Magister Illyrio – He’s pretty much the whole reason we’re considering Banner of the Dragon. As with Lightbringer, Robert is a great choice to multiply his challenge phase impact. Seal of the Hand – Already a great attachment to drop on beefy characters to up their impact in challenges, Seal becomes even more valuable in Stannis decks. And of course, don’t forget that it is a R’hllor card, so we can trigger Melisandre’s ability after playing it. We also have some additional flexibility to place it on Robert for similar speed advantages as well as additional opportunities to negate our opponent’s actions by kneeling the few characters that are standing. Lightbringer – The obvious combination here is to get it on Stannis as a means to both accelerate our game by granting him Renown and to generate Action advantage by standing Stannis.

Of course, the more one-sided we can make the impact of his ability, the better. Since both players are limited in the standing phase due to his ability, whoever is able to get a more efficient number of actions out of his or her characters is going to be coming out ahead (assuming roughly equal draw and economy, that is).

Stannis gives a unique opportunity to negate many of the cards that your opponent is playing and force Action advantage to be an even bigger part of the game. Stannis Baratheon – Here’s one of the first of those “build around me” cards in the game. Ok, so the card pool is a little on the small side right now, which makes it a bit difficult to really dig in the way we used to, but there are still a few “build around me” cards just begging for an attempt to maximize their usefulness. This series is scheduled to be monthly, which works out nicely as it dovetails with chapter pack releases. Thus, we launch today with a new name which is evocative of the experimental nature of these decks. But now, I’m pleased to announce that I’m kicking the dust off the tires dreaming up some janky stuff once again! With the launch of a new edition of the game, it seemed appropriate to update the column as well.

Sadly, the pressures of personal life and time spent on other projects (like the podcast) led me to retire the bi-weekly series during the final year of First Edition. As a brief history lesson for those who’ve joined us in the last year, I launched All Things Shagga as one of the founding articles in the player-run Small Council initiative to organize more AGOT content on CardgameDB during the middle years of the first edition of the LCG. Welcome to the first edition of the column formerly known as All Things Shagga.

Agot 1st ed playing cards in shadows