All Things Shagga - Neutral Cities

Welcome back, intrepid readers, to yet another installment of All Things Shagga. This week, we’re taking a look at one of my favorite Shagga cards from the Brotherhood Without Banners cycle- The Neutral Faction! “But Kennon,” you’re thinking, “you already did this last week!” Right you are, ser! But this week, we’re going to drive and take a look at some other neat tricks that you can pull with this card. Last week, we focused our time on getting a draw engine up and running through Hollow Hill and then maintaining that with our character selection, but there’s another location (or locations *hint hint*) that lend themselves to an interesting, but rather different deck.

Key Cards:
The Neutral Faction - By and large you can just take a look at the comments that I made last week. Suffice it to say that shaving 1 gold off of the out of house penalty of all your characters is key.

Braavos, Myr, Norvos, Tyrosh, Volantis - The Beyond the Narrow Sea cycle brought us these sweet new Shagga cards as well that heavily encourage one of my favorite Shagga activities- splashing! Splashing out of house cards and characters is one of the best ways to start putting together unexpected card interactions or situations and with the right Kingdom location in play, you can knock the out of house penalty off your characters completely. Conveniently, the same factor that makes it impossible to use House of Dreams with the Neutral Faction makes it so that your Kingdoms will reduce all of your characters as “out of house.” Of course, they also lower the cost of the first character of a particular trait that you play by 1, so if your character matches there as well, you’ll actually come out ahead on income. One important thing you might note is that I’m not running Pentos which reduces Targaryens and Armies. Sadly, I wanted this deck to have a fairly different character base, and as you’ll see in a moment, there just weren’t really any Targaryen characters that met the criteria that I was looking for.

All of the Dual House Characters - Yup, I’m cheating a bit by lumping these in together in one large section instead of breaking them down a bit more. The idea here is mainly that they are that much more likely to benefit from the cost reduction associated with at least one Kingdom. If you hit on a couple Kingdoms, so much the better. Another neat aspect is once again working the trait factor. For instance, Arrogant Contender is dual house (Baratheon/Lannister) so it can be reduced by Tyrosh and Myr, but it also happens to be both a Knight and an Ally which lets it utilize the second reduction on both of those locations. If you happen to have them both in play, you can play Arrogant Contender for free. Several of the other characters also cross over on houses and/or traits like Littlefinger (Stark/Lannister and Lord/Ally).

Treaty to the North - This time I changed it up partly just to have a different treaty than you normally see, but also for a couple of important reasons. To begin with, being treatied to a house, any house, allows you to shave the cost of the Kingdom locations down to their printed 1 cost, which helps immensely when you’re trying to use them to jumpstart an economy. Secondarily, a sizeable portion of the dual house character base is half Stark, so this allows you to knock out the initial Out of House penalty on those characters, and then reduce them below face value using the Kingdoms.

Val - This time around, we needed a new draw engine to get things up and running, and it’s harder to find a faster one than Val. Yes, she’s awfully vulnerable, but she’s still a great card. In the early game, she’ll filter through your more expensive cards until you have locations set up, and then she’ll help fill the board, often with your first character at a very steep discount, thus setting a better stage for the second.

A Pinch Of Powder - A Pinch of Powder serves two roles here, giving us repeatable character control and an outlet for the influence that we have on the Kingdom locations, thus helping us be more efficient. Even better, as long as you have 2 gold to put it into Shadows, hitting it on a Val reveal is hardly a detriment as it can then wait patiently for the right time to come out and be put to use.

Flood Waters - With the influence in the deck, I wanted another way to take advantage of it, and I wanted to make sure that it was one that could almost always be used off of a Val reveal. Enter Flood Waters. While the River plots aren’t universally powerful control plots like most City plots seem to be, they do offer a very flexibly array of effects that can be triggered multiple times from their own text as well as a timely Flood Waters.

Thoughts on Play:
The deck should play like a somewhat smarter version of Clown Boat. In the early game, your characters aren’t going to be as cheap as that fabled deck, so you may need to do your best to buy time. Before the Black Walls can interfere with challenges to slow your opponent and Crossing the Ruby Ford’s removal of that 1 measly power can be surprisingly relevant when your opponent only needs to get to 10 in order to win. When timed right, even At the Palace of Sorrow can be used as a tempo swing against the opponent. A timely copy of any of these effects can really help put a crimp on your opponent in order to get enough time to get your engine rolling.

In order to help assemble the pieces as you go or to find gas once you have it assembled, you of course have Val at your disposal, but Shores of Ny Sar plus any of the River copying effects give a non-draw source of card advantage that can keep you digging. As well, Much and More is great for combo style decks that need to dig out specific pieces. Better yet, it’s an Any Phase event that can be played if you flip it off of Val, thus being very unlikely to be wasted. Even Ghost of Winterfell can propel us deeper into the deck if an opponent is foolish enough to throw a body in front of it.

Much like the previous deck, a variety of our characters have control effects such as Orphan of the Greenblood and Cersei’s Attendant, but joining them now as a dual house and appropriately traited character (for Kingdom reduction) is Brothel Guard. Along with A Pinch of Powder, make certain that you target any opponent’s character with renown or other means of gaining power. Not only are you vulnerable due to the time it takes to set up the pieces, but a Treaty essentially gives your opponent a 5 power handicap, thus making power mitigation of the utmost importance. Defend at every chance as well until you’re able to get into a midgame where your out of house bruisers will be able to take over. Characters like Littlefinger, Asha Greyjoy, The Red Viper, The Knight of Flowers, Cersei Lannister and Harman Uller all have some level of ability to attack without kneeling, so they should let you really start putting your opponent on their heels once you can get a couple in play.

The Deck:

House (1)
Neutral Faction (IG) x1

Agenda (1)
Treaty with the North (LoW) x1

Plot (7)
Above the Sorrows (VM) x1
At the Palace of Sorrows (VM) x1
Before the Black Walls (VD) x1
Shores of Ny Sar (VM) x1
Under the Bridge of Dream (VD) x1
Crossing the Ruby Ford (RotK) x1
Alliance (PotS) x1

Character (37)
Orphan of the Greenblood (PotS) x3
Cersei's Attendant (Core) x3
Tommen Baratheon (SA) x1
Arianne Martell (PotS) x1
Asha Greyjoy (WLL) x1
Cersei Lannister (LotR) x1
The Red Viper (PotS) x1
Ser Arys Oakheart (PotS) x1
Newly Made Lord (TftH) x2
Val (RotO) x3
Bran Stark (Core) x2
Harmen Uller (PotS) x1
Knight of Flowers (SaS) x1
Littlefinger (SaS) x1
Ser Kevan Lannister (LotR) x1
Willas Tyrell (VM) x1
Brienne of Tarth (PotS) x1
Ghost of Winterfell (AHM) x3
Brothel Guard (LotR) x3
Joffrey Baratheon (PotS) x1
Theon Greyjoy (PotS) x1
Arrogant Contender (LotR) x3
The Hound (PotS) x1

Location (14)
Street of Sisters (Core) x1
Street of Steel (Core) x1
Shadowblack Lane (Core) x1
Ocean Road (WLL) x1
Braavos (VD) x2
Myr (AHM) x2
Norvos (VD) x2
Tyrosh (AHM) x2
Volantis (VM) x2

Event (6)
Flood Waters (ARotD) x3
Much and More (AHM) x3

Attachment (3)
A Pinch of Powder (PotS) x3