Oberyn’s Revenge is finally on the scene after a slight delay in release – which means that it’s time to get excited about stupid new decks. And this pack gives us plenty of really interesting cards with which to work!

I could go on and on about how much I love Tibwhid (The Iron Bank Will Have Its Due) but won’t at present, for two reasons: first, that any deck I’d be building around it would be less janky and more straight-up good because it’s an incredibly strong card; and second, honestly right now I just wanted an excuse to repeat the word Tibwhid because it’s very important to me that the name sticks.

Flea Bottom is the other standout from the pack in terms of a card that will heavily affect the meta going forward, and you can probably expect more featuring it on this blog in the coming months.

But for the time being I want to get stuck into the non-neutrals because, as ever, my first instinct is to find a cool card and identify the silliest banner combination that I can.

To this end: Mutiny at Craster’s Keep. There has already been a bit of the-sky-is-falling shrieking about this card’s existence and, while I don’t agree with those who are furious about the card being printed, it’s certainly a powerful effect that’s ripe for exploitation.

Let’s start by breaking down the more obvious ways in which we’re ‘supposed’ to use this card. Firstly, it should slot pretty neatly into the existing Builders deck in NW/Summer without any serious tweaks. The top of that deck’s curve is the Grizzled Miner, which almost always costs 1 to marshal and is therefore no kind of serious setback to sacrifice in exchange for target-removing a problem character.

In general, the ‘sacrifice your most costly character’ aspect strongly hints at a low-curve deck; perhaps the wildling theme that is increasingly being given tools and has obvious overlap with the Night’s Watch cardpool. If you haven’t yet marshalled Watchers Jon Snow, then you can pretty happily bin off Ygritte if it means punching through that Renly or Tywin who’s been resisting your Crow Killers.

What it doesn’t do is suggest that you should be playing it alongside your 7-costers, because who can afford to take that kind of economic hit? What deck would actively want to remove those kinds of characters from their own board?

Naturally, I set about finding exactly that kind of character. It needs to be right at the top of your cost curve, so that you can play Mutiny and not worry about hitting characters who you really want to keep on the board, and it needs to be something that either comes in for less than its printed cost a la Grizzled Miner or something that earns back some value by no longer being on the board.

I think the answer is King Joffrey Baratheon.

Joffrey and Mutiny work together well on a couple of levels. Firstly, the event effectively allows Joffrey to repeat his effect – target-kill a character in marshalling, target-discard a character in dominance. This compliments nicely the fact that we are necessarily playing Lannister/Banner of the Watch for this combo and can therefore run 3x Qhorin Halfhand to put lots of pressure on the opponent’s characters.

Being able to sacrifice Joffrey is also very helpful because then we get to play another copy next turn and trigger him again. Often, King Joff’s second and third triggers, et cetera, are from marshalling a Cersei or a Tywin (big characters we don’t want to have to kneel but need to if we’re to hit big characters) or a Lannisport Guard or some such (we don’t mind kneeling them but we can only kill 1-costers). This way we can keep the pressure up on anyone under 7 cost (and though Joffrey’s reaction can’t hit a 7-coster, Mutiny can).

To this end, the deck that I’ve built also runs 2x Tibwhid to recur Joffrey when there’s no Mutiny in hand. This is a slower combo because both effects require a faction-card kneel, so you can’t trigger Joffrey and then immediately bring him back to use him again next round, but it increases our options. In a similar vein, 1x Daring Rescue provides a way to (should you have a Knight in play) get Joffrey back for repeat triggers.

Obviously, it is possible that you don’t draw Joffrey when you want to Mutiny away some dudes. You’re going to need backup so that you don’t have to bin your duped Tywin. So let’s pack 3x Jaqen H’ghar along with 2x Last of the Giants. You can marshal Jaqen, kill a character and then sac him to discard another, or you can bring him in by surprise in dominance and then sac what is effectively a 2-coster to discard anyone you like.

Equally obvious is the fact that all of these characters are quite expensive, especially if you want to marshal Joffrey multiple times, so the deck opts for a no-nonsense plot lineup full of money. I would normally look for two plots of six gold and above in most decks, but here four feels necessary, while two of them being Time of Plenty hopefully ensures that you will be drawing enough to play with all of the cash. Summons could be a Counting Coppers but I like the ability to search for the second or third Joffrey here, should you have the economic infrastructure in place to play him straight out.

The rest of the draw deck is pretty straightforward. In filling out the banner, I’ve gone for Jaremy Rykker instead of Benjen Stark to provide another knight for Daring Rescue, and a cheeky Catapult on the Wall makes use of the potential for quite a lot of leftover money in the midgame and also provides a way for Joffrey to kill more people if you don’t draw into the events that get him off the board.

There’s a basic jumpers structure in the location base, allowing for more board pressure by bouncing the likes of Cersei and Jaime around with Harrenhal and the Tower of the Hand, while a Hand’s Solar means that you can do Tower tricks with Gregor or Joffrey instead should you need to. Between Joffrey, Ilyn Payne, Jaqen, Qhorin, Tower, Catapult and Mutiny, the deck should be able to exert a great deal of pressure on opponents from marshalling all through to the dominance phase.

It’ll lose real hard to the Martell/Stag that just won GenCon, of course… but there’s no shame in that.