All Things Shagga - Widow's Watch Wolves

Ah, faithful readers, it’s good to be back! After an exceedingly busy November, I finally have the opportunity to devote myself a bit more to my more natural Shagga interests. With the onset of colder temperatures here in (currently) foggy Missouri, my mind turns to the change of seasons. Why, one might even say that “Winter is coming!” In light of such developments, it seems that a Stark deck is appropriate, so I turned my eye toward a deck that I’ve played off and on for a few months, with the thought that I’d update it with some of the new tech that I’ve thought up lately.

The Cards:

Widow’s Watch- Here’s the engine that makes it all run. Stark has a lot of unique cards. A lot. And it turns out that starting with a way to search out the duplicates in your deck right from the get go adds up to a lot of card advantage. Not only do you get to thin your deck and thus get yourself effectively closer to drawing gas, but you pretty much get an instant save for whatever you played to the board! And as anyone who’s played against Greyjoy knows, having a number of saves available is surprisingly good card advantage over the course of a game.

Shaggydog & Greywind- The two direwolves that make the “direwolf” deck do something also happen to be unique attachments. Why does that matter you ask? Well, for one thing, Dragon Thief can’t touch them and for another, Widow’s Watch lets us search out a duplicate of any unique card we play- including attachments! This provides great redundancy for a deck that wants to use direwolves to shut the opponent down.

Ice- Conveniently Ice is another unique attachment with a very powerful effect. Pretty much the same gameplan here as with the direwolf attachments, where you can play one and prime yourself for the next by searching it out with Widow’s Watch.

Galbart Glover- Galbart is a new addition to the deck that I can’t believe I missed when I first put the deck together. When he was first released, he seemed deceptively strong until it was pointed out that he won’t work in conjunction with cards like Harrenhal and Maester Luwin since they don’t search the entire deck. You know what does search the deck though? Widow’s Watch! Glover becomes particularly cool in this deck by giving us options to search duplicates out of our discard pile rather than from inside the deck.

Sansa Stark – Now Sansa really makes the deck sing. Sure, she’s vulnerable to some burn before you start loading her up with attachments, but boy does the card advantage start coming in droves once you do. Just think, once you have her in play, you can both draw a card and search for another just by playing one of your unique attachments on her, and the searches don’t hit the draw cap! It’s pretty easy to get some explosive draw out of her in the first couple turns of the game.

Thoughts on Play:

I think one of the things that appeals to me about playing this deck, is that it plays so oddly for a Stark deck. In fact, it plays much more like a Lannister control deck. No, bear with me here, but it’s true. Much like classic Lannister control, this deck seeks to get a ton of cards in their hand and completely mitigate the opponent’s ability to make challenges so that you can buy time to drown your opponent in superior card advantage. Doesn’t sound so crazy when I say it that way, does it?

Here’s the tricky part, though. Classic Lannister control deck is going to be using mostly kneel to control the opponent’s characters, which has a dual sided purpose- it stops them from attacking us, but it also opens them up to our attacks. The direwolves, while potent, generally just stop incoming attacks without giving us appreciable gain in ability to field our own challenges. So, this is where a few different things come into play, but most notably- the deadly keyword and Ice. We need to push through our own challenges in order to make sure we can end the game, and these help us make certain that even if the opponent opts to defend them, we’re still winning out on the attrition game that we’re forcing them into. In particularly, the threat of activation on the more targeted effect of Ice will net some unopposed power when we need it.

Another set of tools that we have at our disposal are our plots. Due to the highly unique nature of our deck, we’re able to take advantage of that in some solid ways. Most directly is our ability to field a large number of saves through our duplicates, which helps Valar Morghulis become much more one sided than normal. As well, this is the perfect deck to use The Pale Mare to winnow down the opponent’s board while hardly touching our own. Even Relentless Persecution helps keep their characters out of the way while we do our thing. This is important because much like a Lannister kneel deck, we want to minimize the number of characters that we need to use our control on, though for slightly different reasons. In Lannister, most of your control is temporary, so you need to thin the field to ensure that the number of kneel effects that you draw remain effective in regards to the number of opposing characters on the board. In this Stark deck, much of our control is repeatable, but doesn’t help push challenges as well, so we actually need to thin the board to make sure that the number of characters we draw remain effective in regards to the number of opposing characters.
Of course, we can also leverage the unicity (like that word?) of deck in a couple of other ways as well. As I addressed earlier, we’ll even be able to collect duplicates of our unique attachments thanks to Widow’s Watch. Whatever you do, don’t play them! It doesn’t matter too much if someone is able to discard them with an effect that targets attachments, as we can then play the duplicate from our hand, but if someone kills the character with a duped attachment, there’s little we can do to recover them both from the discard pile. If Galbart Glover is in play, however, you can let the copy in play be eliminated by one effect or another, then play the waiting copy in your hand on the next turn and then use Widow’s Watch to search the duplicate back out of your discard pile to hand. This can be especially effective with looped copies of Ice. Kill something at will with Ice, then lather, rinse, and repeat each turn with Glover and Widow’s Watch. A similar trick can also be done with Arya Stark, though we do hope that there won’t be too many unique characters dying to trigger her thanks to our duplicates. In fact, the duplicates of our other characters can be recycled with Glover a few times as well thanks to Herald of the Wolf. Feel free to search one out and put it on top of your deck, then play one of your attachments on Sansa to draw it so that you can load up another save onto the appropriate character.

Speaking of Sansa, yes, she is vulnerable as a two strength unique character, so do be careful with her. With the automatic save from her duplicate, you’re probably safe for a few turns against anyone other than Targaryen. Against Targaryen, try to be ready with a unique attachment immediately after searching with Widow’s Watch in the hopes that your opponent doesn’t immediately Flame Kiss her. If you can land Crown of Winter, you’ll be pretty much golden with the strength boost and immunity it provides. As well, Glover lets you cycle the attachments as we discussed earlier and is immune to opponents events himself, which helps greatly against Targaryen.

The Deck:

Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder

Widow's Watch Wolves

Total Cards: (63)

House:
House Stark


Agenda: (1)
1x House of Dreams (ARotD)

Plot: (7)
1x The Minstrel's Muse (RotO)
1x Desolate Passage (TRS)
1x Relentless Persecution (DB)
1x Valar Morghulis (Core)
1x Men of Pride (THoBaW)
1x The Pale Mare (THoBaW)
1x Search and Detain (HtS)

Character: (34)
3x Direwolf Pup (Core)
2x Ghost (TWH)
2x Guardian Wolf (TIoR)
2x Lady (Core)
2x Summer (LoW)
3x Wolf Pack (LoW)
2x Arya Stark (tHoBaW)
2x Bran Stark (VD)
2x Galbart Glover (CbtC)
3x Sansa Stark (Core)
2x Ser Jorah Mormont (PotS)
2x The Blackfish (LoW)
2x Wyman Manderly (RotK)
3x Maester of Last Hearth (HtS)
2x Wolf Herald (SB)

Attachment: (11)
2x Grey Wind (LoW)
2x Nymeria (Core)
2x Shaggydog (LoW)
2x Crown of Winter (LoW)
3x Ice (Core)

Event: (5)
3x At Night They Howl (LoW)
2x Wolf Dreams (LoW)

Location: (13)
1x Widow's Watch (GotC)
3x Great Keep (Core)
3x Narrow Sea (Core)
1x Isle of Faces (APS)
1x Street of Silk (LotR)
1x Street of Sisters (Core)
1x Street of Steel (Core)
2x The Kingsroad 23 (FaI)



Well there you have it folks! Let me know what you think in the comments.