Maybe 2 X Doran 2 x Doran’s Game. A Hand’s Judgment might be good to cancel the Hand’s Judgment that cancels your DG.
It’s combo-y but not unrealistic to get Doran and Viper up at the same time. It’s ridiculous pressure. You might want to run Noble Cause as an econ plot. Naval Superiority doesn’t seem to be played much yet. Take out Heads on Spikes, which will either be stupid good or do mostly nothing. Noble Cause will always be good.
Also it looks like your skipped Maester Cressen. Attachment control is super strong and he’s great at it, I’d recommend finding room for 2 of him.
you can pretty safely cut the house dayne knights, they don’t do a whole lot past turn 1 other than claim soak, and there’s better claim soak. Speaking of which, cutting a dragonstone faithful for 1 shireen would probably be good.
Greyjoy are fantastic at rushing with all the unopposed bonuses, stealth power icons and great kraken. but yeah, stark and tyrell can get a lot of power fast too.
It’s true that A Noble Cause is very good, but Heads on Spikes is possibly the best plot in the core set. At worst, it’s a free intrigue challenge; at best, you put your opponent’s Robert Baratheon or Balon in their dead pile.
Also the money on it kinda sucks, so even on a hit you can just take over the board with something like noble cause. It even gives power to steal. Later in the game it’s good but turn 1 it’s just bad compared to the marshalling plots
So how does everyone think the factions stack up? Right now I think it goes:
Greyjoy
Tyrell
Bara
I have played a few games as Mono Lannister. Although their core strategy is to destroy the opponent’s hand, more often than not I found it was myself without any cards in hand. This tended to arise due to playing out the starting cards via my excess gold and then not being able to generate excess draw- resulting in a lot of excess gold in subsequent turns.
I think that for now it would be best to ally Lannister with another faction, primarily to bring in higher cost characters to spend the gold on, as well as additional draw. I was thinking to try Baratheon- just 3x Melisandre, 3x Fiery Followers, 3x Seen In Flames for kneel (1.0 throwback!), and Chamber of the Painted Table to combo with The Iron Throne for power. Other allies would be entirely possible, it just depends on your preference. I myself really like the red lady
I’m really looking forward to the chapter packs to strengthen mono Lannister though!
Comparing with the other Houses, it seems that the decks are not yet consistent enough to make a firm judgment. You may play the same game twice and experience entirely different outcomes due to the high draw variance. If certain Houses get certain key cards early then they can dominate.
On that note, I hope the trend will change but for now, there remains a high possibility of a very one-sided game (which was a problem in 1.0 too). This seems to be driven by limited draw options. Noting though that we only have the Core set right now- and bearing that in mind, FFG has certainly done a great job!
Related to the above post, here’s my current Lannister deck list. I added Counting Coppers to support the badly needed draw. Seven separate plots gives more flexibility too. Also 1x The Tickler, who I have not tried yet.
Naval Superiority is one that I want to come back to when/if the meta becomes more developed. If you can hit people’s big stuff with it (Noble Cause, Marching Orders, etc.) it’s crushing, but right now things are in flux enough that there aren’t really tiers for plots (or factions), so it’s hard to tell when someone’s going to play one of the plots you crush.
you want 3 lannisport, and I would run building orders over coppers for the better statline, once you start drawing off intrigue challenge wins you’re pretty well off on cards
I got my first ever game in yesterday playing with the starter decks to get an overall feel for the game. I really liked that each player starts the game with characters and locations in play. I also enjoyed the decision making process during the challenge phase. One thing that I had hoped I would really enjoy was the plot deck mechanic but to me it felt a little underwhelming. Maybe because the starter plots are all kind of vanilla. Also the timing structure felt a bit clunky but that could be just me being unfamiliar with the flow of the game.
Edit: Absolutely loving the card art in this game. The templating, Art, font is absolutely gorgeous and on par with LotR.
How are you finding the number of characters? 30 feels like it would be a bit slim for me. And if you’re having problems with card draw, going to 2x Littlefinger is a good way to accomplish that.
If you have a draw location you can skip the coppers for building orders. Except stark, gates isn’t good enough to give up coppers for. 2x Littlefinger, 3x in faction draw for sure though.
I haven’t been able to play on OCTGN for about a week now but I have taught three different people the game now using my single core set. Martell seems really good, has anybody seen them do well on OCTGN? Ghaston Grey and Sunspear are just brutal locations.
Martell is extremely good in multiplayer (it has many cards that aggressively disincentivize attacking you when other targets are available), but in 1v1 it seems a bit clunky despite the amazing locations.
I am suprprised but Martells are now my favourite faction
I have made couple unbelievable comebacks thx to Ghaston grey and Sun spear.
Problem is You need to choose Your plots carefully to have higher init then Your opponnent to trigger couple cards.
Can you share your list? I too was really impressed with some of their cards when I played the Core decks, but I haven’t tried a “competitive” Martell deck yet.
