The Dragon Deck...[Melee in particular, but joust is fine too]

By oshi2, in 1. AGoT General Discussion

Now, I can't vouch for how this deck does in joust. But if given just a bit of breathing space in melee, this has some crazy rush potential. Particularly with the Heir to the Iron Throne agenda.

Having Dany, Rhaegal and Yunkai is huge... I'd even dare to say faster or at the least comparable to Bara Rush. That said, they share very similar weaknesses.

Anyone else see/try this deck in their meta?

A guy in our Meta has a pretty wicked Dragon deck. I think he's running 3x each dragon and 3x each of the shadows hatchlings, + 3x Daenerys. He opens with counting favors to get cards in hand, and can get 2-3 Dragons and Dany out by turn 2. It's pretty brutal to play against, especially with so much stealth on his side. Not to mention all the saves. It's super fast with Heir to the Iron Throne, but going to the rush thread, it's kind of a glass cannon. If you can take down a dragon or two, or especially if you can kill Daenerys, the game is almost over unless he can recover with Maegi's promise.

I'm sleptical about how realible this would be in joust. the costs for the characters are consdierable adn by the time you ahve thinsg set up - a control deck shoudl be able to hold you down. Heri is a clever play - and actually Threat from the East migth help accelearet thinsg as well - Targ is pretty good at discuard recursion, so even the cost migth be off set by in House strengths.

You need to win fast though - I am always uneasy about counting on a couple of uniques to carry the victory in this game.

Ambush from the Plains also helps here - if Daenerys is in your hand, you can play it to put her into play, and then bring her back at the end of the challenges phase. If she dies, use Maegi's Promise to pull her back into hand, and so on. It's certainly an interesting deck, just not sure if it's all there, ya know?

I've toyed with a dragon/Heir deck as well, but have half-abandoned it now because it didn't run as consistently and smoothly as I would like. Admittedly, the deck is probably not as well constructed as it could be. Anyhow, in a melee game the deck drew a lot of hate from the other players because the dragons are so intimidating, but the deck is relatively easy to interrupt. If things went right it was very fast, though.

Saturnine said:

Anyhow, in a melee game the deck drew a lot of hate from the other players because the dragons are so intimidating, but the deck is relatively easy to interrupt.

And there's the rub. You might get attack just because people are terrified of dragons. You draw more attention to yourself than necessary. It would be like running a raiding deck, no one is going to like you. That being said, if you can win fast enough, the above might not matter.

Yeah, thats an important point. They need a good dose of hate or else they will run away with the game.

In the few games i had played with this deck on the table... it was either with newer players or those that had underestimated just how much they can claim in a single turn.

Once the dragons get a bit more exposure and gain some notoriety, I think they will have the same trouble as bara.

On the note of consistency; maybe its just my bad luck, but they have been a threat every time I've seen them played...

I think the key thing to understand about Dragons, especially in Melee, is that running 3x of all the big dragons + 3x of Dany is just bonkers and will make your deck quite easy to disrupt (and quite inconsistent, but then if you're feeling lucky...). The cards in a dragon deck that are actually gaining you power are Rhaegal, Daenerys (QoD) and the locations (Astapor especially, Meereen and Yunkai also help)... the other big dragons are cards that you're paying 4 gold for, just for decent stats and a trait.

IMHO, it's usually a much better idea to supplement Rhaegal and Dany with trait manipulation (copper link) and hatchlings, so that you can make Dany herself also a dragon and use the locations more creatively. Running 2-3x of Dance with Dragons (now in stores near you!) should allow you to get a duped Rhaegal into play early, so that you can start claiming power with him quickly and make up for not running 3x of all the others. I ran a deck like that last month, and I was actually pretty happy how it rolled... the list is in this thread. Definately a Melee build that though, wouldn't cut it in Joust I think.