Fan only: Ajaba Aggression

Summary

Not all factions are capable of running on fan sets alone, but the Ajaba are one of them. This is not going to be the best deck, but I think it's a good way to explore some cards people may not have seen or absorbed.

The deck is predominantly intended to take out Enemies, using Blur of the Milky Eye to prevent Wyrm alphas stepping in, whilst messing with your opponents to reduce their ability to take out their own targets.

Deck

Characters

• 1 Thousand Cubs
• 1 Ironjaw
• 1 Amber Eyes-Like-Knives
• 1 Njoki Scarface

There is nothing particularly special about these characters in this deck, although Amber can slow down decks with lots of resources. But you do have two reasonable champions to draw on, and Ironjaw doing an extra point of damage - wait until you can pump her Rage though.

Sept
I'm going to annotate these, but you can also search for multiple card titles in the spoilers.

• 1 Clan of Hyenas - Solid ally with an inbuilt escape clause.
• 2 Scavenger's Quest - Quest. If it works out, that's a free attack and a VP if you succeed.
• 3 Sense of the Prey - Gift. A weaker version of Sneak Attack.
• 3 Laughter of the Soul - Gift. Similar to Harano Gloom, very powerful for disrupting opponents.
• 2 Tzinzie - Personal totem that plays mind games with your opponents combat hands.
• 3 Termite Mounds - Territory. Lets you see what cards your opponent will be drawing and you can use all three. Combo with Tzinzie.
• 1 Gnaw - Gift. Destroys opposing equipment. Only a one-of since you mainly want to face prey.
• 2 Blur of the Milky Eye - Great Ragabash card, stops your opponents stepping in for prey.
• 2 Bitter Hatar - Enemy.
• 2 Ootani Oil Bane - Enemy.
• 3 Dust Storm - Forces an opponent to discard and redraw their carefully crafted combat hand.
• 1 Toreador Poseur - Enemy.
• 2 Primal Anger - Rage for health.
• 2 Dominance - Cancels action cards of those with lower Renown.
• 1 Animal Attraction - Steals an ally

No sneak attacks available leads to interesting deck building, although the Ajaba do have a good alternative. Messing with your opponents' hands will hopefully buy you time to take out enough Enemies, using Termite Mounds to get an idea of when you should deploy your other abilities. The Primal Angers are pretty critical though for making sure you can reliably use your combat cards.

Combat
CombatDeck:
2 Anatomy Lesson
1 Instinctive Attack
1 Overbear
1 Aggressive Bite
2 Duck and Cover
1 Savage Beatdown
1 Block and Roll
1 Searching for Weakness
2 Leaping Rake
1 Mangle
2 The Whole Nine Yards
1 Spring the Trap
1 Bar the Way
1 Chew
1 Head Butt
1 Vicious Assault
The combat deck is the weakest part of this deck without a lot of the usual tricks. It was even worse before I added a couple of disposable The Whole Nine Yards (frenzies) and Spring the Trap (pack action). The latter is particularly useful with the Clan of Hyenas.

However, there are few things to draw out. Overbear is an awkward card but, if it hits, it can be combined with a Leaping Rake to take out any of your prey; or Spring the Trap for a double undodgeable hit. Mangle is a effectively a one-shot kill against your prey targets, but can also be played by prey (especially if you started with Searching for Weakness).

I want to highlight Aggressive Bite as a great way to stop Run Like Hell, Umbral Escape and Fox Frenzy. In fact, it prevents almost any escape if it lands. I swapped in the second Aggressive Bite for Bar the Way from the Rokea set: it's more reliable, but does less. Still very effective against Run Like Hell.

On the contrary, Anatomy Lesson is a great card for your prey to make any attackers withdraw (if they aren't frenzied). Savage Beatdown is real punisher for frenzies as they randomly lose half their hand. And there are four instinctive cards in the deck.

Substitutions

The deck would obviously benefit from substituting some of the five conditional attacks for reliable Sneak Attacks. You might also want to swap in Friends in High Places for the Dominance if your table likes its 10 Renown champions. Because you are playing Ragabash, you almost certainly want to find space for Stand Like a Fool - but do consider whether the disruption already in the deck is more effective, especially with instinctive actions available.

In the combat deck, you probably want to consider swapping in a normal frenzy, certainly a Taking the Death Blow; and probably swap the Spring the Trap for a Surprise Ally. There are some Combat Actions that might be more effective, but to be honest it's not clear what they might be.

The card I did consider is Stunning Strike as an extra option against frenzy, but between Savage Beatdown and Mangle you might have enough.

Fanonly_ajaba_aggression.dek
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File Type:	dek

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