If you are playing in a league, can you even use these houses? If you only get to use the Core set and two chapter packs, this seems impossible, since there are no cards included in the Core set.

if you pick the right CPs you can use Martell. I've not heard of nor tried GJ, but with the amount of nuetrals and the smaller deck size it is doable for amrtell at least and for a creative person posible even GJ.

Since there ale House cards of those Houses in the CoreSet it means those Houses are legal. It is hard to build a deck with those Houses and you would need a lot of neutrals to make such a deck, but it is not imposible. Though I have never tried it.

I've actually built a Martell deck for the LCG league. I picked the Song of Summer Chapter Pack and the Sacred Bonds, as they gave me a total of 12! Martell characters. The rest of the deck was made up of neutrals and cheaper characters from other houses -- Brown Ben Plum, Hodor, Viserys Targaryen, etc. Of the neutrals you also get Jon Snow, Ghost, Benjen and Maester Aemon for the start of a Night's watch theme (tht works really well in the format), Varys (Stealth with Int/Pow), and several other key characters, Over the last four weeks I have made some good trades -- Fury of the Sun, Aero Hotah, Queen Myrcella's Guard -- and picked up Winds of Winter midway through so I could get Obara and the Assassin. And I've won three of four weeks in our league.

i almost feel that Greyjoy can build some better decks at present. Winter is far more brutal than Summer as a mechanic, and Ancient Enemies gives Greyjoy the plot and 7 playable cards for their house. Both houses are lacking in major in-house characters, but they are possible.

It makes me sad for the card pool when you can pick up the skeletal remains of these houses, fill in the wholes, and still compete. But, I'm glad to hear Martell and GJ are hanging in there.

I've been saying for a while that Martell has a strong cardpool in the LCG, minus locations. If they had half the locations that other houses had there would be no problem with the Martell Card pool. The Summer and Winter CPs really did a lot to strengthen this as well. Underhanded Assassian is one of the best cards in the LCG at the moment (3 of them and a lordship is almost a gauranteed win in every challenge), Obara is just plain old useful (especial with the lack of locations as she gets you a possible 3rd mulligen, which can be huge in tounreys). Open market is an interesting take on recursion, especially with a 'limited' card pool (trade 2 nonuseful cards for a monster). The Summer characters/dayne synergy is good (especailyl becuase there is a lot of other random Dayne floating around the CPs. And maester of the sun is spectacular in a Valar environment. JJ talked about Sacred Bonds, but he didn't tell you about Anceint Enimies (for more then the plot) and The war of the five Kings both give very solid cards to martell and are usually (at least in my league) are sitting there in other players pools.

Granted its not your typical Martell GenCon deck as the control is not there (maybe not a bad thing), epsecially in the leagues where the control elements are going to be limited to 1x per cp. However, a creative and flexible player can build a Martell deck that is comeptative despite its lack of locations (i threw The gift in mine for a 0 cost location that reduces 4 cards all nuetral, but all of synergy with other parts of my deck, the nights watch crew that jj mentioned). I'm not dominating my league the way jj is, but i've gotten good votes in two out of the 4 weeks so far with last week getting snowed out.

I have been playing a Greyjoy Kings of Winter deck in our league using Change of Seasons and Winds of Winter chapter packs. I finished third and second so far (out of 7 and 8 respectively). I will probably Take Raven's Song for the next pack. Wintertime Marauders make it really good if you can control the season and Theon is good regardless of season. In Summer he can be a house.

Venryk said:

has the gold curve been any kind of hinderence? It would appear not (with a 2nd and 3rd) and i'm curious how you are handling it? I went summer w/ martell just to get the extra gold and the thing that scares me about the GJ winter deck is the reduction of my limited ways to produce gold.

Not really. I am usually able to put down what I need. I love when it's summer and I get initiative get the extra gold and then make it winter to deny gold to my opponent. It is really a 2 gold swing. I haven't run into any cost reduction or gold producing issues, though it helps that I am running only 1 out of house hard.

Wow, I forgot about The Gift. I wonder if anyone picked that Chapter Pack, as I have nothing against 0 cost locations.