All Things Shagga - Balerion Bounce

This week, All Things Shagga welcomes you back to another week of combo focused deckbuilding. Along with combos, Shaggas also love big, splashy cards and effects and by golly, it doesn’t get much bigger in AGOT than our topic this week. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the inspiration for this deck. During the GenCon 2012 joust tournament I ran up against our very own co-host of Summer is Coming, Darknoj. During the tournament he played an extremely fun looking Targaryen build that centered around using Balerion over and over. Granted, I promptly played the Lannister Iron Throne, which took the punch out of his combo, but sometimes them’s the breaks. Still, there’ve been quite a few cards released since then which should help the deck out.

The Cards:

Balerion the Black- This is the biggest, baddest, splashiest effect in the game, I’d wager. Weighing in at a full 10 gold to play, Balerion likewise brings a monstrous 10 strength body to the table and kneels all non-dragons. Deadly and renown are just gravy at that point, but boy is this guy tailored to shut down the board and then win challenges. Finding ways to play him cheaply and to bounce him out of play are keys to shutting opponents down.

Dragon Lore- This is the key to playing Balerion on the cheap. There’s not really much more to say about it than playing Balerion for 0 is awesome, and that we’ll need a Maester in play to use it.

Captain Groleo- One of the new cards that should help this deck out, Groleo gives us an option to search out the Dragon Lore without requiring that it be Summer like Red Warlock or using a low initiative plot like Spending the Winter Stores.

Flood Waters- Darknoj showed me how interesting River plots could be to bounce Balerion back to the top of your deck in order to reset him to play again. Flood Waters gives us the ability to trigger the bounce additional times in order to keep kneeling out the board.

Meraxes/ House of Dreams- Conveniently, Flood Waters has an alternate cost aside from the influence, and that requires kneeling a Warship location. Using Meraxes with House of dreams guarantees us a Warship right from the beginning of the game, and it’s even one that we can use for draw to accelerate into the pieces that we need to succeed. I’ve opted here for House of Dreams with Meraxes rather than KotHH to pay the influence cost for a couple reasons. First, rest of the deck just isn’t very influence intensive and second, in a combo based deck, digging into the pieces that you need is essential. While you might be limited to a poor to middling setup with House of Dreams, that’s still a few cards more of your deck that you’ll have seen and sometimes, that’s all it takes.

At the Palace of Sorrows- This is the River plot that makes it all work by letting you return Balerion to the top of your deck, ready to draw and beatdown again that turn, as well as costing the opponent some tempo in a denied draw. The best part is that due to the River standard copy effect, another River plot can trigger this two turns in a row without even needing Flood Waters. Under the Bridge of Dream would let us copy at the Palace of Sorrows again, but we’re skipping it for this deck due to the lack of initiative.

Thoughts on Play:

This is a combo deck masquerading as a control deck, so be aware that you’ll need to play to stall out your opponent a bit in the early game in order to get the pieces of your combo set up. In large part with this deck, however, that will be consisting of making certain that you oppose incoming challenges in order to mitigate opposing power gain. You don’t have many control effects past the big one, so you’ll need to make sure you can get to it. Likewise, you can probably place a premium on an intrigue challenges you can get through as they’ll have better odds of throwing off the opponent’s game plan as you set up. Military will be of lesser importance because one you have the Balerion engine running, your opponent’s characters largely don’t matter- as long as you go second, of course.

I’ve erred on the side of the mid to higher range of initiative on plots in order to up your chances of winning and thus being able to marshall second. Bay of Ice gives you a boost to help as well in this regard, as well as helping on setup as a 0 cost, non-limited location, and can accelerate your draw. But be wary of Knights of the Hollow Hill decks. They seem to be popular right now, and you’re unlikely to beat them consistently in initiative. Otherwise, though, the plots give you a couple of search options in Spending the Winter Stores and At the Gates in case you’re missing pieces of the engine, but stay away from them if you need the initiative. Wildfire Assault rounds out the plot package, giving you a bit of time by clearing out some of the board as well as being a good option once you have things in place because of the decent initiative and the ability to leave your dragons or other key characters in place.

The other key characters and cards in the deck are generally those that will help mitigate the fact that Balerion is going to kneel out your non-dragons as well. With a full suite of Daenery’s hatchlings and dragons, we have good odds of getting another dragon or two on the board to help keep up our own offensive challenges once we have the lock established. Daenerys herself is amazing in this deck in order to let us make multiple challenges. Who cares if the rest of the board is already knelt if our dragons don’t kneel? Likewise, the dragon support locations like Meereenese Fighting Pit and Qarth up our post lock challenge efficiency by standing dragons or adding icons to make our available dragons more effective. Long Lances are another great addition to the deck from recent months that will let you use more characters even after Balerion hits the board. Just make certain that you trigger your responses in the right order. Trigger Balerion first to kneel everything, then trigger the Long Lances to stand one of your characters. As well as standing a character, To Be a Dragon also helps with the redundancy of the deck by getting an important character back that might have been killed and plopping it into play post Balerion. This effectively gives a two character swing during Challenges, which can be huge.


Dreaming of Dragons


House (1)
House Targaryen (Core) x1

Agenda (1)
House of Dreams (ARotD) x1


Plot (7)
Above the Sorrows (VM) x1
At the Palace of Sorrows (VM) x1
Crossing the Ruby Ford (RotK) x1
Wildfire Assault (Core) x1
Fury of the Dragon (AE) x1
At the Gates (GotC) x1
Spending the Winter Stores (QoD) x1

Character (31)
Balerion the Black (RotO) x3
Black Hatchling (DB) x1
Drogon (QoD) x1
Green Hatchling (TWH) x1
Rhaegal (QoD) x1
Viserion (QoD) x1
White Hatchling (AKitN) x1
Daenerys Targaryen (QoD) x2
Qartheen Fanatic (Core) x3
True-Queen's Harbinger (QoD) x3
Advisor to the Crown (QoD) x2
Archmaester Marwyn (CD) x1
Maester Aemon (Core) x1
Brown Ben Plumm (Core) x1
Refugee of the Plains (RoW) x3
Herald of the East (SB) x2
Long Lances (THoBaW) x2
Captain Groleo (RotK) x1
Xaro Xoan Daxos (Core) x1

Location (19)
Meraxes (TBC) x1
Meereen (QoD) x1
Meereenese Fighting Pit (ARotD) x2
Qarth (QoD) x1
Flea Bottom (TGM) x1
Shadowblack Lane (Core) x1
Street of Sisters (Core) x1
Street of Steel (Core) x1
Summer Sea (Core) x3
Temple of the Graces (Core) x3
Khal Drogo's Tent (Core) x1
Bay of Ice (KotS) x3

Event (7)
Dance With Dragons (Core) x2
Flood Waters (ARotD) x3
To Be a Dragon (SB) x2

Attachment (3)
Dragon Lore (CbtC) x3