Hey since this is a Targ thread i figured i would ask here.

I have been meaning to tryput together a Targaryen Brotherhood deck, ive built a few decent brotherhood decks already so i didnt expect it to be such a problem. I have had a Brotherhood Lannister Kneel deck, a Brotherhood Sand snake deck, a Brotherhood Martell revenge deck, A Brotherhood Bara Rush decki have played against Jeffk's Brotherhood Stark deck. But i cant get rolling on a Targ Brotherhood deck, Burn seems to me to take to many cards, Summer doesnt seem strong enoughdragon doesn't seem like it will be fleshed out until the expansion. Im leaning towards a dothraki brotherhood deck but im not really sure

Any advicedecent Targ Brotherhood decks you guys have built?

Twn2dn has just posted a targa brotherhood deck on www.agotcards.org so I think he is the right person to help you. Anyway I still think in these days too much rush deck are in place that make suffer brotherhood. And unluckly narrow escape can destroy your reset solution too easily.

Let's hope in some anti event reliable solution in the near future. I think this would help control decks a lot.

As Gualdo mentioned, I just posted a deck list on agotcard.org. That said, I gave my own deck list a rating of 2.5 out of 5, so I wouldn't recommend it as a "model." If you wanted to avoid the agenda (something worth considering, now that I've played the deck), you'll have to run Lannister attachments that give Beric infamy.

Honestly, the problems with Targ + Brotherhood seem to be many...

1. The two don't combine well. Targ's characters are generally expensive but great at tool boxing. Brotherhood are expensive but great at tool boxing. So you have two mechanics that are box expensive but have a lot of cool abilities. That's EXACTLY how it's played out in my rounds...I can't marshall very many characters, but those that I marshall do a lot of neat things. (Unfortunately, none of these things really help me win...though they do help to not lose.)
2. Brotherhood doesn't fill in Targ's other major holes ...namely short on influence, low draw,lack of location discard. So really, Brotherhood doesn't offer a lot that you're not already getting. (The tricks/tool boxing is different from Targ, but it's still fundamentally just tricks/tool boxing.)
3. Targ's characters are easily stolen for a round by Bara's Fury plot. If Bara needs to close out a game, they can wait until you pile power on a character, then just steel it for the win. In theory, they can do the same to Martell, but Martell's tricks help a lot to stop the Bara Fury Plot from working. Given the popularity of Bara, at least around these parts, that's a big liability.
4. TargBrotherhood are both weak to burn/Venomous Blade. In other words, against both Targ and Martell, your opponent will most likely be able to kill off any single character you control. That makes it really difficult to rely on a particular ability. Given that all your power is piled on your characters, it also hurts in that respect. (In other words, a Targ + Brotherhood deck really doesn't have any "easy" match ups, unlike perhaps a Brotherhood deck run out of another house.)

There were a few bright spots in the deck. The best part about it was that you can combine Anguy with Burn. At one point, I had 9 power on Anguy, which was pretty cool. Still, the cost is pretty hefty for a guy that has no immunities and loses all his power once he's gone.

Twn2dn said:

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who is frequently trying to cut down locations in Targ decks. I almost always have 18+my solution to this issue seems to have become not running 3x of any location. Even in a Shadows burn deck I often only run 2x Dragonpit, but there are so many locations that all work well with the various pieces of the Targ arsenal that I don't seem to have a problem playing a game based on what I draw rather than needing a location I can't seem to get.

I currently have a Targ Wildling deck that is running pretty good. It takes care of a lot of the holes that Targ has like the lack of card draw(via Val, Jhogo,KL)the terrible cost to STR ratio of their characters(cheap wildlings with good str to cost ratio plus stealth. yes please!). Getting to 19 power takes longer but with the access to better characters targ can at least hold it's own in the early rounds. It also has the basic shadows package with dragonpit, KLA, syrio, varys, KL, Red Keep,Dragon Skulls(among a couple other I'm sure) to keep the burn going. It has had very good success against Bara, Stark, Martell,Greyjoy, only bad matchup is Lannister(but that is always the case with Targ). The Targ box should hopefully help with a lot of their holes(i'll cross my fingers for Pyatt Pree to return!)

You know, I really could care less if I never win a game with my Targ deck because that's my house and I'll play them no matter what. Lack of card draw, no location hate, low str characters...ehh, i'll make it work or I'll lose every game trying.

widowmaker93 said:

Just curious, how is your gold-curve? I know Wildlings are generally pretty efficient at 3 gold for 4 STR tricons (with the agenda), but 3 gold is still a lot early in the game,combined with some shadows, it sounds a bit gold intensive. Does the deck come out fast enough to deal with round 1 BlockadesFear of Winter? With the banning of the third Wildling agenda, I've found that my Targ Wildling builds are a bit too slow to deal with both of these plots,the effects they've had on the metagame more generally.

I actually built the deck with as low as a gold curve that I could stomach. But I also wanted to have no characters that would get discarded by my own Threat from the North so i purposefully left out white hatchling, street waifs,maegi crones but left in Viserys Targaryen. Also because of the super low cost of all the targ characters that meant that running Dany's Chambers was not as useful. So that freed up a 2 gold location from the deck(I am thinking about adding this back into the deck however). I typically get 5-6 card flops with the deck and with the city of lies plot that does mitigate the blockade turns and helps to get cards into shadows .Blockade is not really a big deal since 90% of the targ characters are either cost 0-2, can be put into play with ambush,or it's Khal Drogo and we all know how awesome that guy is. Fear is different. First turn that could hurt if your opponent gets a better flop than you. Typically I can flop 3 charactersplay another so that makes 4. Not too shabby so I don't fret about Fear so much. Targ has the uncanny ability to recover quickly as long as you play it rightget your puzzle pieces out. Once that happens it is really hard to beat if you are a good player who knows how to run the deck correctly. Targ is absolutely the hardest house to play by a mile, But if you get it going it can be really really good,

If you would like to see a decklist Twn2dn i can post one up on agotcards.org.

widowmaker93 said:

How odd. I actually think that Brotherhood (particular BericAnguy) bring a great deal to the table for Targaryen- Power. Targaryen is notoriously slow on gaining it, but those two can speed it up considerably. Heck, even the Mad Huntsman can help out quite a lot.

Looks like Targ burn just won a 17-player tourney in Spain http://www.agotcards.org/deck/v/308

Interestingly, this is a very Dragon-centric burn deck list (no hatchling feasts). It looks very gold intensive, but MUCH less reliant on massive amounts of influence (ie hatchling feasts, etc.)...very cool.

I expect this was particularly brutal against Siege decks and against Martell, which tend to run small characters. Also, it sounds like Greyjoy wasn't well represented (no GJ decks?), so the lack of Winter/gold choke probably helped out a lot.

Interesting insights into the local metagame, which seems like it may not have expected to have to deal with much burn.

What? Seriously? I need to be a member of the sight to view decks and stuff? That is just not going to happen. I'm not signing up for any site that won't let me determine if it is worth my time and effort. *sigh*

I've got a new Targ/Summer deck that I'm gonna be testing out tonight and next week. I may be posting questions and cries for help soon. Hopefully it will work out ok though.

my most recent targ build was out of summer and it ran really well, the only problem I had was it was too slow to really compete with a Bara rush type deck. I think once the new Dany comes out in the next CP and with alittle more burn it should be able to hold the rush off more consistantly.

I just built a new one too, sort of a Dothraki military summer melee rush, REALLY character heavy. Won last night against two other military decks, one of them playing Siege. I also really want the new Daeny, and a few more Dothraki cards in the box might make the theme really shine, it seems to have some holes right now...

Lat night we played an unusual tournament. Each player was assigned their House 2 weeks before the event so all 6 houses were represented. The other unusual thing was that it was single elimination. I was assigned Targ, so I built a Targ summer deck. An old time player showed up at the last minute, so I gave him a Stark deck and the NW played a Neutral House deck. So we ended up with 2 stark, and 1 of every other house.

I went 2-1, losing at the final table to Alec playing Stark/Siege. I beat Martell Round 1 and Lannister Round 2. My problem with Stark was all the cheap, high strength characters that are no attachments. Are there solutions to that in Targ/Summer or is it just a fundamentally bad matchup for Targ?

kpmccoy21 said:

Depending on your deck, this can be a pretty tough match up. If your build emphasizes burn, Stark's very cost-efficient (and cheap) characters will be impossible to keep off the field. In fact, likely their deck will be faster than yours, so early use of Blockade/Fear of Winter is going to be much less effective or even hurt you. The main problem with burn in this match up is that burn excels at "assassinating" key characters, but since all of Stark's "weenies" are still big enough to be threatening, you don't have enough burn to go around.

To do well, you'll likely need to have included a decent amount of intrigue characters (craster can be nice there), Valar + Threat form the North, attachment discard (namely to protect your own locations but also for Grey Wind), and location discard (to hit those Frozen Outposts). None of this is out of the ordinary...it's all good against most deck types, but running all of these just means you don't have a ton of deck building flexibility. Hatchling Feast is always really useful with Threat, and especially against Stark (since their characters tend to run few attachments outside of the Direwolf deck...and also because they have some big targets to get the full use out of Hatchling Feast).

I think the biggest part of this match up though is just playing it the "right" way, and even then it's tricky. Basically, you have to gain card advantage and use Valar and/or Threat from the North effectively to clear the opponent's board. If the opponent gets off a Narrow Escape though, that can easily swing (or almost certainly lose you) the game. Before you do play Valar/Threat, you should try to gain card advantage. With (hopefully) more intrigue icons in your deck, you shouldn't be losing intrigue on defense. Catelyn can be a major PAIN to overcome though. Save your burn/tricks for characters like Catelyn, Guard at Riverrun, other "key" characters (like Blackfish), and characters with intrigue icon (if you really have to). Don't waste your burn on random high-STR military or power challenges...the Stark player is going to win those, but make sure you oppose the non-deadly challenges as much as you can.

In the end, when Targ wins this match up, it usually involves some form of game-changing play...like a "one-sided Valar" using Hatchling Feast + Threat. It is possible to out-rush the opponent, but that's pretty uncommon and I wouldn't count on it as a viable strategy. This is different from Martell, where you basically try to keep the pressure up the whole game by knocking off their tool boxing weenies (like Maester of the Sun, Dornish Paramour, etc.), or from Lanni, where you basically use your burn to increase your claim (ie burning their small characters so that your multi-claim military challenges have full impact). Actually, the anti-Stark strategy is sort of similar with Bara in that it usually revolves around a "game-changing" round, except that unlike against Stark, Targ decks can come out faster than Bara (in terms of board control...obviously not referring to power) and thus can use an early Blockade/Fear of Winter to good effect.

Well according to the upcoming section Queen of Dragons is shipping now so it looks like Targ will get disturbingly more popular very soon

Im curious to see if people start running more dragons or more burn

Twn2dn... that strategy does not work against stark players that have a lot of intrigue.

But you are right, against an intrigue light stark (greyjoy is similar)... eating their hand while preventing power grab is the best strategy.

Now, something else to consider is... Starks biggest strength is they can board wipe you with a high claim military challenge with additional effects. And the reason they should have intrigue is then you also lose 2 cards.

So Bones of A Child is important, as is repeatable save characters Aemon and Viserys. Another useful card is Aegon's Hill. As is any of the look at hand pull out characters. I'd even recommend Confession since Targ is influence heavy as it is. Also have 3 copies of Queen Dany's Chambers, the same with Street Waif.

In my own experience I've found that Stark has a chance of losing if you first focus on forcing them to use up cards to expend their resources. Block everything. Sacrifice offensive challenges if need be. Keep their power at 0. And just exhaust them. Just be thankful Ethan stopped playing.

bloodycelt said:

Setups are useless in Targ against Stark.

I find against a stark player that knows what he's doing... you're garunteed to have nothing in play on turns 1 and 2.

You're better off focusing on getting a location base setup, and using confession and aegon's hill to take what you can out of his hand... play enough weenies to stall him and have him waste his murder on them thinking you got a bad start.

Queen's Knight and Drogo are also helpful because they can enter play just long enough to do a challenge and go back to your hand after.

I am making a concentrated effort to get my Targ decks back in competitive play. I did well with Targ in the ITE/5KE era but not so much after the switch to LCG. Traditionally one of the toughest match-ups for my Targ builds has always been Baratheon which have tended to just steamroll my slower Targ decks. I am working on new Targ build which is a bit faster and might be able to sustain against the uber-fast Bara builds so we'll see. I am definitely hoping to play Targ for Kubla if my build tests well enough that I don't think I'll get steamrolled by some of the builds I can expect to see (Bara, Martell).

LaughingTree said:

Targ is still pretty hard to build. My advice is, if you don't plan on playing Targ during regionals, sit back and wait a few weeks to see what the general trend for competitive Targ decks is. Targ, more than most other houses, seems to have a lot of versatility...but each "build" has MAJOR pros/cons, so *the* competitive build will likely be as much about the environment as it is about the deck (and player) itself.

Twn2dn said:

Well, Ive recently been using Dobbler's Agenda for my Targ builds which works well against most Houses but definitely has a weakness to Bara for exactly the reason you said about not necessarily being strong on turn 1. And I definitely do plan to use Targ for western regionals at Kubla especially if the box set is out by then and legal for the tourney which I am crossing my fingers and hoping for.

LaughingTree said:

Anyway, good luck. I'll watch to see how you do.

Twn2dn said:

Indeed, it does sound like we are in the same boat. I have a tough regional with 3 Champs and 2 Runners-up, hehe. Good luck in your adventures at Regionals as well and I'll keep you updated on how well my Targ is coming along