Wow... Haven't played against a non-family member for a year or two and I finally head down to Game Night Games that has just started a league night of sorts. Bring all my cards (haven't purchased for awhile) and am sorting them out before starting a match against a really nice guy playing a Martell deck. He get's a couple of Sand Snakes out that are giving each other cool abilities but my Baratheon Power rush is holding on alright until The Red Viper comes down. I'm ready to work against him when a plot comes down that allows us to choose three characters and the others are killed. He doesn't choose The Red Viper and then plays No Use for Tears . So I sit there in amazement as he goes through his deck and pulls out 12 Sand Snake cards and drops multiple dupes on the in-play Sand Snakes and then lays out tons of other Sand Snakes giving him about 35 strength on the table. So..... I look at him and have questions:

1) No Use for Tears references Sand Snake characters. Does this mean as many Sand Snake character cards he can find or does this at all limit the amount of personas to one that he can draw.

2) Should there be a limit on how many Sand Snake characters that No Use for Tears pulls? Don't mean to cry and I know it's a situational deck but really.... twelve free characters that have every icon, are being power boosted, and several now have multiple dupes? Talk about negative play experience.

Have to say that when he played that out, my first thought was "If this is what the game has become, I'm done with it." I know I can pack Event hate cards to try to preclude this and a well timed Valar would wipe out a bunch of his host (except the four Sand Snakes that had multiple dupes), but those are pretty heavy silver bullets to carry around.

Please let me know if this play is an aberration or if the rest of the game has really turned that way. On a good note, after I recuperated from the Sand Snake beatdown, I did play a rematch with my Stark deck against his Greyjoy and pulled out a convincing win of 15 to 4. Was able to control the board very nice so it gave me some hope in getting back in to the game.

Thanks for your insight.

Matt Jensen

I happen to play a Martel deck, and I've used a similar trick.

However, based on my knowledge of the card, I don't think this guy was using it right.

First, the name of the card is No Use For Grief , and its text reads:

House Martell only.
Response: After a Sand Snake character is killed, kneel 1 influence to search your deck for 1 Sand Snake character, reveal it, and add it to your hand. (Kneel 3 influence to search for any number of Sand Snake characters and put them into play instead if The Red Viper was just killed.) Then shuffle your deck.

So, no, as long as he's got the 3 Influence, there is no limit to how many of those little nasties he can bring out.

That being said, it quite specifically says "put them into play." Backing up a duplicate is NOT putting a card into play, so using this card to back up your uniques is NOT legal in my understanding.

That being said, I can't beleive it never occured to me to use Wildire Assault to kill my own Red Viper to use this card!

I will also say that in my opinion, yes, it is a play aberration. I don't know of any other card/mechanic in the game I consider quite as dirty pool as this. I've kinda retired my Sand Snake deck because it seems almost unfair.

KristoffStark said:

KristoffStark said:

This is actually incorrect. It is well established, though the history of the game, that is a "put into play" effect is used on a unique card that is already in play (or entering play at the same time), the "extra card" becomes a dupe on the first.

No Use for Grief actually CAN put unique Sand Snake characters into play with dupes on them - and/or dupe copies that are already in play.

I stand corrected.

Wow, that's a more potent card than I realized.

The combo requires:

No Use for Grief

The Red Viper

3 influence

The Red Viper getting killed when you have 3 influence.

Not getting any of your Sand Snakes killed before you can execute the combo.

Yes, it's a powerful combo, but it's not overpowered. It takes a lot to pull it off.

radiskull said:

Maybe I saw a lucky hand but he didn't seem to have much problem pulling it off and I can see it happening fairly easily again. Here's the setup:

1) Martell House card + Knights of the Hollow Hill Agenda (+2 Gold, +2 Initiative, +2 Influence) No Setup cards but mulligan for No Use for Grief and one of several low cost Initiative producing cards.

2) First Plot - Summoning Season . Pull The Red Viper . You have 6 gold and will have drawn 9 cards from your deck. Play The Red Viper and you've still got gold for a Paramour, Dornish Fiefdoms, Lord Doran's Chambers or a zero cost Summer Sea

3) Second Plot (If they haven't tried to kill The Red Viper already) - Wildfire Assault or Valar (if influence from locations). Kill The Red Viper , play No Use For Grief , and watch the Sand Snakes reign down in no-cost horror with Dupes on them.

4) Third Plot (if the opponent doesn't have a reset Plot) - To the Spears! The nasty little snakes now attack without kneeling.

Sure there are a couple of things you could do to slow it down (heavy counter-event cards and direct character discard) but that two round intro to 30+ power is a bit of a head rush. Even if you don't draw exactly what you need, just wait a turn and proceed with plan.

That doesn't seem like to hard for a well crafted deck to pull off on a very consistent basis. Please correct me if I'm wrong....

And just to add insult to injury.... Throw in a couple of Poisoned Knife attachments to further empower your Snakes who all have Stealth now.

You're not wrong. That's essentially the deck I played at the last days of Ice and Fire. There are a few counters to it; the plot Power of Blood is pretty strong against the deck. It's a powerful deck, but not so powerful that every single person should be playing it.

Huh, I'm very surprised to learn you can put into play Sand Snakes that are already in play. Now that I reread the card and think about it, there's no reason you can't, somehow I just thought I had seen it said that it didn't work that way. Shrug, it's definitely a Shagga-tastic combo.

As for how to get around having to play against the deck, obviously it would be ideal to find a way to counter it, but if that seems insurmountable, you could always ask not to play against the deck the next time you play. This sounds like a fairly casual thing you went to, I'd imagine most people would rather see you have fun than get trounced, particularly as you're just coming back to the game. I know one of the guys I play with has a Greyjoy choke deck that is incredibly demoralizing to play against, and he's usually pretty respectful when people ask not to have to face it.

radiskull said:

With a Bara rush deck you probably have 2 copies of PoB, so now that you are aware of the combo you could easily stop it (at least until the new RV comes out). There's also plenty of counters for it unless the Martell player wins on that same turn... any House can Wildfire next Round, GJ has mad amounts of triggered effect cancel, Martell uses Viper's Rage, Targ burn plays TftN the next Round and wipes virtually every character in the opponent's deck with just a few cards (as a Targ player I would love to see someone try this against me when I have a Flame-Kissed and a Forever Burning or two in my hand) etc...

I imagine being hit by this combo for your first game back is NPE, but it is not representative of the decks you'll be seeing if you play more often.

Note Trekkermj that even if you are using character-based influence, you can STILL valar and use them to trigger NUFG because they are still moribund.