All Things Shagga - Kingsguard

In a very special World Championship Weekend week installment, All Things Shagga is going to turn to the new hotness. How do we here in the All Things Shagga offices know that it will be the new hotness? Ok, well, we have to admit that we don’t know. Much like all you readers, we were just as surprised when the new Kingsguard chapter pack released just a couple short weeks before the WCW and is indeed marked as legal! As shocking as the timing is, the contents of the pack are indeed pretty exciting and the Kingsguard themselves feature some neat interlocking abilities with several moving pieces that appeal to the Shagga in me. Conveniently, they also look to be pretty powerful, so I have a feeling that we’ll see quite a few of them in the championship tournament.

The Cards:

Ser Barristan Selmy- Barristan is the first part of the engine that really makes the gears start turning. As Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Selmy orders your Kingsguard out of Shadows and into battle, and the best part is that he can avoid the standard Shadows action, which helps to keep you from getting a glut of Shadows cards that you can’t bring out fast enough to impact the board against an opponent whose cards don’t bear a “once per phase” restriction due to their crest.

Ser Preston Greenfield- The second part of the engine, Greenfield is the fuel to Selmy’s ignition. For the low, low cost of free, Greenfield can continue to send a Kingsguard back into Shadows so that they can be brought out to trigger effects again and again. This ability can also be judiciously used to help your Kingsguard dodge impending resets. Of course, you do still need to be careful to keep a steady flow of characters out of Shadows so that they don’t become stymied, so make sure you keep Selmy around to use in conjunction.

Ser Jaime Lannister- Easily the best of the Kingsguard that trigger on a card coming out of Shadows, Jaime is a fantastic draw engine. Draw = win as an acquaintance of mine is fond of saying, and Jaime will easily draw you at least a card a turn in this deck, and with the ability to trigger off of an opponent’s Shadows card and the number of Kingsguard in this deck, he’s likely to do substantially more. Shadows decks can be notoriously slow, so his renown is quite welcome to help speed the game as well.

The Other Kingsguard- OK, so I’m lumping the others together here because, to be honest, they aren’t at nearly the same level, though they all have interesting abilities and can be useful over the course of the game and will impact things as time goes on. Ser Meryn Trant bears special mention as an effect that actually looks quite a bit better than it is. Since your opponent gets to choose what character or location they kneel, he’ll always kneel the least impactful thing on their board, and it turns out that there are frequently some cheap locations around that your opponent miss. Thankfully, he is a bicon with stealth otherwise, which is useful. Ser Aerys Oakheart also has a fairly useful ability to stand your characters which can combine nicely so that you can get extra use out of characters or stand back up those that you’ve used for Volantis Inn or one of the events.

Muster- With a few of these Kingsguard being very valuable and all of them bearing the Knight trait, it seems awfully handy to be able to search them up on command.

Knights of the Realm- With the high concentration of Knights in the deck, we should be fairly well able to keep a higher Knight count than our opponent and in that case, Knights of the Realm is one of the best draw engines outside of The Long Voyage- and we all know what happened to that agenda….

Thoughts on Play:

Overall, the gameplan here is to play a pretty standard Lannister control deck with a Shadows bent. In particular, Alchemist’s Guild Hall is a very strong kneel card that does have the ability to act as location control in a pinch, which people frequently forget about. As well, since we’re likely to have several cards in Shadows, this version of Cersei Lannister becomes one of the most efficient kneel cards in the game. I have fond dreams of kneeling half a dozen characters with one swing. On the non-shadows control front, the recently un-restricted Pentoshi Manor provides a huge amount of versatile control to the deck. Enslaved is one of Lannister’s most powerful control options because of the two card swing that it creates. A House Divided and A Lannister Pays His Debts let us switch up the character control to make certain that our opponent’s don’t even feel safe in what to expect.

Of course, the many moving pieces of the Kingsguard are what really please my Shagga side, so On my Oath and a sly singleton Retreat help keep our woefully unique Kingsguard characters from languishing in the dead pile where we’re unable to use them, or in the case of one like Jaime or Selmy, be unable to play a duplicate that we drew later in the game. So, with that in mind, don’t be afraid to let your other characters bite the dust in order to keep Kingsguard on the table. As well, pay careful attention to when and how you use Ser Preston Greenfield, as well planned use of his ability can make some of your key Kingsguard night invulnerable to your own Valar Morghulis and/or a well telegraphed reset from an opponent. Of course, The King’s Law is a consideration as well, so be thoughtful when placing cards in Shadows and don’t leave too many there where you’ll be unable to get them out in time to avoid being discarded because Ser Barristan Selmy won’t be able to force your Kingsguard out of Shadows that turn before the end of the marshalling phase.

The Deck:

Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder

Lannister KG

Total Cards: (61)

House:
House Lannister


Agenda: (1)
1x Knights of the Realm (KotStorm)

Plot: (7)
1x City of Spiders (TftRK)
1x A City Besieged (CD)
1x City of Sin (AToT)
1x City of Soldiers (TBoBB)
1x City of Lies (CoS)
1x Valar Morghulis (Core)
1x On My Oath (TK)

Character: (34)
2x Ser Arys Oakheart (TK)
1x Ser Balon Swann (TWH)
2x Ser Barristan Selmy (TK)
1x Ser Boros Blount (TK)
1x Ser Gerold Hightower (HtS)
3x Ser Jaime Lannister (TK)
1x Ser Mandon Moore (TK)
1x Ser Meryn Trant (TK)
2x Ser Preston Greenfield (TK)
1x The Hound (TK)
1x Ser Kevan Lannister (LotR)
1x Ser Lancel Lannister (TPoL)
3x Hedge Knight (KotStorm)
1x Tommen Baratheon (SA)
2x Cersei Lannister (AToT)
1x Margaery Tyrell (AToTT)
2x Pyromancer's Apprentice (TBoBB)
1x Qyburn (SaS)
1x Tyrion Lannister (CoS)
1x Varys (SaS)
1x Littlefinger (SaS)
2x Lannisport Moneylender (LotR)
2x Lannisport Weaponsmith (Core)

Attachment: (5)
3x Pyromancer's Cache (TWot5K)
2x Enslaved (THoBaW)

Event: (7)
2x Muster (Core)
1x Retreat (Core)
2x A House Divided (WLL)
2x A Lannister Pays His Debts (Core)

Location: (15)
2x Alchemist's Guild Hall (TBoBB)
3x Kingdom of Shadows (KotS)
3x Pentoshi Manor (AHM)
1x The Iron Throne (LotR)
1x Volantis Inn (AHM)
2x Sunset Sea (Core)
3x The Goldroad (LotR)