I have never built a character lite deck and am interested in building one. What pointers can anyone out there offer me? Thanks in advance for any assistance.

A character light deck generally consists of ~20 character cards. Once you get to 24-25 cards or more it becomes less and less light. One of the easier Houses to build a character light deck is Greyjoy.

Greyjoy is known for it's ability to save characters. Because of this, it's easier to build a character light deck as your characters will be killed less often than if you were playing with most other Houses. Instead of having 30 characters you may replace some of them with cards such as The Iron Mines and Risen from The Sea. Running 6 of these cards can bring you from a 30 character card deck to a 24 one right of the bat. Then you have a character like Maester Wendamyr which can save a Greyjoy character by kneeling himself. You can potentially save two characters (himself and another character) if you have enough influence. Running 2-3 copies of Wendamyr can bring you down a couple of more character cards. Of course there are other save cards like Bodyguard and running dupes of a couple unique characters tends to be a bit popular as well in character light decks.

The benefit of running a character light deck in Greyjoy is that saves don't cost any gold. The Iron Mines is 0 gold, Risen from the Sea is an event with no gold specification, dupes are free, Wendamyr's ability is without a gold cost, etc. What this allows you to do is being able to run higher cost characters (3 gold and up) with less resources. This allows you to run plots that provide lower gold, but better claim or have better plots effects. Additionally, saves keep your characters in play longer, making is alright to not keep marshalling new characters each round; thus allowing you to marshall other cards like attachments (i.e. Support of Harlaw) or locations (i.e. Scouting Vessel). They also give you a better board position after a card like Valar Morghulis is played as you'll probably be able to keep 2 or 3 characters around. However, just because you'll be saving characters doesn't mean your characters won't die! So you'll want to run characters like the refugees for claim soak and use your saves wisely.

Greyjoy is not the only House that can build a good character light deck. Character light decks can also be very successful if they have a lot of control. A perfect example of this the Twn2dn's Martell Shadows Agenda deck listed below. Twn2dn posted this deck after going 3-1 with it in the first US OCTGN tournament. I certainly hope he doesn't mind me using it here. I also hope he forgives me if I provide any false analysis of his deck.

Martell (Shadows Agenda): Character-light

Characters (22)
2 The Red Viper
2 Ellaria Sand
1 Ser Arys Oakheart
3 House Messenger
3 Orphan of the Greenblood
1 Syrio Forel
1 Varys
3 Carrion Bird
3 Flea Bottom Scavenger
3 Refugee of the Citadel

Locations (26)
3 Kingdom of Shadows
3 Dornish Fiefdoms
1 Lord Doran's Chambers
3 Summer Sea
3 Twilight Market
3 The Black Cells
3 King's Landing
2 Water Garden
3 Alchemist's Guild Hall
2 Vale Rookery

Events (6)
3 Red Vengeance
3 Rumors of War

Attachments (6)
3 Rusted Sword
3 Venomous Blade

Plots
City of Lies
Valar Morghulis
Wildfire Assault
Fury of the Sun
Blockade
Noose and Swordpoint
The Power of Arms

As you can see there are only 22 character cards in this deck with 2 unique characters having 1 dupe each. So there are 20 distinct characters in total. Taking a close look at this deck you can see how Twn2dn makes up for the fact that he's running less character cards than normal. The Alchemist Guild Halls kneel characters whenever a card comes out of the Shadows and the Black Cells prevent a character from kneeling or standing for the rest of a phase. Used in conjunction with each other they can make/keep characters knelt during the standing phase. The Venomous Blades allows him to kill printed 2 strength or lower characters for free, and provides Shadow recursion to trigger the effect of cards like the Black Cells or Alchemist Guild Hall. Syrio Forel also provides Shadows recursion. Red Vengeance makes his opponent suffer the claim effect of a challenge instead of him, and Rumors of War and Rusted Sword gives Twn2dn a surpise strength boost in any challenge; allowing him to win a challenge when his opponent might have thought otherwise. Ser Arys Oakheart and Varys provide Ally control, and the Orphan of Greenblood provides icon removal. Ellaria Sand steals a power from a character whenever Twn2dn loses. Her ability cripples opponents decks that have characters with renown. Since this deck is character light, it's also more likely that the opponent will control more characters in play at any given time. This allows for the Red Viper to use his ability by not kneeling to attack. May I remind you that the Red Viper has renown. Plots like Blockade slows down an opponent and can is especially useful when possessing reducers or having free to low cost characters, which Twn2dn has quite a few.

It should be evident that all the control Twn2dn's deck possesses makes it unnecessary to be running 30 character cards. His deck cripples his opponents characters leveling out the playing field. In fact, the deck can cripple his opponent so much, that he eventually wins.

I hope these two examples of character light decks are helpful in the construction of any future deck you may build. Good luck!

Very good stuff. We need more critiques and examples like this. With discussion and varying opinions, as needed. The more I play the more I want help with deck strategies and someone else to bounce ideas off of. The problem is if I do that locally with those I'm playing with I can "give away" where I may be headed and lose a potential edge in our next match.

How did he play "The Black Cells"? It says House Baratheon only.

Nevermind, Shadows Agenda. Didn't see that at first. Sorry.

so it costs 4 gold to bring the black cells out of shadows?

No, just 2.

Mathias Fricot said:

The Out of House gold penalty doesn't apply to cards coming out of Shadows. To quote ktom from another thread, just so he doesn't have to say it again:

"It is addressed in the definition of the OOH gold penalty. You only pay it when you play the card from another House. Cards brought out of Shadows are 'put into play.' Therefore, the assessment of an OOH gold penalty does not apply."

Very interesting indeed