Night Stag 1.0

• Versions
• 1.0

DEFEND THE WALL

This deck is built largely around defense of The Wall.

KEY CARDS

• The Haunted Forest is the MVP of this deck. If you pull The Wall early, use Building Orders to find The Haunted Forest early, it is a powerhouse of a card and having 2+ in play is devastating to your opponent. Keep in mind two very important things: The Haunted Forest prevents unopposed challenges and it kneels if you lose an attacking challenge. So never attack when you have it in play unless you need to (which is your gameplan anyways) and feel free to let a challenge go unopposed if you have it in play and standing. Having The Haunted Forest in play is almost equivalent to having For the Watch! in play every single turn. Your opponent may be able to win challenges, but they can't win unopposed (at a bare minimum on the first challenge). It also makes shenanigans like Spearmaiden and "The Rains of Castamere" vastly more difficult to fire. Always have one in play, if possible. If your opponent uses Political Disaster then you keep 1 copy of The Wall and 1 copy of The Haunted Forest ,let your economy burn before this card. If you get 3 copies in play early then you may have just won the game.
• Ser Davos Seaworth (Core) and Benjen Stark are brutal for your opponent to deal with. They cripple stealth decks and they are undying. Remember, you don't need to even win challenges, just prevent unopposed challenges. These two not only do that, they constantly recur themselves. Combine them with The Haunted Forest and it's a hard day for your opponent to pull off an unopposed.
• For control you have a lot of great choices. Craven is the best condition in the game and shuts down so many good characters. Milk of the Poppy hits characters with strong effects who aren't attacking you. Stinking Drunk lets you choose when it is most opportune to keep your opponent shut down for a turn. Asshai Priestess deals with weenies who will try to take advantage of a missing challenge icon in your setup, and that's before comboing her with Melisandre, who has six R'hllor followers to work with to fire her effect. Finally, use Filthy Accusations at key moments to shut down your opponent's strongest characters. Combo it with Stinking Drunk to drop a character for two turns in a row. All of these cards work individually or in tandem to make your opponent have to over-commit to win challenges, and combined with The Haunted Forest they can guarantee at least two challenge wins per turn without you having to commit many defenders.
• Messenger Raven is the card draw, with Arry as backup, simple as that. Don't be so quick to let Messenger Raven die, either, it's a great card to keep using the entire game.
• Craster is Valar Morghulis defense if you need him, but the deck survives against it just fine, regardless. Don't overcommit to marshalling a horde of characters and don't use Trading with the Pentoshi early and you'll never have to worry about being short on characters, particularly with Messenger Ravens keeping your hand full. Between Benjen, Davos, Ary, and Aemon you have high survivability anyways, plus Benjen going down is always a boon to Night's Watch. If your opponent Valar's out your Benjen the same turn you drop Winter Festival, then you can easily get 6 power (including from The Wall), and you'll be in a strong position to rebuild at any point in the game. Valar does nothing to you. EXAMPLE: I beat a Rains of Castemere deck that would play Trading With The Pentoshi, win an intrigue challenge, fire off Rains to put The Long Plan into play, keep all their gold, and use Valar the next turn to wipe the board. I still ended up with more characters in play thanks to Aemon and Davos, and gained 7 power the turn they Valar'd (from Benjen, The Wall, Winter Festival, and dominance). The gold I had let me drop Davos right back into play followed by a Milk. This deck holds well.
• Maester Cressen is your condition removal and Maester Aemon is both military-challenge defense and Valar defense. Simply having Aemon in play completely invalidates military challenges for your opponent (except as a means to try and bring down The Wall). If you draw Aemon in your opening hand then DO NOT PUT HIM INTO PLAY!!! Your play is to use Here to Serve as your first plot to put Aemon into play from your deck, then you dupe him with the one you drew in your opening hand. If you draw two Aemons, use Here to Serve to draw out Maester Cressen and use the gold to play Aemon and then dupe him. The only time I don't open with Here To Serve is when I don't draw any maesters in my opening hand, in which case I wait a turn and decide if I'll need condition removal or survivability, and drop it turn 2. More often than not you want Aemon in play, but if you're up against Martell or Baratheon then I would strongly consider Cressen instead (to block Martells famous conditions and the possibility of Stinking Drunk from Baratheon).
• Dolorous Edd is one of the best Night's Watch characters in the game. Don't remove him from this deck for any reason, ever.

POSSIBLE ALTERATIONS TO THE DECK

• Jon Snow (Core) is not essential to the deck and removing him is fine, I think, but he always gives the possibility of using a weenie to attack to keep your opponent on their toes if they try to force you to go first.
• Craster is not essential to Valar survival, but completely nullifying its play is nothing to scoff at. I would not remove him, but the deck works without him.
• Renly is not essential, however he's essentially free economy and he has 3 challenge icons. Remember: you don't need to win, you just need to oppose every single challenge, and he helps.
• Samwell Tarly is not essential but he doesn't hurt. Card draw plus increased hand size is always helpful if you need to rebuild. However, he isn't going to win you games.

POSSIBLE ADDITIONS

• The Iron Throne and Chamber of the Painted Table. I struggled long and hard on not including these two. I would consider removing cards (possibly The Roseroad) to include them. Dominance can be a key to winning with this deck. I haven't needed them yet but I feel I might change my mind. If I added them I would yank all three Roseroads and Samwell then put in two copies of both Iron Throne and Painted Table. It's up to you, maybe test it out, but I feel I might have made a mistake in not including them given this deck works through passivity.

DUPES

• You'll notice I do not dupe many characters. This is because I don't like drawing into dead cards late in the game. I only duped up characters I felt were key to winning: Benjen, Davos, Aemon, and Melisandre (sometimes). This isn't to keep Benjen and Davos alive, though, this is to ensure you draw into them. Benjen is never a dead card in hand, after all.

CONDITION REMOVAL

• Note I only have Maester Cressen as condition removal. This might seem platry at first, but note how many Night's Watch characters simply can't have conditions added to them, and they're all some of your best: Aemon, Thoren, Royce, Masons, Ranging Parties, and Ravens. So if you're wondering why condition removal was not prioritized, that's the reason.

I hope you like the deck, feel free to point out any mistakes I made while designing it or any weaknesses you find. Thanks for reading!

And now my watch is ended.