So while listening to the 2 Champs and a Chump podcast I started thinking about something - what made Martell Summer so popular this year? The Time for Ravens cylce was 3 cylces old by the time regionals came around (King's Landing, Defenders, and Brotherhood were all newer). The Martell house box came out around the same time as the King's Landing Cycle, if I'm not mistaken. And during Gencon we were in the middle of the Oldtown Cycle.

I believe Erick Butzlaff was the original builder of this archetype. Did everyone else just take the idea and run with it? Did the state of the metagame this year have anything to do with popularity? I'm a fairly new player of this game, Would a typical Martell Summer deck been able to keep up with Wildlings a year ago?

perpetual noob said:

I would say a lot of it was timing. Wildlings were obviously VERY strong (stronger IMHO) with card draw (Val) and reduction and strength increase coupled with stealth. And a big freaking army that was hard to deal with.

Martell Summer has income...draw...efficent weenies...good synergy (my favorite being the Maesters who save people by discarding cards, usually discarding Darkstar so he comes into play)...great control...nice events. Before the Restrictions, they easily had an answer to everything. Now it isn't so cut and dry, although I would put it up with GJ Winter, Lanni, and good players playing Targ at the top. The other houses are not far behind either (Stark and Bara have very nice builds.

Yea, vanilla Martell cards are so strong that Martell Summer builds itself, and they continue to get more vanilla cards that can be splashed into most any build; I imagine tweaking a Martell Summer deck is much harder than actually building one.

With the return of Bastard, I think it's going to be an even sadder day for rush decks. The combination of nigh-unstoppable stacked attachment removal plus the removal of an important icon (in Bara, Stark and Dragon decks) on any character that's not already going to get wrecked by Search & Detain.

Well yeah but if you are trying to build a rush deck, FFG says "You're doing it wrong!"

Staton said:

~They are right...

Bara won the last GenCon, stop complaining...

rings said:

Psh! Maesters won the last GenCon. This is like when Sam won GenCon and people claimed Bara half won GenCon. Plus right after that there was an errata to the Agenda that made that nerfed that deck pretty hard. So once again Bara gets their rush nerfed. Hell Heir to the Iron Throne was nerfed before it even saw play because a small group of players said it was too broken in Baratheon.

Oh geeze. I don't even want to think about melee if Baratheon had access to Heir to the Iron Throne....

Well the rest of us can't even think about it because we never got to play with it. Its kinda annoying that only Baratheon cards, or cards that help Baratheon, get errata'd before they are even printed. I can't think of any other card to have that happen.

Staton said:

~Some cheese Stanton?

I think various FFG people said the agenda was a printing mistake from the start - look at the Stark and Lanni box, it is obvious the agendas are made for the specific hosue of the boxes.

Fact - Bara has won two GenCons (Joust). ~Deal with it...it is like me complaining if Lanni wins, but didn't use heavy kneeling...

rings said:

I think that's what they said, but I believe before that interesting announcement, there was an article written announcing QoD and spoiling HttIT. The article even talked about using it in other houses, specifically Bara, if i remember correctly. If it got through playtesting that way, was printed that way, and was spoiled that way, it doesn't seem clear to me that it wasn't intended that way and was in fact errata'ed before release.

To go back to the OP, I started playing well after PotS and toward the end of the Defenders cycle, but Martell Summer wasn't as prominent then as it is now. People in my meta played around with summer builds, but I think it was simply the addition of some efficient characters (Lost Spearman), and the discovery around the time of Defenders that the Viper's Bannermen were awesome, which vaulted Martell to the top of popularity in general. Summer has arguably always been the most viable build in Martell because of the draw.

Danigral said:

Yeah, I remember that as well, you are right they did talk about Bara while spoiling it. However, usually the authors of the articles are really not part of the design team, so they might have seen it as printed and made an article accordingly (full disclosure - I write an occasional article, and could totally see this happen).

I agree on Martell as well. They just have a really strong base, and Summer was really the only agenda that fit well (Maesters later on as well) - especially with that saving Maester who is so solid.

Agree with Rings about the articles. It's pretty obvious from AGOT, Cthulhu, and Warhammer articles that the author isn't always on the design team.

Staton, you know in your playgroup you could pretty easily just play the agenda without the restriction for awhile and see how your experience goes.

Kennon said:

It's funny, then, that these articles get put on the official FFG webpage, linked to their products, without getting some sort of cursory approval by the design team. @FFG - there's a simple way to fix this.

rings said:

And it wasn't that summer wasn't viable then...most of the cards were there, with the exception of Lost Spearman and Burning on the Sands (which ended up being restricted, but this was pre-restricted-list). I think at that time the meta was more enamored with Red Viper/Taste for Blood than with summer min/max decks.

I just wanted to pop in and say that when Heir to the Iron Throne was errata'd it was clearly stated that it was due to Baratheon being too strong with it. It happened in the same FAQ as the restricted list. The decision was made to change it to Targ Only because Baratheon would be too strong with it since Fear of Winter was now on the restricted list.

Staton said:

Link please? I remember them talking about Bara, but I also remember discussion about it being a misprint from testing (which obviously could be smoke). Again, with the Stark and Lanni boxes putting out dedicated agendas it makes you wonder...

BTW I am with Kennon. Bara would be silly with it, and plenty of things are erratta'd VERY quickly (Martell's Prince's Plans or whatever never hit the competative scene either).

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=2213

Also touche on prince's plans.