WolfgangSenff said:

Stag Lord got it. I was mostly referring to the fact that Targ can get rid of attachments almost at will. Plus what you said, of course. Frankly, if someone plays Targ and fears attachments, then Targ is not for him.

Zordren said:

3) Recursion is not draw per se, but can serve as a substitute to it. Of course it's slower, otherwise it would have been imba. Still, it's a powerful weapon in any card game.

4) Dothraki out of Summer have:

1. Godly draw

2. Significant battle force with Dragon Sight and many standing effects

Such a deck is very-very competitive.

Stasis said:

True, true. The favoritism of the DT towards the Martell is scandalous. Not only can they wreck all your carefully laid plans with just one event at the right time, they get cards such as VB and The Prince's Plans that should have been ours by right. Or not be at all. I agree with the guy who said that it's time for VB to be banned. Compelled by the Rock was banned because it gave Lannister a signature Targaryen weapon. VB not only emulates THE signature Targaryen weapon, it's in fact the greatest burn effect in the game. No raise in cost, no nothing. This card is an abomination and should be cast out in disgrace.

Double post, sorry.

Don't get your panties in a twist about the number I chose, listen to what I was saying. If you establish consistent character removal at the top of the pile, your going to have a hell of a time getting rid of it. You bring up VB. How many people complain about it? Well now imagine if there was an entire deck filled with variations of VB.

Yes there are characters with No Attachments, they get hit by events and character abilities. There are characters immune to events, they get hit by attachments.

Stasis said:

VB in Targ would be way OP, even more than it is now. It would mean all the burn could be saved for large important characters and every Targ deck would run 3x VB + LDC for guaranteed weenie control. Your opponent couldn't even discard it effectively once your LDC was out. I agree with some of what Mathias says... suppose we opened the next couple of CPs and found four new shiny burn cards - if burn became the top deck, it would be very difficult for another build to displace it.

Skowza said:

But Targaryen can run Venomous Blade...

What is LDC?

Venomous Blade is House Martell Only. How do you figure Targ can run it?

EDIT: Nevermind, I completely forgot about City of Shadows Agenda.

Tokhuah said:

LDC= Lady Danerys' Chambers, I would guess.

Venomous Blade is an overpowered card in Martell, so yeah, it'd be one in Targ too. Targ has no restricted cards, I'm not counting a Fury plot where all of them are restricted and Targ has the worst one. My main point was that thematically it's a Targ card and the closest thing Targ got to it is much weaker and costs more to play.

Characters with "no attachments" are almost impossible to burn. Maybe if you get Threat from the North with Hatchling's Feast + maybe Forever Burning... but that requires that your opponent has 3 characters with no attachments on them (in a meta of Maesters) and requires a lot of resources to pull of. Even then it's not really burn because discarding is much less devastating that killing a unique.

I'm not asking for 4 more playable burn cards. I personally don't want to see a deck that has 30 burn cards and that's all it does. However, I think the power of burn is being severely overestimated. It's resource intensive and card intensive -- it would require lots and lots of draw to fuel that. You need to play 2 cost or greater characters to recur it and you need lots of influence and gold to play the burn. LDC is a location and as such it's susceptible to Price of War, Condemned by the Council, Newly Made Lord, Pyromancer's Apprentice, etc.

This post covers a wide range of weaknesses the house has. Some of them need to be addressed for Targ to be competitive in a tournament environment. The manner in which and combination of issues tackled is up to the designers.

Stasis said:

I disagree, there are plenty of effects that can burn characters with "no attachments" - DotN Khal Drogo, new Selmy, Pitch Towers... "no attachments" often makes it easier to burn characters since your opponent cannot protect them from burn that only targets characters with no attachments like KL Assassin and Hatchling's Feast. I feel like you are limiting your thinking to Dragon Skulls and Flame-Kissed and forgetting there are a variety of burn cards, and I'm not trying to criticize your opinion, just offering a different one. Don't forget The Dragonpit either, and that Hatchlings' Feast does not require your opponent to have 3 characters since you can use the -1 STR on one of your own guys pretty safely most of the time. We also have to remember that using two burn cards to kill a unique with a dupe costs your opponent two cards as well. FFG has to keep a lid on the power of burn and has to keep it combo-centric for it to be balanced (though a little more power in the House would be appreciated).
I definitely do not think Targ burn or any other Targ build is anywhere near top tier right now, and I do agree that burn takes multiple moving pieces and is hard to get started, but a properly built Targ burn deck (especially one running 2-3x Aegon's Hill) can terrorize a meta since there are virtually no counters to burn effects either (Risen from the Sea and Flaming Sword are the only direct protection available).

Btw, while I'm thinking about it... does anyone else feel like HttIT doesn't really work well in burn decks? I feel like you need your options open during challenges and want the ability to make all 3 challenge types. I think Targ's character base with its relatively even mix of 2-icon characters works best when you can pressure their hand and board at the same time. I applaud the effort to give Targ a rush strategy but the support just isn't strong enough yet.

Skowza said:

Yeah, Summer & Maester are both better for burn, for sure. HttIT seems mostly for dragons these days.

Does that agenda even work anymore ?

Compared to new Lannister one it looks like a bad joke.

Opposite to almost all of you I personally think that there is no Targ deck without Knights agenda.It gives us resource we need to do our job without issues with location hate. Additionally it gives us possibility to use ambush in plot phase to play Rules by Decree for example. I can't imagine any influence heavy targ deck without this agenda. I played Targ last session. It was simple Dragon deck out of Knights agenda. It worked quite wll. I won almost everything loosing at the end against greyjoy by making such big mistakes like for example killing 2 own characters by playing Hatchling's feast where opponent had only one char It was already very late at night and I was totally tired. Anyway deck worked very nice. I don't agree as well that we didn't get anything special last time. Last chapter: Ser Barristan Selmy - staple, Dragon Support - solid dragon support, Here to Serve: Shadow Parasite - a lot of potential in burn deck, Litany of Fire - very interesting car with a lot of ideas behind to utilize this. Mask of Archmaster: Bloodrider - cancel + presence, it's one of the best cancel in the game staople in almost every our build. Is this nothing for you? What I'm missing currently is mechanics from 5KE edition with dragons abilities to do something when character comes to play. It was so amazing and passed so gut to targ ambush keyword.

Anyway currently all 3 our builds are solid: burn, dothraki and dragon. They can be beatable as everything and they can beat almost everything with luck.

To add my voice to the rest, I agree it isn't prudent to significantly power up "burn", since it would result in almost unbeatable decks and a major npe for all opponents. It's ok to be left as it is or complemented with a couple powerful cards in the new Selmy margin, though, even as it is, I 'm fine with it.

But...

Something has to be done with our major weakness, the income / influence combination. An address to this problem would result in Targaryen being more competitive and, consequently, in a more balanced environment.

And, of course, I totally agree that Heir just pales in comparison to the upcoming Lannister agenda. The only practical use Heir has these days is in a dragon deck and even that is debatable, since with Return of the Others due for re-release, every Targ player will grab his three copies of Balerion and there is nothing better to complement him than the Summer Encampment, which requires... summer.

I don't think saying that making Targ better will be bad for the game is constructive discussion.

Any really dominant build is bad for the game, what is healthy is an environment where every house can make at least one competitive build (the more the merrier, obviously). So having Targ underpowered is bad for the game, right now the Maester build seems to be accepted as the only competitive one, but it shares the problems of every other maester build, so when something gets printed to stop this kind of builds, and some card will do that, sooner or later, we will be left with our expensive locations, dual-resource centered and losing builds.

I don't really think that we have just a build, but I think we could use some help anyway.

It isn't that making Targ better is bad for the game. It is how you go about doing so. Do you make burn a viable strategy by making a deck with 30 burn cards? Do you increase their draw capacity? Do you even out their income base? Do you give them some rush characters? Personally, if the income situation could be fixed outside of summer I think you would find Targ a more attractive house, and you would see the cards already printed see more play. You already heard my thoughts about making burn a deck that is viable on its own. Its better as a subtheme you see in multiple different Targ decks. Thats just my opinion of course.

Flaming Pitch Tower costs 3, Aegon's Hill costs 3, Dragonpit costs 3 and requires you to run a healthy amount of shadows cards (which slows down your deck), Hatchling's Feast costs 3 influence. Targ can't really take advantage of cost reducers and if you're playing 3 gold cost locations you're not likely to marshal more than two cards on that turn. I've found it's just too slow. Those cards look much better on paper than in practice.

Getting a 3 cost location hit by location hate is a huge tempo loss and devastating. All that Ghaston Grey hate is going to ream you. King's Landing Assassin is simply too expensive. I haven't found it worth running since even if you get it into shadows with City of Lies or Shadow Seer - 2 gold is likely to represent half of the total gold you can marshal with during a turn. You're also paying 4 gold for a 2 cost ally which is susceptible to every kill and discard effect in the game essentially.

@Mathias Fricot: I'd personally like to see the issues of card advantage and resources tackled the most out of the 4. After that I'd like to see the character base get some solid 3 STR additions. New burn is the last thing I'm interested in.

Serazu said:

New Viserion, Drogon and Rhaegal's abilities only work once per phase. Giving them a 3rd challenge opportunity is always helpful but they've already done most of their damage already. I almost prefer KotHH for influence or TMP for a Dragon Lore deck.

I agree that the Lanni agenda is more useful but its power in part derives from Lannisters already being strong at Intrigue challenges. The new Cersei, for example, directly interfaces with it. Targ on the other hand has almost no cards that benefit from being able to do a 2nd power challenge (Drogo WotN comes to mind). Not that they should receive alot for balance reasons but Targ's military ability far outweigh's its power ability and this seems wrong.

playgroundpsychotic said:

And even if we set this precious combo all opponent needs to break it is to attack first forcing us to defend.

From my rather inexperienced point of view - power is the worst type of challenge to attack several times in a turn- with military you clean the table possibly taking unopposed, with intrygue you control their hand and cripple recovery ability and with power well you get power which is cool as it brings you closer to victory but first opponent must have that power on his house card.

So winning a pair of claim 2 mil/int challenges bring very noticeable gains while doing same for power might be good or not at all.

Stasis said:

I agree. I think getting card advantage, a significant card advantage, would be the best thing for the house right now. Then resources could be sub-par but with a big mitt of cards you don't need to worry too much since you will pull into them frequently enough.

The value of multiple power challenges is that multiple claim 2 power challenges wins you the game.

Mathias Fricot said:

+1

Mathias Fricot said:

If your opponent has power

Mathias Fricot said:

Recursion is card advantage, let's examine it:

- Street Waif: This is obvious card advantage, for every turn he uses his skill you get a card you wouldn't get otherwise, this card is actually your worst card in the discard pile. And every turn he is alive, being a 1 str ally, shouldn't be a long time. We all have heard stories about 2 to be a dragon and a street waif, or two rhaenys. Yeah, but nobody talks about every other time when he gave you a useless card. He doesn't see much play nowadays.

- Ambush from the plains: A card for another, this is not card advantage.

- To be a Dragon: This is a really nice effect, to profit from it you have to run power struggle plots, if you run only one, assuming you open the game with it, you will be able to play to be... for 5 turns, then you wait for another 2 turns till round 9 to play it again. If you run two, by playing the another struggle the 7th plot you reduce this downtime, but it's hardly an optimun choice. So, overall a really good card, but nowhere near flawless.

- Lady Daenerys Chambers: It only recurs attachments, arguably the worst card type in the game. You need to play from hand in-house characters with the proper cost (usually around 7 or 8 in most build to recur a flame kissed) and you need the attachment in the discard place. This is the best card of the lot, but it imposes severe restrictions to setup ability, and you have to use it at least two times to start talking about card advantage. Just compare to Bronze Link and cry.

- The Womb of the World: It requires non-uniques dothrakis in your dead pile, and winning dominance. And it cost 2.

- Forever burning: This is not exactly card advantage, but it's recursive. It's a severely underpowered event that gets played just because it's recursive, but to get a profit you need to have lot''s of sources of 1 influence. Using a Red Keep for this isn't efficient at all. And it's the best influence provider in the game.

And that's all. So the concept is nice, but the actual cards who implements it are between plainly awful and just decent.