Preamble:
I have a friend that started playing A Game of Thrones with me. He had never played a CCG before, so we stuck mainly to the Core Set decks. He's picking up the game nicely; he's already beaten me with Baratheon a couple of times. At one point, I threw in the Kings from Kings of the Sea into the decks for fun, but he got a little intimidated when Joffrey Baratheon started to accumulate gold, and his King was already in the discard pile. So we removed the Kings and returned to the Core Set decks.
I persuaded him to buy his own Core Set, which he has. Our games are getting more even now; last night, I managed a very narrow victory of 15-14 running Stark vs. Lannister. It went 7 rounds, and if it had gone an eighth round, he would have won.
His birthday is coming up, so I decided to get him a present that would ease him into deckbuilding and running tournament-legal decks. So I bought him the Winds of Winter + Song of Summer + Change of Seasons. I figure that it will give him the capacity to build both Summer and Winter decks, and if he ever decides to pick up some other chapter packs, he won't get stuck with a winter or summer card that he can't use because he doesn't have the ravens.
I also thought I would see if I could build some decks out of just the core set and those chapter packs. Since he likes Baratheon, I built a decklist for both a Winter and a Summer Baratheon deck, and also a Stark winter and a Targaryen summer deck. I'm going to post these here, each in a seperate thread. My experience in Game of Thrones is actually fairly limited, so if anyone had any advice or feedback on how to build these decks better (using just the materials I've listed), I would love to hear it.
Burning Man: Summer Targaryen (61)
Agenda (1)
The Kings of Summer
Characters (30)
Brown Ben Plumm
Viserys Targaryen
Illyrio's Man
Quaithe of the Shadow
Dany's Handmaiden
Qartheen Fanatic
Maester Aemon (ravens)
Captain Groleo
Daenerys Targaryen
Strong Belwas
Daario Naharis
Xaro Xoan Daxos
Jhogo
The Titan's Bastard
Pentoshi Guildmaster
Fairweather Followers x3
Red Warlock
Khal Drogo
Rhaegal x2
Drogon
Viserion
Dothraki Honor Guard
Warlock's Servitors
Illyrio
Carrion Bird x3
Locations (16)
Xaro's Home x1
Summer Sea x1
Temple of the Graces x2
Eastern Fiefdoms x3
Khal Drogo's Tent x1
Great Pyramid x1
Crossroads x3
Streets of Steel x1
Street of Sisters x1
Shadowblack Lane x1
Lady Daenerys's Chambers x1
Attachments (9)
Black Raven x3
Aegon's Blade
Poisoned Wine
Flame-Kissed
Dragon Sight
The Long Summer
Blood of the Dragon
Events (5)
Dragon Attack x3
Dance with Dragons x1
Forever Burning x1
Plots (7)
Time of Ravens x1
Song of Summer x1
Summoning Season x1
Power of Blood x1
Counting Favors x1
Mutual Cause x1
Wildfire Assault x1
Strategy:
This deck takes advantage of the obvious Targaryen/Summer synergy, which is most profoundly expressed by the “Dragon Sight” attachment. When running this deck, make it Summer as soon as possible, and then get “Dragon Sight” into play. Your opponent will have to select defenders before you select attackers, which will allow you to pick and choose your challenges while your opponent wastes resources trying to defend himself. Beyond that, there are the Fairweather Followers, who stand each time an event card is played, if it is Summer. Once you have “Forever Burning” in your hand, that will practically guarantee that the Fairweather Followers will be attacking twice per turn. There is some enhanced burn support with three copies of “Dragon Attack.” If you can get "Blood of the Dragon" on the Fairweather Followers, you'll effectively be able to play "Dragon Attack" for free (the Followers kneel to pay the cost of Dragon Attack, then stand because the event card is played.
