All Things Shagga - The Long Winter

Here we are again with another Wednesday installment of All Things Shagga! This week, the Midwest is thankfully recovering from the cold snap brought on by the “Polar Vortex.” More moderate temperatures reign, but that doesn’t mean some dragon fire wouldn’t have been useful last week. Oddly enough, last week also saw the invention of the wacky deck game on the forums, which quickly lead to a House Targaryen deck with the Kings of Winter agenda. Normally, this would seem pretty bizarre, but I was willing to play right along and offered up The Long Winter as my first addition to the deck. Of course, the rest of the deck wound up going different directions than I expected, but that initial nugget of insight leads us to our current deck this week- an expanded Targaryen Winter deck!

The Cards:

A Song of Ice- Ok, so I changed the agenda here, because at the moment, it’s just a more reliable way to make certain that it stays Winter, since the Seasons agendas trump old ones if they ever go head to head. Of course, most would argue that the constant discard of Kings of Winter is better than the hand size limit of Song of Ice since it will last most of the game, whereas Song of Ice will generally lead an opponent into topdecking, or at least being easily under the four card cap. In this deck, however, I really think that the opponent being in such a situation will be a boon!

Narrow Escape- Our restricted card of choice is half of why I switched to SoI. Remember that the opponent can’t choose to discard a hand of zero cards, which means that we’re scott free if they’re topdecking and try to use Valar Morghulis to clear the board. A simple Narrow Escape puts our horde right back on the table.

The Kingsroad- The Winter version of this location is a great way to help make sure that the opponent’s hand is as empty as possible, as soon as possible. Once they’re topdecking, we’re in good shape. Plus the cost to resource ratio is pretty good, and it’s not limited!

Valyrian Spirit- Yes, you read that correctly. Yes, you might want to go read the actual card again. I don’t blame you. House Targaryen’s sole Winter card really hasn’t seen any play before, but this might just be the right deck for it. Being able to shuffle both our dead and discard piles back into the deck means that we’ll have a never ending stream of characters that we can keep slamming down on the board to harass the opponent. What kind of characters, you ask? How about Dothraki!

Khal Drogo- This version of Drogo wants to die in order to provide you with more loyal followers. I’m not quite sure how that works in a Nedly sense, since most of Drogo’s Khalassar abandoned Daeny when he died, but at least it’s pretty awesome in a game context! With Narrow Escape, we can kill him, search up some Dothraki, then bring him back later in the phase. As well, Valyrian Spirit helps make certain that any Dothraki that make it into our dead or discard pile just get shuffled back in, ready to be found again. Even better, this means that he’s almost never a “dead” card- pun intended!

Dothraki Vanguard- So the story here is much the same as with Khal Drogo. Keep getting a bunch of Dothraki on the board, and let Valyrian Spirit ensure that there’s always more to be found. Unfortunately, the Vanguard only work after you play them from your hand, so the Narrow Escape trick won’t work with them.

The Long Winter- Ok, so it’s not quite as central to the deck as I might have liked initially, but doggone it, that blanket strength reduction is pretty rad for Targaryen. It helps a smaller number of burn effects go a longer way, and really helps an aggro deck win challenges on offense and keep the beatdown going. Plus, it’s out of house, and what’s an All Things Shagga deck without something from another house?

Wintertime Marauders- Seriously, is there a better Winter card in the game? This gives us some really great destructive potential and as a bonus, is OOH.

Thoughts on Play:

Go Wild! Ok, ok, so maybe you can’t just flip the table on the opponent, but most of the gameplan here is to just flood the board and aggro it up. Like I mentioned above, several cards in the deck work together to help give you an unending stream of characters to flood the board with. Don’t worry if one of your Valyrian Spirits gets discarded, as you can likely use Green Dreams to help search up the second copy, get it killed, then shuffle the rest back into your deck. Are you afraid that your opponent won’t play along and help kill your Valyrian Spirit by sending a military challenge your direction? Don’t worry. Not only can Flaming Pitch Tower help knock out troublesome opposing characters, but it can even target your own Valyrian Spirit in a pinch! Trust me, your opponent won’t see that coming.

Along with the Flaming Pitch Tower, Wintertime Marauders provides a lot of our repeatable control punch. Once we’ve made it Winter, we use Green Dreams to help track down a copy, then the Marauders help us get rid of any number of annoyances from Pentoshi Manor, to duplicates, to Fleets! A small bit of burn in Flame Kissed and the potent Incinerate help round out our control elements. With things like The Long Winter and Winds of Winter, each bit of burn that we have goes just that little bit further, and of course the Spirits help get our burn cards back into the deck where we can draw them again.

Draw itself shouldn’t be too bad in the deck with a variety of card advantage mechanics. As noted above, both the Song of Ice agenda and the Kingsroad as well as Rakharo help empty the opponent’s hand, while Khal Drogo uses search to give a big boost to our hand size as well as card quality. For traditional draw, Jhogo and Meraxes start our suite, while Samwell Tarly and his raven friends help polish it off. Don’t forget that Xaro Xhoan Daxos can target any of your characters to return to hand. Of course, one of the easiest options is to return a Vanguard to your hand so that you can search with them again, but don’t overlook the capability to return a Carrion Bird to hand and replay it to trigger Samwell another time.

The Deck:

Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder

Targ Winter

Total Cards: (62)

House:
House Targaryen


Agenda: (1)
1x A Song of Ice (FaI)

Plot: (7)
1x The Winds of Winter (TWoW)
1x A Time for Ravens (ACoS)
1x Called to Court (ODG)
1x Alliance (PotS)
1x City of Soldiers (TBoBB)
1x Breaking and Entering (LotR)
1x King's Landing Coup (AToTT)

Character: (32)
2x Valyrian Spirit (TWoW)
2x Wintertime Marauders (ACoS)
3x Carrion Bird (TWoW)
2x Samwell Tarly (TRS)
1x Aggo (RoR)
2x Bitter Crone (IG)
3x Dothraki Handmaiden (DB)
2x Dothraki Outrider (AToTT)
3x Dothraki Vanguard (FaI)
1x Jhogo (OSaS)
2x Khal Drogo (QoD)
2x Killer of the Wounded (QoD)
1x Rakharo (IG)
2x Thundering Calvary (QoD)
3x True-Queen's Harbinger (QoD)
1x Xaro Xoan Daxos (Core)

Attachment: (6)
2x The Long Winter (ACoS)
2x White Raven (TWoW)
2x Flame-Kissed (Core)

Event: (9)
1x Green Dream (FaI)
3x Narrow Escape (KotStorm)
3x Incinerate (VM)
2x To Be a Dragon (SB)

Location: (15)
3x The Kingsroad 23 (FaI)
1x Flaming-Pitch Tower (TWot5K)
1x Great Pyramid of Meereen (AHM)
1x Khal Drogo's Tent (Core)
1x Meereen Tourney Grounds (ODG)
1x Meraxes (TBC)
3x Summer Sea (Core)
1x River Row (QoD)
1x Shadowblack Lane (Core)
1x Street of Sisters (Core)
1x Street of Steel (Core)