Now that the full set of City Plots have been out for a while - what's the consensus? Around here, 6 City Plots + Fury Plot and Shadows Cards seems very strong, at least for most houses. Is anyone playing 5-6 City Plots competitively?

well for one, and to be a bit nitpicky, i wouldn't call/lump non-city plots as Generic.

two, this is a tough question as it has more to do with the deck build then anything. If you are running a deck that can win before turn 5, well then the city plots are negated as they can't really build up to the nasty levels desired by running such a plot deck. If I'm running 4-5 resets (wildfire, valar, threat from the north, rule by decree, and fleeing to the wall) i probably don't care about your plot choices anyway.

three, while the city plots are nice, i only think one is brutal late game and thats the multi-kneel one. I'd at most run 4 city plots in my deck. City of Lies, Secrets, Sins, and Spiders.

four, if your not committed to shadows your not going to be able to maximize the cities plots as Lies (which is the only city plot not dependent on having a city in used pile) is not efficient. This comes into play in houses like GJ, stark, and Baratheon. They all have nice shadows cards, but in the long run they don't necessarly want a whole lot of them in their deck. Lanni, while having thebest shadow character in the game doesn't need shadows at all to win, so the best house for them just kind of things of them as amusements.

I think that Lars makes a fair point in that if you are not dedicating a fair part of your deck and/or strategy to Shadows, it is hard to play City of Lies. If you don't play City of Lies as the "seed plot" for City plots, it gets harder to want to play the City plots because at least one will have pretty much no effect at all. On the other hand, if you DO have Shadow cards and play City of Lies, it's hard NOT to want to run another 2-4 City plots. That's what's happening around here; City becomes the entire plot deck for a Shadows deck (5-6 of them usually), but that's about it.

In my #1 deck (Lanni Shadows) I am playing 5 of them, and Valar (probably the best Shadow card out there) and Fury.

Very strong plots.

rings said:

But how many are you running with your non-Shadows decks?

My tiny meta has found Shadows cards to be very strong, and the penalty for not playing Shadows high (Robert Baratheon, for one). In general, the Shadows meta appears to be stronger than the Seasons meta, and easier to add to existing decks without too much retooling.

Where I was going with this thread is that the strongest deck that we have found is Lannister Shadows with 5-6 City Plots. Our meta is not sophisticated enough to pull off the turn 3 win except in rare circumstances where Baratheon goes nuts and picks up ~8 power in a turn. Either way, it looks like the City Plots are a strong contender and makes an already strong Lannister even stronger.

Dr.Cornelius said:

That kind of like saying If the U.S. had oil they'ed be even more of a super power.

Lanni is the best house right now, with or with out shadows and with or with out city plots. The strength of the plots would be quantifiable if they made a non-lanni deck as strong as a lanni deck. I don't think they do.

Lars said:

I would argue that they make Shadow decks strong - and little else because of the "seed" role of City of Lies.

Essentially, this is the same thing Lars is saying in that I think most people will agree that Lannister is the best House for running a full Shadows theme, with or without the Agenda. But I have attempted, and seen some attempts, to run Shadow decks in other Houses (notably Targ and Baratheon - with one stubborn idiot trying to make Stark Shadows work...). These decks are intrinsically stronger when using City plots.

I think the City plots play a role in making non-Lanni Shadow decks competitive against Lanni non-Shadow decks. Unfortunately, they don't do much to being other Houses up to a Lanni Shadow level.

As a side note, does anyone else notice just how much the pacing of the game changes when playing a heavy-Shadow deck?

Ktom, aren't your the stubborn idiot....

Actually I tried it too... but not very thoroughly. It seems it might be valuable in a slow Melee setting. The only problem is to keep it winter. Especially, with Targ Summer around it is difficult, and you have to target his attachment recursion location early on.

C

Castorp said:

Well, around here, Targ Summer isn't as popular a build and between Pyromancer's Apprentice and The Price of War, controlling the attachment recursion (which usually means Dany's Chambers) isn't a HUGE obstacle for the Stark Shadows deck. The hardest part for me is managing the resource curve. It's very gold intensive - which is counterintuitive for a Winter deck.

ktom said:

agreed.