I wonder if other people had this deckbuilding experiences too. You want to build a Stark deck and think about how to arrange ressources in your deck, which charachters you are planning to include etc. So you are going through your collection and see that there are about 30 charachters (in total deck numbers) in the cost bracket 0-1 (and some very solid 2 cost charachters) and start thinking why not make a deck out of these guys, so you mustn´t include too much ressources in your deck and can run attractive plots with a low gold value and a good game text, also you can have some more events or attachments/ locations which usually don´t make the cut. I ended up with an average charachter cost of 0,72 gold, which have an average strength of 2,1. Which is a lot considering the average cost and taking into account that only 8 charachters are neutral and so a card like winterfell castle (which is 3 times in the deck, thank you for the free ressource slots) can get the average strength up to a freaking 2,85 for an average cost of 0,72 gold. Wow!

But than concerns arised - am i playing a mono iconed charachter deck or something like that ? Surprisingly not. Every charachter has an average of 1,75 icons and there is roughly an equal distribution with a typical Stark inhouse focus on military icons, in total numbers: 26 military icons, 11 intrigue icons, 15 (+1 optional - Gilly) power icons. Keywords among charachter: 6x stealth, 3x deadly, renown x1 stalwart x4, no attachments x8, + the untouchable (Cat o´the canals).

Seems pretty undercosted too me ? Hint: some guys didn´t even make the cut, such like Jeyne Westerling, Walder Frey, Mord, Winterfell tutor, Vale ward ... so there´s still some design room to pull the average cost near the 0,5 gold mark. Also the new reinforcement events are not part of the deck, since they haven´t arrived at my place. Granted the deck is a standard format deck and so some of you may say, if you are playing an unsupported format you shouldn´t wonder that you will receive some strange decks. - You maybe right. ;-)

But you can easily do the math for a LCG deck too. Every house has access to:

• 3 x inhouse refugees
• 3 x Vale refugees
• 3x carrion birds
• 1x Gilly
• 1x Walder Frey
• Samwell tarly
• about every house has at least one weenie charachter for 1 gold (or less) which is at least decent (dire wolf pup, salt wife, disgruntled mercenary, midnight sentry, ascetic follower, zealous collector, ice fisherman, house tully recruiter, cersei´s attendant, lannisport weaponsmithold red priest, bastard of robertillyrio´s man)
• every house can run (up to) 15 reinforcement events - in deckbuilding reality i don´t think you would use more than 6 of these events.
• in addition there are 3-4 charachters with 0-1 gold cost for every house
• a traitor charachter with 2 or 1 gold cost for every house

So for me the question arises: Have high gold cost charachters and resources become redundant in todays enviroment ? A 3-6 gold cost charachter seems hard to include in a nowadays deck unless it has a very special ability. With the high gold cost cards naturally the ressources drop from your deck - why run 12-14 resources cards if your average charachter cost is below 1 ? 6 or so resources are more than enough.

Had anyone similiar deck building experiences lately ?

Hmm interesting idea. I guess how well this will work, depends on the plots you choose.

But sofar my experiences with low cost characters involved either Illyn or Drogon with a few forever burnings thrown in ( I´m looking at you Ben!), and therefore have been not very pleasant.

And about the gold curve, right now it feels like more gold then ever, because of the new 2 cost reducers combined with the old hamlets, you get a lot of cash quickly without actually spending anything on locations.

But since it´s you building the deck it´s very likely to work well

Moneylender said:

Yep, that has been a problem in the standard format. But both charachters aren´t available in LCG format. And it´s like i wrote the strength among the charachters is surprising high, so yes a carrion bird will be eliminated by Drogon (ITE) asap, but this mustn´t apply for most of the other charachters. Oh well, we´ll see, never said it´s the best deck around, but the gold curve and the additional room in the deck seems to be an interesting opportunity. Besides i forgot to mention that the Stark deck has of course a resource choke element. :-)

@moneylender: Are you in Frankfurt next week? And wish to join us for a game or two?!

~ Oh I LOVE decks like that!

*claps hands to cheeks in delight*

~ They are so much fun to face and play and really evocative of westeros - what with all those low STRr non uniques.

Please wake me up whne this nightmare is over and First Snow ahs been reprinted. Oh - and at leat i have ilyn and Drogon unitl this summer. Hopefully by tehn we'll have some sort of swarm contorl available.

Stag Lord said:

Well, i also don´t like decks like that either - must be Ring´s nightmare too when i take a look at his usual deck lists. ;-) That´s one reason why i´m bringing the matter to the boards for discussion.

Frankly i think that first snow alone wouldn´t solve the matter alone, there are just more cards needed that award playing unique and/ or high gold cost charachters. We had a lot of these cards back in WED time and we still have a good amount in what was before the standard format and yes there are also reasons not to play small undercosted charachters. But i can´t see too many of them in the LCG format - maybe that´s just me.

Its not that much of a nightmare.

Ben said himself he gets hosed in standard due to a few cards, and while not as devistating Targ and lanni can still easily control those low str guys in LCG.

I think a fundamental flaw is that none of the characters that Old ben mentions help you win. and i'm not sure there is a lot (at least in LCG) that the 'extra deckbuilding space' that helps you win either. Old Ben mentioned the Reins events, but that is just a different form of resources for a charcter (its now three resources instead of one, especially with intrigue claim going before you have a chance to play this guy). So, with them you are replacing the 3/4 gold with 1 gold plus 2 other forms of resources, losing a challenge and protecting your hand (since you can;t play them in the marshalling phase as soon as you draw them they are more vunerable then charcaters and why i;m counting this as a resource).

Also, i think this analysis only slightly holds up for stark at least in LCG (and very little to not at all for other houses). lets take a look at the 'challenge phase' portion of Old Ben's 'standard' deck. 26 military icons, 11 intrigue icons, 15 (+1 optional - Gilly) power icons. Keywords among charachter: 6x stealth, 3x deadly, renown x1 stalwart x4, no attachments x8, + the untouchable (Cat o´the canals). Whats glaring to me is Renown x1and 15[16] power icons. 15 doesn't seem bad, but i know in my martell deck less then 19 power icons was a big problem, and 19 hasn't consistiently alliviated the problem. The majority of the charcaters that are 0-2 gold are non-unigue and thus stealable from seductive promise, plus 7 of the ones he uses discard themselves at various times (6 of which cost additional gold to keep around if you can't pull off dominence). Even if the deck keeps the charcaters wround the lack of renown hurts as it is going to be a slow deck and in LCG at least Stark doesn't have a ton of control to allow it to be that slow (i think they could drag it out pretty far, but not far enough to win, again see the lack of power icons). Again the Reins might speed it up slightly, but you still run into similar problems with those becoming the prime targets (instead of the 3 or 4 gold charcaters they are replacing) and these events make the lack of intrigue icons/in house traitors in a bad matchup hurt even more.

We have a targ deck that has a ton of these kind of cards (targ has a lot of 0 costs charcaters in LCG...), which he runs to get a 7 card flop (i.e. a 53 card deck). And he does ok with the deck, but has a lot of trouble unitll the better (and higher costed) charcaters come out. He does not run this deck much in Melee becuase of the ease for those better characters to get controlled leaving him with little to no punch. I just built thta theoritical men with no king deck and i did it out of bara and I have all the cards excpet the reins/men with no king in it and it looks pathetic. As to the deck building space it saved me, i'd rather drop about 5-10 of those charcaters and add back in my 3/4 gold charcaters and some bara bannermen or other standing tactics. Martell suks if you take out any of its 3 gold characters (no underhanded assains, obara, Knights of Starfall, Dayne, jon snow) and while I haven't looked at GJ recently enough i'd wager they are the same. Lanni losses its effectiveness without the 3/4 gold+ characters (illyn [who by the way still kills off str 2 or lower charcaters, just not as quickly], twyin, tyrion, jaime, castellan).

Old ben, there are a ton of 'rewading' high gold charcaters in LCG (look at the ones i named above), I'd add Danny (even more so now as she might be the only counter to reins wihtout running Men w/ no king), Double renown bobby, King renly, Fox's teeth, Arena Knight, Stalker of the Shadows (winter = 1 card out of 1 opponets hand and one dead character on the board), Eddard (rewnon and deadly is nice), Catlyn, Robb, Viserion, Any Tricon in Targ (w/ ageon's blade become minimum 5 STR with stealth and renown), LittleFinger (and helps you with design space as he provides his own resources), Selmy, Mance, and most of the GJ ones at least in winter.

I think you can fit most of the solid to great 3 gold + cards into the decks and the resources needed to get them out and still have enough design space to have your own take on the dekc or add in other parts as you see fit. We have 4 bara decks in our group right now. I have 2, one is winter the other is men with no king. The other players are summer, but are different (my winter baar beat one and lost to the other in a tournament we just had) in that one focuses heavily on the power challenge and the other focuses on vigilant.

Lars, you got me wrong here or maybe what i wrote was misleading. There are are good high gold cost charachters in LCG as well as in the CCG format. By cards that reward playing high gold cost and/or unqiue charahcters i mean cards that make the difference, such as prove one´s worth, Pttq etc.

The more low costed charachters appear the more card spots wil be taken by them. From your argumentation, of course Illyn (CS) can still kill 2 strength or less guys. But do you know the difference between a refugee getting killed by Illyn and Selyse Baratheon, underhanded assassin, Pycelle or some other charachter getting killed by Illyn? Right you´ve paid 2-3 gold for the charachter and no gold for the refugee.

Of course you can´t run a top tier deck with only 30 or so undercosted charachters, but if you run 20 in your deck and 10 good charachters you´ll still receive a top setup and won´t be missing much essence in your deck. Try to build a resource control deck, it works pretty well - at least in standard format and probably as well in LCG.

About Greyjoy and Martell: Yep, you are right, but what would you expect from two houses that are only half existing at the moment? ;-) Pardon, i should have said that i wouldn´t count them as a full house at the moment for LCG.

Old Ben said:

is a bit different then

Old Ben said:

On to your 'real' point then. I think this argument has been made for a long time. Having come in at ITE i don't really notice it. (sure i'd like to have PTT?, but i'd like any cancel at this point). The LCG is a lot like ITE. It has some really good uniques, but you need the crappy guys to support and be utility. If you want to build your deck around taking out my support and utility i am okay with it (if its a good deck i can use my unigues to win the game before you deplete my utility, right? Its also why promo payne didn't bother me that much). I also think this makes thematic sense, shouldn't Mel and Stanis be getting all the glory while House flornet scout, Old Red Priest, and Sylese be getting knelt, killed, used up, ignored, taken out of the game, etc?

You also talk about a winnie/resource denial deck, well hasn't this been around forever too? Prince's loyalist, GJ char lite, etc.

I think the balance in LCG for resource choices is fine. You are picking the option of fewer locations, but more cheaper gold cost up front characters instead of the 'normal' 15-ish location (which was only ever a guide and somehting that varied often in my builds). You aren't getting more deck space, just different deck space. INstead of 3x narrow sea you now have 3x Bolton refugee (both have risks, both operate in different ways, both are duel use in tha they affect your gold curve, but can also help you in the game, and both have hidden costs [narrow sea is you lose a charcater spot, Bolton refugee is tyht you have to win dominece or he becomes an expensive charcater at 1 godl a turn]).

As to the lack of cards that support high gold cards, well there is some truth to that and some not so much truth to that. Bodyguard, lightbringer, the crest plots (to an extent) seductive promise (indirectly), and Dupes (even htough Stag still doens't like them, thye are good in LCG) are all cheap/useful to those high gold chars. Dayne (at 5 gold) has two cards that work beautifully with him (one attachment, Dawn, and one location, Tower of Joy). i'd also argue that the high gold charcaters (unlike in previous sets) are where the strenght of the decks now are and don't need support cards (see above posts). OS when you pay 4 gold for eddard or bobby it is worth it. The CS reset the power creep a little bit which let us re-evualate the strength and value of vertain things, like only having deadly and renown (look at CS eddard verse ITE eddard verse 5KE eddard, CS eddard is the weakest, but he is one of the best in CS, i thik this is a good thing, i wouldn't be surprised if a lto of people disagreed). The power cards aren't uber anymore, but they are still good, and more importantly to your point Old Ben, the support for them is also not as strong (as it was) but still thee and still useful.

Lars said:

It depends on what you interpret as a winnie resource denial deck. The big days of Greyjoy control where in VED+WED times, Prince´s loyalist was a single and annoying card but didn´t shut down resources. There were several Stark decks in VED+WED which had winnie and resource control (frozen solid and the like) constructions. But i don´t think we saw decent control deck since WED rotated (?), was no longer legal till now.

Lars said:

Let´s say it that way, yes i´m also not that convinced about dupes. They could work well, but if you draw them to late you have a dead card in your hand. Seductive promise and Lightbringer are good examples, but it´s hard to find more of these. Bodyguard is so and so, at the moment the card favors in fact uniques, but since we had a lot of non-unique lords and ladies in the past that may change in the future.

Lars said:

~Haven´t we already swearn off taht combo with the release of men without a king. ;-) I also build a cool house dayne deck with the release of Dawn and the tower of joy and now i´m in the mood to tear it appart - i think it´s hard to risk loosing Ser Arthur Dayne to your opponent. :-)

Lars said:

The Core set left alone indeed resets the power creep, but if you take the chapter packs into account you can´t come to this conclusion. The CS Stark deck is sort of nice, you get the notion that Stark is good at killing other charachters. If you add bear island, house umber berserkers and icy catapult to the deck (and midnight sentry as a cheap stalwart charachter) the power creep curve goes up again.

Your observation about the different Eddards works for me, most of the times i would choose to play 5KE Eddard, lately i had some deck concepts where i included CS Eddard. At least CS Eddard does something totally different than the 5KE and ITE Eddard, that´s why i would probably rank him at the second position. CS Eddard also works nice with Needle, but here i´ll also come back to the non-uniques theme, because Royal guard and Needle are also a great combination - 2 strength, stealth, stalwart, vigilant for 3 gold (or 2 gold and 1 influence) isn´t too shabby in my book. And it´s hard to make a decision if you would like to play Needle on Eddard or on the Royal guard in the given situation.

Old Ben said:

Without getting into too many details, 3-6 gold characters absolutely find their way into my decks. Here are a few reasons:

1. Wildfire Assault and other 'swarm-unfriendly' plots (Holding the Trident, Valar, Hear Me Roar, Winds of Winter, Herding the Masses). Yeah, it seems like a crummy reason, but if you've got a bunch of 1 and 2 gold characters non-unique characters, and your opponent has the same except they have a couple of 4 gold characters worth their cost, you will be at a disadvantage if Wildfire hits. Sometimes, that disadvantage is insurmountable. Furthermore, it sucks to get *ruined* by Hear Me Roar, Winds of Winter or the Long winter because all your guys are 1 or 2 strength, 3 tops.

2. Limited Draw in the environment. There isn't a lot of card draw. If you're losing, drawing two 1 cost characters isn't going to help you climb back up. They're just grist for the mill. I realize that drawing gold is also useless, considering a typical deck would have to play with more, but the best case draws for the deck running all 1-2 gold characters is simply not good enough to turn around a game where you've been intrigued into the dirt, or hit with Rule by Decree before a reset.

3. The characters that tend to pay out the most cost more than 2 gold. Old Nan is obviously an exception as are a few others, but Tyrion, Castellan of the Rock, Ranger of Winter, Robb Stark, Rhaegal, Ser Arthur Dayne etc. will pay out more than what they cost. Big stealth, or lack of need to kneel, card draw, kill abilities, kneel and deadly are all good things, and it is good to have them; they will put you ahead of your opponent.

Loads of cheap characters is something I've tried, and I find that it just loses mostly to plots. It doesn't help that you can drop your hand really easily when things like Valar or Wildfire are ready to 'level the playing field' especially when it levels the playing field in the opponent's favour. When you're playing your games, simply imagine at the beginning of any given turn exactly how much strength you will lose if your opponent reveals Hear Me Roar, or how the board will look if they reveal Wildfire.

Sinis said:

I agree, you need to have a decent draw engine or reset plots and probably other swarm unfriendly plots will turn on you.

Well, i tested some of my rough deck ideas yesterday. I had three different standard decks following the weenie theme. Stark, Lanni and Martell.

The Stark deck had the worst setup i ever had while testing the deck in a real game - so it wrestled 6 rounds and than lost in glory. Ummh, can´t really say if it´s worth it after that one game, also i faced a Stark deck with the 5KE traitors and also a lot of low cost charachters and the usual Stark madness. Everything went wrong from the beginning somehow, we´ll see how it does in teh future with some modifications.

The Lanni deck went 1:1, losing to Trag burn as expected and crushed Baratheon. Lanni was/ is my craziest build. The basic idea is to get a golden tooth mine and or golden tooth guard in the setup and some cheap charachter plus kneel effects in your hand- which is really likly to happen. The first plot is Final sacrifice the kneel effects and the 4-5 charachter swarm is usually enough to successfully challenge on military and intrigue. Well it worked against Bara, in the deck didn´t recober quick enough from that blow. Maybe i wa sonly lucky, who knows. However it was sort of fun to use final sacrifice with success.

The Martell deck also somehow won, but that got more to do with the good martell cards like a game of cyvasse and broken arm and not with the weenie concept.

Old Ben said:

Hmm. I was speaking from an LCG only point of view (I missed the fact that you were speaking about a different format). I can't speak to how well it would work in open/standard/whatever format, but I'm pretty sure that it wont work in LCG. There's a ton of anti-swarm stuff in Open, and there's next to no card draw for non-lannister houses. Even with Lannister, you'd want to play bigger characters, despite their crazy draw stuff.

We've tried mostly with Baratheon Summer (because it has card draw with the Summer Agenda, and a lot of 1-2 gold people), and Stark who has very decent 1-2 gold folks (but not much card draw). Typically, the problem is with Ser Arthur Dayne, Wildfire and Holding the Trident, which see play in a lot of our decks. If one of those is in play, any swarm advantage goes right out the window.

Ther's not enough anti-swarm stuff in any format.

Sinis said:

Well i´m trying to discuss both formats LCG and the former standard format, because i know that most of the people are playing either the one or the other format. But´, it´s right the decks i build are standard format and i can see your point about about the cards you mentioned effectively stopping swarm decks. I wonder if the latest chapter pack will probably change the situation - the event charchters seem to be very strong and cheap to play as well.

Old Ben said:

I'm also speaking from a weird perspective. We returned for the LCG system, but we played when Throne of Blades was released, and the environment was pretty rife with cards like Wildfire and Valar. Perhaps not everyone plays these plots in the current environment (there has not yet been competitive play in my area, though we're working on it). My assessment may be skewed.