All Things Shagga - Martell Choke

And here we are again with another installment of All Things Shagga, this time post GenCon and the lessons learned therein. For those of you that listen to 2C1C, you’ll have already heard some about what I played at GenCon this year, but for those who haven’t or otherwise missed that, I chose to play a rather Shagga deck this year. The deck was inspired by an idea sent to me by our very own Kizerman, which was probably even more Shagga initially with some Maesters and Pale Steel Link shenanigans. The core of the deck is the same, but I tweaked it some, as I felt that the Pale Steel Link theme lost a some without The Maester’s Path agenda, but that I thought that Kizerman was right that Orphan of the Greenblood was a stronger choice for this deck. So what in the world is the deck, you ask? Why it’s a Martell Treaty with the Isles choke deck!

The Cards:

Treaty With the Isles- With the pre-GenCon FAQ acting to reign in The Long Voyage and Negotiations at the Great Sept, it seemed that rush and aggro would be dialed down a few notches, making the drawback of an opponent needing 5 less power to win the game comparatively less of a drawback than it had been. And of course, with the Treaty at our disposal, we’re able to utilize some of the most powerful cards of two very powerful houses.

White Raven- This is what really makes most choke decks get rolling, and this one is no different.

Wintertime Marauders- I’ve said before that I think this is one of the most powerful cards in the game that isn’t restricted yet, and the presence of the White Raven makes it almost silly to not include the Marauders. They serve a wide range of options from removing resource locations to removing characters that do manage to land on the board.

Ice Fisherman/ The Sparr/ Burned and Pillaged- The cream of Greyjoy’s income reduction crop, these three help us really get the opponent down to a low enough level of income that they can’t do any productive.

When I Woke…- Finally, a deck that really fits this Champion card. With a bit of influence available, the ability to choke the opponent’s draw and simultaneously effectively deny them the gold that they first spent on their character is very powerful.

Negotiations at the Great Sept- Ok, so you caught me here. I mentioned in the intro that the first time I started tweaking this deck, I thought that Orphan of the Greenblood was the perfect restricted card for the deck as it provided great help on setup and more icon control for whatever characters hit the board. Unfortunately, it seemed that the deck would play out a little too much in the first few turns and sometimes find itself in the position where it hadn’t managed to quite get the lock and couldn’t keep digging for fuel to develop it. Changing the restricted card to Negotiations really helped alleviate that particular issue.

Thoughts on Play:

After testing for and then playing in GenCon, I can really say that rush is still more of a problem than I had been expecting it to be. Make sure that you work as hard as you can to mitigate their power gain in the first couple turns while you set up the lock. Defending a few incoming challenges to help slow them while you get a Wintertime Marauders up and running can make the difference. Once you have Marauders up, you can remove their saves (like duplicates) to make your Valar Morghulis really count, or clear out chuds and claimsoak so that military challenges and Marched to the Wall can do their work. Marched to the Wall is particularly useful since it cannot be saved and your opponents are less likely to be able to flood the board.

The deck sets up very well, with 5 cards seeming to be the norm and a 7 card setup here and there. With that in place, don’t be afraid to open with Blockade. The usual tendency is to open with a high gold plot on the first turn so that you can get a leg up with more powerful cards. With the generally superior setups of this deck, you can really stick it to an opponent with a first turn Blockade, even though A Time for Ravens may generally look like the starting plot most to many players. If you do get a gold producer on setup, and a White Raven in hand, opening with Blockade and playing the White Raven to start negating gold for the second turn is pretty much perfect.

Of course, it doesn’t always work out quite that easily, and it can sometimes take a bit of time to get the pieces that you need to put the choke together. In the mean time, Martell’s icon removal gives you a great way to negate the characters that your opponent does put on the board. Ellaria Sand is also one of the strongest choices you have to keep your opponent from getting too big of a leg up while you get the choke in place. Also, The Red Viper gives you a great option to close out games since we’re unable to use Asha Greyjoy in this version. Conveniently, The Red Viper also gives us some means to raise our claim and really make that choke count for more as well as set up a key Marched to the Wall.

The Deck:

Deck Created with CardGameDB.com Game of Thrones Deckbuilder


Total Cards: (63)

House:
House Martell


Agenda: (1)
1x Treaty with the Isles (CoS)

Plot: (7)
1x Valar Morghulis (Core)
1x The Winds of Winter (TWoW)
1x Rule by Decree (Core)
1x Blockade (Core)
1x A Time for Ravens (ACoS)
1x Negotiations at the Great Sept (TPoL)
1x Marched to the Wall (LoW)

Character: (31)
3x Ice Fisherman (TWoW)
3x Greenblood Merchant (ARotD)
3x House Messenger (PotS)
3x Lost Spearman (MotM)
3x Distinguished Boatswain (TftRK)
2x The Sparr (APS)
3x Wintertime Marauders (ACoS)
3x Carrion Bird (TWoW)
2x The Red Viper (APS)
2x Samwell Tarly (TRS)
1x Maester Murenmure (CbtC)
1x Maester Wendamyr (KotS)
2x Ellaria Sand (PotS)

Attachment: (4)
2x White Raven (TWoW)
2x Burned and Pillaged (FtC)

Event: (5)
3x The Prince's Wrath (PotS)
2x When I Woke... (PotS)

Location: (23)
3x Water Garden (PotS)
2x Gatehouse (KotS)
3x Summer Sea (PotS)
3x Sunset Sea (KotS)
1x Street of Steel (LoW)
1x Street of Sisters (Core)
3x The Iron Mines (KotS)
1x Aeron's Chambers (KotS)
1x Lord Doran's Chambers (PotS)
2x Hellholt Docks (TPoL)
1x Volantis (VM)
1x River Row (QoD)
1x River Blockade (RoR)