Blood of the First Men (Agenda): "You may run any number of The North agendas. You need 2 additional power to win the game. Reduce the cost of the first Wildling character you play from your hand each round by 2."

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Varamyr Sixskins (Character, Neutral, 2-gold, 2-str M/P): "Any Phase: Put 1 Creature character into play from your hand to return Varamyr Sixskins to your hand. At the end of the phase, if that Creature is still in play, discard it from play (cannot be saved)."

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Balerion the Black (Character, Creature, Dragon, 10-gold, 10-str, M/P) Response: After you play Balerion the Black from your hand, kneel all non-Dragon characters and locations.

Yes, Balerion gets discarded at the end of the phase, but all it cost you was a card from your hand.

Imagine running this out of Greyjoy, and playing "Rise of the Kraken," winning initiative, and then executing this combo as your first action in the challenges phase. The single power challenge that Balerion could do would net you 5 power (2 for claim, 2 for unnaposed, 1 for renown), which could easily be a game closer.

You don't even need the agenda, really, but with it, and an ample supply of dragons in your deck, you could do something like this every turn, for free. And it works with any house; Varamyr is neutral, and none of the dragons are "House Targaryen Only." You could include a couple copies of "Dance with Dragons" (core set) to get the dragons in your hand when you needed them.

What do you think?

Looks like a sound combo, I just checked those cards over to make sure everything was correct, good thing my office is also my gaming room.

I am going to try that today in my Greyjoy deck as we are playing in a couple hours.

I was planning on building a Targaryen Dragons deck and this will be fun in that deck too.

Sweet. Let me know how it goes.

Remember that you cannot use Balerion's response, since you didn't play him.

crap, now I see that in the FAQ. Oh well, its still a free 10 strength character.

rogue is right, varamyr put in play a creature and not play. no faq needed.

yes the FAQ was needed, that is where it is explained and I found it. 4.4 page 9 of the FAQ.

It is still a sweet combo, just not as sweet.

Rogue30 said:

Dag. Well, thanks for keeping me honest, Rogue. It's still probably the best use of Varamyr's ability, but it's not quite the hydrogen bomb combo I had in mind. Oh, well, back to the salt mines.

I am gonna be trying it in an hour or so, should still have a big oh crap effect on my opponent.

the combo can best work in a targa summer deck with summer encampment. You play free balerion. Challenges. Balerion in hand with summer encampement ;-)

Thank you for that idea, sir.

I actually made and used that deck last night - free Varamyr for free Balerion with Summer Encampment to bring him back to your hand - I coupled it with Pit Viper (another Varamyr) and jump-back-to-your-hand Ghost (in case I couldn't get the Summer Encampment out in time), and the combo worked perfectly. The downside was that a free Balerion every turn won't win you the game. You lose the power he gains from renown, and since you're focusing on Varamyr/Balerion (rather than burn, or another form of control) you aren't controlling your opponent and you aren't winning enough challenges to get the 17 power.

However, it did give me some other good ideas for combos: First of all, the varamyr/creature double combo - since you don't need to kneel Varamyr, you can initiate a challenge with him, and THEN put a creature in to block, or initiate a second challenge.

Second, the Summer encampment combo with 'comes into play' is awesome. I summer camp'd a Dragon thief to burn two attachments in one turn, and I summer camp'd a carrion bird in order to trigger Sam Tarly a second time. You can initiate a challenge with Khal Drogo (and another character), stealth out a defender, then summer camp him back to your hand, only to him again when you win that challenge. It has a lot of neat possibilities - you could run Arys out of house (expensive, though, or use Varys if you have good intrigue defense) to get two allies or two mercs.