Khaleesi's Warbox - 3e régio IdF, top Targ

House Targaryen
The Wars To Come
Draw deck: 61 cards
Plot deck: 10 cards
Packs: Core Set (3), The Road to Winterfell, Wolves of the North, Calm over Westeros, True Steel, Across the Seven Kingdoms, There Is My Claim, All Men Are Fools, Watchers on the Wall, Guarding the Realm, Oberyn's Revenge, The Brotherhood Without Banners, House of Thorns, The Archmaester's Key, Journey to Oldtown, Sands of Dorne, The Faith Militant, The Shadow City

Plot (10)
1x  Counting Coppers
1x  Exchange of Information
2x  Marched to the Wall
1x  Nothing Burns Like The Cold
1x  Retaliation
1x  Trade Routes
1x  Valar Dohaeris
1x  Valar Morghulis
1x  Varys's Riddle

Character (28)
2x  Aegon Targaryen
1x  Daario Naharis
3x  Daenerys Targaryen (TFM)
1x  Drogon (Core)
2x  Freedmen
1x  Khal Drogo
1x  Littlefinger
2x  Missandei
3x  Qotho
3x  Rhaegal (Core)
3x  Second Sons
1x  Ser Jorah Mormont
3x  Viserion
2x  Viserys Targaryen (Core)

Attachment (1)
1x  Crown of Gold

Location (18)
3x  Flea Bottom
2x  Gates of the Moon
2x  Isle of Ravens
2x  Plaza of Pride
2x  Shadowblack Lane
2x  Slaver's Bay Port
2x  The Roseroad
3x  Tourney Grounds

Event (14)
3x  A Dragon Is No Slave
2x  Consuming Flames
3x  Dracarys!
2x  Fire and Blood
1x  Funeral Pyre
2x  Nightmares
1x  Put to the Torch

This is the deck I brought to the Paris regional last week-end. I ended up 3rd overall and swiss runner-up. With the same deck I also won a small GNK a couple of weeks ago.

Key ideas

The spine of the deck is a fairly straightforward mid-range Targ burn deck, that evolved organically from my previous Targ/Wars deck, with a few key changes:

- Double Marched to the Wall. This kind of Targ decks have no specific win condition, so you have to control/empty the board first, and then do regular challenges to reach 15 powers. The strategy works well in the current weeny/low curve meta, but you might struggle a lot against big guys deck. Double marched helps a lot against that, it fits well with Wars to Come and the abundance of Targ from-the-discard-pile effects. Also, it can often surprise the opponent, especially if you feint "wasting" your first Marched against a mid-range character.

- Aegon as finisher. As you have no win condition, you might often struggle to finish the game if the opponent doesn't concede. This is particularly bad in actual tournaments, where the risk of losing at the end of time is real. Aegon Targaryen helps a lot with this, especially if you pair it with a 2 claim plot and an impactful character like Daario.

- Recursion. The usual strategy to beat Targ burn is to make them use burn events early in the game, when it doesn't matter much, e.g., because you're gonna reset later anyway, and go all-in late when they likely don't have burn anymore. So here I play 2x Isle of Ravens and 2x Shadowblack Lane, to make sure I see either if not both of them in most games. That, plus 3x A Drawon Is No Slave generally makes you have burn in hand for the entire match.

Plot deck

Double Marched, as discussed above. Exchange of Information instead of a 2nd Counting Coppers, generally as opener, for the extra gold and extra initiative, and also for tutoring the Crown T1 as a counter against annoying characters like small Catelyn, Tris, or Aeron. Riddle is often my 3rd Counting (possibly as opener) and might save your day if used to double opponent Valar. Retaliation is the finisher, generally after you've setup Aegon in Shadow and made sure Daario is in the draw deck. The rest is business as usual: board control, economy, location control.

Draw deck

Mostly good-stuff cards, so just a few notes.

Characters. 1x Khal and 1x Daario because they are really just finishers, not needed early/mid-game. You can play Khal early, either to bait a reset, or if you feel confident in the classic T1 Retaliation with Plaza of Pride and Khal on setup---it might win you games, but of course is very risky. 2x Freedmen to fuel your Marched, resist First Snow, and (re)populate the board quickly either on T1 with no econ, or after a reset.

Attachments. The obvious crown. Beggar King might be added to have an additional target for Exchange of Information, but I remain skeptical of the usefulness of King In The North in Targ burn, so I prefer to not play that module and avoid having stuff that would get in the way of my own Nothing Burns.

Locations. 2x for both Isle of Ravens/Shadowblack Lane for recursion as discussed above (plus, Isle is a great Flea Bottom counter in the current meta). Non-limited econ because it makes stellar setup and boosts your Trade Routes. 2x Gates of the Moon because having it on setup it's game-changing.

Event. The usual burn, Put to the Torch as the perfect match for Nothing Burns, and Nightmares for mirror matches (or Bran, Winterfell, whatever :-)). 2x Fire and Blood rather than 1x (which is often considered enough with Shadowblack Lane), because you really want to tutor burn above all else, and cycling dragons is useful also in early game.

Tournament aftermath

I'm bad at tournament reports, so I won't even try. I went 6-2 overall, and lost in both occasions against passive power gain: one against Martell/Wars that makes 6 power in a turn with Doran's Game (which I couldn't stop), and one against Iron Throne/Chamber (I went 2-1 against that deck during the day, but on the 3rd occasion I had a horrible setup and would never really recover from it, that's life :-)).

In hindsight, I'd had back more location control. To go well with Nothing Burns you really need 2x Put to the Torch, or maybe 1x + 1x Jade Sea Dromond. I've cut the 2nd Put to the Torch a few weeks back for 1x Funeral Pyre because I feared not having enough draw in late game, but that has never really been the case, so switching back might make sense. Also, slotting in a 2nd copy of Littlefinger might make sense: it's an useful power icon in late game, and useful money in early, and you can cycle it well with Marched/Dohaeris/Isle.

Feedback welcome!