All Things Shagga - The Top Shagga: Brotherhood Without Banners

Here we are again, ladies and gents, with another exciting installment of All Things Shagga! This week we continue our look at the top 5 Shagga cards of each chapter pack cycle with a look at the Brotherhood Without Banners cycle. This is one of my favorite sets in the game right now, holding a very close second to the King’s Landing cycle. In fact, this is probably due to the Brotherhood cycle being one of the most Shagga friendly sets that we’ve seen. Let’s take a look!

Neutral Faction (IG) - The first new house card (and only so far and possibly ever) added to the game since the LCG started, this earns huge Shagga points for novelty alone. Since your choice of housecard at the outset has the biggest influence on the deckbuilding process from there on out, the Neutral Faction is an exciting key to unlock a wealth of potential. While it only works to reduce the cost of characters, it turns out that is still a huge focus of the game, and thus it allows for many options. My first guess would have been some sort of super Traitor deck with all of the discard at random traitors. Sadly, they’re all House X Only, which keeps them from being played here and proves to be one of the biggest weaknesses of The Neutral Faction. While this keeps the Jaime performance of the house card low, aside from an awesome Noble focused “Good Stuff” deck that Joe Becker piloted some time back, it’s very existence keeps Shaggas coming back to look at this again every time more characters enter the cardpool.

Knights of the Hollow Hill (MotM) - KotHH is another card that dictates a large portion of your deckbuilding cardpool very early in the process, but much like the Neutral Faction, it offsets this with a wealth of possibilities. Not only does it let the discerning Shagga fill their deck with more of the meaty good stuff instead of boring resources, but the inherent stat bonuses of the agenda can be used to offset a number of effects. For instance, the +2 gold, is enough to offset the out of house penalty on one card each turn, which can lend KotHH the ability to easily splash some out of house cards for unexpected synergies. Another common thing that I see (and sometimes attempt as well) is to utilize Ambush from the Plains (QoD) with Knights of the Hollow Hill. There are some very powerful characters that can be jumped into play as a surprise with this event, like Ser Jorah Mormont (WLL), Daario Naharis (WLL), and Thundering Calvary (QoD). Thankfully, the initiative boost from KotHH helps make it easier to use Ambush From the Plains on the Cavalry. Another item worth noting is that Ambush From the Plains isn’t House Targaryen Only, which means that you could easily splash these cards into a deck of another house, then use the event to get the sweet “comes into play” effect of the characters without paying their gold cost. Then once they’ve bounced back to your hand, the +2 gold nicely offsets playing them normally! Last but not least, KotHH has this very attractive two influence, which makes it much easier for Martell to use The Prince's Plans (TIoR) to recycle key items from their discard pile. This is a borderline Jaime build that can keep hammering the opponent with a nigh on to never ending stream of Orphan of the Greenblood (PotS), A Game of Cyvasse (ACoS), He Calls It Thinking (PotS) and more.

Beric Dondarrion (IG) - Beric is another character that really jumps out at Shaggas with a huge wow factor. No other character is quite as durable since he can’t be killed or discarded, and at the rate that characters often die in that game, this is immediately very attractive. Now, of course, in order to utilize those abilities, we’re usually hooked into using the Brotherhood Without Banners agenda, which forces a bit of a Shagga build in order to hit the particular theme necessary to keep power on our Brotherhood characters and keep their abilities turned on. Beric’s durability then often leads toward building him up with a variety of attachments and powerful effects in what is often known as a “Voltron” or “Uber character” build. The really dedicated Shaggas of the world, however, take this a few steps even further by looking for ways to keep him active while also being able to forgo the Brotherhood agenda. This can be accomplished most easily by combining an assortment of Lannister cards with the infamy keyword in order to keep power off of your house card. This has the bonus Jaime type effect of keeping your opponent from being able to steal power from your house card or characters as a result of winning power challenges. For extra bonus points, Greg Atkinson once combined such a Lannister deck with the White Book agenda, but without any Kingsguard in the entire deck, just so he could have an extra way to discard power that might accidently wind up on his house card before he got infamy on the board.

Hollow Hill (ASoSilence)- Here’s a great engine card that encourages the Shagga entrepreneur to build an inventive deck by splashing a variety of out of house characters and helps keep providing the gas to keep abusing whichever synergies may be featured in the deck. The nice thing about Hollow Hill, is that it can trigger off any character that you play which doesn’t match existing house affiliations on your side of the board, which still leaves very open ground for Shaggas to look for a variety of interesting and synergistic effects for your deck out of all those available in the game. If you utilize this with the Neutral Faction housecard, it’s that much easier to afford the cherry picked characters to keep the engine running. Another option is to use The Brotherhood Without Banners to make certain that there’s no power on your housecard, which keeps the cost lowering ability of Hollow Hill active. It’s never been easier to build a deck in any house or faction that can use the real power characters of any other faction without any extra cost penalty- and the best part is that Hollow Hill keeps the cards flowing. I’m certain there’s a lot of unexplored potential to be had here.

No Use For Grief (DB)- This is the card that makes the Snakes on a Plain (re: Sands Snake) deck possible. There’s not too much to be said about the details here, aside from the fact that the deck should run triplicates of all of the available Sand Snakes so that No Use for Grief can put the maximum number of characters and duplicates in play. Once they’re in play, the Sand Snakes feed off of each other by granting all of the other Sand Snakes a variety of abilities and icons. Of particular importance is Dorea Sand (TftH), who can be triggered even after she comes into play from the No Use For Grief (provided The Red Viper died due to a lost challenge) in order to let the Sand Snake sisters swing for the fences on the counter attack. Once their entire tribe is in play, the girls are a very fearsome force to reckon with, but do watch out, Wildfire Assualt will eat right through your character base without any chance to save with your duplicates.

There you have it folks, some especially great Shagga cards from the Brotherhood cycle, and in fact, I think the depth of these Shagga cards haven’t been fully explored yet. Personally, I don't think I've spent enough time trying to abuse the Neutral Faction and Hollow Hill yet. Does anyone out here have some thoughts on where to begin?