Scheming on the Sands - Deck Options

Hi, I’m Aaron Glazer and I spend way, way too much time thinking about House Martell. Hey guys, did you hear? House Martell sucks now! We have too much restricted and the format’s too fast. Our best bet is to net-deck and hope for the best, but we have no shot against Greyjoy TLV or any burn. Heck, until the new FAQ, we might as well just play other houses.

Well, no. Suddenly, a ton of this once friendly, fun community has gone chicken little. There’s tons of ideas out there, outside the box ideas that really can work. Let’s take a look at three different Martell builds that just aren’t good enough and see how each can still work if one is just willing to work outside the box.

Martell Knights of the Hollow Hill

This was the go to Martell build for quite awhile, until the format sped up and everyone decided it was no longer viable, but is that really the case? Yes, decks are a touch faster now, but, really, how much faster? TLV, outside of Baratheon, isn’t fast enough (and Baratheon has moved to Black Sails anyway), meaning we only need more draw and ways to control their board. Well, we have the multiple resets in Westeros Bleeds, First Snow of Winter, Wildfire Assault, and, of course, Valar. With so much restricted, though, we need to find different tools. Let’s assume no Ghaston Grey for the time being. Here’s some ideas:

The Vaith - You’ll have the influence, so why not use it every turn messing with opponents battle math? Most people like to use intrigue first, but if they do, can they get through the Military or Power with an army facing them, or better, the next guy on the list out. Against any non-control player, this can cause heck with how many characters opponents commit to a particular challenge. Add in The Only Game that Matters in particular to really make this mean.

Ser Arthur Dayne - As it turns out, we’re going to have fewer characters on the board for much of the game. That can be a huge problem, but it needn’t be. The Sword of Morning is a monster on defense, not kneeling with 5 strength for only 4 cost and being impossible to bypass by stealth, so long as you have fewer characters in play. That means that opponents must over commit to challenges. First, here’s two ways to make them pay by letting it pass un-opposed.

The Viper’s Rage - So, you’ve let this challenge, which must be more than 4 strength to get past Arthur through. Well, now no one on the opponent’s board has icons. Go to town and thin their guys out. This is even better once you’ve put on...

Sun Stroke - This long forgotten card gives -4 strength any time an opponent wins against you by 4 or more strength with a terminal effect to boot and a cannot be saved. That’s an end to everyone from Cersei Lannister to Asha Greyjoy. Sure, it can be canceled by Greyjoy, but it’s an attachment, which means it’ll just happen again next challenge until the cancels run out. It gets rid of pretty much everyone ... except Dragons and Armies. So, I’m staring down the Stark horde or a bunch of Dragons... what now?

Spear Phalanx - Spear Phalanx are a walking deterrent. They kneel for their effect, sure, but that’s hardly the end of the world, as past the first few turns, there should be plenty of influence to pay for their effect. What they do best is prevent your opponent’s best from even entering a challenge. Of course, if you’re first, 4 strength deadly attacks often lead to un-opposed, so we’ll need ways to stand them.

High Ground - You should be using Nym’s Guard or the Viper’s Bannermen, right? Big strength with stealth is a huge boon, as anyone who’s ever lost their Red Viper or Northern Cavalry Flank to a pesky Carrion Bird can tell you. Add this to the Spear Phalanx for a surprise defend or to discard the best attacker an opponent has.

Choosing the Spear - Will get characters up for offense or defense. Every character counting twice or more is huge here, as again, you have fewer characters.

Distinct Mastery - Event spots get tight, I know, but if you’re running Nym’s Guard with the Spear Phalanx and a couple of Arianne Martell, this card is fantastic. Why wait for only To the Spears turns to drive opponents nuts? And we really do need to stop pretending that To the Spears is the only standing plot.

A Game of Thrones - Standing for intrigue defense and offense can be huge. Sure, this isn’t the best with your big armies, but for everyone else from Arianne to Lost Spearman it can be huge and turn the tide of a game. The last thing you want to lose is intrigue and with this out, short of Power Behind the Throne decks, you should win intrigue.

Desolate Passage - Finally, we have Desolate Passage. With fewer characters out, why let that be a disadvantage? If only one character can attack and defend at a time, an army, especially an army you can stand, takes extra measures to get through, while you can really lay the pain on with your big renown characters and a single Lost Oasis.

Well, since we’ve now built a whole plot deck (First Snow of Winter, Valar, Wildfire Assault, Desolate Passage, A Game of Thrones, To the Spears, and one of Marched to the Wall, Rule by Decree, or, my suggestion, Negotiations at the Great Sept), it’s time to move on to the next deck type.

By the way, another way to run a Knights of the Hollow Hill deck is with Sand Snakes. Check the bottom of this article for my version of that deck, which seems to get the combo going in four out of five games or so, but is so weak to Targaryen Burn thanks to Threat from the North, that it isn’t quite competitive. Any thoughts on overcoming that hurdle are welcome.


Martell The Long Voyage

There’s a standard Long Voyage build running around out there that’s, well, it’s cleaning up regionals. It showed up in, I believe, 6 regionals and won 4, making the finals in a fifth. It’s probably Martell’s strongest build. Here’s a way to get some extra efficiency out of it. The deck already runs Greenblood Merchants and uses a Black Raven for Summer effects. To increase the usefulness of this, why not add in the Inn of the Kneeling Man. That gets an extra use for each Merchant, but also gives you good utility for Carrion Birds, Dornish Paramours, and even House Messengers. If you’re sick of wasting Merchants just to kneel an influence, add the Hellholt Docks to this already strong combo to get rid of influence faster than most decks can spend it.

Courtesy of Kyle Szklenski, here’s an alternative to Martell TLV that’s just godly with card advantage: Maesters. Maesters have a ton of control tricks there’s often not much space for, a ton of rush potential, and, with this size deck, the ability to main deck your chains. Here’s some key parts.

The Conclave - This beast of a restricted card comes out cheap and wins games when renown is named. In Martell, it’s also in at least two challenges on two separate turns thanks to the before discussed To the Spears, Game of Thrones combination and adding.

Schemes of the Scholar - Why not add a second Game of Thrones type plot, except this one lets you raise the Intrigue claim as well.

Maester of the Sun - It’s still going to be Summer in this deck, and Samwell x3 and the Carrion Bird x3 are going to be great for draw. Why not get some saves out of the deal?

Oldtown Raven - Hey, more draw and the added ability to cheapen all your many, many Maesters.

Valyrian Steel Link - Sam and the Ravens tend to stop working after a turn or two, but the Valyrian Steel Link ensures you’re constantly hitting draw cap all game. The card advantage is tremendous.

Bronze Link - We don’t want to lose the Valyrian Steel, but we also don’t want to lose the season battle (though Ill Tidings helps there as well). Here’s a good way to ensure that’s not a concern.

Maester of War - I’ve been avoiding this guy for ages since I hate making other Maesters Tri-Con, but with so few Maesters currently in the meta, he’s the safest he’s ever been.

The Citadel of Oldtown/Outwit - We don’t want to deal with Valar at all, so try and Outwit it and if not, grab back your best Maester anyway.

We Light the Way - Kneel a cheap Maester to create an extra To the Spears type turn a couple of times per game. The rush gets silly, and if you add trait manipulation (a Copper Link) to make someone like the Red Viper or Arianne Martell a Maester.

Citadel Custom - Extra power challenges with a ton of renown? Why not. Add this to We Light the Way, then in Dominance use...

The Archmaester’s Wrath - This one is ridiculous. All those stand effects are consistently huge, sure, but here’s where they get sick. Maesters standing from these effects in Dominance quickly become a one sided board wipe.

Old Intrigues - In such a big deck, many of these cards will come up at different times, making the full combo hard to pull off. Luckily, Old Intrigues lets you recur all of these events to really bring the pain.

Martell No Agenda

I’m a huge fan of Ghaston Grey in my No Agenda decks. Here’s the gist: If you go first, you get to attack with all your nobles, take a chunk out of the enemy (our old friend Lost Oasis is great for this) then bounce any challenges coming back your way. If you go second, you get to defend, re-stand, and draw for all those incoming attacks, while your opponent is left with little to stop you thanks to having gone first. So, since we’ll be losing, let’s look at three of those lose to win cards first.

Taste for Blood - Everyone kind of realized all at once (you know, right when attachments became viable again) just how amazing it is to gain power for losing challenges on attack or defense. This is especially great, for those concerned with the speed of the game now, on Ellaria Sand.

Sunspear Tourney Grounds - Few seem to run this and I have no idea why. If you’re losing challenges anyway, and in this build you are, then why not get a free cancel out of it. With a ton of unique characters out, this can usually cancel events and character abilities and it’s reusable nature really will chew through even Greyjoy cancels. Some decks run character ability light, but remember, this can even cancel a dupe-save. This is a great, overlooked card.

Oberyn’s Guile - The ultimate draw card for this deck. Whenever you lose a challenge and Quentyn is the Agenda, reveal and add a card to hand, ignoring the draw cap. You’ll also be drawing a card thanks to the Agenda, so 2-cards every single time a challenge is lost? Losing intrigue will mean nothing in no-time. These two are especially good with Shores of the Summer Sea, as if you lose the wrong thing with Intrigue, or merely want dupes back, or use a restricted event or the Orphan of the Greenblood/Parting Blow (a personal favorite since it allows you to dig for Quentyn and Ghaston), you can get back some of your mean tricks. You’re draw-capping each turn and them some, so why not?

Deceit - Everyone seemingly hates this card, until the opponent is about to get a huge challenge through using Stealth or Deadly and you steal those keywords to successfully defend then get an attack of your own through. Worst case, a chump challenge with Arianne can force in a good defender, she can re-stand with this, then get through the challenge she really wants.


Another way to run No Agenda is with a lot of weapons. Naturally, this makes our restricted card of choice the Venomous Blade. Other great weapons include the Flaming Sword (for burn protection), Longclaw (for extra renown), Poisoned Knife (for a bit of target kill), Rusted Sword (for a surprise strength boost), the Tourney Lance (because Joust is wildly underrated), and the War Scorpion (to win whatever you want for fear of retribution). What really makes this work are two locations, though:

Alchemist Shop - This is the obvious one, as +2 strength and deadly makes for a mean character base.

Meereenese Fighting Pit - The other choice is this out of house beauty. Standing an opponent with a weapon attachment with huge strength and deadly causes nightmares for opponents.

This concept might work a touch better out of Hollow Hill for two reasons - without Set Up, that’s a lot of expensive attachments, and, more, it’s sometimes hard to lose challenges with such buff characters. Quentyn, though, gives draw and makes the extra renown characters absolute beasts. Which way do you think would be better?

And that’s this week. Hope you enjoyed this week’s Scheming on the Sands and discuss more off the beaten path ideas. Remember, the game is only stale if you let it be, Oh, and here's that Sandsnake Deck. Enjoy!

Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder

Sand Snakes

House (1)
House Martell (Core) x1

Agenda: (1)
1x Knights of the Hollow Hill (MotM)

Plot: (7)
1x Wildfire Assault (Core)
1x Forgotten Plans (KotStorm)
1x The First Snow of Winter (ODG)
1x Take Them by Surprise (LoW)
1x Rule by Decree (Core)
1x Negotiations at the Great Sept (TPoL)
1x To the Spears! (PotS)

Character: (31)
1x Bastard Daughter (OSaS)
3x Dorea Sand (TftH)
3x Nymeria Sand (OSaS)
2x Obara Sand (TWoW)
3x Obella Sand (DB)
3x Sarella Sand (PotS)
3x Tyene Sand (OSaS)
3x The Red Viper (PotS)
3x Herald of the Sun (SB)
3x House Messenger (PotS)
2x Lady Nym's Guard (RotK)
2x Maester of Lemonwood (BtW)

Attachment: (0)

Event: (21)
3x Judged by the Father (TCC)
3x Desperate Measures (TCC)
3x Much and More (AHM)
3x Red Vengeance (PotS)
3x No Use For Grief (DB)
3x Burning on the Sand (RotO)
3x He Calls It Thinking (PotS)

Location: (9)
3x Dornish Fiefdoms (PotS)
3x Kingsroad Fiefdom (QoD)
3x Summer Sea (QoD)