A Referendum on Rush, not House

By kpmccoy22, in 1. AGoT General Discussion

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Stag Lord said:

What about Baratheon Brotherhood> i've only started thinking about this recently - but does Beric rsuh well with Baratheon? Its a Nedly fit - the Brotherhood supported the Baratheon succession in the novels and Beric can be fast. Cressen gives automatic protection from Milk - Beric's biggest weakness. And Baratehon should eb able to throw out enough supplemntal renown to really close thinsg out quickly. Has anyone played with the build? i imagine power on the House is the biggest single issue....and (of course) draw.

Maybe finally a reason to put Robert's Loyalists into a deck?

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A Baratheon take on Brotherhood might be interesting to see and yeah, Robert's Loyalists would add a nice meat supplement to that. Too bad you lose the usual Brotherhood draw engine (Flea Bottom Scavenger) and let's face it, Baratheon doesn't really have anything to replace it with. Seeing Fat Bob and Flaming Sword Beric together might be worth it, however.

I'm starting to turn into thinking that Melissandre (DotN) is maybe the best Rush card Baratheon currently has. This is because in addition to renown she allows you to gather power safe on your house card, cannot be shut down by icon control or kneel (the passive still works) and can be easily replayed using Many Powers Long Asleep. Renown can be a bit tricky, since you either need to hedge your bets with lots of renown characters - making you vulnerable to Valar...or rely on protecting a few key characters and hoping that your opponent has no solutions on this. And since you won't be running into many other rush decks, Melissandre (Core) is less needed.

There's actually another prospective Glass Cannon build centering on Melissandre (DotN). Pack in 3x of her with:

  • plenty of stealth (3x Smuggler's Cove, 3x Bastards of Robert)
  • kicker resources (Seat of Power, maybe even Starve for Your King)
  • self-standing or unkneeling renown characters (Flowerboy (KL), Arena Knight, Robert (KL), Massey's Hook, Banners for other renown characters)
  • additional challenge (preferably P, since that's where your stealth is) tech (3x Battle at the Wall, Edric Storm, maybe Citadel Custom and Apprentice Collars?). I personally have an odd fetish for running War of the Five Kings for this, since I like to screw a control decks plot choices... not sure if it's really that useful, or just hilariously fun.

The basici idea is to push unopposed P challenges with some of your stealthed vigilant/un-kneeling characters to gather power both on the renown characters and your house card. The feel is oddly reminescent of Stark Siege. Even without taking claim into account, each unopposed P challenge you can manage should net you 3 power (2 for the unopposed and at least 1 for renown). You should also be pretty much able to grab dominance, due to all the characters staying standing. This is actually one of those builds that could have gone totally ballistic with Heir.

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That's pretty much the deck i ran at Summer Knights - save i hadn't tumbled to the Coves yet. I am going to try it with the higher Stealth function adn teh Hooks for added stand - i just may havev to cut back on the (6) refugees to get the Bastards back in. As I said in that thread - Cove is better in all ways than the bastards and the question becomes: so do you sacrifice some efficiency on the flop for the added stealth?

My version was not quite fast enough- close, but only one Plot Three win out of four matches. I want to consistently be done by Plot (or first challenge Plot three) adn with Cahllenge 2 a reasonable closing pahse at least half the time. I may need to run mel x 2.

The arena Knights actually slow you up a little - they cost four and the situational renown isn't what I woudl like. I will probably pull them for supes of key 4 cost uniques.

And you are right - DotN Mel is the fastest and most consistent weapon Baratheon has.

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Stag Lord said:

That's pretty much the deck i ran at Summer Knights - save i hadn't tumbled to the Coves yet. I am going to try it with the higher Stealth function adn teh Hooks for added stand - i just may havev to cut back on the (6) refugees to get the Bastards back in. As I said in that thread - Cove is better in all ways than the bastards and the question becomes: so do you sacrifice some efficiency on the flop for the added stealth?

My version was not quite fast enough- close, but only one Plot Three win out of four matches. I want to consistently be done by Plot (or first challenge Plot three) adn with Cahllenge 2 a reasonable closing pahse at least half the time. I may need to run mel x 2.

The arena Knights actually slow you up a little - they cost four and the situational renown isn't what I woudl like. I will probably pull them for supes of key 4 cost uniques.

And you are right - DotN Mel is the fastest and most consistent weapon Baratheon has.

when I did see WWDrakeys deck performing I can say that the arena k (firsnights were brutal in that deckt time I ever saw them as a threat), when he is doing 3-4 power challenges a turn it gets really hard to stop them. I would ask people to try them in this kind of baratheon rush deck they can really surprise both players with their performance :) also since the deck ran starve for your king which it ment that in good beginings he had atleast 8 golds in his goldpool and some good baratheon reducers.

With playtesting it did fairly well (more like kicked down) most of my decks one of which was lannister hyper kneel. Only deck that really seemed to cause it problems was stark kill control and asshai shadow control (when it decides to work and get all of its pieces...). Martell would have probably caused trouble to it aswell with BotS and VB, but I'm not martell player ;)

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Stag, my point is... you can build a deck that has a first turn win threat. What it needs to be competitive is the redundancy and resilience to survive. If you can get enough draw without Val, Narrow Escape can work. Or if you build the deck around val then plopping her down at the right time is brutal.

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Ire said:

Stag Lord said:

That's pretty much the deck i ran at Summer Knights - save i hadn't tumbled to the Coves yet. I am going to try it with the higher Stealth function adn teh Hooks for added stand - i just may havev to cut back on the (6) refugees to get the Bastards back in. As I said in that thread - Cove is better in all ways than the bastards and the question becomes: so do you sacrifice some efficiency on the flop for the added stealth?

My version was not quite fast enough- close, but only one Plot Three win out of four matches. I want to consistently be done by Plot (or first challenge Plot three) adn with Cahllenge 2 a reasonable closing pahse at least half the time. I may need to run mel x 2.

The arena Knights actually slow you up a little - they cost four and the situational renown isn't what I woudl like. I will probably pull them for supes of key 4 cost uniques.

And you are right - DotN Mel is the fastest and most consistent weapon Baratheon has.

when I did see WWDrakeys deck performing I can say that the arena k (firsnights were brutal in that deckt time I ever saw them as a threat), when he is doing 3-4 power challenges a turn it gets really hard to stop them. I would ask people to try them in this kind of baratheon rush deck they can really surprise both players with their performance :) also since the deck ran starve for your king which it ment that in good beginings he had atleast 8 golds in his goldpool and some good baratheon reducers.

With playtesting it did fairly well (more like kicked down) most of my decks one of which was lannister hyper kneel. Only deck that really seemed to cause it problems was stark kill control and asshai shadow control (when it decides to work and get all of its pieces...). Martell would have probably caused trouble to it aswell with BotS and VB, but I'm not martell player ;)

Don;t get me wrong - i'm definteiyl nto hating on them. They just came out after last weekend. My environment is VERY heavy control - and i am having trouble because the deck is top heavy - way more four ocst characters than ti is probably smart to play - Fat Robert. Eldon Estermont, Mel, 3 x Arena Knights its tough. Maybe I need to look at Starve for your King...

I ahev all the extra power challenge tech but to get 3 x AKs in play - you're tlaking about 16 gold in costs, by Turn two or three at the latest. Even with a Seat ro two early - its asking a lot - given that the key Plot is only three gold. I am hoping that the Cove hook combo (2 gold and much harder to control0 will give me the punch I need by repalcing the Aks and turning some more affordably costed charatcers into something similar.

Thsi may all be a matter of taste and environment - but I certainly agree with hsi amin point: mel is teh key weapon in the deck and I need more copies of her in the build.

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The choices for your 3-4 gold slot are REALLY tight and I think even slight variations in other parts of your build can easily affect what choices start working for you. Personally I was minimizing my reliance on stand events and maximizing my kicker-resources (3x Narrow Sea, 3x Seat of Power, 2-3x Starve for your King, Street of Sisters etc.), so I ran 3x of Arena Knight (I had the gold, and needed the self-stand), but only 1x of Estermont (and even that may have been cut). Then again, if you have more stand-tech, Estermont will easily be the card you want 3x of. Starve for Your King was surprisingly useful btw, I recommend trying it out. Allowed me to get one more high-gold character on the table on Turn 1, which was often enough to give me a strong advantage.

I actually started thinking that the Maester Agenda could also fit a deck like this... ~What a surprise, eh?

Mainly what you'd want is 2-3x (one on agenda) of Apprentice Collar, then you can use either a Vigilant character or Any Phase Robert to play Citadel Custom for additional P challenges. The strength boost from that isn't shabby, it can be setup, and using Robert or a Vigilant character (Arena Knight before you push through a military challenge) would allow you to play it essentially for free. You could also put in 1x of Tin Link that would be a more dependable anti-milk than Cressen (and not cost the 2 gold). Just a thought.

Summer Knights was before bots got restricted, right? Did you run into any Martell there, since I'd think bots would be an absolute pain for this deck...

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I didn't hit Martell at that event - but yeah: pretty much since that card hit i have had to deal with it as Martell is and always seems to be really popular around here. At the higher levels - otherwise, NY has always had a lot of Stark players. But hence my BoTS hate recently - it has cost me many, many more games than the VB ever did and i developed a healthy loathing for that card.

And I see we are building along similar lines and that you have identified the core of my deck and the crux of my (as of this week) issue with Arena Knight. I am supporting nine or ten stand effect cards – quite a few times at Knights I ended up with Bannermen in hand with nothing good to play them on: AK was on the table already and all else were small characters. Too many times, the Bannermen weren’t pulling their weight, while Estermont was driving home wins in other matches. And I DEFINITELY would have liked to see Mel in the one close game I lost. On the whole, I got the sense that she is really they key to that Turn 2/Plot 3 win I am looking for and I do feel good about dropping the AKs for Mel +1 Estermont=1 and maybe TLS +1.
You have me seriously thinking of Starve though – not sure where I would cut, but I will try and find room.

And I am eager to see the Cove+hook combo in action. Just not sure if the Bastards go back in and three Vale Refugees come out. I’m losing icons at a higher cost – but the redundant stealth with DoTN Mel might be huge.