Something Slightly Different 1.0

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This is the deck I've been really enjoying for the past week or so.

The deck idea is quite simple. It is built around The Inn at the Crossroads + Lay Waste combo. I've been trying to find home for this interaction ever since I realized how it works. And this one just seems like almost perfect fit. For those of you who are not aware, Lay Waste has the all-important word "owner" in its text. Which means that if you give control of Inn to your opponent in the dominance phase to draw 3 cards and then use Lay Waste on the Inn, YOU are gonna search your deck for a card (not your opponent). Which opens door to so much fun stuff. Is including those 2 at best mediocre cards in your deck just for that interaction worth it? Probably not. But it's very lovely and fun indeed.

So the deck idea was simple. Play something that "abuses" this interaction while also staying reasonably competitive. Oh yeah, and I also decided I need to play Emissary (it is a very fun card). With that in mind, I started building my deck.

So after looking at the card pool, I decided Flea Bottom is probably the go-to option to fetch from Lay Waste. It also works well with Emissary. Now Emissary + FB calls for a lot of events. So what are the best events to flashback with Emissary. Dracarys? What's better than that? I guess Bribery. But then you need Mercenary Contract. Oh well, you can also fetch Mercenary Contract with Lay Waste. I guess we now have our faction.

To be fair, I resisted Targ for a long time. It is generaly my least favourite faction and I just despised the idea of playing Bribery. Despite knowing how good it is. My first option was Stark where you can flashback Winter is Coming, No Surprises, I am no one, etc. It is an option as well. But this time, we are talking about Targ.

So now I have chosen my faction, I start thinking what cards am I gonna play. Planning to have a lot of events, some form of burn comes to mind first. I think burn works very well with Valar Dohaeris and Duel. Trying to burn big characters is quite hard. Burn the small stuff around them and use your plots and/or military claim to deal with the biggies. Duel and Valar D are ideal for this. So at this point I decide I will probably cut my curve off at 5 cost. Well except Drogon. Having the slight disadvantage of having to play around it just comes nowhere near the power level Drogon provides. That card wins games. This also makes it pretty clear that I'm not going to play Valar Morghulis. I think Valar D fits the burn theme much better, it's also amazing with Drogon. And I definitely don't want my 3rd plot slot be taken by another reset. That decision makes me quite vulnarable to any Sea of Blood decks however. Let them push through their Military and without Valar Morghulis to help I am just gonna fall out of the game. Which means I will need a lot of military icons to have at least some chance of stopping that.

So I start looking at all the tyrell cards to fill into my mandatory 12 tyrell slots. I don't see many things I would want there outside of Knight of Flowers (4 cost indeed as we are planning to play a lot of events) and maybe an Oathkeeper. So I decide to fill in my non-character slots first.

I didn't feel comfortable playing less than 30 characters if my main draw effects are gonna be dominance phase. So after putting in some econ (I don't think I will need a lot - we will be topping our curve at 5 + drogon), then Dracarys, Bribery, Contract and Crown it becomes pretty apparent we will have no space for Gifts plus bunch of attachments. So I decide I will try 5 cost danny and some more burn effects. Astaport came in as an alternative fetch from Lay Waste my Inn. But that requires a lot of golds in Dominance so TIBWHID came in (don't worry there is always enough use for it in a burn deck with FB and Drogon).

With that filled in, we go back to our Tyrell cards. The option to go for Left and Right is there but I don't think our deck has enough card draw to support it. They are just gonna be 2 cost mono-cons most of the time. So I opt to go for Ser Talbert Serry (he's pretty efficient and hey, he triggers of Womb of the World too - that's pretty nice) and Knight of the Reach for the icons (and I guess we have Danny too). Margaery because she's my favourite and she's decent fun with Dracarys. The last card is Jousting Knight just for having decent stats for a deck that wants to play on small boards.

The Targ cards are just autoincludes. Second Sons are great with FB and have good STR/cost ratio against SoB, Dragons for Dracarys and Ser Jorah is just a great card. The last cards are Varamyr and Tormund. Varamyr is my favourite card. I just love his versatility and being 8 str against SoB could be decent. Tormund came in as another alternative for characters that are good with Mercenary contract (the other being KoF). After all Mercenary Contract is a decent card even if you don't see Bribery. And I think he's very good. 5 cost 6str intimidate renown is decent.

The remaining 4 plots are tough (yes, 4 - I knew I'm gonna run At the Gates before I even started to think about any deck). There are arguments to be made for many strategies. I wanted to play a 2 claim plot but low reserves is what kept me out of it. This deck does draw in dominance so yeah, 4 reserves is not ideal. Blood of the Dragon is an option - but I don't like the low gold and initiative. I do think you need one economy plot to be able to dump your hand on the table and/or pay for Bribery but I don't think it needs to be Trading. In the end I showcase this deck with the boring but efficient lineup of Marched/econ/carddraw (I do think EoI is the correct pick for card draw plot) and Riddle for its versatility and good reserves. Though I could definitely see a lot of other plots being decent there.

Alright, this is the deck. If you have read this far, I thank you for sticking with me. I hope this was at least a bit of an inspiration.

PPS: I took this deck to a tournament today and ... well, didn't do great ^^' . I guess having a lot of military icons is not enough to beat Targ SoB (I lost 2 games to it, then 1 to Shadows). Shadows was gonna be our nearly unwinnable matchup but I don't think I can do much about it without abandoning this deck.