With the discussion recently about Targ's viability, I thought I would post the decklist I used at the NYC Regional. It is a modified version of the deck that someone else in the Chicago area meta took to 2nd place in the Chicago Regional. So we know it works - or at least worked - in a competitive environment for Joust.

Plots:
Valar Morghulis
Fury of the Dragon
The Winds of Winter
City of Lies
Fear of Winter
Threat from the North
Take Them by Surprise

Characters:
Brown Ben Plumm
Green Hatchling
Viserys Targaryen
White Hatchling
Ser Jorah Mormont
Daenerys Targaryen
Drogon (Core)
Khal Drogo (Core)
Syrio Forel
Varys (King's Landing)
Refugee of the Plains x3
Dragon Thief x3
Street Waif x3
Shadowcat x2
Silent Sisters x2
King's Landing Assassin x3
Free Cities Mercenaries

Locations:
Twilight Market x3
Street of Steel
Kingdom of Shadows x2
Khal Drogo's Tent
Eastern Fiefdoms x3
Meereenese Brothel x2
Crossroads x3
Lady Daenerys's Chambers x2
The Dragonpit x2
Rhaenys's Hill
The Red Keep x2
King's Landing x3

Attachments:
Flame-Kissed x3

Events:
The Hatchling's Feast x3
Forever Burning x3
Nightmares x2
Aegon's Legacy x2

Now, this deck is put together as a control deck. It controls characters through STR manipulation, burning them out and killing/discarding them as much as possible. It works primarily on the principle that if your characters are not in play, they can't do much to help you.

This deck also falls prey to two of the biggest difficulties with Targ, both of which have to be overcome through play-style and temperament rather than build. First, there are a lot of moving parts. You have to be aware of everything, both on your side of the board and your opponent's, if you are going to be successful. You need to put some thought into which characters are best to burn and when. You often have to find ways to make the most use of an opponent's deck against him (for example, in a game against Dan at the NYC Regional when he played Fear of Winter against my Threat of Winter, I would have been in deep trouble if I hadn't used my one card to burn his Ser Jorah Mormont - thereby burning the rest of his board with Jorah's drawback). And you have to remember all of your effects - forgetting to do something as simple as getting your Forever Burning back can come back to haunt you (as it did in that same game against Dan...).

Second, it is slow. The control comes pretty quick, but it takes time to get both the control engine running and have what you need to pick up the power you need to win. It is unusual for a game to go less than 5 plots. So if your head is in the aggressive attack, dominate the board and quick win mindset, this will be a difficult deck. Further, it is not unusual for your opponent to get to 10-13 power in the first 2-3 rounds before you are able to shut them down completely - an uncomfortable place for many players to be.

So, there is a Targ deck that does not use Summer, an Agenda or War crests as the basis. Thoughts?

Thanks for posting this Ktom! I was very curious about this decklist. With the shadows cards, did you mostly just leave them in shadows to fuel stuff like dragonpit and whatnot? Then bring them out in the late game for challenges?

Also, what do you think of the new khal drogo? Would the renown speed up the deck at all? And I'm assuming you'd be able to win a power challenge easily enough with all your burn, and he'd help remove stuff from the field quicker. Not sure if it would muck up the gold curve though.

Staton said:

No. You mostly bring them out of Shadows one at a time to fuel the King's Landing draw engine. You rarely need more than one or two to stay in Shadows to fuel Dragonpit.

Staton said:

Gold curve and keeping characters alive. This deck loses a lot of characters, particularly in the early game - assuming you have any characters out to begin with. With all the claim 2 plots and multiple military challenges these days, I wouldn't expect him to last very long, particularly if he's being held for a power challenge. Could work, though.

This deck looks awesome.

Do you see it as GenCon viable? Or does it need some overhauling before it is ready for that big of a field of different decks?

Rhaenyys Hill? Just in there for the King's Landing count, i presume?

I find it very, very tough not to run Mad King's Legacy as a Plot out of Targ. I might pull Take Them By surprise for that.

Did you face any dedciated rush decks at the Moot? I wonder if a Siege or Noble rush deck could swamp this before it got the lock - I am sure that is/was a cocnern of yours as well.

Solid though - and I really like the event mix. i think i am goign to steal that lineup for my next build - with teh exception of the shadows burn event x 2 this will wokr out of almost any targ build and there are pelnty of other pwoer events you could go with.

Thank you for posting!

Thanks for posting the deck, the bones of it are all what I expected, though its interesting to see personal differences in card choices. The list prompted a bunch of questions which I've asked below:

my count shows 65 cards. did you find that this was the minimum you could use or do you think you could have gotten it closer to 60?

decks like this always scare me because of the location to character count. I have trouble seeing one or two too many locations in some builds with only 11 or 12 locations. Did you find them to get in the way at any time (testing or in joust) and how often did you have to mulligan? If you do run into a situation where you get a bad opening draw what kind of things did you do to mitigate it. I could easily see you getting opening hands post setup with muliple twilight markets and either more limited locations or some of the 'overpriced' income locations.

on the location choices why crossroads over shivering sea? I'm also w/ stag with the confusion over Rhaenys's Hill. If it was just to fuel king's landing why not use Visenya's Hill? did you think you would use Rhaenys's has a closer (which it seems like would be a much better option in melee)?

Similar question on Free Cities Mercenaries, was he to close if you every got the chance to get him out? did you ever get him out? for two gold less did you thik about using Shadows Selmy?

did you ever see a game where you didn;t get a forever burning out early? I find that if I don't see one in the first three turns i'm in a lot of trouble as its really hard to burn that early annoying character.

did you play against The Red Viper at all? if so how did it go?

Viper would almsot surely be a problem for this deck. i'm almost certain the next generation of this build will be running Marched to the Wall.

i think thta Plot is going to make a comeback in popularity and see action in a lot of control builds given the amount of saves and the Noble crest Plots

The Viper is actually not a problem for this deck.

Threat from the North or Dragonpit + Flame kissed removes the Viper just fine.

Good call, dobbs. I stand corrected.

See: moving parts. This is such an expert level deck, as ktom observes above.

Nice Targ build, Ktom! The decklist looks very different from the version I ran at Black Friday last year, but the two seemed to play very similarly (at least in our NYC regionals game), with the main exception that I ran city plots that providedless gold and more control. (This actually just slowed games down though, making the games longer. I think I prefer your plot selection.)

I had retired my shadows build because I (perhaps erroneously) thought that Lanni and Bara shadows decks would have both more shadows and King's Landing, rendering Dragonpit and the King's Landing draw source ineffective. Since these are the keys to the deck (or were to my success), I felt the deck couldn't run in the current environment. Based on the Chicago and NYC tourneys, however, I will have to reevaluate my thinking; this was clearly very successful.

I can partially answer one of the above questions - ktom beat bloodycelt's Bara Treaty Martell deck in the semifinals. That deck was both a Bara rush deck and had the Viper. I didn't watch the game so I can't say if the Viper came out though. bloodycelt said that Targ owns his deck, which seems believable to me (Dobbler's comment above plus the general superiority of burn vs saves).

Stag Lord said:

Stag Lord said:

Why? With Meereenese Brothel and Dragon Thief, it's not like the deck is hurting for attachment removal. With plot choice being so key these days, Mad King's Legacy actually doesn't make the cut effect-wise.

Stag Lord said:

A standard weenie rush deck isn't much of a concern. The Noble rush deck is less of a concern than you would think because Threat creates the "discard" instead of the "kill" that would be stopped by Power of Blood, and anyway - even if the characters don't die at 0, they don't win any challenges, either. The Siege deck can be fast depending on the character mix. Uneasy Peace in the plot deck would actually make this more than robust enough to handle Siege decks, I think. But then, Siege decks in general are going to make Uneasy Peace a popular plot for a lot of deck archetypes, not just this one.

Stag Lord said:

Yeah. The Shadow's burn events are the interchangeable part. They work really nicely in this deck, though.

Lars said:

Could have, but didn't really feel the need to. King's Landing is a really powerful draw engine in a deck like this.

Lars said:

It's about concentration on control. I am never sorry to see a bunch of locations because of all the influence events. A fair amount of the control is in the locations as well. Ultimately, I think your nervousness comes down to playstyle. If your playstyle is character-centric, this deck is going to make you nervous. Mine is not. But, you know, this isn't remotely a character-lite deck. There are 27 of them, after all.

Lars said:

Crossroads over Shivering Sea because of the gold. Notice that the plot gold is a little low. As mentioned above, Rhaenys' Hill is absolutely a closer. I used it multiple times as such. Done in conjunction with Fear of Winter, it is particularly demoralizing. Free Cities Mercenaries is also a closer. Use him over Selmy because of the self-standing. A LOT of self-standing. This deck kills a lot of characters at 2-STR or lower (yes, the Mercenaries work with burn), so he stands a lot. It is a great card. Try it.

Lars said:

A few times, but it isn't really that big of an issue. There is a lot of other burn in the deck. SOME of it always comes out early. That's the whole "moving pieces" thing. If you keep an eye out, there is almost always something you can do, even without an early Forever Burning.

Dobbler said:

Exactly. Plus, it is pretty easy to have fewer characters than your opponent and still deal with the challenges. Without that "non-kneeling" advantage, the Viper loses some of his teeth.

ktom said:

Re Locations: I guess it is a playstyle thing, but I could just see a turn where I need to see something other then a location and only draw them. (even w/ king's landing....its these kind of builds that make me want to put 1x king's landing in decks can leave it sit in shadows if I don't need it...no harm there)

Re Free Cities dude: I wasn't trying to imply that he was a bad card I was just looking at gold costs and s4 still scares me a little.

Ktom, how would that deck work vs. an army deck... no attachments high strength....

I haven't seen a viable build out of them yet, but that recent location and King Robb has given me thought. I remember that being one of the reasons I stopped playing Targ... staring down a field of characters completely immune to my control.

Lars said:

Well, that can happen in any deck. We've all had "characters shuffled to bottom" AND "resources shuffled to bottom" games. And with 27 characters, It doesn't happen any more often than in other decks. Remember, this deck is primarily about shutting down the opponent, so even if I'm not able to capitalize on the control for one particular turn, my opponent usually isn't making much headway either. The games goes on long, but it goes on. So play style. You might feel like the deck needs some tweaking if you cannot press an advantage immediately after gaining it. But I'm comfortable not pressing the advantage right away - so long as I'm not losing it.

bloodycelt said:

Would certainly be a problem. Nightmares can help get some of the lower STR ones (had a nice moment in NY where I finished off one of finite's Wildling characters with Nightmares: blanking it lost the trait, which made it lose the +1STR from his The North Agenda). Threat from the North and the other events could get some of the others. Right now, though, it's a reasonable meta choice. As you say, the heavy Army deck has not materialized. And if the one you mention did, Robb would be the first target for flash-frying, making it that much harder to get the Armies out.

I'm always nervous about Crossroads thanks to Support of the Kingdom . They're awfully tempting targets. Is my fear unfounded? Is Support of the Kingdom not a popular card? Or is that just the chance you take.

Great work ktom. It would be nice if more people posted deck lists on here and provided this sort of critical analysis of them. Keep up the good work.

You'll certainly see Support aorund here. It doens't keep people from playing Crossroads though - I guess the risk-reward ratio is titled in afor fo getting those resources for at least one tunr.

Thanks for the feedback Ktom - its probably a style sort of thing: I just prefer the spot control of the plot as to the chance of drawing the character.

Mereen Brothel is the best attachment removal in the game. I even have some decks where I consider running it out of house.