Ours is the Fury - Baratheon Resilience, Part 3

Baratheon Resilience - Part 3

This week in Ours is the Fury we bring our trek into Baratheon Resilience to a close, by looking at neutral options with particularly auspicious synergies to either the Baratheon cardpool or playstyle. Since the subject matter here is quite vast, we'll take a slightly different approach this time, and narrow our concentration to both the most important Recursion & Prevention cards and those that can be especially helpful for Baratheon in the current meta.

We will also be limiting our targets to actual Prevention and Recursion cards, instead of looking at enablers or discard engines, thus leaving those for our readers to discover by themselves.

Acknowledged All-Stars

Let's start off with those cards that any prospective Baratheon player should really be acquainted with, the ones that so often stand between glorious victory and shameful rout.

Narrow Escape (KotStorm) – Even after countless erratas and eventual restriction, Narrow Escape is still one of the strongest recursion cards available in the game. If your Baratheon deck is lacking in card advantage, can't keep a stable board-presence after a Valar Morghulis (Core) or just tends to start off slow... consider running it. For most Baratheon decks, Narrow Escape just tends to be the most efficient restricted card out there. However, when running it, make sure you have enough intrigue or other hand protection (like The Laughing Storm (GotC)) to keep it safe until the right moment. Best thing about Narrow Escape? He Calls It Thinking (PotS) doesn't work on it.

Paper Shield (QoD) – Stark will kill your powerful uniques, GJ will cancel your effects, Targ will use Forever Burning round after round to bring your 3 STR characters into burning range... and there's not much in the Baratheon cardpool to help stop any of it. Here's where Paper Shields, the de facto neutral event cancel comes in. If for nothing else, then to cancel your opponent's Paper Shields.

Now, as a Baratheon player there's one thing about Paper Shield's you have to realize: Their effectiveness depends on you having card advantage. If you're not drawing much, then wasting a card for a conditional 1-for-1 cancel is probably not what you would want to accomplish. Here at Storm's End we don't have the luxury of Martell KotHH players of wasting an event slot on a card that may very well sit in your hand for most of the game. Unless of course, if that one cancel helps you close the game out before your opponent's card advantage will help them take control of the game. When running Paper Shields, be mindful of what you're running them for, and whether they're really helping or hindering your deck. Your mileage, will quite definitely vary.

Many Powers Long Asleep (RoR) – For any Baratheon Asshai / Holy build Many Powers Long Asleep should really be an auto-include. The biggest problems for Baratheon decks tend to be bouncing back from having your board cleared, and this helps with that regard beautifully. And as it's a plot, you don't have to rely on drawing anything, but are able to get the recursion on demand. Even if the only Holy character you're running is three copies of Melisandre (RotO), this will usually pull it's own weight in longer games. Think of it as a more Baratheon-friendly late-game version of At the Gates (GotC).

Fear of Winter (BtW) – Probably the strongest card in the game for creating virtual card advantage. Now here's a card that truly deserves it's restricted status. Stopping your opponent's card advantage from mattering for one round and thus 'locking' the board position is something aggressive Baratheon -builds can easily turn to their advantage, and this makes this one a tough competitor for your restricted card. Too bad you can't run both this and Narrow Escape (KotStorm) in the same deck anymore...

The Power of Blood (Core) – This card is the one reason why Baratheon Noble-rush has been, and to a lesser degree still is, a force to be reckoned with. Properly timed and well-played it can give you the time required to close out the game with your power-laden renown characters. For several years of the LCG, it was the defining card for competitive Baratheon decks. However, with control having stepped up in efficiency, relying only on saves and the prevention from Power of Blood to overcome your lack of card advantage has become more of a gamble than a solid stratagem. That said, even more recent, less Noble-rush oriented, Baratheon decks tend to feature a decent amount of Nobles and thus can benefit from this greatly.

Usual Suspects

In addition to the obvious ”money cards”, there's also a set of cards that are often seen in Baratheon decks as common meta-answers to various other decks.

Burning Bridges (QoD) – One of the most solid prevention cards in the game, and one that can easily rob your opponents Maesters of their toolbox, control-decks from their location-based effects and Greyjoy of their location-based saves. With a hefty 5 gold income, this is certainly a card that you should consider for Baratheon decks running a large amount of uniques with passive Prevention effects. Want to do something fun? Time this against a GJ Maester's Valar Morghulis (Core)...

The Hand's Judgement (TTotH) – Paper Shield (QoD) doesn't cancel Red Vengeance (PotS), Westeros Bleeds (Core) or Incinerate (VM), but this does. That alone should be enough reason to consider running it. The biggest problem here is that due to timing, you often won't have gold to pay when your opponent goes for a The Hatchlings' Feast (ASitD), so you have to look elsewhere for answers to that. Bonus points for not getting cancelled by your opponent's Paper Shield.

Forgotten Plans (KotStorm) – While this already works better against theThe Hatchlings' Feast (ASitD) & Threat from the North (PotS) combo, it's still nowhere near a silver-bullet to it. The primary reasons for running this tend to be against KotHH decks with The First Snow of Winter (ODG), especially if your deck is running a healthy contingent of 0-2 gold characters.

Fortified Position (LoW) – Beric Dondarrion (IG). Street Waif (AToT)s and Long Lances (THoBaW). The Viper's Bannermen (PotS) that are considering Manning the City Walls (CD), and other character-based draw engines. There's a lot of tricky characters out there that could do with a solid kick in the shins, and a well-timed Fortified Position will usually do the trick. However, running this plot in Baratheon tends to have both it's pros and cons... it nicely fills up the lack of solid character-control, but also causes you to lose one of your most important advantages. You know, those powerful Baratheon uniques, that are just really nice and balanced, and definately don't want a kick in the shins...

Hidden Gems

And finally, in the spirit of Staton's Forgotten Plans articles, let's look at some neutral Prevention and Recursion cards that really aren't seeing nearly as much play in Baratheon as they should.

Calm Over Westeros (Core) & Calm Before the Storm (LoW) – Baratheon doesn't really revel in powerful events, and the lack of card advantage tends to force you into running even less of them. So in most matchups, both of these will usually give you a decent advantage by forcing your opponent to spend extra resources for their events, or stop them from being played at all.

Retreat (Core) – With burn and character ability cancel on the rise, it can be pretty difficult to keep a unique character from being killed. Retreat is one of the best neutral solutions for working around this (due to being a replacement effect and not a save), and it fits Baratheon beautifully due to the number of powerful uniques. However, similarly to Narrow Escape (KotStorm), remember to make sure that you are actually able to hold the event until you are able to use it... since both events tend to be dead weight if your hand is being constantly depleted by intrigue challenges.

Lord of Light, Protect Us (RoR) – There's not a lot of good character ability cancel in Baratheon, but our old friend ”LoL” is one of the sharpest Boar Spears available. Bouncing something like a The Viper's Bannermen (PotS) or Long Lances (THoBaW) after it attempts to trigger it's effect can be... priceless. And due to the Asshai -requirement it could just as well say ”House Baratheon Only”.

Stay of Execution (KotS) – One of the solidest Power Struggle plots available, Stay of Execution tends to be a natural fit for Bara-decks due to the number of good Kings available.

Wildling Wisewoman (TWH) – While mostly something that you would tend to find in Baratheon Wildlings, this one packs a pretty mean cancel punch... Why, you ask? There's two important things to notice: 1) she also works on passives (due to not specifying triggered effect) so she can even cancel draw from your opponent's Golden Tooth Mines (Core) and 2) since the wording states ”that would allow” she can pretty much hit almost any effect with the word draw in it, from the likes of Threat from the East (QoD) to Parting Blow (PotS). For some discussion on this, see here. Pretty nifty, eh?

Epilogue

Our three-part trek through the Resilience options available for Baratheon has been a long and arduous one, but hopefully it has given us some deeper understanding of the different types of tools at our disposal. Understanding that we can then use to leverage just the right cards into any Stag-powered builds we create.

An observant reader will notice the complete lack of Maester-related Recursion and Prevention effects in our look at neutral options. The reason for this is quite simple. Even though I'm not personally a big fan of Maesters, it would be quite prejudical of me to cover Baratheon without looking at one of their best competitive builds. To this end, I have tried to overcome my personal feelings on the matter and spent quite a lot of time lately playing Baratheon Maesters in various forms... So, from the next article onwards, Ours is the Fury will be following in the steps of our esteemed colleague JCWamma's GJ articles and taking a field-trip to Oldtown.