Ours is the Fury - Against the Stream

It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to write an Ours is The Fury article, mainly due to all things unrelated to AGoT. However, the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that there was another reason to all of this. One that’s very much in the heart of this article’s subject matter, right at the furry core of the Stag.

That past CP Cycle brought a load of really good cards for Baratheon, and by the looks of it, the following Cycle is only continuing from where the previous one left off. So, in a way, it’s a good time to be playing Baratheon. At least, so it would seem on the surface.

However, there’s a small issue with that, a looming cloud on the horizon, if you will. Despite the new cards we’re getting, Baratheon hasn’t really moved upwards in competitiveness a single notch. This has made me wonder a bit, and I believe that a part of the puzzle came to me when looking at some of the results Kennon posted from GenCon.

So, what can we see from those results? Nearly half of the Baratheon decks were running the Black Sails Agenda, usually for the ages old Val + The Laughing Storm combo to hole up the leaking draw-hole in our House's side. These are probably somewhat based on a deck run by former World Champion Greg Atkinson to win the Missouri Regionals (decklist can be found on Agotcards). Something else we know from that Tourney is that those decks… to be blunt, did not do very well.

So, the real question related to this is: Why?

A short treatise on Black Sails

Warning: This article differs somewhat from my usual fare of articles, being strictly Jaime-minded and very focused upon a largely subjective gloves off -kind of discussion of a particular candidate for the best current competitive Baratheon build. I am not asserting that Black Sails is bad, unplayable or anything of the sort. Just trying to point out, why I don't think it has the potential to stand toe-to-toe with true Tier 1 decks like Targaryen KotHH or Martell Quentyn.

There’s a specific-kind of epidemy with Baratheon decks, and many of the cards from the previous CP Cycle have only added to it’s outbreak. One of gimmickyness. And on a competitive sense, it’s largely to blame for our House not making an impact even with a greatly improved cardpool. How do you know your deck suffers from it then? Usually, it’s quite easy to tell. It goes like this: you’ve got a really neat trick/combo, which blinds you to the fact that in order to run that combo, you’re sacrificing on not only the individual power-levels of the cards in your deck, but also forcing your hand with regard to in-game choices. As an end result, specific cards in your deck will form very concrete weak spots, such that if you’re opponent is able to deal with them, you’ll deck will be hit extremely hard.

Moving back to the subject of Baratheon Black Sails, especially with the Val + TLS combo, I believe it to be a prime example of such a deck. This will take a bit of explanation, since it’s clearly not obvious.

Now, there’s three ways to float with Black Sails:

• Run a tight 60-card deck, and hope that you can finish the game before your 30 card deck runs out. Pretty much this means committing yourself to an all or nothing Rush.
• Run a 60-card deck with methods of ‘extending’ the duration of your deck. Examples (for any House) would be: Benjen Stark, Barristan Selmy, Shores of the Summer Sea and even stalwart cards.
• Run a much looser 70-80 card deck, and hope for the advantage from the tutoring provided by Black Sails to offset the inefficiency.

The really important thing here is that… all of those choices are negative. Essentially, your choice of Agenda is directly building a clear and obvious weakness into your deck. Be it opening your deck to stalling Control, losing pound-for-pound card efficiency or just losing structural consistency… You’re always losing something. Oh and, yes, TLV was able to make those 85 card decks work, but that's not a testament to them being as efficient as 60-card ones, it only shows how good that constant and nearly uninterruptable 50% increase in base draw can be.

Having a drawback is all fine and good, as long as the advantage provided by the Agenda is worth it (again, think TLV). However, most people who’ve played with Black Sails will be able to tell you that a good competitive Control deck will be able to reduce the number of searches you get with Black Sails to… well, zero. So, in that matchup the only benefit that you’re left with is the single search of a Character from Naval Reinforcements. Now, after the most recent FAQ, decks with strong Control elements are back in a strong position - be it Martell No Agenda/Quentyn, Targaryen KotHH, Lannister No Agenda or Tunnels of the Red Keep. Once again, every deck needs to consider how it will hold up against Control-elements.

So, the next question to look at is: Is a single-search at the beginning of the game worth an Agenda-choice? If House of Dreams has proven us anything, then it’s that the answer to this is usually no, with some exceptions (for HoD these would be Tunnels of the Red Keep and Dragonpit). Other Agendas, or even going without one, just provide more bang for the buck.

Val and The Laughing Storm

Let’s move back to our old friends Val and Laughing Storm. As I mentioned, this combo is an old one, and if it were enough to vault Baratheon into being competitive by itself… it would have done so the moment TLS got off the restricted-list. The problem here is that the combo is just too fragile to function as a primary draw engine, since it’s based on two unique characters remaining in play and not being controlled.

What I’m trying to say is that: One Threat from the North and Val discards, one Venomous Blade and Val dies, one bounce of TLS to hand via Ghaston Grey and an ensuing intrigue… and there goes the combo. One Enslaved and Val starts providing cards for your opponent. One Valar, and if both characters weren’t duped, then there goes the neighborhood. One Flame-kissed and you never even got a single draw off. The list goes on.

These issues are of course further exasperated by the fact that Baratheon is currently pretty good at keeping Baratheon characters in play, but has very few ways of resurrecting Val from the dead/discard piles.

Collecting the pieces

Remember my definition of gimmickyness? Really neat combo - check, the loss in overall deck/card efficiency (due to BS) - check. What about the in-game choices? Well, there’s the fact that Naval forces to overcommit, the fact that you usually have to search for the second piece on round 1, have to try to protect the pieces, have to play them instead of playing something that drives your deck’s main focus… Looks like we got that one as well - check.

Such gimmicky combo-based decks were much better before the previous FAQ, since the popularity of The Long Voyage was keeping the amount of Control decks small, and TLV decks themselves were bad at effectively interrupting their opponent, since the larger decksize made running and drawing specific counters much more difficult. But now those slim 60-card stacks are back, while influence-based Control decks have more efficient searching (Desperate Measures) to boot. The times are just not the best for black-sailed stags.

One of the problems with gimmicks are that there is the ever tempting option of starting to protect them, at all costs. While there’s nothing wrong with running a few always useful Paper Shields or maybe a Retreat or two, the more energy you spend on trying to protect your combo with conditional counters or protections, the more it dilutes the actual functionality of your deck. With Baratheon this goes even further, since building those counters in is also adding to your draw-reliance and dropping your deck's speed that much more. Again, you end up trading away pure efficiency due to the over-reliance on a single combo. Taking a page from the classic ‘DC Meta’ style of building decks - a good deck is made of only good cards.

In search of a truly competitive Baratheon build

However, the issue here runs a bit deeper. Out of the box, all Baratheon decks are awfully prone to being interrupted, due to the very advantage that playing Baratheon provides - jaw-dropping characters and power gain. Building a competitive Baratheon deck is not just about slapping on card advantage to make it work, it’s a lot more about finding ways to make your deck less susceptible to interruption without diluting it.

And that’s really where Black Sails fails for Baratheon. It just adds more stuff for your opponent to interrupt, instead of trying to strip your opponent from being able interrupt you, or wielding such speed and efficiency that your opponent can’t keep up. Coincidentally, for a while now, two of the best competitive decktypes for Baratheon have been Knights and Wildlings. They offer those exact things. And if you’re really in love with the Val and TLS combo, you can also run them in either of those two decks - to good effect, one might add. Now, if you're still dead set on building a truly competitive Baratheon Black Sails, it's probably much better to drop the gimmick and focus on finding ways of mitigating those weaknesses, without losing any of the build's inherent strengths - aggressiveness and speed.

I need to reiterate that this article is very much a personal opinion, so I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the matter. Do you know of a way to make BS resistant enough to Control? Do you have another solution to working with Black Sails without losing deck efficiency? Is there a better, more robust, combo that can be achieved via Naval Reinforcements? Or do you have another deck in mind that could be the competitive Baratheon build in the environment? Let me know in the comments below!