All Things Shagga - The Top Shagga: The Secrets of Oldtown

This week on All Things Shagga, we get closer and closer to catching up with the current card releases. Currently, we turn our attention to the Secrets of Oldtown cycle. This cycle is probably best known for adding The Maester’s Path to the cardpool, but there are quite a few interesting cards hidden in its depths.


The Maester's Path (GotC) - Of course, we can’t really get away from mentioning TMP on our list of Shagga cards for the set. Now, it is a pretty heavily Jaime card as well due to the immense amount of card advantage, deck thinning and resource advantage that you can get out of it over the course of a game, but fundamentally, I think the thrust of the card was to push heavily Shagga, combo centric builds. There are so many possibilities that this enables that it’s a little difficult to narrow down a few to list here, but the deck thinning is so good that nearly any combo deck that doesn’t need another restricted card can be made better with the addition of this agenda and some number of chains because it makes it that much easier to draw into the core pieces of the combo. The efficiency of the card has lead to several tweaks along the way, but Zeiler’s GenCon 2011 Infinite Robert deck is a prime example of the sort of ultra efficient combinations that lead to the first errata.

The Laughing Storm (GotC) - Even when The Laughing Storm was first released, the strength of playing it in combination with Val was quickly realized. Eventually though, its restriction was reversed and the environment quickly saw an influx of Baratheon plot manipulation decks that were able to use The Laughing Storm to negate the drawback on cards like Val, Threat From the East and Rule By Decree. In fact, these decks were sometimes able to use Bran or another form of plot manipulation to leave the opponent with only one card in hand to start the game. This is a prime example of the sort of deck that put the deck thinning of TMP to great use. Thankfully, some errata and an addition to the restricted card list curtailed this deck.

Maester's Tower (HtS) - Here’s another Shagga card that just hasn’t seen enough play yet. With See Who is Stronger and now Glamor of Fire available to the enterprising Baratheon player, there are a bevy of good effects to copy with Maester’s Tower. Unfortunately, I think that what’s most likely holding it back is the dearth of cheap learned crests to kneel for Maester’s Tower out of Baratheon or neutral characters. Beyond the Narrow Sea did bring us a couple of cheap Lannister nobles, so it might be worth trying out some kind of Alliance deck to use those characters, possibly with Golden Tooth Vaults to discard large characters from your hand to cheat into play with your See Who is Stronger.

Dragon Lore (CbtC)- Ok, so this one is a bit of a one trick pony right now, but boy is it a Shagga doozy. We’ve already discussed Balerion before, as the 10 gold dragon is a beast of a character to get on the board and appeals greatly to the shiny bits side of the Shagga personality. Finally when Dragon Lore entered the card pool, Shaggas everywhere rejoiced for a way to actually afford the monstrous dragon. Of course, Dragon Lore does work to cheat any of the four cost dragons into play as well, but that’s just not nearly as impressive.

Steel Link (TIoR) - One of links does appear to offer a bit more combo magic than the others. The Steel Link lets us stand any location we control when the attached character kneels. In combination with Inn of the Kneeling Man (and a season) you could stand the character that Steel Link is on each phase, as long as the character is 2 or less STR. Of course, this can be used with low strength maesters who happen to be wearing some other assortment of chains in order to repeat their effects over and over (generating gold perhaps?) but there are some other options. Of course, the characters will generally require an Apprentice Collar in order to have the Steel Link attached, but here are a few options: Alannys Greyjoy can offer unstoppable kneel/discard, Maester Vyman can cancel every phase, and Septon Cellador offers unlimited deck shuffling! Ok, so Cellador is actually no attachments, but just think of how awesome that play would have been!

Dishonorable Mention: Hellholt Engineer (CbtC) - Of course, no mention of combo cards out of this cycle would be complete without mentioning Hellholt Engineer. He offers a lot of great options in melee with things like cost reduction, but when two players at the same table each control one they can trigger an infinite number of times. Of course, this can be used with things like cost reducers or something like The Scourge for extreme control. If you haven’t heard much more than this about the possibilities by now, you’re probably better off for not knowing.

Secrets of Oldtown was a very Shagga friendly set and there were a few cards that I had to cut from my top 5. Is there something else that you could include? Some character more awesome than Cellador that you’d combine with Steel Link/ Inn of the Kneeling Man?