Richmond Poll Deck #2, Vaes Dothrak Targ/Stag 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

First draft of a more competitive deck after practicing with a oversized one to get a feel for card interactions. The idea was based off a poll (with one whole vote......) to take a underused or considered bad card (vaes Dothrak and visited by shadows got the one vote) and make a deck that can run it and compete in our next op event.

The original design had Ser Barristan Selmy rather than Mirri, but since I'm using only targ reducers and begger king as my main economy he was almost never playable, and Mirri comes in for some extra kill. King Viserys is seeing play due to having Vaes Dothrak and Maester Cressen on demand, I feel his attachment control is far less necessary and I wanted to give him a shot. A major problem I ran into initially with the theory deck was gaining power at a reasonable pace, it was really feeling like a martell deck with how slow it was so hopefully the king will help me push more quickly.

I also decided to go for the kneel package with a stag banner, there's almost certainly a good case for the dominance package and once edric storm and the new targ location come out i'll be giving that a whirl most likely, as it will open a lot of chances for increased power rush.

The overall game plan is to ride jhogo, mirri, and aggo/devoted bloodriders to a win keeping the board states fairly clear to gain unopposed power challenges. Maester Pylos is another Maester to fetch with here to serve, and can help secure a late game power challenge with 2 stealth power icons on the board, while also letting me not have a dead plot if I see cressen super early. In my first playtests I've only gone up against Nights Watch and Reinforcements has been super handy for that matchup, if you are forced to discard down to 3-4 cards in hand you can dump a Melisandre or Aggo, then use reinforcements to get a free mel trigger or ensure jhogo keeps on working. It's also handy to grab either of the rhllor characters to get a mel trigger too, and helps secure your board from a marched.

As far as Vaes Dothrak goes i'd only trigger it if it seemed necessary, pitching a bodyguard to remove a milk is a fair trade, but only if that's not going to harm your future board state, and remember that counting coppers trigger happens before Vaes Dothrak, so if you really need to pull something off your mirri or drogo, that can help fetch what you need. Begger king dupes are also excellent weapon/craven/blood magic ritual removers