Thoughts from Beyond the Wall - When Wildlings Attack!

So at the start of the regional season we had The Laughing Storm (GotC) taken off of the restricted list. This prompted every Baratheon player (well most) to immediately switch their restricted card to Val (RotO) to abuse this ridiculous repeatable draw engine. Having the Laughing Storm in your deck also opened up the possibilities for other cards to see increased play. There is the ever popular combo of using Citadel Law (MotA) pre-plot to reveal Rule by Decree (Core) followed up by Threat from the East (QoD) first turn. This powerful combo (three pieces of which need to be drawn into and only two played on setup) leaves your opponent with one card in hand and whatever else they managed to place on setup while you can still have six cards in your hand. If you manage to get this off then you can pretty much call the game from that point, yet in spite of this I have yet to see Baratheon make as big a splash as I expected this regional season.

When I first saw TLS come off the restricted card list, I too jumped to thoughts of Val but quickly thereafter my mind wandered to our old friend Dolorous Edd (TWH). Why run him you ask? Because the Wildling Agendas have The North trait and old dour Edd allows us to increase the draw cap by three if we go full tilt. Val is a Wildling and Baratheon runs wildlings extremely well so why not? Now he is a bit expensive at three gold, is very susceptible to burn and has no icons; all factors that run counter to the typical Baratheon strategy of rush; however, he does sport a learned crest (useful for running Outwit (TIoR)- this will help protect your renown against Valar Morghulis (Core)) and all you really need from him is one turn on the board. Hell, triggering Val can be your very next action. This should give you a free turn of draw meaning you should be able to draw all the reducers, events and characters you may ever need. I'm sure this is purely the Shagga in me talking as the thought of drawing eight cards in one turn is enough to make me laugh with glee but surely there must be some Jamie left in this strategy? I know that a recent French regional champion piloted a Baratheon Wildling deck to the top and so I ask the question, where do you think there is to go with this deck? I might take a hand at building a deck based on this combo in the future and if I do I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes but for now I'd love to hear thoughts on this, especially from some of the more experienced players.