The Sunny Serenade - Vengeful

Well, what a name to give a House ability, makes the Martells the last people you wanna cross. If you give this ability to pretty much anyone else, they'll probably just give a sigh and complain a lot about the utter fatalist nature of this ability; but, in the hands of the Martell, thanks to all their "I lose, so what?" event cards, this ability is actually pretty useful.

Picture the time you attacked a Martell and was hit by The Viper's Rage, you've just given the Martells the ultimate means to effectively cancel all your subsequent attacks (unless you have multiple icons) and all his Vengeful characters (pretty much all his Sand Snakes at some point, when Obella is around) will stand to prepare to welcome the next attacking player, or just to really really contest the Dominance phase. (and he probably blocked your attack, keeping below the 4 STR difference requirement to deny you the unopposed challenge in the first place, knowing that his Vengeful character will be up and ready after this)

Vengeful simply gives the Martell player lots of option when he is attacked (and impacts his own attacks as well), since he can safely have characters stand to either trigger effects or defend after losing a challenge - for the Martells, losing a challenge is rarely a problem.

Not exactly an ability you can win with, more defensive than actually independent. That is one problem Vengeful has - if no one attacks you, it does absolutely nothing by itself, and even so, it still means that the Martell needs to lose a challenge before it kicks in - in a way it serves to improve the defensive capability as well as conserve event cards, but the claims must still be fulfilled, which sometimes might lead to losing games.

It is a good supportive ability, especially if one uses the Banner to give to characters with abilities that required kneeling and is useful after Marshalling - for example, Influence generating character such as the Paramour or the soon to arrive Maester Kedry, STR modifying characters like the Bastard of Godsgrace and Myrcella or other abilities like the Healer and the Phalanx.

Well this is definitely better than Stalwart, but not in the range of more direct abilities like Ambush and Intimidate, but it is almost on par with Vigilant, and I'll argue that it is better than Infamy.

(o.o)

The Dragon Dance - Ambush

Definitely one of the more interesting House abilities there is, Ambush is one of the key reasons that influence is important. (otherwise it's mostly about events and some random thingy) Ambush gives the Targaryens one of the most valued edge in any strategy game - unpredictability.

How many times have you happily blocked the Targaryen's attack, confident in your own ridiculously high STR, and then have your character shot in the face by Ambushing bows, or Kissed to death, or harassed by random Dothrakis who appear out of nowhere? And this, is the might of Ambush.

Granted, by looking at the influence providers on the table one can probably guess the possibilities involved, but that itself is another danger. Good Targaryen players can definitely use this to their advantage, and keep their opponents guessing - is there a Bow on the way with those 2 free Influence I just got from the Hand, or maybe my Red Keep will fund the next Dragon Chaser to frighten all my Refugees away. Now this is an incredible advantage that one can exploit - especially against more informed players - making opponents think too hard is always a good thing.

And as if these advantages is not enough, Ambushing cards sometimes come with good triggers - for example, the Dragon Thief is good for getting rid of those Frozen Solids and Fishing Nets. This is not common yet, but it definitely sets a standard and we can all hide in fear of what is to come for the Ambush power.

And there are quite a good number of support for Ambush, there are cards that reduce Ambush costs, cards that bounce back to hand to increase the annoying level of the Targaryen player, and now the Dragons have Ambush.

Absolute rubbish, don't you think?

However, Ambush is not a simple no-brainer ability that you can just trigger and use for fun - unlike more "efficient" ability, such as Intimidate, a character or card with Ambush requires some careful deck construction to ensure that there are enough Influence-providers in the deck to give them a chance to Ambush out into the open - The Hand of the King is not always available. That of course, didn't seem like a problem for all the Targaryen Ambushers out there~

Lastly, the Banner of the Targaryens doesn't give Ambush - it would be completely pointless~ :)

(o.o)

Valar Dohaeris - Watching the Tullys

After my starter set, my first actual constructed Stark deck was a Tully deck, made pretty much from the Lords of Winter. Of course, nowadays, Tullys have so many more toys to play with (and expecting more). I've always wanted a cool Tully deck, and apparently most Tullys look too alike to me, and that discouraged me from actually assembling one after I took out the few core good Stark cards for my Stark Military deck.

After trying out my Night's Watch deck, I decided to try to merge them to see if they work well together. The first try yesternight wasn't too encouraging, though the game did identify critical issues of the deck, so I tried fiddling with it a little more and hopefully this coming Saturday will yield a little better results for me.

This Tully deck tried to use The Wall and the Defenders of the North to supplement their defensive capability to ensure Riverrun can kick in. On the other hand, the Wall can simply be a great deterrent to attackers, and free up the Tullys to initiate their own attacks (before Black Fish is powered up) while still able to offer some range of defence. More Importantly, with a couple of Defenders in hand, the Wall is a great defense mechanism for Intrigue attacks, which is of course, the traditional Achilles' heel of the Tullys.

I am supposed to get The Wall with Building Season, but To Be a Wolf also provides a good search mechanic - for that, no matter what people name, I'm going to have quite a good range of stuff to hunt for - Riverrun, The Wall, Defenders, many good events, The Black Fish, Hoster, Catelyn, Frozen Solid, Crown of Winter - a great spread of options - all capable of pushing me ahead towards my goal. Planting the Riverrun may be a key decision to win/lose game, and could be a problem since it attracts all sorts of attackers.

As with all Tully decks, I'm presented with a host of great little buggers and a couple of excellent key players, though as usual, The Black Fish is the key person in this deck. Come with Renown, he also allows everybody else to attack without kneeling once he gets his 3 power, and he helps to draw cards. Combine this with the Guard of Riverrun, Family Plot, and To Be a Wolf, I do not foresee a lot of card draw issues.

I threw in Siege at Winterfell as I feel that I wouldn't be conducting a lot of offensive actions, so the Siege will focus my attack efforts on Military challenges, which is good since it will reduce the threat level if I'm doing my job right. With Feigned Retreat, I could also handle the few Military challenges that I might not win, and still cause a great deal of trouble.

The Plots are pretty simple to choose from - Summoning and Building for the specific search, Family for warm bodies, Loyalty to deter attacks, Fury, After the Mummer's and Storm of Swords to power up To Be a Wolf as well as providing gold and power support.

A single copy of Parting Blow is there in case it comes into effect with my Defenders, and hopefully an epic battle is in play~ YY and Bann's advise to throw in Distinct Mastery was also adopted to see how many times I can get my characters to stand up to the victory! (V Gundam theme song)

All in all I think the contributions of the Night's Watch in the Tullys is quite minimal, but they may come as quite a surprise occasionally~ :) let's see how this one works...

House Stark

The Siege of Winterfell

60 cards

PLOT (7)

Family, Honour, Duty

Summoning Season

Building Season

Loyalty Money Can Buy

Storm of Swords

After the Mummer's End

Fury of the Wolf

Characters (26)

The Black Fish x 3

Catelyn Stark (Core) x 2

Lucas Blackwood x 1

Ser Edmure Tully x 1

Defenders of the North x 3

Edmure's Host x 3

Hoster Tully x 2

Riders of the Red Fork x 3

Trident Reinforcement x 2

House Tully Septon x 2

Guard at Riverrun x 2

House Tully Recruiter x 2

Events (17)

To Be a Wolf x 3

Distinct Mastery x 3

Parting Blow x 1

A Sword in the Darkness x 1

Guilty! x 1

Feigned Retreat x 3

Routing the Charge x 1

Endless Endurance x 3

Locations (13)

Riverrun x 2

The Wall x 2

Frozen Moat x 2

Frozen Outpost x 1

Northen Fiefdom x 3

Lord Eddard's Chamber x 1

The Red Keep (Tales from the Red Keep) x 1

Winterfell Castle x 1

Attachments (4)

Frozen Solid x 3

Crown of Winter x 1

(o.o)

The Symphonic Storm - Vigilant

Not exactly a House ability that you can reliably make a deck of, but at least it is possible. Also, in the hands of a Baratheon, this ability is deadly for most of its deck types - be it Power Rush, Knights or even the Asshai Shadow.

Comparing this to what the Starks and the Lannisters get, this is absolutely heaven, and I'd say that it is at least on par, if not better, than what the Targaryens and Martells get. Of course, nobody, absolutely nobody can scare off the Greyjoys.

The best thing about Vigilant is that, it is possibly the most usable ability of the lot - Stalwart and Vengeful requires opponents to participate, and generally involving losing something (a lot less problematic, and often desirable for the Martells, but the Starks, however...), Infamy is, well, passive, and Ambush and Intimidate requires forethought in using. Vigilant kicks in when you win a challenge, and Baratheons do like to win challenges.

On key thing about Baratheon decks is that they're seldom single color - Blue and Red are almost always together in pretty much most of the time, if not, Green and Blue for the more feminine Stags. With at least 2 colors,Vigilant gives the Baratheons unprecedented offensive capability. You couple this with standing after winning their last challenge issued, and they do get their people ready for defense too.

Because of this, I'm so gonna say that Vigilant is only slightly less powerful than Intimidate, on the fact that it is almost brainless to use (if you have it), rather common, and doesn't require specific deck construction to make use of. (good decks can of course maximize its usefulness)

Why the Baratheons have this I have no idea. In the Song of Ice and Fire, the last description you have on the Baratheons is that they are vigilant.

(o.o)

Battle Hymn - 11-06-2011

11th of June, in the year of our King 0001, Games Garage.

Oh well, a most deadly series of games yesternight, with me on the losing end, and quoting YY - "forced to choose between the lesser of three evils turn after turn." You guys wanna know how bad it is, here we go~

Game 1

I arrived at GG just in time, when YY, LF and Fad just ended their 3 players game. (with Fad looking suspiciously like what I'll be looking like a couple of hours later) I've just completed sorting out my cards at home and have hastily (though not without thoughts) assembled my new decks, and pretty eager to try them out. Unlike with Vtes, I've yet to develop the kind of commitment to read and understand the selection of cards in AGoT, and is still sticking to the more conventional deck types to play with and build. In time, I hope that this will change and I can start working on AGoT the way I deal with Vtes~

I pull out my shiny Stark Night's Watch deck for my first game, that was based pretty much LF's "The Wall" version, with the Starks providing the slaying option with their events. Fad was playing his Lannister Joffrey deck, YY his Baratheon Melisandre and LF her Targaryen Dragons.

Now LF was ahead in the game most of the time, an early Summoning Season, which traded with my Building Season, got her Dany and Viserion. Running the Heir to the Iron Throne gave LF a good attack capability, though my Wall and Defenders did keep me relatively safe for a while. YY threw down his entire hand during setup and has an excellent spread of property, giving him a good +4 gold every round pretty much right from the start. Fad was sitting too far from me for me to notice. He had yellow cards.

Despite holding 2 Defenders in hand and had the Wall in play in round 1, I couldn't get my Night's Watch to do much. Granted, my defense was reasonable, losing only 1 character and about 4 powers throughout the whole game, but my offensive capability was moot - I've gained a total of only 6 power (including the one from Half-Hand's Renown) from the game, while everyone else was pooling to over 10.

LF's Dragons was able to attack again and again without kneeling, thanks to Dany's encouragement, and I only managed to eliminate Viserion with a Routed Charge, but soon Drogon and Regal was all over the place. YY, though he was without many characters in the early game, and had lost Melisandre (taken back with Many Powers Long Asleep), got back into the game with all his Shadow thingy and Acolytes. Fad was too far for me to see, except that he got many powers on his House card, and had knelt my Half-Hand with his Brothel once.

After a while, everybody was in the position to win - LF had 13 power, YY had 12 or 13 I think, and Fad had over 10. LF won Initiative and chose to be player one, I played Focused Offense. thinking that the 2 Defenders should be enough to fend off some attacks. Unfortunately LF played Fear of Winter - pretty much making me the prime target, not to mention that I was the last player. However, YY played Shadow Politics and declared that LF only had 1 chance to get her 2 power before YY can take his action to initiate an Intrigue challenge. (I kinda don't really get that card, coz it seemed that it is only going to give the player an additional Intrigue challenge as an action, but not immediately, will request for FAQ)

Anyway, LF didn't target me as YY was supporting me, and went after Fad, failing to win. YY then won the game, how he did it I forgot, coz he didn't target me, and the action was far away on the table~ I did however, ended up with only 3 powers and was far from being in the game~

Game 2

Though Bann had arrived, he wasn't feeling too good for the game, so we continued with another 4 players game. This time I pulled out my Lannister Brotherhood Whitebook.

The table was horrendous. 2 Martells, LF's with the White Book, and YY (I think) the King of Summer. Fad was still fighting the table with his Lannister.

This was a most defensive game for pretty much everybody. Generally few attacks were issued, and everybody, except me, had big big guns up their sleeves.

LF had Ser Arthur Dayne, armed to the teeth with a selection of attachment, supported by Selyse and the Knight of Flower (and eventually somebodies else); Fad's Joffrey had (eventually) 3 Devious Intentions stacked on him with 3 duplicates and a good number of power on him, making him a double digit STR character. And I lose count of how many Sand Snakes and characters that YY had.

Again, I struggled to survive. With Beric and a triplicated Tywin I was able to hold off for a while, with 2 Wildfire Assault being played I managed to get to 8 powers before the final round where everybody will win if I attacked them.

A Bungled Order was played by YY, but I messed up and attacked him before trying to lose and reveal my Valar to level the playing field. That pretty much gave YY the game.

The game was a lot closer then I could describe here, battle reports don't do justice to the close fights that we had (and much table talk) for the game. A highlight of this game was the many alternatives that Joffrey tried in that single one round and pretty much nothing worked, since the Martells would win with Taste of Blood and Renown regardless. So of course, I suffered the wrath of the double digital Joffrey - most of the time.

And the table was full of data request - "How many blues do you have again? What do you mean by 23 on him alone?""You have deadly? All of them?""Who can I stealth? Who don't have stealth again? You remove who's what?""You target who? Why?""How many power you have on Joffrey? So how many STR he has?""How many cards you have in hand? Need to count one ah?"

Great game. It was way closer than I could do justice to. Of course, I wasn't part of the threat~ again~ :)

(o.o)

The Lion Libretto - Infamy

The House ability of the Lannister usually requires a little finesse to use, and definitely requires quite a bit of preparation before the ability actually kicks in big time.

By itself it is a rather lackluster ability, and the few cards that has it usually has some predictable ability like STR enhancement based on power, kneel or protective ability (again base on power on it) and lately even power-gaining ability (Daven Lannister - kinda difficult to pull off still, but everyone is working on it). However, unlike Renown, it doesn't actually gain you any extra power, but simply manipulates the placement of it.

But it is actually more than that if the player spent more time looking into deck construction elements to fully exploit its power.

For a start, power on characters are usually very resistant to common power-stealing/moving actions (primarily initiated with Power challenges), and a good majority of decks has very little means of actually taking any power from a player that has no power on his House card - Infamy can make sure that happens. Of course, the down side is that the power on the characters are gone if they go to the discard or dead pile, and we all know how common that happens in a game.

But with sufficient save tech, this risk can be reduced (though unlikely to be totally eliminated), and it becomes extremely useful if this ability is coupled with the "If you have no power on the House card" tech of the Brotherhood cards. John has shown us what the Lannisters can do with Beric on their payroll, as well as the whole gang of the Brotherhood people walking around in Casterly Rock.

There are attachments that give Infamy, and some also gives good ability that bounces off the power that the attached character gains from Infamy - Devious Intention gives you +1 STR for every power, among other things, the Dwarf head thing is a little less useful besides just giving you power onto characters that otherwise might not be unable or slow to get it - pretty useful with people like The Black Fish to speed up things a little.

But if that Melisandre girl hits the table, then suddenly your route to victory had just been sent to the heavens, and that is actually quite difficult to recover from in a pure Lannister deck.

So, Infamy is definitely a much better ability than Stalwart, but not anywhere near the power level of Intimidate, and is actually still somewhere on the lower end of the House ability power level - mainly because it adds very little by itself, doesn't really contribute to winning by itself (no net gain) and requires much effort on the player to make it work.

No to mention that it doesn't sound cool at all. Infamy. Bah.

(o.o)

The Winter Whisper - Stalwart

Gee, definitely the most useless of the House abilities. The Starks seemed to be always on the end of the goodies queue, I sure hope the AGoT design team try a little harder to allow the Starks to make use of this ability.

What's the point of putting a character back on to the top of the deck where it does very little besides saving the character for a while. Very few effects actually bounce off this ability (I don't even want to talk about the Stark Banner...), and there are so many other ways to protect a character.

Bouncing the character also means you still loses everything on that character - his attachments and more importantly his power, and you still have to pay to get him out of the hand again - not to mention that the whole world knows what you're going to draw from your deck. (Great info for the Greyjoy discard) Why waste a card like the Banner when you can just slap another duplicate on the character you want to protect?

Granted, Stalwart will semi-protect any character from the more permanent killing style such as the Targaryen's burn or "cannot be saved" cards, but it is still limited by the loss of everything that the character in question has on him at the time of death.

I think the Starks will benefit greatly if their attachments, locations or if the Old gods favor it, events, gain Stalwart, then we're talking. At the moment, though the cheap non-unique characters may gain a little bit from Stalwart, by and large this ability is pretty useless, and definitely not there in the league to base any strategy on - a sharp contrast to every other House ability.

Shiver in the cold, Starks, you are sad.

(o.o)

Recruiting Cards - Valar Morghulis

Many call this the defining card of AGOT, many claim that it is over-powered, many loved this card to death, and many others hated it to death.

One thing's for sure, this card is almost always in your mind when you're playing an AGOT game, and it is almost always present (or at least you wish it is (or it is not) present) in a Joust.

Some call it a reset card, some use it as a primary strategy, the majority probably has it in their plot deck and hope he never needs to get to it - a double-edged sword sometimes.

There was a time when I had this card in every plot deck that I used, and cursed fiercely and aggressively when it was played by somebody else. Most often than not I couldn't recover from it when Valar hit the table (when it was not played by me), and at some point I did feel a little bitter about the power of this card.

Today, however, Valar is still quite prolific in my environment, it appears all the time, but it is no longer something that I dread, but something that I always planned for in every game that I play.

IMHO, Valar is a great card in a Joust environment, since whenever you play it, you know that (most of the time anyway) you will be having the upper hand on the results, or at least your subsequent position is usually relatively better than before you play it. But in a melee environment, it is significantly harder to be the sole benefactor of the Valar as you play it. Very often, in a melee, Valar is played to prevent one particular player from running away with the game, and does not necessarily give you the upper hand in the game relative to the other players whom are also involved.

Of course, there are certain decks/cards who're just natural partners to Valar Morghulis - Beric for example, or the Refugee decks who use Valar to get ahead. But for all the other decks out there, it pays to be prepared for the eventual appearance of this gruesome destiny.

How do people do that?

Generally, keep a couple of characters in hand if you can, in case everyone got wiped out (especially non-unique characters without save capability). So if you know that (or suspect) that someone is gonna Valar soon, hold back that 1 or 2 characters that you intend to play and prepare for the subsequent power vacuum.

That said, it is not always easy, since one usually need all the help one can get, either to quickly gather those power, or sometimes just to keep up.

Having many ways and means to keep your characters alive is another method - Valar KILLS characters, so there are multiple ways to save your characters - duplicates, save attachments such as Bodyguards, events and locations or save-capable characters like the famous Aemon are all good options. If you can actually time it well, a Power of Blood will totally give you the win when a Valar is in play.

Then there is Narrow Escape, though it is a restricted card, and people has means of getting over it.

But what happens after a Valar, assuming that you're not prepared for it.

If you think about it, unless the Valar is a bigger part of a well-coordinated strategy, it often just puts the leading player back to a level playing field and gives all others a fighting chance.

So I feel that Valar is not really that fantastic a card - powerful it is, but overpowered it is not. With only 2 gold there, the user is not going to get very ahead if he's also losing many of his characters. Moreover, with a claim and initiative of exactly ZERO, the Valar-er is out of the game in this round, no effective attacks and almost definitely not winning initiative to get that extra 2 gold or 1 card that is usually good to have.

Not to mention that you may have no choice but to play Valar if you run out of other Plots to choose from. (not necessarily from a long game~)

So, for decks that are primarily meant for melee, and has no real reason to kill off all characters besides getting back into the game, perhaps a little more consideration could be included before throwing Valar into the Plot deck, especially since there're now quite some good alternative defensive cards, like Loyalty Money Can Buy or Wildfire Assault etc. Stuff like Condemned by the Realm can sometimes be more effective than Valar in melee.

Valar Morghulis, yes, but it doesn't always have to be there~

(o.o)

Calls to Arms - the rationale of SEVEN

Now, why 7?

Because there're 7 days in a week? Or there are 7 sins? Why not ten, to facilitate sleeve buying, why not 5? Or for the matter, why not the auspicious 8?

Why 7 cards in a plot deck?

I can understand why there must be at least 5, or the plot deck would be rather thin and the variety of strategies greatly limited.

But why stop at 7? Not 6, not 8, not 10?

What's the rationale in the number 7 for the plot deck?

Well, I have absolutely no idea. So I'll attempt to speculate.

We know that most strategies involve about 3-4 plot cards to pull off, 1-2 with good income, 1-2 with card search, and at least 1-2 with high claims - that ensures that most basic card strategies require a cycling of the fundamental 3-4, or maybe even 5 plot cards to execute. Take the predictable Baratheon Power Rush for example. Probably you'll see like, a Summoning Season first, followed by 2 Power of Blood or something like that, at the minimum, for the Baratheon fella to win the game with those pesky well-known kings and lords.

Most other decks don't have that kind of speed, so 4 plots are needed (usually, and we're talking about melee here) to execute the grand scheme of things, usually starting with a search (Summoning or Building, or the lucky Family support from the Tullys), followed by a buy (high income plot with benefits, say, a Fury), and then the key attack cards, like a 2-claim plot, or victory-related strategic plot such as To the Spears! or Rise of the Kraken. Very often, 2 of such cards are required to pull a chain or secure a win, like 2x 2 claims plot or something like that.

Therefore we can probably safely say that 4-5 plots are actually the norm for pretty much any deck to score a win - and therefore any plot deck must consist of about 4-5 cards dedicated to the primary path of victory - either with Power-related abilities (like Rise of the Kraken) or Power-grabbing facilities (like Storm of Swords for a Siege Stark) or survival for the grabbing of power (like Power of Blood or Uneasy Truce).

The 2 remaining cards will then provide the "Plan B" for the deck. These are usually either reactionary cards meant to level the playing field (especially in Joust), like the famous Valar, disturbance plots to annoy people and improve current position, such as the Blockade, eliminate key threats with the Wedding, or simply bonus cards like the Winter Festival.

But if too many plots are available in a plot deck then the basic "very good to have" plots will appear in every one, like Valar or Winter Festival, so the number 7, I think, is created to only allow a single Plan B, and not enough to allow a Plan C and/or too many goodies to see, say, Winter Festival in every deck.

So I guess 7 is a well thought out number, not randomly pulled from the numeracy table.

On the other hand, it could simply be convenient. Or maybe Mr. Eric just likes the shape of the number 7, or he hates 8.

(o.o)

Yes! Let's start again!

Ok, now that job hunting is officially out of the way, and I (more or less) have a stream of steady income again, time to defrost this blog and start writing~

(o.o)