berto said:

Its because your best players didn't play TMP.

@ Mathias Fricot:

You are seriously asking how Targaryen deals with GG ? By killing the Nobles, of course. They burn just like everyone else. You ask how Lannister deals with Ghaston Grey ? By drawing a TON of cards, FLOODING the table with cheap characters AND Kneeling EVERY character the Martell player has. Then they initiate challenges with TWO characters. Suddenly it doesn't matter if you return their Mountain Refugee to their hand, because the Moneylender still gets the job done. The answer for Bara ? I don't know, maybe just play duplicates and Loyal Guards on your Noble renown characters, or play 3 Nightmares and get the job done before he has time to really set up.

@Mathias Fricot and Staglord:

You know what ? You can discuss all day on message boards why Ghaston Grey in theory is invincible, if you want. In REALITY, i.e. the real gaming/tournament world, NO REAL PROBLEM EXISTS. How better to prove this but with a field test involving a 122 player environment from various metas. In the real world, Ghaston Grey might be powerful, but it is not a meta defining card. Neither is The Maesters Path.

Staton said:

Thus, it is not the cards, but the players that matter.

AegonTargaryen said:

If you have two players of the same skill, TMP deck will always win.

Staton said:

If that was the case then why isn't TMP dominating still? Seems to me its day in the sun was GenCon and those builds don't quite work anymore due to some errata. Same goes for Martell.

Even when you see TMP decks they are often "TMP Lite" employing only a very limited number of chains on agenda. Slapping a single chain on TMP really doesn't make it strong. It means you get 1 gold and 1 card during the challenge phase. Clearly monstrous.

playgroundpsychotic said:

I was at a joust tournament in Sheffield last weekend (only 14 players) which was won by a Martell deck playing TMP (only 6 chains). Does that means it's a lite version of the deck? Does that really matter?! It's still a TMP deck. I came second with a BWB Martell deck, only using 5 brotherhood characters. Does that make it a BWB lite deck?

Anyhow, of the top 5 finishes four of them were Martell (all completely different builds) and one Targ TMP deck. Alright, not a particularly large field but a completely unsurprising composition for the final tables, with the overall winner playing both Martell and TMP...

Nitro Pirate said:

I clearly stated what you would expect from a TMP Lite deck. Does having one chain on the Agenda really all that game breaking? Think about what it does for you. You have to win a challenge with a printed Maester to effectively net 1 card and 1 gold. This is clearly game breaking. Nevermind that a lot of players use At The Gates to get a useful character in play regardless of what deck they use. Thus winning a challenge with a Maester is a relatively meager feat to gain a one time small bonus. TMP might seem a little stronger with more chains on it but this leads to more disruption potential.

I'll counter your example of your tournament. It seems to me the problem with your tournament is that few wanted to try to counter the Maester deck. When I look at a top deck it usually has a few different ways of dealing with potential opponents. It might neglect something but often involves variable amounts of character, attachment and location hate. If you think TMP is a danger then tech specifically against it.

This leads us to Stahleck, Days of Ice and Fire and the Spanish Nationals. All heavily attended with minimal amounts of TMP placing well. That's not to say TMP is underpowered. The Spanish Nationals was won by Martell TMP although other TMP decks were eliminated early. Martell placed a little better but was largely locked out as well. To me this says more of Stukov's playing ability rather than how powerful TMP or Martell are.

AegonTargaryen said:

I appreciate your enthusiam, but lets calmdownbro.jpg here for a second. Maybe some day I will be just as good as you at the game of thrones card game. I'm not trying to upset you with my opinion of Ghaston Grey, so don't hate on me or Stag for our conclusions: hate on our conclusions. Tell me why we are wrong, if you can present a good enough argument I will be convinced. "cheap characters AND Kneeling EVERY character the Martell player has" and "Killing the Nobles" or "play 3 Nightmares" doesn't do it for me. Right now, based on my conclusion, its a good card. Its a very very good card.

Vanilla character control is a problem when it can hit any and every character in the game (minus 1). If you don't think so then don't meta against it. Just be ready to argue your point about how its not a good card while your losing to it.

Furthermore, if The Measter's Path wasn't defining it would not have been erratad, and thats not the point I was making. Even post errata if you don't think its defining then you must not think it smooths out all the decks that had hiccups, like your namesake Targ. I can imagine the Tier 1 targ players out there would agree that it is defining because without it lots of decks wouldn't be competitive at the level they are, even if thats just a more consistent casual deck. That doesnt necessarily mean it is all powerful and unstoppable.

Lets try and keep it friendly here okay?

Mathias Fricot said:

But it isn't cleared up. It doesn't necessarily advance your relative board position, it advances your gold advantage, you are denying your opponent a gold or two they may have spent somewhere else, but may and would be able to, or even wanted to is entirely different. And Ghost of High Heart costs 2. If that card is coming back you are going to have to use Myrcella to target her every turn, because if you don't she will discard your noble that you return to hand (assuming that her ability and cost are unchanged whenever she is released). So your 2 cost for their 2 cost, now your three or four or five cost for their character that is actually going to be winning challenges and pushing them closer to the win...

Board advantage is not hard to calculate. Count the number of characters, compare the strength and abilities of those characters. Whoever comes out ahead has the board advantage. You could certainly be advancing your board position if you remove a character whose presence tilts the board advantage in your opponents favor by sacrificing a character whose presence is less than that character. Characters like GoHH are weak in board advantage but strong in card advantage. It just isn't as clear cut as "I got rid of a character I would not normally use the effect for one they would."

Now gold advantage or more properly speaking resource advantage goes to whomever is able to play or put more cards into play with equal effects/abilites (or better) while having to tax their resource pool the least. So every time you can spend two gold to remove a card that cost your opponent three you have gained advantage there. Now that Greyjoy choke is getting some real play, even that is not necessarily going to ensure you an advantage because that two gold to play Myrcella turn after turn is not guaranteed to comparatively less than them paying three or four gold to put out a card. If that 2 gold (with reducers) is all your gold, but they are able to routinely put a 3-4 cost character into play turn after turn then you are again just creating parity here.

Now a Choke deck that is forcing you to lose on the resource metric and on the board position metric has neutralized your GG.

Now these are all philosophical debates. The actual game you are playing, who gets what out and when is going to really determine how good GG is in that matchup. My choke deck hasn't lost to a Martell Summer deck focusing on GG yet. I'm sure it will, lord knows my other decks have been chewed apart by it at times, but that is sort of the whole point right? Figuring out where the meta is going and what deck and combo of cards gives you the best chance of beating the field?

GG is a great GREAT card! No argument from me there. I don't see it as the boogieman that so many people seem to think it is though. Maybe it is just my meta.

Penfold, I agree a lot is over exaggerated. It isn't the end of the world, but its a very good control card.

I do disagree with your description of what is board advantage and what is resource advantage and what is card advantage. GoHH will redraw into the card pulled, so it isn't card advantage in the traditional sense - its not making less cards in a player's hand (unless they have already hit cap). Its tactical benefit is obvious, no doubt. But it isn't strict good old fashioned card advantage.

Losing a 2str pwr character to have your opponent lose a 3-8 strength character (regardless of icons) IS relative board advantage, because relative to each other, he is doing worse than he was before to a greater extent than you are doing worse than you were before. But agree to disagree on why its good, we can both agree it is good

Just curious, which houses are people seeing that play "TMP-lite?" All I've seen so far is Lanni, though I can imagine some GJ or Stark builds might play only 2-3 chains.

For the most part, the "TMP-lite" option really doesn't appeal to me, except for possibly in Lannister. By running TMP, you lose out on the ability to play other agendas, which is a very big downside for most houses. Typically, all the card advantage that comes with TMP easily balances out the loss. But in a "TMP-lite" build (fewer than 3 chains), you aren't really getting much card advantage. Even if you run At the Gates + Valyrian Steel Link (1 chain), your using a plot effect + sacrificing the opportunity to run a different just to have +1 card draw...which you quickly lose after Valar (or faster against Targ). That is a pretty big investment. In any house other than Lanni it seems like a waste to me to run fewer than 3 chains. (I think the sweet spot for most decks is somewhere between 3-6 chains.)

A Poisoned Spear was just spoiled and I must admit that seeing the card made me a little angry. This is the second attachment that gives Martell targeted kill. I think it seems like a decently powered card as well, I understand you must rid the icons from the character first but is that really that difficult to do? Not only that it gives a character joust! Many people probably know by now that having a joust character with stealth greatly increases your chances of winning a challenge so it will be much easier to trigger the response from the spear. I just don't understand why a house needs an answer to every aspect of the game.

Rant over.

Wrecking Ball said:

It isn't bad, but really is it tier-one? They have so much more effiecent control already, and the negatives are pretty strong:

1. It is an attachment. Enough said. There have been all of 4-5 positive (on your own characters) attachments that have been playable on their own w/o an agenda to help out.

2. You have to participate with that character. Lots of removal or kneeling out there.

3. You ahve to rid the character of icons. Again, usually that means another moving part (although it seems that more is coming down the pike for Martell).

A good card, but I could just use GG + Noble, or intrigue plus Game of C, or put in other control cards that might work even better.

What's the point with Martell? It's ridiculous cards it receives.

With spear in game If I play first, no attack because Martel has The Viper's Rage. If I play second Martell player uses Orphan and attak. No sense.

Please, a little test on Martell cards, this is absurd.

Wrecking Ball said:

I dunno. Its very good but does require some additional work to use properly. Nightfall seems distinctly better. Certainly much better than Warhammer though (which seems like something you use against Bara not with).

One thing that has me interested is new support for no agendas. I'm interested although its something they should have released earlier rather than later.

Isn't this just Poisoned Knife all over again?

It got spoiled, people panicked about how insane it was going to be... and then it wasn't that big a deal.

Don't get me wrong, Martell gets more than its fair share of absurd cards and I don't understand why FFG keeps printing stuff for them that's so clearly above the curve. But when you compare it to the rest of the tools Martell already has, I suspect that this won't actually make that big an impact on metas (if only because Martell players have better, non tin-linkable, things to bring to the table already).

Mathias Fricot said:

Mathias Fricot said:

I can't tell if you are just not reading what I am writing or if I am not saying it clearly enough.

The card CAN give you board advantage, but it does not do so automatically. I already showed that if they have GoHH out that your cheapest noble must now absolutely be used to remove it rather than that +3 gold character, which means now you have to use your +3 gold noble to rid them of a character that will actually be used in challenges or using abilities that will affect your own board position. This is simply a fact. Your 2 gold character and mine are both returned. Now it is your 3 or greater gold character against one of mine. That might constitute betterment of board position, but that depends on the quality of cards being returned now doesn't it? My choke deck runs exactly one character above cost 3. You are VERY unlikely to get board advantage against my Choke deck with GG in that regard, because the moment that GoHH is legal she goes in, probably x2.

As to GoHH giving card advantage... well I can always remove the best card you have in your hand or the one which most adversely affects my plans, or best synergizes with what you have on the board. You in turn get a random draw. There will be times when it will put a card of equal worth in your hand and times when it will put a better card in your hand... but a trade off between a known good card a potentially good card is one most people will take time and time again.

The thing that bothers me isn't that this is a crazy powerful card, its not. Its pretty good though. The thing that bothers me is that if this was in another house it would be tier 1. Well assuming it said knelt character or character without a power icon or something to fit the other houses themes. However in Martell this card isn't even going to see play! Because they have TOO MANY awesome cards. Like wtf?

I'm facing a Martell Maesters deck, I've already lost all my attachments, the field is full of huge maesters played at cost 0. They setup with 52 cards, don't kneel to attack and sometimes also to defend, they cancel valar, draw at least 5 cards every turn... But I keep going...I have to get to that bloody Ghaston Grey that keeps hitting me !!

They already bounced me back so many times: I lost icon's, bounced back to hand, got str reduced to 0.But this time I'm gonna get it !! 2 marauders... 3 marauders..... First one get bounced (eh...the last shot for that bloody GG), second one goes too (well cyvasse is cyvasse,the only pity is that costed him just a weenie maester thanks to STR reduction,) but now i'm finally there facing just few gigantic 3 icon maesters: but now I can beat them and finally destroy it...destroy Ghaston Grey!!!. but hold on.... what was I thinking ? That I could really touch a Martell ?

msommi said:

LOL... This one time, I nearly busted a Martell Maester's Ghaston Grey too.

He played retaliation, I was first player... the time was ripe, condemned by the council was sat in my hand waiting to leap out... But I reckoned without Edric Dayne, Game of Cyvasse and Parting Blow. Turns out I got two four cost characters back into my hand, lost one of them (and the condemned) to an intrigue challenge, and had my remaining characters slain by a Lost Spearman. Time to Wildfire Assault, but OHH NOEEES, I'VE BEEN OUTWITTED ONCE AGAAAAINNN!!!

So close though. I'm gonna tell my grandkids that one.

msommi said:

Dude.....Brilliant. lol.

Round 3 of the joust tournament. I play my Targaryen KotHH vs. a former German champion's Martell Maesters, someone I consider a very good player. He has a great setup with 3 characters and two locations. He starts with At the Gates and I play Threat from the North and Hatchlings Feast, and all his characters including his Maesters are discarded. He plays a second wave of characters. I answer with Flame Kissed, Dragon Thief and I don't remember what. He loses a character to military claim and a card to my intrigue challenge. Next round I play Take Them by Surprise, draw a card with Bay of Ice, play Forever Burning, marshall Thundering Cavalry, discard his Orphan, carrion crow and another character (the victim of FB). He loses one more to military claim and more cards to intrigue (he has no intrigue icons left on the table). He plays some more characters, I think a Conclave among them. For the first time in this game, he wins a challenge with a master character on the table and places a chain. Next turn, I velar and the turn after that easily seal the deal with Ser Barristan, some other cards and Raeny's Hill. In the entire game, he was able to get one chain from his agenda. He cursed and told me he felt completely helpless in this match. True story from Stahleck.

AegonTargaryen said:

Great story - Targ is getting REALLY good right now actually, and trending better and better. Sounds like you had a pretty solid start yourself though

Actually, the deck worked kind of like this in 5 of 6 games in the Swiss Rounds (except for the Thundering Cavalry part, that worked only twice this day). In one game, when I did not have The Hatchling's Feast, I started with Valar instead and played Threat from the North and several Forever Burnings as my second reset later. In the end, I went 5-1 and made 8th place in Swiss out of 122 players.

My one (time) loss in the Swiss rounds was against a Martell Summer player who had a really excellent start himself. He made it summer in the first round and on top of that played two Viper's Bannerman in the first two rounds. Now that is what I call card adantage ! Also, these Bannermen are very resilient to burn effects ... and he played the dreaded GG. However, I burned everyone else, left him the field for a turn when he had a claim 1 plot and then killed both Bannermen and Arianne with Valar. He could not return Arianne to his hand with GG because I had no characters on the table ! The turn after Valar, he almost got a heart attack when I revealed Retaliation!, played Rhaeny's Hill, reanimated his Bannermen, Arianne and a decent pile of other dead characters, and got four cards from his former Bannermen myself. This round almost turned the tables (three claim intrigue with Arianne). But my reanimated army left and he came back when he drew a Samwell, played some Ravens and flooded the table with more characters, the Viper among them. With both Threat and Valar already used, I thought that was it, how could I survive until the plots where recycled two plots from now ? But among the next six cards I drew (Bay of Ice) I got my second Rhaeny's hill ! My opponent immediately began to complain how broken and overpowered that card is. However, when I used Rhaeny's Hill once more (4 more cards for me), I had more characters now and he was able to make multiple attacks with his Viper, keeping the pressure going, and I had mainly to prevent him from winning this round. Also, he played Edric Dayne and used him with GG to return the reanimated Arianne to his hand. Even though I killed one of his characters, at the end of the seventh round, he had 14 power, two of those on characters, however. I knew he had Arianne and Edric in hand. But my hand was full of cards, too, burn cards among them, and Valar would kill his characters on the table next turn, including the Viper, so maybe I could turn the tides once more. But at this moment, a judge appeared and told us that we should not start the next round, as time had been already called. So he won with 14 power to my 10. A great and entertaining match.

I then lost to a Lannister Maester in the first round of Top32. The chains did not matter, as he was only able to play them when he actually had already won the game. My opponent told me after the game he even was afraid in the beginning his agenda would turn against him when if I eliminated all his maesters. Again I started with Threat from the North and Hatchlings Feast and killed a good bunch of wheenies. But he had a Golden Tooth Mine and two Pyromancer's Caches online very soon. This insane amount of card draw broke my resistance, as he drew lots of kneeling events, his kneeling locations and of course additional characters. A Favorable Ground was not enough to stop him at this point (the Caches were on limited locations) and it hurt me too, as I had to discard my only Bay of Ice. I never drew a Dragon Thief or Meereenese Brothel to stop the Caches before it was to late. In the end, he intrigued away my hand, brought out a Conclave and won by placing all his chains with two turns of unopposed challenges.

You can still return Arianne to hand, it just doesn't successfully resolve GG.