Nitro Pirate said:

That doesn't work... GG only returns characters you "own and control" - if it let you return characters you own but someone else has taken control of, I definitely would be on the "GG is OP" bandwagon.

EDIT: Never mind, I understand what you mean.

It also just occurred to me that it can break Bolton decks too... as if it wasn't bad enough that it ends Brotherhood, targetting the right Bolton so you can slip a challenge through and claim all those jumpy Bolton guys will really hurt.

Don't forget you can also return your own characters to hand if you suspect Valar is incoming.

Contrarily to what several have already stated, I do not (yet) support the notion on restricting Ghaston Grey, though, with Myrcella out, this seems somewhat inevitable. It's a stellar card and perfectly thematic for the Martell. My outrage is caused by cards such as Venomous Blade and The Prince's Plans. Martell already has terrific mechanics in the terms of bounce, challenge / trait manipulation, draw etc. There was really no need to also give them two of the best burn and recursive cards in the environment. This is a Targ field, a house, which is already one of the low-tiers for years. The designers should eventually comprehend it: the Martell cannot and should not be able to do everything. They keep overpowering a house much to the chagrin of everyone else who made the fatal mistake of picking one of the other five houses. This tactic is going to cost them both old and potential players and they are going to realize it in the process. One fine step they could make to, at least, show that they start to treat all houses equally and respectfully would be to un-restrict the Bannermen and BAN Venomous Blade and the Prince's Plans altogether. Though, like I 've already said, probability dictates that Ghaston Grey will be next on the list.

Nitro Pirate said:

Sorry, this is way off-topic, but where's the tournament in Sheffield? who's running it etc. I'm based in Nottingham, and always on the look-out for AGoT events in this part of the world.

It is repeatable, and its favorite control friend VB is repeatable. And you don't kneel it - after Mycella comes out they are a very easy plus cost-effective way of wiping your board most turns. Plus you get the challenges out of it. I have returned the Red Viper to hand for goodness sakes many times, it is that good.

Comparing it to Writ Small or Lanni Pay Debts is not even apples to apples. Maybe Bear Island could be (although it is more restricted). But it is much easier/cheaper to get going, and the return to hand actually helps many times, and Stark doesn't have as a consistent 'follow-up' to keep boards clear as VB. Grey Wind is close, other than the fact that it is way more breakable, and kill is Stark's 'thing' so they don't have the other things to help as much.

Repeatable control > single time control. It is why cards are restricted - heck even Castellean.

I would be fine if #1 it knelt to use the ability, and #2 if it was restricted so you had to (boo-hoo) decided between which repeatable, easy-to-get going control you wanted No banning is needed, but the combo with VB is tough.

That being said, I am not surprised that it hasn't won tourneys. Well, they didn't have Mycella #1, but they can be beat by GJ choke, Lanni hyper-kneel, or Stark speed control.

i find it amusing that these turn into "we don't really play martell in europe" discussions.

truth is, martell in the states is a serious issue. cost-to-strength comparisons of martell vs. any other house in the current environment isn't really a comparison at all (IMHO).

The Nick-ler said:

While we agree on many things regarding the state of the game and I always enjoy/value our discussions, I don't think Martell's cost to strength is superior to most of the other houses. I do agree they are competitive, but it isn't because of their cost to strength ratios in my opinion.

Off the top of my head, this is what I come up with in terms of cost to strength per house (I'll leave out traitors and refugees, which are great cost to strength for every house).

Stark: Steelshank's Reserves, Knight of the Red Fork, Bastard's Elite, Host of the Bear, Flayed Men, Bolton Loyalist

Greyjoy: Distinguished Boatswain, Ancient Mariner, Iron Fleet Raiders, Fishwhiskers

Martell: Lost Refugee

Targaryen: Black Hatchling

Baratheon: None come to mind.

Lannister: None come to mind.

Now granted, I may be forgetting some cards, but I think this is a fairly good snapshot. It seems to me that Stark and Greyjoy actually have the best cost to strength ratios right now (ignoring neutrals and the above mentioned traitors and refugees available to all houses). Martell has some advantages in certain areas, but I don't think cost to strength is one of them.

Thoughts? Am I wrong here?

Nope, I think you're right on as far as a STR comparison goes. I can't help but wonder if when Nick mentioned 'strength' that he was actually referring to relative power level instead.

Sorry if this is derailing this topic, but I found ASoIaFfan's list of effective weenies quite interesting, so I decided to go through the deckbuilder and figure out what the actual numbers were per house. I was looking for anything that had a higher printed STR than its cost. I stopped at 3 cost characters, I didn't include any Shadows cards because they were showing up without the cost to put into Shadows, and I included the refugees and traitors ASoIaFfan excluded. I also included neutrals, and excluded Bearer of the Light and True-Queen's Harbingers for not having any icons and just being glorified reducers. They should be in order of cost.

Stark – 16 – Bolton Refugee, Hungry Mob, Direwolf Pup, Hodor, Knight of the Red Fork, Steelshanks’ Reserves, The Hound (PotS), Bolton Loyalist, House Tully Septon, Northern Scavengers, Ser Jorah Mormont, Steelshanks Walton, The Bastard’s Elite, The Flayed Men, Wolf Pack, Host of the Bear

Targaryen – 11 – Refugees of the Plain, Brown Ben Plumm, Disgruntled Mercenary, Black Hatchling (DB), Green Hatchling (TWH), Shadow Seer, Dragonstone Scavenger, Hired Swords, Horseback Archers, Horseback Hunters, Ser Jorah Mormont

Greyjoy – 10 – Island Refugees, Distinguished Boatswain, Fishwhiskers, Ancient Mariner, Iron Fleet Raiders, Kingsmoot Hopeful, Mercenaries from Pyke, Scavengers of the Sea, Sea Raiders, Banner for the Kraken

Lannister – 5 – Mountain Refugee, The Regent’s Spy, The Hound (PotS), Scavengers of King’s Landing, The Hound (Core)

Baratheon – 5 – Highgarden Refugee, Herald of Storm’s End, Stormland Scavengers, Summer’s Champion, Renly Baratheon (TRS)

Martell – 4 – Refugee of the Citadel, Lost Spearman, Southron Scavengers, The Bastard of Godgrace

Neutral – 12 – Vale Refugee, Walder Frey, Lost Ranger, Old Bear’s Crow, Ranger of the Watch, Gilly, Craster, Crow Killers, Former Champion, Mammoth Riders, Rattleshirt’s Raiders, The Hound (AToT)

Obviously some of these aren't cards you won't actually want to be using, and some have some pretty serious shortcomings that seriously hamper their efficiency. Keeping it to characters that are cheaper than their STR omits some strong weenies--2 cost, 2 STR has some of standouts, including one of my favorite weenies: House Payne Enforcer. Interesting that every version of The Hound is featured.

Kennon said:

This. He was clearly referring to strength of the card, not STR of the card.

Cost 2 STR 3 monocon isn't exactly what I'd call cost effective character

michaelius said:

It depends: when that character has useful keywords, traits and/or abilities, I wouldn't call it cost-ineffective, either (I'm thinking of Wolf Pack and Horseback Archers, I don't know the others so well).

I'm pretty much persuaded GG has to go. The lcoation control in the game is still very spotty - unless you're palying greyjoy. Too much of it is dependent on winning challenges - which you can never count on against Martell. If Newly Made Lord had been a staright reprint of Bandit Lord - i might have been sympatehtic to teh argument. as it satdns now - GG is undercosted (post Myrcella) and difficult to get rid of.

Stag Lord said:

Not sure I agree. Since Burning got restricted, winning challenges against Martell is probably not harder against the other houses; lots of their own effects depend on them losing challenges, after all. As for Location control, there's always Pyromancer's Apprentice.

ASoIaFfan said:

I stopped reading after Stark, as the vast majority of those cards are Bolton and you lose them on a regular basis, which ends up hurting you more (its harder to re-win a challenge of a given type now that your opponent controls that character).

And Knight of the Red Fork will kneel out your own cads, or not stand, and Host of the Bear will get discarded if your initiative is too low. So in reality, there are no Stark cards on that list.

You can run GG or Cyvasse in any martell deck. Good luck with trips of KotRF.

If GG should go then so should Lannisport Brothel and Alchemist Guild Hall. And of course that new location that removes 3 icons.

And now that we have removed any useful location based character control lets go after the harder to repeat but now the only things left character control since the control players will use them instead and everyone will ***** about it.

In fact the REAL complaint is: People are playing Martell. So if the requirement is to get people to stop complaining about this or that... then the solution is to restrict the Red Viper, Gold Tooth Mines, Lannisport Brothel, Alchemist Guild Hall, You killed the Wrong Dwarf, White Raven, Wintertime Marauders, Maester Wendamyr.

Now Martell, Greyjoy, and Lannister will no longer be played in tournaments.

And the next house on the chopping block is Targ: So restrict Eastern Fiefdoms, Khal Drogo's Tent, Red Keep, Crossroads, Dobbler's Agenda... done house is no longer functional.

And as for Stark: Doesn't matter nobody will play stark at Gencon anyhow, so they're fine.

We now have an environment where everyone plays Baratheon. Yay!!!!

Or you could just wait and see if GG becomes a problem after Martell (and other houses) get more character control options.

I have to say that GG is clearly just undercosted for the effect it has. Sorry but you cannot just compare ordinary character control against bounce effects.

Bounce effects are specially good in this game as they can (notice can not always) even give the player playing it all of these, usually just one or two but even more is possible. Resource advantage, you usually are bouncing something cheaper than what you are returning to your own hand. Card advantage, if the opposing character had attachments on it, well they are now in the discard pile so you have gained card advantage. Tempo advantage, this can be achieved by using your own characters to kneel ability or attacking/defending with the N before opponent uses the character you are going to bounce. Also you can gain huge amounts of advantage if that opposing character has power on it.

These are the things that you usually do with the GG to give you an upper hand. There are also few rare uses where you can bounce your own N that has a negative attachment on it to get rid of it. Or bouncing two of your own characters (heck why not even more if you have enough N) turn before you valar.

The problem here just is that unlike any other control location there is this just can do too many things too well and be used in many scenarious. Brothel will be only usable in dominance so they even get use of that character and it only kneels, doesn't remove attachments or power.

well I still wouldn't ban it maybe little errata if it ever comes to that, but saying this card isn't well under costed is just wrong.

Ratatoskr said:

Definitely disagree - Martell still has the Orpahns and plenty of cancel. You jsut cannot guarnatee getting that challenge off agaisnt tehm to tirgger your event.

I like Pyromancers as well - but lately people are building very high gold decks to offset Greyjoy Winter. i triggered a couple of Pyros Balck Friday and my opponent always had the gold to cancel. Never got a single lcoation - and the Pyros had tested very well before the latest tournament.

bloodycelt said:

I'm glad you decided to jump to hyperbole instead of offering counter arguments to my analysis of the competing control cards that you previously listed (including Brothel and Guild Hall) and why I feel GG is far and away superior to them.

Stag Lord said:

Yeah, I guess. Thing is, Martell tends to be cost intensive, and is likely to be one of the houses you'll have a better chance to catch without Gold when you bring your Apprentice out than others. But yeah, then you'll still have to get past HCiT, so I hear ya.

But I'm still not convinced GG needs to go at this point. Do I wish they had printed Myrcella without the Noble crest? Yeah, I do. But let's play with her a bit, shall we? And if it really is a problem, errata the Noble crest away from her. I just don't think Martell is that much of a problem right now. In fact, I think the game is more diverse than it has ever been in the LCG (as far as I can see). Hell, the last five big tourneys have been won by five different Houses. Martell is still very good, as it should be, but hardly dominant.

I was among those that really felt something needed to be done about the TLS/Val combo when TLS was first spoiled. Now I kinda regret that. I learned my lesson. I say, let the players try to find solutions. If they can't, then take action.

Besides, I have a feeling that we'll have other things to worry about once the Lanni expansion makes landfall.

Kennon, I just noticed a post responding to your analysis did not get submitted. My apologies, I did read it.

I think for a large part I place cards that require other cards to function lower than cards that work by themselves, I don't trust my luck in drawing. I know, champion decks will have 1 GG, 2 TRV, and one each of the other nobles... and somehow that small percentage of drawing both Myrcella and GG will be often enough to generate a NPE for people. While somehow the Brothel which works by itself, and combined with other Lanni kneel effects and claim 2 plots can keep you paying to have 5 characters out so you can get 1-2 challenges off is not nearly as NPE because the characters stay in play useless and knelt until you choose them for claim, rather than in your hand.

But I'm not using hyperbole, I firmly believe that since control in general is an NPE (in every game since Magic the Gathering, people don't like their stuff messed with, their plans stopped, and having to then wait and watch themselves lose the game), as long as Martell has tournament caliber cards, and is popular people will have a list for the restricted list, and will not be satisfied until Martel is so hamstrung nobody but dedicated fans play the house. By the end of this cycle Martell is going to have a lot of cards and less slots to fill on nasty NPE control effects. I would say that only a noble-crest themed deck will use Ghaston Grey because outside of Arianne and the Viper the rest are not playable, and not worth putting in on their own merits. Trust me you'll be complaining about "Son of Broken Arm" very-soon.

Also, man up and start running some Duplicates for your uniques.

Ratatoskr said:

I concur with you on your point about diversity right now. We have the best balance going right now that I can remember in the LCG era, with the fact different houses have won the most recent tournaments. We had Baratheon at GenCon, Lannister at Days, Greyjoy at Stahleck, and Targaryen at Black Friday. Doesn't sound like any one house is dominating the environment right now, and I call that a "good thing" . Has Stark won any recently? I'm drawing a blank for them, but other than that, seems all houses are well represented recently.

Ratatoskr said:

Heh, I'm curious about this myself.

@BloodyCelt, Ah, there you go man! You sound much more reasonable this time around.

It's interesting that early in your post you mention decks running 2 Red Vipers and 1 of the other nobles, and then end suggesting that we run more uniques. Am I the only one that has been planning on running a Martell deck with 3 GG, 3 Myrcella, and 3 Edric? In a deck built to abuse GG (not just a Martell deck that happens to include it) I would much rather drastically increase my odds of getting such a potent combo running, rather than multiples of someone expensive like The Red Viper.

Also, I find it strange that you mention that GG relies on other cards being drawn as a ding, then go on to compare it to "Brothel which works by itself, and combined with other Lanni kneel effects and claim 2 plots can keep you paying to have 5 characters out so you can get 1-2 challenges off is not nearly as NPE because the characters stay in play useless and knelt until you choose them for claim, rather than in your hand." which seems to be quite a bit more effort than just drawing a cheap noble or two.