Decent Decks for Beginners… looking for suggestions
By Larry Gross– February 7, 2013
We’ve moved our weekly game to a pizza place in town and we now have some store support. It’s pretty much during a geek game night and we get a few interested onlookers. We allow proxies, so I’m trying to build a series of Walk-On decks for n00bs. My audacious goal is to create some solid decks with fairly straightforward mechanics. I’d like to have one built for each House in the game. Here are my ideas so far:
- Stark Standard w/No Agenda (already built)
- Targ Dothraki/War
- Greyjoy Unopposed
- Lannister PBJ
- Baratheon Holy Rush (already built)
- Martell… I have no ideas here
Any help is appreciated. If you already have decks posted somewhere, please free to link them in or if you just have basic ideas feel free to post those as well. We’re really trying to expand the meta.
Martell is tough to build a walk-on beginner deck because they are so tricky… But maybe look at house dayne summer… well, season mechanics may be not newb friendly either…
Maester rush? lol
Sand snakes without the NUFG combo? That would be pretty straightforward and aggro-like. Should be interesting with the new army as well.
Alternatively you could build some generic martell army deck with a few tricky events (but nothing that’s not understandable, RV or some such).
Oh.. many hyper viper type builds would be pretty newb friendly (not necessarily to play well, but at least to understand mechanically).
Actually the NUFG idea has merit. Teaching that combo isn’t that complicated really and the deck can’t rely on it to win regardless. That’s a “Wow! Awesome!” moment when you can pull it off, but the deck has to be able to win without it. Sand Snakes do provide some nice synergies to teach card mechanics and how cards affect other cards without there being as many unusual timing issues. That might be worth a try. But – Hyper Viper is also a good idea.
The Sand Snake deck could be a little confusing with all the gained icons/keywords but it does offer a lot of little nuances to introduce key concepts.
The House Dayne/Army deck could be pretty good as well since they offer a little bit of everything, though the gold counters might be confusing starting out.
The more I think about it the more think a SS deck would likely be the easiest to use to learn the game. Hyper-viper decks can be good decks but I’m not sure I’d suggest them for learning the game.
That’s what I was thinking. Sand Snakes do a lot of buffs to each other, but those buffs are straightforward passives (from what I can recall) so they’re fairly easy to grasp. Seems like the way to go – still pondering the Quentyn angle. A charagenda could make it a little more confusing (remembering to trigger the draw), but it’s a nice mechanic.
I give my Sand Snakes melee deck to newbies quite often (and, once, this past weekend, to a former World Champ, who made the final table with it). I just show them to NUFG combo, tell them how it works, and ask if they remember Sliver decks from Magic. If they do, then I tell them that’s what this deck is, basically. If they don’t, I explain a moment longer. It’s a solid choice for a newbie, in my experience.
Are you trying to stay away from KotHH agenda so you can still include setup for the new players?
Yeah – most new players don’t seem to do well with that agenda right out of the gate. You really have to know what to play in order to know when to mulligan and what you should be trying to drop on T1.
Honestly for Lannister I would just go with HyperKneel. The PBJ builds require too many INT icons and desication to two INT challenges plus making sure to defend the ones against you is crucial. HyperKneel is the most straight forward Lanny build out there.
For Martell you can make some fairly simple control builds utilizing icon removal, kneel, and bounce effects.
PM me if you want some decklists.
okay i am so confused why it is called pbj there is no j?? where did that come from
Because it’s waaaay cooler than PBtT.
lowercase is t is like a backward j?
as far as i know, robert likes to say pbj and it has caught on around these parts.
means Power Behind Joffrey
My experience has been that icon removal and kneel have actually been more confusing for newer players than multiple challenges of the same type. That’s why I was staying away from kneel. Deciding when and what to kneel is a strategy play that gets easier the more you play the game. Doing two intrigue challenges is far simpler to understand as you’re really only having to act on the cards that you’ve been reading since you first drew them.
Icon removal is a whole other set of confusing situations for the new player. That’s been my experience at least. Straight up rush or aggro tends to be easier to manage as they’re trying to learn what’s happening. As they play against tougher builds and they watch how their own characters get affected, newer players will start to gravitate towards the build types they find the most compelling – not based on what they’ve played, but what they’ve played against.
But – that’s only the experience I’ve had with the players here. I’m trying to build decks where your offensive focus is really on what your own cards can do rather than controlling what your opponent does (unless they already have a card game background and understand the concept of control).
And that’s not to say that those aren’t strong archetypes in the hands of a good player… they are. I’ve just found that icon removal and kneel in the hands of a beginner end up being difficult for them to pilot well.
Yeah if they have never played card games before may have issues. If they have, well they still might have issues.
Right. I just figure with HyperKneel you don’t have to worry about what to kneel….you just kneel it all every turn.
Well, there is that – haha! Kneel it all!
PBJ – Power Behind Joffrey. Originally coined I believe by Robert himself.
ah thanks haha kinda makes sense but kinda odd too lol
You should hit Matt up for his Dothraki list, that deck was extremely beastly and murder decks are pretty simple to learn as well.
Oooh – good idea. That was a beast of a deck.
I just built a Targ deck for a new player with a small cardpool. I’ll send it over to you.
Thanks – but I’m not as concerned about card pool. The entire pool is open as these are walk-on decks that I’m building so that people get a good feel for the flavor of the game.
I let people use my decks indefinitely. In every case, people have bought their own cards within a few months of playing and started expanding like crazy – but I like to have some easy to learn, but solid, decks.
Now that we’ve expanded from my house to a place with store support… we have a greater potential of newer players, so I want to have one decent deck from every House that people can reserve via my Anyvite I send out each week.
BUT! Do feel free to send me the deck regardless.
Already done
It’s not THAT small a pool.
All this is making me hungry for some pizza in Austin by the way.
Buz, you could show up and pretend to be new and then beat em up!
Buz – come on down… I’ll buy your pizza.
How about a Quentyn no agenda deck?
I’ve definitely considered it for the Sand Snake angle (even though they can gain Vengeful on their own… the agenda makes it easier and you get card draw).
Well as long as none of your other starter decks are running winter, a summer army deck could do really well. Looking at the SS deck concept, since you need 3 influence for the event to be awesome it strains the deck build a bit.
Oh btw, are these for joust games or for melee?
Good point on the Influence. But, with Fiefdoms, Seas, and Kedry – it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Primarily – Joust. With beginner decks, I’ll have a few plot changes for Melee if they want to try their hand at Melee. That’s not optimal, but for new players, it’s seemed to be enough.
Instead using a bunch of the SS’s, how about just using the uniques with Quentyn. Add in the Viper, Oakheart, Kedyr, Bastard of Godsgrace, Drinkwater and Yornwood for additional character support – and great characters to put Blood of the Viper onto. A few Palace Spys to help pull your influence. Lady Nym’s Guard for some form of protection and big STR characters. Lost Spearman and Orphans of the (evil) Greenblood to help the curve.
For events, NUFG obviously plus A Nest of Vipers, a few He Calls it Thinking and either Red Vengence, gental Prison or Words are Like Arrows.to get more use out of the influence.
Complete side note… what is it about having green blood makes them hate icons so much?!
This is an excellent idea. Decided.
Well, it’s a known fact that having green blood means that you’re very calculating and logical. Therefore, ergo, vis a vis, you out maneuver your opponent’s challenge capabilities before they’re even able to think about the type of challenge they wish to make because you’ve already thought about it before. Unless you’re a lizard… then you can poison those greenblooded hobgoblins!
What about Martell Knights? Just a straight forward play-a-lot-of-dudes type deck.
Wow – hadn’t even considered that. Until recently, that was a hard build to even consider. My biggest concern would be the downside of the agenda. With Stark and Bara popular in our group, you’re likely to encounter turns where your Knight count is too low.
Are you expecting these starter decks to only go against other starter decks? or are they given a deck and released into the wild, as it were?
Our meta is very new player friendly. They’ll go against other solid decks that people have built, but everyone who works with a newer player works to help them understand how their cards work.
Hence, the deck should be solid, but not expected to be competitive material.
I’m not sure what kind of card pool is available to your Martel newbies, as far as concept I would look toward:
– x2/x3 Arianne Martel + x3 Rusted Sword
– more Stealth to push
– some claim 2 plots to ramp further
– the plots A Game Of Thrones and To The Spears
– Red Vengeance + Burning on the Sands + The Only Game That Matters, to free up characters for aggression
Attack for a lot and/or without kneeling, ignore some/all of enemy aggression, and learn the basics of Stealth and Influence while you do. It’s less counting STR and trying to finesse, which is where new players get frustrated by the mess of card on the table.
Larry, are these decks posted somewhere? I play with a few friends who don’t really know the game and I am betting these decks would be perfect for them.
what’s NUFG?
No Use For Grief – when The Red Viper dies, you can search your entire deck for every Sand Snake and put them into play. Cool effect, but you can’t count on it.
cool, thanks. I’ll give it a try. I’m a northern kind of player but occasionally play a little Martee