Hello all,

I'm new to the forums, so if there is already a thread for it and I didn't find it I apologize in the mean time.

The reason I'm writing this post is becuase I started Playing with some friends and a friend of mine has come up with a combo that seems to stop all of us in our tracks in either Melee or Joust format. Just to give you all an idea of what we have (we work from a community pool) we have gotten:

The Core set x2, Queen of Dragons, Lions of the Rock, Kings of the Storm, Kings of the isle, Princes of The Sun, All of hte Defenders of the North set, all of the Kings landing set, Illyrio's Gift from Brotherhood without a banner, and a couple of Clash of Arms.

With all of that said the combo is this:

The Prince That Was Promised-Illyrios Gift F20
Blood of the Dragon-Core T100
Khal Drogo-Wolves of the North F9
Dany-Queen of Dragons F22
Rheagal-Queen of the Dragons F24
Viserion-Queen of the Dragons F 25
Drogon-Queen of the Dragons F23
Astapor-Queen of the Dragons F28
Qarth-Queen of the Dragons F26

Using these cards they have two guys with over 11 strength that don't have to tap to attack and even when they have to defend they can usually stand one or both of thier big guys. With the Duplicats on Drogo and Dany it makes it really hard to kill them when Gift of the Meagi is thrown in there to bring them back from the dead pile.

My question is this: is there away to stop this using a Stark Army Deck or a Baratheon Knight deck? (the Knight Deck is used mostly from the Kings of the Storm Box premade deck) and if you need the list for my stark deck I would be happy to provide it if it helps answering the question.

Here is what I usually do when I see my opponent pull out a Targ House card.

1. Start crying

2. Ask myself if I'm sure I wouldn't like to take up golf as an alternate hobby.

3. Grit my teeth and prepare to be burned.

The blokes with the "Blood of the Dragon" on them are only dragons once they are in the challenge. Unless they are being declared without being knelt some other way, Dany's ability doesn't functionally affect them. Use search and detain to blow up all the dupes then remove Dany through another control affect. And if for some reason the opponent decides they don't want to run attachment control (I don't know, I've seen it happen in a weird Targ deck) throw Milk of the Poppy on Dany.

As goshdarn said, Blood of the Dragon will not allow a character to not kneel from Daeny's ability. It has to kneel to participate and then gains the dragon trait. There are a lot of options to try to break it down. Your best bet would be to try to win before he marshalls all those characters (and that could be a while because they are very expensive - that's over 25 gold worth of stuff!) While the Dragons are annoying and powerful, Daeny is the linchpin. Run Condemned by the Realm in a melee game to have a third party kill Daeny. Also, Dragon decks tend to be weak in intrigue - the thing is, so do Stark and Baratheon. But if you can win intrigue challenges, you can get those pieces out of their hand. Another idea is to use Horn of Dragons out of house to steal their dragons; or use Songs of Bael the Bard or Old Nan and use Direct Assault to steal their dragon locations to use them against them, but that's just a difficult to pull off and won't ultimately do anything if you can't stop them in other ways.

sahandriel said:

It might help to post the decks. The Dragon deck does take sometime to get going and I don't see any reason why a Stark aggro deck can't aggressively kill it. Duplication and recursion might be problematic but you still have to draw it. Alot of my friends had trouble with my Dragon deck for awhile until they learned to build better decks (ie not put half-assed crap in their decks).

playgroundpsychotic said:

Exact same experience. I was one of those friends who started building a better deck, and now do quite well against the once-feared Dragon deck. The Dragon deck is pretty slow, has very little in the way of fodder. Use things like Marched to the Wall and 2-Claim plots to get through military challenges early, before the Dragons + Dany get set up. Use Search & Detain to clear the dupes. Use Valar Morghulis before dupes get played (T1 on unduped Dany + Dragon will win you the game immediately). If they're using Knights of the Hollow Hill agenda, T1 Fear of Winter will make them hate you. Burning Bridges helps out against the Dragon synergy effects.

Even just changes in plots can do wonders before you even get to the deck proper.

Danigral said:

I forgot to mention that Condemned by the Realm is good to kill any characters that don't have a dupe, like anyone who flopped a 4-cost dragon or Daeny on setup. lol

I used to lose a lot of games to my friend's Dragon deck. The easiest way to kill this deck is Milk of the Poppy Dany. If you are using Stark, use directed kills toward her over and over again. "Focus all fire on the Super Star Destroyer!" Stark has a lot of events that can kill her. Also, I would use a Lannister Kneel deck. This is ultimately what undid my friends Dragon deck. Win Initiative and go first every time, kneel everybody out and attack. He will be reeling from all the kneel and death happening to him.

A lot of the Dragons have synergy that relies on all-dragon attacks.

a Nice way to mess up their effects, is to have Old Nan on hand, wait until they've declared all their attackers, then remove someone's dragon trait. Suddenly, they can't trigger any of the responses.

Obviously, that won't stop the challenge itself, but there are plenty of ideas above that will.

"Starks kill dragons better than dragons kill Starks. It is known, khaleesi." - A Handmaiden

AceManUSC said:

If your using Lannister use Terminal Schemes for a little targeted kill

botounami said:

You only have to live one round through. Play with Valar dohaeris and attack only in intigue challenge (if the dragons cannot get that icon). End of the dominance all of them will fly away

Thanks all for the Ideas, and sorry for the late reply been busy with life and work. I have implimented some of the Ideas like Milk of the Poppy into my deck to help slow them down. So far it seems to work, I can't really do some of the other suggestions due to not having all of the chapter packs at this time.

My friend uses that Dany in his dragon deck. I killed her in two games in a row by simply playing a Lord and then using The red Wedding.