All Things Shagga - The Top Shagga: Defenders of the North

Welcome one and all, to another riveting installment of All Things Shagga. Ok, so riveting might be a bight of an exaggeration this week, folks. When the Defenders of the North cycle was released, I found myself feeling kind of apathetic to the cycle as a whole. At the time, I thought this was largely due to the obvious depowering of Lannister cards for the set in order to let other houses catch up with them a bit. Now that I’ve read back through the set a few years later for this column, I think I've realized another, more subtle portion of my apathy. There just aren’t really a many good Shagga cards in this set. Coming off of the superbly Shagga King’s Landing cycle, we find that many of the cards in Defenders of the North just aren't really geared toward that particular psychographic. So, if you feel that this week’s list is stretching things a bit to get to 5 cards, you’re entirely correct. On the flipside there are quite a few great Jaime and Nedly cards in the set, so maybe one of the other columns will hit on that aspect soon. Regardless, let’s see what we did find!

Coldhands (RotO) - Ok, so he’s not an engine card as I might normally be looking for, but he certainly is one of the most impressive and “shiniest” cards from this cycle. This is the first time that we had seen “Cannot be killed” in the LCG and you do have to admit, any character with those words starts to look pretty impressive. Being restricted to participating in the first challenge in which he is eligible does restrict his use somewhat, but I have indeed seen decks at one time or another attempt to build Coldhands up into a veritable beast of a character to use in multiple challenges. Sadly, the errata to the Wildling and Nightswatch agendas that keep all six from being played together limits his usefulness somewhat at the moment. In general, folks looking for CBK these days go for Beric Dondarrion (IG).


Varamyr Sixskins (AKitN) - Well, at the time of his release, Varamyr looked interesting by dint of having a very different character ability from most that we've seen before (and since) but also he struck more of a Nedly cord than a ringing Shagga bells. Thankfully, the game continues to mutate and grow as time goes by and the addition of The Painted Table (TBC) led me to write an entire column on how to turn Varamyr into an engine for Balerion and more.

Val (RotO) - Here’s an engine card if I've ever seen one! Ok, so she was actually just a gigantic Jaime card when she was first released, but again, the game continues to grow as we go, and she’s only became a more and more appealing Shagga card as time has gone by. The trick is in making certain that you can rig what goes to the discard pile. One of my all time favorite pet decks is the Army recursion deck that I ran at Days of Ice and Fire a couple years back that uses Val to purposefully dump high cost, potentially out of house armies into the discard pile, only to jump them right into play with See who is Stronger (KotStorm). This is a deck that I’m looking forward to revisiting for the column soon.

Balerion the Black (RotO) - Again we’re looking at a character that gets on the list for just being damn impressive to look at, if nothing else. Not only is the art amazing, but the 10 cost and 10 strength are certainly eye catching for Shaggas everywhere. This is a beat stick to beat all sticks. Or something like that. Feel free to come up with better phrasing for me. Much like my phrasing, Balerion was interesting, but ultimately difficult to parse when he was first released. It was only after the release of Dragon Lore (CbtC), considerably later in the Maester cycle that he really became feasible to afford, but boy is making that play a hugely gratifying Shagga moment. At GenCon this year, the most exciting deck that I ran into was a Targaryen monstrosity built around bouncing Balerion back to hand each turn so that he could be played to kneel out the opponent’s characters each and every turn. This is another deck that I’d like to examine in the column.

The Seastone Chair (BtW) - This is another interesting puzzle card. It presents the player with what appears to be an appealing play path, but twists things just enough that we have to jump through some hoops in order to accomplish it. If this had been in a house like Baratheon with a great deal of noble characters and a multitude of ways to use them in multiple challenges, but a house like Greyjoy has fewer noble characters (and at the time of release, very much fewer) and doesn’t feature standing as a theme, so players who are hooked then have to work on ways to build this into a cohesive deck out of a smaller available card pool, which does force the Shagga player to take a look at second tier cards that the Jaimes of the world might not normally use. Thankfully, this is getting easier and easier to build around as time goes by.

So, what do you guys think? Am I still just so crushed by the dearth of quality Lannister cards in the cycle that I’m overlooking some particularly spicy Shagga plays? Be sure to let me know in the comments!