All Things Shagga - Synergy

Welcome back, dear readers, to another installment of All Things Shagga after a brief and unexpected hiatus. Though the Shagga player generally turns their fantasies to the larger and more impressive items and combos in the game, I thought we might turn our eyes toward the smaller end of the scale now that we’ve returned. Of course, once you shrink the interactions that this column normally focuses on, I think most players would say that they fall more in the realm of “synergy” rather than “combo.” While that might send us further into the territory of the Jaime player than we usually delve, I think that it might be a useful depth for us to peer into, what with the World Championship Weekend coming on soon now.

Of course, with a little bit of a different focus this week, we’ll also follow a little bit of a different format.

The Deck:

Deck Created with CardGameDB.com Game of Thrones Deckbuilder

Total Cards: (60)

House:
House Targaryen

Agenda: (1)
1x Knights of the Hollow Hill (MotM)

Plot: (7)
1x At the Palace of Sorrows (VM)
1x On Dagger Lake (VD)
1x Shores of Ny Sar (VM)
1x Threat from the North (PotS)
1x Rule by Decree (Core)
1x The First Snow of Winter (ODG)
1x King's Landing Coup (AToTT)

Character: (25)
2x Bloodrider (MotA)
3x Company of the Cat (THoBaW)
1x Daario Naharis (WLL)
3x Dragon Knight (TBC)
3x Dragon Thief (AE)
1x Jhogo (OSaS)
1x Khal Drogo (Core)
2x Magister Illyrio (VM)
1x Missandei (RotK)
1x Pyat Pree (QoD)
2x Sellsword Deserter (CD)
1x Ser Jorah Mormont (WLL)
2x Thundering Calvary (QoD)
1x Viserion (QoD)
1x Young Griff (VD)

Attachment: (6)
3x Flame-Kissed (Core)
3x Harried by Dragons (VM)

Event: (11)
3x Forever Burning (Core)
3x Incinerate (VM)
3x The Hatchlings' Feast (ASitD)
2x Ambush from the Plains (QoD)

Location: (18)
3x Kingsroad Fiefdom (QoD)
3x Eastern Fiefdoms (QoD)
3x Summer Sea (QoD)
1x Great Pyramid of Meereen (AHM)
1x Lady Daenerys's Chambers (Core)
1x Meereen Tourney Grounds (ODG)
2x Meereenese Brothel (BtW)
1x Meraxes (TBC)
2x Rhaenys's Hill (TBoBB)
1x Tyrosh (AHM)



The Synergies:
In a deck like this, it’s difficult to sort out exactly where to start examining these synergies. One of our best options might be to start from the top. Of course, the Knights of the Hollow Hill agenda tilts the construction of the deck in a variety of ways, but one of the first we can examine is the plot deck.

There’s already been much written and observed about the interaction between The First Snow of Winter and Rule by Decree, but it’s probably worth mentioning again. Since KotHH players are generally behind in card advantage in the early game due to the lack of setup, The First Snow of Winter can help offset this by forcing those cheap characters that help so much in the early game to be returned to hand. Once your opponent has a larger hand than you due to the returned characters, you can make them discard down to four cards in hand and make it permanent.

With the KotHH deck behind in card advantage from the get go, another focus of this plot deck is to provide an incremental card advantage to help even to playing field. In this case, we field a trio of River plots to aggregate that advantage. At the Palace of Sorrows provides a solid way to open the game by clogging your opponent’s draw and potentially costing them some resources while not hurting you at all due to your lack of setup. On Dagger Lake forces your opponent to discard, thus helping even the card scales. And of course, the Shores of Ny Sar adds a card to your hand, which evens the scale as well. The beauty of the River plots is that these can be chained in any order you need and the second and third River plots will provide twice the incremental advantage by doubling up those effects. And even better, KotHH increases the stats on the low gold River plots so that they become much more reasonable options to play.

Of course, the biggest chunk of the game revolves around the challenge phase and the characters that make them happen, so let’s take a look at them. Again, a large portion of the character base is devoted to overcoming the early game card advantage so that you can eventually bury the opponent in efficient cards with multiple uses that will tip the balance back in your favor. How do we do that with characters? Comes into play abilities! Conveniently, Targaryen easily has the most and best range of these characters- and most of them come with ambush (thus utilizing the agenda) to boot!

Company of the Cat is the most straightforward of these characters by instantly drawing you a card when you put them into play with Ambush. Dragon Thief is probably one of the next most obvious options by removing a card when they come into play. In a related vein, Daario Naharis and Ser Jorah Mormont each remove characters when they enter play- still very powerful, even if they don’t have ambush. Thundering Cavalry also likely removes a character or two from play and Dragon Knight can do so as well if combined with some kind of terminal burn effect.

Of course, these comes into play (CIP) abilities can be used multiple times per character if combined carefully with some of the other cards in the deck. First Snow of Winter can not only be used to to negate an opponent’s early character and resource advantage, but it can also return some of your two cost CIP characters like Dragon Thief and Dragon Knight to hand so that you can trigger their abilities a second time. As well, not only is At the Palace of Sorrows a great opening plot, but in later turns, the River plot copy effect can be used to let you put one of these CIP characters on the top of your deck so that you can trigger them again. Ambush From the Plains is also a key player by letting you cheat one of these characters into play from your handin order to trigger their ability as well as rescue one from the discard pile in order to use it if need be. Conveniently, it then returns the character to your hand so that they’re ready to trigger again. Another important aspect is that it can help you avoid paying for one of these characters (like Thundering Cavalry) if you don’t have the gold for it. Of course, you need to have initiative higher than the cost of the character, so conveniently, the Knights of the Hollow Hill agenda pumps our initiative high enough to matter for this event far more often.

The other non-character cards in the draw deck can also help with our overall theme of aggregate card advantage. Harried by Dragons searches out extra copies of itself to thin your deck and get you extra cards. Lady Daenery’s Chambers can help recycle Harried by Dragons and Flame Kissed so that they be used multiple times to burn out more opposing characters when combined with other effects. Forever Burning also can be looped as many times as we have available influence in order to alter challenge math and combine to burn out more characters.

Another plot in our deck can also synergize with these important cards in our draw deck in order to maximize our potential. Threat from the North pairs with a variety of these effects from Hatchling’s Feast to Thundering Cavalry or Harried by Dragons to Forver Burning in order to lend larger strength penalties and generate a terminal effect for those that don’t bear one already.

So there you have it folks, a brief look at how many sorts of internally synergistic cogs that a deck might utilize. Do you guys see some that I missed mentioning? (Hint, I did leave a couple out on purpose).