This morning I posted a blog I called The Maester's Gambit . In it I discuss possibly using Dragon Lore and Balerion in my deck as a back up option. While I certainly would love to hear your thoughts on that, I'm here to discuss something else. In the blog I also posted my current list (which is currently being edited). Almost everything I've read online proclaims that a dragon deck can be good, but not great. That it can do decently but not be dominating. My question is, can a dragon deck be built in such a way that it is competitive, if not dominating?

I tend to think it is possible. I must admit though that I am new to the game, as are the people I play with. At current, my deck is enough to dominate on a fair number of occasions the opponents and decks that I am playing against. As we continue to play and expand our collections, I am certain that what I am running now likely won't cut it. From what I have seen though, even getting one or two dragons out if played properly can give some strong advantages.

Because I'm so new, there is a lot I don't understand about this game and it's meta. However, I am curious. Why exactly can't a dragon deck work? Is it too slow? Are the advantages not great enough? What is it missing?

Zach

I think the biggest problem with dragon based decks is that they're fairly easy for a control player to lock down. once a Lannister player gets a brothel in play, at least one dragon is not going to stand the entire game. Not to mention all the ways they can kneel out the rest of the dragons to prevent challenges from going off. Martell has icon removal that can also lock down the dragons. Not to say they're not good, but if you're devoting 18 slots of your deck to 3 of each dragon, 1 of each hatchling, and 3 of Daenery's you have to expect a lot out of them, and they're really just not that reliable. Not to mention a dragon-based deck probably has a bunch of dragon-based events and locations like Meereen that are basically worthless if your dragons cant' attack.

Yeah I pretty much agree with PN. The tournament scene favors control decks. Aggro and Rush builds have always been harder to win with. Now that's not to say that you can't win with a Dragon deck, I think it just has to be fast. You need to get the three Dragons and Daeny out as quickly as possible. Not to mention that you need to have at least one dupe on all of them. This tends to mean you need a certain amount of luck in order to get them out and win before the control player can get a lock on you. Plus there seems to be a growing number of ways to bounce your come into play characters, which is pretty bad for the Dragon deck. That one Enemy Informer? Yeah he just turned into two or three Enemy Informers because he can get bounced back to hand. Also Horn of Dragons. I think the Dragons need some sort of protection. They are just too vulnerable as it stands. I think you can still do very well with a Dragon deck, but I doubt we'll see any winning tournaments anytime soon.

We need a card for Dragons like Martell has for Sand Snakes. Maybe call if "Blood for Blood" Response: "If Khal Drogo is killed kneel 3 influence and put any number of Dragon cards into play."

Whilst I disagree that aggro / rush decks are difficult to win with, even against control, I agree it's currently impossible to build a consistent, quality Dragon deck that will win more than half of it's matchups against top tier decks. The Dragons are just too few, and too susceptible to too many effects (targetted kill, blanking, icon removal, kneel, bounce). Unfortunately, Targ are a victim of the canon when it comes to Dragons. They probably need to re-release Balerion as a playable card and also the 2 other great, historical Dragons before we can hope for competetive Dragon decks.

Aggro/Rush decks aren't hard to win individual games with, they are hard to win enough games to win a tourney. The deck is built to maximize the probability of getting the cards you need to win. However, over the course of multiple games, the odds become longer and its harder to win the tourney. Its not impossible, but its certainly harder than it is to win with control.

Interesting. I feared that they wouldn't be consistent enough. I'm going to keep pursuing the idea and see if I can make it worthwhile. It's doing well enough for me right now locally. What are the more competitive big events that happen? I'd be interested in attending some.

Zach

Well it depends on where you are at and how far you are willing to travel. During the spring there are regionals in various areas of the US. There is also Days of Ice and Fire at the FFG event center in MN that happens in October and LCG Days at the same place in April. You have GenCon World Championships in August over at GenCon Indy. There is also Black Friday over in NY every year. There are also other big events that crop up from time to time.

I think the Dragon's need some additional support that is not challenge participation based. They can get pretty frightening but it still requires you to assemble a lot of pieces and it can fall apart before you get to use anything since some of the aforementioned controls can be used before the challenge phase or between challenges. Also Targ inexplicably receives no additional advantages in terms of influence which could be used to combat control. For example, a friend managed to bounce a dragon back to my hand after a challenge but I put it directly back into play since I had the spare influence. A rare occurrence for sure but helpful.

Still there's a bit of hope on the horizon. Meereenese Tourney Ground is probably the best Targ card this chapter cycle and works well with the Dragon theme. First Snow of Winter is also a big helper for high cost character decks. I suspect we may see more cards that help with having large uniques in play.

I would like to see new Dragon cards engineered to support a burn mechanic.

perpetual noob said:

I think they also need to take a cue from the Sand Snakes taking some liberties with the lore. We've gotten six of the eight canonical Sand Snakes in-game (we're just missing Elia and Loreza), but we've also gotten non-uniques, plus Blood of the Viper allowing you to grant the trait to others.

Going back to historical dragons might be a good idea, but I think the better strategy would be to not look to the dragons in their heyday, but the dragons right as they were going extinct. If Balerion sets a precedent, any of the other big-name dragons would be super-huge, shagga-tastic cards. I'd rather get a runty dragon, one of those ones described as the size of a dog, as a non-unique. That, plus some Dragon synergy that does not require participating or winning in challenges.

Something like the Rainbowguard but with Dragons instead of lords.

Staton said:

I immediately thought yes I like this idea, then immediately afterward I thought NO, cos that's just replacing the words Sand Snake with Dragon...

Why can't we just get some new weenie Dragons along with maybe two new bigger ones for some support. Give the bigger two abilities that assist burn mechanics. Maybe toss in a Maester or some kind of religious figurehead that can save Dragons from death by kneeling them, and I could see Dragons being a viable threat.

The real problem is lack of other dragons.

Currently you must put multiple duplicates of each one since there's no replacements for them.

If we had some non-unique dragons at 2 and 3 cost it would greatly help to trigger all those effects. Even a generic hatchling would help to trigger all those dragon based effects.

I'm not sure Targ really needs more Dragons although I think there's plenty of room to play with the keyword. For example, Blood of the Dragon is a cool card but it was designed before QoD and it shows. It doesn't work very well with current Dragon decks. Still cards that grant the trait to other characters on a temporary or permanent basis would be interesting. More cards that help combat control against Dragons (or creatures even).

The other creature deck got a nice leg up with Maester of the Last Hearth. Why not a maester that aids dragons? Targ maesters are currently only sort of useful. The one with the useful ability can't take chains, the other isn't meant for anything except fighting. There's a certain named Maester with glass candles after all.

Same goes for a holy sub theme with the Asshai. Lorewise Targ seems to suffer a little from having a lot of things from ADwD which is so far unrepresented.

I'm excited to see what the future holds for Dragons. Blood of the dragon is epicly good. Having say, two dragons out and then dropping that item has swung more than one game in my favor. Gets you to your third or fourth dragon pretty easily. I've also had several times where I have a late game surge using the hatchlings to spam the board after using something like Westeros Bleeds and my opponent just not having enough cards to keep up. Again, I have yet to compete in a major event, but I'm curious to see how my deck will do in such an environment.

Does anyone know how the GenCon tournament normally works, what days they are on, total rounds, etc.? There are very high odds that I'm at GenCon and I wouldn't mind seeing a more serious environment.

Zach

playgroundpsychotic said:

SPOILERS!!!

Well, it's hinted at rather strongly in the novels that Maesters actually played a prominent role in killing off the dragons, so I'm not sure if it's Nedly to print one that helps them.

Kennon said:

Yet not all Maesters are of all the same mind and one in particular has a rather un-Nedly version of himself.

playgroundpsychotic said:

Which one?

Dragon decks are, unfortunately, glass cannons. Once all pieces are put together, they absolutely destroy your opponent (and we all know that it's much preferable to totally annihilate your opponent than to just beat him). They are so easily disrupted though and this is a major drawback. I remember some games I recently played vs. a Stark Armies deck with Siege of Winterfell. The Dragon deck I used was built around gathering power quickly with the help of the Heir Agenda and some other shenanigans. The final score was 2 - 2. In one of those games I had already gathered 15 power by the middle of the second round with just two Dragons (and Danny of course) in play. But in both games I lost, Bear Island made an appearance and I did not fare so well. The one game was a major battle where I finally yielded, but I was really close to victory myself. In the other, I lost almost hands down. And I 'm talking vs a pure military deck where Dragons are supposed (and they do) fare better. Against Lannister hyper-kneel things will be tougher. In my point of view, there is a Dragon deck which can be a nightmare for everybody, though I haven't had a chance to play it yet. It centers around Summer with 3 copies of Balerion, 3 Dragon Lores, 3 Summer Encampments, 3 Copper Links and several Maesters. The idea is to play Balerion practically for free via Dragon Lore and use his devastating ability, use Copper Link to give Summer Encampment the Dragon trait and then kneel the Encampment to bounce the Black Dread back to hand to repeat in the following round. It's not that hard to do it, almost not hard at all, as long as you plan your deck carefully and such a deck can really dominate.

Serazu said:

Don't forget Dragon Sight, because in a summer targ dragon deck anything less would make the Ned in me cry. But ya, someone pretty much runs this in my meta (albeit without the Summer Encampment). It loses to Tin Link every time (like most things) since you force that kneel and lose the Dragon Lore (so Danys Chambers will obviously make an appearance). But ya, I agree, its beauty.

Dragon sight sadly doesn't work that well with dragons, since they basically lose their stealth. And stealth is one of the things that makes them so good.

Very true, and I guess youll want to be using them in pretty much every challenge.

Has anybody looked at using this with Heir vs. Maesters? Maesters would give you the consistency of Copper and a tie in to Dragon Lore's kneeling, but Heir really gives you the extra power challenge. Then again, mil + pwr vs pwr + pwr might not be that different when they are not kneeling to attack. I'm not a big targ player so I havn't really tried Heir outside of a few fun games with other people's builds.

Mathias Fricot said:

In my (somewhat limited) experience, Heir to the Iron Throne isn't that great out of Targ, since the one thing you need to really make it shine is a bunch of renown. An extra power challenge isn't going to really do that much if you're just getting one extra power for claim, and maybe an extra for unopposed. Getting copper link in play will give you almost the same effect, without having to give up intrigue challenges. If you can give Danerys the Dragon trait she will claim an extra power as a dragon (assuming she goes off with Rhaegal), will claim an extra power with renown, and if you can get her to also win an intrigue challenge she'll claim another power for renown.