Crimson and Gold - Enemies of the Crown Pt 6

Welcome to the final part of the Enemies of the Crown series of articles. Today we travel to Dorne, to visit the DLC expansion pack of the world of Westeros, House Martell! As random as the house is, with their 3 unique characters and army of nameless palace servants and knights, they are consistently a beast in the card game.

Let's talk about a deck that uses Martell's more traditional aspect. Control. Martell control has been on top for some time, cards like The Broken Arm, Prince's Loyalist, and now Ghaston Grey and The Scourge have haunted the hearts and minds of players for years.

In the house's current state, they are not without weaknesses however. Lets take a look at some wounds we can try and pour salt in.


Weaknesses
Martell is bit of a fragile house
Martell is host to some of the strongest effects in the LCG, but many of these effects are one shots off of an event or come into play effect, and/or are reliant on influence. A canceled first turn Flea Bottom Scavenger in the marshaling phase or Viper's Bannerman off a Manning the City Walls, can create a serious problem for the Martell player early on. Decks that come out screaming on turn 1 can walk all over Martell decks that don't get their draw or challenge effects off because of cancels.

Martell has weak card control outside of characters and response effects
Martell in-house location control and attachment control is pretty weak. This means that any location like The Iron Throne or Aegon's Hill that can really mess with the field in the long run can cause serious problems with their gameplan. Martell can patch their attachment control with the Maester agenda, which has good synergy with the house in general, but in turn, brings us to our next weakness...

Martell is the king of the restricted list
Martell decks that run the Maester agenda cannot run Viper's Bannerman, Search and Detain, Knights of the Hollow Hill, or even Burning on the Sands. This makes deck building difficult. For example, running Viper's Bannerman means you lose the geneal utility that the Maester Agenda gives you. Because of this, building a solid Martell deck can be difficult for an inexperienced player.


The Deck
Today, we're going to take on Martell with the new agenda House of Dreams. My favorite build is Shadows, so I wanted to do something with that. After playing around with it for a little while, here is my initial Lannister build for the agenda:


Total Cards (60)

House (1)
House Lannister (Core) x1

Agenda (1)
House of Dreams (ARotD) x1

Plot (7)
A City Besieged (CD) x1
City of Lies (CoS) x1
City of Soldiers (TBoBB) x1
City of Spiders (TftRK) x1
Men of Pride (THoBaW) x1
Retaliation! (ASoSilence) x1
Valar Morghulis (Core) x1

Character (29)
Mountain Refugee (RoW) x3
Tommen Baratheon (SA) x1
Doubting Septa (LotR) x3
Carrion Bird (ASoS) x2
Shadowcat (KotS) x3
Joffrey Baratheon (KotS) x1
Silent Sisters (KotS) x3
Syrio Forel (TftRK) x1
Cersei Lannister (AToT) x1
Yezzan's Grotesquerie (CD) x3
Pyromancer's Apprentice (TBoBB) x3
Varys (SaS) x1
Bronn (LotR) x1
Tyrion Lannister (CoS) x1
Littlefinger (SaS) x1
King Joffrey's Guard (TWot5K) x1

Location (17)
Twilight Market (AToT) x3
Kingdom of Shadows (KotS) x3
Pentoshi Manor (AHM) x3
Volantis Inn (AHM) x1
The Iron Throne (LotR) x1
Lannisport Brothel (Core) x1
Tunnels of the Red Keep (CoS) x1
Alchemist's Guild Hall (TBoBB) x3
King's Landing (SaS) x1

Attachment (10)
Increased Levy (LotR) x3
Enslaved (THoBaW) x3
Slander and Lies (HtS) x1
Pyromancer's Cache (TWot5K) x3

Event (4)
Condemned by the Council (AToT) x2
Paper Shield (QoD) x2

While Lannister doesn't really have a location for the House of Dreams agenda that makes people shiver in terror like Aegon's Hill or Bear Island, they have a real versatility with their in-house Unique locations that can create some interesting tactics.

Tunnels of the Red Keep, The Iron Throne, and Lannisport Brothel are my go-to locations for the agenda.

Tunnels of the Red Keep: This is my go-to location for Targ obviously. This deck is pretty heavy on the shadows, so even 2 cards in shadows makes it that much more difficult to burn even your 2 STR characters.

Lannisport Brothel: Do NOT knock the brothel. This card has survived from the first block for good reason (Just as a heads up, this card was misprinted as non-unique early on, so you may have copies that look like they're non unique, they're really not. We can dream though.) The strength of the Brothel is that it is almost always useful, and with the immunity of the agenda, in most cases, you're swallowing a character slot for the entire game. This is my go-to location for Stark and Greyjoy.

Iron Throne:
This is where the agenda hurts Martell, which I will discuss in more detail in a little bit. Other than that, Iron Throne does a good job at protecting your own Ally characters from Arys Oakheart (as well as many come-into-play abilities in general) and making sure dupes don't do anything. This is probably my go-to for Martell, Baratheon, and Lannister.



What this deck can do against Martell
Lets take a look at some options:

Martell is a bit of a fragile house:
In theory, starting Iron Throne for HoD against Martell sounds pretty awesome. It's like a mailed fist to the face. There goes first turn Viper's Bannerman, Flea Bottom Scavenger, and Orphan at the Greenblood, which are 3 pretty common starts, at least in our meta.
Iron Throne against Vipers Bannerman is really useful, since it kneels afterward. This also cancels Arys Oakheart, who tends to pop up from time to time. Martell Decks that don't go with Maesters or Summer for draw, may be hurting badly against the Iron Throne.

As far as I know, being a response action, our HoD Iron Throne can still be canceled with He Calls it Thinking. Keep this in mind, it may be worth holding a paper shield for.

HoD is also a great tool against Favorable Ground, which pops up in Martell KOHH often.

This deck also runs a lot of Location Control (maybe 7 potential cards) and Martell solely banking on their control locations will have a hard time if caught without a He Calls it Thinking. Luckily, they can also lose Ghaston Grey fairly early off of A City Besieged.

Martell has weak card control outside of characters and response actions:
Martell players that don't go with The Maester's Path are going to have a tough time against An Iron Throne with multiple Pyromancer's Cache and Increased Levy stacked on it. If you get 3 Cache's on your location, Martell control is going to have a tough time controlling anything with you drawing to cap every turn.

Alchemist's Guildhall will do a good job of dealing with influence, and it's always a good tool to keep down The Scourge, or some of the other odd nameless control locations Martell has.

Martell is the King of the Restricted List:
This is a fun one. It seems like most Martell players run The Viper's Bannerman, and will have a tough time dealing with anything attached to your HoD location, which at the worst could be +3 gold and drawing to cap. They also don't get to try and return your HoD location with Search and Detain. You get a huge advantage against Martell players that go with Burning on the Sands, because they can't do either of the prior options.


And that's the breakdown. Even with these options, Martell is tough. Martell Summer in particular will still be pretty hard, because you wont be able to curb their draw nearly as easy.


Notes:
Setup and HoD: This is a tough one, from what I gather so far, a decent setup with HoD is probably 3 cards at 2-1-0. In practice, I feel like you get a consistent 0 or 1 in setup with 10-12 cards dedicated to that value. In Lannister, it's pretty easy, and you tend not to end up with filler cards: Pentoshi Manor x3, Doubting Septa x3, Tommen, Carrion Bird x2/3, Inn of Volantis, etc. (Shadows makes it easier with Kingdom of Shadows.) For 0s, you get Increased Levy x3, Mountain Refugee x3, and 2 sets of 0 cost locations.

For this deck, I went with only 9 0s: Increased Levy x3, Mountain Refugee x3, Twilight Market x3, and I did notice some difficulty in setup because of it. A sunset sea or two will probably end up in the next version.

Increased Levy in particular is amazing in this deck, because it's guaranteed for setup, prevents a first turn Search and Detain, and probably never goes anywhere.

Pentoshi Manor and you: If any new card met and exceeded my expectations in actual play, this card is the one. Pentoshi Manor x3, Yezzan's Grotesqueries x3, and LOTR Bronn x1 is an excellent stalling subtheme. Pentoshi Manor by itself does a good job dealing with the 2 STRers that are going to get washed in the Valar anyway, but it has more utility beyond that.

For example, without Stealth, Baratheon will have a hard time hitting you with Power Challenges at all with a Grotesquerie in play.

Bronn has been my favorite character forever, and I appreciate that being able to take keywords away from characters with Pentoshi Manor has made him pretty awesome. It is sad times for the Red Viper if you have Bronn and a Pentoshi Manor in play at the same time. The same could be said for any duped non-kneeler if you have The Iron Throne in play.

Protect your Royalty: This deck is pretty feast or famine as far as draw goes, especially because you don't have the initiative to reliably draw off copies of an opponent's Bay of Ice. The draw is sparse, but pretty strong once you get it. So early on, if your draw isn't surfacing and you draw into the Lannister family, keep them around. It only takes 1 cache to turn around a card deficit, and outside of Targ and Maesters, you have a pretty good shot at the Cache staying around for awhile. Also keep an eye out for cheap Kings and Queens if you have an Enslave.


Cards to Watch out For
Search and Detain: This may be fairly obvious, but you'll want to look out for 1st turn Search and Detain, since this is an easy way to render your agenda worthless. My favorite opener because of this is Retaliation, since it also can beat KOHH if your opponent has no boosts on the table.

Retaliation is nice first turn anyway because you can get a lot of use out of Enslave going second if you draw into it.

Red Vengeance: This deck draws a lot of its strength from claim. So be ready for this card if you think the Martell Player has it. If you have a Cache or two hanging out on the HoD location, you might as well start with an intrigue challenge, for the chance to pull Red Vengeance if they decide not to use it on the intrigue.

Illyrio: Because of the pretty big chunk of Shadows in this deck, you're giving Targ a free burn effect every time you bring something out. He's a good choice for City of Soldiers. Just watch out for Narrow Escape and To be a Dragon, friggen Targ cheaters.

Dragon Thief: This card will cause you no end of grief, since we have a playset of Enslave and a draw engine based on the Cache. Don't forget you can cancel the effect, but a good Targ player can bounce this around several times with Ambush from the Plains, so be careful.

The King's Law: Not as bad against this deck as most, because of all the 0 cost shadows characters, but it's still a threat, so keep it in mind.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the deck! Thanks for reading!


And that's the end of Enemies of the Crown, I hope you guys enjoyed the series.

Again, thanks for reading, and for the comments. Even though this series is done, I'll still be doing regular Crimson and Gold articles, so look for them!

If there's anything in particular you guys would like to see, post in the comments and I'll see what I can come up with.