Wow - play testing aroudn here has Greyjoy consistently beating just about all contenders. LIV is one of the best card draw effects we have seen in a long while. And with reliable cancel in depth and being resilient to the popular resets, they seem to handle Lannisters main tricks with not too much difficulty.

How are other metas seeing Greyjoy at the local level? Are they beating Lannister with regularity? Has anyone found holes in the typical Greyjoy build they exploit?

I expect the Krakens to be heavily represented next week at Black Friday, and I'll be surprised if they don't post a high winning perecentage.

Not to be too smug or anything, but I remember saying even before KotS came out that once GJ had some basic in-House resources, they'd quickly become contenders. Not sure they have "passed" Lannister, but I think they are running a strong race - maybe even a photo finish.

I think they're absolutely near Lannister. They're pretty balanced.

Semi-OT:

I'm beginning to hate this dualism...I try and playtest lots of different decks, but Lannis and Greys seem too much over the top for everyone.

I write this against my own interests, since I'm a "heavy" Lannister player, but I've to admit it's pretty "annoying" playing a strong archetype (Lanni kneel) that's been improved month by month and that everything we have against are a couple of conditional semi-unplayable cards.

Greys are on the right way to become the same...If the Upcoming cycle is "north" centered (even if it seems more stark/night's watch/wildlings oriented), we'll have a Greyjoy dominion, similar to the Lanni's one we're having right now.

Anyway, Grey/Winter is a strong archetype, EVEN if I think that Lanni is more COMPLETE. Grey winter has a "one-way" strategy, while Lanni builds offer lots of different options (I'm currently playing a strong Lanni Event-Heavy deck and it works perfectly even against Winter-Greys).

I think the thing is this: lannisters can beat greyjoy, if the gj don't get an early lock, or fail to control early in the game. Give lannis one good hand and a turn or two, and there's nothing gj can do to get back on there feet usually. I've played lanni decks some, and I have only won a couple times, and only because i put the pressure on early and managed to keep it going. one event can screw up the whole game for greyjoy. (I'm you writ small... Lanni pays his debts, etc). GJ has at most 9 cancels, seasick is blocked if they have influence and Hand's judgement needs gold... the lanni events are much less restrictive...

But overall, I think greyjoy and lannis are at the top right now. I have a feeling Martells are gonna jump up there too when their expansion comes out. They always were a really obnoxious house to play against..

Greyjoy Chris said:

this is about where we are. GJ wins sometimes, but is about .500. They are perhaps a little under .500 in our meta in joust. Though I think they are amazing in melee.

We had a GJ winter deck going for a while in our meta, in fact it was an option for GenCon, but because it didn;t reliably win it was chosen not to be used there. Our GJ player tends to run into the same problems. If he doesn't see one of 4 cards early he is in trouble, or if one of those 4 cards (not by total number in deck, but by card name) gets controlled he will have a hard time.

If GJ had a way to reliably deal with Flogged and Chained i might be more inclined to give them the edge over lanni, but right now i thinks its an even match with lanni having a slight edge.

Our meta probably plays out like this:

Lanni

Bara

GJ

Targ

Martell

Stark

and if someone is not running an uber kneel lanni deck our last couple of tournaments have been this way

Bara

Lanni

GJ

Stark

no Targ/martell played.

So i see 3 strong houses right now, and if everyone else is right about targ i guess we finally have 4 strong houses in LCG....

Were Greyjoy around in any LCG sets before the KotS deluxe expansion ?

You can find some Greys in almost any CP.

My Greyjoy deck has been cutting through our meta lately, but it does hit a roadblock against Lanni kneel. Greyjoy is strong and powerful, and competes on a different field than Lannister, but if Lanni gets its kneel engine running and I'm cancel and To Be A Kraken short I can't get my win out.

I am looking forward to Martell, as I think they can easily become top tier as well. Truthfully, from the different deck types I am seeing lately, each house has good strengths and weaknesses. There is a Bara deck in our meta that can win quickly, but falters in the long, drawn out game. I've playeed some Stark deacks are are just brutal, and the Targs are getting some good decks running if they can keep their gold engine moving. That's targ's biggest weakness in my book needing gold.

I thin Targ's biggest weakness is having to run a dual resource stream to be competitive, both gold and influence, with not enough options for them to run one or the other. Targ needs a character with influence the way Martell had Paramour or an attachment that grants influence like Mystique of the East back.

Targ has the Red Keep. That's all they need for influence. If they can then get out a few gold providing resources(like 2-3) they can really steam roll someone. And having a one sided reset in Threat from the North(can't believe they let that come back) is usually too much for the opponent to handle. Things are going to get a whole lot more interesting after PotS hits.

If you are a playtester aren't you covered by an NDA? If this post isn't violating it by the letter, I suspect it is by the spirit.

Sidestepping any possible cards or mechanics or themes Targ may or may not be getting but have not been revealed by FFG yet...

I disagree with the Red Keep. That is a single influence providing source. It isn't just the amount of influence on the table but the ability to play multiple effects dependent on influence in the same round/phase. Choosing to ambush a character or use burn and being restricted to just one of those until influence stands is a major limitation. I'm not suggetsing we get rid of the need for influence and gold for Targ, I'm simply suggesting that if we had more variety of sources it would give us more deck building options and make Targ builds more adaptable to your specific meta, and have a better showing at larger events. I think this may be one of the few things that is holding Targ back from competing with Bara and GJ rush and Lanni control.

Its also being smug. I don't remember any posts where folks announced they play tested. So I assume it's like fight club...

Lets move the crystal ball to something different: Threat from the North was revealed in an article.

I think discussing the effect of the game from THAT card would be more fruitful.

RE Threat From the North.

I'm taking a wait and see approach.

I see its abilty in Targ for sure, but it still doesn't get around Targ's biggest weakness for me, which is the fact that most of the things it wants to do require so much set up (or to coattail on dormouse, since it needs two resources streams you have to have them both going and then be able to have the cards you need at the right time). Sure, Threat can be brutal the turn you have 2-3 burn effects (btw, if this and flame kissed happen, is the charcater killed or discarded?). However, for a one time blast (say with only 1 other burn effect) its 2 gold is not really worth it as now you are just slowing yourself down even more and taking longer to set everything up. In other words its a well balanced card, I just don't like playing well balanced plots as i like to maximize my plot deck in my favor

I'm not sure if it really does anything for other houses. I guess it is supposed to help against a swarm deck, but with only a -1 to STR and in houses that have no other ways to lower STR i'm not sold on its impact on the game. The houses that have a plethera of 0-1 STR characters either have recursion (Targ) or STR boosts (GJ and Stark) So the effect of a 2 gold plot is severely mitigated in those houses.

Lars said:

The First Player is the one to decide what happens. Both of them are passive effects.

There are other STR reduction cards, a couple even global ones. I can't wait to see a melee where two of these get flipped, or one of these during winter with Winds of Winter. So much carnage!

It is a small reset against swarm decks getting rid of the dreck and severely limiting the effectiveness of the drivel for a turn... that said no single plot is going to prevent a swarm deck from doing what it does best, namely throw up a horde of small characters and overwhelm you with numbers. If swarm decks are really running rampant in a meta though it would not be hard to make a deck with a few very strong characters with pwerful abilites and run Valar, Wildfire and Threat all in the same plot deck knowing you will alway end up with more STR and better abilities on the board for three turns than your opponent. This out of Bara with their rush and vigilant could stop a swarm deck from ever being able to dominate numerically.

It toasts Maester Wendamyr and Salt Wife.

And of course the carrion birds, samwell.

And even one flame-kissed adds another character to the dead pile. I think it's a good card for Targ to use... and I think some may use it as a secondary reset.

My lanni builds have plenty of location control, that is for sure. GJ's real issue is lack of consistant draw if you don't get your ship, although the initative draw one is very strong for them as well. i would say 55/45 Lanni.

What's with the Widowmaker/playtester hate there? I don't see anything in that post that insinuates playtesting, nor anything that a reasonably knowledgeable and experienced player couldn't have asserted.

Kennon said:

Based on the published time for widowmaker's post, which is later than the two posts that follow it questionning the appropriateness of disclosing his playtester status, I'm assuming he went back and edited his post in response.

As a note on this topic. in a field of almost 6 greyjoys at Black Friday, the three lannisters made it all to the top 4. I think its safe to say that lannister is still the top tier when it comes to houses.

Greyjoy Chris said:

And the 4th was Targaryen to boot. To my mind, this event confirmed to me that Lanni is the top house by far and that the other houses do well with a good player playing them.

i had a post here, but i'm moving it to its own thread

I actually think Greyjoy is still very competitive. In our meta, we play tested a lot with and against Greyjoy. It did well enough that we all took decks that were designed to perform well against Greyjoy (not Lanni), which might help to explain a big part of why Greyjoy didn't do quite as well. Though I can't remember exactly how each round with a DC player went, I'm pretty sure that as a meta we cleaned up on Greyjoy...keeping them from breaking to semifinals. (For my part, I beat Greyjoy Chris, though as I mentioned Chris drew very poorly and I had the burn to deal with his start early.)

I think... to sum it up looking at the other thread.

I used summer, sam tarly, gilly, liv, and the ravens for card advantage.

lanni used golden tooth mines.

I don't mean any disrespect when I say this but I don't think any of the Greyjoy decks were particularly good. Greyjoy is frustrating at the moment as there really seems to be only one viable deck type for them, that being Greg's World's deck, and the other types of decks they can run just aren't very good. It's doubly frustrating as Greyjoy is my favorite house and my refusal to netdeck left me trying variations of Greg's deck or new Greyjoy decks that were all not tournament worthy.

My Stark deck was pretty effective against everything except Lannister. It was a risk but like the rest of the DC meta we were expecting more Greyjoy, especially Greg's Greyjoy, and my deck was built to be good against Greyjoy and Bara while being strong against Targ and really needing luck on my side to have a chance against Lanni. Playing Lannister back to back took me out of any competition, unfortunately.

I think the best we can hope for is that Martell and Greyjoy are going to be very strong against Lannister while Stark and Bara are going to be strong against Martell and Greyjoy and Targ being a bit of a wildcard depending on how its built.