Martell LCG (Summer/Reinforcements)

By RJM, in 4. AGoT Deck Construction

Here's my best shot at this deck-type for the time being. Yeah, it has some glaring holes in the form of resources, but it's also got an abundance of cheap and versatile characters. Plus the Reinforcement events.

Most of its pretty self-explanatory. Getting into a MwnK duel isn't actually that terrible for this deck, as it has some pretty excellent card draw, and odds are about 50/50 when it happens that you'll be in the same position you were before the Reinforcements triggers start going off.

The Maesters: Refugee of the Citadel & Maester of the Sun are 2 STR for 2G tri-cons while theres a Maester of War out. Aemon even gets a Mil icon. The abundance of STR 2 or lower characters works great with Underhanded Assassins as well. (One of Martells best LCG characters.) Desolate Passage with an Underhanded Assassin is also basically an auto-win challenge for you as well.

3x Obara gives you a better shot at the chance for a 2nd mulligan. Its pretty important to get a good start with this decks handicaps in resources, so the small added percentage does help. Otherwise, its some extra saves for your strongest unique.

Open Market synergizes really well with the Maester of the Sun's save effect & the Retreat and Regroup event. You can keep discarding and trading up for cards you really need. It essentially can bring back "killed" reinforcement event characters to your hand for you in this manner once they've been discarded.

----- Plots (7) -----
Desolate Passage x1
A Time for Ravens x1
A Song of Summer x1
Wildfire Assault x1
Snowed Under x1
Valar Morghulis x1
Fury of the Sun x1

----- Characters (28) -----
Desert Exiles x3
Men With No King x3
Refugee of the Citadel x3
* Gilly x1
* Samwell Tarly x1
* Obara Sand x3
Underhanded Assassin x3
Carrion Bird x3
Maester of the Sun x3
* Maester Aemon x1
* The Bastard of Godsgrace x1
Maester of War x3

----- Locations (14) -----
Open Market x2
Temple of the Graces x3
Summer Sea x3
Crossroads x3
Street of Steel x1
Shadowblack Lane x1
Street of Sisters x1

----- Attachments (6) -----
Black Raven x3
War Scorpion x3

----- Events (12) -----
3x Retreat and Regroup
3x Summer Reserves
2x Missing Recruit
2x Beguiled Bodyguard
2x Spy in the Midst

Agenda: Kings of Summer

Total cards: 60

I've thought about pulling the War Scorpions for 1 more copy each of the Reinforcement events, as the Limited Responses on MwnK and War Scorpion can sometimes be at odds with each other, but so far it hasn't come up that often.

Anyway, yeah... its not the greatest deck in LCG by far... and to me, its REALLY boring to only have all of 2 whole named Martell characters in a Martell deck. But still, it actually works pretty well for a half-existing house in LCG. Thoughts, suggestions?

I built a deck with the Open Market combo you mentioned, and it seems to work really well. Like you said, though, the resources is a bit of a pain for Martell, and your gold curve looks kind of high right now. How has it played out in 1v1?

If you're low on gold most games, I suggest running Support of the Kingdom rather than the out of house gold you have in here. This can be much faster, especially with all the power icons you have, and takes gold from your opponent to level the playing field. I know it would mean running more event cards, but 2 gold for +1 gold per round doesn't seem very efficient. (You spend two rounds paying for the location, so it only really gives you gold on the third round.)

Also, I like War Scorpion quite a bit on both defense and offense. It works great with Underhanded Assassin, because your opponent will always have to block your Assassin with more than one guy and risks losing 2-3 guys to the challenge if they decide to block. Arguably you'd still be trading 2 cards (1 character and 1 War Scorpion) for their 2 characters, but you can get back the attachment with Open market, so this adds a strong element of defensive and offensive control. Since you have all that draw, why not just run two MWNK? That will lower your gold curve and keep the "limited responses" to a minimum?

Yeah, Support of the Kingdom is definitely more efficient in a lot of situations. It's also just a slight gamble if you can't win the Power challenge you really need early. I'll be trying it as both I'm sure. (I'll have to pull the Supports out of my Lannister deck though, as I have only the 3 copies.)

So far, the gold cost of my characters hasn't hurt me too badly. It may appear steep with the 6x 4G costers, but the rest of the deck is really very cheap. 4x 0G cost, 5x 1G cost, 7x 2G cost, 6x 3G cost, & the 6x 4G cost armies. Its something like an average cost of 1.6... But really you also have the 9x reinforcement event 'pseudo-characters' for 1G each too.

To me, the deck will not truly be fun until I can actually run some Martell characters though. So, while it works pretty well in LCG, even as a pretty diehard Martell player... it's hard to get excited by it. I need my Red Viper! :-P

Playing Martell there is almost no reason not to be playing A Game of Cyvasse. Using Vendor of Venoms you can almost always win this one, and the card has Vengeful. A good control mechanic.

I stopped running the Kings of Summer agenda, because I see alot of Winter/Kings of Winter decks. Winter cripples the card draw, and Kings of Winter often still forces me to discard cards from my hand for a turn or two. As one of our players pointed out, there is no downside to playing KoW.

Depending on your fear factor of MWnK, I run Mance Rayder and Jeyne Westerling in my deck -- Jeyne to search for Mance, and both to reduce the cost of Queen Myrcella's Guard. They would both be even better if Pyromancer's Cache was unbanned.

Open Market never worked out as well for me as I wanted. Often the card I want to bring back is the Black Raven, but I can't use it unless it is Summer.

Thanks for the comments JJ. I just can't find room with the current spread of the deck for Vendors and Cyvasse. I like them both though, but right now the Reins events are stronger options. And with City of Secrets, this deck actually became incredibly smooth.

I've pulled 3x Maester of War, 1x Open Market, and 1 each of MwnK & War Scorpion. In their place I've got 3x Nomadic Merchant and 3x Shadow of the South.

Now if you're playing events I'm getting gold for my own Reinforcements, and if I get Shadow of the South cycling... Well, enjoy basically not playing events for the rest of the game during the challenges phase as long as its summer. (Or more phases if I get 2 copies cycling.)

Now I just need some damned named characters so I can actually enjoy playing this deck from a Nedly point of view.