Wharf Rats-the most annoying card ever!!

[xqg5009 0]

Last week, my friend played a "Wharf Rats" character card. I just didn't know how to get rid of this annoying card!!

this card says" after Wharf Rats comes out of Shawdows, choose an opponent. That opponent takes control of Wharf Rats". And then "after Wharf Rats' controller wins a challenge, discard the top card of its controller's deck."!!!!

So, if i win 3 challenges in a round, i will have to discard 3 cards from my deck!!!! And last week, my friend put 2 Wharf Rats  (not  unique) under my control!! And what's worse, this card " cannot be killed!!"

Can someone tell me how to get rid of this card? Or is there any restriction for this card? This card is too powerful!

[ktom 598]

Well, if you want to kill it, you need to blank its text. Since it cannot take attachments, the easiest way to do that will be with cards like Margaery Tyrell (Tales from the Red Keep) or Renly's Courtier (Core Set).

Of course, just because the card cannot be killed doesn't mean it can't be removed from play. You can always look for effects that discard the character, return it to hand or Shadows. Think of Tywin Lannister, for example, to continually make your opponent have to spend gold to bring the rats out of Shadows again.

Now, if you're really clever, what you do is find a way to cancel Wharf Rat's "Response" effect (like w/ Jeyne Poole). Then your opponent is "stuck" with them. Or you use recursion effects like KotS-Robert Baratheon or Street Waif that bring cards back from the discard pile. Or you use location discarding effects to go after your opponent's gold so that they think twice before spending 3 gold to give YOU a 2-STR military character, even with its discarding ability (it is kind of expensive for them to give you a character that will always be there to attack them in military challenges).

It is a very annoying card, but it really isn't over-powered.

[FATMOUSE 0]

xqg5009 said:

Last week, my friend played a "Wharf Rats" character card. I just didn't know how to get rid of this annoying card!!

this card says" after Wharf Rats comes out of Shawdows, choose an opponent. That opponent takes control of Wharf Rats". And then "after Wharf Rats' controller wins a challenge, discard the top card of its controller's deck."!!!!

So, if i win 3 challenges in a round, i will have to discard 3 cards from my deck!!!! And last week, my friend put 2 Wharf Rats  (not  unique) under my control!! And what's worse, this card " cannot be killed!!"

Can someone tell me how to get rid of this card? Or is there any restriction for this card? This card is too powerful!

You also forgot to mention that it has the "No attachments." keyword; so you can't even play a card like Milk of the Poppy to blank it's text.  The card isn't too powerful, but it certainly can be very annoying.

There isn't much you can do to get rid of or control Wharf Rats, but there are a couple of things that come to mind:

1. Discard - You can remove wharf rats from play by discarding it.  An example of how to do this do would be to use Wintertime Marauders' ability while it is Winter.  Another example would be to play A Threat from the North and reduce it's strength to 0 using something such as the event Forever Burning.

2. Remove from play/Return to Shadows - The Martell event A Game of Cyvasse can return Wharf Rats to it's owner's hand if the character you knelt with an intrigue icon has more strength than your opponent's character.  One version of Tywin Lannister can return cards with the Shadow Crest back to the Shadows if you win a challenge in which he participated in.

3. Blanking the Text Box - One version of Margaery Tyrell has the ability to blank a non-Lady character's text box for the remainder of the phase when a card comes out the Shadows.  This would allow you to kill Wharf Rats during that phase.

4. Trait Manipulation/Discard - Old Nan can give Wharf Rats the Raven trait.  This would allow you to remove it from play and place it back in it's owner's deck using the Carrion Bird's ability.

5. Triggered Effect/Response Cancel - If you can cancel Wharf Rats response when it comes out the Shadows using a card such as To Be a Kraken or He Calls it Thinking, then Wharf Rats will have to come into play under your opponents control and not yours.

6. Don't Win Challenges - This works extremely well, but I don't recommend it.

As you can see each House does have a way to deal with Wharf Rats.  Is it easy? No. Does it require you being lucky and have certain cards in play or in your hand? Yes.  More often than not, you're probably just going to have to deal with it.  The fact that the card isn't untouchable though should be a bit reassuring.

[xqg5009 0]

Well, u did give me a lot of useful suggestion. Now i know how to deal with it!! Many thx!!

[lars16 2]

you could also just ignore it and shrug off the 3 cards milled. Untill the cards are in your handthe mill doesn't do anything to your game state and really just changes the randomly generated next 2 cards you get. Heck sometimes it can help (see discard pile recursion).

[xqg5009 0]

Well, the point is, u can discard more than 3 cards in a round as the result of that rat card. See the card says "after the opponent wins a challenge...", it suggests either as an attacker or a defender. So the maximum discards can be 12!!! if u r playing with 3 people and win every challenege as either an attacker or a defender.......

And remember, Greyjoy still have the 3 plots which allow u to initiate one more type of challenge, so that means.....u can discard up to 16 cards!!!! That is really a LOTTTTTTTTTT!!!!

[xqg5009 0]

And one more reminder, the rat card is not unique card. SO if u have a very "clever and lucky" opponent and he decides to put three rats under your control.......just imagine, then u can just quit the game directly......

[ktom 598]

xqg5009 said:

And one more reminder, the rat card is not unique card. SO if u have a very "clever and lucky" opponent and he decides to put three rats under your control.......just imagine, then u can just quit the game directly......

 

That's a lot of gold for your opponent to be spending to give you unkillable characters - discard ability or not. (Normally, "cannot be killed" on a character you control is considered to be a good thing!)

Remember that in order to lose all those cards, you have to win all those challenges. Most of the time, winning the challenge should help more than losing the card hurts. And if it's not, why would you feel the need to win the challenge. Knowing when to lose a challenge, even if you could win it, is one of the arts of the game.

Quite honestly, if you are in a position to win enough challenges to lose 16 cards from a single Wharf Rat in a single phase and you don't win the game, you did something wrong.

[Castorp 0]

 I take the wharf rats any time, they are an unkillable character - after a Valar one still has a MIl character left  and its even for free. With ,e.g, "To be Stag" as kTom already said it is even helpful.

C

[Mat_Not_Barlow 0]

Could you not just pay the 2 gold in marshalling to put it into shadows?

[Staton 1]

 Once a card has come out of shadows you can't just pay the two gold to put it back into shadows. An effect has to put the card back into shadows. like Tywin Lannister here.