oshi said: All things equal, Id sooner challenge doran or euron before i challenge the faithful. just saiyan. (Euron is all around the better character though). They're not equal. When facing the Faithful backed by a Bones of the Child and perhaps a Tourney Ground, attacking the Targ player is a bad idea. Or you might decide to bite the bullet and just get it over with. Kinda like peeling off that bandaid when you know its gonna pull out a bunch of arm hair. It only hurts once. Attacking Euron will give him cards and likely power. If you attack him multiple times, you will give him multiple cards and power. Oh and he's still standing to challenge and he's hard to kill. Attacking Doran means you're attacking a Martell player. The question remains is not how you will get reamed, it will be the number and variety of ways you get reamed. And you might still give him power. The Faithful are in a way, just a character version of Taste for Blood. A bad version.

oshi said: What? They pretty much guarantee that you wont get challenged unless they have stealth and/or they are doing it to deliberately cripple you. Their cost keeps them from being auto include but hardly a bad choice if you can afford them. Id never play more than 1 per deck though, limited response and all that. No they pretty much guarantee you won't get challenged if you have 14 power. Most of the time a renown character would be more effective. They need something else to dissuade an attack. If someone really wants to slap you down, they will. If the whole table wants to take you down a peg, they will. Its not an adequate enough defender especially considering there are no Dothraki cards that are useful in defense. Compared to Euron or Doran, it fails miserably. Having other nifty support cards does increase the value of the Faithful though. Having multiple annoyances helps especially if they can't be bypassed by a convenient keyword.

Dobbler said: Its never about the money for the high level tournament player, its about the "options". You want a full playset of the cards so you always have every option of deck building at your disposal. Are you that genuinely diverse in your tournament decks though? I sometimes read some of the European forums as well as U.S. forums and even amongst those players who play different deck types there isn't too much branching out. Some players seem almost entirely mono-house. Is there a style of play that you genuinely dislike that you would never play it?

Dobbler said: Any consistent tournament player will tell you that you operate from a disadvantage if you do not have a full playset of everything. Why is that? I would assume that not every single chapter pack is completely worthwhile for a tournament level deck. If you do a lot of casual play with silly theme decks on top of tournament play then I could see it. But at that point you're on obsessive compulsive collector so the money doesn't matter anymore.

Dobbler said: So, if FFG decided to rotate out Clash of Arms or Time of Ravens, how would you feel? Do you think it would be good for the game or bad for the game? Bad. Cards currently reference older chapter packs all the time. They still make season cards or cards that are useful with season-like effects (ex Old Bear's Crow). They still make Military Battles, Power Struggles and Intrigue Gambits even though the majority of the cards that reference those traits are in Clash of Arms. What happens if you start to rotate out more sets? There are plenty of shadow cards but they become less useful if you don't have the King's Landing cycle. Finally, you're under no requirement to have a full playset. You can pick and choose what you want or you can share cards with friends and family.

1 - Greyjoy 2 - Baratheon 3 - Yes although I think Melee is misapplied in a few cases. Whilst very good on a few cards like Melee Bob or The Greatjon, certain cards like the Sparr or Dagos Manwoody should've received 2 (or 3) Strength instead of 1 Strength + Melee. 4 - Yes, I like Melee games although I think a few subthemes were misapplied. Melee House attachments were generally weak, recursion is over-valued and the Warhorses should've provided some attachment protection given their Joust and attack requirement. The emphasis on unique characters was nice but strangely absent in some cases. Ex no Wildling uniques. 5 - Yes although I don't hate neutrals as some do. A sprinkling of appropriate neutrals should be part of the game. Sansa Award - SANSA STARK WILL CRUSH YOU ALL. Champion Arises Award (for Worst Card) - A Champion Arises Balerion Award - Asha Greyjoy Ned Award - Lyanna Stark Shagga Award - Theon Greyjoy Renly Award - Secret Alliance Hot Pie Medal - Arianne's Conspirators Jaime Medal - Alannys Greyjoy Kettleback Medal - Satin Tyene Medal - Dothraki Stallion (until Killer of the Wounded gets nerfed) Euron Medal - Myrcella Lannister

oshi said: All that said, true queens loyalist is still in my bottom 5. But still playable, you just have to be careful who you give it to and try to milk a deal out of it. if you manage to get 3 on a single player thats when it starts to get silly. After getting TQL and Across the Summer Sea, some form of Targ challenge control sub theme has occurred. TQL is a bad card and so is Khaleesi's Faithful but both grant you power for people trying to attack you. Throw in Secret Alliance, Bones of a Child, Loyalty Money Can Buy and AtSS and you have additional challenge control without having to commit characters to a challenge. Finally, the Crown of Meereen or Kraznys mo Nakloz can be used to steal other people's melee attachments. Its like a whole tonne of bad turned into a whole deck of annoyance if not good.

Ire said: I think the season cycle is still one of the strongest. There really are some powerful cards there. Obviously season ravens, carrion bird, wintertime marauders,every houses refugees, samwell tarly, renly baratheon, game of cyvasse, tommen baratheon, northern cavalry flank, ice fisherman, jeyne westerling, maester of sun and the summer/winter agendas still are the most seen ones in tournaments.Since they have been reprinting other sets it would make sense if they continued especially the season cycle. The season cycle is strong but it doesn't have any restricted or banned cards either. Only one card has received a nerf via errata (Carrion Bird). Reasonable balanced cycle over all. Aside from stock issues for 4 of the CP's I don't see why they shouldn't reprint this.

imrahil327 said: Wait, THAT'S your example of an "abusive" combo? I can think of two different combos which create can create unlimited amounts of power in one phase with KotW and Lyanna. They're tricksy to pull off but not impossible.

Rogue Cypher said: If we're going to go the way of "Seasoned" cards, why wouldn't we instead just make a third "Season" that involves the transition from Winter to Summer or Summer to Winter? And it can benefit BOTH Seasons OR be a disadvantage to them. It could also help with Raven control without needing another Raven. Well, they are a few Spring/Autumn cards in game although they never made very many. King Robert's Hammer is penalized if its not Spring/Autumn. A couple Lannister cards benefit them but in different ways depending on the actual season. They probably should've made more and had Bara and Lanni the Spring/Autumn Houses.

Bomb said: I agree. I have nothing against any new cards that have Influence on them, but what would be expected of any new ones coming out? Why is Martell deserving of Maester Kedry and Targeryen does not get a similar character? What about the other influence characters? Having in house options allows you to key effects of those cards. Reducers in particular are helpful. Or how about we compare it to Lannister's gold treatment? If Targ is the attachment house wouldn't it be reasonable to give them attachments that can generate influence?

I thought if I posted something obviously sarcastic I wouldn't have to use some arcane forum shorthand to mark it as sarcasm. Targ has been sparkly this cycle but in all seriousness, where's the influence? Targ's influence options remain weak and this will continue to hold them back despite needing it more than any house (that includes you too, snake people).

Yes, Bara Knights and Dothraki have received steeds that are a testament to their skills. Naturally, the weak horsemen of the other houses have been given poor mounts. I am not even kidding.

Bob is just a bomb waiting to happen. You could fix Satin but then someone else will figure out a new way to break him again.

Stag Lord said: Yes: if it was a Response (like it should have been) it would be a staple. As it is...give me 3x Paper Shield and 2 x Hand's Judgement and I'll take my chances. It would be 3 or 4 gold as well and might still have restrictions. The Lanni Throne by comparison can only stop character abilities. Bara still has a number of decent characters with purely passive abilities. You can still hit people freely with them whilst this card goes on overwatch. There are very few locations that provide cancel. The Painted Table is the only one that can cancel any trigger.

Freerider said: So far the three traits we know will have reducers have all been ones that are seen in every house: Lady, Army, Lord. So it seems likely to me that Asshai is unlikely to be on one of the others fun and thematic it might be. Knight seems an unlikely trait to be tied to one of the cities there as well though as a common trait to all houses they could shove it in somewhere I suppose. The tie could be to a specific character or group related to ADoD. Such as: Braavos > Arya Stark > Lady and Stark Norvos > Mellario Martell (and Doran, Oberyn, Quentyn, Tristane) > Lord and Martell Pentos > The Golden Company > Army and Targ If we have a highly house specific trait, the new location would allow for that trait to be used OOH for greater effect. Whilst I think Lys is a strong contender for Bara, having it reduce Mercenary might not work. They have only one currently and don't really try to deal with them in ADoD. Their new unique army is unlikely to be a Mercenary one (and likely a Knight one). Knight would still be the most useful even if the connections are tenuous: Lys > Salladhor Saan (~ Ser Davos) > Knight and Bara

Bomb said: My guess on the OOH reduction is either Baratheon or Greyjoy. The only significant Norvoshi in the books are Martell, so I suspect its Martell. Norvos is also represented in game as a Martell card. The Bara card is likely Lys (Salladhor Saan). The Lannister card could be Myr. The Greyjoy card could be Qarth to represent Euron's connection to the Warlock's. Volantis could be Greyjoy as well due to the connection with Moqorro.

Danigral said: Uniques dying is a cool aspect of the game (and the books), but I think the debate has been pretty good about the pros and cons of having a plethora of kill, specifically its impact on running duplicates of uniques. It could be that part of the problem is that there hasn't been enough focus on character survivability this cycle. From a thematic standpoint, some characters have managed to survive either through wits, luck or mercy. The new Theon is a good example of that. Still this could be spread to other houses. Bara has gotten some decent focus on recursion but that's about it. There's been more than a few times where I wish I had some targeted removal in a game to maintain parity but for every action there should be some ability to counteract that. There are some pretty strong effects that can be generated by a unique characters but survivability doesn't seem to be one of them. Maybe there should be cards that allow you to generate abilities based on how well duplicated the character is.

Martell can circumvent the draw penalty by using effects that put cards in their hand. Also more Darkstar shenanigans. Bara can practice stronger draw hate and ignore the penalty by using The Laughing Storm.

alpha5099 said: 'm interested in this. So Legends are a whole separate card type, like Character, Location, Attachments, and Events in AGOT? (No idea what Warhammer's types are.) Hmm, that might be cool, though I wonder how that would work in practice. Warhammer has Characters, Events (Tactics), Locations (Support) and Attachments (Support Attachment) much like GoT. Warhammer uses a Capital board to play with provides a base 3 Gold (Resource points) and 1 card draw. You can increase this with characters and support cards. In the case of a Legend it functions like an attachment to the capital. Its character-like in that it takes damage like a character does and defends itself like a character does. The Legend can be attacked instead of the capital board. It also increases resources, draw and has 1 or 2 fairly strong actions. A Legend is almost immune to all game actions (friendly or not). This is mostly because cards almost always specifically reference character or support cards. Its almost like The Red Viper on steroids. What would the GoT equivalent be? I'm not sure. Perhaps a special strategy card that has alternative bonuses (and perhaps balancing penalties). Special House cards or Agendas. Kingdom cards that are immune to effects because of their size but make the player vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks. The upcoming Chargenda's are something like this. Maybe a Locagenda could be made as well.

Penfold said: I think you may have it it right on the head, none of the Houses need a deluxe expansion. Is it possible we are just assuming there will be one and they have no plans to create one? I could see them just foregoing the entire thing and instead just keep churning out Chapter Packs. Warhammer and CoC have only two expansions a piece. Both are faction based games yet don't have expansions devoted to each faction like GoT does. In that sense, no new expansions are needed. Warhammer's second expansion did introduce an entirely new card type (Legend) though. Perhaps there might be room in GoT for an entirely new type of card and that could be used as a basis for an expansion.

AceManUSC said: playgroundpsychotic said: Mathias Fricot said: It would amuse me though to see a "troll" expansion filled with terrible GJ and Martell cards so they can have as many bad cards as everyone. This is funny. Waste of money, but funny. Sad that it is also pretty true. Although, I will say that the Driftwood Crown is a crappy GJ crown. I would rather have the old GJ Crown of Pyke. That's why it would need 2-3 really good cards for each house so everyone would buy it. It would give you that extra bit of self-loathing to complete the joke.

Mathias Fricot said: There will be a GJ deluxe and a Martell deluxe because PotS and KotS were to introduce the houses and put them on par with the core set. So yeah, there are two more down the pipe before we even need to start worrying about this. I can say with complete confidence that GJ and Martell, with only ~75% of everyone else's cards, are on par with everyone else. It would amuse me though to see a "troll" expansion filled with terrible GJ and Martell cards so they can have as many bad cards as everyone.

sahandriel said: My question is this: is there away to stop this using a Stark Army Deck or a Baratheon Knight deck? (the Knight Deck is used mostly from the Kings of the Storm Box premade deck) and if you need the list for my stark deck I would be happy to provide it if it helps answering the question. It might help to post the decks. The Dragon deck does take sometime to get going and I don't see any reason why a Stark aggro deck can't aggressively kill it. Duplication and recursion might be problematic but you still have to draw it. Alot of my friends had trouble with my Dragon deck for awhile until they learned to build better decks (ie not put half-assed crap in their decks).

jack merridew said: are the greyjoys going to get a war horse? seems odd if they do http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=2897 Each House gets a Warhorse. And the odd thing will be that Greyjoy getting the strongest horse.