martell + knigths of the hollow hill

plots:
fury of the sun
take them by surprise
the red wedding
the power of blood
to the spears!
retaliation!
the prince that was promised

characters (30):
the red viper POTS 3x
vendor of venoms 3x
berric dondarrion 2x
lady stonehart 2x
ser ary oakheart
darkstar POTS
arianne POTS
ellaria sand
the bastard of godsgrace
maester of lemonwood
house messenger 3x
orphan of the greenblood 3x
lost spearman 3x
refugee of the citadel 2x
flea bottom scavenger 3x

attachments (8):
venomous blade 3x
poisoned knife 2x
bodyguard 2x
rusted sword

locations (11):
alchemist´s shop 2x
palace fountains 3x
sunset sea 3x
dornish fiefdoms 3x

events (11):
red vengeance 3x
burning on the sand 2x
make an example 2x
westeros bleeds 2x
condemnded by the council 2x

i played this deck at our wintertourney today. it did quite okay, fiinshing 3rd.

when bulding the deck i had a lot of bad setups (too many attachments and events, characters like house messanger and flea bottom scavenger). so i decided to go with the hollow hill agenda (being able to add even more of all that stuff ;-)

at the beginning of the game (2-3 plots) i tried to control the board (martell events), avoiding any power on my house card (vendor, lady stoneheart). in the mid game the rush starts: 5 renown chars in the deck + power stealing ellaria and claim raising arianne. with the plots to the spears & the prince that was promised (+ make an example) power is gained very quickly. finish with the red wedding.

very effective combo: venomous blade/poisoned knife + alchemists shop (best played with a surprising rusted sword)

Out of curiosity, what is your normal order of plots, and how did they do? Did you find yourself at a big disadvantage at the beginning of the game with no setup characters?

usually i started with Fury and/or Take them by Surprise. gold is important.

and yes, the first turn(s) is crucial. slowly start to set up some characters and locations. red vengeance and buring in the sand helped a lot here (in one game i had 3x red vengeance in my starting hand). avoiding any power on my house card is important, cause so i dont have to care too much about power challenges in the beginning.

in the tourney i had to face 3x Fear of Winter as first plot. that was quite bad. still i won 2 of them (and the third was very close). in one game i anticipated Fear and i had the viper in my hand so i play The Power of BLood as first plot. that was cool ;-)

when i felt ready to start the rush (viper + some more renown characters), i played The Prince and To the Spears.

Would "Feast or Famine" be a better choice in the first round?

definately yes!!

i was thinking of that card when going to the tourney, but it was too late then (didnt have it in my bag).

Not a bad deck, and sounds like fun to play. Conceptually though, it seems like you'd have trouble with the transition from early control to mid/late rush. You don't have a ton of gold-providing locations, so your early control doesn't seem geared toward giving you time to set up a strong resource base to play game-winning characters en masse. Similarly, it doesn't look like you have a ton of draw, so aren't guaranteed to have card advantage. Westeros Bleeds probably helps in giving you some card advantage, especially if you can keep a couple Vendors on the table, but this will be pretty ineffective the opponent has a lot of saves or is able to cancel the event.

I think you could really use a lot more draw. House messengers and scavengers are really not enough, especially if the game goes long. I suggest adding Viper's Bannermen...they're expensive, but EXTREMELY good at establishing card advantage (especially late game). I would also run at least 1x Val (I prefer 2x in this type of deck and her effect is easy to use with the agenda, since you have gold), and also 2-3 other draw effects. Though some probably disagree, I think Dornish Paramours, Skirmishers, and Parting Blows can all fill in as pseudo-draw in the sense that they help cycle through your deck a bit. Paramours actually are draw in the sense that they net you a card, but they're also contingent on winning challenges, so I sometimes choose skirmishers or parting blows (or both) instead of paramours. The point is just that you'll get MUCH more out of that Westeros Bleeds, and early control effects in general, if you can keep your hand size significantly larger than your opponent's..

In terms of other cards, if you can find space, try out the 3-gold, 1-STR characters with deadly that kneel to jump into a challenge. They are sort of expensive, and probably won't be any good if you play against a lot of Targ or Martell. But they are extremely good with Poison Knife, since they effectively double the effect it has. I also think 1or 2 Lost Oasis would be good. Since it looks like you're winning initiative, you might as well add a bit of stealth and keep your opponent from initiating challenges (especially power challenges) when you start rushing. (Lost Oasis are also great with those 3-gold, 1-STR characters...forgetting what those characters are called at the moment.)

sry, double posting ...

Twn2dn said:

not a signle one, since you are not allowed to play ;-) but of course you knwo that and meant something else.
but i rarely had gold issues. first thanks to the high gold plots. but also because i keep my characters thanks to red vengeance/burning. i even added 2 bodyguards and some dupes. finally i have characters that i can let go easily such as flea bottom scavenger.

Twn2dn said:

i start to play "game winning" cahracters as soon as i can. they are needed to defend, not giving away any unopposed challenges. thats why i love those vendor of venoms so much: infamy AND vengeful.

Twn2dn said:

yea, this is a weak point. i owuld love to have more card draw. still i dont like viper´s bannermen - too expensive for my taste.
i dont think val is a good option. too many events that are not playable with her.
the deck doesnt focus too much on westeros bleeds. maybe it woule be more effective if it does, but then i had to change a few things (more influence, more dupes) and the chractersitics of the deck would be that of a control deck, and no longer rush.

Twn2dn said:

true, but i wouldnt want to remove any of the cards in the deck at the moment. and there is no way to play with more than 60 ;-)
one of the last cards that didnt make the cut was tom sevenstrings. being able to cancel events is awesome. and the 2 games i lost was both times thanks to a surprising event by the opponent (at night they howl standing all direwolves and enabling grey wind to finally kill my VERY stron viper. to be a wolf: standing a character who was able to defend and win a challenge against the viper, thus stealing him with dubious loyalties played earlier on him). man how i wished i hadnt sorted out tom sevenstrings, but i saw no way to squeeze him in (or any hands judgement).

Twn2dn said:

same answer: no space. though i dont think lost oasis is needed in addition to alchemist´s shop. and though i like this 3 gold assassin, this character is too shaky at a high cost.

Twn2dn said:

Silent Assassin

FATMOUSE said:

when i looked at the silent assassin first i also thought: wow, cool card.

but then, paying 3 gold for an ally (!) character and facing targ (burn), mart (venomous blade) or stark (greywind!), i decided its not worth it.

also, bara rush doesnt care much about him, its only about winning their own challenges. and all lannister has to do is kneel. nobody plays greyjoy nowadays (sadly!).

i am not sayin gits a bad card, but at first glance it looks better than it is.

I've had success playing this card with Lost Oasis in a deck that wins initiative most of the time. The idea is to stealth and kneel the opponent's characters with your primary character, then stand that character and jump in the Silent Assassin, so that you can stealth/kneel 2 characters with one guy. The same idea with Poison Knife. It's a neat trick that can lock down an opponent's board pretty easily if you're the first player. The effect is much less potent though if you are second player.

I played my version with the location that gives guys +2 STR and deadly if you have a weapon attached. If the opponent burns your characters, the +2 STR and attachment help a lot to buff guys...though Targ is still a poor match up because of their attachment discard.

I play him in my Martell Brotherhood deck. Berric goes solo into a challange with a War scorpion equipped. if they don't defend or defend with just 1 many times I'll jump Silent Assassin in to kill the character and lose the challenge to trigger effects. Then Berric is standing heading toward another challenge.

in a deck with lost oasis the assassin makes more sense probably. but winning ini was not one of my goals. many times i prefered to go second.

the location you are looking for is alchemists shop. its in my deck. and together with 6 weapons its very effective. thats why i felt i dont need lost oasis (couldnt find a spot in the deck).

i played Lost Spearman as a sort of influence control. i need cheap characters. if the opponent wants to avoid this, fine: kneel your influence locations. also there is Condemned by the Realm.

Darksbane said:

I always liked the Beric + War Scorpion combo, but I just can't make room for it in my deck. As more and more Brotherhood characters come out I find my deck shifting from a "Martell Brotherhood" deck to a Brotherhood deck that just happens to feature VB, Taste for Blood, and some nasty Martell events and Martell draw cards... any chance you'd be willing to share your deck? I'll be happy to post mine if you are interested.