I forgot to comment on Kennon's question as to whether others have tried "Flea Bottom Scavengers". I didn't use to run them because I thought their draw was too limited, but upon feedback from various folks, I went ahead and put 3x in my Martell deck and gave them a run. My conclusion? I was not impressed, sadly. I eventually pulled them out again. Too often I would have one in hand with 2 or 3 power on my house card and at that point they were just inefficient 2 gold, 1 strength monocons. I did manage to play them on round one on occasion when I had no power on the house card and the three cards is nice in that situation, but I would prefer something more sustainable.

I still like and run the "House Messenger". I don't use the "Dornish Paramour" because I don't like the fact I have to win a challenge with them and then discard them to net me +1 card. I'm also using "Parting Blow", which will give me one card and has a nice side effect of letting me kneel an opponent when one of my characters leaves play.

I find I wish I had some better, more sustainable draw in Martell. What are others using to achieve this? The King's Landing route? Or the Sam and the ravens mechanic? Or are folks just going with Summer and running Gilly? Maybe some combo of the above?

Look forward to any feedback. Thanks!

Dobbler said:

and yet people still play it OOH. yet lanni still has other forms of draw that it can afford to wait for GTM to pay off. Compare the perfects opening hands/flops. Lets give lanni 1 GTM on the flop and FBS in the opening hand (perfect situations for each right?). now lann is going to get out drawn but it has options via plots. 1. blockade 2. fear of winter. 3. turn 2 valar. now it has bought time for gtm to 'kick in' has the gold/draw to not care about wasting first turn or killing its own characters turn two and FBS shot its wad and GTM is sitting there drawing away. yes martell can be fast, but it can be slowed down very easily too and GTM just chugs away.

In your anaylsis you fail to mention the strength of a second GTM verse a second FBS. FBS is one of those graphs that starts off high for the 1st one played, but then plummets after that. GTM actually goes up the second one you play and then evens out for the third (back-up?) copy.

I haven't played Targ in a while, however I wonder who can build the best card advantage deck? Targ or Lanni?

I also think GTM should be banned. The LCG environment should not have any free unconditional draw. Also if we ramp up location control the only houses to benefit are Stark... and Lanni. Why do you think its not second nature for me to put in attachment hate or location control, or expensive locations (beyond cost 0)? I learned to play from a Stark player and a Lannister Player. When you have a lot of location control it means that it comes down to who has the best cheap characters, and the most effiicent events. You think a player who can play 3-4 characters for 3 gold is going to care that you fleed? OMG I now have... 2 gold, guess I can't play hodor.

bloodycelt said:

You want to ban Gold Tooth Mines after Pyromancer's Cache is already banned? I'd rather GTM be made Neutral than banned but that sounds too extreme a solution. You are on the East Coast yes bloodycelt? Wait until after your regionals at least before you call for any more cards to be banned. Lannister just had Compelled banned and I don't think other Metas have really seen the effect of the Lannister nerfs. Lannister lacking attachment control is becoming huge. This is not the Core Set days where there were no good attachments. The reality is every good deck has many attachments to use from Baratheon's any-Noble dupe to Bodyguard, to Devious Intentions to Taste for Blood to removing all the condition attachments on your own characters there are a LOT of powerful, game changing attachments in the environment at the moment. Lacking attachment control already knocks Lannister down a peg. Other Houses having access to mechanics for playable cards in hand advantage has lessened the impact of Lannister's draw. Heck against Chaos's Western Regional Champion Baratheon deck, games are over 2 plots. Bara Power rush is back. A slow Lannister Shadows control that wins in 10 plots simply no longer has time to get the most out of GTM as they did in early LCG. Wait and see how GenCon develops but I am willing to bet it is not a Lannister deck that wins GenCon.

Also, I do not see how only Stark and Lanni benefit from location control ?!?

Every deck benefits from location control if you have more of it than your opponent but first hand Greyjoy, Bara and Targ all benefit as much as Lannister from location control.

Can you build a working deck out of Targ, Greyjoy or Bara that:

1. Does not use influence.

2. You can put on average 3 - 4 characters a turn if able based soley on plot gold.

That also wins?

Both Stark and Lannister can and have done so, but location screw a targ deck or a greyjoy deck and they are out of luck. And if I recall bara needs to be able to put out 6 -8 gold a turn for the expensive renown characters.

Imagine turn 1: Frozen Solid followed by Price of War followed by Support of the Kingdom? That's four locations. And in the process you may have already lost 2 characters and 2 cards in hand.

I'd rather ask to ban troublesome locations than increase the location control quota, because also remember... how many cards in your deck do you want to dedicate to location control, attachment control, character control? Don't forget you have to win and also what about event control?

bloodycelt said:

You're on crack if you think Baratheon can't do this. Seat of Power x3 Narrow Sea x3, Sally's Crew x3. Looks like they got the resources covered, and where do they need influence? Vigilant Stag? That card's crap anyway. And against a stark deck, Bara will probably be able to win a power or mil challenge. Not both but at least one. Sure I'll have to overextend, but I'm sure I'll come out on top after an early Valar anyway. This (and most of the other reasons I'm reading in this thread about why things don't work) is just more of the East Coast knowing exactly what does and doesn't work and knows the exact decklist of every player because its soooooooo obvious what are the best 60 cards for a house.

Nobody is saying Lannister's cards are not better than the rest, just simply saying that other houses are filling the gap in power slowly...

Dobbler said:

Perhaps getting away from the point of this thread, but I wanted to say I feel the same way as Dobbler. I'd like to achieve Lanni-level draw when building other houses and might envy my Lanni opponent in a game where he's gets his draw going, but what I feel makes Lanni strong (and why I think more about toolboxing against them than any one other house at the moment) is their kneel effects (often easily repeatable), their nasty "surprise" kill effects (...Pays his Debts, which I think is the best targeted kill effect in the game until the Stark expansion hits, and ...Writ Small), and the cohesiveness of their Shadows builds that mesh well with the potent City plots. Rule by Decree is a very good leveler when it comes to draw advantage (can't be canceled -suck on that Old Bear!- and 4,4,1 is pretty solid stats, so not sacrificing stats to get the effect). Even in games where the Lanni player doesn't get a lot of drawing going, if they get a few of the right control cards or Shadow cards early, it's an extremely tough battle against them.

bloodycelt said:

bloodycelt said:

I do not understand what these questions are supposed to illustrate.

'Can you build a working deck out of Targ that does not use influence?'

Huh? That question just sounds weird. Why would anyone want to make a Targ deck without influence when Targ cards are designed to use influence?

Targ's mechanics to the best of my knowledge have always used influence. Along with Martell depending on influence is simply one of Targ's House quirks or however you want to phrase it. Blood Magic used influence. The few Ambush cards for Targ that were made used influence. Its simply a Targ mechanic.

Staton said:

Where did that come from? Obviously various metas play the game somewhat differently, but in a thread where we were just concerned about the tone used towards Kennon, this seems really out of place.

~And personally, I never voted for Bloodycelt or Lars to represent the East Coast. I would say Dan or Erick have earned that right recently.

Yeah that was probably a bit out of line. I guess you can just replace the east coast in my post and replace it with Lars.

NPE stands for non player experience. This type deck makes players, especially new players not want to play the game anymore. Lannister shadows creates this type of game environment, I've never liked decks like this and I never will. Shadows is even worse because you CAN'T do anything to cards that are in shadows, they are invisible and untouchable. So the other player just sits there helpless.

Actually, it's N egative P lay E xperience.

This is an interesting conversation. While I'm still fairly new to the game and have been mostly lurking the boards up until now, I've been thinking about Lannister's draw advantage.

First off, I think the title of the thread "Lannister's Perceived Draw Dominance" leads one to suspect that the OP's point will be that Lannister does not, in fact, have draw dominance. I think that colored people's interpretation of his message - that the gap is closing, even though it still exists.

Second, as someone who's been playing Martell lately, their draw is really not up to par with Lannister's from what I've seen. Sure, there are several decent Martell draw cards, but none of them are on par with GT mines (for reasons already discussed in previous replies). On top of that, several of the better ones (Flea Bottom Scavenger, Dornish Paramour and Palace Messenger) are not likely to be found in the same deck. They're all 2 cost characters with intrigue icons and thus fill exactly the same roles in a deck (OK, DP has a POW icon, but that's probably not enough to differentiate it). I'd never include all 3 and would be very wary of including 2 of them.

In fact, 6 of Martell's 7 draw cards are characters, 4 of those are single shot (and two of THOSE may not even get triggered when played), one has potentially 2 uses and one is conditional based on having the right events.In contrast, GT Mines, Tommen and Insidious Ways are a location, character and event. It's very simple to put all three in the same deck, and they have more consistency and control that Martell's. Don't get me wrong - Martell's draw is decent, certainly better than most of the other houses. But better than Lannister's? No, not in a real world deck.

Finally, I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that Lannister's strength in intrigue only increases the impact of their draw advantage. GJ, Stark and Bara are all going to be suffering a major card disparity with Lannister drawing well while simultaneously stripping cards from their hand. GJ's limited discard abilities, and possibly now Bara's, help a bit, but it's still a far cry from being able to win INT challenges consistently. Add in the ability to rake in gold and Lanni has a real edge in this area.

I'm not saying that Lanni is overpowered, by the way. Just that the card advantage they have is very real and ought not be disregarded. Is the gap closing? It definitely seems to be, but it is most definitely also still there.

JeffK said:

Strange, I play all three in the same deck. Along with the Skirmishers and Parting Blow. I almost never have trouble finding a way to draw cards because I have so many different sources.

I concur. I run all three (but not the skirmisher). I consistenly pull off Flea Bottom Scavenger on the first turn, and don't have any draw/draw reveal problems. Lannister has great draw, but frankly right now so does Martell. And a properly built Martell deck can go toe to toe with Lannister on most days (vengeance really negates all their great kneel effects).

Also, Kennon also points out that we're seeing more draw effects for the other houses, and less for Lannister. So as the game evolves, the other houses are getting some draw while Lanni is losing out. And every house can run GTM if they want to, though it is expensive (but aren't people saying in other threads that the point of playing cards OOh is so that a house benefit is more expensive in your house).

Lastly, as I am working on a Greyjoy raid deck at present, I absolutely LOVE Fishmonger's Square. In a deck designed to a) discard 3-6 cards each turn and b) win games, FmS is proving to be well worth it. And it is an in-house draw effect that is based around an in-house theme. Lannister doesn't have to work as hard to get draw as other houses do, but I don't have a problem with that if the trend that appears to be developing in the LCG keeps going this way.

Dobbler said:

I did read his post and I don't see what in my post would lead anybody to believe I am jumping on some bandwagon. We were discussing card advantage and so I discussed

More on the topic, I do agree about the delay in the reward you get from GTM. That's why if you are able to get rid of this card fast, you can really hurt lanni. Location control has been on my radar as an important aspect for a while. It's probably why almost any semi-competitive deck I made always contained 2 or 3 Pyro Apprentices.

Kennon said:

Your right sorry about that. The point is, Lannister shadows creates it. This is the reason I've never liked the shadows crest since it first came out, I really doubt i'll ever like it.

JeffK said:

Also, it's important to note that people are willing to play the various Martell characters despite the fact that they fill the same role and/or gold slot. None of these characters are power characters, and their presence on the board typically doesn' t a huge impact on the game. In other words, I don't think people are itching to play tons of 2-gold, monocon characters in their Martell decks; rather, people are forced to overload that slot in their decklists precisely because there aren't viable alternatives.

On a more general note, I've played Martell games where my draw came off much better than my Lanni opponent. This isn't the norm though, and keep in mind that even if I do draw a lot, I can't necessarily marshall all of it. Not only does Lanni have more gold for marshalling, but its sustainable draw means that Lanni doesn't have to keep playing crappy characters (which take up gold) just to fuel the draw engine.

On a more general note, I've played Martell games where my draw came off much better than my Lanni opponent. This isn't the norm though, and keep in mind that even if I do draw a lot, I can't necessarily marshall all of it. Not only does Lanni have more gold for marshalling, but its sustainable draw means that Lanni doesn't have to keep playing crappy characters (which take up gold) just to fuel the draw engine.

This is why I've been looking for a more sustainable draw for Martell that doesn't involve those characters. The Dornish Paramour has to leave the board for me to net one card, which is essentially like paying two gold for one card. You don't even get the added benefit of using it as a claim soaker in its case. I've found FBS too limiting (basically only works round one and is a waste of space in my hand after that). I do like and use the House Messenger. I get a card and the Messenger sticks around for claim soak. Like you mentioned above, even if I pull off the FBS in round one and draw into some useful cards, I still need the gold to marshal them, which I don't exactly have in abundance. Afterall, even if using all these characters, one still has to win the game. To do that, good cards are needed to be in play and to stay in play. If I'm constantly spending two gold for characters I will lose to try to generate draw, I don't gain any board position. And that two gold I have to toss away limits what other cards I could play.

I have to admit I'm a bit surprised to hear that people are running FBS, Dornish Paramour AND House Messenger in the same deck, not to mention the Skirmishers. That seems like an awful lot of characters whose only benefit (other than being characters with icons, of course) is drawing cards. I can see it would lead to a lot of card drawing, but card drawing is not an end in and of itself. Devote too much of your deck to draw and it becomes self-defeating. I'm curious, how many copies of each are you running?

Regardless, I actually think this supports my point to a degree. In order to get Martell's draw power to approach Lannister's you MUST use characters, and a fair amount of them. That definitely restricts your deck building options if you want the draw. It's not a deck archetype that, at this point in time, I'm willing to buy into. Others apparently feel differently. The specifics of how to build a Martell deck with good draw are likely best addressed in the deck construction forum, however.

Lannister, in contrast, has 4 characters, 2 locations, 1 attachment and 1 event. This is an extremely flexible choice of cards that doesn't put many restrictions on you. You can mix and match as you like to fit your needs. It's hard to imagine a Lanni deck in which GTM, Tommen and Insidious Ways wouldn't fit in.

Late to the party here, so i'll be succinct.

Great post Jeffk - very well reasoned and presented. please contribute more often.

Sorry kennon, dobbs and JJ - not buying the premise. Just because the other Houses have gotten nods towards in House draw - that doesn't make them playable or effeicient and most are not worht including in serious decks. The Bara attachment sucks, all the Stark stuff sucks, Targ's DRAW sucks - but tehir recursion rocks. still no where near as efficient or reliable as Lanni draw though. LIV is great - but frozen solid will own it - unlike the non unique GTM. Still - at the moment its really solid. Not sodl on Fishmonger's Square out of a dedciated mill deck - which (like finite), i don't really see the point of, rigth now. Martell - I already knew they were just about equal. i noted all those reveal cards spilling out in the CPs and knew Martell would jump to near the top as soon as their box came out.

Laughing Tree - not buying that the so called nerfs really set Lannister aback just yet. They still represented well in DC and in every other regional so far but Kubla. Also - what bloodycelt is saying is that location control outright owns a couple of Houses - much more so than it does others. He's arguing that Stark and Lannister beneift MORE thna other Houses from location control - cause it doesn't hit them as hard. And for the most part - he is correct. I hadn't actually thought about banning GTM - I'd much rather see Castellan get banned - but tis not a terrible thought. I kind of liek your idea of making ti neutral a bit more though.

All in all - i don't think its a "perception" that lannister still has a card advantage lead on four of the other Hosues. It does - and sub par draw effects are nto narrowing the gap.

Stag Lord said:

Stag Lord, IMO Lannister with GTM is not dominating with gold + draw the way they did for instance in 5KE when Castamere+ other cards were available.

The difference is that gold + draw is not translated as easily into Power the way it was when combos like Castamere + Alayne Stone were available (which was a Lanni or Stark combo primarily).

I disagree completely that location control owns entire Houses more than others. It owns certain builds more than others: builds that depend more on locations for effects. But that really implies nothing about Houses as every House can build competitive decks that depend more or less on locations. Many Lanni builds are most certainly dependent on key locations staying in game (Tunnels, Toll Gate) and removing those locations hurts a Lanni build every single bit as much as removing locations can hurt a Targ or Martell or other location dependent build. In fact, other than Lost Oasis Martell doesn't really any specific locations (other than some resource). I don't see how Lanni benefits from location control more than Martell.

LaughingTree said:

Exactly, so in a location control heavy environment (like Winter)... on average your influence providing locations will be discarded by your opponent. So again if your opponent is able to reliably destroy any influence providing location you have, can you win?

Stag: I've noticed that once Targ's recursion engine is running they can keep summer on reliably, also they can recurse the black raven attachments to feed samwell. I think they are the only house besides lannister that can get 3 cards a turn reliably. However they need more moving parts than Lannister to achieve it.

Yes - I agree. They can keep it summer via Lady Dany's and most Houses (other than Greyjoy) can do little about it. Still - the OP was primarily about evolving new draw tech closing the gap - and this has been out for a year and a half.

More to the point: if your opponent does manage to make it Winter - and they nuke Dany's - losing that card per turn absolutely kills you. You have to seriously think about that drawback before you bring a Summer build to a tournament -s ee orclrob's excellent post in the DC Regionals thread for an example.