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All Things Shagga - Small Council
May 08 2013 05:00 PM |
Kennon
in Game of Thrones
Small Council All Things Shagga Kennon
Once again All Things Shagga returns with a deck to wow your friends. A few months ago, we worked our way through the current chapter pack cycles and picked out the top 5 Shagga cards for each cycle. This week, we take a look at one of the great engine cards that were picked out from the King’s Landing cycle and look at how we might use it. (One slight caveat to the deck is that I started work on this before the release of Sitting the Iron Throne. That’s an engine for a whole new deck that we’ll explore another time.)
Small Council Chambers- This is the cog that keeps the deck running and returns Small Council events so that we can put them to more use. Sadly, there’s not a terribly good way to abuse it with multiple intrigue challenges, as it would return to shadows after the first one that you won with Power Behind the Throne and can’t be brought out again before winning the next challenge. The other extra intrigue option that looks tempting, Shadow Politics, is a bit of a fake out due to the Small Council trait. It seems nice, but if you just keep being tempted to return Shadow Politics to hand to keep the chain going, which doesn’t have the oomph we’d like turn after turn. Still, the Chambers will let us recycle one powerful event every turn, which can be put to good use.
Joffrey Baratheon- If we’re looking for a way to put those Small Council events to use, it’s hard to get much better than Joffrey, who probably lets us discard a character each time we play one of these Small Council events.
City of Shadows- This agenda lets us tie things together so that we can reasonably run the Chambers and Joffrey in the same deck, as well as allow us some access to several other powerful effects that trigger off cards repeatedly coming out of shadows like our Chamber is hopefully doing.
You’ve Killed the Wrong Dwarf, The Shadow of the South, Condemned by the Council, Questioned Claim- Our Small Council event base provides a varied means of messing with our opponent’s plans and controlling their cards through a wide range of means. Most nicely, You’ve Killed the Wrong Dwarf even provides the power necessary for a character to have in order to use Joffrey on them!
Margarey Tyrell, Tyrion Lannister, Alchemist’s Guild Hall, The Black Cells, King’s Landing- These are the cards that all provide a pretty solid boost from the Small Council Chambers bouncing in and out of Shadows each turn. They provided plenty of strong control effects and some card advantage from King’s Landing, while Tyrion gives us a really solid option to close out a game when we need to.
Overall, this plays like a fairly standard Lannister City of Shadows deck, which is to say- heavy focus on control. Stall out the opposing player with the location based control effects in order to get your engine rolling and your lock in place. Alchemist Guildhall and The Black Cells lock down opposing problem characters and the ability of the Guildhall to kneel out an location in a pinch isn’t something to be disregarded. Cersei Lannister also puts those shadows cards to good use by kneeling potentially massive numbers of characters. Pentoshi Manor is also fantastic repeatable challenge control for whichever characters are left to participate in challenges. Your opponent will probably not be choosing to give their characters power once you have Joffrey out, though, so be sure to have at least a chump defender around for when it counts.
That said, once you have Joffrey in play, the engine really ramps up as he turns each of your recycling Small Council events into a potential character discard. Rush and Aggro are already quite popular in the current meta, so there’s a good chance that your opponent’s power characters may already have power on them, but You Killed the Wrong Dwarf and Pentoshi Manor give you some alternate methods of granting power to the opponent’s characters. There are a wide range of characters in the deck with a noble crest, but The best option to use in conjunction with Joffrey is probably Ser Jaime Lannister, who could be knelt in Marshalling to discard someone and then still stand during Challenges to participate. Still, as long as you have at least one noble on the board, Prolific Statesman gives you a cheap, fairly low impact character to kneel for Joffrey’s effect while you save the beefier guys for challenges. Also, don’t forget that Rich Lands and a Keep can actually turn Joffrey into a noble, which lets him be knelt for his own ability, and conveniently grants some protection with The Power of Blood!
The Deck:
Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder
Small Council
House (1)
House Lannister (Core) x1
Agenda (1)
City of Shadows (CoS) x1
Plot (7)
City of Lies (CoS) x1
Cersei's Scheme (TPoL) x1
The Power of Blood (Core) x1
Valar Morghulis (Core) x1
Wildfire Assault (Core) x1
A City Besieged (CD) x1
City of Soldiers (TBoBB) x1
Character (27)
Cersei Lannister (AToT) x2
Littlefinger (SaS) x1
Margaery Tyrell (TftRK) x1
Qyburn (SaS) x1
Joffrey Baratheon (PotS) x3
Ser Jaime Lannister (LotR) x2
Ser Kevan Lannister (LotR) x1
Paxter Redwyne (TGF) x1
Tywin Lannister (Core) x1
Prolific Statesman (HtS) x3
Syrio Forel (TftRK) x1
Tyrion Lannister (CoS) x1
Varys (SaS) x1
Doubting Septa (LotR) x3
Lannisport Weaponsmith (Core) x3
Margaery Tyrell (AToTT) x1
Tommen Baratheon (SA) x1
Location (22)
Alchemist's Guild Hall (TBoBB) x2
King's Landing (SaS) x2
Kingdom of Shadows (KotS) x3
Ocean Road (WLL) x1
Small Council Chamber (SaS) x2
The Black Cells (TftRK) x3
Pentoshi Manor (AHM) x3
The Goldroad (Core) x3
Street of Sisters (Core) x1
Street of Steel (Core) x1
Shadowblack Lane (Core) x1
Event (9)
You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf! (Core) x3
The Shadow of the South (CoS) x2
Condemned by the Council (AToT) x2
Questioned Claim (AE) x2
Attachment (2)
Rich Lands and a Keep (LotR) x2
- Zaidkw likes this
14 Comments
Also, no love for Sitting the Iron Throne? It combines wonderfully with Joffrey, isn't bad power grab in it's own right, and can recur outside of the Small Council Chambers loop. It also works against pesky Nobles and can be used multiple times within the same Dominance phase. I'd run 2x of it over 2x Shadows of the South.
I seriously dislike Paxter Redwyne for being 4-cost. If you need another 4-cost Noble I'd suggest Lyanna Stark, her -1 STR ability actually combines rather well with Pentoshi Manor since it means 3-STR non-uniques get shut out of challenges completely.
Core Tywin is also pretty overpriced for what he does . Have you considered Ser Gregor Clegane (LotR)? If you ran some Influence (Seas, Fiefdoms, and Red Keep which is a guaranteed Joffrey trigger and a solid Shadows card) you could abuse the hell out of his power to murder in this deck. Most characters slide in range of his kill effect if they take the -2 from Pentoshi Manor, and it's a hell of a trick to YKtWD Gregor and then stand him back up to make murder happen.
Edit: for Joff's sake of course, you loose YKtWD combo though if Joff is not on the board.
Joff isn't required - it's a completely separate but effective combo to kneel your own Ser Gregor so he can Stand to kill an attacker.
I'd also suggest running Street of Silk in this - lots of pricey uniques in this deck. Widow's Wail might be a cheaper path to card draw than King's Landing and it has the benefit of protecting Joff against burn.
I did have a Shagga moment where I had managed to deck myself with Pyre out and then proceeded to use Val to play the exact same Distraction 3 times in a row - when the bottom of your deck is also the top of your deck hilarity ensues. On the next turn I would have gotten the game into a lock where I could confession both his cards out of hand during the draw phase every draw phase, but he managed to snag 15 power that very turn.
We have someone in our meta who was playing a Small Council event deck with a metric ton of nobles and that attachment to make nobles. It could wreck most decks unless they had a way of killing Joff before the PoB turns (after he is turned into a noble obviously) or after if you could weather the storm long enough.
Venomous Blade (TBoBB) worked wonders against it for me.
The Margarery duplication, however, was a mistake on my part. The Shadows version is really the much better choice for this deck, but I got a little overzealous on the release of Sitting the Iron Throne and the new Margarey. I looked at adding them both in before deciding that Sitting the Iron Throne wasn't right for this particular version of the deck, but missed dropping the Queen Margarery. I think I'd likely drop her for a second Tyrion to up the odds of closing out a game.
I have a silly Lanni Holy Winter deck that abuses the hell out of her though. She is an absolutely beast that can just keep coming back with Many Powers Long Asleep (provided you can get her into play in the first place).
I am a bit curious about running Cersei's Scheme over City of Sin. Sin just seems like it's more consistent and powers up your other plots, while Scheme entirely relies on you winning initiative to do much of anything at all. I've been running Scheme in several decks but it rarely has blown me away with its effect.