Played Greyjoy very successfully in the CCG, looking to start the LCG. The options for GJ are limited, but here's what I've come up with:

House: (1) Greyjoy

Agenda: (1) Kings of Winter

Plots: (7)

Summoning Season

Building Season

The Winds of Winter

A Time for Ravens

Rule by Decree

Marched to the Wall

Valar Morghulis

Characters: (22)

3X Island Refugees

3X Carrion Birds

3X Wintertime Marauders

3X Bloodthirsty Crew

1X Samwell Tarley

1X Fishwhiskers

1X Maester Wendamyr

1X Wex Pyke

1X Alannys Greyjoy

1X Theon Greyjoy - A Change of Seasons

1X Asha Greyjoy

1X Dagmer Cleftjaw

1X Balon Greyjoy - Kings of the Sea

1X Euron Crow's Eye - Kings of the Sea

Locations: (24)

2X Refurbished Hulk

3X Iron Island Fiefdoms

2X Bloody Keep

3X Sunset Sea

1X Street of Steel

1X Street of Sisters

3X Iron Mines

3X Naval Escort

1X Aeron's Chambers

1X Longship Iron Victory

1X Longship Foamdrinker

2X Scouting Vessel

1X Den of the Wolf

Attachments: (8)

3X Support of Harlaw

2X White Raven

2X War Horn

1X Driftwood Crown

Events: (6)

3X Assault of the Kraken

3X Risen from the Sea

It plays simply like old-school GJ control: use cheap, efficient characters to win challenges early, use a combination of Warship pump, Attachments, and a few characters to make your opponent overextend to counter, deny resources, and use plot deck to control board/hand and for search. I'm happy with most of the current selection of cards, although I miss Promo King's Landing with a passion as well as the older, more efficient GJ location control.

I'm open to suggestions, but keep these things in mind: I won't run multiple copies of a Unique location/character, it's a waste when you're running search and saving, and I like having a ton of locations, especially warship pumps... other than that, go nuts.

How does the deck deal with Lanni kneel and Martell control (i.e. Venomous Blade)? I'd imagine the Agenda and RBD would help against both as they (will likely) outdraw you,. Can you recover from Fleeing to the Wall?

Unless Lanni Kneel has become much more stout than it was before, I'll probably just beat it like I did before: pop their characters with Valar and Military and prioritize their draw and kneel locations for destruction.

Venomous Blade is stout, but I also believe it can be played around. If it becomes too much of a problem, I will find room for 3X Scurvy Cutthroat.

I hate Fleeing to the Wall. I hated it back in the CCG days, and I'm sure I'll hate it in the future. That being said, while it was annoying, it wasn't game breaking. I pick my three best locations, get rid of the rest, and keep on trucking.

I appreciate you pointing out these weaknesses. I'll be sure to playtest against these particular decks and, if I find I have trouble with them, make changes. I'm thinking that cutting a few locations for Scurvy Cutthroat would: a.) give me more cheap characters making it harder for Lanni to kneel them all, b.) give me some defense against Venomous Blade and other attachments, and c.) make the deck a little less reliant on locations and less susceptible to Fleeing to the Wall.

My biggest wish is that Greyjoy had more War Crest characters that weren't ridiculously costed so I could reliably play Die by the Sword and The Price of War... I feel that would mitigate a lot of the deck's weakness.

redthirst said:

I"m not sure how it is compared to how it was but a Lannister deck with a healthy amount of kneel won the Joust championship at Gencon this year. I seem to recall Lannister might have won the year before too, but I'm not sure.

Any chance you could provide a decklist?

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_nrep.asp

Decklists for the Top 8 of this year's Gencon joust are here .

Kneel can be very potent in Lannister, mainly because of the City plots from the King's Landing cycle. Since the deck is character-lite, it will be easier for Lannister to kneel out most (or even all) of your characters. Not having any dupes will help, but 22 characters isn't much. You also only have one 2-claim plot and really no other character removal effects other than Marauders (which are very good, but not so much knelt). The War Horns are nice, but expensive for a deck where you really don't have much gold (not that you can't afford them, just saying). All of your decks tricks mainly rely on characters being able to participate in challenges, and some even winning in those challenges. It's going to be difficult to do that when the characters you need most, are likely going to be knelt. Having no stand and cancel will make it more difficult as well. Support of Harlaw is stand, but basically a lot of GJ's stronger effects at the moment rely on winning, many unopposed. So when you're winning with this deck, you're going to find it does very well. When you're losing, you will find many of your cards to be useless (i.e. Assault of the Kraken) and not very helpful in turning the tide.

Scurvy Cutthroat can't discard Venomous Blade because bringing a card out of Shadows is not the same as playing an attachment card. Even if it did work, there would be an issue of VB targeting Scurvy. Unless you save him, he wouldn't be able to use his ability since a card can't leave play twice (he was killed by VB first). Anyway, you're only real control of VB seems to be Marauders. One issue with that is you're going to have to be sure you're first player when you win them; otherwise, VB can go back in the Shadows before you can trigger Marauders effect. Another issue is that Summer is somewhat popular in Martell, which means you'll have to battle over Seasons. I brought up VB because over 50% of your characters are at 2 STR or less, which is a lot considering how few you have in the first place.

Cool, thanks.

I looked over the lists. I like the Lanni Kneel, but it doesn't have as much kneeling as the old version... of course, GJ doesn't have as many ways to deal with it either, so it may still be a problem. It also looks like the most popular decks are Martell and/or Wildlings, so what's the normal way to deal with them? Lastly, a GJ Kings of Winter deck T8ed, so that's pretty awesome.

Yes, it's true I only run the one 2 claim plot, but I also run March and Valar which are pretty good at board control. I was thinking Scurvy Cutthroat could be used when Venomous Blade was initially played in the shadows, but I completely forgot that it'd be played face down and I'd have no clue if it was a Venomous Blade or not. Do you have suggestions for how to deal with the Lanni Kneel?

How about this:

House: (1) Greyjoy

Agenda: (1) Kings of Winter

Plots: (7)

Summoning Season

Building Season

The Winds of Winter

A Time for Ravens

Fury of the Kraken

Marched to the Wall

Valar Morghulis

Characters: (22)

3X Island Refugees

3X Carrion Birds

3X Wintertime Marauders

3X Bloodthirsty Crew

1X Samwell Tarley

1X Fishwhiskers

1X Maester Wendamyr

1X Wex Pyke

1X Alannys Greyjoy

1X Theon Greyjoy - A Change of Seasons

1X Asha Greyjoy

1X Dagmer Cleftjaw

1X Balon Greyjoy - Kings of the Sea

1X Euron Crow's Eye - Kings of the Sea

Locations: (22)

2X Refurbished Hulk

3X Iron Island Fiefdoms

2X Bloody Keep

3X Sunset Sea

1X Street of Steel

1X Street of Sisters

3X Iron Mines

2X Naval Escort

1X Aeron's Chambers

1X Longship Iron Victory

1X Longship Foamdrinker

2X Scouting Vessel

Attachments: (8)

3X Support of Harlaw

2X White Raven

3X Fishing Net

Events: (8)

3X Risen from the Sea

3X Distinct Mastery

2X To Be a Kraken

This version adds 3X Fishing Nets for more Character control as well as 5X Standing events for some defense against Lanni Kneel. Thoughts?

My other idea was to trade the Kings of Winter agenda for City of Shadows, and swap out Fishing Nets for Venomous Blades. I hate adding out-of-house cards to the deck and the City's drawback as well as losing the KoW's disruption (especially since I had to replace RbD to run To Be a Kraken), but the blade is good enough that it might be worth it. Any opinions on that?

redthirst said:

Well, Old Tywin was the man (or not, depending on what side of the board you were on), but Lannister can still pull off kneeling 3-4 characters a turn without too much difficulty.

With the recent banning of Blood of the First Men, Wildlings probably won't be as popular as they were. They certainly won't be as efficient due to a higher cost curve, which was even lower at GenCon since you could run all 6 The North Agendas. I wouldn't worry about them anymore, but I'll say that only a handful of decks, mostly very innovative, were able to compete against them and still remain competitive against non-Wildling decks. That should (hopefully) change now.

Martell on the other hand is still very popular. The best way to deal with them is being familiar with their tricks and trying to avoid them. Be aware of powerful events like Burning on the Sand and trickier ones like A Game of Cyvasse . A nicely timed To Be a Kraken could be used to cancel either. Running less printed 2 STR characters and more printed 3 STR or higher, will also damper Martell's ability to have board control.

Best thing to counter Lanni is to have a combination of more stand, cancel, and characters. Hand control is also pretty big since they can get a pretty strong draw engine going. The addition of TBK and Distinct will be useful, but you don't have that many crested characters (I counted 7), so I'm not sure how consistent you'll find it. I'd consider going 3x TBK and 2x Distinct. The only thing I don't like about TBK is that it's really good when it works, and really bad when it doesn't. One part of the caveat being you have a Military Battle (i.e. Fury of the Kraken) plot in your used pile to use it. It's still a strong card though. Fishing Net can be good to lock up characters, just note that it's a pricey attachment and doesn't do much to prevent your opponent from controlling you.

It's not worth swapping the agenda to run VB. I very much understand the appeal, but it's going to be a very expensive investment since you have no way of reducing the cost to put it in Shadows (2 gold) or take it out (1 gold penalty). You also don't have enough Shadow cards to offset the agenda's drawback. GJ in general is Shadows-lite since they don't really have cost-efficient/powerful enough in-House Shadows cards . Furthermore, it doesn't do much in terms of preventing the assertion of control over your characters.

Sad... I think I'm going to have to simply shelve the GJ deck idea until they get a little more support. They just aren't the same, anymore. Support of Harlaw is amazing and I love Warship pump, but there's very few incredibly efficient cost-to-power military dudes, hardly any cheap war crests to allow PoW or DBtS, and no playable location control.

I appreciate everyone's help, but I think if I'm going to go Military/Winter, I'm probably better off doing Stark for now. Thanks again.

redthirst said:

No problem. The truth is -- GJ isn't as good as it used to be, and is probably, and is in my opinion, the weakest House. It's definitely the least played. Not that you can't have good matches with GJ ( Pulled Under and Fishing Net can own decks like a Red Viper build), but specific (and popular) archetypes will give GJ a very difficult time. Other Houses have too much control for GJ to counter (we didn't even talk about Targ burn) and you probably can build equal or better aggro builds in other Houses. GJ is desperately lacking the efficient cancel/denial it used to have. It also relies on too many weenies and still lacks draw (although Bay of Ice works pretty decently in it). Until we see the return of GJ resilience, GJ will continue to lag behind other Houses competitively, and I'm guessing you like your decks to actually be good in most match-ups rather than just having a casual build.

There's a recent thread on GJ Holy decks somewhere, but Bara Holy decks are better because the Asshai related tech is better than what GJ can offer.

Unfortunately, I don't see GJ getting better any time soon. The Raiders are unimpressive and GJ has never been big on Maesters, but maybe there will be enough neutral Maester support to leech onto. As a GJ "loyalist" I am also saddened by GJ's current state of affairs

We should start a support group.

To be fair, though, I remember when GJ came out in A Sea Of Storms and they were fairly lack-luster compared to the other houses (though, less-so than they seem now), they didn't find their place until Ice and Fire, and really started cooking right around A Crown of Suns. I'm hoping for something similar to happen in the LCG. GJ's save mechanic is right where it needs to be... but that's it. Their other mechanics: location control, stealth, and efficiently costed military characters (usually dependant on the player controling a warship to be good) are struggling. Oh well... I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

So I'll be the first to admit that I'm pretty crappy at building GJ decks, but I lose to plenty of them, so...

Honestly, I like your deck and think your changes are spot on. I agree 100% with Fatmouse's analysis of its weaknesses. In particular, I think Venomous Blades and Red Vengeance can really chew through your saves/small characters...VB in particular. I'm not sure what the best way to deal with that attachment is in GJ...maybe Ill Tidings? (crappy soluation, I know). I'm less clear on how the Lanni match up goes, but in my experience, if you can get winter + Wintertime Marauders, then Valar and save a Marauders, you'll win the match up more often than not. These days, I would worry more about Martell, and to some degree Stark, since Lethal Counterattack can really hurt. (Those cancels you're running should help a lot in the Stark match ups though, I'm guessing.)

Otherwise, think your deck is solid. Actually, I think with a few tweaks this will perform well against most Martell decks too. One of the most important things in that match up is not falling behind in terms of card advantage. Martell will out draw you (probably by a lot), but your cards should generally be more efficient. If, however, Martell drops Venomous Blades before you can get winter + Marauders, it will be very difficult to keep up. I know your policy on uniques, but I don't think you'd be sorry if you added a second Alannys, Longship Iron Victory, or Wendamyr, all of which will help you keep up in hand size (mostly by keeping your opponent's hand size low). These cards are among the most efficient cards in the game. Honestly, with all the saves GJ has, there's no reason not to run 2x of such efficient characters/cards. Also, Val is noticeably absent from this mix. In a deck like this, I would play 2x Val.

Finally, in terms of adding in the Shadow Agenda...don't do it. Winter is definitely the way to go here. Not only will the deck feel smoother and be more fun to play, the winter agenda is just MUCH better. VB is good in large part because it's free...recursive kill is attractive, but for s1 it becomes much less effective (harder to pull VB out of shadows twice in one turn, or even play it at all). Also, Wintertime Marauders it the biggest juggernaut in the game, once you get it going. There's really not much an opponent can do once they've begun to lose challenges to the marauders if you have a save on the board (Iron Mines/Wendamyr) or in your hand (Risen).

Twn2dn is right that you can win control match-ups, but you need to lead the game before your opponent does, which is much easier said than done. You can pretty much tell within the first or second round if you'll win or lose the game, sometimes even after Setup. Like I said before, Greyjoy is great while it's winning, but terrible while it's losing.

I do like the suggestion of more dupes. I always run dupes in my GJ decks for more consistency (and it goes with the save theme), but I didn't make the suggestion since you said you didn't want any. Val is a good suggestion (is for about any deck), but definitely practice using her if you put her in. You'll need to get a feel for when and how to use her (how much gold do i have? What reducers should I kneel? etc.).

Martell is more popular at the moment than Lannister, but Lanni kneel will never be "bad." Kneel will always be good, it's just a matter of whether or not your deck can manage against it. A really good litmus test for any deck is seeing if it can compete against a heavy kneel, gold, draw deck. If it can, then you know you're on to something; if it can't, then the deck will probably falter against other builds too.

I'll also agree with Twn2dn and say that I also like the current your current deck list; it's much better than what you had originally and it probably would perform fairly well. It's not how I build GJ decks, but it certainly takes advantage of what GJ has to offer. It's just that when I think of whether Houses/themes/builds/etc. are "good" or "bad" I tend to do so with a tourney setting in mine. Right now (and really since the full release of King's Landing) there are a lot of difficult match-ups for GJ to handle (one of many reasons being that the cost curve for decks has decreased rather significantly since the release of Seasons, making Winter denial less severe). It's not that GJ can't win games or isn't able to win against good decks (I think GJ actually does fairly well against Stark), but for it to actually go through a tournament and come out #1 is extremely difficult at the moment.

So I hope what I said before doesn't discourage you from playing and fooling around with GJ. It's still fun to play, but keep in mind that it's not as good as it use to be in CCG.

Well, I suppose I can continue to try and perservere.

Here's the deal: I don't run multiples of unique characters or locations because I can simply search for the ones I need with plots when I need them, I also have enough save for my characters that stacking multiples seems like a waste. I tried multiples when I first started way back when because everyone told me I needed them, but after a lot of playtesting I dropped them because they were unneccessary with the amount of saving GJ brings to the table.

Here's what I love about GJ right now:

Support of Harlaw - this card is A+ #1. I absolutely love it and it's one of the main reasons I want to play the LCG.

Wintertime Marauders - 3G for 3Str military, power is meh, but if I can keep it winter, that ability is broketastic, especially when combined with cards like Support of Harlaw, standing, and perhaps Driftwood Crown if I can find room for one or two. Basically, WM + SoH early = GG.

Risen from the Sea/Iron Mines - Classics that are amazingly good at what they do.

Longship "Iron Victory" - It's no Crown of Suns "Iron Victory", but pump + draw makes it my #1 pick to get with Building Orders.

Other Warship Pump - It's simply amazing. I attack with one guy who's strength can be 3 or 5 or 10... do you oppose with one guy and lose? Do you oppose with most of your guys and still maybe lose? Do you oppose with everyone to win, but then leave yourself wide open for other challenges? They allow you to decide how many resources you want to commit to an attack after you've seen how many resources your opponent will commit to their defense. That's huge!

Fishwhiskers - this is the kind of Warship based efficient cost-to-power character GJ was known for and I love this little guy.

Here's what I hate about GJ right now:

Very few crests- I would love to run Die by the Sword and/or The Price of War, but there's not enough cheap War Crest guys to do it. The Seastone Chair would be awesome if there was more than one noble dude in the entirety of the Iron Islands.

No location control - That was GJ's thing. I never cared that Stark could out-military me (or save better than me), that Lannister could out-draw me, that Baratheon was faster, that Targ had dragons (really? effin' dragons?), or that Martell punished me for winning because, against me, all their locations were forfeit. Now, it looks like all the other houses still have their old main themes (except for Stark bowing out of the character save business) and we lost ours. Was it really that broken? Yes. But that's why I loved it.

Here's what I'm unsure about:

Distinguished Boatswain - This guy has potential, but when all the top decks seem to be rocking Shadow, it seems like most of the time I'd be paying 1 for a 0Str guy. Is he any good?

First Mate - He's got a war crest and an amazing Limited Response, but he's also 3G for a 2Str guy with 2 icons that I'm not exactly lacking in the list.

Bloodthirsty Crew - Two decent abilities with both military and intrigue icons make this guy attractive, 3G for 2Str does not.

Fishing Net - Not cheap, and basically just makes the target first in line to die by military claim (and if someone's whole deck is built around having one specific character attack, defend, or count for dominance, that's not IMO a competetive deck).

Everything else, I pretty well like. GJ's named Character are still pretty awesome, the plots are good (I'm especially happy to see Valar and Marched), the locations aren't the best but they're about as good as anything anyone else has right now, and the winter mechanic/agenda are decent control. Maybe I'm just jaded because I look at the list and it looks like crap compared to the GJ lists I used to know, but then everything looks a little less powerful than it was so it might not be a problem. I think I might keep toying around with it to see what I can do.

redthirst said:

Veteran Marauder is pretty cool, no?

redthirst said:

From a casual/non-tourny player/beginner's point of view, I still have fun with GJ and like the stuff they have as far as crests & location control (Vet Marauder, Theon, etc). I'll be picking up War of the Five Kings from my FLGS this weekend and can't wait to throw in those few cool (but expensive) GJ cards into my deck!

As far as Seastone Chair, I don't think it matters if you as the GJ player have a noble character - it depends on which characters were involved in the challenge against you. I'm not saying that makes the Chair great (and I don't even own that card myself...), but it seems pretty flexible since you can use it either when you are the attacker OR defender, and it could be used multiple times.

redthirst said:

I think it depends on what you wanna do with GJ. They are almost completely unrepresented amongst the people I play with right now (our GJ player never really got into the game and we had all traded or loaned him most of our decent GJ cards) so I cannot say that I speak from experience...
We decided to play a melee the other night with brand new decks that were all version 1.0 builds, it seemed like a good way to test various combos and strategies so I built a mill deck just for the hell of it. I didn't really know what I was doing, so the whole deck was designed to slow the game down to a crawl while my mill worked, I made almost no challenges the whole game so there was less power out there for other people to get ahold of. I used Fishing Nets and Pulled Under as threat neutralization, despite the high cost of both cards. Almost all of the non-mill cards in the deck were 0 or 1 cost so I could splash my hand each round to prevent unopposed challenges and thus prevent any more power from hitting the board. Even with cards in Shadows I think the Boatswain was worth it in a melee, they were 1 cost claim-soak cards and multiple King's Laws were played by other players which powered them back up to 4 STR in several rounds.
I understand why mill isn't all that useful right now, but if the game would have lasted another round I probably could have won; I did manage to mill away 1 player's entire deck and the other 2 only had about 6 cards left apiece at which point I would have let them fight amongst themselves until they had no characters left and I would have put the 2 wharf rats I had in my hand into play for myself (who cares if they mill my own deck if my opponents have no decks left at all and no characters in play, right?)
My impression was that Fishing Net is worth using, if only for Red Viper, Castellan of the Rock, Beric, Robert, etc. The Boatswain proved useful and may be more so in joust; if not, they are still 1-cost claim soak.
I'm sure more experienced GJ players will let us know what they think and I'll stop rambling now...

I've had much different experiences playing with/against duplicates of uniques in GJ (if you rely on plot search to get these out in GJ, you're giving your opponent WAY too long to get things going), but I guess if it's working for you, then that's all that matters. If you experiment though, you may find that you can cut the search plots, which also give your opponents free cards. (Likely, while you're playing that, your opponent will play a plot with better stats and get the benefits of your plot.)

In terms of the questions you had...

1. Boatswain is great. There are fewer shadow decks now than a year (or even 6 months ago), but I still expect to see a fair number...there are probably a ton more Asshai shadow decks as well. Honestly though, shadow decks don't usually slow these guys down much in my experience. The nature of shadow cards is that you have to bring them out of shadows at some point, so usually there aren't very many sitting in shadows all at once. Most often I see a player with one card in shadows (a 2-STR guy for 1 gold is pretty good, considering he isn't an ally and doesn't die to Venomous Blade). Even if there are two, he works as claim fodder and has a good trait.

2. Bloodthirsty Crew seems playable. I really hate that he's 2 STR...makes him much to easy to kill with Venomous Blade, Targ burn, and Stark Direwolve attachments. Otherwise though seems very good. Probably pretty decent in the right deck.

3. I don't like fishing net, but I see a lot of people run it. Since GJ is short on targeted removal, I guess it makes sense...I'm more accustomed to Targ, and that probably affects how I view attachments (namely they should be awesome to see play). I suspect as more people begin to see the value in attachment hate and more options for it open up, fishing net will only get worse. Support of Harlaw is, of course, a fantastic attachment and worth running though.

By the way, I'd also consider running either Fear of Winter or Blockade, or even both. These plots can go a long way toward shutting down an opponent's deck, especially if played early in the game.

Distinguished Boatswain - Yeah, I agree with Twn2dn on this. Maybe the one card I always end up putting in a deck, since he's much better in practice than on paper. Also immune to Venomous Blades, which rocks.

Bloodthirsty Crew - One of the few decent Raider cards (Ambitious Oarsman and Euron are the two others). If there was one or two more REALLY good Raiders, this guy might be usable in a more Raider -themed GJ deck... Mainly since you could substitute all gold/influence locations with: Refurbished Hulk, River Blockade, Naval Escort and Scouting Vessels, and still get to reduce the cost on the Raiders.

Fishing Net - Again, I agree with Twn2dn on this. Not that good, but since there's no other removal for GJ...

Duplicates - Running many search plots in the beginning gives the other player too much space I think... with GJ I would much rather go with a turn 1 Retaliation than with a search... So yeah, basically I'm just parroting Twn2dn again

First Mate - Not worth it. Sadly.

No location control - Yeah, this really needs fixing I think. The game really needs more threats to locations I think. Stark Wildlings were good for that, if nothing else, but I'm guessing from now on those will be fewer and farther between.

Veteran Marauders seems... okay at best. You've got to pay a gold, then keep the character it's attached to alive, then win an unopposed challenge with that character, then you get to take out one of your opponent's locations unless they have attachment hate. Stealth is cool and all, but that seems like a large investment for not much gain.

As far as Seastone Chair is concerned, I didn't realize it didn't have to be my noble character in the challenge... that makes it better, but not by much. I still don't like anything that allows my opponent to dictate the course of the game.

There may be a good argument against seach plots. The ones I remember like Summons and Building orders only affected the active player, I do hate the fact that my opponent gets the effect of both their and my plots. I'll play around and may revise my opinion on unique multiples.

I'll give the Boatswain a shot. I had it in my head that my opponent would just have a ton of stuff sitting in the shadows, but I guess that's probably pretty impractical. If my opponent keep 2 things in the shadows then that's a 4 gold (or one plot) and 2 card investment to shut down a 1 gold guy... kind of a win/win for me.

The more I look at fishing net, the less I like it.

Has anyone seen anything spoiled for GJ that might help? I really think a lot of their weakness could be mitigated with some cheap, in-house war crests, actual location destruction, or cost-effective military+intrigue dudes. I mean, if they reprinted this guy and this guy with war crests and maybe something like Endless Raid again... I think I'd be perfectly fine with the lack of card draw, character removal, noble crest, etc...

A man might dream...