AGOT - Queen of the Dragons

[fatolaf]

Lets just say I am quite excited by this 

On pre-order now in the shop.....



"We are blood of your blood," said Aggo, "sworn to live and die as you do."
- A Song of Ice and Fire, Volume II: A Clash of Kings

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to present the latest deluxe expansion for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, Queen of Dragons, coming this spring! In Queen of Dragons, House Targaryen will gather its armies and deepen its native strengths, as well as introduce some new intrigues.

Queen of Dragons includes 165 cards - three copies each of 55 unique cards - featuring not only solid, new cards for House Targaryen but also neutral cards and agendas that will add variety and challenge into decks of any House.

Standing on the Field of Fire

For more insight into this expansion, we present these notes from Queen of Dragon's developer, Damon Stone.

"In the books, House Targaryen is Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons. Her story of hatching the dragons, winning the loyalty of armies through guile, and seizing cities by strategic brilliance (all in her pursuit of reclaiming the Iron Throne in the name of her House) are epic.

I knew that I really wanted to concentrate on these themes, but deciding which to tackle first was easy: The Dragons. I wanted to give the players the tools to create a powerful Dragon-themed deck. That meant three new dragons each capable of finding a home as a support card in a regular Targaryen deck, but which could work together to create an overwhelming force, leaving death and destruction in their wake. The story of Aegon and the Field of Fire had always stuck with me. The ideas of these giant dragons being used to expand Aegon's realm was interesting but when all three descended on the same battlefield, they killed or routed an army of 55,000 men.

As you can see, each Dragon's effect could slot into a number of Targaryen decks... but the strength of the Dragons is in their working in concert. As each dragon joins in on the attack it creates a bigger impact on the board. I really wanted the reaction of seeing all three Dragons on the board to be one of dread. It was important for me to try and capture this in a way that made them instantly attractive to players without them creating an automatic loss for the player facing them. Ambush was an early design choice, representing to me the dragons swooping in from the heavens, and Stealth backed this up. As the mother of dragons Daenerys was the perfect centerpiece of the dragon deck, making them even more fearsome in battle.

Masters of Spear and Shield and Shortsword

Throughout the course of the novels Daenerys seeks to raise the necessary armies to conquer Westeros. This was one of themes I really enjoyed exploring. It was an opportunity to bring out the Unsullied and mercenary themes present in the novels without leaving behind the Dothrakis which are one of their established sub-themes. The armies and army support cards (including neutral cards) present here give the Targaryen player a broad range of effects: Stealth, Deadly, Burn, War Crest, and standing. Diverse enough in scope to cover most bases, but tied together through the Army trait allowing for some very nice synergy.

While the set itself is geared towards those lovers of the House of Dragons, it contains many important cards useable by any House in their goal of ruling all of Westeros, such as River Row, Dissension, and Kingsroad Fiefdom. Two of the more intriguing cards: the Heir to the Iron Throne Agenda, which, with careful deck-building, can be the lynchpin for rush or control decks; Threat from the East, a versatile new plot that can be a boon to you or a weapon against your opponents, really put the choice in the players' hands game by game in how these cards will be used."

Included with the Queen of Dragons expansion are two decklists, created with the aid of 2009 Melee World Champion Jonathan Benton and other devoted AGoT fans, that you can use as jumping off points to delve into House Targaryen's various strengths, or, if you are a new player, a starting place to explore the art of customizing a deck in general.

These decks can be constructed using only the contents of one A Game of Thrones Core Set and one copy of Queen of Dragons. Below is the one of the two decklists included with Queen of Dragons. The first deck, "Fire and Blood", is a showcase of what the dragons unleashed can do.

Targaryen House Card
Heir of to the Iron Throne Agenda
Plot Deck   Locations
Threat from the East   Summer Sea x3
Mad King's Legacy   Xaro's Home x1
Valar Morghulis   Khal Drogo's Tent x1
Summoning Season   Eastern Fiefdoms x3
Focused Offense   Kingsroad Fiefdom x3
Spending the Winter Stores   Qarth x1
Mutual Cause   Yunkai x2
   Astapor x1
Characters   Mereen x3
True Queen's Harbinger x3   Lady Daenerys's Chambers x1
Black Hatchling x1   
Green Hatchling x1   Events
White Hatchling x1   Maegi's Promise x2
Daenerys Targaryen (QoD) x3   Field of Fire x3
Drogon (QoD) x3   
Rhaegal (QoD) x3   Attachments
Viserion (QoD) x3   Dragon Fear x3
Advisor to the Crown x2   Sun Stroke x2
Initiate of the Citadel x1   Crown of Meereen x2
Qartheen Fanatic x1   
Khal Drogo (CS) x1   
Viserys Targaryen x1   
Brown Ben Plumm x1   
Ser Barristan Selmy x1   
Maester Aemon x1   

   

In essence, this deck is an exploration of House Targaryen's approach to the "power rush" strategy. Through the Heir to the Iron Throne agenda, you can execute an additional power challenge each round. With the help of Daenerys Targaryen, your Dragons do not kneel to attack and you therefore have more opportunities to take your opponents' power. Through Rhaegal's ability to claim additional power in challenges for all Dragons, as well as through the character and location control granted by Drogon and Viserion's abilities, you can easily overwhelm your opponents with your Dragons' magnified power.

[fatolaf]

As those of you who have been with the game for a while know, one of House Targaryen's key strengths is in its use of attachments. There are attachments like Dragon Sight (A Song of Summer, F5) or the recent spate of Dothraki Weapon attachments, or attachment-related cards like Lady Daenerys's Chambers, Xaro's Home, or The Battle of Astapor (Epic Battles, F69) all with the intent of House Targaryen's attachment superiority.

One place in which House Targaryen excels over other Houses is in its ability to discard attachments from play or move them around - see Dany's Handmaiden or Dragon Thief (Ancient Enemies, F37). A shining example of this skill set can be found in Queen of Dragons in Crown of Meereen.

Crown of Meereen does double duty in this set: apart from making it Summer and powering cards like Dragon Sight and The Long Summer (A Song of Summer, F44), it also gives you the ability to take control of attachments and put them on your own cards. Win a challenge with the character that Crown of Meereen is attached to and, assuming you have an eligible card handy, cards like Northern Steel (The Battle of Blackwater Bay, F102) and Poisoned Knife (A Song of Silence, F76) become assets instead of irritants.

[Draig]

May well be taking that Agenda in Greyjoy. I never use Intrigue there, especially not against the nasty Martell, and it'd allow double power challenges, giving more chance for unopposed schennanigans. I like.

[fatolaf]

The Wine of Warlocks

Moving on from The Chosen Few, we present this week's card spoiler, again from the upcoming deluxe expansion Queen of Dragons. We chose this week's card because of the ongoing discussions on the subject of creating a House Targaryen draw engine. The main question is whether Queen of Dragons will add more draw capability to the Targaryen arsenal. We offer Shade of the Evening as an example of some new draw possibilities for House Targaryen.

We are cheating a little here: Shade of the Evening is not technically a draw card, it is a search card. In effect, it falls somewhere between a draw card and a search card, in that the net result is that it adds a card to your hand, but you don't have to reveal it. Because it is not a draw card, it is not affected by card effects that reference drawing cards, such as Kings of the Storm's Stannis Baratheon or Kings Landing's The Iron Throne. Of course, Shade of the Evening requires you to win a challenge in order to trigger its response, but that is a small price to pay given the boost of both adding a card to your hand and getting some information about what is in store for you the next time you draw (or what you stand to lose in a Greyjoy milling attack). Other than that, Shade of the Evening fits in nicely alongside other House Targaryen strategies - it is stronger in Summer and it is an attachment (Xaro's Home, Lady Daenerys's Chambers, etc.) - so it is bound to get plenty of play in the months ahead.

Under Siege

Another card that will add to House Targaryen's draw capabilities is Meereen. Meereen again works double duty as a card that plays alongside a developing strategy - Dragon synergy - as well as adding to draw. The main thrust of this card is actually giving one of your Dragons immunity to opponents' triggered effects. The fact that winning the challenge - again, a small price to pay - lets you draw a card for each participating Dragon is an especially enticing bonus. With the Queen of Dragons Daenerys in play, there is not much of a downside to throwing all of your Dragons into a challenge (assuming you are attacking) in order to draw more cards through Meereen. A good Dragon deck has a lot of moving parts that need to come together in order to really work, but if you can get them in line, it can be a formidable enemy.