Martell only. Response: After a Sand Snake character is killed, kneel 1 influence to search your deck for 1 Sand Snake character, reveal it, and add it to your hand. (Kneel 3 influence to search for any number of Sand Snake characters and put them into play instead if The Red Viper was just killed). Then shuffle your deck.

If Red Viper will be killed can I put in play 5 sand sneak characters each with 2 duplicates into play?

That's right. The five unique ones with two dupes each and three Bastard Daughters.

hehehe it's sick. There is a lot of rumor about Cellar Aprrentice but this card beats mentioned chain attachment with power level at least 2 times.

Build the deck. See how often you can get The Red Viper to die before you draw (or have to play) one of those 18 Sand Snake cards (pretty big chunk of your deck...) early enough in the game to make it worthwhile. It takes a lot to get that combo off - and quite honestly, the Sand Snakes are not so amazing that pulling it off is going to win you the game.

I know it looks powerful, but in practice, it's both unreliable and not a "finisher."

If you can can pull it off early, I think that should pretty much be the game in most cases. I mean, it's basically one guy with pretty much his starting hand against another guy with pretty much his starting hand plus eight tricons with Stealth, Deadly and Vengeful, five of them double-duped uniques. Hard to come back from that. To pull it off, you need the Viper, the event and three Influence early on, and then the Viper needs to get killed. Certainly not impossible, but pretty far away from the kind of consistency you'd like to see in a competitive environment. Also, let's not forget the event can be cancelled.

It's great fun if it does go off, though. I once played a game in which my opponent pulled it off turn one, and we both laughed very hard. I held my ground pretty well, but succumbed eventually. Bottom line, this is great for casual play. For tourneys, not so much. Just my $ 0.02 of course.

Ratatoskr said:

Plus, that whole "if you can pull it off early" is a huge limitation. You have to remember that your deck is roughly one-third Sand Snake characters. The odds are really good that you're going to pull 2-3 of those cards in every setup hand. Do you hold them back or not? Do you put them into play and risk them being killed before your combo or not?

I'm telling you, build the deck and you'll see. It's not very good. It looks great on paper, but its execution is pretty lame.

ktom said:

You're preaching to the choir here. Maybe I didn't express myself well, but I actually agree with you 100% on all points, except that I think the effect, if it does go fully off, may be stronger than you give it credit for. Certainly not impossible to come back from, but very hard. Even in your example with Wildfire (which is pretty far from being included in every deck), you're still three double-duped tricons with Stealth, Deadly and Vengeful ahead of your opponent (well, minus one Viper).

For the record, I assert three things concerning the combo:

1) The effect, if it does go off to anything close to its full extent, is pretty **** strong and hard, although not impossible, to recover from.

2) The build is highly inconsistent, and not really competitive, although it should be able to get some wins.

3) In casual play, it can be great fun, though, if only because it's a huge WTF moment when it does work. Your inner Shagga will have a field day.

Actually you need only one influence and event. Red you can get from Summoning. with many influence location you get one for sure.The worst thing is with event. Here you need mulligan twice or even three times with Obara. You can have flea to get another 5 cards. I would say probability to get it early is much bigger than you think. The only plot which give a little chances to recover is assult which is not played very often and even with this plot you have still 3 very good save characters in the game and free valaar to clear your opponent side. consistent build will be difficult but not impossible. We need a lot of draw and can effor to loose some challanges even unopposed.WE can use some blocking plots just in case if we need to wait for event a little bit longer. You will see guys this card will be very fast errated or restricted/banned.

berto said:

Well, you need 3 influence if you want to search for all your Sand Snakes.

berto said:

Well, the card has been out for eight months now. Since then, there's been GenCon and how many Regionals? 20? 25? If a Sand Snake deck built around No Use for Grief has made any splash in any of them, I haven't heard about it. The card is not an issue in the current environment, and hasn't ever been since it came out. As far as I can see, it's not even being played. So I really don't think it warrants an erratum or restricting/banning.

berto said:

Perhaps Berto forgot to say that you should run the Knights of the Hollow Hill agenda in this proposed deck. That would give two influence, leaving you only needing one more. With Summoning Season and Valar as plots, you'd be down to just needing to draw 1 influence provider and the event itself on the first turn in order to pull this off. Disclaimer: I am not arguing that this is a top-tier strategy, but it might be a fun casual deck as Ratatoskr suggested.

schrecklich said:

That's definitely not what he was saying given how he was talking about setups.

Of course I thought about Agenda. That's the reason that you need only 1 remaining influence. Having a lot of characters with inf 1 plus some location you can get it 100 %. The most important issue is to get event. Two or three mulligans help, flea and messanger give speed we can even consider more draw like Tommy or King's Landings. It will be sufficient to get it. I'm pretty sure this is tier 1 and I'm gonna to prove it on coming Stahleck if I don't decide to go with Targ combo which is as sick as this one.

When you get kombo even with Assult it's over, fear of winter, blockade vallar thanks for playing had fun. Having three save tricons with deadly, vangeful and stealth what wrong can happen?

I didn't know to be homest that dupes come in play. This is the big difference and lack of playability for this card was caused probably by reasoning that it can be only singles brought to play. With reset as a must have it would give u nothing. But wth dupes is quite different story

The card with all effects, including the fact that it gets the dupes into play, has been known very well by the community since it's been spoiled, so I don't think that's it. Anyway, the two of us will have plenty of opportunity to thoroughly test this build in the coming weeks, so I guess we will see.

And then Maester Robert burns them all away on a Threat from the North turn

But I want to put together a Sand Snake deck together as well. Would be hilarious to actually get the combo off.

Saturnine said:

Nevermind what I said. He was talking about mulligans, not setups.

Ratatoskr said:

I returned after 3 years of break. I was AGOT freak before but rotation of ITE and 5KE was too much for me. Now I'm back and still I can find cards which surprises me. This card just set strategy for snake build and made this deck at least playable. Still a lot of skills is needed to create tier 1 build. I'm glad that there are more people who see potential in this combo.

berto said:

Saturnine said:

I must be going blind. I don't see any mention of setup other than using Obara to mulligan.

-Istaril said:

~Personally, I'm especially looking forward to see the look on berto's face when I kill his lonely Viper turn one and then cancel the living **** out of his event...

Well, it is "He Calls it thinking" and "Paper-shield" proof, so while not invulnerable, it's reasonably hardy.

Anyway, Berto - the card itself is powerful, and impressive. It can win you a game. The deck built around it can work. But that doesn't mean the card needs banning, restricting or errata-ing. Do the math yourself, or try the deck.

Statistics > first impressions.

-Istaril said:

~Yeah, but it gets hit by Herald of the King, and what deck doesn't run three of those?

60 % in first round. But u can wait 1-3 plots so u should consider additional draw 6 cards plus possibility to have flea or messanger there, we can add Thomen for 3 gold as well or even Vipers Bannermans having 2 G from agenda

-Istaril said:

Clear. But I wanted to show u that there are other cards then maester which can much easier win game for u. I myself against banning errat-ing anything but after one deck type become successful there is a lot of rumor and finally he get cut-off. do u think that Burning on the sand for example is stronger card than this one?