Targ Army/War Crest/High Claim (Melee)

I ran several versions of this deck from about Apr12-Oct12. Was very pleased with it overall. Probably won 2/3 of all games (a total of about 15 games played total). Never went up against a Winter deck (or season-hate tech), so I'm not sure how it would have performed in such a situation.

Deck strategy is pretty simple - employ high claim challenges (often claim 3 using Pike Phalanx) and just smash your opponents in the face. Lots of wonderful Army trait and War crest synergy.

Never had a problem with the gold curve. Myrish Villa and extra gold for summer really help out. Card draw/advantage is a little lite, but it was not a big deal and I just didn't want to make room for Meraxes.

Has good icon spread, few weenies and a good number of uniques so it doesn't collapse under weenie hate, non-unique hate, etc. Not much in the way of saves, control, or cancel effects, though.

Not a top-tier deck I am sure, but it was a lot of fun to play. The most recent change was removing Khaleesi's Faithful (TGM). Although I like the card and needed/wanted another Army, the limited response hurt when I wanted to use Pike Phalanx's ability, and there are other Armies to choose from. I decided to go with Second Sons, but I am debating replacing that with Destitute Horde (SA), Brazen Beasts, Warlock Servitors, Long Lances, or others. I just like Second Sons because they are unique and War-crested (but may be too expensive...).

Putting it on the back-burner as I have a couple other melee builds I am itching to try out!

Questions, comments, criticisms welcome!

Actually I'm thinking about a similar deck, but I have not build it yet, because I see too many problems with the high cost of characters. 13 characters costs 4 or more. 5 attachments, 8 events. Very bad setup. If you play against a Maester, they may lock down your raven and your Myrish Vila's and discard your characters with any type of trait manipulation. Anyway a player, who sees your cost weakness, may rush hard against your hand, which might be easy because of the bad setup, and the valar will hit you very hard.

I'm really wondering about the scentence "never had a problem with gold curve". Have you played against any Maester decks? Have you experience in games with several valar?

"Very bad" setup is a bit harsh! But yeah I prefer builds like my Stark Defense and Bara Asshai builds where I am usually getting 4-5 cards easy in setup. This one is definitely slower - 3 or 4 (with the VERY occasional epic fail of 1 or 2, but that can happen to anyone...), but I have found that it's worth it. Earlier versions of this deck ran an extra refugee, an extra carrion bird, one less black raven, and a couple other changes to help improve set up and lower the cost curve, but after a few plays of that I just said screw it and went big, replacing those weenies for bigger armies, events, etc and I didn't regret it. Stuff like "Price of War" and the extra Crown of Mereen, while bad for setup, just proved to be too useful. Heck I even ditched Shadowblack Lane in favor of another High Ground - didn't "need" the extra resource and the High Ground effect is just crazy.

Valar is pretty ubiquitous in my small meta, so yeah I usually run into it, and on more than one occasion I've had opponents toss their hand of 4+ cards just to cancel my Narrow Escapes so my beefy armies or key uniques didn't come back. I learned quick to not over-extend myself, and use my True Power and High Ground so that I could successfully defend/attack with single characters (and was often able to get off the Fairweather Follower's ability to stand after an event) . You don't need 4+ characters on the board, even in melee, when your dudes are all buffed up to 5+ strength, so I could do a lot with just 3 or 4 characters and keep a couple in hand at all times to repopulate. But sure, I had some matches against GJ packing a lot of saves, or Noble-heavy decks that may have flipped Power of Blood on a Valar turn, and yeah the scales could tip pretty heavily against me for a time. That's pretty much what my own Valar M was for.

I played a couple games against Maesters (GJ and Martel), but don't have extensive experience with it. Aside from a fair amount of attachment control that I have (Jorah's Cohorts, Dragon Thief, Crown of Mereen - which you may not even have a chance of activating if a maester/chain effect gets rid of first...) I guess there's not much I could do against a focused "Maester Assault"! But in melee since there are other opponents, I'll just hope that the love will get shared and I won't bear the brunt of the effects!

Winter is about the only thing that scares me but I never faced off against it.
If you do post your own version let me know - I'd love to see it!

Actually there are very few winter decks in melee. I guess only with the House of Dreams agenda, Baratheon Wall Winter may become common. But GJ or Stark isn't that great with winter in melee (in my opinion). If I find the time to create a summer war deck I will tell you, but christmas time is no game of thrones time.

Yeah winter in melee doesnt seem to be too prevelant from what i have seen/read, so maybe my summer tech is pretty safe!

Christmas time is a GREAT time to play games - time off from work, visiting with gamer friends & family, etc!

Yeah winter in melee doesnt seem to be too prevelant from what i have seen/read, so maybe my summer tech is pretty safe!

Christmas time is a GREAT time to play games - time off from work, visiting with gamer friends & family, etc!

Winter in melee instantly makes the other people at the table dislike you, less gold means less ability to play cards and they blame you for it, but i have seen a few very good winter Greyjoy melee decks, usually focusing on using Wintertime Marauders as a bargaining chip