Looks like Twn2dn's article on Targ draw engines got us some spoilers. From this weeks card of the week

Now those are some nice draw capabilities. Shade seems extremely good.

Wow, shade of the evening reminds me of Samwell Tarly from the CCG days. And Samwell was an autoinclude in every single deck I made. I'm even inclined to think Shade of the evening might be better if you can find a self-standing or non-kneeling Targ character to put it on.

Yeah - I posted right away on CoTW when I saw this. Shade looks like a must include in Targ. This should pretty reliably get you +1 a turn and gvien a stander maybe even more. Just the +1 though should help a lot. I'm really liking this card.

Every time I pay two gold to play Shade, I will yell "Boom Goes the Dynamite!"

Good fish ability, makes a tricon, its a nice standard for 2-gold attachments.

Dobbler said:

My first thought for abusing it is Fairweather Followers in a Summer deck.

Throw in Training Ground + easily recurable Forever Burning and you can gleefully activate the Shade a couple of times a turn (both times at full strength, huzzah!).

My second is lobbing it into the (much loved, if not all-conquering) Prince That Was Promised gimmick deck. It's an attachment so helps out PTWP, and PTWP lets you avoid kneeling (at all) so it synergises perfectly.

What are the better tricks that I'm missing?

LoneWanderer said:

Here's what you do: You get out KotS Viserys Targaryen. Put three copies of Shade on him. Put on Aegon's Blade on him. Reveal the Prince that Was Promised. Add as many other attachments as you can. Proceed to put lots of cards in your hand and win.

Well that is super sweet. Glad to know that the gang at FFG is on the ball.

And Shades is awesome. Meereen is going to be a must have in any Dragon based deck.

Great cards - well costed and pretty fun really.

Both have drawbacks (one is an attachment, one needs something to trigger) but good rewards.

~Thank goodness Shade ISN'T like Sam Tarly. Who's text was really 'make this game last 15 more minutues'.

~shade is undercosted and will ruin the game.....you combo it with one good character and its 3 cards a turn that don;t count against the draw cap, its breaking the game and with the limited attachment control outside of mirror matches and targ's ability to get attachments back plus its non unique so you can have three of them out at once...it needs to be banned!

Awesome cards that help address a big problem for LCG Targ (finally!)

Lets hope this comes out before KublaCon!

Oh and to add I love the art on Meereen

Given that it has to be on a targ character... I don't see this at the level of abuse if it were say able to be placed on the red viper.

Granted, someone with Dobbler level combo hacking could find a way to make a voltron targ guy that just nets 9 cards a turn. I know one thing: I am definitely going to be looking at motley and fishing net more closely.

That said giving Targ decent draw will probably make them more powerful than Lannister. Unlike winter block (where Targ defenders was fairly powerful), we don't have insane location control (which stops targ dead).

bloodycelt said:

Good point about Targ character only! There are very few options through Targ for multiple challenges with the same Targ character. Fairweather Followers and Prince who was Promised was already mentioned in this thread. Distinct Mastery and To Be A Dragon will also give you extra challenges, or Kingdom of Shadows can possibly restand one of your shadows characters, but lets me honest, that is NOT a long list. Compared to Bara or Martell who have multiple non-kneeling or self-standing characters or stand effects, if you want to get multiple uses out of Shade of the Evening in the same challenge phase, your options are limited.

I agree with Dobbler...there aren't that many options for "abusing" this in Targ. And if you go with Fairweather Followers, it only works in a summer build, which severely limits the flexibility you have (extra slots go to even more attachments, etc.).

Keep in mind that this is a 2-cost attachment in a house that has the best attachments and (often) gold issues. I wouldn't say this is an auto-include by any means, and I suspect this is more the type of card you throw in your deck 1-2x, hoping that you'll be able to take full advantage everyone once in awhile, but not relying on this as your primary draw engine.

Meereen feels sort of the same way to me in how situational it is. Unless it's a dragon-centric build (which might be fun and viable with the new dragons), you probably won't be drawing tons off it. As someone else mentioned above, Targ already has a lot of great locations, so playing even a 1-gold location is a MAJOR trade off, since it means you play fewer characters or other powerful locations.

Yeah - but you get the most bang for the buck out of this in Summer anyway - so Fairweather Followers seems a pretty nice fit.

And yeah - its a two cost atatchment - but hell: Targ can recycle attachments almost at will. In combo with Xaros - i don't even mind if I am spending two gold for this every couple fo turns - it may net me two cards from the challenges + 1 from Xaros every time i play it.

And if its going to be sumemr anywya - why not run the Agenda for summer draw as well? This atatchment can practically offset the odd thime where htey make it Winter.

I really think the possibilities of this attachment are many and varied. Its going to help Targ a lot.

Hell - i'm even thinking about Merecenary Contract to make a non stander and THEN slapping this on them. This really could be a staple for Targ.

And what about giving a triicon character Rhaegar's Harp, making him a Dragon and using Dany (Dragons don't kneel)?

HemAhn said:

The only problem is that the Harp gives all traits, so someone is going to discard your "dragon" using ally hate. Unless you use a CBD character.

HemAhn said:

Same is true with the Followers, actually. You need the Black Raven + Shade + Followers + Any Phase/Challenges events to make it work. Great combination, but most players won't draw all the need cards by round 1 or even 2.

The one thing that makes some of these combos potentially useful though is that the pieces of these elaborate combos are becoming intrinsically better. So you don't have a situation where one card is complete crap on its own (like Xaro's Home or Crone)...Followers has decent stats, Black Raven fuels Summer Agenda Draw, Targs events are pretty strong these days, and Shade (perhaps the weakest link on its own) also grants all 3 icons. So even if it takes 3+ rounds to get the full 4-5 card combo out, having just 1-2 pieces of the combo is (FINALLY!) still useful.

We'll see how it goes, and my feeling is that draw is still going to be pretty clunky and combo-intensive in Targ, but maybe that's Targ's "weakness." At least the pieces involved in these elaborate draw combos are getting MUCH better as standalone cards.

Twn2dn said:

That's exactly why I'm confident that the Shade will see fairly heavy play (if not in a top tier deck, then in many effective tier 1.5 builds).

It has the potential to link up with other cards and be devastating, but it's also decent enough just doing its thing alone. Likewise, all of the other pieces of the various suggested combos are potent in their own right (weakest link is possibly Followers, which is really saying something) and can impact the game effectively without the other bits of the puzzle showing up.

Sure, getting the full shebang to work is tricky, but you don't actually need to get it fully set up before you can start slapping your opponent about. Resilience + Potential like that is hard to turn down.

rings said:

This does highlight my only concern. If my opponent gets two or three of them going, I could really see the game bogging down. Samwell was unique so he only went off at the most twice per turn.

~But I guess with Bara rush winning in 1 or 2 turns with the Heir agenda, this will keep the games from ending in 5 minutes or less.

But overall I like both cards. Shade seems really nedly title for the effect, and I like Dragon trait love on Meereen.

I'm skeptical about Shade. I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm not sure it's much of the staple as some are making it out to be. Like most Targ cards I still see the fine print disclaimer:

"May cause slower initial game play. Make sure to use in conjunction with other cards' effects for optimal performance."

I might be completely wrong (and again, I'm not saying it's a bad card), but based on first impression I find it to lack a high enough level of efficiency/power boost needed to be considered a staple (i.e. Longship Iron Victory), but maybe I'm confusing "staple" with "semi/full auto-include." I can see it in some attachment heavy aggro builds, but I'm not sure how much it will shine outside of those. I'm really hoping the Targ Box helps with Targ's character base and resource curve. Improve those two and just about everything in Targ will get better.

Meereen is fine, but really only helps Dragon heavy decks.

OT Italian distributors said that Queen of Dragons will be released 26th april. Let's hope ;-)

FATMOUSE said:

We'll see how it plays out, but I agree with you that this isn't an auto-include in every Targ deck and may not even see tons of play outside of summer builds. That said, it will certainly be an added incentive to play summer in Targ.