I am new to this LCG, and forums, and I just bought the core set. I was wondering if you could expand the two house cards, that have no specific deck , into full blown decks for six player matches. Or will they always play a supporting role to the deck in which they came?

With the cards currently available from the Core Set and various Chapter Packs, I personally would say not be able to build particularly satisfying Greyjoy or Martell decks. If nothing else, consider that they are lacking all the in-House resource cards (every other House has in-House 0-cost gold locations, cost reducers and the like).

Unless FFG specifically puts out some sort of "Core Deck" for the two Houses as an expansion for the Core Set, I'd say it will be at least a year before there are enough cards available from Chapter Packs to really build a deck for either House. In the meantime, they will act primarily as support for ALL the Houses (with Martell working a little better with Lannister and Targaryen and Greyjoy working a little better with Stark and Baratheon).

Of course, if you want to reach "back in time" and pull from the pre-LCG era cards (when this game was a full-blown CCG), you could build Martell and Greyjoy decks now.

I agree 100% wiht Ktom in regard to Greyjoy.

However I disagree in regard to Martell. I have a nifty little Martell LCG deck that is currently 1-0 (it beat a jack of all trades Targ classic deck, though if i didn't win the turn i won, it would have been downhill). The biggest problem with a martell deck is still resources. I run 3x of the martell Sea, 3x crossroads, and 1 of each street. I also made it a summer deck to get an extra gold, card, and exploit some other things. I have to tricks built into the deck to speed up my locations which is Obara Sand x3 and/or opening with building season. My version is also a little grey, with about 50% of the charcaters being Nuetral (one of which being A. Dayne who has some synergy with other cards in my deck), but it doens't have to be this way and i could easily have a deck with 100% Martell charcaters.

It is a bit luck dependent for sure and I might try it in a few events, but it is mostly a casual deck (for now) but if you want to build a casual Martell deck, it is out there once you get all the chapter packs.

Greyjoy actually has some potential also with the Winter mechanic and Winter's Horn. Make up for the lack of inhouse locations by forcing your opponent to be on even footing with you.

It is definitely a bit luck dependent without the same card base to shore up weaknesses, but when the LEague play starts up I'm definitely playing one of these houses. They have to get points some how.

I seriosly hope that within a year the Greyjoy aand Martell will be back. It would broaden the variability in the first place and secondly in our small meta (pretty new too) we had few players playing Greyjoy and Martell as they primary Houses, sometimes only Houses they played. Now they are only upset and want to quit playing untill they make some special G/M CoreSet. Specialy Greyjoy now after WNE lacks some key locations and other stuff.

Yeah...I always played Greyjoy in the few sessions we had for the CCG "sigh". I bought the first chapter pack available(song of summer) at my local FGS and their were some cards for both of those houses.

dormouse said:

I think this is a case of putting the cart before the horse. You have to be able to put out enough characters to win military challenges, bearing in mind you have to keep up with the other guy who has "real resources". If you simply don't have the base resources available, you wont be able to even start up your War Horn pillaging, and so the playing field will never be even.

It makes me sad, because I really like Ice Fisherman and War Horn, and the other Winter/Greyjoy mechanics, but there just isn't any footing for this stuff to start from.

Rozy said:

I would also like a Greyjoy and Martell to enter full force as a core xpansion....but as you say we need to be little patience.

question is that they even plan to expand this two houses?

I am doubting it after reading this article: http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=167

The lack of in house resources hurts, no doubt, but it isn't impossible to overcome. It mostly means playing conservatively and keeping your deck and table talk very focused on the task at hand, avoid making yourself a target, and only burst out of the gate when you are ready to go on the attack.

As to them building up the Krakens and the Vipers, that will pretty much happen, as long as they keep including an equal number of cards for them... but I trust Nate to come up with something to help with the resource and staple mechanics that took a severe beating for those two houses. I also suspect he will include some cards that will fill in some of the less supported mechanics after the switch to LCG. The real question is when. This is essentially a reset of the game, and comparing the mechanics and card availability to Westeros is probably the closest comparison for what we can expect to be able to do with the cards as well as how things are likely to be further developed.