This is kind of a random post, but I've been obsessed with making a competitive GJ deck lately. There are a few combos that I've been toying with, and was wondering if any of you wouldn't mind reviewing them. Mind you, my intent is not to put all of these into the same deck, but rather just to generate ideas and ways of making Greyjoy playable and fun with some combination of the below.

Driftwood Crown + The Power of Faith + all of those twicon chars with mil/pow = tricons that don't kneel to attack. If they have renown, well that's just a large bonus. Driftwood Crown is just such a fun card, because you can also use The Power of Arms, a card that is never out of place with Greyjoy, and get a +2 str bonus on your chars. On Wex Pyke, DC becomes sick, especially if you have Support of Harlaw on him. On Aeron Damphair, DC is really fun as well. Give him the intrigue icon, he already gets a military icon, and now you have a tricon with stealth who doesn't kneel to attack. (Don't forget that if he dies, he can pull out Godswood Attendant, who would then be a tricon who doesn't kneel as well.)

Knights of the Hollow Hill + mass saves = you aren't wiped out first turn. Knights of the Hollow Hill is fairly difficult (in my opinion) to make it work, but in a GJ deck that focuses on saving its own characters, it's quite strong. This also gives Rise of the Kraken some more gold to play with, in addition to an almost guaranteed initiative win. Mass saves is, in my opinion, the only way to play KotHH competitively.

Wex Pyke + Support of Harlaw = semi-frequently two unopposed challenges. No need to mention Rise of the Kraken here because it's just too obvious.

Most efficient characters + heavy character control = constant ability to clear the board and no need to worry about having really high-gold plots. When I say, "Most efficient characters," I mean chars like Distinguished Boatswain, Mercenaries from Pyke, and Fishwhiskers.

Refurbished Hulk + Naval Escort + Scouting Vessel = Never lose a challenge as an attacker. In addition to rarely, if ever losing as an attacker, Naval Escort counts for defending as well. Not only this, but Naval Escort ensures that Refurbished Hulk can be used every turn, regardless of whether or not you have any non-0-cost locations to play. Finally, 2x Refurbished Hulk on the table means that Ten Towers might actually be playable. I wouldn't count on anyone ever using it, though, as it's still a mess to get 2-3 in your opening hand with no Hulks.

Horn of Dragons + Rhaegar's Harp = Take my characters, please! I find this to be a weird combo, but when you take into account the Intimidate keyword plus Horn of Dragons, it's already a potent combo. Add in Rhaegar's Harp (for 3 gold) and you can steal almost any character your opponent has on the table, whether it be a power-laden Fat Bob/Fat Beric, or an otherwise untouchable Red Viper.

Risen from the Sea + Island Smuggler = you can kill a whole bunch of characters, even your own, with nary a Narrow Escape to worry you.

These kinds of posts kind of irritate me simply because I see them in Starcraft a whole lot. "Oh, Zerg can't be played anymore because Terran just beats them every time!" To me, it's a bit like whining without suggesting anything new. But that's why I came up with the above ideas and posted them, rather than just out and out saying that GJ seems to be unplayable in 1v1 right now.

I totally agree with your sentiments. I never have thought ANY house was unplayable, due to FFG doing a pretty good job of balancing houses and the large sprinkling of neutral characters/events that can usually fill most holes.

GJ just hasn't gotten a '2nd trick' over saving, and to be honest a lot of other houses save (or the equivilant of) just as well. Bara, Martell Viper, Brotherhood, Holy tricks, Noble crests, etc. Saving is also almost irrelevant against one house (Targ) that is usually pretty tourney strong (when people actually play them). Their subthemes have been more than underwhelming, and they haven't gotten a bomb card in some time.

Let's look: Mauraders are great, but need setting up and are fairly fragile when you mix in the need for Winter. Iron Mines are probably one of the top 3-4 locations in the game (I run them out of house more than any other location). Maester W is arguably the best save engine in the game. Their To Be event is strong. Other than that...I really can't think of one GJ card that I worry about. Compare that to Martell (Blade, some of the best events in the game), Lanni (draw + income is good I hear), Bara (power-rush without compare), and even Stark (some serious in-house control cards). *shrug* GJ has had bombs in the past (the notorious LIV, Storm Raiders, etc.), but they are just a tad behind the 8-ball right now.

Can they win any game? For sure. Can they win a big tourney? I just don't see them consistent enough.

I actually think Greyjoy is extremely underrated at the moment. Before last year's regionals events, there were some GJ winter/choke (non-Wildling) decks floating around that were particularly nasty. Longclaw had one that I really worried about at regionals, though nobody in NYC or DC ended up playing a similar build.The problem then was that Wildlings were so efficient that, even with GJ's saves and choke, the Wildling player could bigger guys with a better icon spread.

Now that the Wildling cost-reduction agenda is out, I think this Greyjoy build is MUCH more competitive and could win tourneys. Although there hasn't been very many cards printed recently that help the build, there also hasn't been many that challenge it. I brought such a GJ deck to an 8-person playnight in NYC recently and it went 3-0 against a very strong Martell deck (which I would consider tier-1), a Stark Seige build (was actually less seige, with a splash of Tully), and a Bara deck, I think. The GJ deck is relatively simple to play, so it's easy to avoid play mistakes like forgetting to trigger a Martell response or return Forever Burning to hand.

I suspect the reason GJ has a bad reputation right now has more to do with ongoing misperceptions and a lack of enthusiasm in the cards. The fact that there's little variety in terms of competitive builds (basically the deck has to be very fast and based around winter), discourages some types of players. Also, the issues Rings identified - GJ just haven't gotten anything new and exciting that would make people want to play - leads to the house being easily passed over.

These are all nice combos, many of them were already tried by me in my play group.

Honestly I think GJ is in need of serious love from FFG to be able to be competitive again. I agree with rings. Can they win anygame: yes. Can they be competitive in a tournament... hardly...

I think this is the time for all of us GJ players out there to raise our voices and demand some love for this house!!

creepy combo also between winter marauders and training grounds, but very expensive to build. It also affects euron's enforcers and king's balon host, but winter doesn't help here.

Had another big response typed up, hit the backspace button and it went back a screen instead of a letter. Arrrrrgh!

My entire point was this: With winter-style GJ, you are still not nearly as consistent as you need to be to win tournaments. The issue is that GJ is already so expensive that playing it as winter causes you at least as much pain as the opponent. With the Laughing Storm coming up, the agenda is nigh unplayable.

So I'm at a loss for what to do about it. Most of my ideas revolve around GJ locations or attachments, both of which in the current environment are fairly simple to control - I'd warrant that there's no top-8 deck which doesn't have some amount of both of them, sometimes a large amount.

Alright, I think I've figured out the problem. With other houses, you have very distinct and directly powerful foci. For example, with Stark, it is controlling the military challenge and winning through that. With Baratheon, it is power-grabbing faster than any other house. With Lannister, they kneel you, draw better than you, and have more gold than you. With Targ, they will keep your chars off the table and slowly power for the victory, often with a fair amount of recursion. With Martell, you get super-strong events, all of which support the goal of controlling challenges in general (with none of these events being dependent upon the others), in addition to the Viper, of course. And with neutral, you get the ridonkulous Beric Donkdarrion, who, as we all know, wins games.

With Greyjoy, the only focus seems to be milling. While I admire that, the issue is not that it isn't powerful enough: When it can be pulled off, it can be quite successful (in my opinion). The problem is that it's nearly impossible to pull it off consistently in any of the above match-ups.

I guess it's back to the drawing board for me. Time to try a different approach.

Twn2dn said:

QFT

The potential is there for GJ. It really only needs a couple of good cards to make a jump back into the tournament scene and be successful.

I think you're right that Greyjoy doesn't have a single, powerful tool like the other houses. In a way, I think this is a strength because, in the right deck, Greyjoy can basically choose a play style based on setup, initial draw, and the flow of the game. I've been playing around with a sort of "modular" build for Greyjoy to take advantage of this flexibility. Each module can work with a very small number of cards on the board/in hand and there's also a fair amount of crossover.

Right now, I've got a deck built with about 4 different modules, all of which overlap and allow the cards in it to serve several different functions depending on the shape of the game. The whole thing is still a work in progress, but I think there's potential in it.

The intention is that rather than letting the build dictate how I'm going to play, I've tried to build it so that the flow of the game does this. This puts a lot more pressure on me as each mistake will be magnified with this build, but it also makes it very hard for an opponent to know what strategy they may be up against - I won't even know what strategy I'm going to use until I get past setup. Played smartly, I think the deck can be competitive - it still relies on luck to a certain extent, but it also keeps the games interesting. I've play tested it a bit and it's managed to win using several different themes (and switched between them with reasonable effectiveness). It's handy because while I use the Kings of Winter Agenda, I don't actually need to play A Time for Ravens on turn 1. Obviously, if I've got a strong 'winter module' presence between setup and my hand, I'll do this, but if a different module is dominant, then I may hold off on making it winter until later in the game. In fact, I think I've had situations that warranted playing every plot in the deck except Valar on the first turn.

So what do they need to be competitive? I know the one thing that I fear the most in GJ is negative attachments. Even more than I do in Martell these days (yeah to Lemonwood!). Some sort of attachment hate would be really nice, even if it only targeted my guys. But that is more about filling in a small whole, what do you guys think they need to be competitive?

Scurvy Cutthroat is actually some pretty solid attachment control, but he requires being in play prior to your opponent actually playing the attachment, and then really does more to deter the playing of attachments. They really are stuck at the moment once something actually hits the board.

@Twentyft, that was very programmery of you. To continue the analogy, I personally think that if a deck doesn't have high overall cohesion, it is going to have trouble winning tournaments. At the same time, I agree that having loose coupling between the cards/combos is a good thing, and can lend itself to a good kind of cohesion in this case.

I went about making my GJ deck tonight with those thoughts in mind. It's a really interesting deck, but it doesn't use the Winter agenda - too likely to burn me worse than it is to help me. I may add it in before The Laughing Storm comes out, but I'll have to take it out as soon as TLS hits the shelves.

I played my GJ deck vs Bloodycelt earlier this evening. It was weird game, and one that I feel like I could have won if I'd burned Valar one turn earlier. I'd have lost a char, but he'd have lost more and not gotten quite so far ahead as he did.

My deck focuses on controlling characters and locations, but also has Scurvy Cutthroat of course. At the same time, I have all of the renown chars, including the merc army. They are intended to be a late-game push or a mid-game meat shield. Maester Wendamyr, Iron Mines, duplicates are strong for saving (if I'd gotten out *any* of these early on, I would have beaten Bloody, I think). Making it Winter + Cragorn didn't do too much against Bloody because he happened to have a ton of high-gold plots for no good reason, but I think it would regularly hurt others. I had a lot of gold in the deck so that I can be fairly certain that I'm never screwed for it. Marauders - 'nuff said. Finally, Milk of the Poppy and Die by the Sword for some character control. The plots are fairly standard - 4 2-claimers, 1 raven-grabber, 2 high-gold plots.

It's incredibly fun, even if it didn't win its first try-out game. I hope to hone it, or give up on it when it proves that it's worthless.

Imho, Naval Escort and River Blockade are bomb cards. Not as flashy as Beric Dondarrion, but nearly perfect in a GJ deck.

The bad thing for them has been last two cycles centered around milling, such a boring mechanic. But intimidate is a really strong Keyword, they just received a pair of them, and warships are beginning to shine. Let's see what happens in SoO with a new focus on resource denial and, who knows, maybe another non milling Raider.

And... playing winter has nothing to do with using that lousy "Kings of Winter" agenda.

Deck discard is one of my favorite mechanics in card games. However it seems like all attempts at it have been half-hearted. Is it because way back in the CCG days there was a broken combo that could let you discard a players deck in a turn or two? I wasn't playing back then but I've heard stories. I'd like FFG to really put out some awesome raid effects that make it matter, preferably combo-ed with something else the Krakens do well since decking an opponent doesn't win the game.

::steps on soapbox::

DO YOU HEAR ME FFG?! MAKE RAIDING MATTER!!!

*ahem*

Thank you.

Actually, that's a good point. Knowing the sort of sick discard combos that Dobbler has come up with in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if FFG was watching it carefully. I've seen him discard all of each of his opponent's deck in a melee game in one turn!

Kennon said:

I think Greyjoy lacked appearances in tournaments because getting trips of the core elements was costing around 100 bones, not because they are unplayable.

To me, Raiders are the strongest theme that came out of the last cycle. They give you a distinct advantage: options. Draw in Lanni is there so you make sure you can do different things and have your answers to situations, and that variability is built into Raiders already. I think they are incredible. Maybe not at a tier 1 World Championship level, but definitely top 16 to top 8 appearance.

Plus they are really really fun.

ktom said:

I have no idea how to do this. The funniest I ever saw was a Raiding Fleet dropping with a Motley Crewman in play in melee. It made me angry, but also smile.

Kennon said:

How? o.O

Mathias Fricot said:

I'm just not seeing what options the raiders give you, so I'm wondering if you could expand on that. Right now I think they are the worst of the themes out of the last cycle so I hope there is just something I'm missing.

I've been playing around with raiders and I think they're vastly underrated. It's all about what you expect from the themes in the BWB series. I certainly wouldn't build a deck around raiders, but I think they can be very useful in the right deck.

The first thing is, I don't actually use raiders for mill. I think it's been written in these forums before that mill isn't a viable build by itself, but can be an annoying distraction. As Mathias said, they give you a ton of options - and in working with a 'module' oriented deck, having as many options as possible becomes exceedingly important. In the 'module' deck I'm working on, only about 30% of my characters are raiders, I think any more than this and they would start to hinder the deck. So far, they've been working well in the deck. Here's a few examples of how they help:

• Euron's Enforcers - without any other raiders, they are still a 4 strength army with intimidate - that by itself should be enough to push through a fair number of unopposed challenges. If I happen to have any other raiders on the board, the enforcers only get stronger.
• Ambitious Oarsman - These guys make my warships more flexible. I can use them as -1 reducers on other raider cards. There will be times when I don't want to do this, but having the option makes me better able to adapt to the game. This also gives cards like Refurbished Hulk and River Blockade more uses, which makes them more viable, which in turn increases the power of Naval Escort.
• Cragorn - I'm finding more and more that Cragorn is a beast of a character. I've noticed that with Greyjoy, you can develop a slight advantage, but if you can't hold it, it won't lead to wins. Cragorn helps you hold advantages. Playing only Cragorn, I've managed to take all of my opponent's gold before they could marshall. Essentially, this ability lets me take a small advantage (say the ability to win a military challenge) and magnify it into a larger advantage. If you add in the Ambitious Oarsman, then it's possible to bankrupt your opponent without losing all of your gold in the process.
• Longship Silence - with about 30% raiders, Longship Silence provides me with another draw source to go along with LIV and Sam and the ravens.

Those are just a few examples. As I said in my last post, the raiders are one module of a deck with several others and the interplay between modules allows the deck to function in a variety of ways. I'm still tweaking exactly how large a presence the raiders should have in the deck (too little and they don't function properly, too many and the deck is weakened), but in testing, I've found they've really improved on my pre-raiders Greyjoy build.

Twentyft said:

How are you doing that with only Cragorn? He needs to go back to your hand to steal 1 gold, which means if you're opponent is marshaling you can only use him once (how do you put him back into play without marshaling him?). Or if you're marshaling, your opponent has not counted gold yet or they have already marshaled; thus diluting the impact of his effect on your opponent.

I achieved this by being an idiot.

In the game I was talking about, the playing sequence was mis-implemented with both players taking gold at the start of the phase. Obviously, this is wrong, so Cragorn isn't worth nearly as much.

sorry for the mistake

In spite of the mistake with Cragorn, I think the point is still worth considering. Cragorn can reduce your opponent's gold pool by one. If it's winter (which it probably would be for a Greyjoy deck), that's a reduction of 2. That can be enough to help you hold an advantage. Plus, he can boost Euron's Enforcers and can help you draw with Longship Silence. Quite a few of the raiders are either flexible in themselves, or make other cards more flexible.

~Now if I could only learn the rules to this game...