I’ve been spending the vast majority of my GoT LCG time exploring Targaryen decks over the last few months following GenCon. I’ve tested several different builds: Summer Burn, Shadows Burn, Aggro Burn, and various builds in between. My initial testing of the house went well and I was optimistic, however, as I began to test against top tier builds I found that Targ just doesn’t have the firepower to compete.

What I’ve found is that the house has some glaring weaknesses that make it very sub-par in a world of Maesters, Martell, and Greyjoy. I decided to start this thread to discuss my opinions and to gather thoughts from other players as well.

I’d like to preface this by saying I’m not talking about Targ Maester builds. Maesters make every single deck better and shore up any weakness that a deck has because they are overpowered.

These are my observations and opinions about Targ:

1. Character Base: I think everyone who has played Targ has noticed that it’s full of weenies and overall lackluster characters when compared to other houses. There are very few characters that are higher than 2 STR and the house is chock full of negative traits that make them susceptible to discard effects. I know that the Ally trait makes a lot of sense when it comes to the content in the books but it’s a major thorn in the card player’s side.

I’ve wondered why this is the case and have assumed that the designers felt that the STR reducing effects in the house warranted Targ having lower STR characters. If that’s the case it doesn’t make sense for a card like Endless Endurance to be printed as Stark has tons of 3+ STR chars and Endless Endurance adds 2 STR rather than reducing opponent’s STR by 1. Not to mention that Endless Endurance is perfectly happy being Paper Shielded while Forever Burning gets hosed if it’s canceled.

In a world of Paper Shield, To Be a Kraken, He Calls it Thinking, Maester Murenmure and so forth; burn effects are just not reliable. These cancels are very devastating to a Targ player that is holding back cost reducing effects and expending resources, relying on them to go off to be able to stay in the game. Not to mention that these cancels cause Forever Burning, Dragon Skull, or whatever to go to the discard pile.
If First Snow of Winter is reprinted this is going to be an even greater issue as it might as well be Valar Morghulis to a Targ Deck.

Solution: Targ needs more 3 cost, 3 STR characters and less negative traits overall.

2. The influence ball-and-chain: Because so many of Targ’s effects rely on using influence you’re not able to utilize cost reducers like every other house can. This means that you can’t marshal as many cards as opponent’s can and you are relying exclusively on gold. I’ve found this to be a serious issue in my games.

It’s very strange that Targ does not have more influence providing locations (or even cards period) than other houses given this reliance. In fact, Martell has more influence providing locations than Targ and more cost reducing locations than anyone else. Cards such as Prince’s Plans or Advisor’s Chambers make much more thematic sense in house Targ than they do in Martell. I think there is an issue in Targ with house identity.

Solution: I feel the solution to influence reliance is cards that provide both influence and gold. One idea I had was a location that provides gold, influence, and stands when a character’s strength is reduced (perhaps to 0, if that is unbalanced). Another idea is to print attachment(s) that provide influence (Game needs more Tin Link fodder). I know there was something like this in the CCG.

3. House identity: Targ decks that focus on control can’t compete with the control effects of Greyjoy and Martell. Targ decks that focus on aggro can’t compete with Stark or Baratheon. I’ve done a ton of experimenting and I can’t find any hybrid of these that is competitive. What is Targ’s identity? What does Targ do better than others or that no one else does?

Burn is extremely restrictive (most of the terminal cards require that the target have no attachments), cancelable (I think Flame-Kissed is the only exception), and very resource intensive. That’s the playable burn – there’s about 5x more unplayable burn that is even more restrictive, such as requiring you to have and kneel dragons, have many cards in the shadows, have it summer and kneel 2 influence, etc.

Ambush and similar effects, burn, attachment removal, and recursion seem to be the themes that are central to Targ. I don’t see any one of those as fleshed out and executed well enough to be viable. Too many restrictions, too many costs – I always feel like I’m stretched too thin by the costs of these. I don’t see cards like Unburnt and Maegi’s Promise being as good as Greyjoy saves. You have to spend the character’s costs to bring them back out, and in the case of Maegi’s Promise, you also have to kneel an influence out during dominance. As far as attachment removal goes – your main target are Maesters and they were jam-packed with attachment saving effects that return them to their hand as well as the Maester they are attached to.

Solution: Flesh out these mechanics and make them viable. Barristan Selmy is actually a card that addresses two of my issues: it is burn without the heavy restrictions, a 3 STR character that isn’t an Ally, all while being balanced due to the discard cost. Perhaps for recursion make an effect like“Only death can pay for life,” which allows you to return a character from dead pile into play by killing a character. This type of effect would be much more competitive when compared to Greyjoy saves.

4. Draw: Or lack thereof. The only cards within Targ that allow repeatable draw are Maegi Crone (too expensive, too conditional, too susceptible), Jhogo (great character but character based draw is unreliable), Xaro’s Home (too conditional, too expensive), and Meereen (Targ already relies heavily on locations, and dragons are either unique and expendable or unique and expensive). Running Summer for draw consumes 6 deck slots and one plot at the minimum and more likely 8-9 deck slots. It is also extremely risky, if it’s winter more than a turn or two you’re going to lose the game.

Summary: I think Targ needs better characters, more and better options when it comes to resource providers, fewer prohibitions when it comes to burn and playing its cards, playable draw mechanics in-house, and better fleshing out of its themes overall.

While almost everything you say is right, I think we have solutions to these problems.

Character Base: Really lame here, and our own Deluxe Expansion didn't help us exactly, but we have some cool characters, and you don't need the best character pool to get to 30-32 chars. We have very poor cards at cost 3, but lately we have received some cool dudes like Aggo or Jhogo. New Daario seems good, but he fails the Venenous Blade check, sadly. Anyway, we have very good cost 4 ambush dragons, Drogo, new Barristan, SoO Dany, etc. But I agree we could get some more love in the 3-cost character base.

The influence ball-and-chain: This is the biggest problem Targ has, a dual resource base is really inefficient, that's the reason no other competitive build uses influence. The only one solution to this problem I can find is to play Knights of the Hollow Hill. It solves a lot of problems, like poor setups caused by expensive locations, a high number of events/attachments, many dudes not useful in setup like Dragon Thief or Horseback Archers/Hunters, Khal Drogo, etc. Now you have another problem, you don't do setup, and it's a big problem, bit I think this is the right solution to the dual resources problem.

Having more locations with gold influence can't be the solution. FFG aren't going to print more chambers, nor something clearly more efficiente than crossroads, nor we need more locations which make us very vulnerable to location hate. And having the Red Keep I doubt we're getting something more powerful or more secure.

House identity: For me the identity of the house is very strongly related to resets, and the capacity to get advantages after resets. Aegon's Hill and Rhaenys Hill are great cards in this reset war. So westeros bleeds and favorable ground seems very natural Targ cards in the pool, and both have a very good sinergy with the KotHH agenda. Other cards like To Be a Dragon or Ambush from the plains works greatly here too.

Draw: Targ draw is a shame. So we need to look at neutral draw one way or another. My choices are King's Landing and Pyromancer's cache. But summer/sam or valyrian link serve the same purpose. Maybe if we keep receiving Knights we could use the agenda, but not in a burn build I think.

I think the new Daario exemplifies my point very well actually. He's 3 cost, 2 STR, and his ability makes him very risky to include. The Smalljon is 3 STR and has melee, although he doesn't have a discard effect and Ser Arys Oakheart is 3 cost and has a better discard effect and renown.

I haven't found Knights of the Hollow Hill to be playable in Targ in my own experience. Martell can get away with it because they have so much challenge control that can allow them to recover from Fear of Winter or bad board position early on.

I don't think Targ recovers from resets nearly as well as Greyjoy.

The issue with King's Landing is that it's very slow and Targ has very few King's Landing locations compared to other houses. The ones it does have are 1 cost, 3 cost, and 4 cost respectively. These are very expensive and you're also going to want to run River Row and Street of Steel to have more insurance that you can use the ability. Doing that leaves you little room for influence unless you want to run like 20 locations, in which case you don't have room for attachments or events.

Stasis said:

You forgot Twilight Market. This plus The Red Keep (both of them neutral I know, but staples in a Shadows burn deck), plus River Row, plus any (or all) of the three hills, plus the Dragonpit guarantee you 'll have more KL locations than your opponent.

As for the income / influence thing (our biggest concern), try Summer builds with the Myrish Villa. This location is awesome, since it practically turns influence into income. Two birds with one stone.

Well, you have to consider everything as a whole.

If you are not running KotHH then your recover ability is way worse, you depend a lot on locations, then you cannot play favorable ground (and are deeply hit if you face this event), then you cannot get King's Landing on as a reliable draw engine.

Remember, if your rival has 9 non-limited KL location (only one is limited, Twilight Market), you only need Kl, 3 influence and favorable ground to win the trait battle. 3 influence is agenda+fiefdom, or Red Keep. You need to protect KL, but you can have it in shadows till the reset, or you may have duped it before.

Greyjoy has a recovery chance from a westeros bleeds or threat from the north+hatchling feast really low. Targ has no more chance than Grey, sure, but you play the reset so it's a timing question, and Targ has some jumping chars (horsebacks, Drogo, queen's knight, Bastard of the Titan, Ambush From the plains...).

So, as I see it, either you play KotHH, or don't play influence based burn.

Serazu said:

Whilst Myrish Villa is a good cost reducer, its not Influence. I simply do not see why Martell has a variety of influence generators and Targ has none despite Targ's much greater influence needs.

playgroundpsychotic said:

I didn't say it's influence, I said "it practically turns influence into income", since it hits the table with influence, allowing you to:

1. Reduce costs by a great margin.

2. Save your gold for something extra.

Serazu said:

Except its not a solution to the influence problem. Yes, its useful to turn influence into income but would it not be more beneficial to have an effect that does the reverse? Sometimes you need influence to fuel certain card effects. Most ambush cards can be usefully played with gold although its almost always better to spend influence to pay for ambush.

I agree with the original post, though these are not really new issues. Honestly, outside of maesters, Targ just isn't going to be very competitive. That's because the maesters fill in those holes you mentioned (add STR to characters, help with income, and provide card advantage).

Though I'm skeptical of any non-maester approach working in the competitive environment, there are a couple ways to address some of your concerns.

Influence (cost-curve): Run Advisor to the Crown + At the Gates in non-maester decks. Obviously it's a less attractive option in a summer deck, because you can't play Time for Ravens round 1. But I find that having 2 influence early on makes the deck much more consistent. Also, count up all the influence costs you have in the deck. You should have about 2/3 the number of influence-providing cards as you do total influence cost. (So if you have 2x Hatchling Feast, 2x Flame-Kissed, and 2x Forever Burning, you would have 12 influence cost in your deck. You would want around 8 influence-providing cards, with at least one of those being an Advisor that you can put directly into play.)

Solid characters: No real help here...this is really where Targ falls apart. If you really have to play non-maesters, then stack up on uniques...2x Jorah, 3x Jhogo, 2x Drogo (search for dothraki version), etc. That means you're likely stuck with playing Narrow Escape as your restricted card, but there are worse things in life.

Draw: Really, the biggest thing FFG could do to make non-maester Targ competitive is give them a more reliable form of draw (or card advantage). The problem with burn and weenies isn't that they are "inefficient" exactly, it's that they require stacking up effects/STR in order to do anything. Much of the burn requires using multiple effects together, at least for characters above 2 STR. This is where Targ is challenged...they don't have enough draw to be effective without the maester recursion/draw. King's Landing (shadows) was OK for awhile, but the environment has sped up, not to mention location hate is now more plentiful. Any draw engine that takes 2-3 turns to get going (which King's Landing does, unless you completely neglect board position) is no longer competitive.

The BIG RISK for Targ, I think, is that at some point FFG is going to give them draw. By the time this happens though, Targ is probably going to get more efficient burn, bigger characters, and better sources of influence. At this point, it's possible that with draw + all these other fixes, Targ is just going to dominate. Nobody wants a house that can consistently burn 2-3 characters a round AND win challenges. That's not fun. Without draw, Targ is probably going to remain second tier, but with draw, it's getting to the point where Targ is *very* powerful. This is why, I think, the maester deck is so successful.

Frankly, though I 'm a staunch supporter of draw in every card game, I 'm alright with our inefficiency to it. Every house should have an Achilles' heel after all. Besides, there are many neutral cards that provide efficient draw and we have the best recursion in the environment (though the Prince's Plans is an outrage). The income / influence combination is my greatest concern, however, since it requires a large portion of our decks in order to be dealt with. If more cards like Myrish Villa are introduced, I 'll be a happy man.

Serazu said:

Getting recursion going can take a few rounds, because even if I draw my Dany's Chambers, etc. it might take me a couple rounds to get to the attachment I need to help me. As the environment speeds up (and it has already), Targ can really fall behind if it takes a few rounds for it's card advantage mechanic to kick in. Meanwhile, GJ's saves work on round 1, Martell and Lanni have very robust draw engines that kick in on rounds 1-2, and Stark's search/draw is just as fast. Really Bara and Targ are behind here, but unlike Bara, Targ can't close out a win fast enough for the lack of card advantage to play only a minor role.

If Targ gets more recursion like Bronze Link (only in-house rather than neutral), that would make me just as happy. If the recursion is going to continue to focus predominantly on attachments though, then a couple more search effects like Red Warlock might be necessary as well. More effects like Street Waif are OK too...but then Targ needs more effects like the new Selmy to help ensure that all those crappy cards your opponent picks out for you are still somewhat useful (even if only situationally).

True. Up to now, Summer is our most reliable draw mechanic. Situational yeah, but Targs can do a lot during Summer.

Lady Daenerys' chambers are amazing, no doubt. However, the environment will be shifting to more location hate due to Ghaston Grey and Citadel of Oldtown and such - and Greyjoy just got Newly Made Lord too.

I agree with Dan that the Targ cards that do provide some card advantage or either too slow or are impractical (too expensive for effect or too susceptible to disruption) to use. I'd be perfectly happy with recursion being Targ's sole card advantage strategy as long as it was done in a way that was competitive.

I don't think more Myrish Villas are the answer. There's only so many locations you can run in a deck before it begins to seriously erode the events and attachments you can run. I'm already at 11 must-have locations in my builds and probably more like 14 that I'm attached to. That leaves me 16 slots for more locations, attachments, and events I can run without counting Myrish Villas. I think a location that is 1-2 cost (or some creative cost such as killing one of your characters or something) and provides gold and influence is something that would help the most.

A good Targ agenda that helps with one of the weaknesses would go a long way to helping. It's a card that doesn't take up a crowded location/attachment/event slot. Baratheon has the Knights of the Realm agenda that really helps out the draw weakness in the deck. No one can compete with the amount of Knights they can field, but there are times when the downside will come into play after setup or after a reset so it's not 100% upside.

Summer isn't the answer to me either. It requires a ton of deck slots to utilize and there's too much season hate (Winter or Maesters that discard it). When you're doing the typical season stand off with these decks it's just many turns of not being able to utilize the draw from Summer. God help you if it becomes Winter...

Serazu said:

Martell can do a lot during Summer. Or without Summer. Greyjoy and Stark can generate card advantage independent of season and then use Winter to counter your draw engine.

Then, make sure it stays Summer. And do not make the mistake of thinking only of the agenda. Shade of the Evening is awesome. Imagine a Dothraki Summer as well with Jhogo and Vaes Dothrak in it. Yes, it's situational, but if a Targ player cannot win mil challenges with Dothraki, then the problem is more about him, not the house.

No one is playing 2 cost attachments since Tin Link was printed. Most decks aren't playing any attachments period.

If one house has ways of dealing with Tin Link it's the Targ.

Serazu said:

Do you mean having all of their attachments discarded by Tin Link and then having to retrieve them every turn and having to play them again every turn? Cause that's not really a sustainable solution.

Serazu said:

I do imagine it. Every single game, every turn is a 3 Dothraki military rush with Jhogo in the lead. I cackle madly from the weight of the massive stack of cards in my hand.

The reality often is Jhogo slipping in a solo military challenge via stealth if possible (its not always). Assuming my friends aren't actively trying to stop him since they've now figured out how valuable he is. He's really the only card that gives any form of stable draw for Targ and he's the usual mulligan target. Everything else is a multicard investment that you still have to draw to get going.

Searzu has the rigth of it.

If you are playing Targ on Black Friday without reservation. If a Dragon Follower can't Tin Link - well, he really doesn't deserve to complain. Targ has soem good atatchments and can protect/recur them - shade of the evening being one of them, and providing solid supplemental draw. The Shade/Warlock combo is infinite adn can easily let you pressure an opponent rhough several challenge phases. Cards like Tin Link and Venemous Blade - that are OP agisnt the other Houses really don't slow Targ down much. (This is why i don't have much symapthy for Targ players who don't run Mad King's and soem combination of Dragon Thieves and Mereeneese Brothel).

I'm running Targaryen at Black friday - and i feel rpetty good about the choice. i'll mathc up well wit Maester decks and managing the reosurce curve has become much easier since the Targ box provided a couple of key +2 INF resources. Things have been different for teh House of teh Dragon lately - and by the way: Barristan Selmy just upped the Houses efficiency quotient noticeably.

Jef said:

I find it very difficult to use KotHH in Targ these days. As Twn2dn mentioned, the game has been speeding up, and the lack of setup combined with the lack of draw mechanics make it difficult to gain any sort of control before you are overrun. If we had some more reliable draw then Targ would have a better chance of making up for the lack of setup, but as it stands now KotHH isn't a practical solution.

It seems to me that part of the problem is that Targ still really only has one semi-competitive build: burn. Lanni has a similar problem but they are getting some really promising cards and they have a box on the way that looks pretty solid so far. All the other Houses have been fleshed out with cards that add new mechanics and options (Ghaston Grey, Slander and Lies, Widow's Watch) but Targ has been given nothing new to work with. The box was obviously a disappointment except for a few key cards, and Dragon decks and Army decks have not proven to be competitive at all, though Plaza of Pride was a good start (maybe). Everyone seems to agree that Maesters are the way to go right now, but its still just a burn deck.

Great discussion. This "noob" (well - I've been playing for a while actually, but still minimal experience outside of casual core set games...) really appreciates it!

As a Martell hater (mostly just because I'm rather disinterested in them in terms of the books/storyline) and a Targ fan (Dragons kick ass, Dany is hot) I'm saddened by the fact that Targ seems to be at/near the bottom of the barrel in competitive play.

So anyway a few questions for you "pros":

1) Has Plaza of Purification done much (if anything) to help the gold+influence resource issue?

2) Does anyone use Core Set Daario in "competitive"(or even just "advanced") decks? I'm a big fan of him in the books, but regardless his CS card just seems pretty great to me. The traits kind of suck, but **** a PRINTED 3-Str Tricon w/deadly is great, and in my (limited) experience there's always someone with a gold laying around at the beginning of dominance...

3) Interesting discussion re "draw" vs "recursion". In my (again, very limited) experience, I've seen recursion work very well. I suppose the benefit/advantage to recursion is that you get to dig for something that you may have need of right at that moment (or after a couple phases). But, I guess the obvious disadvantage is that it's potentially a LOT slower than just regular draw.

4) I recently played against a Targ Dothraki deck in a joust, and played my own in a melee as well. Seems like a **** strong build - can get running quickly and with some beefy tough characters as well (e.g. ambushed weapons, strength-bump Dany, etc). No Dragons or burn in either deck - just straight Dothraki synergy (not even Summer IIRC). There just seem to be a ton of cards available to support the Dothraki trait - a plethora of strong and weenie characters, great events, attachments and locations to strengthen/key off them, lots of nasty tricks and boons. Still appears that "Summer", "burn", and/or Maesters are the best bets?

5) If I ever win a world championship and get to design my own card, it will be an Attachment of "Silver", which will grant both influence and cost reduction at the same time (as well as some immunity if it's attached to Dany). So don't worry, Targ resource management help is coming!!!

This is my opinion, as someone who really enjoys playing but doesn't get to as much as I would like.

For the sake of the game Targ burn can never be tier 1.

If that were to happen that means it has the ability to deal with heavy character builds (35+ characters) which we already see, and is to a certain extent the norm. If that were ever get established on the top of the hill, it wouldn't be able to be knocked off because any characters you field against it would just get removed. You would either need a lot of "immune to opponent's events" characters, and that evasion is extremely strong, or "X's strength cannot be lowered."

Just think for a bit about the classic rush vs control that goes on. Your either playing lots of characters and rushing, or your building decks that control those characters (sometimes through your characters like Castellan or what have you). If burn were to make it to the top of the heap, nothing would be able to replace it without a massive power "creep" because of the nature of the deck they would be dealing with. If this happens to character heavy decks, you come out with something like GG. That kind of reactive card design would require what... say three non-uniques for every house that would be un-burnable. Otherwise every character you field is getting burned to zero and discarded on the spot.

Know what I am saying?

I love Targ and I think their maesters are competitive, I just don't think we can ever see a serious consistent tier 1 burn because it would be too difficult to get it out of that number 1 spot.

There are plenty of characters that are no attachments, immune to events, immune to triggered effects, etc. There are also characters whose STR is too high to burn. 3 STR characters are doable but by no means automatic, 4 STR starts getting very hard and 5+ STR is **** near impossible to burn. It takes multiple cards to pull this off as well. Dan said it nicely in his post.

Why is Venomous Blade in Martell instead of Targ? Why does Venomous Blade cost 0 to bring out shadows while Dragon Skull costs 1 and is a response which makes it cancelable unlike VB?

No one said Targ had to be able to burn through 35+ character decks to be competitive, not sure where that came from. No one said Targ had to be the "best deck out there", either. We're saying they're too weak now. Burn doesn't have to be the ONLY thing the deck does -- it's an accent to the deck, one of the few things that Targ has unique to it (except for that chain...).

I disagree that 35+ character decks are the norm.

When the Targ Expansion was first announced I had really hoped they would've given the Dragons some kind of burn ability since you know... they breathe fire and it logically makes sense. I had also hoped we would have gotten a few more burn cards that were less pricey and could help burn a character or two by -1 STR just by playing it to help during challenges. But we didn't get a lot of that either. I'm hoping when Chapter Pack 5 and 6 are unveiled for this Chapter Pack Cycle we'll be seeing a few more lowly burn cards for Targ and maybe even one or two new weenie Dragons. I always felt like we need more Dragons for Targ too. We have 4 plus 3 hatchlings. You can't tell me all those dragon skulls of the Red Keep are unusable for cards. Why not toss out a few weenies and maybe one or two bigger, named Dragons like Balerion or Dany's?