All Things Shagga - The Prince that was Promised

Hello again, intrepid readers! This week, All Things Shagga delves into a reader submitted deck, this time by Reldan. For those of you who regularly read the column, you may have already seen some hints about this deck in the comment thread of the Song of the Sea review article. Truth be told, Reldan actually mentioned that he has a couple versions of the deck worked up- one with a more Jaime slant and one with a more Shagga slant. Of course, being who we are, we’re going to take a look at the more Shagga version. Let’s see what we’ve got.

Key Cards:

Blood Magic Ritual- One of the more interesting cards from the Song of the Sea cycle, Blood Magic Ritual was on the short list of cards that just barely didn’t make my Top 5 Shagga cards list, but judging by the reaction from others, it’s certainly in the top 5 for a lot of other folks. Much of that is due to a quirk of the rules and the templating of Blood Magic Ritual that allows it to return a character with the “no attachments” keyword to play without immediately killing that character again because it was never attached to begin with. So, of course, one way to abuse this becomes obvious by returning large “no attachments” characters to play, but what if we’d rather put Blood Magic Ritual on a character that we do want to die?

Rhaegar Targaryen- How about this guy? A 5 STR tricon with two crests for four gold is nothing to sneeze at, but he also has a really cool ability. While he quickly became panned by players for the opponents’ opportunity to trigger his ability, what if you pretty much always want it triggered anyway? And better yet, Blood Magic Ritual gives you a way to kill him on demand and ensure that you’re able to trigger his ability when it best benefits you.

Dragon Thief/ Shadow of the East- Enter a couple convenient ways to discard attachments at will! There’s not really much more to be said here, but they are nice utility options in general anyway.

Crown of Meereen- Of course, Blood Magic Ritual allows you to come up with some other fun ways to abuse the ability when you really do want characters to die. One of the most interesting is that you can use the Crown of Mereen to move BMR to any eligible character, which means that it could be moved to an opponent’s character that can take attachments. Then of course, your on demand attachment discards become on demand character control.
*edit* Zeiler pointed out to me that the kill effect looks like a lasting effect put on by the Response of bringing Blood Magic Ritual out of shadows, which would make this trick not work.

Thoughts on Play:

You guessed it folks, kill Rhaegar, then bring him back, only to kill him again. Since Rhaegar ends the round completely, you can set up some really sweet scenarios where you deny your ability the opportunity to interact or otherwise partake of some of the most important phases of the game. Depending on the board state, you may want to kill Rhaegar after you’ve Marshalled but before your opponent does so, or perhaps you’d like to make a few challenges of your own and then proceed to the next plot phase before your opponent can swing back at you with their two claim monsters.

The Maester’s Path agenda works to speed you quickly into your combo pieces by letting you start with a slightly smaller than normal deck, and Desperate Measures will dig even further and faster. Vhagar, Bronze Link, Supported by the Smith, Archmaester Marwyn, and Street Waif can all help recycle any choice cards that wind up in your discard pile as you dig. And in the mean time you’ll probably still need to buy some time, which the Crown of Meereen/BMR can help with by taking out opposing renown characters to slow the game.

The List:
Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder


The Prince that was Promised

House (1)
House Targaryen (Core) x1

Agenda (1)
The Maester's Path (GotC) x1



Plot (7)
Spending the Winter Stores (QoD) x1
At the Palace of Sorrows (VM) x1
At the Gates (GotC) x1
Valar Morghulis (Core) x1
Crossing the Ruby Ford (RotK) x1
Under the Bridge of Dream (VD) x1
Summoning Season (Core) x1

Character (21)
Rhaegar Targaryen (BoRF) x2
Archmaester Marwyn (CD) x2
Maester Aemon (Core) x1
Oldtown Advisor (GotC) x1
Dragon Thief (AE) x2
Kingsguard Squire (PotS) x2
Young Griff (VD) x1
Strong Belwas (VD) x3
Sellsword Deserter (CD) x1
Red Warlock (ASoS) x1
Ser Jorah Mormont (WLL) x1
Daario Naharis (WLL) x1
Missandei (RotK) x1
Street Waif (AToT) x2

Location (16)
Summer Sea (Core) x3
Great Pyramid of Meereen (AHM) x1
Khal Drogo's Tent (QoD) x1
Temple of the Graces (Core) x3
Lady Daenerys's Chambers (Core) x1
Tyrosh (AHM) x1
Vhagar (TGF) x2
Shivering Sea (KotS) x2
Meereenese Brothel (BtW) x1
Meraxes (TBC) x1

Event (9)
Paper Shield (QoD) x2
The Shadow of the East (AToT) x2
Desperate Measures (TCC) x3
Supported by the Smith (AJE) x2

Attachment (14)
Rhaegar's Harp (BoRF) x1
Horn of Dragons (ASoSilence) x2
Blood Magic Ritual (TCC) x3
Bronze Link (FtC) x1
Copper Link (GotC) x1
Gold Link (TIoR) x1
Lead Link (CbtC) x1
Valyrian Steel Link (HtS) x1
Apprentice Collar (GotC) x1
Crown of Meereen (QoD) x1
Flame-Kissed (Core) x1


Modifications:
Reldan had an awesome idea here and a great decklist, but Shaggas are frequently refining and tinkering with their decks, so let’s take a look at some possible tweaks to the deck.

Plots-
First up we’ll look at the plots, where I feel that the River plots just aren’t doing quite enough for the deck. In the other version of Reldan’s deck that also uses dragons (and hence Balerion) I can see these working quite well to return and trigger the Big B multiple turns, but in this deck, I’m just not feeling it. They don’t work with quite enough cards in this version of the deck and their initiative is lower than we want to help maximize our use of Rhaegar. Instead, we’re going to slot in Forging the Chain for decent initiative and an ability that can really help us out with some additional attachment recursion. If something happens to our chains, we can fairly easily bring back a particularly key one like Bronze Link to restart our attachment recursion engine. Twist of Fate also slots in to give solid initiative and great gold and claim to help put the hurt on the opponent. Even better, once Rhaegar is up and running, we can potentially end the challenge phase before the opponent has the chance to use Twist of Fate against us! Wildfire Assault helps thin out opposing characters while we set up and again has decent midrange initiative.

The last plot to leave is Spending the Winter Stores. While it is great to search out one of our several attachments, with the smaller deck and cards like Desperate Measures, we’ll likely get to things like our Blood Magic Rituals pretty quickly. Subbing into the plot deck in its place will be Stoic Resolve, which can gives us the chance to kneel a Maester pre-plot to survive something like Valar Morghulis- important considering we’re not very Maester heavy. Additionally, we could kneel one of our characters with a Blood Magic Ritual, then discard the BMR in order to recur it and return other characters and keep the one it was on since they can’t be killed!

Characters-
One of our first changes will be dropping the singleton Oldtown Advisor for a singleton Advisor to the Crown. The Oldtown Advisor really wants to be the first maester you move chains to so that it can pick a couple up and become active as quickly as possible, but with only the one copy in the deck we’re stuck with using At the Gates to get him quickly instead of other targets. I think I’d drop him and look at slightly upping the influence count with the Advisor to the Crown since I want to also up the influence effects just a bit.

Next up, I think I’d like to make room for a third copy of Dragon Thief. It’s such a powerful card for what this deck wants to do that I really think we’ll want three. In order to make room for the third, I think we’ll drop Strong Belwas to two copies. Though Belwas is a great card, the only recursion from the dead pile that we’re using is BMR, which comes with its own vulnerabilities and awkwardness from being a Shadows card that it can be difficult to use it to bring Belwas back and still keep up Rhaegar engine.

Locations-
Overall, the locations look pretty good, but there’s still a bit to tweak. While Shivering Sea is great on Setup and does provide some of the influence we need, we’re also almost entirely unlikely to use the cost reduction part of its text. Though it costs more, I think that Kingsroad Fiefdom is likely to do more work for the deck by generating influence as well as allowing us to win the initiative race more often.

While Vhagar does some neat things, it also comes with some limitations (must attach to the character just played) which make it rather harder to fully utilize with our key attachment (Blood Magic Ritual) than we’d like. I’d still keep a copy in, but dropping one for an extra Meereenese Brothel to up our odds on getting a discard outlet seems good.

Attachments-
Ok, I acknowledge, there are a lot of attachments in this deck and that’s unlikely to significantly change when a deck is built both around Maesters and around some sweet Targaryen interactions. In fact, I think I might wind up increasing the attachment count just a little. Apprentice Collar gives some great redundancy against text blanking effects, is handy on setup, and gives some awesome extra chances to make use of Forging the Chain so I think I’d up it to three total copies and play two in the main deck. Flame Kissed is such a great control card for a variety of situations and helps trigger the Brothel, so I think I’d like to go up to two copies. Of course, it shouldn’t be said that I’m not willing to decrease the count on something, so I’d like to drop Horn of Dragons to one copy. Though it is a powerful card with some great Bronze Link/ Rhaegar’s Harp interactions, it’s also expensive and something that I don’t really want to see until the mid to late game.

Events-
The event package here has some great ways to make the deck run, but I do need to trim a little since I added to the total attachment count. Though it’s a very versatile card, I think in this situation, I’d drop Paper Shield to make that room. As well, I think I’d like a little more flexibility than Shadow of the East provides. Though Shadow gives some bluff potential about which card might be in Shadows (and gives an option to play on Setup) I really think that two copies of Forever Burning are the better bet. Once you have a Meereenese Brothel in play, Forever Burning gives an even easier (and repeatable!) option to discard attachments. It also helps alter the course of challenges and may very well be just what you need to stall out an incoming chump attack or swing combat math in your favor to make certain that you win and move a chain when you need to. As well, it combines with Flame Kissed in a pinch to help take out slightly larger problem characters.

The Deck v2:
Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder

The Prince that was Promised v2

House (1)
House Targaryen (Core) x1

Agenda (1)
The Maester's Path (GotC) x1

Plot (7)
At the Gates (GotC) x1
Valar Morghulis (Core) x1
Summoning Season (Core) x1
Forging the Chain (FtC) x1
Twist of Fate (APS) x1
Wildfire Assault (Core) x1
Stoic Resolve (MotM) x1

Character (21)
Rhaegar Targaryen (BoRF) x2
Archmaester Marwyn (CD) x2
Maester Aemon (Core) x1
Dragon Thief (AE) x3
Kingsguard Squire (PotS) x2
Young Griff (VD) x1
Strong Belwas (VD) x2
Sellsword Deserter (CD) x1
Red Warlock (ASoS) x1
Ser Jorah Mormont (WLL) x1
Daario Naharis (WLL) x1
Missandei (RotK) x1
Street Waif (AToT) x2
Advisor to the Crown (QoD) x1

Location (16)
Summer Sea (Core) x3
Great Pyramid of Meereen (AHM) x1
Khal Drogo's Tent (QoD) x1
Temple of the Graces (Core) x3
Lady Daenerys's Chambers (Core) x1
Tyrosh (AHM) x1
Vhagar (TGF) x1
Meereenese Brothel (BtW) x2
Meraxes (TBC) x1
Kingsroad Fiefdom (QoD) x2

Event (7)
Desperate Measures (TCC) x3
Supported by the Smith (AJE) x2
Forever Burning (Core) x2

Attachment (16)
Rhaegar's Harp (BoRF) x1
Horn of Dragons (ASoSilence) x1
Blood Magic Ritual (TCC) x3
Bronze Link (FtC) x1
Copper Link (GotC) x1
Gold Link (TIoR) x1
Lead Link (CbtC) x1
Valyrian Steel Link (HtS) x1
Apprentice Collar (GotC) x3
Crown of Meereen (QoD) x1
Flame-Kissed (Core) x2