Kennon said:

I can recall one other. WED-Viserys OOH in a Baratheon weenie deck, designed to put out, and kill, low cost characters (including Viserys). Once you have 15 non-Doomed characters in the various dead piles (usually less, given accumulated power getting to that point), play Plea to R'hllor and get 1 power on Viserys per character returned to play. Win with him in moribund.

Of course, Viserys eventually got errata to stop this deck, but it went to at least 4th in at least one Regional before that happened....

Changing gears with the discussion, but... why do we errata combos out of existence? Or why do so few pop up to begin with? It's rather odd that of all the cards games around, AGOT is the only one I know of that only really has control and rush as viable decktypes.

Kennon said:

Yeah, I know. But a rush deck usually wants to go first. So by forcing the control player to go first, you give them the disadvantage, but usually lose your advantage as well. And a control deck can still unload a lot of nastiness going first too. At the very least they will make the rush deck have very few guys to actually attack with. And what kind of success are we talking about? And was it due to using multiple dupes and/or bodyguard or other saves? Because I know that you can make a decent rush deck utilizing saves and dupes, but it waters the rush down. You can just play a pure rush deck. Although there isn't much tech out there for a pure rush deck, so it has that going against it, but still. Control is the way to go if you want to win in this environment. Having a plot cancel would only help balance things out. Its not like control decks will suddenly be unplayable.

Kennon said:

~That's because you didn't spell out your points with nice numbers.

Staton said:

Staton, I agree, this is a good discussion and very relevant to our resurging California meta.

I'd say that stating low gold and low initiative is easily countered is easier said than done. Sure Lannister has the easiest time with that but playing City plots in say Targ which needs gold and influence requires a lot trickier deck building and is much tougher to play and a lot of trial and error needed. But again the issue becomes more that Lannister (possibly Martell as well) just has the most versatile card pool and can adapt to any good plot easier than other houses. I see the solution lying more in giving the other Houses (Stark included) some more tools (like in house card draw) to even the odds with Lannister.

Another thing I wanted to mention that I've been forgetting is that I agree that Outmanuever is better model than Outfox but I would much prefer a different form of plot control/cancel.

Say for example a character like this:

Archmaester Marwyn (neutral)

3(or 4) Gold

2 Str with Int, Pow icons

Plot Phase: Discard Archmaester Marwyn to cancel the printed effect of any single player's plot card.

or maybe

Plot Phase: Kneel Archmaester Marwyn to cancel printed effect of any single player's plot card and force them to reveal a new plot card.

I prefer something like this. I am not sure why "When Revealed" plot effects are being targeted solely for plot cancel. The Fury plot effects definitely vary in being okay to being very strong. A Targ player might want to be able to cancel that Bara player's Fury passive plot effect (along with 5-7-1) and I see that being every bit as valid as a rush player wanted to be able to cancel Valar.

I say try a new form of plot cancel that is not biased against When Revealed plots. Personally I like the character cancel above that is capable of working against passive plot effects that are just as good as any city plot.

2.I'm not saying that Valar dominates the environment. I just think that right now its WAY easier to build a control deck than say a rush deck or a combo deck because of Valar. and I think that Control decks should ALWAYS be the trickiest to build. What I'm seeing here is that most people want to play control decks. They don't like rush decks. But I think that they should be just as viable. Sure you can use bara and use nobles and saves and whatnot. but I think that really waters down the rush. Its not as strong as it could be. Again giving the edge to the control decks. When I say I want more decks types viable, I mean something other than control. Right now control is dominating. I don't even remember the last time I saw a good rush deck. If I'm wrong though, please show me a good rush deck! I've been looking for a good build and haven't figured it out.

Unlike the 'kiddie' ccgs like yugioh or naruto, most of the good players in Thrones like more elegant control decks. I think every house has viable control deck potential with different focuses. I honestly don't see many experienced wanting to play rush decks. That is one aspect that drew me to Thrones as a game to begin with was that there seemed to be many good control build.

Next,I do think there are very competitive fast builds though if not a classic "weenie rush".

For fast decks, I would say Syd's Martell deck is great example. It's not a "rush" deck per se but it can certainly play fast as it locked down the top two Lanni builds in our meta (one City of Shadows and one pure Lanni).

3.I agree, it would make deck construction easier. but the more important part is that it would make deck construction POSSIBLE for some deck types. I mean who wants to run a rush deck right now? I mean run one and hope to win? Or even a combo deck. I haven't seen a combo deck since I started playing again. Maybe I'm missing them? and right now I think that there is alot more focus on deck construction than playing skill. If I build a bara rush deck and play against a lannister city plots deck, then no amount of skill on my part is going to make me win that game.

While deathjester might agree this is just not true from my playtesting. When I playtested against my 12 yr old son for a week straight several games a day, we had tweaked his Bara power rush to be able to win two games in a row against my Lanni Shadows control. Sure I did help him min/max his play and we tweaked his deck knowing all my cards but there were a few key cards we used to beat me that I just haven't seen the few Bara decks in our meta ever try to play with.

I just don't think most experienced players are trying to make rush decks and win, maybe I'm wrong since I personally like having multiple "control" deck archetypes, so my main issue is every House having viable and competitive builds which I think the current environment is evolving into but needs a few more mechanics for some houses not just reprints.

It would be nice if people didn't even think about classic ccg deck archetypes. Syd's deck , while it can win in 3 Plots, is not a "rush" deck. I think FFG should focus on mechanics so people think more a Targ "Fast Burn deck" or a Martell "Claim and Icon manipulation" deck than in terms of Rush or Control. The current mechanics lend themselves the potential to have both fast or slower/control results depending on the specific game. Lanni already is kneeling mastery and Greyjoy seems like unopposed mechanics. I think the goal should be for every House to have their own style of mechanics that can potentially win fast or slow. For instance a "Hand Control Intrique deck" might win in 3 Plots or it might win in 15 plots. It would be nice for Thrones to break the old, tired "CCG stereotypes of rush, control and mill". Instead focus on House mechanics that reflect different concepts and themes.

ktom said:

Why do I find it mildly coincidental that both of those decks were actually _taken_ to regionals events by the same guy. >:] Talk about cojones.

And what's the Bard combo that your referencing Kennon? The only one I knew was that ghastly combo that Zack came up with using 2x Bards, 2x Chosen by R'hllor, 2x Your Life for His, 2x Robert's Squire, WED Robert Baratheon, Gormond Goodbrother. At least I think that's ~all it took.

There were a couple of infinite mill combos if I remember... notably the 2x Envoy of Highgarden, Green Dreams, War Profiteer and Beggar King.

Maester_LUke said:

The one I remember was Gossiping Bard, Tavern Braggart and Horn of Dragons. Give an opponent's character the dragon trait (stand the Tavern Braggart & claim a power), kneel the Braggart to activate Horn of Dragons, at the end of the phase when the character lost the dragon trait, stand the Braggart and claim a power. Put Kingslayer on the Bard to do this every phase.

This wasn't the reason the "no Responses at the end of a phase" rule was created, but it effectively killed the combo.

@Kennon:

As I'm not 100% sure if Stark really got the least love in King's Landing, I'll try and elaborate why I think that this is. You can correct me when you notice an error in my thinking.

To start off, let's have a look at the in-house shadows cards they got: Arya and Master Malleon's Tome. Now Arya is pretty good, at least in a winter deck, but so are both Cat and the CS version. Master Malleon's Tome on the other hand is complicated, costly and requires quite a lot of building around. Interesting, but I'm guessing will not be included in many decks. But compare these two shadow cards to shadow cards that other houses got (such as Venomous Blade, Tyrion, Kingswood Trail, The Queen of Thorns, King's Landing Assassin...) that are almost automatic staples, and you can see that at least in the in-house shadow department Stark didn't get too much love. Possibly not the worst, as the GJ shadow cards are all quite gimmicky as well, but definately in the bottom two.

Now the neutral shadows cards provide some very good cards, but then these are available to all. There are a few (Varys, Ser Mandon Moore) that seem to be almost made for Stark, but then each house has some that are favorable to run. So I'd think the neutral cards end up being quite neutral (heh), and can't be used as an excuse of Stark really getting any love. King's Landing (the draw location) itself gives me some worries regarding Stark, but more of that later...

I'm guessing your main argument of Stark being a good deck to run shadows from arises from the following Shadow-dependent cards: Hidden Chambers, Tower of The Hand, Storm Dancer? Of these cards I'd say Storm Dancer is the most solid as it also works without winter/shadows, and comboes well with the Kingsguard Agenda. The other two locations both have the problem of requiring winter to function at all, and are thus quite easy to disrupt by opponents. They DO make running a City of Shadows Agenda a viable option, but in order to do that you have to also run winter, but without one of winter's greatest strengths - the Kings of Winter Agenda. Compared to Lannister just running the Agenda with it's naturally high gold income, this is much more fragile, and you have to invest both into these cards and into keeping it winter. Additionally, the fact that these two are the only King's Landing locations Stark got, it's a bit hard to run King's Landing in a Stark deck without running winter as well. Making Stark again really dependent on the season. And I wouldn't say that Stark is any better at running the City of Shadows Agenda than say Baratheon (lots of things that trigger off cards coming from Shadows) or Targaryen (Getting quite good mileage out of having cards in shadows), it just gets different benefits.

Here what bugs me the most is that, considering the Starks weak in-house shadow cards, the argument of King's Landing providing Stark with a chance of running a cool new shadows deck boils down to: "But hey, by jumping through a few hoops you can run all the cool shadow cards that the other Houses got!". Which to me just feels somehow very wrong...

So, there's how I see it. =)

Hey folks,

In regards to the topic, I don't like Valar in most my decks. I prefer "Wildfire Assault" in most cases, but I do like the Valar in my Greyjoy and in some Lord/Lady decks with Bodyguard. As others have said, I just don't like how Valar sometimes bites me in the butt. I also don't like the 0 initiative and 0 claim (though that can be worked around in some decks, most ably by Greyjoy due to their saves and unopposed action).

Now, along these lines (reset plots), I'd love to see Winter Storm (from "A House of Thorns") return. That is another of my favorite resets to go along with Wildfire Assault.

There's my two coppers. Thanks for the topic.

ASoIaFfan