playgroundpsychotic said:

Theres always Nightmares. Its also a versatile solution to any number of non-TRV character problems.

As we can see, the house having problems is Baratheon. And I think the problem is on their yard, not Ghaston Grey.

But they have the tools to fight, indeed.

Asshai decks can run Confession and Pyre of the False Gods, even Altar of Fire if you feel like winning intrigue. That's not a silver bullet, that's a build wich have been deeply reinforced by the Lanni box (Shadows and Spiders, Terminal Schemes) and it wasn't that bad a build prior to LotR.

Sallador is crazy in house location control, expensive as hell and ally, sure. But Martell can't discard him as easilly, their only way to do it before he activates is dissention, and well, martell can't run cyvasse, condemmed, HciT, Paper Shield and Dissention, or they can, but they are paying for it in many ways (setup, unconsistent draw, etc), to prevent VB killing him, Bara can run Fiery Kiss and dupes, to maximize his presence they can run King Bob's Hammer and Marya Seaworth.

Even Rush Builds could run 3x Dragonstone Watchtower to get easy points out of GG.

My point is, I feel location control is more than enough, after Fleeing to the Wall and Favorable Ground, if you can't fight locations then it is a build issue, not a card pool one. Another neutral addition to the list, stronger than Condemned, or easier to play than Price of War or Favorable, would make Location heavy builds even more risky than they are now. And GG isn't even a location heavy build, just a star location build.

Skowza said:

Nightmares is worthy but its also not a response. GG isn't as risk free as some like to portray, it has a hefty cost to use it. Greyjoy is fairly dangerous to a GG deck not just because of location hate but they can cancel the trigger itself with a few cards.

Having something generic that stops a location effect could set the Martell player on edge.

playgroundpsychotic said:

I think a reasonable compromise is to have a "cancel a triggered effect by a location" in play. Perhaps a unique location or character that can do that. There is very little out there that can do that specifically.

Staton said:

I agree that not all decks with be competitive due to various popular decks at the time. However, this isn't a popular deck, this is a card. One single card that invalidates entire deck types. Not just certain decks, but entire TYPES. That is bad for the environment. Especially when there aren't RELIABLE answers to said card. I have played both with and against this deck. I'm not just looking at paper. I've played dozens of games at this point, again both against and with the card. Its ridiculous the amount of effort you have to put into dealing with the card unless you are prepared to specifically play a deck type that will beat it.

Rave said:

I haven't really seen a Martell deck that is weak in the early game. They have great weenies and solid cards other than GG - which is why IMHO it is more worrisome. It isn't like you don't draw GG or it is controlled that is game over - they have efficient characters and many other control mechanisms...and they only spent one card and one gold to put it out. GG just kind of puts it over the top, especially in combo with VB.

Lastly, this isn't just an issue with Bara as too many people are saying. It is an issue with any deck that relies on larger characters, or characters with attachments, or characters in general

Again, I just think every house has pretty good control for characters, especially through plots. Locations, despite the handful of cards mentioned here, usually are deck restricting in the very least, highly inefficent for most (and have to be triggered). None of the location control I have seen mentioned changes my mind *shrug*

You know a card is broke when I just agreed with everything rings just posted about it.

rings said:

I don't actually play Martell, so I will concede here. I can only go off of what I've seen and played against.

But do you believe that early game Martell is so good at stopping challenges that triggered effects based off of them are a lost cause? This is the point I'm trying to get across, that I believe this isn't the case.

Which decks do you find all of the available location control inefficient for? All that comes to mind for me is not having event slots in certain decks, but then I would just run Pyromancer's Apprentice.

Pyro has already been covered. He's up against a deck then will probably run resource heavy to guarantee replaying it's nobles and advancing it's own board position, so holding the one gold required to negate the apprentice is no problem, then his effect is a response without and influence cost and HCiT fixes that too. Price of War, Condemned by the Council and Pyro are NOT answers to GG.

Arrdet said:

The fact that I have 3 cards in my deck that can destroy GG is an absolute. The idea that your opponent might have gold left over or He Calls it Thinking is not. I blew up a Lannister Iron Throne with Pyromancer's Apprentice on wednesday.

Rave said:

But...isn't Apprentice a character ability?

imrahil327 said:

Yeah, you're right. I played it when he didn't have gold, and it was knelt.

rings said:

Thanks for a lead in on one of my recurring rants! Definitely undercosted. Remember how in the early cycles of the CCG, probably 90% of locations had to kneel to trigger the effect? That alone slowed them down/limited them to 1 use/round, and made them much more susceptible to being negated (through location kneel effects that were much more prevalent, & Attack from the Sea was a good plot at that time PRECISELY because so many locations had to be knelt to trigger effects).

Getting away from that has been a real problem IMO.

First of all I just wanted to point out I don't know where I am on the subject of GG. It is most definitely a problem, but I don't know if it should be banned, restricted, or left alone for FFG to print answers to it.

I just wanted to point something out. Those of you who have listened to the most recent 2 champs 1 chump podcast you might have noticed that dobblar referred to something over and over again that I think is very relevant here. He said that no more than 12 slots in your deck shouldn't be filled with cards that you can't play on the set up. I know that there are many ways out there to build decks, but this is a pretty good rule to follow. If your building a deck under the restriction of 60 cards (which I always do) then you know if you put in too many cards that can't be played on the set up it can be very difficult to get a reliable start in your game, this is crucial in the tournament setting.

What do you notice about the cards you need to use to take care of GG? Most of the cards are attachments or events, and that's if you have the ability to use those cards at all. In fact, martell has so many answers to events and attachments that you have to run multiples if you plan on getting rid of GG which would mean you would need to run at least 6 (I would run more). The benefit of the 6 cards you have to run is that they are usable against other types of deckbuilds you will play against in any given tournament, but the problem is that it is still a hinderence to deck building in general, especially if you are running multiple copies of cards to take care o 1 low cost card in a deck that you might run into. So Now whenever I build a deck I have to use event and attachment slots to deal with GG instead of using those slots to make my build better. 60 cards is a major restriction, but one that IMO needs to be followed for most deck builds. What percentage of a deck needs to be teched against for GG? Is that fair? I honestly don't know.

I have used GG in my martell decks and I can tell you that I will be using it as long as it is legal. It is so easy and so good. The card essentially lets you stall the game until you can win it, even if you have a terrible flop this card allows you to come back. Why would I not put that in every martell deck I build? The card is so good I try to look for cheap efficient ways to play it out of house.

If it was mentioned in the five pages previous to this (I didn't feel like reading all of the posts) but my favorite anti-GG card is Aegon's Hill!

Wrecking Ball said:

Well, like you say, those location destruction cards are useful against any deck. Some kind of location removal is pretty much essential nowadays. If you don't hit GG you can hit an Iron Cliffs, or an Aegons Hill etc. And the GG deck itself is spending a lot of its 60 cards teching towards nobles. Triple Edric and Myrcella at least (who are mostly useless without GG), probably some of the more expensive ones too, which will slow down their setup. Plus a lot of people in this thread have argued that the GG players will use HCiT or Paper Shield to protect GG, using up more deck slots.

Full disclosure: I am using a GG deck in the current octgn tourney. But if I win it's due to my skillz, the location itself is fine guys, honest!

Wrecking Ball said:

Can I read this to mean that out of 60 cards, 12 or less can be un-playable at setup. Therefore, 48 or more need to be playable on setup? Sorry, but the wording was confusing.

AceManUSC said:

Indeed! It may not seem like a big deal but thats 1/5th of your deck already and thats not counting all the high gold cost locations and chracters youll be running.

At the end of the day its all well and good to say GG is OP and theorize on solutions/restrictions to it but the real judgement will have to be passed after we see it in serious tournament play. If we start restricting cards based on apparent power level without giving it alteast One chance at a real tournament then every strong card will end up going the way of TLS, which makes puppies cry.

So, this 12 cards that can't be played in setup rule of thumb, is that just referring to events and attachments? (Sorry, haven't listened to the episode, no offense to the great work they're doing but podcasts just aren't my cup of tea.) I would assume high-cost characters probably also make sense, as how often are you going to get a 4- or 5-gold character in and still have a good set-up?

12 cards sounds really strict. I usually do 15, and I figured that was strict too.

Obviously whatever number anyone settles on is up to them. I was more just asking what counts toward this unplayable-in-set-up number.

Hmmm... I would say probably anything that can't be played during Setup at the beginning of the game.

For the record that's any Event without the Shadows Crest, any attachment without the Setup keyword, and any character or location with a cost above 5 gold.

Just ban the **** thing. It's totally insane in any respecrt.

I played the other day with a "Martell kothh with the lot" (GG,red vengeance, cyvasse, prince's plan, orphan, scourge) . It's just nonsense. I would tie Damon Stone to a chair and make him play against that deck for 6 hours a day. Its even more insane, given the strenght of the maester agenda, to give maesters control to the only house that actually abuses already of that same agenda. Please get rid of it.

Rave said:

~Yes, very consistent way to spend 3 to get rid of something that costs 2, was already used at least once, and was conditional that they used all their gold. But, you get a bad character as well...so there is that.

j/k, but there is a reason that Apprentice is rarely used.

Back to your question though - yes, I think that Martell can consitently stop people from using triggered abilities. But, even if not, it is so cheap that I don't think their deck suffers much if you get your 1-for-1 removal done. Big upside, very little downside plus good control with protection from Valar as as sidenote

Mathlete has it though, I think Aegon's Hill is a very strong counter for Targ.