All Things Shagga - Port at Slaver's Bay

Once again, we’re here with your bi-weekly dose of Shagga goodness. This week we turn our attention back again to that old Valyrian house of conquerors, House Targaryen. In fact, this deck was inspired by a conversation not long ago with Pulseglazer, who was working on his Fire and Blood article at the time. He asked for a few suggestions on which attachments I thought were worth playing out of house with Port at Slaver’s Bay. During the conversation, I also let slip that I was still trying to decide on a solid direction for our next article here and Pulseglazer suggested that I follow up his article with a deck using out of house attachments. Frankly, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t already considered it and the timing sounded perfect, so here we are. I think you’ll note that we made a few different choices on which attachments were worth using out of house, so I’ll take a little time to discuss these choices as we go.

The Cards:

Port at Slaver’s Bay- This is the engine that will get the deck up and running. It can be rather hard to play these attachments without a way to knock out the out of house penalty. I’m a bit wary of playing the Port as my House of Dreams location because it’s so easy to discard with plot based location removal at that 0 cost slot, but the deck will have an awfully hard time functioning when a quarter of it costs an extra two gold. If you’re more concerned about the discard, flip to Lady Daenery’s Chambers as your House of Dreams and try to draw into a copy of the Port as quick as humanly possible. Hopefully, Alliance and the Kingdom locations will be enough to help get you by.

Lady Daenery’s Chambers- As the alternate choice for our House of Dreams, I consider the Chambers to be an awfully important piece of this deck. Since we’re looking mainly at negative attachments that will be spread out over our opponent’s cards, I’m not too worried about large single target attachment removal effects like Bastard or Coldhands, but we’re still likely to lose some as the game progresses and opponents choose incapacitated characters for claim or other effects. As well, we’re surely going to end up with some in the discard pile with our Desperate Measures. Either way, the Chambers help us make sure that we can keep our most brutal attachments coming back again and again. And don’t forget that you’re just looking for the printed cost on the attachments, so you don’t have to factor in the +2 gold penalty when you’re choosing what to return.

Captain Groleo/ Red Warlock- In this deck, these two characters provide the same important function- search! Not only it search always solid card advantage, but since we’re running singles and doubles of a variety of attachments, these search effects help give us the utility to hunt up whichever attachment is going to be the most beneficial to us or hurtful to the opponent at any given moment.

Ser Raymun Darry- Sure, the ability will always be card disadvantage, but it’s an Any Phase way to put these attachments into play! Not only does this effectively make our powerful attachments into events, but it also helps us dodge that pesky out of house penalty. Also, if you discard other attachments from your hand, you can use that handy Lady Daenery’s Chambers to get them back again for the next turn.

Fishing Net- Our first out of house attachment, Fishing Net is one of the strongest methods that Greyjoy has for character control. It stops so many characters dead in their tracks and it’s always worth noting that Fishing Net is an attachment, so it can be played on several more characters than the average negative attachment. Plus, it’s at the handy two cost slot where we only need one other Bannerman with Darry in order to make sure we can jump it into play.

Hunting Spear- It’s such an awesome positive attachment that just wins challenges for you left and right that it’s worth slipping in a single copy to search up when we need it.

Pulled Under- Another extremely powerful character control option out of Greyjoy, it is usually too slow for most players, but we have two things going for it in this deck. Under the right circumstances, we can possibly drop it into play with Darry and dodge many of the effects that would discard it, and we have a multitude of search effects to keep bringing it back from the bottom of the deck, should we be in an advantageous matchup to use it.

Seized- Ok, I know that a lot of people are down on this attachment, but I still think it has some things going for it. One, it fits the theme of the deck (so nyah). Two, some kind of location control is always a good idea in a deck. Three, it’s a two for one swing when we do take something from an opponent. With the capability to drop it in and steal a Frozen Outpost or the like as a surprise in the challenge phase is huge.

Enslaved- I already like the chance to get a two for one swing and deprive the opponent of a card they were counting on with Seized, and Enslaved is even better. It’s always a good play in the marshalling phase, but don’t forget two nice options- One, you can take your opponent’s character (preferably during a challenge) and then kill them for claim, then bring Enslaved back with Daeny’s Chambers to take someone for claim soak on the next turn and two, if you use Darry to drop Enslaved in on a character that’s attacking by itself, you negate the challenge!

Widow’s Wail- Another strong positive attachment, Widow’s Wail gives us a strong option for card advantage and is notable as an attachment that Darry can put into play on his own.

Devious Intentions- Our last out of house attachment, Devious Intentions can really rock the challenges phase when it gets going and honestly, we needed another high impact attachment at a low cost point for Darry to drop into play.

Thoughts on Play:

Well this is a tough one, because many of our more important twists and strategies were discussed in the above section, but we’ll see what we can do.

This is a control deck. A janky, combo oriented one, but control for sure. The majority of the attachments that we’re cherrypicking are control oriented so put the focus on using them to negate the opponent’s cards. The trick, of course, is that attachments can be fickle things in this game. Thankfully, there aren’t any Westeros Bleeds style cards to easily take out all of your attachments at once, so judicious use of Lady Daenery’s Chamber should be able to help keep us ahead of the game so to speak. If Desperate Measures, Ser Raymun Darry and general attrition fill too much of your discard pile, feel free to shuffle it back together with the core set Barristan Selmy. Conveniently, this also helps fill the deck back up to make sure that your search effects continue to have targets as the game progresses.

On the plot front, we have several options available to us. In a deck using House of Dreams and so many attachments that can’t be played on setup, we’re going to behind in the early turns, so some of the standard Knights of the Hollow Hill tricks are useful to help us catch up (as well as the two for one attachments). First Snow of Winter helps us even out early turns when opponents have several weenies on the board, but watch out with using it too late in the game when you might lose your own Enslaved characters to it. Redwyne Straits is also a brand new addition to our arsenal that can give a huge early game boost to help push us up to board parity with decks that have a more fully functional setup than we do.

The Deck:

Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder

Port at Slaver's Bay

Total Cards: (64)

House:
House Targaryen

Agenda: (1)
1x House of Dreams (ARotD)

Plot: (7)
1x A Song of Summer (ASoS)
1x A Time for Ravens (ACoS)
1x Alliance (PotS)
1x Negotiations at the Great Sept (TPoL)
1x Valar Morghulis (Core)
1x The First Snow of Winter (ODG)
1x Redwyne Straits

Character: (29)
2x Captain Groleo (RotK)
3x Red Warlock (ASoS)
2x Ser Raymun Darry (TBG)
3x Dothraki Vanguard (FaI)
1x Aggo (RoR)
3x Dothraki Handmaiden (DB)
3x Dothraki Outrider (AToTT)
1x Jhogo (OSaS)
1x Khal Drogo (FaI)
1x Rakharo (IG)
1x Kraznys mo Nakloz (TRS)
1x Gilly (RoW)
3x Carrion Bird (ASoS)
1x Missandei (RotK)
1x Ser Barristan Selmy (Core)
2x Blue-Lipped Warlock (QoD)

Attachment: (16)
2x Flame-Kissed (Core)
2x Shade of the Evening (QoD)
2x Fishing Net (ASoS)
1x Hunting Spear (BoRF)
1x Pulled Under (TWH)
2x Seized (AToTT)
2x Enslaved (THoBaW)
1x Widow's Wail (LotR)
2x Black Raven (ASoS)
1x Devious Intentions (BoRF)

Event: (4)
3x Desperate Measures (TCC)
1x Incinerate (VM)

Location: (15)
1x Castle Darry (TBG)
2x Lady Daenerys's Chambers (Core)
1x Port at Slaver's Bay (AToTT)
3x Summer Sea (Core)
2x The Kingsroad 29 (FaI)
2x Myrish Villa (QoD)
1x Tyrosh (AHM)
1x Volantis (VM)
1x Khal Drogo's Tent (Core)
1x Great Pyramid of Meereen (AHM)