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Scheming on the Sands - The Quentyn Deck
Sep 27 2013 05:15 AM |
PulseGlazer
in Game of Thrones
Small Council Scheming on the Sands PulseGlazer
For the first time since Maesters and Knights of the Hollow Hill were all the rage, which were before Bruno took everyone’s lunch money with Targaryen House of Pain and the DC Stark Winter was giving stuff swirlies in toilet, and well before before FAQ 4.0 and TLV being the king of wedgies, for the first time since those halcyon days, Martell again has the new hotness, the deck everyone just has to play. And today I’ll be telling you all about that new deck’s key parts and introducing a new theory. I’m referring, of course, to the DC Quentyn Deck. The decklist wasn’t published, this being DC, but this is almost certainly a decklist within 5 or so cards of it. Let’s take a look:Deck Built with CardGameDB.com GoT Deckbuilder
Quentyn DC
Total Cards: (61)
House:
House Martell
Agenda: (0)
Plot: (7)
1x Men of Pride (THoBaW)
1x Valar Morghulis (Core)
2x The Power of Blood (Core)
1x Manning the City Walls (CD)
1x Breaking and Entering (LotR)
1x A Song of Summer (ASoS)
Character: (35)
2x Arianne Martell (PotS)
1x Dagos Manwoody (TBC)
1x Doran Martell (TGM)
2x Dornish Paramour (TTotH)
1x Edric Dayne (IG)
1x Ellaria Sand (PotS)
3x Greenblood Merchant (ARotD)
2x Host of the Boneway (AToTT)
3x House Messenger (PotS)
3x Lost Spearman (MotM)
1x Myrcella Lannister (ODG)
3x Quentyn Martell (VD)
1x Ser Archibald Yronwood (CD)
1x Ser Arys Oakheart (PotS)
1x Ser Cletus Yronwood (TCC)
1x Ser Gerris Drinkwater (CD)
1x The Bastard of Godsgrace (EB)
3x The Red Viper (PotS)
3x The Viper's Bannermen (PotS)
1x Carrion Bird (ASoS)
Attachment: (0)
Event: (10)
2x Nightmares (LoW)
2x Paper Shield (QoD)
3x He Calls It Thinking (PotS)
3x Choosing the Spear (AJE)
Location: (16)
3x Ghaston Grey (FtC)
2x Lost Oasis (AToT)
3x Palace Fountains (PotS)
3x Summer Sea (PotS)
1x River Row (QoD)
1x Street of Silk (LotR)
1x Shadowblack Lane (Core)
1x Flea Bottom (TGM)
1x Street of Sisters (Core)
The fun, then, comes from making opponents suffer for choosing you to go first, ideally kneeling out as much as possible, allowing you defense, and them that clear, all important counter. There are two cards in this deck, both locations. The first is Lost Oasis. With this out and one of numerous stands, whether an activated Red Viper or Choosing the Spear), the opponent will quickly find his or her board knelt out. Worse, in many ways, is the second location: Ghaston Grey. This allows you to go first, take power and cards from the opponent, and finish up by bouncing any potential retaliation, whether an uber character or not. I believe the actual DC deck only used two of Ghaston, but given how powerful it can be with almost any fuel, I bumped that to three and added Myrcella (I think that’s the majority of the difference in this deck).
In addition to figuring out the logistics of whether to be first player or not, the opponent will be facing an awful lot of two claim plots while likely struggling for card advantage. Arianne Martell early in the game with two claim plots makes for an empty opposing hand sickeningly quickly. Of course, the restricted choice helps keep the pressure on, too, while ensuring more card advantage, as the Viper’s Bannermen can almost always win a challenge when needed and gain you at least two cards coming into, or leaving play. As you’re destroying your opponent’s hand and card advantage, the Bannermen, Arianne, The House Messenger, the Dornish Paramour, and Quentyn are all ensuring you have plenty of cards to keep the pressure on and the opponent from mounting a comeback.
Some decks, however, are just so defensive and controlling that without control elements, a loss becomes nearly inevitable. So this deck piles on the defense. There’s Nightmares, which goes in every Tier 1 deck with good reason, and Paper Shield, which is more and more doing the same, He Calls it Thinking for Cancel, and to ensure the one important challenge doesn't go through, Choosing the Spear works damn near as well as Burning on the Sand, granting Melee to turn back most normal challenges. Sprinkle in the Greenblood Merchants for icon removal, the Carrion Birds for season control and Ellaria Sand for rush, and there’s an answer to almost everything!
All of this leads me to my current theory on the game: the one card too many theory. The House of Pain deck type was good, but really took a leap with Long Lances making the Street Waif epic. Stark had just too much murder for a card advantage agenda like Kings of Winter to remove 1/2 of your natural draw each turn. Tunnels of the Red Keep was seemingly frightening before players had to choose between the Pentoshi Manor and the needed draw of the Pyromancer’s Cache.
The Quentyn deck was very good, if not yet dominant, before Choosing the Spear. That one card changed everything. Here’s a quick bit of some options this amazing card gives you: standing a Greenblood Merchant to remove a second icon or get rid of needed influence, standing Arianne for a huge power and card advantage swing, allowing a second kneel from Lost Oasis, and, the biggest, functionally canceling a challenge from a 3-strength character by giving melee and allowing defense for two uses of a character. With this and Ghaston Grey, you can have one character easily be a part of three challenges. With this, the Bannermen and a Greenblood Merchant, you can all but guarantee you win two of the three challenges per turn, offense or defense. Add it to Renown to finish the game. Quentyn decks were good, maybe even great before, but they had to choose from more Icon removal (the Orphans), Challenge cancels (Burning on the Sand), the huge presence (The Bannermen), or getting rid of weenies (Venomous Blade). Now, with this one card and Ghaston Grey, every Martell player gets every bit of control and power they need.
And that’s this week! See you in two more, until then, remain Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken.
- Reldan, bigfomlof, slothgodfather and 1 other like this
28 Comments
It's hard to know how long this deck has been good because it was overshadowed by The Long Voyage era. Maybe the the one card too many was giving the other houses TLV.
While I'm not sure how much "one card too many" applies to Bruno's House of Pain (as Aegon's Hill (TTotH), The Hatchlings' Feast (ASitD), Long Lances (THoBaW), and Street Waif (AToT) were all added to the restricted list since his win), I like the one card too many idea.
As a corollary to your theory, I might add "one ability too many." The new ability that pushed Martell to new heights was on-demand challenge phase standing.
In those bygone eras you mentioned, to stand characters during the challenge phase Martell needed to lose challenges (Vengeful keyword, Sarella Sand (PotS), Deceit (ARotD)) or remove characters from challenges (A Gentle Prison (WotN), Lhorulu (THoBaW)). If you opponent opened with an Intrigue Gambit plot, there was a chance of To Be a Viper (SB) on plot 2 or later, but not a huge chance.
Choosing the Spear (AJE) is available from plot 1, doesn't require you to kneel anyone, doesn't require you to have lost any challenges, and it makes the character more likely to win the challenge. That is a fundamental shift in the flavor of House Martell towards abilities abundant in Baratheon. It is as odd and out of place as seeing a big buck stag roaming the dessert sands.
Originally I thought Greenblood Merchant (ARotD) was the problem, but now I agree with you 100% on Choosing the Spear.
Counters
Besides the Lanni No Agenda/Grand Maester Pycelle (Core) deck that won in Europe, do you (or anyone else) know what kind of decks give The Quentin Deck a tough matchup?
(1) Fortified Position or Burning Bridges, probably the safest variant as it cannot really backfire and can be effortlessly included in a good bunch of decks.
(2) City of Lies into Sorrowful Man, provided you have the influence in your setup. Very safe but you might have to mulligan aggressively.
(3) The ultimate way to shut down a Quentyn deck, almost certainly wins you the game: Outwit their MtCW on turn one. Not very accessible for most decks though and if they HCiT the Outwit, then you've just wiffed one of your most important plots.
Of course there's always the possibility that they won't draw into TVB on their setup. Variant (1) and (2) don't really hurt you in that case but (3) does, so that's surely another unknown to consider.
Pretty much every current t1 deck, Martell Quentyn is by no means overly powerful. It is definitely one of the decks to have the least unfavorable match-ups at the moment though and fares incredibly well against niche decks that appear at tournaments. The "overall performance" of Martell Quentyn might suggest some sort of 1v1 advantage against other t1 decks but that's a deduction that cannot be made. In fact, during my very own testing I've never really felt that Martell Quentyn was superior to my opponent's deck. It always came down to who pulled the better plays.
Don't start overthinking the whole thing is my approach to the matter. With the release of the next CP a lot of what we call meta right now is going to change for keeps anyway.
First of all, it's only 3 cards in a deck and there will be games where you won't see any of them. In that case, if you have no other armies (or very few like in this case), it's just a waste of a plot, with bad stats (1 gold). Then again, I'd like to point out that every house has big str armies with good or bad abilities.
As I mentioned in some other posts, The Red Queens Faithful, especially with a dupe is much stronger than TVB, who are just good when come into play, or leave play. Have you ever tried playing against the recent Bara HOD fury? They have this beast who keeps standing and wining challenges much more than what TVB do: plus, they remove 3 of your powers...
Then again, remember what happened at Flea Bottom Fracas? Lanni charagenda has way too much kneel and 3xChoosing the spear won't save you from that, especially if they use city plots to kneel your Red Viper, since you can't stand it anymore.
What I'd like to say is that this deck is not overpowered, is just a very good deck in a very balanced meta. If people could just see this, we'd face fewer Quentyn on OCTGN and we'd all have much more fun, but now everyone is playing it just because it won Gencon.
I hope everyone brings it at worlds so that one lucky Lanni charagenda would win
I don't think it is a good comparison as tRQF doesn't have any keywords, does completely different things and it also goes against the common Baratheon strategy with its powerful ability. I can actually stealth tRQF and tRQF doesn't have as big impact on challenges as attacker as TVB just by missing those two keywords. tRQF ability actually is double-edged which is why you don't see it in every Baratheon deck... most of the time Baratheon decks will want you to have power on your house so that they can steal it as they happen to be usually the best at power challenges. Taking power away from house with tRQF while slowing your opponent will slow the Baratheon player as well and Baratheon really doesn't want to slow the game. TVB will be bringing card advantage to you as well as board advatange while tRQF are about slowing the opponent and mostly board advantage.
~Also if TVB are a ok can we reprint all the other bannerman armies from the ccg? I would especially love the Greyjoy one that lets you search for a warship when it comes/leaves play and targ one would be fine too with its -4 str terminal burn on non-uniq characters.
Btw of course we are comparing apples and oranges here, my point was that every house has good armies, TVB are particularly good but I' tired of hearing people complaining about it, they are already restricted
My second point is that people are net decking the best decks and lack of fantasy, when I went to italian regionals I was probably the only one playing a Quentyn deck while 60% were Long Voyages, and Quentyn was already a very very good deck!
Furthermore, there might be times were you don't see Quentyn and you won't be able to stand the viper. If you kill Quentyn mid-game and the viper gets knelt with a plot, they are likely to win intrigue as their last challenge and trigger their own agenda, or worse the Lannisport Tourney grounds to re-kneel the Viper. It actually happens pretty often!
One more thought: has anyone thought about Rally Cry? Say goodbye to Quentyn
For any deck though, I recommend Milk of the Poppy. Throw that down on Quentyn before he dies, on The Red Viper, or on Arianne. It won't shut down your opponent completely, but it will give you a little breathing room.
Also, there's no reason to run both Milk of the Poppy and Nightmares, and in this deck Nightmares is the better option (as it usually is in anything not doing attachment recursion).
Can I ask why Host of the Boneway is in the deck? The ability isn't great with so few events (and I prefer to keep my events secret in any case), leaving a decently efficient but expensive card. Is it purely for an extra army for Manning the City Walls? I'd prefer Southron Mercenaries or maybe Starfall cavalry if that is the case.
The other one I am curious about is Doran Martell. Expensive and has vengeful already so doesn't benefit as much from the charagenda - would Darkstar, Sarella Sand, Obara Sand or Areo Hotah not be better choices?
Is the new Ellaria Sand worth including rather then the old one now?
Finally, is Maester Of Lemonwood worth putting in to counter such things as Milk of the Poppy?
It's not unbeatable, but you almost have to meta against it specifically because it draws, grabs power, and controls at least as well as almost any other current deck.
The real secret of this deck is that it doesn't actually need Quentyn to become an agenda in order to win. That's a "nice-to-have" but the deck hums along fine even as No-Agenda. The trick is that it doesn't have mediocre cards that ONLY work if you get Quentyn to go off - instead all the cards are quite good and become even better if you get the agenda working.
Paper shield takes care of dissension and he calls it thinking takes care of Arys. so the mercenaries are decently protected. Now that the host will be hit by the str larger than cost cards it is looking a bit more even as far as which card is better protected.
I think a close game can be swung by bringing the mercenaries out of shadows for the last challenge phase. They are monster strength and can net a good 4 power with kingdom of shadows.
Fitting in 3x kingdom of shadows instead of some resources + the mercanaries instead of the boneway (maybe get them to 3 and drop another charachter) would have been my tech against the other quentyn decks if I knew all my buddies were playing this Qyentyn deck. Especially, since they cant get bounced by ghaston.
For the time being EVERY deck needs x3 carrion bird so good for one cost anyway with stealth but only real answer to seasons decks
Ahahah yesterday I was discussing with my friends what would happen if they restricted Valar, I mean, it's clearly OP and an auto-include, LOL
The Seas and Fiefdoms see a lot of use in decks too