i wouldnt recommend fear of winter if your planning on abusing with events, it seems a little counter intuitive.

It's too bad Retreat doesn't work on Buzzsaw Viper. Makes a person wonder if it is possible to use KLE Red Viper just to trigger NUFG, then play the otehr Viper next marshalling phase. The setup could really suck, meaning you'd want to use Summoning Season or Hearld of the Sun to pull him, but I'm tempted to try this just to pull it off once. Preferably against King Blith.

JerusalemJones said:

Working on a deck that pretty much aims to do just that. Considering Bronze Shield and War Scorpion to get TftRK version killed, then it's just a matter of swarming with Sand Snakes and summoning PotS version, though getting them both in hand is a problem so Herald of the Sun would be a good choice.

Gargoyle said:

You'd still need a way to get the one Viper out of the dead pile so you can play the other. I was also trying to build a deck around No Use for Grief, but without a reliant way to search for the event it's impossible to set up in any viable fashion, and the Sand Snakes are just too meh to play the game out until you have the cards in place, at which point one or two of your Sand Snakes may already be dead, making playing the event pointless.

Yeh, I only use 1 copy of each Sandsnake. I run Benjen Stark though, who can either return Red viper to deck so the other can be played, or recycle the sandsnakes. Problem is, that's another character you need, making it even more complicated, and he needs to be killed to activate his effect. Good thing is, that if he's on the field when you kill The Red Viper(TFtRK) his effect shuffles that Red Viper back into the deck , allowing the other to be played, though you've just nuked the field and swarmed, so his effect won't be of any use.

Gargoyle said:

I believe the Red Viper is still moribund when Benjen's passive kicks in, so the Red Viper would still go to the dead pile.

Saturnine said:

Red viper's effect activates after he is killed, as does Benjen Stark's. Not aware of all the rules yet, but in terms of logic: Red Viper dies, then his effect activates, killing Benjen Stark, after which Benjen's effect activates, and returns Red Viper to the deck, as well as himself as it happens after he is killed. If this isn't the case, the text on such cards should read 'when', not 'after'.

Gargoyle said:

Take a look at the timing structure outlined in the FAQ as well as the explanation of the "moribund" state. The Red Viper dies and becomes moribund (=heading for an out-of-play area but still in play until the end of the framework action window) in step 3 of the framework action window. His response is activated in step 5. This opens a little sub-window in which TRV's response could be canceled (sub-step 2), Benjen dies and becomes moribund (sub-step 3) and in which passive abilities trigger after the response resolves (sub-step 4). This is where Benjen's passive ability executes. At this point all players shuffle their dead piles back into their decks. Note that both TRV and Benjen are still moribund, i.e. not been placed in the dead pile. After all responses to the framework event have been played in step 5, all moribund cards move to their respective destinations in step 6.

Yeah, as Saturnine's post reveals, the whole "moribund" rules can get kind of complicated. (They're supposed to be intuitive, and 90% of the time, they are. But certain situations get pretty messy.)

Basically, just remember that unless a character or card specifically "saves" itself (like Viserys) or has a replacement effect that says it does X if it "would be" normally doing Y (like Bronn, or like Drowned Disciple from the Kings of the Sea expansion), that character is going to end up in the dead/discard pile. In other words, "saves" and replacement effects (contain "would be" in the text) are very specific and used for this reason.

The reason the designers didn't just simplify this in the first place by saying "when X enters the dead pile, do Y" is that technically, you could kill a character and then play "retreat" (or a similar card effect). So the character would be "killed" but wouldn't actually end up in the dead pile.

Hope that helps....