I tend to build decks as 30 characters, 15 resource and 15 other. It seems that again the 15 other space is crowded again...

Required cards seem:

Distinct Mastery x3

To Be A Kraken x3

White Raven x3 (I gave up on summer... it seems winter IS the only competitve build for greyjoy).

Risen from the Sea (Or Iron Mines) x3

Longship McDraw x3

This of course makes for a bland and boring deck... now you don't have winter armada, milk of the poppy, scouting vessel (which seems to be needed) in the deck. This of course has given a raise to the question, how much is distinct mastery needed vs. scouting vessel. Or should one instead replace characters like euron, balon, asha, theon, and dagmer with intimidate characters, this would provide a passive un counterable ability to bypass most weaker characters.

As far as what is popular now I'm out of the loop.

Given the choices you offered there, I'd put the scouting vessels in and take out the distinct masteries. The vessels are reusuable and you can have it the whole game, while the events are one-shot uses each. I'd also dump one of those white ravens and add in the winter armada. That would give you a little more Greyjoy flavor I think.

Bland and boring! How dare you say that about the Krakens! Just teasing...sort of...

Summer is not for Greyjoy. When there's more mill out, Summer might help with the gold curve, but mill isn't viable yet. Also, one thing I don't like about Summer is that you're giving your opponent one extra gold. In Winter, you're taking away one gold. I've found that the best Greyjoy decks so far do run Winter, but I've seen successful both successful Winter light (not running cards like Winter Armada) and Winter heavy (running cards like Winter Armada) decks. So don't feel like you have to run every single Greyjoy Winter card for it to be a good deck.

Anyway, If your deck is very reliant on Winter keep the 3 White Ravens. If it doesn't need it to be Winter to win, only run 2 and just run the Raven's search plot. Even if you run 3, you may want to run A Time for Ravens anyway.

I personally, am not that crazy about running To Be a Kraken x3. I find that it gets in my hand too often when other cards would have been more useful. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic card....when the opportunity is there for it to work. That opportunity isn't there first round. It may even be useless second round if you decided to use another plot first round, such as A Time for Ravens, to make it Winter. You also can't use it to simply stand your GJ characters like To Be a Dragon. You can only stand a GJ character when canceling a triggered effect, and you can only cancel a triggered effect when you have knelt GJ characters. I find when running x3 I feel obligated to play Fury of the Kraken first round, and that's not always the best plot to play. I like x2 much better, but the call is obviously yours.

Support Harlaw is Greyjoy's Distinct Mastery. Run Support of Harlaw x3 and you should be alright. Run Euron x3 with this and you'll be even better.

I only like running two Scouting Vessels because I find between Stealth, Intimidate, and one Scouting Vessel many opponents don't declare defenders and just go unopposed. Two on the field is certainly good, but three tends to be overkill and no provide no more benefit than having two out. If you really want to be drawing them, run 3 but 2 has always worked fine for me.

Longship Iron Victory (LIV) x3 is not a bad thing. I like it as Greyjoy's little draw engine. The other two copies will sit in your hand doing nothing, but they provide for nice intrigue protection. They also make your opponent worried that you have events just sitting in your hand. That said, Ahead of the Tide and Bay of Ice is an intriguing combo now. I haven't tried yet, so can't really say if it's that effective. It may be worth running LIV x2 and Bay of Ice x1, but again I haven't tried it.

You can run actually run both Risen from The Sea and The Iron Mines x3; especially if you're running a character light deck. You're deck doesn't have to be a vanilla deck: 30 characters, 15 locations, and 15 other. If you decide to go vanilla you may have to sacrifice some other events or just run 3 of one or some combination of both totaling to 3 or 4. If Euron and neutral characters play a decent role in your deck, you may want to run The Iron Mines. However, Risen from the Sea does provide a strength boost, which works well with Intimidate characters like Victarion and KoTS Balon (he doesn't have Intimidate, but his ability is effectively just that). Risen from the Sea is also one of the very few saves, and maybe the only save right now that can actually save a character from Flame-Kissed. Which one you decide to run depends on your deck build. Maybe running two of each is a good idea?

For a while I've considered Victarion and Balon to be the only good Intimidate characters for GJ. The Kraken Tattoos can make any GJ player have Intimidate, but the strength boost it provides only last for the duration of the phase. It also requires you to mill cards. Not only is there no pre-challenges mill, but the characters that do mill during challenges stink in my opinion. With the latest CP, The Kraken Tattoos are looking much more interesting. The new GJ location (Naval Escort?) can provide your Intimidate characters with a rather nice boost. Kneel two locations and you can give two characters +2 strength. If one has Intimidate, that's pretty sweet.

I have to stop helping so much with deck strategies. I'm giving too many good ones away to potential future opponents. Haha.

Hope this helps.

FATMOUSE said:

Bah, misread Kraken Tattoo. Pre-challenges mill is still a problem.

Seasick might be slightly better then to be a kraken right now (son;t have to flip a military battle plot first turn), but to be a was so good for so long its hard to put it down.

I also think scouting vessel is better the ndisctincrt, maybe 2x of 1 and1x of the other.

I might go with 1 white raven, the search, and maybe core set selmy...

I prefer the mines of risen, unless targ is crushing you....

I'm not sure greyjoy winter needs milk.

You could also try going a little bigger like maybe a 70 card deck, 3x bay of Ice and 3x Win Initiative event. gives you more draw and about 4 more deck slots.

Trouble I find and why distinct was given is this:

Round 1 vs lanni -> all my guys are knelt.

Round 2 vs lanni -> all my guys are knelt, no cards in hand, lanni player has around 9... valar is no longer an option.

Rounds 3 - 5 I watch lanni win, while having nothing in play or hand.

The problem I've found with Greyjoy is that you often can only put out 1 - 2 characters a turn, this is due to winter. Support is good, but if all your dudes are knelt... then it aint going to help you.

This is based specifically on two encounters with lanni by different players, one was a newbie at gencon, he completely hosed me. And the other was finitesquarewell who also hosed me.

Round 1. Your first Plot is Fear to Winter (I don´t know exactly the name in english)

You play one card, don´t challenge in Intrige and let him do it. If he don´t, play Nute to have less cards than him.

Round 2. Rule by decree. Now you have the board controlled (you killed 2 characters on T1 and he has only 4 cards in his hand). Now just wait his valar and win.

Lars said:

Seasick suffers from the exact opposite problem of To Be a Kraken. It's good very early in the game, but become worse as the game progresses. Once your opponent gets an influence out, it becomes just about useless unless that the triggered effect you are canceling used that influence as a cost. While most Houses don't use tons of influence like Targ and Martell, most Houses do have at least one influence standing around. It's for this reason that I don't recommend running Seasick. Against a couple of Houses (i.e. Bara) it's not bad because they will usually discard their seas right away and only being running one copy of the 1 gold, 1 influence providing unique locations (i.e. King Robert's Chambers), but against most Houses it just sits in your hand for the whole game. Either that, or you need two or even three copies in your hand to actually cancel a annoying triggered effect such as Lanni kneel.

As for running Distinct Mastery, it's a personal choice. I like to run Assault of the Kraken x3 in some of my Greyjoy decks. You could replace that with Distinct Mastery x3. Lanni uber-kneel will always be a problem for Greyjoy, as it is for most Houses. It boils down to a bit of luck, hoping you get a good setup and your Lanni opponent doesn't. Running Distinct Mastery x3 will help, but it won't solve the issue. If you think you're going into a heavy Lanni environment you could run To be a Kraken x3, Distinct Mastery x3, and Cannot be Bought, Cannot be Bribed x3. Whether or not that's practical when facing other non-kneeling Houses is another story.