Hi everyone, I thought I would take a moment to post my House Targaryen deck list from GenCon. I was knocked out of the joust (ie crushed) by Greg in the semi-finals, so this is the 3rd or 4th place deck list, depending on how you look at it. Either way, I think it's a fun deck, and I encourage people to mess around with Targ + chains. I'm certain the Maester's Path, rather than the Summer Agenda, is currently *the* best way to build Targ.

And in case my empty assertions aren't enough, I was 3-1 against Martell summer throughout the event, and undefeated against Martell summer if you count the modified loss as a (likely) win, which I think it would have been had the game gone an hour rather than 50 minutes. I'm not saying the Martell summer match up is easy, but the odds seem to come down fairly consistently in Targ's favor. (Prior to the tournament, I had thought this match up was more 50-50, but looking back that clearly isn't the case.)

Kudos to Greg for rolling me in semis, and to Casey, who's Greyjoy deck made me look like a complete moron. I'm pretty sure after the prelim game we played he was wondering "man, how did such a crappy deck and player get to 3-0?!"

The list is up on CardGameDB here http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/index.html/_/game-of-thrones/got-tournament-reports/gencon-2011-3rd-place-deck-top-targ-joust-deck-r51.

It was a pleasure playing you. I think I might have had an easier time if I have been playing location hate or Ghaston Grey, but that being said, I am glad you finally agree with me that the odds were in your favor. One of the most challenging decks I played all day (Which makes sense, I suppose, since you beat me once, and nearly twice.)

Well done on a creative approach.

Thanks man. Yeah, I had a great time...that first game against you (round 6) was the best thrones game (in terms of back-and-forth) I've played in a long time. Tragically it was the one that (we thought) would determine who broke, so it was also somewhat stressful. That's a game I'll remember for a long time.

The second game was a bit stranger...and I think came down more to a bit of luck on my part, and the fact that I was outdrawing you. If anything, I'd say you outplayed me that game and I just got *very* lucky drawing into a Rhaenys' Hill when I did.

Looks like the link isn't working or something is wrong with the CardgameDB website because it's not bringing up the decklist

widowmaker93 said:

Hm, brought it up fine for me - scroll down a bit.

WolfgangSenff said:

It's not working for me either. I get a page that says the article can't be found.

sWhiteboy said:

yeah this is what happened to me too

A very interesting build. I'm surprised to not see at least 1x Queen Daenerys to net an extra card from Pyromancer's Cache, but I guess that would raise the overall cost of the build quite a bit since she costs 4.

Did you face many Targ decks with heavy attachment removal (or any Maester decks for that matter with removal)? I've been working on a summer deck that runs 3x Dragon Thief, Illyrio, and Shadow of the East for attachment control - primarily to take out apprentice collars. But I haven't had a chance to play yet, so it might not be that good. :-)

Do you think that you will add the new Targ Maesters and additional chains to this deck? What would you take out? Sorry for all the questions! I love Targ!

I also thought that this was in interesting build. Here are some of the surprises from the decklist...

1x Horseback Archers - I would have thought at least 2 of these guys but I guess sometimes they can really hurt your setup if you draw them into your opening hand.

2x Ser Jorah Mormont - He's good but I never would have thought to run 2. There are so many other good cards out there for a maester deck that you could have run.

You ran the Search Khal Drogo instead of the Jumper or the Kill version(who I would think would be amazing with the maester chains).

No in-deck Bronze Link. I know you have LDC but it's so tough to rely on that to get your chains back with all the location hate running around.

Only 1 Gold producing location. Sounds like this was a major reason for you going 4-2 and not 5-1.

No Dragon Skulls or KLAs. This I can see since they are expensive and Martell can cancel their responses. Probably a good idea not to run these. But I would still think that the burn would help in other matchups.

Only 2x Pyromancer's Cache...I would have ran 3 just to make sure you draw it.

Overall It looks like a very interesting deck and I can't wait to try some Maester stuff of my own for Targ. Now only if FFG had not of denied Targ that 4th Chapter Pack maybe you could have taken it all the way.

The link is working for me...if it doesn't work for other people, just visit CardGameDB, and click on the article. It's linked on the homepage.

@Widowmaker: This build is intended to be extremely fast, and other than the GJ match against Casey, I think the deck came out pretty fast in all my games. My typical flop is 4-6 cards. To keep this speed up, I try to play fast characters that are above 1 STR. Another consideration is intrigue. There are a high number of intrigue characters in here for a Targ deck. That allowed me to take better advantage of the many 2-claim plots, and when I forced the opponent to play Valar (by clearing his board with burn), it made it much harder for the opponent to recover. In the Martell match up, a lot of high-STR intrigue also made it more difficult for an opponent to get off a Game of Cyvasse when they needed to. Keeping all that in mind, I found that 2x cache was the right number in a 54-card deck, and I never really had a problem with draw.

You're right about the gold-providing locations though. I typically had a lot of cards in hand without enough gold to marshall them. I wish I could have fit some of those 0-cost gold producers in, but there's really just no room without slowing the deck down. I suppose I could pull 1x Xaro's Home, but that runs the risk of slowing down draw. Also, I originally ran 1x bronze link main deck instead of one of the collars, but I found that to be mostly unnecessary.

On Drogo, Erick (Finite) disagrees with me about the value of this version of Drogo too. I admit it's a matter of preference and how you play the deck. In my opinion, Core Set Drogo just doesn't offer as much as the draw version. As good as Core Set Drogo is, in my experience he doesn't really help you win the game, he just helps you win the game faster when you're already winning. (There are obviously exceptions to this, but as a general rule this is what I've found.) In contrast, the draw version can turn a loss into a win, especially after a reset. With a couple chains on Drogo, I can search for 5+ dothraki and repopulate the board incredibly fast. Most importantly, I don't have to already be winning the game to use this ability. In fact, it is precisely at the worst of times (when I'm losing) that this Drogo really shines. So even if the draw version is a dead card 1/2 the time, he's really fantastic at least 25% of the time.

About attachment removal, I didn't play against any other Targ decks (there were only a few others playing in the joust). Other decks played a little bit, but it's honestly pretty easy to discard a Tin Link or just take a hit from a one-time effect (ill Tidings), and then recover with a bit of attachment recursion. More common was Game of Cyvasse and Gaston Grey. I played against Martell 5 times, and 3 of those decks ran Gaston Grey. One of those opponents had Gaston Grey out early and managed to bounce maesters 3-4 times in a row before I could finally kill his Edric (I had to pair up Hatchling Feast and a Flame-Kissed) and discard his Arianne from hand. In that game, I would say the player used Gaston Grey pretty much as well as it could have been used to stall the game. It just didn't matter.

widowmaker93 said:

Add a gold link to the killer of the wounded combo, and you have an insane gold producing machine. The question remains, what card do you take out for the gold link?

HoyaLawya said:

Gold Link and Lead Link both require you to kneel the character. So, it would only work if you have two Killer of the Wounded out. One with Gold Link and the other with Lead Link.

you are correct. that makes it a little more difficult to pull off, but it would be awesome

for those who had trouble getting to the article it is possible that it was set to publish slightly in the future. I've checked and everything should be OK now so if anyone encounters any more trouble let me know.

On topic: Was City of Soldiers mostly for another 2 claim plot or did you manage to get good use out of it killing a 1 STR character?

He could have pre-plot burnt someone with lead link I think?

He killed my 1 strength characters every time he played it.

Fieras said:

were you running Venomous Blade?

If I remember correctly Fieras was running VB.

City of Soldiers was in there for the reasons mentioned above...namely it's a 3-gold, 2-claim plot with an occasional *very good* effect, as opposed to other 2-claim plots that have less gold or a worse ability. Most games I could arrange it so that I killed a 1 STR character (burning 2-STR characters in the previous round and leaving at least one small guy for the plot). As someone also mentioned, killing a 1-STR character gets pretty fantastic with the Killer of the Wounded combo.

Also, on the point about Killer burn combo + Gold chain, you really don't need two killers in play to take advantage of this. All you need is a Flame-Kissed. Since killer *should* have a bronze link on him, you will be able to return the attachment to hand once per phase. So what you do is (1) draw phase kneel for gold; (2) marshalling phase play Flame-Kissed and stand killer; (3) kneel killer to give a character - STR and return flame-kissed; (4) kneel killer during the marshalling to get gold; (5) play Flame-Kissed to kill something of high STR (that you just burned with killer). In other words, it's easy to kill two characters with Flame-Kissed (one 2 STR and another up to 5 STR) and claim 6+ gold with only the collar, lead, and bronze links attached to killer. All this happens in the marshalling phase, before challenges (during which you can kill another high-STR character if you have influence to pay for ambush).

If you have the Red Keep and the link that stands locations in play, things just get silly, since every time you kneel the killer for burn/gold, you're also getting back Flame-Kissed and standing the Red Keep (limit once per phase of course). I did some testing with the spoiled draw chain as well...and let's just say that if you can keep killer out with 5 attachments on him, you hit your draw cap every round and have plenty of gold, while your opponent essentially has no characters.

Keeping killer in play gets very difficult though. This combo is easily more threatening for the opponent than playing against Shaggydog or TRV, and because it's on a printed 2-STR character, there are a lot of way to deal with it. Martell has tons of solutions for him...Cyvasse, VB, Ghaston Grey, He Calls It Thinking (to prevent the response that stands him), or just outright high-claim. Stark can blank him or use Old Nan to remove his maester trait (which is super annoying). Usually though, someone will just Valar the moment you get the combo. Even if you have the maester save location in play, replaying all those chains gets pretty expensive. (I've messed around with variants that play Iron Mines to protect the combo, and they can be very hit-or-miss.) Rather than play for the combo, it's probably better just to build a solid deck and then add 3x killer on the off chance that you get the combo out early and your opponent doesn't have a solution.

Hello some questions:

1. Any changes to this build taking into account new chapter packs ?

2. Is it worth to invest in shadow support having only prophet and Varys?

3. Why two Jorah?

Thanks

berto said:

2. Shadow seers are excellent on their own, and even better when you happen to get a shadows card into play. If you want, you could add 1x Dragon Skull, but I would avoid Dragonpit in the maester build. If anything, I would cut down on the locations and add a second Favorable Ground. The advantage to the maester build is speed and less reliance on locations...no reason to add more. (With the two newest chapter packs, I would cut the prophet and add a second The Red Keep, but then cut some of the other locations as well.)

3. Jorah is arguably the most efficient character in the game. Also, he is 3 STR intrigue (the big reason I played the Prophet) in an environment where Martell dominates. Playing several 3+ STR intrigue characters makes it much harder for the Martell player to control you, and much easier to push through an intrigue challenge against Martell/Lanni when you need to.

Thanks a lot I went through. If you drop cache then you don't have restricted cards. Have you thought about Narrow Escape as a defence agains Valar? Plot which you mentioned works fine but you can"t be sure when Valaar comes.

What do you suggest as a defence agains bara maester? Have you thought about Mad King Legacy to discard cellar from robert with all chain attachmentes?

Which new chains do you see attached to agenda?

Narrow Escape may not be such a good option since, if this deck centrates on Intrigue and attacking the opponent's hand, the other player may be willing to discard his/her hand to cancel it. Not sure if this is right, though. Let's see what twn2dn says.

nikotina said:

Also keep in mind though that Narrow Escape can be cancelled easily with Paper Shield. Note that I run no Paper Shield targets in this deck, so any opponent running Paper Shield will be waiting until I play the NE. The chances of getting off a mid-game NE (when I really need it, for example after Valar) is slim. I think the best strategy is to either play 0 targets for Paper Shield, or play a bunch, including your own Paper Shields. Also, as Nikotina mentions, this restricted card often isn't particularly good against a player who has a small hand size unless you can also play cards that discard a "last card" the opponent is holding, such as a Dornish Skirmisher.

Lastly, I have a theory, or maybe it's more of a "feeling," that Narrow Escape is particularly good in this environment only because Martell is powerful. Martell relies on in-hand card advantage more than any other house. For this reason, Narrow Escape is particularly good against Martell, so long as you can actually play it without it being canceled (no easy feat against Martell). Against other houses, Narrow Escape is still good, but may not be *the* best card. Fortunately or unfortunately, this Targ deck already tends to win against Lannister maesters, most Bara builds, and (as it turned out) Martell summer. So unless you're really worried about other Martell builds, or find that you're still having a tough time against Martell summer, NE might just be unnecessary.

In the end, I think you could go with Narrow Escape, but then you'd probably want to also add your own Paper Shields. At that point, you might as well also add 2x Forever Burning (which are fantastic, but tragically inefficient when they're canceled after one use). I really missed having Forever Burnings, as there were a lot of times where a quick -1 would have paired with Flame-Kissed to finish off a problematic character. But altogether that's 8 new cards to the deck, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the deck begins to look/function quite a bit differently with such significant changes. (It develops different hard/easy match ups.)