Sneaky Bastards 1.0

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Areo Hotah without Arianne Martell seems like a crazy move. How have you found your flops? You have a lot of high cost cards.

@jacque_steampunk Money is a problem in this deck, yes. But cheaper ambushable (is this a word?) Sand Snakes help a lot. I should probably run Arianne Martell but it's hard to find a spot for her. Maybe if I remove 1 His Viper Eyes and Tower of the Sun.... Will need to test it:)

I am not really sure about the effectiveness of Tower of the Sun. His Viper Eyes is an excellent card though; maybe try removing Tower and just running with 61.

@TubalcaneI think I'll try that. Though, I usually spend a lot of time trying to trim decks to 60 cards. I'll do some playtesting with 2x Arianne Martell and remove one card I need the least.

@amaasikI think you could drop to 2 Harmen Uller and The Red Viper. I am also wondering if you drop Political Disaster from your plots to get a better plot like Summer Harvest or even Trading with the Pentoshi (which I almost never use anymore) but either of these might help with the money situation you may have with a high cost character deck like this.

@jacque_steampunkDroping The Red Viper is something to think about but Harmen Uller is the cornerstone of this deck. The original version of this focused on Sand Snakes and their ambush (There was no Doran and 2 Vipers for instance) but after some playtesting I decided that deck needs more cards to be competitive. Still, I'll keep the theme going in here (hence, the name of the deck).

I used to play Trading with the Pentoshi but I got the feeling that I really don't want to give opponents extra gold. I'll put Summer Harvest in as soon as I get it Probably instead of Calm Over Westeros. I'll also try this deck with Kings of Summer but Fealty will probably stay a better option.

As for Political Disaster, I don't like to play it, but our meta plays a lot of Locations and this is the only way to deal with Greyjoy (no comments needed), Baratheon (Iron throne and the entire dominance thing) and Starks (If I can't force them to discard Winterfell, I'll take their LImited locations). I had 2x Put to the Torch in here but in the end I decided to sacrifice a card in a plot deck to get more room in the main.

I have played with and played against a similarly themed Martell deck on a regular basis and find the deck to be too dependent on Harmen. If he's killed, or just not pulled it hurts your ability to get out characters as your Econ could be a problem. My friend Chad plays with a Martell deck with Arianne to help alleviate this issue as well as a trading for plot gold. It works very well for him.

Rattleshirts is an excellent card; I don't think you really need confiscation, but it depends on who you are playing against. Summer Harvest is a good new card and with King's of Summer it would help get gold and keep reserve high for those ambush capable cards you want to have in hand.

Pyromancers are always an option for getting rid of pesky locations.

If you didn't want to run kings of summer though first snow would be an option over wildfire as you could always pick up your low-cost sand snakes and ambush them back out Lol

@TubalcaneThe thing with First snow is that everyone expects you to play it. So, at least in our meta, everyone has found ways pass it. So I'll stick to Wildfire Assault for now. And I really don't like Pyromancers. I don't think they're worth the cost.

In general, thank you to everyone who has commented. I've added Arianne Martell and based on my first playtest it seems to fit very well. I removed 1 Dawn as I don't often play it anyway. It's mostly in the deck to save agains The Seastone Chair and similar effects. I'll be doing a lot of playtesting this weekend, so I'll probably know by Sunday what else should I modify.

I'll rethink the plot deck when I get my hands on Summer Harvest. But thanks to draw and Arianne I seem to have a lot less money problems then before. This is wonderful as I hope to replace fealty with "The Rains of Castamere" one day.

@amaasikafter reading "The Rains of Castamere" several times I think you are going to be a little let down especially when you face a Lani deck or another Martell. I could be 100% wrong here but having to win Intrigue challenge by 5 could be a bit of an issue but that is just me. Let me know how your testing goes.

@jacque_steampunkI don't have very big expectations for Castemere but it's a game-chancing thing that one must try out. And I'll try both Martells and Lannisters with it before (probably) going back to Fealty or Kings of Summer.

While writing this, I started wondering. Maybe I should try The Lord of the Crossing if I get past the money issue. I have this feeling that this deck can hang in there but it doesn't have the final punch (unless Viper is in full swing and that doesn't happen often).

But maybe it's because I just lost to Starks 15-11 on the 8th round.

How did your games go? Did you make any major deck changes?

@jacque_steampunkThanks for asking:) In general, it went well. Arianne Martell was a very good addition and thanks to Harmen Uller I had money to spare. I'd love to play 2x Dawn but have no room for it.

It's a hard deck to play and requires a lot of patience. If I had Viper and Harmen out, I managed to win with 4 rounds. If I only had one of them I usually won on round 5 or 6 with Doran's Game. I usually opened with The Long Plan to get the 8 reserve and followed it with A Song of Summer and Calm Over Westeros. If playing someone with a lot of locations, Political Disaster on turns 2 or 3 destroys economies (and my reserve, but it's worth it).

By turn 3 I had most of my good stuff out.

The problem is that the game sometimes drags on to 7th plot which means that before a game I must be ready to play all my plots and not keep some for special situations. Confiscation is the problem but with all the cards comming out this cycle, I think it will work.

I've added a 3rd Kingsroad and removed Quentyn Martell for now and I'm testing it for a small tourney that I have in two weeks. Hopefully I can get Summer Harvest by then but I don't really need it. I'll publish the updated version when I've played a few more games

@amaasikthanks for the update when you post new version please let me know. Are you still playing it Fealty? Like I have said before I am a Martel player in my local meta I was playing them before they were "cool" not winning mind you but still playing them. I have been wondering how tower of the sun has been treating you? I so want to play it but only 1 gold per phase makes me sad and events have to be played too.

It is great that you are winning by round 4 it takes quite a bit to have Viper and Uller out and keeping them out.

@jacque_steampunkthronesdb.com