Since the final round is yet to come, final SoS is not complete, but this deck lost 2-1 against Zsa's Lannister Shadows deck in the semi-finals. Really a very basic deck with nothing noteworthy, as you'll see.

The first tournament, I used a version of this with way more card draw, which was nice for consistent draw, but it just lacked enough control. At least two of the three games I lost that tournament I would have won with one more control card, basically any of Martell's control at that. So I took out the Sam/Ravens engine (which is a lot of cards that do nothing for my deck except draw, since I'm not running any seasonal effects) clearing up 6 spots immediately. Two of those, I replaced with Viper's Bannermen, which were good in games that went long, but not as good if you draw them early. The rest went to more control cards, which helped the deck a lot. I typically don't like to go above 62, and most of my decks are 61, but Martell's got decent enough draw to do ok with it. I'd have liked to shave this one down a bit, but when I couldn't figure out what to cut before the tournament, I just gave up and ran with it.

I was painfully aware of the lack of location control, but the locations that scared me the most, Alchemist's Guild Hall and Black Cells, are unaffected by the best location control Martell can run - Condemned by the Council (still probably needs to be in there for other things like GTM, Lannisport Brothel, etc.). So He Calls it Thinking was in there to stop a turn or two of the Viper getting shut down, since you can win with a good turn or two from him and possibly a Lost Oasis. Fleeing helps here against a Shadows deck, but the real key is hitting your draw often and early to keep pace somewhat with them. The card advantage is pretty good against most of the field, but Lannister can still overrun Martell most of the time in the card advantage department, and Targ looks to be able to do the same with the Crone+Waif tandem now. It doesn't help that the Dornish Paramour is basically a dead card against those two houses, either.

The Paramour can be replaced by Palace Spy, I think, as getting your Red Keep should mean all your influence worries are over in this deck. I'm sure other changes can make it more efficient, and particular card choices argued, but overall I was quite pleased. It lost to two Lannister Shadows decks (which are coincidentally in the finals) but won every other game.

House Martell/No Agenda (63 cards)

Plots

Fleeing to the Wall
Valar Morghulis
City of Sin
City of Secrets
City of Spiders
City of Soldiers
Fury of the Sun

Characters (32)
Arianne Martell x1
Darkstar x3
Ser Arys Oakheart x2
House Messenger x3
The Red Viper x3
Carrion Bird x3
Flea Bottom Scavenger x3
Orphan of the Greenblood x3
Dornish Paramour x3
Ellaria Sand x1
The Viper's Bannermen x2
Paramour x3
The Bastard of Godsgrace x1
Varys x1

Locations (15)

Palace Fountains x3
Summer Sea x3
Lost Oasis x3
Lord Doran's Chambers x1
Dornish Fiefdoms x3
Shadowblack Lane x1
The Red Keep x1

Events (11)

A Game of Cyvasse 2
Red Vengeance 3
He Calls it Thinking 3
The Prince's Wrath 3

Attachments (5)

Venomous Blade 3
Taste For Blood 2

I've been meaning to post, but I keep getting sidetracked by the other threads...

Very nice looking deck, Longclaw. A few questions:

How did Game of Cyvasse play out for you? I was worried about playing it, but in the end I really missed not having that card against some houses. Did you ever find that you were holding it because your opponent had stronger intrigue guys?

Just wondering how 3x of certain uniques played out for you. Those characters definitely seem like good candidates if you're running 3x of a unique, but that still makes me worried. (I guess Red Viper is hard to kill outside of Valar though, so maybe it's not as big a risk.)

How did the Viper's Bannerman play out for you? That guy is huge, but then, it seems like the gold cost could be hard if you're playing the city plots. (Just wondering...I may have to find a way to squeeze at least 1x in some of my decks!)

I'm going to qualify these answers by saying I think a lot of variation of specific card choices can be had right now in Martell without a lot of upward or downward movement in the deck's consistency or power level, simply because so many of your choices are very similar power level (unlike Lannister which thus practically builds itself, in some ways) and only vary in the specific, or that is to say, specific in-game circumstances where one choice might have served you better than another.

Game of Cyvasse: I can only remember one instance (in 9 total games) where I held this card without sufficient STR to use it. I can recall holding this card a few times, not because I didn't have the opportunity to play it, but that I wanted to maximize its effect at a later date. Meaning my other control was adequate at the time, so it wasn't needed. I like that it's a surprise effect that can be used mid-challenge, unlike most (or all?) of Martell's other control, which makes it very powerful. Even with a relative equality or slight disadvantage in INT STR, I've found that windows will open as characters get knelt for challenges, allowing you to play it for good effect often in such cases. The volatility of its usefulness probably balances the card nicely, although it can make one long for the days of Locked in the Tower. I do wish Martell's control events were a tad stronger at this point, simply because their control characters and locations are not as good as Lannister's in comparison, which can make it difficult when you add to that Lannister's better draw and gold. Martell's better events can close that gap somewhat given a steady draw.

Three Vipers and Darkstars are risky, but viable, for sure, to add consistency in getting out your two best characters and possibly protecting them with dupes. In fact, I don't want to wait until my opponent Valars to play these guys, and drawing two of them allows me to go ahead without fear. Similarly, I don't want to take away my option to Valar just because I have one of them out with several power on him, and having one of them duped allows me to Valar more readily. Of course, if they do die, they are a dead card later, which is the worst cost imo (slightly moreso than the lost card slots which could have been used for something else). In addition, I normally don't want to play The Viper first turn, simply because Martell needs to be building some infrastructure up and establishing more of a board presence in the early game, so I don't need to worry as much about losing a lone Viper in my hand to an early INT challenge if I know another one is likely to come up. I would say they were a positive way more often than a negative for me.

Viper's Bannermen are really interesting. In a long, slow, control game, they are fantastic. Honestly, I never would have beaten Zsa's Lannister Shadows in game 1 without drawing 8 cards with these guys. However, before that matchup, they didn't get played all that much. Probably because my game lengths were much more "normal" and against several Stark and Greyjoy decks. Without a decent draw of locations (likely including a Sea or two) they can be difficult to play in a non-Fury turn, so they are a bit restrictive. Since the meta is filled with super control-Lannister builds right now, I don't think they are a bad choice.

With all that said, I can certainly see changing up every one of these choices for what may prove to be slightly better options all around. As I was saying before, Martell seems to me to be way more subtle than most of the other houses right now in how decks are made in that their options are nowhere near as obvious as others (I feel similarly about Greyjoy, although not to the same extent. But then again, I'm much more comfortable building for and playing Martell, so I'm not certain it is the case for Greyjoy).

Been meaning to post into this thread for several days, but keep getting sidetracked... I have to say I really like this deck - it matches my opinion on the strengths of playing Martell in the current format, but has several choices I wouldn't have thought about. Very interesting!

I get the same feeling with Martell being really solid and uniform in power level all-round. Not too many obvious choices (maybe Lost Oasis and Venomous Blade) but more actual choices on the actual style of play. Pretty much how LCG should be. Personally I've also found Cyvasse to fit pretty well into my play style, especially since it also doubles as a sort of pseudo-version of attachment control. And similarly to longclaw, I've found that it rarely gets stuck in hand because of too little intrigue - kneeling in challenges always seems to fix this. =)

GJ might be a bit in the same direction as Martell, but the build is a bit more optimizable and there's a wider range in power levels between individual cards. That said, I've been testing various very different GJ builds (wildling unopposed, war crest heavy, winter, etc...) lately with a friend and they have slightly different modus operandi, but seem to be pretty equal in overall level, with different strengths and weaknesses.

The other houses are pretty different from these two: Lannister pretty much seems to build itself, with the largest choices being the amount of shadow-tech. Sort of sad that you can't play any really variant Lannister decks without them being just inferior. Baratheon on the other hand seems to be a weird collection of really strong cards and really average ones, with the strong cards refusing to co-operate nicely. Maybe as many strong cards as Lannister, but they just don't have the same synergy. Stark requires quite a lot of jumping through hoops to get really working, and even then you're getting it done with pretty mediocre cards and few really individually powerful ones (maybe Robb and Eddard) - this ought to get fixed by the expansion however. I still haven't had much success in building a good Targaryen deck that doesn't cause me a huge headache to play because of the amount of moving parts... even though on paper it's my favourite house. Maybe Twn2dn could give me some good pointers? =)

A few little questions on the deck:

- did you get mileage from the one copy of Red Keep? Seems a bit costly for the influence in this deck...

- any problems with not having enough influence for events?

- any valuable experience with running the city plots? I tend to find City of Spiders a bit hard to fit into my decks, the small amount of gold is a bit too harsh for me....

Game of Cyvasse - In January this was probably my favorite event from Martell (along with He calls it thinking). In my (small) experience, the event is very good vs houses like Baratheon, Stark, Greyjoy (returning to hand a wintertime marauder that just knelt to attack with a support of harlaw attached is priceless ).

Against lannister though, I did not find the event as useful:

- First of all, Lanni kneels your characters and you might not have enough characters to both kneel AND attack in a challenge - difficult choice ahead .

- Lanni has a lot of intrigue icons as well, and while it is true that you will get windows where you can use the event effectively, you might not be able to use it at a specific moment you want to.

- Lanni does not offer as many succulent choices as other houses for return to hand effects - they do have cards that would actually benefit from a return to hand (enemy informer, qyburn) and quite a few that don't put you in the best of positions (I don't think returning a castellan to hand is a very beneficial move for example, unless you get to terminate his challenge along with the return to hand effect).

- Returning Robert to hand with 6 power on him is cool and useful. Returning Tyrion to hand might help more than hinder Lanni since you're helping his shadow engine.

Great thoughts (and answers) Longclaw. I especially like your perspectives on The Viper's Bannerman...I can see how 1x (possibly 2x) would be a decent choice in the current environment.

@Drakey: Yeah, Targ has been kinda tricky to get right. It used to be extremely clunky feeling, even when things played out well. Each card sort of fills a niche. I'd say the one thing you have to decide up front is where your draw engine is. If it's shadow, that will shape the rest of your deck. Shadow is nice because it's generally very reliable draw (3-5 cards a turn is easy) and has good synergy with Targ burn. On the other hand, if you play against another shadow deck, you'll probably lose the "King's Landing" trait contest and be stuck drawing 2 all game, since Targ has relatively few King's Landing locations that you (a) realistically want to play and (b) can fit into the deck. Another downside to shadow is that it's expensive, and non-gold locations take up many slots in the deck, so you end up playing low-cost characters that are smaller and generally less threatening to the opponent. This means that to win a game, you have to really dominate the opponent's characters. That takes several rounds to establish at a minimum, so this is a late-game win, and playing the deck can get really tiring after remember to trigger so many effects each round...forever burning, street waif, King's Landing draw, and any others you have on the table. Actually, with Fear of Winter now in the environment, I'm even more uncertain about shadow Targ.

If you go with summer, you have some great search to pull your attachments (Red Warlocks), but I've found it's difficult to build burn with summer, unless it's attachment based. Given the number of threatening characters that have "no attachments," it's not a good idea to rely exclusively on attachments though, and there's really not enough of these to get working. In fact, Fallowed Followers are probably the only real reason to play Targ summer (other than the draw agenda), and they're more of an aggro card anyway; if you build aggro rather than burn, summer seems like a good choice. Given the dominance of control in the current environment though, aggro (especially without a lot of renown) can be a bit risky.

Until recently, these were (in my opinion) the only two reliable draw engines in Targ, and their weaknesses are probably the main reason why Targ isn't quite on par with Lanni. Since Maegi Crone was printed, however, I think things have turned around a bit. I don't want to overstate the significance of a 3-gold, 1-STR character, but the crone really does seem to even out the draw so that you can get the cards you need in your discard pile to make the recursion (Dany's chambers and/or Street Waif) really work as draw replacement, which is what they're supposed to be. In terms of where the Crone fits in, I think an aggro deck makes the most sense, since the shadows/control deck is already light on characters, and adding 1 STR characters seems like a bad idea, especially relatively expensive (3 gold is expensive for Targ) 1 STR characters. In aggro, you should have enough decent characters so that Crones don't really have to worry about combat and can basically just sit around drawing cards. (This, of course, means building some burn into the deck, so I'd still play 3x Flame Kissed and 3x Forever Burning with these guys.) As far as whether the aggro deck still needs to play seasons, I'm not 100% sure. Seasons seems like it would smooth out the draw quite a bit, but it also slows the deck down in the early game. (3 Black Ravnes, 3x Samwell, and 2-3x Red Warlock is quite an investment.) I've been experimenting with a new kind of aggro-control hybrid that basically comes out fast like aggro but uses Crones mid- and late-game to get the needed draw to keep the momentum up. I'm happy with it so far, but I'm not sure yet whether it (or returning to a seasons-based deck) is the "optimal" build.

Thanks for the indepth analysis on Targaryen deck building, this is extremely valuable! =)

Twn2dn said:

I've been working hard to try and build a really working shadow-burn -type deck and this pretty much mirrors my experience there. You either have to put in non-crucial King's Landings to keep your draw solid, or be faced with no draw in some matchups. The characters end up costing a huge amount for very little actual strength and our local GJ/Stark player runs very aggressive builds with Fear of Winter, which usually end up running all over this kind of deck.

...and this is the one that possibly gives the worst headaches, as it's very easy to make critical game errors (just by forgetting something etc.) in rounds 1-2 and end up losing the game because of that.

Twn2dn said:

Aggro-Targaryen is actually the only decktype I've gotten any really working builds out of... Mainly by running a Summer War -type build (3x Randyl Tarly, 3x Daemon Blackfyre, 3x Fairweather Followers, 2x The Power of Arms, 3x The Price of War and also the new Khal Drogo). The build has some solid renown (Khal and Daemon), can produce an awful amount of STR on the table around turn 2-3 and even has good location removal. Also it's pretty easy to fit in Burning Pitch-Tower in this build... The problem of course is running into either winter -builds or overextending and getting hit by Valar. Although, with proper builds and playstyles it shouldn't be impossible to maintain summer dominance. Also an odd problem starts to arise with To Be a Dragon, which should be a very good card for an aggro deck. I often end up in situations where I have to start with A Time for Ravens and go power of arms turn 2... and the first turn I could play To be a dragon is turn 4.

The Stark expansion should give good cards to help optimize the war build a bit more also...

Additionally I'm not convinced with summer being enough draw, it needs at least some draw replacement or supplemental draw to really function. But I think it's still much better than the shadows version, as it doesn't totally dictate your price curve and deck composition.

Twn2dn said:

Yeah, the crone is really much stronger than I initially gave it credit for. And I think I need to retry it in more aggressive builds, as I've only been trying it in shadow builds, where it is simply another card that costs too much. And I have to agree that the best choice for Targ is found in some kind of more aggressive build, and not in a total control type (just too clunky right now). Running an aggressive build without summer might help with getting To Be a Dragon working and give much more room in the deck for other effects (like you said, summer takes quite a large part of the deck by itself). The only problem I see here is fitting location control into the deck, as summer gives you good solid war crests to build your location removal on. And with crones I'm constantly slightly afraid of running into a Martell build (or Lanni shadows) running Venomous blade and wiping away my draw weenies.

I think I'll need to try building some non-Summer part-aggressive builds and see what kind of mileage I get out of them. Very interesting input, thank you!

(and to not foget totally the original topic: I really also need to stop fearing the price on the Martell bannermen, and try them out in a build...)

WWDrakey said:

Great discussion, guys - not much to add with the Targ stuff. Dan's got the expertise in that dept. anyway.

1)The Red Keep was a last-minute addition. The reasoning behind it went something like this - Red Vengeance would never be in doubt, no matter if my influence infrastructure was there or not. In addition, I could safely run Fleeing without worrying about paying for RV. Not many other influence effects in the deck, so I thought I could rely on this one location if I drew it, or if my opponents were running Building Season. So yeah, only six cards that worked off of it, but then, Red Vengeance is so important that I felt it warranted a lot of attention.

2)I don't think I ever had much trouble paying for the events. Ten cards that provided 1 influence meant The Prince's Wrath was almost never in doubt. Maybe once or twice because a Paramour got knelt in early rounds of a game that I hadn't drawn Red Keep, I had to hold a Red Vengeance. However, it did mean that I usually had to think very carefully about whether or not to burn an early Summer Sea, but I think those kinds of choices are pretty normal in a Martell deck, dating back to the CCG days. I actually feel I could rely less on other influence cards with this deck with just Palace Spies and The Red Keep, but maybe Dan might weigh in on this possiblity. Not sure if it would be reliable or cost-effective enough or not to start taking out the Paramours, for instance.

3)City Plots are really really good. The gold sucks, but if they had more gold, there would never be a reason to leave them out of your plot deck, practically (or at least for control decks). Playing against a Winter deck can be annoying, true, along with always having to deal with a slowly developing board on your side of the table, so I think it all balances in the end. City of Spiders usually doesn't get played until plots 5-7, so by that time, you should have enough locations on the table to compensate for the 1 gold. Theoretically. Obviously, Fear of Winter hampers City of Lies and Shadows heavy decks, which this isn't. However, Fear of Winter also hurts the City Plots in general, of course, in that it slows down your development even more while giving them a 2 claim turn. But I can't help but feel that this may be a positive thing since the City Plots are so strong right now. Maybe this will also help curb Lannister Shadows decks a bit.

4)Game of Cyvasse - Zsa is right on the money with regard to its usefulness against Lannister, and it's one reason why I only ran 2 copies of it. However, it does offer some possibilities of creative play vs. Lannister that would not go astray, such as putting your own characters back in your hand. I can think of a few come into play (or even leaving play) abilities my characters have that I might want to replicate in the right circumstances. It was one of my favorite things about Locked in the Tower (the play I consider my most inspired ever in this game was returning an Ilyn Payne to my hand after it had been knelt by Will in the quarter-finals of Worlds 2008 and playing him again so he would be standing - it was a miracle I even thought of that one), and while Game is much narrower, the concept is the same. But because of its general lack of usefulness against Lannister, I would agree that it's probably near the top of the list of borderline cards for the deck.

longclaw said:

Since I was running Westeros Bleeds in my deck, I ran a lot of influence...more than I needed for the other events. The Spies helped search for the one copy of the Red Keep I played, and although they were good at that, I found them otherwise pretty unexciting/inefficient (and expensive in turns that I had to play both the spy and the red keep). In general though, I agree that ~10 influence is good in a Martell deck that runs Red Vengeance. An extra one or two would make decisions like the one Longclaw mentions (about discarding summer seas) a bit easier, but so long as the gold curve is relatively low (pretty easy to do in Martell), I haven't had problems drawing into sufficient influence.