Rogue30 said:

Then maybe the next poll should be about which House is the weakest. You probably couldn't list specific builds, but could at least get a consensus. Then ask about strongest and weakest again about a month after we get the Lanni box and see how much the answers have changed...

Skowza said:

Yes, that would be interesting, although I wouldn't count on consensus in that matter.

Staton said:

Strangely enough, this also directly correlates to why I haven't played Lannister at a competitive event in two years.

Staton said:

I'm a baratheon control fan. prove it. you have the best control card (black cells), phenom standing effects, and a lot renown characters. (unopposed mel is silly). win with it. consistantly. bara control has the second best control build that i have ever seen. played at gencon. scrubbed out.martel can do the same things with half the cards.

Well, the *final* results are in. When combined by houses, here’s what we have for the

125 votes – FFG Forums/CardGameDB/AgotCards.org
Martell – 48%
Baratheon – 17%
Greyjoy – 10%
Targ – 10%
Stark – 7%
Lannister – 3%
Other – 6%

74 votes – French Forums
Stark – 36%
Martell – 22%
Greyjoy – 13%
Baratheon – 10%
Targaryen – 10%
Lannister – 4%

The most interesting statistic to me in the Stark statistic, in both categories. When I originally posted this poll, I suspected Stark would be upper-middle of the pack. That clearly isn't the case for the general poll, where there was strong consensus that it is not the strongest house. In contrast, Stark easily beat out Martell as the top house in France.

As previous respondents have noted about Lannister, placing near the bottom isn't necessarily an indication that a house is weak...Lannister, for example, might consistently take 2nd or 3rd at major tournaments. There does, however, seem to be consensus across metas that:

Martell easily remains one of the most dominant houses. The preferred build appears to be summer.

Lannister and Targaryen are least likely to win a major tournament.

Greyjoy is fairly competitive, albeit on the fringes. Though I don't have earlier data for comparison, based on the 2011 regionals season (see Thrones Times for a breakdown of house representation) I would guess that Greyjoy has jumped up significantly in competitiveness.

Perceptions are largely shaped by the region you play the game in, but not completely confined to it. (For example, excluding Stark and Martell, results from both polls are fairly close.)

Thanks for crunching all the data!

clu said:

clu said:

Just to be clear, I was just kidding. I was talking more about winning dominance than actually winning games. However, I do think Baratheon is a fairly strong house right now. The best? No. In the top three? Yes. As for Bara Control, the problem is that its too expensive. Even then, they just don't have much control outside of some awesome locations. I'm hoping that with Joust coming back that we'll get to see some more challenge based control. I think there needs to be some more event and character control to really make this work. I actually think something that would help tremendously would be something like that old event that bara had that let you kneel two influence to steal a character for a turn. Obviously it'd have to be made into a new card, but just something along those lines.

As it stands now, Bara is best utilized as a rush house. Most people don't really seem to enjoy this type of deck, but it can actually be fairly consistent and fast if built right. I'm willing to bet we'll see at least one bara rush deck in the top 8 at Days.

Those numbers don't surprise me at all. The EU meta is generally quite different than the US meta. Stark has always been very popular in EU, and some of the best players over there play it. One of the reasons that I think Martell and Lannister have done so well in the past here in the US is due to the fact that so many of the best players flock to those houses. Since the game has transitioned to the LCG, and as a result has been opened to a much wider player base, we are starting to see very competitive decks from the other houses. However, I've always felt that the answers to "What is the best house?" and "Which house is going to win?" don't have to be the same.

Its just hard to reconcile what th data point to with what i know to be true. Lannister is fully capable of winning just about any major tournament right now in the hands of a capable player. They just aren't popular at the moment - but theya re still a Tier 1 House with few weaknesses adn tremendous assets(card advantage and resources).

Stag Lord said:

I feel the problem why Lannister isn't seen as the top house is it's reliance on card advantage and ally/2 str characters. The reason the old Lannister build is not as good as it was is that other houses have gained a lot more ground in card advantage and Lannister kneel is most of the times one shot so when you lose the draw war you also lose your ability to control the other players board. Heck even Stark with search can easily out draw Lannister that chooses castellan over the cache (cache currently being very vulnerable thanks to tin link). The character base is more vulnerable thanks to increased ally hate. The biggest problem still is that it hasn't gotten any new cards so people are bored with playing it and everyone knows how you should play against a lannister kneel build as the deck hasn't changed and will most likely not surprise anyone.

Honestly I don't think Lannister is in the top three. They are just too slow at actually winning. It gives the other player lots of time to try and get around their lockdown. Now I'm not saying that they can't win. I think they are still very competitive. However, if you take two people of the same skill and one is running a Martell or Bara or Stark deck, or hell even Greyjoy at this point, and the other is running a Lannister deck I think the Lannister deck will lose 8 outta ten games. It used to not be a problem that it took them awhile to win, but the other houses have gotten sped up over the cycles. Almost every house but lannister has some sort of delayed rush, and Lannister doesn't. So all you have to do is wait it out and get a few good turns and you beat them.

Staton said:

True when was the last time you saw a "championship level player" playing Lanni at a big event anyhow?

John Bruno at CaliCon, but that was mostly because John has an incest fetish and loves having Jaime and Cersei on the table at the same time. He was considering running them out of Martell, but figured it wasn't worth it.

goshdarnstud said:

See my above comment about not playing Lannister for two years because I'm not rewarded with drinking and whoring.

Kennon said:

So you're saying you'll play lannister at the next ChiCon?

I just threw one together for MN because of this thread! Lanni kneel still brings the heat. Still standing by that it's the 2nd best house.

I'm assuming that Butterbumps is the #1 House?

Staton said:

i thought that's why we haven't even brought it up because it was such a given! On topic, kneel is easyish to play and you only have to main deck 9 cards with kneel effects for it to be competitive. Most Lanni I've seen is control, kneel + dissension + uber efficient characters.

Yeah I don't consider the all kneel all the time approach to be the best Lannister deck. I think their best builds are still probably shadows, just because they can get some cards to speed up their power gain. Plus, when was the last time you saw someone running antishadows tech? Also, I've never been too impressed with Lanni's character base. What characters would you run in a Lanni deck? I think they have some awesome chuds, but nothing that has that big of an impact. Sure the characters are very efficient, but they don't really do much. Vanilla! that's the word I was looking for! They are just kinda vanilla. It seems like efficiency just isn't enough these days. Your characters need to actually DO something, even if all it does is have a keyword.

Staton said:

Kings law is in quite a few decks. Other than that, no.

Really? I haven't seen it in any of the Iowa stuff. I think maybe one deck was running it in the last tourney. Granted, even if it was run its not really enough to not run shadows.

Staton said:

Ditto on the King's Law. It's probably the only anti-shadow tech I would run though.

Vanilla though? King Joffrey isn't Vanilla. Neither is Bronn, Burned Men, Queen Cersei, Shadows Tyrion... New Jaime is pretty cool. Lannister has a ton of character diversity, and they don't even have a box yet.

House X rearguard/guard/host/army/knight/champion with a military and power icon and maybe renown. That is vanilla. (Oh you can stand them too, sweet!)

Yeah, they don't win quickly. They only have 6 characters with renown, and those 6 don't even work together all that well. But you shouldn't be trying to play Lannister like Baratheon anyway.

Oh so the Unique characters from your house do stuff? cool story brah. Oh wait, the burned men aren't unique! sweet, one non vanilla non unique card. Now there are others in Lannister, but not nearly as many as other houses. Lannister does have renown, I'm not disputing that. However, Lannister is still weak at closing out the game. Other houses just do it quicker. I'm not saying build a Lannister rush deck, I'm saying they need help to get power mid to late game before other houses get a chance to get out from under the lockdown. Nice job putting words in my mouth though, that was clever.

Staton said:

lol. Did I hit a nerve? Good god.

I thought we were talking about "Vanilla" characters, not unique characters. Baratheon is and always has been the king of "Vanilla" characters. That's why I found this funny enough to reply.

If Lanni resets with a full hand, and you have 2-3 cards in hand. That's Lanni's game. Why would I need means to grab extra power in a situation like this?

Staton said:

I fail to see what words he tried to put into your mouth? He was only disputing your claim that most of Lanni's cards are vanilla by providing examples of what vanilla is and that Lanni has quite a few that aren't. You labeled all Lanni cards indirectly as being "vanilla" because there isn't much cooperation between them, but that doesn't make them vanilla. It just means you need to find other ways to make them be in sync. Also, when has any Lannister character happily dealt with another Lannister character in the source material? They're at each other's throats and barely trusting of each other. The only two pairings that ever seemed to cooperate was Jaime-Tywin and Jaime-Tyrion, exception of Jamie-Cersei because of later books.

It's true though that Lannister does need more cards that help give life to their given themes. I find Clansmen are good but leave something lacking. At the very least other Houses themes can at least fall back on a secondary challenge type if their primary focus fails (Baratheon has a mix between intrigue and military when their power challenges are blocked, Targaryen has a blend of power and military, Greyjoy can go all three fairly easily, etc.). I feel that Lannister needs a new theme type to be introduced. All five other Houses (six if you count Neutral) have multiple possibilities in-House whereas Lannister has only one or two. They need more versatility. I think it would be beneficial if they had used the upcoming Lanni box to introduce past Lannisters from the source history that CAN cooperate with other Lannisters. Not one or two that blend well enough that requires outside help to make them workable.