“Draw = win,” went the old adage in the first edition of Thrones. That has never translated literally into Second Edition, although obviously nobody would argue with “draw = good”. Most plot decks will include at least one draw plot as a matter of course, and any new opportunity for card advantage deserves at least some consideration.

Siege Preparations is a really interesting new card from the Fury of the Storm box which offers an unusual spin on draw. The most common draw plots that I see hit tables are Counting Coppers and Exchange of Information, each of which provides an immediate boost to resources and allow you to plan your round accordingly.

This is a distinct advantage over Siege Prep’s delay, which asks you to accept a mere three gold for your marshaling and challenges without seeing any extra options to get you through that lean period. Given that its reserve value is 6, drawing back up to that number might not net you more than three or four cards anyway – in which case, can it justify seeing any play over Coppers or Exchange?

Clearly, if we want to justify running Siege Prep, we should be doing it with the explicit intention of drawing more than four cards so as to outperform a best-case-scenario Exchange of Information. We need to find ways to widen the gap between our reserve value and our hand size.

There are two obvious routes towards making this happen:

1) Raise our reserve value.

2) Reliably chew through all of the cards in our hand.

Now, of course we could just focus on doing one of these things, but this column has no interest in half-measures. So what deck can fulfil both of these criteria?

The easiest way to address point 1 is to choose the Night’s Watch as our main faction. The Watch boasts a healthy number of reserve-boosting cards (Core Samwell, Bowen Marsh, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and Northern Rookery), which can join the Iron Throne and the God’s Eye in offering us a potential reserve ceiling of 12.

The only other faction that can make an argument for boosting reserve is Martell, through Dorne and the Summer Sea Ports, but – for reasons I’m about to illuminate – I don’t want to spend my restricted slot on Dorne.

Opting for the Watch also allows us, in a happy coincidence, to try out another really fun-looking new card from the box: Protectors of the Realm. In decks that aren’t explicitly aiming to jack their reserve sky-high, this Army probably isn’t worth the time but, if you’ve got a chance to run what could be a five-for-12 beatstick, you take it.

The next question is how we achieve point 2. Not only do we want to keep our hand as empty as possible so as to trigger Siege Prep as satisfyingly as possible, we’d ideally like to make sure that those cards are all used helpfully instead of just binned off for the sake of replacing them. Naturally, I am therefore inclined to think of running Banner of the Dragon for our agenda.

Targaryen, as is well known, offer a variety of ways to discard cards from our hand for tangible benefits. The first thing that I’m slotting into our deck is 3x Hizdahr zo Loraq as our restricted card. This chap seems like he should be an absolute monster with Siege Prep, simultaneously widening the gap to our reserve value and ameliorating the low gold value on the plot.

Hizdahr also works very well with the next Banner Dragon card that I want to slot in: Aegon Targaryen. We already know that we want to run 3x Protectors of the Realm, and my next thought is to continue the army theme with 3x Garrison at the Wall (after all, this is a deck with a discard theme, so we’re going to end up on 3x Missandei as a convenient trigger for the Garrison). Hizdahr can get us Aegon for free, and Aegon can potentially fetch us a double-digit-STR Protectors as one hell of a surprise.

To round out our banner package, I’ve taken 1x Plaza of Pride (it discards things for tangible benefit!), 1x Freedmen (it likes being discarded and we should be able to win things by 5 with the right armies out), 1x Core Jorah (henceforth known on these pages as Corah) for bland efficiency and 1x Hired Assassin (because Meera blanking Protectors makes us sad).

Completing our theme of discarding for effect, we can take 3x Old Forest Hunter (a mini Hizzi). I’ve also slotted in 2x Citadel Archivist to make sure that our Siege Prep triggers don’t lead to us accidentally milling ourselves out, as well as to recycle useful cards that we’ve discarded for short-term benefit.

At this point, we have all of the ingredients that we need to exploit Siege Prep to its fullest potential, which means that we must now work out how the deck actually wins games and build the rest of it appropriately. So here’s the list, and I’ll explain what it’s up to:

The deck on ThronesDB

As you’ll see, I opted for Core Wall as the win condition. It was the only real logical choice – our pre-built shell didn’t obviously support the six-cost Wall, nor did rush seem the order of the day in a deck focused on drawing a bunch of cards a few turns in. But we had a promising icon spread, which I have since rounded out to a very solid one, great STR to defend key challenges, and a couple of ways to stand important blockers.

The nature of our character base means that we’re a little short of acceleration, which I usually want even if I’m on a Core Wall clock deck, so I’ve thrown in a Street of the Sisters and a Starry Sept. We should be able to field some pretty beefy power icons, especially if the Protectors get as hench as we know that they can, so this seems cheap and reliable. The Iron Throne also helps with ticking up that power count.

Other small but noteworthy modules that I’ve added include:

1) Kill events. 2x Put to the Sword and 2x Daggers in the Dark are not commonly seen in Night’s Watch, at least outside of Sea of Blood, but I like to have options on this front as surprises, and we know that we have the potential STR to force through a PTTS. Daggers suits our desire to defend challenges and can be triggered for free if we have Hizdahr on the table. My favourite Core Wall decks always have some kind of teeth, the better to prevent opponents from getting comfortable as they try to solve the puzzle that I’ve set them.

2) Protection of my non-uniques. I’ve only dedicated two cards to this – 1x Craster and 1x “On a Misty Morn” – but, given that our primary beatsticks are non-unique armies, I think it’s important to have some cover for them as the typical ‘dupes and bodyguards approach’ doesn’t work here. Craster can prevent calamity and allows you to get a better deal out of the ‘parity’ of Valar Dohaeris than usual. Misty Morn is a card of which I’m increasingly a fan, which allows you to play more daringly around resets and look like you’re going wider than you truly are.

3) The Crow is a Tricksy Bird and cards that support it. Whenever I build a Night’s Watch deck, I always want to see if I can fit in this card, as it can straight-up win games in the right circumstances. Usually, you need at least two plots which can enable the trigger, and I’ve settled on Calling the Banners and Return to the Fields here. Both are solid enough plots in their own right – Return in particular offers us high reserve and a way to put Archivists into the bin – with good gold and strong initiative.

I would have liked to run a Varys’s Riddle or Bloody Flux to go with Tricksy Bird; forcing your opponent to Valar then Fluxing it is one of my absolute favourite things to do. Indeed, after playing more with this deck I may end up trying to make room for one of them, but it is a strong enough play in and of itself to see your opponent’s plots and dictate them for a round.

Ultimately, though, I decided that there was no room. At the Gates is a must, 2x Siege Prep is the entire point of the deck, we have two Tricksy enablers, Dohaeris as a reset plus For the Watch!. The latter is the most cuttable of those but, in a Wall defence deck, I think it’s worth opting for caution first, and For the Watch can be a great tool to blunt dangerous turns or trip up unthinking opponents. If you win initiative and go second, it can also help you keep resources standing for PTTS or power-gain triggers on the attack.

The final list ends up looking pretty darned strange, even by my own admission, but it holds together surprisingly strongly. My initial experimentations with it have been really entertaining, with the deck feeling flexible and fresh.

And let me tell you, there is nothing quite like triggering Siege Prep to draw 10 cards.