Scheming on the Sands - Dorne

Scheming on the Sands – “Dorne”

“DORNE was the last of the Seven Kingdoms to swear fealty to the Iron Throne. Blood, custom, and history all set the Dornishmen apart from the other kingdoms.”
-George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

Welcome to another edition of Scheming on the Sands! In this edition we’ll take a look at another signature Martell card that is not as popular as The Red Viper (PotS) but if deployed correctly can provide a huge marshalling advantage: Dorne (PotS).

Why is Dorne Not Played More?

Dorne has a few things going against it in a “standard” deck.

• It’s more vulnerable to location hate than your typical cost reducing location. Since it’s non-limited it’s a prime target for Newly Made Lord (TftH) which is very popular in the current meta and Frozen Solid (LoW) which appears in a fair number of Stark decks.
• It’s expensive. At 3 gold it’s not cheap to get out, even during setup, and depending on your deck type it may not pay for itself for a turn or two. Since it’s so expensive many people chose not to play it because of the significant risks outlined in the previous point.
• It can only be effectively used in the right deck. It’s effect is amazing but if there is not some degree of trait harmonization in your deck it’s just not worth the space and expense.

So is there any hope for this card?

House of Dreams + Dorne

There is hope. Now that we have House of Dreams (ARotD) the math changes significantly. Let’s consider what the agenda provides us.

Put any unique, non-limited, in house location into play immune to opponents non-plot effects, a 6 card setup hand, and a 3 gold setup bank.

Let’s talk about the immunity first. By eliminating all non-plot effects we can much more easily predict what might target Dorne when it’s in play due to House of Dreams:

• A City Besieged (CD)
  What’s particularly good is that this plot can only possibly affect Dorne as early as turn 4 (assuming no plot churn has occurred) and only if your opponent has been playing City plots for the three previous turns (which is not unreasonable since many of them are good plots). Additionally, I would argue that Dorne would not necessarily be the best target at such a late point in the game; it depends on what other locations you have in play.
• Burning Bridges (QoD)
  This doesn’t threaten the location itself but it does “turn it off” for a turn which is certainly annoying.
• Search and Detain (HtS)
  This is the biggest danger and there’s not much you can do about it unless there is a bigger threat on the board that has your opponent’s attention, or you have Outwit (TIoR) and a learned character ready. However, like A City Besieged, Dorne might not warrant being the target of this plot as the card in-of-itself poses no threat to your opponent’s board position. Again, it depends on what other locations are in play among all the players.
• Snowed Under (Core)
  I’m not willing to bet money on it, but I have a sense that this plot will see a bit of a revival with House of Dreams now out. As the plot owner gets to choose the location there’s not much you can do except NOT use Dorne on the turn this plot is revealed. It’s also not a when revealed plot so Outwit won’t work. However, this might be a good moment for Forgotten Plans (KotStorm).
• Fleeing to the Wall (Core)
  This is essentially Wildfire Assault (Core) but for locations. No direct threat to Dorne and shouldn’t be a terribly costly decision since your other cost reducing locations pale in comparison.

So with the new agenda Dorne is relatively safe and a bit of a bargain as well. House of Dreams reduces your setup gold to 3, however Dorne costs 3 and is put in to play for free. So not only do you guarantee it during setup to maximize it’s time for wide scale cost reduction you also get it at a small discount. You effectively get a 6 gold setup with no penalty.

What’s In a Trait?

The big deal with Dorne is that it reduces cost based on trait. The vast majority of other cost reducers used modify based on house affiliation (see “fiefdom locations”) or icons (the various “streets”). Since Dorne modifies by trait it also allows you to cost reduce out of house and neutral cards as well as different card types (characters, locations, attachments) with the same trait. For now though let’s work with what’s available to Martell.

Having an agenda out is a big deal now given that so many cards in the meta are affected by having (or not having) an agenda in play. With this in mind we need to make the most of Dorne and its ability to do massive cost reduction. In Martell’s wheel house two traits come to mind: House Dayne and Sand Snake.

Sand Snake
I’m not a big fan of the Sand Snake deck type. It’s far too reliant on synergies and far too easy to break. Additionally, if you don’t use No Use For Grief (DB) it’s very dependent on your ability to draw the right cards to build the necessary synergies and that gives your opponents way too much time to respond to the coming threat.

Furthermore, I don’t think Sand Snakes is made that much stronger with Dorne. Outside of the 6 unique Sand Snakes there are two other Sand Snake cards; one of which is a Shadows card that can’t be marshaled through cost reduction. Assuming you only pay for a unique one time that means there are only 9 (6 unique + 3 copies of the only other cost reducible non-unique) Sand Snake cards that will benefit. Another problem is that with the exception of Bastard Daughter (OSaS) all the other cards have only the Sand Snake and Bastard traits. There are only two other Martell cards with Bastard that aren't terribly interesting in a Sand Snake deck so there isn’t much else to harmonize.

There’s an argument to be made that the other 10-12 character cards in the deck that aren’t Sand Snakes might share traits among them but it would most likely be Lord, Lady, Knight and Ally. Among those four there’s almost no “cross pollination” with the Sand Snake characters or each other. So, in short, I just don’t think Dorne works with Sand Snakes and certainly doesn’t warrant the agenda.

House Dayne
If you are sticking within house Martell cards then in my view House Dayne is the trait to try and build upon when using Dorne. Unlike Sand Snake there are 16 cards that feature House Dayne as a trait; of those, 3 are unique. So assuming you pay for a unique once you have up to 42 cards that can be played using Dorne’s cost reduction (compare that to 9 with Sand Snake).

The thing is a straight House Dayne deck isn’t particularly interesting because there are only four House Dayne unique characters (two of which are different versions of Darkstar and one of which is a super expensive neutral Kingsguard). Additionally some of the House Dayne characters aren’t particularly compelling. Also apart from a few select characters there is a large dearth of Power icons on the House Dayne stable of cards.

However, there are lots of House Dayne cards that have a second and even a third trait. If we consider Knight and Army traits then we get a more interesting picture. There’s a lot of overlap with House Dayne and other traits. Martell fields some compelling cards with Knight and Army as well; namely The Viper's Bannermen (PotS) and Quentyn's Guard (WLL). If we mix those together perhaps we can conjure a more interesting concoction?

Deck It – The Might of Dorne

So, now knowing that some of House Dayne actually harmonizes fairly well with several other traits we can build a deck. So we’ll take some of the House Dayne stable of cards and toss in a few other cards to maximize trait harmonization the best we can; in this case we are putting three copies each of The Viper’s Bannermen (Army Trait) and Quentyn’s Guard (Army. Knight. Traits). Some House Messenger (PotS) (Ally Trait) along with the Viper’s Bannermen give us some draw power. It’s not optimal, but I’m also putting in Counting Favors (Core) in case you need some draw in a pinch. Starfall will show up in the deck since we’ll still have a lot of House Dayne.

We’re putting in a single copy of The Red Viper (APS) (Lord Trait) and Old Bill Bone (ARotD) (Mercenary Trait). They don’t harmonize well trait wise with the rest of the deck but their utility aspects work very well though. Old Bill Bone should really shine here as APS Red Viper and House Dayne/Starfall will allow you to bank a lot of gold on characters to spend later if you just so happen to be dealing with pesky choke decks. On that note, however, winter can hurt this deck. Dorne’s mass cost reduction and Old Bill Bone might be able to get you around income choke, but the season change will neuter the Starfall Bannerman (ASoS) (House Dayne. Bannermen. Traits) and make the House Dayne weenies vulnerable. On the other hand if someone makes it summer for you then enjoy being able to bank gold on the Knights of the Sun (ASoS) (House Dayne. Army. Knight. Traits) for free and use Old Bill Bone to spend it later. Unfortunately there’s not space to have any sort of season control so if your opponents are making it summer or winter then you’ll just have to weather it (pun intended).

A Game of Cyvasse (ACoS) will shine in this deck as well. You’ll have a huge amount of intrigue characters all boosted so character control shouldn't be an issue. Blood for Blood (PotS) makes an appearance for the same reason. A one gold character has the potential of being 4+ STR very easily so it makes for a great way to take out much more expensive characters that your opponents control. In some cases I’ve deliberately killed the Viper’s Bannermen in order to get the draw and kill off an annoying unique that had high STR. Red Vengeance (PotS) and He Calls It Thinking (PotS) are self explanatory.

So here’s the deck. Try it out and let me know how it works for you! Also, let me know if you have any other ideas on maximizing House Dayne/Dorne.

The Might of Dorne

House (1)

House Martell (Core) x1

Agenda (1)

House of Dreams (ARotD) x1

Character (31)

Darkstar (PotS) x3
House Dayne Knight (PotS) x3
Knights of the Sun (ASoS) x3
Lord Edric's Knight (PotS) x3
Starfall Bannerman (ASoS) x3
Starfall Cavalry (MotA) x3
House Dayne Squire (ASitD) x2
House Messenger (PotS) x3
The Red Viper (APS) x1
Old Bill Bone (ARotD) x1
The Viper's Bannermen (PotS) x3
Quentyn's Guard (WLL) x3

Location (17)

Dorne (PotS) x1
Street of Steel (Core) x1
Shadowblack Lane (Core) x1
Water Garden (PotS) x2
Lord Doran's Chambers (PotS) x1
Palace Fountains (PotS) x3
Starfall (ASitD) x2
Dornish Fiefdoms (PotS) x3
Summer Sea (PotS) x3

Event (12)

Red Vengeance (PotS) x3
He Calls It Thinking (PotS) x3
A Game of Cyvasse (ACoS) x3
Blood for Blood (PotS) x3

Plot (7)

To the Spears! (PotS)
Muster the Realm! (QoD)
You Swore an Oath (WLL)
Game of Thrones (LotR)
Counting Favors (Core)
Battle of Oxcross (PotS)
Manning the City Walls (CD)

Deck Notes
A few points to keep in mind when playing this deck.

• It's extremely light on the unique characters so keep in mind all the downsides with that; namely that there is effectively no saving anyone except Darkstar via duplicates.
• It is very aggro; Red Vengeance is some insurance but unlike more typical Martell vengeance decks it will not win you the game. You need to push hard and often as the deck doesn't have a lot of renown either.
• On a more positive point it's fairly resilient to resets. Since there aren't a lot of unique characters resets don't hurt that much and if you don't suffer from lack of draw too much you can quickly repopulate the board.

What about Maesters?

Maesters. Yes, it's another common trait and one that Martell has quite a few of in house. Of course there's a big problem if you want to use Dorne and House of Dreams. You can't use The Maester's Path (GotC). I haven't done the theorycrafting regarding draw and pulling out links quickly enough, but I think most people would agree that having to pull attachments normally is the reason why Maesters weren't a big deal before the agenda was released. Perhaps we'll look a bit more into what we can do with Dorne, House of Dreams, and Maesters another time.

Nonetheless, if you want a touch of Maester, do this. Take the deck build above, drop one of the copies of Lord Edric's Knight, and one copy of Blood for Blood. Replace those cards with one copy of the Copper Link (GotC) and one copy of Starfall Healer (RotO) (if you are wanting to trait harmonize some). The healer will help you save versus kills and provide you another power icon. If not the Starfall Healer almost any other in house Martell Maester can work. Each of them can expand the tool kit for The Might of Dorne deck in a slightly different way. A maester with an intrigue icon would be particularly nasty as well as you could use them to for Cyvasse and then activate the response without having to commit the character to a possibly dangerous challenge.

The thing we are doing here to add some trait manipulation so we can activate Starfall on characters that don't have the printed House Dayne trait. Candidate #1 here, of course, is The Red Viper (APS).

Next Time

On the next edition of Scheming on the Sands; we saw what Dorne can do when we think about trait harmonizing the Martell stable of cards. What happens if we think outside of the box a bit?