Hi all,

I've been playing Greyjoy recently in joust (can't seem to get a good melee in Tokyo!) and I'm having trouble using the Drowned God themed cards in my deck. I've based my deck off of Darksbane's suggested CS x2 deck here:

http://www.cardgamedb.com/forums/index.php?/topic/207-4-decks-built-from-2x-core-set/

My Sets:
CS x2
Queen of Dragons
Kings of the Sea
Wolves of the North CP
The Wildling Horde CP
The Battle of Blackwater Bay CP

House Card: Greyjoy
Total cards: 65

Plots:

An Empty Throne
The Breaking of Oaths
Loyalty Money Can Buy
Muster the Realm!
The Power of Arms
Rise of the Kraken
Valar Morghulis

Characters: 31

Aeron Damphair (KotS)
Asha Greyjoy (KotS) x2
Balon Greyjoy (KotS) x2
Dagmer Cleftjaw (KotS)
Drowned Disciple (KotS) x2
Drownded Fanatic (KotS)
Drumbeater (KotS) x2
Euron Crow's Eye (KotS) x2
Maester Wendamyr (KotS)
Mercenaries from Pyke (KotS)
Priest of a Drowned God (KotS)
Randyl Tarly
Scurvy Cutthroat (KotS) x3
Sea Raiders (KotS) x3
Shadowcat x2
Stowaway (KotS) x2
Theon Greyjoy (KotS)
Victarion Greyjoy (KotS) x2
Wex Pyke (KotS)

Locations: 18

Aeron's Chambers (KotS)
Bay of Ice
Bloody Keep (KotS) x2
Gatehouse (KotS) x3
Longship Iron Victory (KotS) x2
Iron Island Fiefdoms (KotS) x3
Scouting Vessel (KotS) x2
The Iron Mines (KotS) x2
Sunset Sea x2

Events: 9

Ahead of the Tide (KotS) x2
Asseretion of Might (KotS)
Assault of the Kraken (KotS) x2
Drinking the Sea (KotS)
Risen from the Sea (KotS) x2
Seasick

Attatchments: 7

Pulled Under (KotS)
Seafarer's Bow (KotS) x2
Support of Harlaw (KotS) x2
Veteran Marauder (KotS) x2

I've been playing mainly Lannister and Targdecks, with the occasional Bara. Our group mainly only has access to what you see above, plus the Kings of the Storm expansion, so we're not metagaming too hard - just light shadows and season manipulation. The Drowned God cards haven't been very useful in my games and I've been slowly phasing them out with Scurvy Cutthroats to counter some of the Targ players attatchments.

The remaining cards in the deck are:

Aeron Damphair - I live this card because of the STR and stealth, and his ability would be great if I was really keen on the other crested (sorry, I can't recall what that crest is called now...) cards in my deck.
Drowned Fanatic - Is making an opponent get rid of two cards really effective? As I write this I'm thinking it actually 'is' but my normal Targ opponent tends to keep a few Kingsroads locations to prevent me from winning initiative and give her extra influence for her ambushes.
Drownded Disciple - Another card with sealth never hurts, but at 3G and only 1 STR, I again have to question how much I want to make my opponent burn down his deck through discards.
Priest of the Drowned God - A situational card that relies on me having that crest out (though I could always give 1 STR to the Priest) - plus I'm throwing away my cards now.

I guess I can see the potential in the Drowned cards, but I don't know if they are right for my deck.

At 65 cards, I could really just toss all of them out to bring me to 60. But I'm wondering if anyone has had a lot of success with these cards and can offer advice on where to sub or cut.

As always, thanks for all the advice/suggestions ahead of time!

porkins

The crest is "Holy" - and it's main advantage is the number of other cards that play off it. A Greyjoy Holy deck can be quite a force to be reckoned with - in fact, one of them won a major Melee earlier this year (You can see the deck-list here: http://www.agotcards.org/deck/v/1577 , the article describing the win here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news_new.asp?eidn=2309 ).

What you need to make such a deck work, above all, are two "The Power of Faith" plot cards. With those, and a whole truckload of "Holy" characters, you become a force to be reckoned with. With an initiative win, the stealth on characters like Drowned Disciple and Aeron Damphair and scouting vessels, you can essentially guarantee unopposed challenges that don't cost you future blockers. Characters like Tarle Thrice Drowned, and a variety of other greyjoy saves, allow you to survive even aggressive retaliation and even turn it to your favor. The Melissandre included in that deck is just icing on the cake.

I've put together a number of GJ Holy builds and I've found that the Holy characters generally work well if you build the deck around the theme, but are not particularly effective if you only use a few of them. Drowned Disciple is most useful if you are running them 3x and running 3x Aeron and fetching one every time Aeron dies, but otherwise they are a bit costly. Drowned Fanatic isn't very helpful unless the raiding helps you somehow (draw off Fishmonger's Square, raiding as a major subtheme, etc). Priest of the Drowned God is a combo card; it can help bump STR if a character has Intimidate or Support of Harlaw or help push though a challenge if you have some Scouting Vessels available but it isn't all that useful by itself.
As Istaril said, when you put them all together and use Power of Faith it works really well, but just a smattering of Holy guys in a non-Holy deck won't be as helpful as some other GJ cards. The one exception is Tarle, who can be tossed into almost any GJ build.

Thanks for the recommendations. Over the past week, I took out the Holy crest cards and went 0-2 vs. my wife's Targ deck, then put them back in and fared no better with 2 more loses. Without Kings of the Storm, I don't think I'll be able to include them. I'd love to get more expansions and chapter packs, but they are hard to come by in Japan.