I'm fairly new to the game and have mainly played melee up to this point. However, last night I played a few Joust games against a Targaryen Dragon deck. The deck was originally posted here , but has been tweaked and improved since. The general idea is - get out a few dragons, with plenty of duplicates (hatchlings, etc) and Daenerys , which causes Dragons to not tap to attack. I'm having problems dealing with the deck, and wondering how other players might deal with such a strategy?

We're using the Core Sets combined with our Deluxe Expansions. I'm playing Greyjoy. I simply cannot find a way to get ahead in this matchup. My best bet is to Valar Morghulis when Daenerys comes out, but the typical plot response is Forgotten Plans. That buys a turn in which the Dragons get all of their effects, their power, and do not kneel. Combined with Stealth, 4 strength, and a few other cards, it's something I just cannot seem to surmount.

From what I understand, these kinds of dragon decks aren't terribly competitive and that scares me. What is the downfall of this kind of deck and what might all of us fledgling players do to defeat the threat?

Targaryen dragons are intimidating, but have several disadvantages. First, note that Forgotten Plans doesn't blank a valar - your valar will still go off! (Forgotten plans only works to blank your plot during phases other than plot).

1) They don't kneel to attack, but they still kneel to defend. Strike first, and they lose some of their superiority. Or use kneel effects (stronger in Lannister or Shadows decks) to kneel them before they get a chance to attack.

2) They're extremely expensive. This means they can't get all the pieces on the board in one turn, and you can hit them with high claim challenges to strip them of their pieces as they come into play. It also means that any form of resource denial could cripple them from "being able to play a dragon with their 4g" to "being able to play nothing this turn". Steal their locations, use plots like "Blockade", make it winter with a white raven... the list goes on.

3) They're all dragons. Play a "Horn of Dragons", and steal their with some dragons of your own.

4) They will have few characters. A "Search and Detain" might force them to bounce (And then pay another 4g for) a dragon. A "Game of Cyvasse", a "Ghaston Grey", or any other such bounce will hurt them badly. A "fortified position" will really neuter the dragons for a turn, while hurting you nowhere near as badly.

I'll add Milk of the Poppy and Nightmares also. You can use them to blank Daeny, forcing the dragons to kneel. Also Horn of the Dragons is really awesome against the Dragon decks.

Thanks for the replies guys!

It seems like I just don't have the tools with the Core Set + Kings of the Sea. Are the Greyjoys just out of luck until they get a lot of chapter pack support? It hurts not having any cards in the Core Set.

The real issue I'm having is that my characters just don't have the strength to keep up with Dragons and others. I've also been tangling with some Lannisters, and things like Mance's Men, which they can afford, have been eating me up.

Is there any general advice that you could give as far as getting Greyjoy operating at a good pace? I'm finding that Stealth runs this game, and that without Euron's Crow's Eye, I'm up the creek, as it were!

-Istaril said:

It's worth remembering though that the dragons also have Ambush, so choking gold output isn't necessarily going to be enough. Targ should have a lot of influence, particularly if the deck is running Knights of Hollow Hill, which I think is a good agenda for a Dragon deck.

It's my dragon deck in discussion here. We are still pretty new to the game and it is amazing how many answers there are out there. I do have some questions in response though:

1. How much of your deck are you willing to use to tech against a specific deck?

2. Knowing the cards that could really own my dragons, I have already included several cards to answer these issues. For example, having a handful of attachment removal cards (and even one plot), means that getting rid of the one or two items that really hurts me isn't all that difficult. Again, how far do you go including things to stop specific decks instead of promoting whatever it is your deck is trying to do?

3. I'm interested that you think dragons are expensive at 4 gold. Being able to pay for them with influence thanks to ambush alongside having 2-3 in gold reduction through locations makes it fairly easy to have two dragons and Daenerys out by turn two (or three at the latest). With a high initiative plot or two and duplicates, I can get through the first turn or two unscathed, forcing the issue with some dragon attacks.

I will admit that the biggest struggle I have is in my number of characters. If things go bad, they go really bad. Once a dragon or two hit the dead pile I'm in a very, very tough spot. It's somewhat why I like the deck though, because I can go for the throat and if I don't pull it off I'm a goner.

Zach

Is that your friend's website? If so, it sounds like he's playing too many copies of the dragons. 3 of each new dragon, + the ones from the core set, would give you 4 of each dragon (and apparently 5 of Viscerion), which is a no go (you can only have 3 copies). If your friend is doing that, obviously it's going to be a lot more likely for him to draw into the pieces he needs.

As for Greyjoy, as others have mentioned, choke would be good to play, but there's not really a lot of choke in the core set boxes.

I would say your best bet is to put together an unopposed deck. Balon and Wex Pyke are both almost guaranteed to get an unopposed against Targ Dragons, especially if you have Scouting Vessel in play. Euron will protect you from the Dragon's stealth. Dagmar will help you win Dominance every time. Support of Harlaw will help get your characters standing again, and Assault of the Kraken will let you put the pressure on. And Assertion of Might will help you get power quickly, which is important when playing a rush deck (which dragons are), And Rise of the Kraken is a fantastic plot for an unopposed deck.

Bay of Ice will help you win initiative, and give you some draw. Play a ton of saves like Maester Wendamyr and Iron Mines. Also consider playing warcrest cards + The Price of War to get rid of influence providing locations, or Confession + Holy characters to discard Dragons and Daenerys before they can be played.

I hope that helps!

botounami said:

While there are some chapter packs you'll want to get for Greyjoy, you'll find Kings of the Sea pretty good. I don't think its as good as some of the other house expansions, but still has some pretty good staples. Although good luck finding one of the new ones that has 3x everything in it.

perpetual noob said:

Just so everyone knows, the deck is updated and legal (with only 3 copies of each dragon)! It's my blog on teamcovenant.com (which let's anyone sign up for a blog). I'll be blogging an updated version of this deck and some game reports soon.

The biggest issue here seems to be that you're playing a deck made from the Core Set and Kings of the Sea, while your friend has a deck backed by a deluxe expansion. Yes, Kings of the Sea is a deluxe expansion, and there are some truly fantastic cards in the box, but it's pretty close to the power level of the Core Set decks. Queen of the Dragons gives Targ a solid bump, and even if Dragons aren't full-on competitive in tournaments, it's a much more imposing deck than what you can field.

Plots can also go a long way to helping out. Are you limited to the plots from the CS and KotS? If you have access to the plots your friend isn't using from Queen of the Dragons, Loyalty Money Can Buy will buy a round where his claim against you is reduced by one and Burning Bridges will at least put a stop to the triggered effects from locations buffing the dragons and the responses the dragons have.

GJ is going to have a difficult time with just the tools you have. The typical GJ responses would be either to (1) use Choke, such as the seasons-based cards (like Icy Fishermen, Wintertime Marauders, etc.) and/or cards like River Blockade and Newly Made Lord to make it hard to play large characters and trigger the dragon-based locations, (2) run cards like Horn of Dragons (much more common in melee...not really played much in joust), and/or (3) play very cost-efficient large characters, and GJ has a lot of these. Ultimately, all of these strategies rely on a very efficient character base, but it sounds like you don't have a large enough card pool to choose from to really deal with this deck effectively in GJ. (Unlike Lannister, where you only need a very few number of effects to kneel your opponents' cards to prevent them from participating.)

If you don't mind changing up the way your deck plays so that it feels a bit like a Lanni "kneel" deck, you could run 3x Distraction (Core Set) and 3x Parting Blow (Martell Box) if you have them. That should be enough to kneel some of the dragons at critical times.

I do have access to pretty much anything in the Core sets, including Plot cards, so I'll take some of these recommendations to heart. One question - if I put a Seafarer's Bow on Balon Greyjoy and tap it when I attack, does that STR total count for his effect? That is, only characters with 5+ STR can block?

I've been doing pretty much what has been suggested as far as the unopposed thing goes. I'll tweak it a bit more and see if I can get some results. Plots play a much bigger role in things than I think I was considering.

botounami said:

Yes, that works.

Any "Cannot be Saved" effects such as Marched to the Wall work well against Dragons. Dragon decks are generally a mid-game rush strategy and do poorly if they cannot draw into the right cards or if they cannot win fast enough. They also don't have many draw mechanics, so if you can eliminate Meereen or whatever is being used for draw you should be able to slow them enough to get board control. GJ is also good at cancelling triggerred effects (Seasick, To Be a Kraken, Maester Murenmure) that Dragons rely very heavily on. Just a few more GJ cards (Alannys, Tarle, etc) should really help you out.

I think the usual GJ paradigm of 1) destroy their locations, 2) Valar with superior saves and cancels, 3) Push through 2-claim challenges should work against Dragons as well...

So, going step-by-step...

With Core + Kings of the Sea, your choices for location control are: The Price of War, Support of the Kingdom + Veteran Marauder. Of these Price of War is by far the superior one - albeit to run it you will need to have several copies of the good uniques with the crest (at least: Dagmer and Victarion 2-3x, Asha 1x, maybe the neutral Jack-of-All-Trades?) but the 2 others can also hit limited resource locations, so some kind of mix would be good. Or just running all of them for overkill.

The Valar'ing with saves is pretty easy... Iron mines + Wendamyr already makes for a fine base here. Also running some extra copies of important non-uniques (Victarion, Balon, Wex, Wendamyr, Dagmer) should help with this. Maybe Risen from the Sea. For the cancels your only choice is really Seasick, but that should work pretty nicely combined with the location control. And as far as I recall, even with several duplicates there is only one response on the character, so you only need to cancel it once... (one response per trigger rule) If I'm wrong, I expect someone will point this out pretty fast...

Now for the 2-claim challenges you will need: Any/all 2-claim plots you can get your hands on, with your war crests Power of Arms is probably a really good bet at least, and Rise of the Kraken is one of the best 2-claim plots in the game. And pushing them through against Dragons: Scouting Vessels, LIV, Victarion, Wex, Balon... Veteran Marauder/Support of Harlaw also help with non-stealth characters, so they'll have to use their dragons on defence (which is good if you're going first).

Yeah this is kind of what I settled on. My original deck was based heavily on Valar and saves, but I've transitioned into what I feel is a more competitive and consistent deck. I dropped Valar and maintain only the Maester for saves (which, after testing, might be changed to include Iron Mines or Risen from the Sea - we'll see). But I did include all of my War crest uniques, as well as Randyl Tarly for the bonus. I'm running 2 copies of The Power of Arms to shoot my STR totals up.

I'm also using Balor Greyjoy with Support of Harlaw and a Seafarer's Bow in play. That makes him almost impossible to block, and when I also have Stowaway out, which I often do, he gets 3 attacks that are unopposed and that leave him unkneeled. I've got Assertion of Might, too, which works well here.

Going to get a blog together with the deck and ideas and post it here. I will say in playing it against Lannister last night, I was much more impressed with this incarnation than the previous Valar + Save version, though I could see them both working. I've yet to include Price of War, and instead am using Die By The Sword from a friend's expansion. With my high claim cards I need to strike first and keep the enemy suppressed, but if that's accomplished, it's hard for them to turn it around!

As many of you noted, my dragon deck was not exactly legal when Steve (botounami) first started this thread. I posted a blog this morning discussing my thoughts on what I call the 'Maester's Gambit' that also includes the updated list. I played several games last night and am changing my deck as we speak. I would love to get some thoughts and ideas on where I can take that deck next.

Zach

Thought you guys might be interested in seeing the results of your advice! I just posted a new blog on Team Covenant detailing the newly-tweaked Greyjoy deck and a few games with it against the Dragons.

Greyjoy has Arrived...

I'm assuming its pretty common to feel like I need to open up more Chapter Packs now, right?

Glad you're enjoying Greyjoy, it's an awesome house. And yes, the urge to dive into Chapter Packs is quite alluring. If you're looking to just expand on your Greyjoy deck, it's pretty easy to pick up some of the best cards for the house in just a few packs.

Refugees of War is the standard recommendation for pretty much everyone on the first Chapter Pack to purchase. It's such an important pack primarily for the refugees, a bunch of zero-cost, 2-str weenies available to every house. The Greyjoy one, Island Refugee, is this first link. The pack also contains Alannys Greyjoy (the second link), who has a very nice ability, provides Greyjoy with a Queen, and has an Int icon, which can be rare in the House.

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=20417

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=20418

From the Brotherhood without Banners cycle, I would definitely recommend considering A Song of Silence. Every pack in that cycle focuses a bit more on a given house, and that's Greyjoy's pack. The Raider subtheme that cycle introduced isn't the most impressive, but many of the characters work well even in decks not specifically aimed at Raiders. That pack contains two very important cards. The first is Euron Crow's Eye (first link); yes, you have a Euron from KotS, but this Euron blows that one out of the water. The Renown is incredibly helpful, and his conditional stealth works a bit better than KotS' conditional stealth. The other key card in that pack is Retaliation, one of the best neutral plot cards in the game, and another handy 2-claim plot if you don't mind having to go second.

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=29067

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=29080

Winter is also very strong out of Greyjoy, so picking up The Winds of Winter and A Change of Season could be a good decision. The Winds of Winter will give you the Kings of Winter agenda (first link), the White Raven to make it winter (second link), and Carrion Bird to mess with other people’s ravens (third link). A Change of Season gives you a plot to fetch ravens (fourth link), and contains a new version of Theon (fifth link) and Wintertime Marauders, one of the best cards Greyjoy has gotten (sixth link).

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=20350

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=20353

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=20364

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=20388

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=20377

http://agot.dbler.com/index.php?view=card&arsenalid=20377

Finally, the last three packs from the current cycle—Tourney for the Hand, The Grand Melee, and On Dangerous Ground—have all provided some excellent Greyjoy cards. They’re not available to see on Dabbler, but if you have an account at agotcards.org, check them out. The first pack gave us The Knight and Newly Made Lord, plus Free Man, a neutral Wildling that works well in War-crest decks; the second deck gave us another phenomenal Euron, a great attachment in Captain of the Iron Fleet, and Flea Bottom, a great neutral reducer; the most recent pack has another Alannys, Nagga’s Hill, and two very cool neutral plots, Called to Court and The First Snow of Winter.

Quick note on Blood of the Dragon and Daenerys, Blood of the Dragon only confers the Dragon trait during the challenge that character is participating in. IOW it must be declared first, and then it gains the trait. End result it must kneel to participate and gain the trait, which means it is already knelt so is not eligible for Daenerys's ability.

Penfold said:

That changes some things! Thanks for clarifying. It's crazy, as we get deeper into the game two things are happening to my dragons:

1. All the other decks are getting very good, making my life tougher.
2. I continue to discover rules that make them a little less powerful.

I still think it's possible to do well with a deck based around dragons. However, I will say that a dragon deck in a local melee meta is nearly impossible to win with. When three people know the pieces you need to win, it's pretty easy for them to work partially together to make sure it doesn't happen. I'm imagining whatever the dragon deck ends up looking like it will have to be a joust based deck (although melee when your opponent's don't know your deck as well as you do could work). I'm looking at a Dothraki deck for melee at this point.

zachbunn said:

Dothraki Summer can work pretty well and you have no idea how beastly Kraznys mo Nakloz is in melee until you've seen him in action. Just be sure you have enough I icons or your hand is going to get crushed round after round.

alpha5099 said:

Thanks for all of the suggestions! I'm doing quite well currently - though I do have some concerns that it's just because we're first getting into the meta. One thing that I always wonder about is how much to optimize a deck for Setup as opposed to filling it with bigger but better characters.

I'm having huge success with that Euron you suggested (who I had pulled before your suggestion - that must mean I'm on the right track) in my Arms-based Greyjoy deck. With Power of Arms, and things like Driftwood Crown and Distinct Mastery, I've been able to control things without much trouble. Risen from the Sea, the Maester Wendamyr, and the Iron Cliffs, my momentum has been hard to stop. Die By The Sword gives me much needed removal.

Am I missing something perhaps with things like Island Refugee and Alannys? A 0-cost with the Dominance condition certainly has its place, but with my saving I rarely need to satisfy a claim with weenies. It would be solid in Setup, but just having 2 STR with its two icons and the ability to quickly disappear isn't something I've been able to find room for. Alannys is an appropriately-costed Intrigue/Power character, and that discard ability could be nice (especially at the beginning of Dominance), but with Wex, Euron, Asha, and Kingsmoot Hopefuls, as well as Driftwood Crown, when paired with Power of Arms, gives me pretty consistent 2-claim Intrigue challenges. Euron + Assault of the Kraken can clear a hand quite quickly. Maybe it's just not right for my deck, as I can see the card advantage that she might provide.

I've been doing this long enough to know that my initial assessments are generally not in-line with the players who have been seeing the meta shift for years and know what the tournament scene is like - so I openly invite you to give any advice!

You can never remove enough of your opponents cards from hand fast enough. Alannys is well worth the gold.

Refugee's are nice because they help with setup and they provide a nice little defender to stop your opponents from gaining unopposed still leaving you with your bigger guns to win challenges with as well as dominance. My suggestion on both is to give them a try. You can always take them out after a couple of weeks if you find them performing less than ideally. The idea with a living card game is that your deck should also be living, breathing and growing and changingg. If you stop growing your opponents decks will be adjusted to yours over time and combined with the fore-knowledge of your decks tricks will start evening out the win loss columns. We can't have that now can we?