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)