All Things Shagga- Combos Along the Narrow Sea

Hello guys, first of all, two warnings: this is my first article (and actually my very first post at all at CardgameDB), so it might not be as shamelessly goat-rapingly brilliant as previous All-Things-Shagga installments. Moreover, I am German, which not only will make my English sound weird at times, but also means that I don't (yet) have access to all goats and cycles. In Germany we still have to wait for the King´s Landing, Defenders of the North, Brotherhood without Banners, Tale of Champions and the Beyond the Narrow Sea cycles to be published. But I think that the limited German card pool does not impair this deck that much. On OCTGN I play against anyone and have largely positive results. Anyways, let´s get started!

Actually, I have played Stark since I started the AGoT LCG and brought a Stark deck with Stark power counters and Stark deck sleeves to all tourneys I participated in. But in the last one (Regional in Jena on May 25) I won a House Baratheon super special House Card (the black stone tablet with an engraved stag). In my mind that felt as if I had “unlocked” a new House to play with, and I tried long and hard to develop a deck that combines the strengths of Baratheon and Stark, which I take to be recursion and searching for cards.

The Conquest Agenda very much encourages such thinking outside the box and has made all kinds of fusions viable. Bara-Stark though, is not one of the most prized marriages: they do share the Narrow Sea, but there are not really many salient synergies, and above all, there are so many other Houses that present the prospect of quick victory (Lannister or Martell with some renown – you probably know what I am talking about).

What I came up with in the end is this (I´ll give you the list now and discuss it in the following):

House:
Baratheon

Agenda: (1)

1x Conquest (Spoils of War)



Plot: (7)

1x Valar Morghulis (Core Set)

1x Common Cause (Fire Made Flesh)

1x Redwyne Straits (Forgotten Fellowship)

1x Rule by Decree (Core Set)

2x The Power of Arms (Core Set)

1x Waste Their Time (Queen of Dragons)



Character: (30)

3x Highgarden Refugee (Refugees of War)

3x Jeyne Westerling (A Song of Summer)

3x Sansa Stark (A Hidden Agenda)

2x Vanguard Lancer (Kings of the Storm)

1x Marya Seaworth (Kings of the Storm)

1x Selyse Baratheon (Core Set)

3x Ashemark Knight (Forgotten Fellowship)

1x Maester Cressen (A Hidden Agenda)

1x Ser Garlan Tyrell (Fire and Ice)

1x Ser Edmure Tully (The Champion's Purse)

3x Robert Baratheon (Kings of the Sea)

1x Northern Cavalry Flank (Scattered Armies)

1x King Balon's Host (The War of the Five Kings)

1x King Robb's Host (The War of the Five Kings)

1x King Robert's Host (The War of the Five Kings)

3x The Viper's Bannermen (Princes of the Sun)

1x Warrior's Sons (Lions of the Rock)



Event: (10)

3x Desperate Measures (The Captain's Command)

3x See who is Stronger (Kings of the Storm)

1x Nightmares (Lords of Winter)

2x Supported by the Smith (A Journey's End)

1x The Price of War (Kings of the Sea)



Location: (20)

1x King Robert's Chambers (Core Set)

2x Stormlands Fiefdoms (Core Set)

1x Lord Eddard's Chambers (Core Set)

3x Narrow Sea (Core Set)

3x Kingsroad Fiefdom (Queen of Dragons)

1x Street of Silk (Lions of the Rock)

1x Street of Sisters (Core Set)

1x Street of Steel (Core Set)

1x Fury (A Journey's End)

1x Southron Stronghold (The Banners Gather)

1x Karhold Rookery (Called by the Conclave)

1x The Iron Throne (Lions of the Rock)

3x Shivering Sea (Kings of the Sea)



Now some explanations:

Jeyne searches for Robert. You want them both out, preferably duped. Though it does not entirely depend on him, King Robert is what makes this deck shine. I have nine “Any Phase:” events that can be recurred and found again. The deck size will decrease rapidly thanks to Desperate Measures, so you can count on drawing into the events you shuffled back.
Marya and Fury stand Robert.
Sansa searches for anything and places it right where you need it. If she dies (for claim, mayhaps), Edmure can help her to make a re-apperance.
Desperate Measures gives you things to work with. Note that there is 1x Karhold Rookery to make it even better.
As restricted card I chose the Viper´s Bannermen for obvious reasons. They are never played from hand, of course, but rather revived by See who is Stronger. Other armies are the big 8-STR hosts and Northern Cavalry Flank. Also targets for See who is Stronger: Edmure and Ashemark Knight.
Speaking of which: Ashemark Knight OOH is really worth it, even in setup. He brings you to the drawcap all by himself while putting things where you need them.
Ashemark Knight, Bannermen plus Jenyne and Robert are characters with 4 different House affiliations. The new Common Cause Plot is a natural fit here. If you revive King Balon´s Host, you could make claim 5 challenges (which only happend once so far and resulted in an immediate rage-quit on OCTGN).

Thoughts on play:

Influence is key. That is why some sub-par cards like Vanguard Lancer and Shivering Sea are in there. Many people nowadays think it is funny to steal your Kingsroad Fiefdom with Support of the Kingdom. So you might want to defend those seemingly harmless power challenges. Military and Intrigue challenges on the other hand should not worry you too much: Kill some Refugee or fill up your Discard Pile, no problem!
Be prepared for long matches. You have so many things to do, from the first round on, and your Discard Pile is not going to get smaller!
Watch out for prized! It is a good thing that duplicates do not have affiliations, but still – in the course of a game, you might end up giving your opponent 4-5 power. Try to keep score when thinking about Valaring the board.
Setups are somewhat sub-par with a deck that runs these big-ass armies and ten events (but far from terrible!). But, with Redwyne Straits you can turn this in your favor. Once I did not place a fifth card in setup in order to get the extra gold from Straits.
In later rounds, it turns out that the deck does not need much gold at all. It all works via Influence and See who is Stronger. This is why I currently run Waste their Time for the Lategame (but there have to be better options?).
Supported by the Smith is awesome! You even have two holy crests (Selyse and Warrior´s Sons) that you can use to pay for it. Fetch back a Kingsroad Fiefdom, use Robert´s ability and do it all over again... It also fetches Southron Stronghold which is a bit costly, but another valuable discard outlet (not to mention the Iron Throne!)
For location control, you have Price of War. This is the only event that is not “Any Phase:”, so Robert cannot recycle it. But Maester Cressen can and will (or Edmure, if need be)!
Here we have a deck that could make good use of the Warrior´s Sons. They offer two valuable crests, a nifty ability and have the army trait. In theory, this could be awesome, but I have not yet much experience with them.

Further Development

Anyone should feel free to try out this deck and make suggestions. One obvious improvement would be River Plots (everybody fancies them now), but in Germany we don´t yet have the Rivers from the Valar Morghulis / Valar Dohaeris chapter packs. Especially the Plot Deck is still work in progress. I´m not set on anything except Valar, Redwyne Straits and Common Cause.
Robert is a king and wants to be the only one. Right now, Nightmares in hand is your only answer to opposing kings for one last event recursion... or Valar. Maybe some targeted kill effects can be incorporated? At least Robert is not vulnerable to Burning Bridges, I think, because his is a gained ability.
What I have on my list to try out: Ser Parmen Crane, Stay of Execution, and maybe Old Nan to have more control over the king trait... Warrior´s Sons is what I am testing right now, since they seem to fit in nicely, but I can´t tell yet.
I cannot yet report how this deck fares against various archetypes because I have not played enough to have any significant results. But as far as I can tell I am quite satisfied.

That´s pretty much it... There are surely some little synergies I have not mentioned, but I think you get the idea. Although I combined goats from 5 different herds to feast on, I´m sure there are some I didn´t catch, so I´d be happy to get some feedback. Thanks for reading!

-Itachi


Thanks, Itachi, for submitting a great guest article for the All Things Shagga column. It's great to see that solid Shagga decks can be played in even a limited card pool and I've been hearing a lot about the German cardpool lately. Best of all, it's a deck that's near and dear to my own personal goat, the Re-Army-nator!
-Kennon