I think twn2dn generally ahs teh right of it here. I see where you're coming from in the big picture, Drakey - but playing Bara Rush and various iterations of Targ have left me mostly invulnerable to Venemous Blade. Although it hasn't been a decisive factor in any game I have been in for the past year and a half - given the lack of attachment control I can see how it is perceived as a stronger card at the moment.

But Burning has cost me far more in terms of wins and losses and I think its more powerful. It certainly is recursible, its certainly searchable (and given the At the Gates + Luwin combination - its even more readily at hand) Surely I mis-read you twn2dn: you aren't suggesting that BoTS NEEDS to remain in teh environment to keep Martell competitive as the pool epands? Don't they have enough, appropriately costed options right now? Surely a free challenge cancel surprise card, one that eliminates ALL ramifications of a challenge while keeping the attacking characters knelt and unavailable is a bit much for a Hosue already specializing in card advantage and denial effects? If you are saying this card is likely to grow stronger as the pool expands - I agree with you. Quite frankly i find that an alarming thought, given how strong it already is.

Its a bit frustrating to think of how many overpwoered effects like his Martell has enjoyed for the past few years, and how long it takes R&D to address them. Here's looking for a Locked in the Tower reprint in the future. It certainly wouldn't surprise me at this point.

Regarding the whole picture of the meta and VB/BotS I pretty much agree 100% with Twn2dn's analysis. That said...

I'm coming to think that this is a bit of a playstyle thing and thus there really isn't a 'right' answer to the whole question. Mainly because Baratheon and Targaryen are probably the Houses I play most, and me and Stag's mileage seems to vary quite a bit. I think I took quite a steep lesson from all the Wildling/NW Agenda Mayhem last year, and tend to favor cards/effects that don't rely on having to win certain (or any) challenges over the alternatives. Examples: I don't play Dothraki-heavy Targ, I mix in some control elements like Kingswood Trail, Obey the King and Wicked Seductress into my Baratheon rush instead of going for pure speed, I always try to have an even icon spread in both houses... and I generally dislike Die By The Sword, Price of War etc. since I can't rely on getting them through against heavy-control or a Wildling-meatlock. Thus my playing is less hampered by BotS, but more vulnerable to VB. However, I have to agree that with all the Response effects in the newer Targ cards, BotS is really becoming quite a bit more of an issue there.

I'd also have to agree with Twn2dn's suggestion that BotS will could become the stronger card in the long run (especially if the current power-creep keeps up). However this will largely depend on the direction that the game is going, and while we've currently been seeing some powerful characters triggering from challenge wins (mainly Luwin, the new Dragons, Dothraki...), but also a large influx of powerful cards NOT triggering off challenge wins (to try and name at least one from each house: Baelor Blacktyde, Galbert Glover & Rickon & Widow's Watch, Both new Dany's, Martell influence & Prince's Plans, Laughing Storm and um... err... ok not much for Lannister). So while I can see the effect that saturation of high-STR weenies (which seems to be proceeding slowly, but surely) will have on VB in the long run, I'm not completely sold on challenge-triggering effects being on the rise. It almost seems that those effects are being made one of Targaryen's 'specialities'...

Oh, and another way (in addition to weapon tech) for VB to become stronger would be if they were given ANY new shadow-triggering cards. Although I'm pretty sure that this will not be done... And yes, I believe Tin Link will be seeing quite a bit of play, and could have somewhat of an impact on VB. Hopefully at least. And, to make things perfectly clear, I still think BotS should be on the Restricted list. If for no other reason, then to infuse some creativity into Martell decks. =)

I'm not actually sure if the environment really IS getting faster right now... If anything I'd say that the recent increase in pure control (and plots such as Loyalty Money Can Buy, which I find to be quite ridiculous) without a similar rise in power-grab is taking the game in a slower direction, with games lasting longer as the losing player can constantly stall the other deck until a possible solution is found. But this more on gut-instinct, really.

I have to endorse your last post in almost its entirety, drakey. well argues.

Yes - our experiences are different. i stepped away from the game for most of the summer and fall alst eyar while the Wildlings were dominant - and by Black Friday: the environment had shifted. - and they ahd fallen out of favor. But I ahd no realistic chnace of getting rush through aganst a Wildling deck - adn i do recall VB stabbing several Asshai as I tinkered with an INT/Shadows Baratheon build in the fall. I ended up goign wiht a Targ build for msot of those months, adn one that didn;t rely on weeinies very much - in fatc it used Knights of Hollow Hill agenda - so the flop was irrelevant.

So our experiences are quite different - shaping our impression of Martell's "strongest" card.

And I think one of the salient points in the thread as a whole is how many candidates there are! Experienced and formidable control players up thread are tlaking about Cyvasse and HCiT - and making solid cases. Given Martell's easy access to reveal and draw and satble of solid characters already - maybe they don't quite need this level of efficiency in the premium denial tier of card effects. Odd how this sort of stuff just builds and compunds on itself through whole cycles of CPs - whereas the mere threat of accelerated rush gets drawn down quickly - with much less evidential performance data from real events.

@Stag: By saying that Martell players "need" to play Burning, I didn't mean to suggest that the house as a whole would be overly weak without it. I only meant that as long as it's unrestricted, the card will remain an auto-include. Meanwhile, I suspect we'll begin to see more decks played without VB in the next few months, and especially as the Oldtown cycle finishes. Obviously the restricted list would be a factor in terms of ditching VB, but I think a major shift from "VB is auto-include" to "VB may not be the best restricted choice" is indicative of how the card's power level may scale down in coming months.

About the point that Martell has so many "candidates" for power cards though, I'm a little worried about the tone. Are you suggesting that we should restrict a few more Martell cards? If so, I generally disagree. I wouldn't oppose a restriction on Burning, but that has more to do with what I think is a poor (and overpowered) game effect, rather than attempting to balance Martell as a house. Other than Burning, I'm not sure Martell really needs any more restrictions. (Prince's Plans, spoiled on regionals swag, probably should be restricted the moment it hits the environment though. I know how you feel about those types of restrictions, but getting back 2x Burning, a VB, and an Orphan for 4 influence seems excessive.) To reference something Fatmouse has been stating for awhile now, I think that as Greyjoy becomes stronger, Martell will be kept in check a bit better.

@Drakey: Regarding the "speed of the environment," that doesn't really have to do at all with how fast games are actually won, or even a prediction that rush/aggro will be more popular. Control decks have to move fast too in order to gain control quickly and keep it. I was instead referring to the speed at which a deck gets its key components in place to win, and how quickly the opponent can respond. For example, Milk of the Poppy is a decent temporary solution, but if we see more immediate/spot-character removal introduced into the environment (cards similar to A Lannister Pays His Debts or Game of Cyvasse), cards like Milk of the Poppy will feel slow in comparison and ultimately be replaced in decks by the faster, more immediate cards. Similarly, more gold + draw in the environment speeds decks up...both control and aggro alike.

Already we've seen the environment get *much* faster in the past two years. A few highlights: Bara went from winning on round 3-4 at the fastest to round 2, whereas effective control builds used to be extremely hard to manage outside of Lannister kneel and are now seen in pretty much every house (even Bara has a control build). There has been some power creep, but this trajectory in general isn't the result of power creep...just the natural evolution of the environment, given the introduction of new options from an expanding card pool. So long as we avoid rotation, decks will likely continue to get faster. If they don't, then it means there aren't enough good cards in the newest cycles, and there will be few incentives to buy them.

We're still a ways off from any need for rotation though, especially with the new restricted list. There's a lot of design space open, including for melee mechanics/themes/etc, which remain woefully underdeveloped.

I'm actually going to go out on a limb here and pick a card that no one else seems to be naming. After all the time I've spent playing Martell for the last year, I'm going to pick Taste for Blood. No other card that I've played with changes the dynamics of the challenge phase to the level of this card. While vulnerable as any attachment, it quickly forces your opponent into a position of impotence in the larger "game" of gaining power. While Burning on the Sand and Venomous Blade are each more powerful in specific application, Taste for Blood impacts the only true win condition in the game (getting 15 power) as well as the primary means of achieving that power (winning challenges) in a way that is at once subtle and far reaching. And Heaven forbid that you manage to get two out at the same time. Suddenly you're not reaching a rough parity each time an opponent attacks you, now you're climbing ahead from their challenges as well as your own.

Kennon said:

I don't think its the best card, simply because it can be used against you. Steal the character with TFB on it, and boom. Game over. I don't like it because its too gimmicky. Other player has melisandre, and your TFB power doesn't count. Fury of the stag, horn of dragons, its used against you. In the right circumstances, TFB is amazing, but its not terrible hard to get rid of, and it can sometimes lose you the game.

Kennon wanted me to post this, since his bank is LAME (unlike mine) and doesn't let him post

“The trick, I suppose, with Taste for Blood is in the careful application of force. Burning on the Sand is a hammer blow of defense that drastically stops what your opponent is attempting to do for one challenge. Venomous Blade is a series of small cuts at your opponent that can hurt, yes, and lame certain strategies of theirs if you’re lucky. Both, however, generally only stop what your opponent is trying to do to you. Taste for Blood, on the other hand, operates on a principle more similar to throws in any variety of martial arts in that you utilize your opponent’s force and momentum to accelerate your own action. Rather than negating some strategy of your opponent, Taste for Blood allows me to not only use my own resources and challenge to achieve victory, but adds to that each challenge that my opponent wins.”

(sidenote: I disagree, in that attachments that go on your characters have the inhearent issue of being a 2-for-1 card so are very difficult to be in the top 5 of any house - it's a good card that wins games, but all of these are)

rings said:

Haha, thanks for posting for me. I think that my bank rightly knows I'd spend a bit too much time posting about and analyzing Thrones if I were allowed to do so.

I think it's more indicative that thee are 5 to 6 good answeres, depending on your build and playstyle. Best unique character, best power grab attachment, best repeatable weenie control, best challenge control, strong character control(Cyvasse); and those are only the candidates for best options. No one is mentioning poison knife, orphan, wrath, etc. And don't get me started on Oberyn's Guile. If we are gonna go the preemptive Restricting route as a game, then that card needs to be Preemptively Restricted. "You become Darkstar, and you become Darkstar, and you become Darkstar..." ~Martell definitely needs that kind of hand advantage at this time.

kpmccoy21 said:

Guile is unique, and has the issue of being a 2 cost, condition attachment you have to put on your own character (with limitations!) giving it the 2-for-1 removal issue if the character is controlled. I am going to go out on a limb and say it won't be in the top 10.

I think the title of best card depends on the deck you are playing against.

Against a Baratheon renown deck, BotS is much more valuable than VB as StagLord mentioned. Against a weenie deck, VB might be better.

Overall, VB is stronger than BotS. I think that is the case because of two facts:

1) The repeatable nature of the effect

2) The protection VB receives from going in and out of shadows.

The fact that VB jumps in and out of shadows makes the card much harder to get rid of, and it offers protection that most other attachments don't benefit from.

HciT is a very good card, but as mentioned previously, it is not my main concern when playing vs a Martell deck. Game of Cyvasse, BotS are events that have more influence on the direction of the game.

All in all, I think that none of these cards are the best martell card out there. The best Martell card in my book is the The Viper's Bannermen.

TVB offers you a character which can push through military and power challenges as well as defend against them. You can't easily defend or attack against it due to the keywords and it can't be easily burned either.

The thing that makes it shine is the card advantage offered. The reason why it is so powerful lies in the wording: "after TVB comes into play or leaves play". Unless the response is canceled or character blanked, you are almost guaranteed to reveal and draw those 4 cards. Even if it is discarded, or bounced back to your hand, I don't know about you, but that seems to be pretty **** good to me.

Zsa said:

It's actually pretty funny, Martell's attachments/events weren't always so controversial, and the sea change could be somewhat related to the card advantage they get from Bannermen. I remember before Bannermen were played on the East Coast, Lanni was dominant. The consensus at the time seemed to be "well, Martell's draw is poor and these power cards are just one-time effects, so Martell isn't OP. In fact, Martell has trouble keeping up with Lannister." Looking back, Martell really hasn't gotten much more draw than anybody else...Dornish Paramour and Flea-Bottom Scavenger aren't all that popular at the competitive level outside specific builds. In fact, Finite's 2011 regionals deck (which was essentially copied by several other top-4 finishers across the country) had only 1x Samwell, 1x Gilly, and 3x House Messenger for (very situational) "draw." Even adding in the Summer agenda, this certainly isn't game-wrecking draw here...even a typical Stark deck has more draw. But Martell's 3x Bannermen give Martell the edge and allow it to pass Lannister as the "draw" house.

I don't know about other metas, but the DC's conclusion that Martell was *the* house to play came on fairly quickly once those players began running Bannerman. Much of this was actually the result of Zsa's deckbuilding (kudos Zsa). One day after I had played Zsa on OCTGN in a mirror match (him playing Bannermen and me not), where he beat me three games in a row, I discussed the results with Finite. I remember the conversation concluded with something like "I guess 2-3x Bannermen should go in every Martell deck." Stag Lord may also recall that the next major tourney in NYC, I played a Martell deck gainst his Bara. After he played Valar with 2x Bannermen in play, I played Narrow Escape and put 8 cards into my hand before the draw phase. I think for the East Coast, that regionals was a turning point in Martell deckbuilding.

I'm not sure when and how other metas decided to run Bannermen, but I'd say that Martell's card advantage is very dependent on this character. And Martell *definitely* needs card advantage to be able to play all those one-shot events and still have enough other cards to actually win the game.

Zsa said:

Certainly an amazing card. Doesn't do it for me for two reasons: one, it is 7-cost. While 99.9% of us would say 7 gold for 4 cards and the card that controlled the army is still crazy-strong, it is a high cost that might clog your hand for 1-2 turns. Against kneeling decks, or GJ choke decks, (which are both popular right now) it is more of a wasted card slot (which you can't say much on the others). The other is Seductive Promise (which SHOULD be played more).

I totally agree, Viper's Bannermen is Martell's best card.

dan and zsa are correct; the best card in martell is viper's bannermen, if we really must single out a card that has made the DC meta's martell/summer build the dominant decktype for the 2011 regionals season. it is, of course, folly to discuss which single card is the best; the cohesion between the specific components of a deck is just as important as the efficiency of the individual components -- indeed, cohesion likely is more important. that said, if you're forced to single out a card, i have to say after three regionals that it's indisputable that the 3x bannermen more than any other single card make the deck work (outside the summer agenda itself).

as dan mentioned, our martell decks were mediocre until zsa clubbed dan over the head in multiple games over OCTGN last winter -- with the deciding factor in each of those games clearly being that zsa played the bannermen whereas dan didn't. once our martell builds started to include the bannermen, everything changed; the cohesion increased by some huge factor due to all that extra card draw, and all the other amazing cards that make a martell deck so disgusting (VB, burning, cyvasse, he calls it thinking, the super efficient characters and great icon distribution, etc.) came together much, much better once martell's "draw problem" had, in part, been solved. so when dan says that a martell player who gets two bannermen out in the course of a game (especially earlier) tends to win more often than not, he's absolutely correct when he directly attributes the wins to simply getting the bannermen -- who then go and get so many more of the other good cards. you could take out any one of of martell's hyper-efficient cards (VB, burning, cyvasse), substitute it for another highly efficient martell card, and still win more often than not so long as you get two bannermen into play in the first few rounds of the game.

finitesquarewell said:

@Rings: Feel free to kneel my Bannerman as much as you want. They're definitely great targets, but I find that the +4 cards (or more, assuming I have NE...note even if my opponent discards hand to cancel, that's still card advantage), make a HUGE difference. Basically, these are the guys that win the match up against Lanni...Martell probably won't be winning without them. And against any other house that doesn't have kneel, these guys are ridiculously good.

Certainly the deck is a deciding factor. In Erick's decks I certainly woudn't argue, with lots of smaller efficient characters.

Didn't Kennon just win a large Regional w/o them (or many of the power cards we are talking about - it was running VB of course though) or am I not correct in my memory? That is a much different deck, which lends to the 'depends on the deck' argument.

Again, I think they are an amazing card, top 5 for sure (and top 1 in Erick's deck by his own admission). Just not as 'best' as VB when talking about all Martell decks.

And Erick - I am not sure if you can call your Martell/Summer build as dominant as you could a few weeks ago. You guys are REALLY good players which tends to mess with the percieved power level of decks, and it certainly showed well at places you were not. It didn't win either of the two largest in the US (that being said, you were not at either either proving my point or refuting depending on how you see it). *shrug* I lost to it once, and beat it once, and mainly that was the level of the player rather than the deck (the guy at Kubla was actually a pretty good player, didn't make any mistakes vs. me at least). It is a VERY strong build and the most succesful of the US Regionals season (again - partly due to the 'drivers'), but not sure if dominant. Unlike your performance

So are we in agreement then? Top 6 (No particular order)

Bannermen
Cyvasse
VB
BotS
TfB
HCiT

Pretty solid set of cards. Fortunately for Martell, only one of them is restricted.

rings said:

Yes, sir. I've got the decklist up on the Springfield Regional thread here. While Dobbler has tried to convince me to utilize the Viper's Bannerman in a general sense for quite some time, I've just never been able to jump on board with the initial buy in of 7 gold. Since there's not a plot in the game right now that would let me play it without locations and the new resurgence of choke decks, I can't personally justify the cost (unless of course, I'm playing it out of that Baratheon recursion deck...).I've played games against choke where I couldn't get the resources necessary to play Beric at 4 gold, so I'm exceedingly skeptical of the ability to quickly marshal a 7 gold character as these decks gain in popularity. Now, my deck on the other hand, did play Fleabottom Scavenger which is easily the quickest and cheapest return on draw in the game- provided you have no power on your house. She's been useful in straight Martell decks, but playing her in Brotherhood gives her a value far above that of the Viper's Bannerman.

As for the other mentioned cards, I was indeed using Venomous Blade, Burning on the Sands, and Taste for Blood. Just like The Viper's Bannerman, I've never been particularly fond of Game of Cyvasse, though I don't have anywhere near that level of reasoning for the dislike. And He Calls it Thinking didn't make the cut just based really on it being an event. For whatever strange reason, I've really been whittling the event slots of my decks down to a bare minimum over the last few months.

Fieras said:

Pretty much agreed in that I think, and I find there's actually something REALLY notable about this list. There's one character, two attachments and three events. Adding to that Lost Oasis (pretty much Tier-1 in my books, and somewhere in the Top 10), makes them one of the only houses that can actually wield such cards in all deckslots. Most of the other Houses don't come anywhere near this, IMHO.

I don't think I can make a deck with less than 10 events, would be very hard for me. I could see Paper Shield being a reason to cut events from decks. You're going to see 2 or 3 in the majority of decks out there and cutting your events will help make that a "dead" card at times. Of course, the other effect is that if you have fewer events it'll be harder to push them through, since they won't have as hard of a decision to make on what to Paper Shield and just the sheer number game is against you now. Unless you run your own Paper Shields, then you can make sure your events get through, but that would increase your event count - something you were kind of avoiding under that assumption. My head hurts now.

Yeah, I remember that Dan. Also remember you came back with a Martell Hollow Hill deck and mopped the floor with me

When I built my first martell deck, I didn't include the TVB. The deck was mediocre, could put up a fight but nothing stellar. After I added TVB, boy o boy did that deck work. Erick is right on the money when he says that TVB is the card that synergizes a Martell Summer deck.

Rings is right that not necessarily all decks benefit as much from TVB. But that argument could be made just as well for VB , if you play against a Targ deck with good attach control, or a deck with few weenies, VB won't perform that well.

It's also true that you need to build your deck more carefully to use TVB than for the events or attachments. That doesn't detract from the fact that it's an amazing card with a very powerful impact on the game.

Kennon said:

In that brotherhood deck, TVB would not work that well . You have too many characters that require "attention" from your gold pool for you to have enough for a 7 cost card.

And the initial buy is definitely worth it for this card.

WWDrakey said:

Restricting any one card in effort to balance Martell as a whole won't work, and restricting multiple cards just to lower the power level seems like a *very* bad idea. The better approach is to similarly give other houses efficient choices for each type of card that are good on their own AND work in combination. For example, a Greyjoy winter deck should have more to it than just Marauders + Ice Fisher (thankfully, it looks like GJ is slated to get a boost in Oldtown cycle). Lannister is already there...events and locations have a lot of synergy with the kneel theme but also work well on their own. I'd say Stark is also fairly close too, and that's reflected in its regionals performance.

And one other thing...I'm sure glad we're talking about Martell now rather than Lannister, which dominated the LCG environment for so long. Looking at the regionals results, it actually isn't all that clear to me that Martell is superior to Lannister. I'd say Martell has a slight edge, but Lannister has done very well this year too. Moreover, unlike last year, there's actually quite a bit of variety this year. So while we complain about Martell, the environment as a whole has progressed significantly in the last 1.5 card cycles, and judging by the spoiled Oldtown cards, things look to be headed in the right direction.

Twn2dn said:

Could be car vs driver once again. I think MOSt of the top players played Martell or Lannister. Is it because they were already perceived as the best? It would be interesting to see play in a large tournament where the great players tried to make amazing bara/targ/GJ decks and see how they do.

How do people rank the Red Viper? I prefer rush to control so usually when I make a Martell deck I like to build it around the Viper, but I don't play competitively. Is he still good enough to focus a deck around?