At the Gates for Pycelle and Melee

By ScottieATF, in 1. AGoT General Discussion

Is there any reason to have any other opening play the to revel At the Gates for Grand Maester Pycelle in a Melee game?

If any two players at the table open with the same play, and you don't, you are stuck playing behind two players with at least a 3 card advantage. And given the playability of search plots in Melee, it's likely that chain will be triggered again, putting you back further. Rule by Decree can only hurt one of them, and then you are still stuck playing behind.

Is there really any option?

Off the top of my head...

...stuff that can counter it:

- Any Deck: Use Burning Bridges as first plot

- Any Deck: Use Condemned By the Realm. If there's one other player in the table who is not running Pycelle, then most probably one of you has just won initiative. Decide the Searching order so that Condemned By The Realm happens after at least one maester search. Kill one Pycelle. If both of you were running Condemned, then better for you.

- Any Deck (esp. Baratheon with Iron Throne): Use Ser Preston Greenfield (KotStorm)

- Baratheon: Run Lord of Light Protect Us and use Asshai weenies

- Martell: Run He Calls It thinking? (I am not sure if one cancel is enough to break the chain, a quick analysis would say no, thoughts anyone?)

- Lannister: Use Death By Payne

...reasons not to run it:

- You're left with 3 gold and a low initiative & claim, which pretty much makes sure you start off pretty slow turn 1. Depending on who you're playing with, this may lead to people seeing you as an optimal target to pounce on Turn 1. Having resources to play useful characters/locations is really not trivial in Melee - of course this can be taken into accunt during deck design.

- You're forgoing searching for another Maester that might be more useful for you (Influence fix for Targaryen, Luwin for Stark and event heavy-decks)

- You're forgoing searching for a raven to get your season running

- You're forgoing using a plot that works better with your decks main idea

...a way to get one-up on people running At the Gates + Pycelle:

- Run Good For the Gander to get the same effect and more gold. Next turn search for another Maester with At the Gates.

What am I missing here? How does At the Gates for Pycelle give anyone a card advantage?

The text on Pycelle is: "Response: After an opponent's effect reveals one or more cards, reveal the top card of your deck and put it into your hand (limit 3 per phase)."

In the plot phase, plots are "revealed" by the game's framework effect, not by an opponent's effect. So revealing plots doesn't trigger Pycelle.

I think he's referring to summoning season/etc.

ktom said:

What am I missing here? How does At the Gates for Pycelle give anyone a card advantage?

The text on Pycelle is: "Response: After an opponent's effect reveals one or more cards, reveal the top card of your deck and put it into your hand (limit 3 per phase)."

In the plot phase, plots are "revealed" by the game's framework effect, not by an opponent's effect. So revealing plots doesn't trigger Pycelle.

The way I had understood it earlier I thought that you could trigger your own Pycelle off your opponents At the Gates, but after re-reading the plot theres no mention of having to reveal the character, just put it into play. (Usually you have to reveal a searched card before putting it into hand, but this is not required if it comes straight into play, or is it?) So, in order to get the chain of Pycelle responses going, at least two players would need to play Pycelle and a third player start with a search plot (Summoning Season, Building Season etc.). Ehh. Quite conditional and completely reliant on people liking to start with search plots.

I am referring to any additional search effects made by other players, After playing it last night I did re-read At the Gates and noticed nothing gets revealed.

Even if people don't like to start with search plots, someone is likely playing at least one within the first two turns, in addition to any other search effects anyone might have. Even a player with Pycelle out can start the chain by playing his own search effect.

In my limited play experience it seems like a play that is forced on you by virtue of the fact that if you don't you can easily get stuck playing behind people with hands over 20 cards. And it's not as if Pycelle isn't a 2 STR, INT, POW

"- You're left with 3 gold and a low initiative & claim, which pretty much makes sure you start off pretty slow turn 1. Depending on who you're playing with, this may lead to people seeing you as an optimal target to pounce on Turn 1. Having resources to play useful characters/locations is really not trivial in Melee - of course this can be taken into accunt during deck design.

- You're forgoing searching for another Maester that might be more useful for you (Influence fix for Targaryen, Luwin for Stark and event heavy-decks)

- You're forgoing searching for a raven to get your season running

- You're forgoing using a plot that works better with your decks main idea"

3 gold is lower then the more common 4 gold plots, but you are getting to put into play a 3 cost character, so it is a net effect of 6 gold. And even with the low initiative yous till have a fairly easy shot of either the Crown Regent to prevent all 3 player going Military against you, the Master of Coin to drop extra characters, or any title someone supports. Provided you don't have the worst set up, you can't get that run over. And if you have the worse set up running over you might not be the best idea.

With how many cards you end up getting in a few short turns you are fairly likely to find all those things you could have searched for anyway.

I only played one round at Kubla where one of my opponents tried the Pycelle thing. We both ended up with half our decks in our hands that game.

I see no reason not to do this. At the Gates is already a popular opening plot, and search plots are pretty common in melee. You're bound to get some cards out of it, even is you have the only Pycelle on the table.

If this is the only maester tech your deck is running I wouldn't since it will hurt your deck more than help as you are running two cards based on that your opponent will do the same which they might aswell not since there are many powerful first turn plot choices. This really depends on your melee enviroment, on my own it would never work as we have this nice thing going "look guys that one guy is doing way too well! lets kick him down and keep him there" and this is very good way to target paint your head with a threat sign for the other players. It will work in some other enviroments when people will let you do your things. Sorry its really hard to talk about these when there are so many different kinds of melee enviroments in the world and I have no idea how its done in your end :D

also how does crown title negate all 3 military challenges?

~also think about it if everyone was running a ministrels muse with a den of the wolf and building season and lotsa influence... 5 dominance phases the fastest melee game ever :D (if den of the wolf works the way I think it does...)

Agreed with Ire on Melee being a hard game to discuss, due to the differences between metas being much larger than for Joust.

@ScottieATF: Hmm, am I right in thinking that your Melee environment is pretty low on character control? (VB, Milk, kill events, Grey Wind, Burn etc) Most decks around here have enough control elements to disrupt this kind of combo before it nets more than a few (3?) cards... and if all the players are in on it, then no one is really netting anything...

Actually, the existence of the Pycelle combo could reduce the ubiquitous usefulness of search-plots in Melee, which is a pretty nice new development. (Good to see the Melee game also going places, and getting discussed!)

ScottieATF said:

Even a player with Pycelle out can start the chain by playing his own search effect.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your statement, but I dont think this works... you can't play Summoning/Building Season and use Pycelle when your opponent searches, card reads "After an opponent's effect reveals one or more cards..."

If at least two players have Pycelle out, any Search played by any player will net those players 3 non-drawn cards.

Player A and B have Pycelle out. Player A reveals Summoning Season, reveals a character. Player B triggers his Pycelle, reveals a card and puts to hand. Player A triggers his Pycelle, reveals a card and puts to hand. This repeats until both players have reached that response limit of 3.

If any other Search is played in any other phase, those players will get another 3 cards. None of these are drawn, so the draw cap never comes into play.

Skowza said:

ScottieATF said:

Even a player with Pycelle out can start the chain by playing his own search effect.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your statement, but I dont think this works... you can't play Summoning/Building Season and use Pycelle when your opponent searches, card reads "After an opponent's effect reveals one or more cards..."

For the chain to work, there need to be two players with Pycelle out. Either one of these players could play any search effect (not necessarily a plot effect) and start the chain off with their opponent's Pycelle.

"also how does crown title negate all 3 military challenges?"

I didn't say it negates all 3, I said it prevents all 3 opponents from making a Military challenge to you, as you can send one along.

"@ScottieATF: Hmm, am I right in thinking that your Melee environment is pretty low on character control? (VB, Milk, kill events, Grey Wind, Burn etc) Most decks around here have enough control elements to disrupt this kind of combo before it nets more than a few (3?) cards... and if all the players are in on it, then no one is really netting anything... "

Martell character control yes, as few players have a full Martell playset, but all the others are fairly common.

On to your second point, thats exactly why I feel almost forced into it. You can't afford to be the odd man out. If all players are doing it, it's a push, but if 3 out of 4 are and you aren't, and you can't disrupt 2 others (because why would those in on it mess up their party), then you are playing behind 2-3 players that as one player noted can have over half their deck in hand.

My main point was you can't be the odd man out, because then you are stuck trying to disrupt everyone else, and doing so with them having a card advantage.

The best part about Pycelle, is that if there is another player with him out, and you're both getting a ton of cards, then you're not the only one at the table with a ton of cards for people to target!

If there isn't another Pycelle out, then he might grab you a few cards before he's killed, but it won't be enough to make yourself a target.

I did this at Iowa regionals with one other guy and it was sick. And we both kept having the same number of cards in hand so RBD wouldn't work (that was just happy happenstance). I probably had a hand size of 15 by the time the game was over. I didn't win, but the other pycelle hombre did. And didn't this go crazy at LCG days as well?

Yes, sir. I didn't run it myself, but I sure watched Dobbler and Nickler go crazy with it.

goshdarnstud said:

I did this at Iowa regionals with one other guy and it was sick. And we both kept having the same number of cards in hand so RBD wouldn't work (that was just happy happenstance). I probably had a hand size of 15 by the time the game was over. I didn't win, but the other pycelle hombre did. And didn't this go crazy at LCG days as well?

I was playing Nick's deck at Iowa (with less than half as much success) and in my third round game, Andrew "The Wrecking Ball" Crum and I got this going first turn. I managed to dupe my Pycelle and both of our opponent's were playing defense oriented decks. Since his was Direwolf-centric, we'd trigger off a Search Plot, Jeyne Westerling, Wolf Dreams and Winterfell Kennels. He got RBD's when we were at 17 and 15 respectively, but even afterward, he broke 15 and I hit 20+ cards in hand _and still finished last_. :/ It's kinda revolting.

New FAQ posted. This whole topic is completely moot now.