Ours is the Fury - Baratheon Resilience, Part 2

Baratheon Resilience – Part 2

This week in Ours is the Fury we're continuing on the path begun last week of looking at the current cardpool in regard to Baratheon Resilience. Since we already covered Recursion, this week it's time for Prevention.

Now, Baratheon prevention in AGoT is an aggregate of three distinct things – immunities, saves and denial. Some of those three themes have gotten weaker as the LCG has expanded, while others have only gained in potency. So, without further ado, let's start strapping on the armor and see if the King has truly become too fat for it.

Immunities

Anyone who has played other cardgames will know that immunities can often win you games, especially when they are on high impact characters. In AGoT this is quite nicely epitomized by that Martell heartthrob The Red Viper (PotS), who wouldn't be nearly as scary if he could be easily targeted with a timely No Quarter (TBC).

By themselves immunities provide you with virtual card advantage (stopping your opponent from using certain cards, at least to their maximum effectiveness), but some of them can also be combined with blanket removal effects in order to create very real board advantage.

Immune to Events:

Stormlands Smuggler (ASoSilence) – Immunity to Events is one of the stronger immunities in the AGoT cardpool, so this little guy shouldn't be dismissed right out of hand. A character who can safely challenge through A Game of Cyvasse (ACoS) is nothing to scoff at. Minus points for the low strength and weird trait... A Raider in Baratheon, and not a Smuggler? Honestly...

Davos's Confidant (TBC) – Only immune to your opponents events, which is both a boon and a minus. The Ally trait hurts, and there's always the off chance that your opponent isn't actually running an Agenda. Nothing to write home about.

Cannot be Discarded/Killed:

Stannis's Northern Cavalry (Core) – This card should effectively read: ”Cannot be removed by burn.” Which isn't at all bad, especially with the deadly and tie-in's to Army tech.

King's Champion (AE) – One of the wierder cards in the LCG cardpool. Why can't he have that immunity and icon just printed? Anyway, an immunity to Westeros Bleeds (Core) and Threat from the North (PotS) based burn is not that bad, and the Knight trait is ok. Still, Baratheon is usually able to get so much more for 3g.

Knight of the Rainwood (Core) – Solid weenie with immunity to discard and 'no attachments except Weapon'. Can be pretty hard to remove by burn decks, and can be used to fill up the ranks in a Knight deck if you're not running influence (and thus want Vanguard Lancer (KotStorm) instead).

Immune to Location Abilities:

Stannis Baratheon (VM) – Now this is what an immunity character should look like. An impressive powerhouse, that's hard to deal with. Sincerely competes for the King slot for many Baratheon decks. The Scourge (ODG), Pentoshi Manor (AHM) or Bear Island (AE) giving you problems? Consider running Stannis.

Immune to Character Abilities:

Renly Baratheon (Core) and Brienne of Tarth (Core) – Both of these pale quite badly in comparison to their other versions... so you will rarely play either. Although, Renly is actually yet another character that can "break" Maester chains by forming a stand-loop via Steel Link (TIoR), Apprentice Collar (GotC) and any influence-providing location, so you actually can possibly use him in a Maester build.

Card Effects:

Burning Sword (ACoS) – Now here's an interesting card, which can be used to grant the strongest immunity in the game, though only for a phase. Helping Melisandre (RotO) walk nonchalantly through a Valar Morghulis (Core) is definately not a card to be scoffed at. Too bad positive attachments, especially 2g ones, are a dying breed.

Immunity Support Cards:

Banner Bearer (THoBaW) – With the usual clause on attachments being vulnerable, this one works quite nicely for spreading around immunity keywords.

Overall:

Now, what does the look at Immunities provide us with? Out of all of those, the only card that really shines is the new Stannis. However, there's an interesting point here to be made. Notice the several Cannot be discarded and Immune to Events characters? If you combine those with Baratheon's penchant for discard pile recursion (that we talked about last week), running Westeros Bleeds (Core) as a one-sided aggressive reset could be a feasible path for our House to consider. Especially when Valar Morghulis (Core) really usually isn't a good choice for a house with card advantage issues, and a pure liability against GJ or Targaryen. This line of approach is also supported by the new plot Melisandre's Scheme (RotK) allowing you to play all of those discarded characters right back again...

Saves

Here be where the squidpeople walk. Since the advent of the LCG saves have been a crucial part of the Baratheon arsenal, almost to the same extent as GJ's. Usually most of Baratheon's saves tend to arise from copious running of duplicates in order to carry renown characters through Valar Morghulis (Core), but we also have some in-house methods of saving.

However, with burn and cancel on the rise, this theme has been receding and weakening fast lately. This development has been sped up by the fact that while we have plenty of positive attachments (that could be used to raise strength and resist burn), those same cards are nigh unplayable due to Tin Link (CbtC).

Duplicate Tech:

Loyal Guard (WotN) – A decent support card for Noble -decks. However, the weakening of saves holds double for duplicates, since with the advent of cards like The Iron Throne (LotR) and Sunspear Tourney Grounds (ODG), they tend to get cancelled even more than other saves.

Ser Davos Seaworth (WLL) – One of the nicest cards for easily bringing Baratheon decks a little more resilience, and it also doubles in providing cards to your discard pile for recursion. Bonus points for triggering also when put into play via recursion (or other card effects). After the current CP cycle, the Smuggler trait will probably more than make up for it's lack of a Lord trait.

Other save abilities:

Ser Davos Seaworth (Core) – One of the early defining cards of Baratheon prevention. Bonus points for also working against burn, but lacks the all important stealth keyword shared by it's two competitors.

Ser Davos Seaworth (TBoBB) – A very different save ability, one that actually works on attachments. While you cannot use this to re-use one-time cards like Bodyguard (Core), it can help in protecting other resilience providing attachments. There are also some interesting aggressive uses for this Davos, such as the quirky Demon's Dance (ACoS) decks.

Ser Parmen Crane (KotStorm) – Another defining card for prevention in Baratheon. The save ability provided to Lords can be huge in the right deck.

Save attachments:

Lightbringer (Core) – This card used to be a 1-2x staple in Baratheon decks until the Secrets of Oldtown cycle. Why? It was a staple for providing easy re-usable prevention. Why not anymore? Yup, it's Tin Link (CbtC) again. The 2g is just too much to pay for something as vulnerable as an attachment in the current meta.

Overall:

All in all, the tale of Baratheon saves is a lament. In the current meta, saving is probably best left to the squidpeople, since they can back theirs up with redundancy and more cancel than there are caskets of Rum on a Raider ship. The only exception to all of this is Davos, who you should probably be running at least one copy of. Any version will do, really.

Denial

While saves are getting less and less efficient and powerful characters with immunities are still quite rare, there's clearly a rising star in the Baratheon prevention arsenal. If you can't weather it or save yourself from it, what can you do? Pr​event your opponent from ever doing it in the first place!

Denial Characters:

Brienne of Tarth (PotS) – Probably one of the strongest denial cards in the game. Nothing says denial like cannot trigger effects. If there's one piece of denial every Baratheon deck needs to have, this is it.

Stannis Baratheon (KotStorm) – Denial in a different manner, this time stopping your opponent (and you for that matter) from drawing through card effects. This is one of those cards that is very close to working, but it has problems with the fact that it can be hard to draw into him in the first place, let alone keep him alive. However, these both problems can probably be alleviated by running him with the new Black Sails (RotK) Agenda, where you'd rather have recursion over draw to begin with (so that you don't run out of cards), and the associated search plot Naval Reinforcements (RotK) will help in searching for him round 1.

The Laughing Storm (GotC) – Another of Baratheon's strongest denial cards, and also one that you should probably run in every single Baratheon deck. He protects your hand from intrigue and hand destruction, forms draw combos with Val (RotO) and Threat from the East (QoD)... and still manages to have a strong keyword, good traits and a crest. Now that's efficiency.

King Robert's Host (TWot5K) – It's big (hard to burn), often cheap (all Baratheon decks tend to run at least one King) and locks out a whole challenge type while standing. Certainly something you should consider, especially in combination with See who is Stronger (KotStorm) or other Army-tech.

Melisandre (Core) – This is another card that used to be a Baratheon staple, but has since fallen by the side due to the increase in both hard removal and blanking. The problem with her nowadays is that unlike Jhalabar Xho (TWot5K), she doesn't exactly stop your opponent from gaining power on characters, only from winning with it.

Rotten Bastard (HtS) – And finally there's this little runt. A weenie with a passive denial ability seems to be a bit counter-intuitive, since usually you want to keep your denial cards in play, not kill them for claim. However, this could possibly have a place alongside Stannis in adding more ways to choke draw effects. If you can spare the deckspace.

Other Denial Cards:

Snowed In (ARotD) – An interesting recent addition to the Baratheon Denial arsenal, allowing you to close down some of your opponents key characters for a phase. Playing against Martell KotHH and fearing a first round Manning the City Walls (CD) for a The Viper's Bannermen (PotS)? No problem. Wintertime Marauders (ACoS) looking at your nonunique resource locations gleefully? Easily handled. However, the denial here comes at a cost. While you're stopping your opponent from triggering important effects, you're also spending a card to do so, and thus emptying out your hand. Now, this is a problem that can probably be worked around. How? Well, this might be the right time to start considering some of those event recursion cards we were looking at last week. Robert Baratheon (KotS) and Pyre of the False Gods (KotStorm) are the first ones to come to mind.

The Painted Table (TBC) – Now this card is one complicated mess. At first, it might seem like just the card that Baratheon denial was waiting for. However, you can rarely rely on it actually cancelling what you want it to cancel, can you? And there's also the fact that Targaryen can just play one of their Ambush characters into play and thus negate you from ever actually cancelling anything. Why? Since Ambush is an uncancellable triggered effect. However, this card probably has it's place in decks that rely mainly on strong passive power gain and denial effects to win the day, so that you are not hampering your own choices, only making your opponent's that much harder.

Overall:

Baratheon denial, mainly from the mentioned T1 characters, is probably one of the strongest weapons we have in our disposal, and any deck you build out of Baratheon should try to utilize it as much as possible.

Final Thoughts

In the current environment, the strengths of the Baratheon Prevention arsenal clearly lie in strong unique characters with denial abilities. The only question is then how to keep them in play? Usually this is best accomplished by running several copies of each of them, but mainly to ensure that you draw into them, and not even expecting to rely on the duplicates for saves. Rather, you should try to combine the denial characters with recursion effects (like Fiery Kiss (ODG)), so that you can maintain the passive locks on your opponent's game.

That's not to say that saves and immunities aren't strong or shouldn't be utilized, especially in faster decks they can help you maintain the pressure on your opponent. However, if you're going to run saves, it would probably be a good idea to risk a few positive attachments (preferably unique ones, since Targaryen players only tend to run Dragon Thief (AE) for attachments these days), so that you can stay the burn onslaught... or even run a Paper Shield (QoD) or two for insurance.

Most of you will probably notice that there's a huge The Power of Blood (Core) -shaped hole in the side of my discussion about prevention. For the discussion on selected important neutral resilience cards that fit the Baratheon Warhorse, come back next time for our concluding Part 3, when we take a look at both the neutral recursion and prevention possibilities.