 power each and a "distraction" would have won him the game as I only had one char with the military icon. Thankfully he didn't draw it and I won the match in dominance.

4th round vs Vince "Milo" Teule - Greyjoy Old Way L
Vince and I practice together every week and together with Tagore he's the guy that taught me how to play properly and how to build a decent deck. I know I had an unfavorable match up here but this was not a loss, was a beat down, Castle plot+Mya stone, transformers boats and scouting vessel/naval escort made sure that I could never win more than one challenge per turn while I could rarely defend successfully.

5th round vs Kostas - Bara Maester L
Kostas is a very good greek player of the Edinburgh meta I had the pleasure to meet in Amsterdam - I knew this was going to be hard...and it was: Kostas had a very strong setup and flooded the board: Sallador + Marya (goodbye locations), 2 refugees, brightwater man at arms, maester aemon, oldtown advisor, masseys hook and more stuff force me to valar 2nd turn. Even after the valar I was always behind thanks to Stannis (AKA Stannis Super Sayan) and PowerBob, and he rushed me for the win while I was slowly coming back.

Overall I made 6th thanks to SOS (everyone I played went at least 3-2) - this allowed me not to meet Vince that won the swiss undefeated.

The elimination round

Quarter final vs Ryan Kelly - Bara Knight (streamed on twitch)
This is the first time I had to pleasure to play with Ryan - the match start was though as after turn 3 he had 9-10 power and I had 0, however, thanks to wintertime marauder and newly made lord I was destroying is location base (economy, black cells, location that search knights) and, after the valar turn, he didn't have enough economy to play too many of those expensive knights anymore. However he had a great advantage in powers (I remember that thanks to parmen crane he got a 3 claim unopposed power challenge) and I was afraid I was going to get rushed - however Asha Greyjoy and Balon allowed me to sprint for the win before he could. This was a really good match and I hope that Ryan will show up more often to our events in London!

Semifinal vs Ryan Wood - Bara DWDW (streamed on twitch)
The rematch! Ryan defeated me in a store championship final in March (we were playing similar decks) so this would be an occasion for revenge This was probably the best game of the day - it was one of those "back and forth" games where no-one bothered to defend and the outcome was never certain. I honestly cannot remember most of the plays we did - at the end I only managed to win because i discarded with kingsroad the event that gives renown so Ryan was stuck at 14 powers and this allowed me to push for the win.

Final vs LoL Craven - Greyjoy HOD (streamed on twitch)
Mirror match! Craven is also a fellow cornish paramour - it was a great pleasure to play the final vs him! We were both playing a similar deck but I think that in the final the details made the difference. His deck was more aggro while mine was more choke oriented, this allowed me to choke him really hard on resources and he didn't have enough gold to play enough strong chars so I managed to dominate the board (I should also say that I had two marauders on the table and this was a big deterrent) and hit him enough time on the power challenge to bring the win home

Thanks to all my opponent to make the day entertaining and fought! I honestly think I didn't have a single "relaxing match" and especially the direct elimination were all fought to the wire. Thanks Alexi, Wamma and Tagore for organise it and Wamma for TOing! But also thanks to Vince and Federico to help me optimise the deck that was born as a "joke" and instead became a strong contender.
Final thanks to everyone that came from outside London - it was a great day for the UK meta - I hope that the other regional will be even more successful!

Congratulations to you on your victory Marco, it's about time you won a major event with that deck after you've been constantly troubling people with it tournament after tournament .

For anyone who wants to watch the matches Marco mentions being streamed on twitch, you can see them all here: http://www.twitch.tv/darkspheretwitch/b/657504556

Just spent the entire afternoon watching them can't belie I forgot to trigger the marauders twice...

Congrats big guys, well deserved.

And the stream was great, we really need to push for that in all events.