All Things Shagga - The Top Shagga: King's Landing

Welcome back to another enthralling entry in our very own All Things Shagga column! This week, we’ll be continuing our trek down memory lane with a look at the top 5 Shagga cards from the King’s Landing Cycle. This was a phenomenal cycle that added the influential Shadows mechanic to the game, and if I had to make my pick, would probably be the top Shagga set of all time. There are so many great choices here that it’s a little difficult to narrow it down. For the time being though, these are my top 5:

The Queen of Thorns (TftRK): The witty old witch here is a beast of a win condition. While she isn’t actually an engine herself, she is pretty simply what the engine will be driving home. If you haven’t heard me talk about it before, I’ll sketch out the rough idea here (for a full article and decklist on this combo see this previous All Things Shagga Queen of Shadows). What you do is use a White Raven (TWoW) or other card to make it Winter. Now make certain that you have Hidden Chambers (CoS) in play and the Queen of Thorns and Sister of Truth (KotStorm). The Hidden Chambers will lower the cost of bringing the two Shadows characters into play by 1, which lowers them to 0. Once you bring out the Queen of Thorns, she can claim a power in response to herself. Next phase, bring out the Sister and then target herself with her ability. This sends her back into Shadows immediately and primes her for next phase, while allowing the QoT to claim power. This can be extremely hard for an opponent to interact with if timed well.

Abandoned Forge (AToT): This one is a little bit trickier, because it appears to be an engine without a home. Abandoned Forge searches up all of the attachments that you might need and lets you set up something particularly sweet. There are, however, two caveats. 1. All the attachments have to be weapons and 2. No one seems to have quite found out what to do with them all. The best plans I’ve seen so far revolve around assembling a large Voltron character. So far, I’ve seen Renly/KoF being loaded up with Aegon's Blade (Core), Hunting Spear (BoRF) and the like and a Hand of the King deck that used it to search up Dawn (TRS) and others to load up Ser Arthur Dayne (TWoW). I love that the search scales to whatever amount of gold that you have left and I can’t help but feel that we’re one interesting weapon attachment away from really having something powerful here.

Open Market (ASoS): Do I really need to say anything else about this one at this point? It’s one of the best engines in the game, and you can read my article from a couple weeks back (Martell/Lannister Recursion) for information on one potentially brutal way to abuse it. Expect me to revisit this one eventually.

Rhaenys's Hill (TBoBB): Ok, ok, I’m cheating on this one a bit, because I think you really need to include Aegon's Hill (TTotH) and Visenya's Hill (SaS) here as well. Rhaeny’s Hill, however, is the one that really makes a Hill deck possible (though Aegon’s has proven itself as a Jaime tournament staple). While you can certainly chain the three together to move a large number of key characters into the opponent’s dead pile and then take a gigantic, hopefully game ending swing, there are also a variety of ways to fill that dead pile with Targaryen burn or resets like Valar Morghulis. I can see potentially interesting builds working with this out of house as well. Martell decks with access to To the Spears! (PotS) might very well be able to put this to good use. In particular, I think this stands a chance to really let a player close out a game in Melee, where a higher percentage of characters that you might get back from the dead pile are likely to have renown or other means of gaining the power necessary to close out the game for you.

Small Council Chamber (SaS): Again we have a case of an engine that just doesn't quite seem to have gotten there yet. Small Council Chamber, however, is probably much closer than Abandoned Forge is at the moment. Small Council events are, by and large, more game changing in effect than the current weapon attachments are likely to be. Current standouts are Condemned by the Council (AToT) and Questioned Claim (AE). Both of these can put a cramp on the opponent when returned over and over again. Likewise, You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf! (Core) becomes strong repeatable control (particularly when combined with nobles and Joffrey Baratheon) but potentially becomes a repeatable source of power for yourself! As well, Lie for Your King! (BoRF) offers some possibilities to keep the cycle of other Small Council events going. Bonus points are awarded here to Small Council Chamber because as it goes into and out of Shadows repeatedly, it actually combines with our previously mentioned Queen of Thorns.

There you have it, folks, a look at possibly the most Shagga set in existence. What would be in your top 5? Blackwater Bay? Balon Greyjoy? (Hint, those were surely in the short draft of cards that I pulled for the list, and both are likely to feature in future decks.)