so this isn't a debate i want to get into at length, given that the environment likely will change with martell (threat from the north itself is a game-shaking card), but the brief analysis i've seen thus far on greyjoy's relative strength in light of the results of black friday is incorrect, and i'm going to get into detail as to why, because the discussion highlights that the importance of card advantage in the LCG enviroment has not been fully internalized by many. instead, taking to heart these lessons on the absolute necessity of things like draw, hand screw, and board control will improve the competitiveness of any player's deck, and may even serve as a starting point for choosing a house for a large tournament for a player not particularly loyal to any one house.

at black friday, lanni came out on top again, in addition to a quirky targ/shadows deck, and those few greyjoy decks that were played didn't fare as well in terms of performance. however, i don't think what happened at black friday was at all indicative of the strength of all greyjoy builds, and one specific build in particular -- greg's worlds joust deck. furthermore, the framework i present below explains not only what happened to these greyjoy builds, but why we keep seeing lanni on top, and how the DC meta's crazy targ/shadows deck ended up in second when no one thought targ was at all a viable contender in the environment.

as usual, the DC meta prepared pretty hard for black friday, though we definitely called the meta incorrectly -- see, we, too, thought it would be greyjoy heavy, not necessarily because of the talk on the forums, but because our own build of greyjoy preformed so very consistently against both our lanni and targ builds (both of which made it into the top 3 at BF). we had assumed, because of what we saw in testing, that a lot more people would be playing greyjoy; instead, we countered at black friday the "loyalist" phenomenon whereby many people who show up to NYC tourneys stay loyal to their particular house of choice when the environment feels more open, rather than netdecking and playing what's popular. this lead to things like me loading my old lanni hyperkneel with summer ravens, and the other two lanni players to include similarly dead cards which sort of bogged us all down in the matchups of the tournament that were close. so we have that everyone was gunning for greyjoy, and in doing so the environment at black friday was very anti-greyjoy, and this explained part of the greyjoy players' difficulties.

however, this definitely isn't the full story; indeed, i'm certain the smattering of anti-greyjoy deck was a minor part, as there's something more fundamental going on here that manifests itself time and time again in LCG: relative player skill aside, the big reason the greyjoy decks that were played at black friday didn't enjoy the same sort of success as greg's world joust champion greyjoy deck is that they didn't focus on the things that matter most in the LCG environment in general; not all greyjoy builds are made equal, and the one greg invented at gencon turned out to be a very special breed. greg's deck focused synergistically on destroying the opponent's hand -- the winter agenda, alannys, stronger than average intrigue presence in greyjoy, confession, price of war (knocks out golden tooth mines) -- which many have come to call the strategy of "reverse card advantage." this synergy addressed the *most important* factor in the environment: card advantage, or, in this case, the lack thereof. given that a deck is full of good cards and is generally synergistic, its performance in this somewhat resource-limited environment is *hugely* dependent on how many cards it can draw efficiently beyond the usual two per turn. (i say efficiently because, for example, while golden tooth mines is an outstanding source of draw, qyburn's informers is not due to its cost.)

card advantage is a good part of lanni's perceived superiority, as everyone well knows: it has synergy in kneel, and fuels its kneel engine to the point of success because it can outdraw other decks. furthermore, perhaps even most imporantly, card advantage helps set a player up to dominate the board post-valar, and the board reset valar provides is a dominant factor in all games at present. (these things were exemplified in the mirror matchup semifinal i played against paul/redterror yesterday; he opened the game with golden tooth mines, i didn't, and he enjoyed resource advantage after the first valar of the round, which fueled his lanni kneel engine to the detriment my own even after i had reached 14 power.)

in another example, dan/twn2dn's 2nd place targ/shadows deck was fueled by what unexpectedly turned out to be a very strong card advantage engine: street waif, king's landing, and forever burning recursion. the introduction of king's landing to fuel a non-lanni shadows deck was enough to push our targ/shadows build over the top, though i don't think we understood just how good KL was until dan added a 3rd copy on the bus up to NYC and proceded to consistently reach the draw cap with it in my rounds of many of the games in which he played. (indeed, i had no clue that the deck would do as well as it did, in part because late in playtesting we saw it get wrecked by greyjoy a few more times than was healthy.) this provided dan with a cohesive sequence of burn effects every turn which, when combined with dragon pit and the city plots, allowed him to decimate an opponent's board and lock it down to characters all of which were left at strength 0 or 1. indeed, in our own long, grueling game in the swiss i came out on top in part because he had no way to get my golden tooth mines off the table, and got KL a little later than i did my own draw. many resets and kill effects were played that game, and without the consistency of golden tooth mines there's no way in hell i could have came out ahead under the onslaught of targ's efficient burn mechanisms.
further evidence is found in the lack of competitiveness in stark, bara, and straight targ, none of which have consistent sources of draw available to them. the elements of stark kill and bara rush exist in the environment, but neither deck works because they just run out of steam early without a way to replenish their hand and fuel their respective engines. same goes for straight targ, which is helped a lot by the waif and, to a lesser extent, recurring forever burning, but which ends up running out of steam in the same way as the other two less competitive houses. indeed, look at what the addition of kings landing as a consistent draw source did to targ burn, as described above.

with these examples in mind, it's easy to see why a successful greyjoy has to focus intensely and cohesively card advantage, and the greyjoy decks played yesterday didn't do so. hand screw counters draw, thus destroying the synergy of an opponent's deck, and choking them out in all the ways that matter. furthermore, the marauders and price of war can knock back the characters and locations the opponent does have in play (including golden tooth mines against lanni, or dragon pit or king's landing against a deck like dan's targ/shadows, or tunnels of the red keep in the lanni/shadows matchup, etc.), and it's much, much easier for them to do so when the opponent's hand is picked at every round by all the hand destruction mechanisms. furthermore, greyjoy's vast network of saves importantly allows it to whether valar that, of course, is one component of greyjoy every greyjoy player gets right; but if greyjoy isn't dominating the card advantage game, there's still room for an opponent to catch up, especially a lanni kneel engine or a targ burn engine, both of which aim to control the characters on the board. instead, a greg-type greyjoy gives no such leeway; in the games corey and i played against him with our lanni decks at worlds, and as the DC meta saw time and time again in testing for black friday with our own streamlined version of that deck against both our targ/shadows and lanni/kneel builds, its reverse card advantage mechanisms leave an opponent without the ability to do much of anything after valar strikes from either side of the table, thus easily allowing them to pull out the game with the multitude of claim 2 plots it plays.

in summary, if you want your LCG deck to be competitive, eat, sleep, and breathe card advantage; merely acknowledging it by way of including a draw effect or two in your deck, or making sure you have good strength in intrigue, isn't enough. and until bara, stark, and non-shadows targ get some consistent/efficient draw effects of their own, they won't be viable in large tournament play.

(i apologize ahead of time for any formatting problems or typos; in taking this blurb from the "has greyjoy passed lannister" thread, it appears i've lost some of the formatting, and for some reason typing on these forums seems to encourage typos and grammatical errors as no other written outlet does.)

*anti-greyjoy cards, not "deck"

*qyburn's informers is not due to its cost and weakness as a character that has no real saves to protect it

*in many rounds of many of the games

*neither deck works _consistenly_, because... (in reference to stark, bara, and straight targ)

I'll post a more in-depth tourney report in a separate thread soon, but just to chime in on a few notes...

• I agree 100% that Greyjoy remains competitive, and as Finite mentions, most of the DC decks teched against it to the point where they could beat a finely-tuned (updated) version of Greg's World Champion deck, though the game was expected to be a tough matchup.
• A winter Greyjoy build wins because it wears the opponent down in the long game OR decimates an opponent's board position with marauders (or sometimes both). Of these two, I have found that the first is much more common and potent, at least against me. The winter agenda and GJ saves are especially strong...a mid-game valar often ruins the opponent, and the agenda makes it nearly impossible to recover. Given the obvious strength of the marauders, it's easy for a GJ player to forget about the long-game, however, and therefore proceed water the deck down or play to win the short-game rather than focusing on the long game.
• Card advantage is the main reason why Lannister often wins. (This is just my opinion.) GJ winter has the potential to keep up by keeping Lanni (and other houses) hamstrung in this regard with the agenda and marauders. As a devoted Targ/Martell player, I had very few options to keep up with draw but found that King's Landing offered a possible solution, assuming I could ensure I always had more "King's Landing" traited cards. I won't go into detail here, but I will say that in most of my games (against Lanni and non-Lanni players) I outdrew my opponents.
• Lastly, although Lanni has a natural advantage against most houses because of its easy card advantage, the environment is much more rock-paper-scissors than it used to be. (We may have not really seen this at Black Friday, but test playing before the tournament suggested this, and I don't think Black Friday disproved it.) With the introduction of Martell, I think the environment will continue to become more balanced and Lanni much less dominant.

How does Dobbler's GJ build do against Targ Forever Summer?

I happen to agree wiht most of your thesis - though none of it is terribly new. Card advantage is always, always decisive - not matter whether you are playing control. aggro or even crazy combo deck.

To that end - Lannister is still on top. Its not just becuase of Golden Tooth Mines - its that they have so much supplemental draw to boost the effect and consistently hit draw + three better than any other House. GTM is amazing in that it is simple and reliabel - but its really the whole package that keeps htem where they are.

Greyjoy's strength is their ability to play aorund the kneel effect with support - and their ability to remove non-uniques with the Marauders combo. But a really solid Greyjoy deck must have a strong emphsisi on intrigue in order to offset Lannister's draw.

Unless there were more neutral draw in the environment, like many of us have been asking for over the past few months.

But you're absolutley right - the Martell expansion certainly should shake things up.

Martell will definitely cause some re-evaluation in regards to Lannister deck building. Characters that stand back up, a house that traditionally has a high amount of stealth, it's own form of character control, and ways of putting a lot of cards into their hand is going to make the Lannister Uber-Kneel not quite the sure lock it has appeared to be.

If Martell really can cause this build to be less reliable we may see some more variance in builds which may give other Houses a greater chance of competing against Lannister. Certainly no guarantee but it'll be interesting the way things sort themselves out after Princes is released.

My question is what will it take for Stark to have the kind of showing in the US that it has abroad?

finitesquarewell said:

i can give my point of view on bara here. what i've done with them is instead of focusing on draw (which isn't there as Eric states) as a way to help them survive the 'running out of steam' i've tried to make it very hard to get rid of my board. I run dupes of 7 charcaters so that i see them early and/or keep them around. I run 4 other saves and davos. I run 2 copies of Power of blood and when i ran 2 kings i ran stay of execution. I also run Raven's Song to extend a winter GJ deck (was at worlds too, just never got to play one) or to stop one turn of draw against a summer deck. Its essentially, can't draw so delay with what i have.

With vigiliant, Cancel eddard and renown i can usually win if the game is under 7 plots and its about 75-25 against if the game goes over 7. We have two versions of this similar deck, both reached indenpendantly and then some ideas bounced back and forth. My version is less aggro then alec's version and mine leans toward cancel heavy which is nice against lanni kneel, but not so nice when you play 0 lanni decks. what my deck struggles with is overly aggro decks, like Casey's and LGR's. As I do not want to valar early, but am forced into against those decks. The game against dan's targ shadows deck i made two mistakes (that i remember) that caused me to be stalled out at 11 power. One semi-mistake was the flop i had, but I just wanted to the most cards to be able to redraw into more, but i flopped 2 characters knowing they were in essence dead as soon as dan wanted to kill them. the first real mistake was not leaving Queen of Thorns in shadows as i never thought about dragon pit, and while having 2 cards in shadows wouldn't have stopped dragon pit per se, it would have forced dan to keep an extra card in shadows a little longer. the second mistake was not stealing shadowcat with my plot as I went for the INT icon to protect my hand instead of the mil icon with stealth, the next plot was 2 claim and it was there that i essentially lost the game.

Can't argue that draw would be a huge boost to any deck, especially bara. I'm just not sure if its the answer as by giving every house draw you are ramping the game up to CCG levels again (lanni draw works becuase of the consistiency it lets it draw into, not that it is just drawing cards, maybe if there weren't so many efficient kneel cards and cards that make them twice as bad, lack of draw in other houses isn't has bad....). I had 1 2 plot win @ BF going from 6-15 in one turn and a 3 plot win that was actually over by the 2nd plot it just took me one extra challenge to get to 15. Draw lets me do that consistientently, which may or may not be a bad thing.

dormouse said:

For people to take Stark seriously and play them.

1. They have "To Be A Wolf" one of the best search events in the game.

2. Plenty of permanent character control.

3. If "Winter" is as awesome for Greyjoy due to card disadvantage it gives opponents, then Stark also has winter support. And anti-shadows tech.

4. Cat and Ned say no to kneel. (and any other triggered effect.)

5. Other Cat says no to intrigue.

6. Oh... and they do have draw... as much as Greyjoy has access to anyhow.

Summing it up, what Stark can currently do is put a decent lock in on the board. Having an impenetrable wall, point and clicking opponent's characters can give them a lock on the game. I just think people do not take Stark seriously. The old joke was that if the Loyalist had been Stark nobody would have complained, and it's true. Stark has some incredibly broken tech out there... it just gets ignored.

bloodycelt said:

As my house of choice, I at least take them seriously, but I don't see things as rosy as that. Just my thoughts:

1. Agreed. It's one of reasons why as my Stark Treatied with GJ became more and more GJ that I continued to hold onto Stark. The uncancellable stand plus search is tremendous.

2. Eh, I've chilled on Icy Catapults (no charge for the pun). It's often too delayed for my taste and the limitation on effecting only characters without attachments means that often the target of choice is untouchable. I'd trade away the Catapults in a heartbeat to get a Lannister Pays his Debts, especially the reprint that doesn't limit how often it can be used. Core Set Robb is potent, but at 2 STR is susceptible to burning, but perhaps I should reconsider him. Did you have other cards in mind?

3. What is Stark's anti-Shadows tech? Or do you mean cards that like it when there are no cards in Shadows? I think that's the opposite of anti-Shadows tech, as it just gives another benefit to your opponent for running Shadows.

4. I've only tried the new Ned sparingly, but perhaps I should look at him more.

5. New Catelyn when working is potent, but having two conditions (card in Shadow and it's Winter) makes getting her set up far from a sure thing. It's a shame that a Stark player has to choose b/w new Catelyn and Core Set Catelyn.

6. I waffle on Foam Dancer, but right now I'm underwhelmed by it. B/w it and LIV, I'll take LIV almost any day.

I think Stark still lacks the draw to do well consistently against a variety of decks. Though it has decent search, in most cases you're still just getting one card for every two or so of Lannister's; even if your cards are better 1 for 1, 1 card typically isn't better than 2 Lannister cards. (In reality, the 1:2 ratio ends up being more like 1:3-4 because the Stark player is constantly losing intrigue challenges.) The longer the game goes on, the more likely the Lannister player wins.

If the games are short though, a Stark player can do really well, especially against Lannister. If you can manage to kill a few Lanni characters on the first turn, which isn't very difficult if you can pull off the Fury plot, Lannister can fall behind and find it difficult to recover. I suspect this is what happened in the French nationals games...there were enough Lannister decks that Stark players hit them a few times, improving their records overall. (This is only a guess though, and it's a generalization at that, so I could be way off in my thoughts on the French nationals outcomes.)

In general and all things being equal though, I think the houses that draw (Lanni and, to a lesser extent, Targ) and the house that restricts draw (namely, the winter Greyjoy build) are more competitive than the rest at the moment. Ironically, Bara seems to do well at times only because it is inherently strong against what are currently all-around more competitive houses, at least in my opinion. Bara's Fury plot wrecks Targ so that it's difficult to recover, and winter Greyjoy, which tends to be slow and take some time setting up, can have trouble keeping up with Bara if the latter gets a fast start. (Bara players also play a lot of duplicates of unique characters, which tends to make Greyjoy's resets less effective.) In contrast Bara tends to do horribly against Lanni, and this pretty much keeps it from being top-tier in my opinion. (I also think Bara will do pretty poorly once more people begin to play Martell.)

As others have stated, the introduction of Martell could really shake things up. I can see Martell doing really well against most houses, especially those like Bara that have trouble against heavy control. (Bouncing a renown character back to hand with Game of Cyvasse can essentially end the game for Bara rush. Similarly, some of the recently printed and spoiled Martell events will be very good against houses that are prone to run out of steam in the mid or late game.) On the other hand, Martell could be somewhat weak to Targ, which shouldn't have problems burning utility cards like Dornish Paramour, summer-based saves, etc. (To be fair, Venomous Blades can also burn all of Targ's utility cards, so it might just be a blood bath.)

It'll be interesting to see what happens, but I'm hoping a more rock-paper-scissors environment forms so that there's a bit more variety at the competitive level. By this I don't mean an environment where the match up automatically determines a win/loss, but rather one where houses have relatively easy or hard games that test the limits of deckbuilding and gameplay. For example, Bara tends to be a hard match up for Targ, and a Targ player has to think creatively about how to play against Bara without making any play mistakes (and even then may often lose). It would be nice if Lanni had a similar hard match up against Stark/Martell, while those houses had a hard match up against Targ/Greyjoy, etc. As it stands, Lanni's hard match ups are more like 50-50 games, whereas its easy match ups tend to be near auto-wins, at least in my experience.

And then there's the multiplayer format, which remains uber boring as far as I'm concerned. It definitely needs some variety and/or an alternate win condition to promote non-Bara rush builds, at least at the competitive level.