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1
Ours is the Fury - Absolute Power
Dec 10 2012 06:05 PM |
WWDrakey
in Game of Thrones
Small Council Ours is the Fury WWDrakey Baratheon
This week in Ours is the Fury I'm going to have a hard look at one of the most common misconceptions about Baratheon and talk a bit about win conditions and the current meta.It's All Rush
The misconception: "Don't let anybody fool you, all Baratheon decks are just Rush".
This is usually bandied about as a way of diminishing the House of the Stag's worth in people's eyes, since there's the unwritten part that says "and everybody knows Rush is easier than Control". Now, while there are cases where this is actually true (Targaryen Control has always been one of the hardest beasts to pilot in AGoT), it has very little to do with the mere style of deck, and much more to do with the nature of the card effects. Direct and easily triggered control (The Scourge (ODG), Castellan of the Rock (BoRF), No Quarter (TBC)) isn't really hard to play, just like complicated Rush archetypes (Lannister The Power Behind the Throne (LotR) with intrigue-based power gain and Joffrey Baratheon (TftRK)) aren't at all simple.
So, where does this misconception arise from? Let's modify the statement to be a bit more accurate, and see what that teaches us.
Win Conditions
The truth: "All Baratheon decks have built-in Win Conditions".
Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. That is, if you know what I'm talking about. So what actually IS this mythical "Win Condition" I'm talking about? Let's do a mind-game. Look at your favorite deck and estimate how many turns it would take you to win the game if you're playing against a deck that is able to succesfully block you from ever gaining unopposed power, and is not amassing power on their own House Card. Go ahead and calculate. If the answer you're coming to amounts to something like 15 turns, then congratulations... your deck has no or very few Win Conditions, it's just hoping to manipulate the board in such a way that it can gain power from crippling the opponent successfully. Pure and simple, Win Conditions are cards with printed abilities that allow you to push towards winning the game, pretty much regardless of what your opponent is doing.
From other card games there are concrete examples to be had of what happens to the value of characters in a game with prevalent hard control. The end result is something like this: "If it doesn't have immunity or a comes into play/leaves play effect it's usually not worth the cardboard it's printed on."
So what does all of this have to do with Baratheon? If Baratheon is good at something as a House, it's Win Conditions. While Robert Baratheon (Core) is the most classic Rush win condition, our House also sports interesting combo-based win conditions like The Queen of Thorns (TftRK) and even win-conditions best suited for Control builds, such as The Iron Throne (ASitD). Thus the current environment with its prevalence of hard control is pretty much toxic to Baratheon on the whole.
Lucky us, eh?
Real Rush
Now, people who say that all Baratheon decks are Rush decks, don't really know what they're talking about. It's just that they're looking at them from the point of view of the current meta, with it's balance skewed towards hard control without win conditions.
So... what can Baratheon aim at in such a hard control environment, with card advantage nearly completely denied to them? The first obvious answer is resilience, from recursion effects (like Fiery Kiss (ODG) or Many Powers Long Asleep (RoR)) and immunities (The Power of Blood (Core)). However, there's also another option.
They claim we're all Rush, eh? Let's give them Rush. I mean real rush, not the kind of steady powergain that most Noble Rush decks aim for. If your win conditions are too vulnerable to control, then pump up the speed to the point where they don't have the time to hit them. What I'm talking about are decks geared towards Turn 1 and Turn 2 victories, eschewing all resilience, counters and contingencies for pure unadultered speed. You know, the kind of Glass Cannons that either win big or lose big. If you're going to go out any way (playing Baratheon in the current meta is a gamble at best), why not do it with a huge bang instead of a sad little thud.
What I'm talking about is the kind of really fast Rush that is best epitomized in the Treaty with the South (CoS) deck that Fieras' used to win KublaCon this year. For details on that, check this thread on the FFG Forums.
Absolute Power
To give another example of the kind of deck that I'm talking about, I decided to resurrect an old concept deck from deep in my archives and update it a bit for the current meta. While Fieras' decklist is merely really fast, but still quite resilient, mine is just pure gamble. Without further ado, the decklist is here: Ours is the Fury - Absolute Power Deck.
Background: I was building and finetuning this deck in anticipation of the Heir to the Iron Throne (QoD) Agenda, which was not yet errata'd to House Targaryen Only. Additionally, über-fast The Siege of Winterfell (LoW) decks with Epic Battles were still a big presence in the meta, and I was looking to leverage a similar kind of approach from Baratheon. Over the years, the deck has gone through several variations (from TMP fuelled Citadel Custom (CbtC) builds to Treaties and back again).
Concept: Gamble. Use non-kneeling/Vigilant characters with renown to push through 3-5 power challenges in 1-2 turns in order to win. Attempt to drop your whole hand around turn 1 if possible, and hope to push through the win FAST. Attempt to scramble your opponents plots via The Art of Seduction (LotR) and War of Five Kings (RoW) in order to stop them from Valaring before you win.
If your deck is starting a bit slow (it doesn't look like you will win Turn 1), then start off with The Art of Seduction (LotR) and only hit An Empty Throne (KotS) Round 2 once you've built up speed. If you're facing an Aggro deck and have a bad starting board, then use Lineage and Legacy (KotStorm) or The Power of Blood (Core) (depending on your cards) Round 1 to mitigate losses. Against KotHH, with your huge resource acceleration, a first round The First Snow of Winter (ODG) is not an issue, especially if you flipped The Art of Seduction (LotR), and chances are War of Five Kings (RoW) can scramble the eventual combo with Rule by Decree (Core). As a side benefit, the Epic Battles also stop you from having to fear a Turn 1 Rule by Decree (Core).
With this deck the only thing that matters is winning - powergain, that is. Be sharp with your challenge math and you should be able to supplement your renown powergain with a large amount of unopposed power (especially with Melisandre (RotO)). If you're not winning the game by Round 3, chances are, you've probably already lost.
- Amuk, Archrono, Rave and 9 others like this
25 Comments
Honestly though, very well said. Completely agree with why Baratheon has done so poorly lately. I'm still not sure if Baratheon Super Rush is enough though. Control effects are so common that they will generally have just enough to slow you down until they can get a full lock. How has this deck been doing for you?
cheers on the article!
Looking ahead, I'm hoping that the next CP cycle will boost Baratheon resilience enough to allow more consistent competitive decks... but until then, short of FAQ-induced changes, I have a bad feeling that gimmicky is the best you can really hope for. Well, except maybe fiddling with Baratheon Maesters... although I'm not at all sure that running Maesters out of Baratheon would be nearly as effective, as say... running them out of GJ, Targaryen, Martell or Stark.
The Deck: The deck has been performing as you'd expect from such a gamble-centric deck... instead of having definite good/bad matchups, it's just temperamental by itself. On a good day, you can beat almost any deck. On a bad day, everything falls to pieces. I'm pretty sure that a Treaty-based über-rush would be a more competitive choice, either with Martell (like Fieras' deck) or GJ (like a build that made Top 32 in Stahleck 2011).
@darksine:'The problem with both of those cards is that they're effectively card disadvantage... and Baratheon really can't afford much of that these days. However, these kind of super-fast Rush decks would be a good candidate for including either card, since crippling your opponents cards for one Challenge-phase can really be what separates victory from defeat. So... yeah. I think both cards have potential for Bara. However, these will be pretty meta-dependent, since neither works as a large enough blanket to stop your opponents shenanigans during Challenges regardless of House. Little and Less (ARotD) is probably best if you're expecting Martell (Red Vengeance comes to mind) or Stark (kill events), and Snowed In (ARotD) maybe more against Lannister (stop their kneel during Marshalling) or some Targ-decks (Long Lances (THoBaW) anyone?).
But seriously, I think we need to take a step back and figure out what's really up. Baratheon has lots of tools for rush, and just enough of almost everything else to get into trouble. What do the other houses really have over Baratheon?
Baratheon gets on the board. (Reducers and renown) and has some powerful defensive and offensive tools (like Eldon and The Laughing Storm, Core Mel, and Noble's + power of blood), and an touch of it's own control Margaery Tyrell (ASitD),The Black Cells (TftRK), etc.)
So what really kicks Baratheon in the pants?
Is it we're missing a tool, some key few cards to stabilize the house's core strategies? Or are we just not seeing the big picture.
If Stark takes characters off the board and keeps theirs on,
Greyjoy prevents you from playing your cards (choke) or keeps you from getting rid of theirs (saves),
or Targ just burns your characters away, and/or uses combat tricks and recursion to keep your board clear,
or Lannister kneels what it doesn't remove with a timely
Terminal Schemes (LotR),
Or Martell, which just eliminates the usefulness of any character by wiping an icon, or bouncing back to your hand.
What are we supposed to do? Rush harder? Hope the glass canon goes off, or pack our deck with counters to....everything?
Trust me, I'm not complaining. Baratheon is my favorite house (I almost play it exclusively), but I think we're missing the point.
Baratheon almost seems like the deck that is designed to barely hold on, and sneak the win through at the end.
Just enough saves to keep a key noble alive, and enough marshaling power to re-flood the board post valar (or just keep a couple key guys alive to make them wish they didn't kill all of theirs.)
Enough tricks to push through even when you normally couldn't win as an attacker (let's call it vigilant support) Like stealth and a few str bumps, and a few tools to help when you lose a challenge (Laughing storm, fiery kiss, Glamour of fire,See who is Stronger, or even The Red Queen's Faithful to keep power off your house).
Targeted removal of characters (Terminal schemes, Greyscale with a couple simple combos.)
Targeted removal of locations (Salla, and more soon to be released smugglers.)
And solid use of the neutral stuff every other house can use.
Does Baratheon have the short end of the stick right now? Maybe.
But we still have some of the strongest characters in the game.
My personal opinion is that it's a bit of both, but probably more the fact that we have the tools, they just never seem to fit into the same toolbox (Winter, Shadows, Learned, Summer, Knights, Armies, Lords/Ladies, Joust, Asshai...). It's pretty Nedly really, Baratheon would be good, if only they would work together.
Currently, the main thing that Baratheon has fully fleshed out to form complete decks is Speed, but I don't really think that it's a good idea to give us any more support on that. Speed is something that is pretty much impossible to balance correctly. Give Baratheon a bit more speed... and suddenly you start consistently winning games Turn 1 - something that most players would find to be a worse NPE than GJ Choke. Heir to the Iron Throne (QoD) was errata'd for a good reason, if you ask me.
I'm going to do another Ours is the Fury on what I would call Baratheon Resilience, but I guess I could already explain a bit of what I mean with the topic, since I mentioned it in this article.
From what the current cardpool teaches us, Baratheon Resilience clearly rises from three aspects: prevention (immunity/cannot be...), recursion (primarily of characters) and duplicates. Now, for most of the LCG the best supported parts of this theme have been the duplicates and prevention (mainly via The Power of Blood (Core)).
The current meta is particularly harsh on duplicates (easy Response/Character Ability/Trigger Cancel and of course... Burn), but while other Houses are adapting by only running rainbow-esque 'Best Of' decks with 1x of each power unique, this doesn't really work (at all) with the Baratheon playstyle of character-based powergain. And really, short of a FAQ change to duplicates not being cancellable, it's hard to see how they could suddenly get any better in the meta. Looks a lot like a one way street to me. Maybe if duplicates could be supported by prevention f.ex. via positive attachments? But then that would require positive attachments to be playable in the meta in the first place...
Now, if duplicates are weak, Baratheon Resilience has to either turn towards prevention or recursion, and neither theme is currently able to really support a whole deck. Of these two, I think that recursion is possibly the more interesting one, since we've already got a lot of support cards for it (look at Maester's Tower (HtS) for example), but the cards just don't really work together, or are dependent on various under-developed themes (Joust, Learned, Army).
The reason I have quite high hopes for the next cycle (and recursion) is that the new cards seem to be geared towards having comes into play/leaves play types of effects on characters (Dale Seaworth, new Salladhor, even the only old Smuggler Ser Davos Seaworth (WLL) also fits the description) - something that meshes extremely well with character recursion. If recursion also gets boosted, then the problem of duplicates being weak can nicely be worked around.
Of course, the irony of hoping for Baratheon's theme-splintered cardpool being healed by... a whole new theme (in Smugglers) is not lost on me.
...probably? Shadow Control is pretty deep in the rock-paper-scissors territory of the current environment. That combined with many of it's power cards, like The Black Cells (TftRK), just being too costly for their fragility (a perfect target for both Newly Made Lord (TftH) and Frozen Solid (LoW)) make it a bit too inconsistent.
As for Bara in general, I'm fully convinced that there is a very good Bara Holy (with or without a focus on Asshai) deck based on INT and hand control out there. Somebody just has to find it.
I'm a pragmatist regarding the Holy hand control deck. People have been talking about there being this mythical T1 Holy hand control deck ever since the Brotherhood-Cycle came out (2 years at least?). Yet it has never materialized. I don't really think such a thing exists, not with the current cardpool at least. Wouldn't take many parts to make it roll, but those parts just are plain missing currently (like say, a Baratheon 1g Holy nonunique, or a good draw engine fitting the deck without slowing it down or adding yet more themes). However, if somebody does come up with it, I'll gladly eat my words and play it to my heart's content.
Anyway, I sure have thrown all my creativity at it so many times that I know my brain can't solve the puzzle. Won't stop me from trying once in a while though, the whole process is quite addictive...
Somehow, I get the feeling that it's like a pile of wheels, exhaust pipes, and motor parts... it makes you think there's a car to be had. However, if dozens of engineers have been trying to put the parts together without success, Occam's Razor says that there's probably something missing. Who knows, maybe those new Prayer events will be just the thing.
~ Well, at least the trouble that all the so-called "pure hearted" will have to go through in order to reach it, warms my black and shrivelled heart.
But then is it a balanced game? If you can consistently win turn one, then your opponent has to pick the perfect plot to try and stall you, (or magically have a dissension in hand).
Turn one wins aren't what thrones is about. Turn 3-4 (surviving or using a valar to your advantage) is still a rush. It's all about that extra 5-9 power you swing that last turn. That's rush for me.
Oh, and I think there are some Driver vs. Car issues there, since Marduk was also the only Baratheon player to make the cut at Stahleck...
That said, there's also probably some meta-differences at work on top of all this. Looking at Marduk's performance in Stahleck (Agotcards, here) an initial guess would be that the French meta is/was a bit more lightweight on Maesters and maybe the Stark Winter decks hadn't become as common when he won those? That sound at all correct, or are my words just wind?
I'm basing this partly on the facts that (according to the report) Marduk took his Top 16 Loss in Stahleck from one of the GJ Maesters, and his only loss in Swiss from Stark Winter... and also his Paris games don't list having to face many Maester decks (exactly one, and that's a Dragon/Maester). Not exactly sure how the decks match-up against the most recent Targ/KotHH builds, I'd think that Long Lances (THoBaW) would have shifted the balance a bit, arriving in CP 5 as they did.
Overall, out of those builds, I'd maybe hazard a guess that Wildlings aren't as good a choice anymore as Knights, since they give control decks (Targ KotHH, Martell KotHH) too much time to take over the game. Knights have a better chance of knocking their opponent back fast, and then running away with the win.
Usually with Holy Rush, the most important part is somehow forging your way through the Valar, so I'd probably suggest running Narrow Escape (KotStorm) as your restricted card, with the Asshai intrigue you'll also be sure to keep it in hand until then. A few cards that you should consider for Asshai Holy Rush are Fanatic (RoR) and Bound by the Light (DB). The former helps you make Holy non-kneelers out of Baratheon renown characters (like Robert Baratheon (Core)), while the latter helps you maintain a stronger board presence through a Valar.
The extra-fast Rush archetype from this article would probably keep Knight of Flowers (SaS), and maybe add some protective attachments (Bodyguard (Core), Lightbringer (Core)) to replace the NE's. One more Bastard of Robert (Core) and maybe a 1-2x of the new River Runner (TGF) would probably be replacing the Refugees.