All Things Shagga - Dragon Egg

Hello readers, and welcome to the future! It’s a new year and a new column here at All Things Shagga! Doesn’t it seem strange to see those four magical digits 2013 now? I’m pretty sure that I was promised a flying car by this point, and damned if I’ve seen one yet. Still, even here in the far flung years of the future, A Game of Thrones is still going strong. With my look at the chapter pack cycles conveniently finished up in time for the end of the year, we now find ourselves ready to embark on a journey back into the land of Shagga deck design. Based on the most recent of the cycle review entries, it looks like the votes are in to ring in the new year with a deck based around Dragon Egg. Let’s take a look at what we can figure out.

Key Cards:

Dragon Egg (AHM) - This, of course, is the card that we’re planning on using to make the whole shebang run. But what does it do exactly? Well, the answer, sadly, is not much on its own. I’d hesitate even to quite call it an engine card, but it’s surely one of the more interesting and wacky abilities in the game. There are a few important things to remember about it right off the bat as we construct the deck. 1. It’s an attachment, and thus is very fragile. 2. It has to go on an opponent’s card, so it’s potentially even more fragile. 3. The most likely card type that you’ll be able to play it on is “character” because it’s probably the only one that no deck can survive without at the moment. 4. This leads us to looking at characters that we’d be able to abuse by granting them ambush.

Magister Illyrio (VM) - You know who likes characters with ambush? In the immortal Darryl Loyd’s words, “Illyrio!” Specifically, Illyrio’s ability triggers off of characters entering play during the Challenge phase, and granting ambush to all of our characters makes that extremely easy to pull off.

0 cost characters- These are perfect for the deck in a couple regards. First, 0 cost means that we can ambush them in at any time, regardless of our resource base and whether or not we’ve had to use our influence on something else that phase. Additionally, they play very well with Setup, which is important to offset our agenda and to add a level of pseudo draw in the early game in order to help us dig into our combo pieces earlier. With ten 0 cost characters along with several 1 cost characters and the low cost locations, we should be set for both of those applications. Additional bonus points in this deck go toward Disgruntled Mercenary who can actually be ambushed in to burn someone with Illyrio, then return to hand and ambush in again during the same phase! Also, special mention to Shadow Parasite, which can ambush in and then immediately gain strength with Illyrio’s burn. In fact, with all of the ambushing we’re planning on doing, the Shadow Parasite is likely to be a solid strength character.

Long Lances (THoBaW) - You know what else likes characters with ambush? The Long Lances are an amazing addition to the Targaryen arsenal, which make them nearly immune to Lannister kneel and allow them multiple uses of “kneel to do X” characters. In fact, in watch John Bruno’s GenCon deck, I learned just how amazing it can be to utilize the Long Lances every phase to keep standing and reusing a character like Street Waif, who immediately turned into a shoe-in for the deck. In fact, the 0 cost characters above are also very conducive to entering play in multiple phases, in order to accommodate the Long Lances.

Lady Daenerys's Chambers (Core) - Ok, so the core of the deck revolves around being able to ambush in characters, but in order to do so with most of ours, we need a Dragon Egg around, and gosh darn it, if those suckers aren’t fragile. Especially once the opponent learns how important they are to our plan. Enter, House of Dreams as an agenda with Lady D’s as our location of choice. Immediately we have access to the recursion we need to keep things running. Of course, the Street Waifs help with that as well, but Lady Daenery’s Chambers helps us get some more burn back as well in the form of Flame Kissed and Harried by Dragons.

The Brazen Beasts (ARotD) - Well, with all of the strength reduction we’re doing, we might as well make sure that we can get something out of the deal. Hopefully, the Beasts help us add up a little bit of extra burn to help speed up our game. Unfortunately, much of our burn (Illyrio & Incinerate) are Challenges only, but Flame Kissed and Forever Burning should give us some options to spread the love a bit, and of course the Beasts do have renown as well.

Maegi's Promise (QoD) - Ok, I’m usually on the fence as to whether I think this is a decent card or not, but there’s a good chance that this deck doesn’t do a whole lot without Illyrio to make it sing, so we really ought to have a backup plan in case he gets knocked off the board. There’s enough recursion that it shouldn’t be as much of an issue if he’s discarded, but a dead Illyrio means we’re grinding to a halt, so this is essentially to get him back when you need him.

Thoughts on Play:
As crazy as this sounds, you really shouldn’t kill everything in sight. Of course, most of the deck is dedicated toward burn, but too much of the deck is tied up in characters (through Illyrio and a character based Dragon Egg) for you to force a reset out of an opponent when you’re not prepared for it. Losing your Illyrio to Valar with no Maegi’s Promise in hand and then drawing 2 dupes is really the pits, so both your and your opponent’s character presence is something you’ll have to manage. To help do so, take a look at their most fearsome, beefiest, or otherwise most important character as the place to land your Dragon Egg. If they’re less likely to sacrifice it early to military claim, the better for you. That said, your opponent will kill that character for claim, and generally quickly. You can both mitigate this disadvantage, however. Save your military challenges for last whenever possible. Utilize your ambush characters and burn to make certain that you can force through the other two challenges, and particularly focus on stripping their hand before clearing their board. Still, even if they kill the character, you should be able to bring your Dragon Egg back on the next Marshalling with relative ease, so don’t be afraid to use it on key characters to bait your opponent into killing off something important. This is particularly useful with unique characters, which your ambush happy Illyrio won’t be able to hit.

The plot deck also offers some solutions to mitigate weakpoints in the draw deck. Of course, uniques can be a problem, so Search and Detain can give you some temporary spot removal in order to clear out something particularly troubling for a bit. In case you do wind up down and out, Wildfire Assualt is my reset of choice in this deck because you do have characters that you want to protect. No one wants to Valar their own Illyrio. Also, Forgotten Plans helps against Fear of Winter, which would put a huge hold on a deck like this for a turn by preventing us from putting into play more than one of those cheap ambushed characters.

The second half of the plot deck, however, seek to capitalize on the strengths of this deck. First Snow of Winter is a great way to return all of your weenies to hand in order to reset your capability to burn with Illyrio. Blockade and Rains of Autumn both muck with your opponent’s resources, which is something of a non-issue for you when you’re ambushing 0 and 1 cost characters into play. My favorite find for the deck, though, is The Grand Melee. Since you’ll be focused more on small characters, it can be tough to win on their strength alone, so why not just play to their capabilities in numbers? Ambush here becomes particularly useful as you can really muck with your opponent’s combat math by dropping more characters into play in between challenges in order to change totals. Sure, it’s not as awesome as First Snow of Winter probably is here, but it’s always fun to find the perfect deck for an oft forgotten card.

The List:

Ambush - Dragon Egg

House (1)
House Targaryen (Core) x1

Agenda (1)
House of Dreams (ARotD) x1

Plot (7)
Blockade (Core) x1
Rains of Autumn (Core) x1
Search and Detain (HtS) x1
The First Snow of Winter (ODG) x1
The Grand Melee (TGM) x1
Wildfire Assault (Core) x1
Forgotten Plans (KotStorm) x1

Character (29)
Black Hatchling (DB) x1
Brown Ben Plumm (Core) x1
Disgruntled Mercenary (BoRF) x3
Refugee of the Plains (RoW) x3
Sellsword Deserter (CD) x3
Shadow Parasite (HtS) x3
Viserys Targaryen (Core) x1
Magister Illyrio (VM) x3
Dragon Knight (TBC) x3
Street Waif (AToT) x3
The Brazen Beasts (ARotD) x2
Long Lances (THoBaW) x3

Location (16)
Lady Daenerys's Chambers (Core) x1
Khal Drogo's Tent (Core) x1
Eastern Fiefdoms (Core) x3
Meereen Tourney Grounds (ODG) x1
Meereenese Brothel (BtW) x2
Meraxes (TBC) x1
Summer Sea (Core) x3
Tyrosh (AHM) x1
Xaro's Home (Core) x2
Great Pyramid of Meereen (AHM) x1

Event (8)
Forever Burning (Core) x3
Incinerate (VM) x3
Maegi's Promise (QoD) x2

Attachment (9)
Dragon Egg (AHM) x3
Flame-Kissed (Core) x3
Harried by Dragons (VM) x3


So there you have it folks, Dragon Egg! Let me know what you think in the comments, and let me know what you think of the tweaked format for the article. Should I stick to breaking down deck columns like this?