Hello everyone, I'm pretty novice to this amazing game. I sincerely ask your help to deal with Targaryen... The background is just only one core set (plus the expansion pack Princes of the Sun) and two players, i.e. me and my wife both using the default decks of two houses. No doubt she uses Targaryen and I use Lannister mostly, but sometimes Martell as well.

My problem is that: how can I deal with her stealth dragons and those attachments that lower STR... I mean, dragons are needless to say, but she has a buch of really powerful attachments (one of them is to add 6 STR if I remember correctly). In addition, she also has an evil plot that when revealed detaches an attachment (what the hell?!). Though I know I have my great characters but it seems it's so easy to let her murder my important characters all of a sudden (she has some ambush cards).

So, can you give me some advice upon this frustrating situation? Please note that we only use the core set cards and the Martell core set cards, no more, no less... which means, for example, I won't have 2 Blood for Blood though the expansion pack provides two copies. Either suggestions of Lannister or Martell are welcome.

Thank you all!

With both Lannister and Martell, you have an advantage in Intrigue. Use that. The CS Targ deck can be a pain to deal with because it has potentially powerful combos that can wreak havoc if the Targ player gets them off consistently. But they are also quite easily disrupted. Remember that Forever Burning goes to the Discard pile if it lost due to claim from an INT challenge, and cannot be recurred from there. Once Forever Burning and/or Flame Kissed are on your wife's discard pile, her deck is suddenly a lot less frightening.

Other things that might work out:

Use Ser Arys to eat into her character base. Quite a few of her chars are susceptible to him (Titan's Bastard, Daario, Groleo, Xaro, Brown Ben Plumm).

Use Rusted Sword (two of them, ideally) to buff your key characters and make them less vulnerable to Flame Kissed. Remember that you can use the ability on Rusted Sword after your wife has declared attackers, but before you have declared defenders, thus turning what seemed like a won challenge into a defeat for her. If you haven't done that yet, watch the look on her face when you pull it off for the first time, it's gonna be priceless.

Targ is more dependent on locations than other houses. They need them for gold/cost reduction like everybody else, but also for Influence to fuel Ambush, for draw (Xaro's Home) and for attachment recursion (Lady Dany's Chambers). Consider running the plot Fleeing to the Wall to disrupt that.

Run the plot Let My Porridge Fly to get rid of irksome attachments.

Use characters with Stealth yourself whenever possible, to counterher Stealth. Use Gutter Rat's Cunning to give Stealth to a key character.

If you're playing Martell, The Old Palace pmakes her dragons lose Stealth.

Use He Calls It Thinking to cancel irksome responses like the ones on Khal Drogo, Xaro's Home, Maester Aemon, Viserys, Bodyguard and others, and then buff your key characters with it. In fact, HCIT might be your best chance against Targ when playing Martell. Played at the right moment, it can be highly disruptive.

Remember that The Red Viper is immune to events and character abilities, so he doesn't have to worry about Forever Burning, Westeros Bleeds, Drogon or Viseryion (he can still be chosen as a Stealth target though, that doesn't count as a character ability).

The combination of The Red Viper and Taste for Blood should be very hard to deal with for the Targ player. Run two of both. Remember that if one character has two copies of Taste for Blood attached, you get to resolve the ability twice.

HTH.

Some addenda:

Take Distraction out of the Stark deck and use it, it'll work like a charm on Targaryen.

Be careful when using Let My Porridge Fly: Its effect is a Passive, it has to resolve. If your opponent doesn't control an attachment when it does, you'll have to discard one of your own, so this needs to be timed right.

The ability on Rusted Sword can also be used after both attackers and defenders are declared, but before the challenge resolves. Sometimes you might want to do that.

Use I'm You Writ Small. Play it in a challenge you initiated, right before the resolution, after defenders are declared. If you do this right, you can kill your wife's characters when she doesn't expect it, like in INT or POW challenges, or when she wins in MIL as the defender.

Ratatoskr said:

Thank you Ratatoskr! Your reply is really really helpful. I'll use your strategy tonight to try to conquer my wilfe's army. Thanks.

Be sure to tell us how it went.

Ratatoskr said:

Well, it went pretty well! We played 8 rounds and finally I won, by using your methodology. I didn't have a chance to use those powerful events like He Call It Thinking but I succeeded to use some cards such as Taste of Blood, etc. to make my challenge loss as kind of success and I use that guy you mentioned to discard her ally. All in all, thank you for your advice! Hope we can communicate more.

I find targs are attachment heavy, their draw engine comes from cycling them. fewe character with lots of attachments are easy to control with lannisters. If i'm lannister I just use lots of kneel effects. stealth is no threat if the dragons are all knelt. dragons blood is wasting on a character if its knelt. if i'm targ i hate seeing taste of blood. especially taste of blood on red viper. i've totally dominated games start to finish only to lose to a couple of taste of bloods. deck didn't have enough attachment control.

My cousin has been kicking me and my other cousin's butt consistently with Targaryen. I gave up on Stark and am now ready to give up on Greyjoy. The story is pretty much the same. He gets locations out that buff his Initiative so he always wins and goes first. He plays Dany (Core) and then gets the dragons out. They never kneel, they have horrible responses that kill chars, add on Power tokens or discard locations. But my turn I am tore up, almost fully knelt and all his dragons are standing. All the free attachments (Dragon Bite, Fear, Sun Stroke, etc) make life hard as well. He is ambushing dragons in for no gold.

I try to keep Dany out of the game so he has to kneel, but its too tough. I can never win initiative to challenge first and use events that let you target specific chars for death for winning challenges.

Any advice on beating this deck?

AceManUSC said:

I was like you having a hard life struggling against Targaryen as well. But it turned out bettern recently since I bought Lords of Winter expansion. If you go back to use Stark (my advice is that you don't give up Stark because he's still a beast if you build well and play well). My preference is to attach Grey Wind (Low) and Shaggydog (Low) to Robb Stark (LoW) and add as many duplicates to them as possible. Then, when a dragons attack me, I just kneel Shaggydog to reduce its STR to 2, and then kneel Grey Wind to kill that dragon immediately. After that, I play At night they howl, and repeat the steps and kill another dragon, etc. But I guess your opponent will recognize this strategy so at least he'll be much less aggressive. Anyway, I'm new to this game as well and I think there isn't a deck that cannot be defeated, so you just need to buy more and play more, haha.

Keep in mind that "At Night they Howl" stands _all_ creatures in playing... including Targaryen's Dragons. And as mentioned above... try hitting their resource base with plot cards like Fleeing to the Wall, Dry Season and Attack from the Sea