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A few random thoughts on Targ
May 24 2011 05:00 AM |
Twn2dn
in Strategy
Apologies in advance, this isn't as well-written as my past articles. If I have time at some point in the next couple of weeks, I may come back and clean this up quite a bit. I just thought I'd post what I had now, in case others found it useful.The below conclusions are based on a Targ deck I played in two regionals. The first regionals it went 3-2, with both losses very close games. The second regionals it went 4-1 (one win was a modified win, where I ran to time with 14 power), and lost in the first game of semi-finals to a summer Martell. The semis loss was very close, despite my (surprisingly awful) 2-card setup.
Here's my advice for Targ players:
Manage the resource curve
Run cards that *can* use influence but don't always need it. For example, Myrish Villa and Horseback Archers are now Targ staples as far as I'm concerned. They're solid cards that provide a use for the influence you have, but don't sit in your hand if it takes you longer to get to the influence. After playing with a lot of resource allocations, I now apply the Magic The Gathering resource guidelines to AGOT influence: Basically, count up all the influence costs you have (1x Dragon Thief = 2, 1x Horseback Archers = 1, 2x Hatchling Feast = 6, etc.), then divide by 2. The final number you get is a good target for how many 1-influence locations you should be running. A deck with 2x Thief, 2x Flame Kissed, 2x Forever Burning, 3x Archers, 2x Hatchling Feast would need ~10 1-influence locations. You can reduce this a bit if you play Red Keeps or Advisors...probably to the tune of swapping out 3x 1-infl locations for 2x multi-infl cards. (So the net result might be 8-9 influence-providing cards, with 7x 1-influence, 2x multi-influence.)
Make sure you have a strong draw engine
Outside of summer Targ and shadows, I still think the draw engine is the single hardest thing to get working in a Targ deck. But to give you an idea, in most of my games, I was outdrawing the lannister players. Unfortunately, I had to commit A LOT of cards to draw to make sure it was reliable, so even when you outdraw the opponent, you may not be gaining *real* card advantage. Anyway, I based my draw engine on attachments. Xaro's Home is pretty fantastic, now that there are more uses for 1 influence (namely Myrish Villa and Archers), so adding a couple extra fiefdoms isn't necessarily a bad thing. I played 3x Eastern Fiefdoms, 3x Summer Seas, 1x Tent, and 1x Shivering Sea, plus 3x Advisors. Xaro's Home gets even better with Unburnt + Lady Dany's Chambers, which I think is the optimal way to play it. Of course I also played 2x Jhogo, 1-2x Drogo (Targ box), and 1x Samwell, which was really cool with Unburnt + Carrion Bird. Altogether, I think I was playing 9 attachments, though two were "chain" attachments that started on my agenda.
What I found is that my draw engine was extraordinarily robust (more so than any Targ deck I've played since CCG), but it could be disrupted. Unlike a Golden Tooth Mines, which pretty much just sits there unless an opponent has a location discard effect, my Targ draw drew me a storm of cards at times and close to nothing at other times. Overall though, I was very satisfied with it. (Playing Narrow Escape also helps a lot to maintain card advantage, in those situations where it takes longer to get out your draw.)
- BraavosiBanker likes this
8 Comments
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Specifically, Flame Kissed is an amazing card, and I run 2-3 copies in every Targ deck. It's especially good with Lady Dany's Chambers. (In the above version, I think I had only 2 copies, since I was already heavy on attachments, and I played 3x LDC, which 1-2 copies more than I typically do.) Same with Forever Burning, 2-3x in every deck. I'm less fond of King's Landing Assassin, given he's essentially 4 gold for 4 STR...2 STR char + kill a 2 STR character. So basically you're still paying 4 gold for 4 STR, except that you get a weenie and kill a weenie, rather than getting a 4-STR big guy. Of course, you can (and should) stack up the assassin's burn to kill a bigger character, but then you're still just trading 2 of your cards (assassin + extra burn) to kill one of theirs. With Targ, it's typically harder to gain card advantage through draw, so you don't want to be spending 2-3 of your cards just to kill one of the opponent's characters, unless it's someone extremely important. Assassins become decent though when Dragonpit is on the table...which leads me to shadows.
I think Shadows has a lot of potential, given the draw engine and the powerful effects. The problem though is that it has had trouble for the past year or so keeping up with faster decks. Shadows has gotten faster, but not at the same rate that Martell, Bara, and Stark have. Another big part of the problem is that it can be tough to splash shadows in Targ. Unlike Lanni, which has cool effects that trigger off themselves or big shadows characters that swing a game (Tyrion and Qyburn), Dragonpit needs cards to stay in shadows, and Targ's shadow characters are generally over-priced. In a shadows-heavy deck, Dragonpit is very powerful...but playing so many shadows increases the chances that the deck will crap out with too little gold or influence to get going. Shadow Seer could go a long way to change all this though, and will definitely make it easier to splash shadows. Dragon Skull, in particular, could become pretty awesome when the Seer hits the environment.
As for draw, I'm not playing Shade of the Evening. I think Shade is actually fairly decent, but only in a Summer deck. This isn't because of the ability boost, but because the best target would be to play this attachment on a self-standing character. Targ has three options: Killer of the Wounded (dies too easily to stack important attachments on it), Blue-Lipped Warlock (dies to everything, including Threat), and Fairweather Followers. Of the three, Followers are by far the best option (I think), because they're much more resilient/reliable. The other two are situationally good with Shade, but not enough so that I would play Shade without the Followers.
If you can get the attachment recycling/recursion going with LDC, then most of the time Court Advisor or Hrakkar Pelt will be just as good as the Shade (outside of a summer deck) and cost you 1 gold. And both of those can be played on non-Targ cards.
Overall, I think Targ box was lacking in the draw/card advantage department. At best, it pushed competitive Targ players to run summer. (For the record, I don't think the dragon-based deck is that competitive, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised at one of these regionals.) If you want to do something other than summer, you still have to think just as creatively as ever about how to get your draw going.