The most enjoyable kinds of new cards for a player like me are the ones that enable you to use old cards in new ways. For this reason, few new releases this year have been as interesting to me as Assault from the Shadows, the agenda featured in Daggers in the Dark.

While I’ve enjoyed the first cycle of the shadows mechanic and am pleased by the extra layer that it adds to the game, I wasn’t initially excited by the notion of an entire agenda built around the mechanic. Many shadows cards that have been printed so far are not overly interesting in design – often simply reflecting ‘classic’ design beats for each faction with a ‘after this card comes out of shadows’ trigger. Those are arguably necessary parts of integrating shadows into the game, but they don’t stimulate the imagination all that much.

What makes Assault a fascinating agenda, though, is the ability to put any card of your choosing into shadows. That any effect in the game could be brought into play at (hypothetically) any moment creates all manner of new possibilities, and for me the most interesting Assault decks will be focused around exploring those instead of simply maximising the value of conventional shadows effects. The trick will be to build weird Assault decks that justify the effective one extra gold that you’re spending on putting non-shadow cards into shadows.

I could sit here all day just listing cards that become much more entertaining when they can emerge as a surprise, particularly in the challenges phase. From simple but game-changing cards like Milk of the Poppy or Jousting Pavilion to flashier effects such as Turncloak or Crown of Gold, there are just so many options! Indeed, you’ll probably see me talking about more of them on this site in the months to come.

Today, though, I’d like to share a deck that I built out of the factions least obviously likely to make immediate use of Assault from the Shadows: House Greyjoy.

A Pinch of Assault on ThronesDB

This is a deck that I built as a result of four main impulses that I recognised in myself after a long, relatively jank-light competitive season from regionals through to Stahleck:

I want to try Assault from the Shadows. I want to run Political Disaster. I want to try Rhymes with Meek. I want to run the Bloody Flux plus removal effects (thanks to hansen, who destroyed me in round two at Stahleck, for inspiring this).

You might not think that all of those things could or should go in the same deck, but the notion of running Political Disaster out of Greyjoy, who are notorious for their enormous back-boards, tickled me so much that I could hardly not try it out.

The nice thing about committing to a lighter location base in this deck, in order to justify Disaster, was that it freed up more slots for events, which dovetailed nicely with my desire to murder things and draw cards using Rhymes with Meek. As a secondary bonus, the typical drawback of running a double-digit event count (worse setups) is partially mitigated by the presence of shadow events like Rhymes or Poisoned Coin, as they can be set up into shadows.

Given that I knew immediately that I was going to be on five kill events, and that I was running Greyjoy so had access to the potent Raider from Pyke/A Pinch of Powder combo, it made sense that I should commit to an aggressive build. I would pack as broad a variety of removal effects as I could, as well as running unopposed tech to profit from my opponents’ hopefully empty boards.

Naturally, this prompted the draw-deck inclusion of from-shadows removal cards like Moqorro and Varys, the Asexual Assassin, alongside unopposed powerhouses like Core Asha and Core Balon.

Perhaps most crucially, the Assault agenda allowed me to get great joy (geddit?) out of Throwing Axe, a card that has been poor ever since the Core Set due to its highly telegraphed nature. The ability to put it in shadows then bring it out after defenders are declared makes it a lot harder for opponents to defend against.

This all adds up for more options to control boards than most opponents can shut down, and the end result feels like a very classical Greyjoy deck in the style of the Core Set, just with the subtleties to hold its own in the modern meta.

The plot lineup, freed from a desperate need to run draw thanks to the reliable Great Kraken and Rhymes with Meek, feels strong to play. Trading with the Pentoshi and Summer Harvest are two very necessary economy plots, as Assault decks will typically require, but everything else has real punch.

Marched to the Wall and Rise of the Kraken can create and punish small boards, while the character curve is slim enough that Valar Dohaeris can do more work than it normally would in Greyjoy. That choice of reset, alongside Political Disaster, is liable to really surprise someone who plays around what they would typically expect from the squids. Make sure that you try the instant-classic trick of putting Roseroads into shadows then bringing them out for free in the plot phase after your own Disaster!

I took this deck for a spin in an online tournament that was streamed on the Knight of the Blackwater channel – you can watch footage here. I’m featured in the first game and the last, having gone 3-0 in the Swiss and making the final – with a win against Stahleck champion Wilco van Dijk in the process! It didn’t end well, though, as I faced a Martell/Stag/Kraken deck that didn’t care about its character base at all, negating almost all of the potency of my removal effects. It also had the draw and recursion to shrug off Political Disaster despite a huge base of locations.

That obvious bad matchup aside, I’ve been impressed by how the whole package comes together into a deck that’s both janky and powerful, and I’m looking forward to playing around with it more. Feel free to try it out if you fancy a little more spice in your calamari!