Weaving is certainly legal, but the question of fairness is certainly debatable. A quick shuffle does randomize the cards though you end up with a much greater chance of spacing combos. In a Championship tournament I would certainly do a triple sorting and then three set of halves shuffling the same way I ensure my cards are randomized before and after a game to prevent clumping of cards. (Those words may not mean anything to anyone else, but it is quite an excellent way to force cards through a deck).

And then there was debate on what exactly the term "sufficiently randomized" means.... yeah. Let's just say it's made me a little paranoid.

Yeah, if I was facing someone I had any doubt about I'd deal their cards into three piles left-to-right-toleft, reverse sort the left pile then shuffle the left and rright piles together and then that new pile with the center pile. From there split the deck in half and shuffle, remove the center set of cards and shuffle, split the deck in half placing the top on the bottom and then remove the center set of cards and shuffle it with the remainder. Hand the cards back and smile. Now setting up of the cards would be able to remain un-randomized.

Question about duplicates.

1. Shadow cards cannot be marshalled directly in play...

2. Duplicates are not marshalled, they are played on a unique character and so far have never triggered anything about a card being played or put into play.

Therefore: Is playing a duplicate considered marshalling the card? If not then I assume I can attach duplicates with the shadow crest w/o first putting the card into shadows?

This was addressed I think in the rules section. You may place a duplicate on a unique character during the marshalling phase.

Sorry, to clarify:

Can you play a duplicate on a shadows character from your hand? Or can you only do so by bringing the card out of the shadows so to speak?

Yes you can play a duplicate from hand. A duplicate is considered a textless, titleless, card. This would be the Shadow crest and gold cost as much as everything else on the card.

Put it into context. Say that there was a plot that said "The North cards cannot be played this round." Could you dupe Coldhands (a unique character with The North trait)? Of course, because the dupe is not played as a The North card - it is simply a dupe.

Same thing for duping unique Shadows cards. You are not breaking the rule that Shadows cards cannot be played directly because you are not playing it as a Shadows card - it is simply a dupe.

This may have been already brought up, but does anyone else think Kraken Tattoo is a preview of what we might see in the Kings of the Sea expansion? If indeed there is synergy for Greyjoy, could this be a hint of whats to come? The Response is "After a card is discarded from a players deck, attached character gets +1 STR and Intimidate until the end of the phase." Really this wouldnt benefit anything unless it was in the challenges phase, like if Desperate Looters left play. Thats two cards I can think of off the top of my head. Could Greyjoy's focus be Mill?

It could, but I don't know if Mill was ever popular enough among the Kraken faithful to make up for the disdain I think other players seemed to have for it. I love mill. I love any sort of way of attacking my opponent that is hard to plan for and even harder to defend against... that said I'd say Kraen Tattoo is definitely a card intended to work with upcoming cards. This was a KLE card, the first set designed after the rotation so it doesn't count for any of the ITE or 5KE mill cards. We can't say for sure if we are getting more mill in KLE, KotS or both, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that we are getting more.

see i think GJ is going to be a bit dispersed as they have been in the past, but are going to be hurt by that in the LCG format. They have winter, mill, and unopposed right now (and a little bit of save). In standard it was okay to be spread out amounst a bunch of themes as your had enough to meld them or to focus on one....i'm not sure if thats going to hold up with less then 100 individual cards.

i think GJ needs to get away from mill, there is no lose condition for being decked, if GJ had str in int to back up their mill or protect thier own hand it might be worth while. Also intimidate/unopposed needs a lot of support behind it and i don't see a whole lot of it right now (especially becuase not a lot of people have a problem giving you an unopposed challange [and popping in a rein event], why should i pay extra for a character who gives me unopposed...).

Now a lot of people are expecting location control and cancel....now they are getting even more despirsed if that holds up. Not sure if this expansions is going to be as meta altering as a lot of people are betting on.

I don't think the ability on Kraken Tatoo is nearly as interesting in a GJ deck as the "gains the Ironborn trait." Saltwife is still out there....

The question is really more about what comes with the mill. Since ITE there haven't been any mill cards that were just mill cards. Krakenn Tattoo is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. It isn't mill but it keys off mill and drives unopposed... as well as powering up a potential defender and allowing a character to potentially be saved via Saltwife. So if I get to discard cards for winning a challenge I want to win anyway, bonus, and often there is no real extra pay for mill cards, I think Euron and Whirlpool were the only cards from ITE that cost an additional gold, and considering how much of a bite they could put into an opponents deck (those reins and MWnK you harp on? Not so great sitting in a discard pile) I think it is worth that additional gold.

So if we were looking at mill cards that granted some other benefit (like whirlpool did) or was an added benefit to a cost effective card (like Veteran Looters were), or were a global revenge mechanic (like Desperate Looters and Drowned Disciple) then it isn't much of a watering down nearly as much as combining multiple themes in the same card.

Speaking of revenge mechanic mill... loosing a Desperate Looter with a Kraken Tattoo in play in multi-player, suddenly you have a +2 or +3 strength Intimidate character on your side of the board. Oh, God I hope DD is reprinted. Seriously suddenly you have a +6 or +9 Intimidate character. I'm not sure there is a character sitting in a deck out there who could face down you average Greyjoy character under those conditions.

And Lars you are absolutely right about people often letting challenges go unopposed, but there gets to be a point where you have to start blocking those, esepcially with a series of 2 claim plots like a lot of Greyjoy players used to run. Loosing two cards from your hand and two power from your house three times in a row is painful for any deck. Not being able to stop them is worse. Adding insult to injury is any mill going along with that, especially if it is powering up cards or even better powering up my power count.

All that said you are definitely right, being too diversified in such a limited card pool is not an asset right now it is a detriment. The question I have in my mind is how long before we are no longer playing in a restricted environment and when we get out of that, will Lannisters tight focus end up hurting it as much as it is helping it right now?

ktom said:

See that's what got me started on looking more into the card. I'm using it in a Lanni-Greyjoy treaty i built (which despite what I thought is doing better then first glance) and after saving Tywin via saltwife with it, I was pretty happy, but noticed i could very seldom trigger the K-Tat ability, and get any use out of the STR buff and the intimidate during challenges (since it only lasts till the end of the current phase.)

Like you Dor, I absolutely loved mill. Veteran Looters tops my reprint list, and I loved ITE Euron almost as much (if not more) then the WED Euron. I would like to see Greyjoy go in that direction (despite what the general consensus seems to be).

I guess i didnt worry about Greyjoy's theme(s) being dispersed as much because it's been reassured so much that synergy will be present come the expansion. The best I can hope for is that there is some direction present. I will say I do miss the days where I could sit down and want to build a Greyjoy deck and think of which direction i wanted to go in. If we dont see the synergy many of us are hoping for, then what Dormouse said about when the environment finally does open up, there could be alot of diversity present.

King of the Saltwives said:

I would actually hope that at a total of 60 cards, the expansion doesn't try to re-introduce or synergize all of GJ's themes at once. I'd prefer depth in, like, 2 or 3 over all X of them spread over so few cards, regardless of the degree of synergy. If there are 10 cards that work great together, that's all we'll ever see from GJ.

King of the Saltwives said:

Well the best mill card ever printed (Euron - upto 6 cards a turn and makes people rethink the challenge phase) and looters (stealth, self standing, and intrgue icons) are solid outside of mill as a house theme. Take the mill away from looters and it probably still gets played. euron didn't need anyother mill in the deck to still be an effective and playable card. I doubt we will see anything like those two cards for a while. (in fact looters has been rpleaced already by Desperate Looters (mill one card when enters or leaves play on an iffy character).

Ktom, thats kind of my point. If you look at a Core set house and try to play a Core set onyl deck, well its a bit all over the place. Its the chapters that really help you tie in themes and focus your deck. GJ's main deck should follow this rule (and be spread out) and the stuff in the chapters is a lot spread out for them right now with the most focus being on winter (which i don't think will be in the expansion) adding yet another theme to GJ's many.

Lars said:

I disagree that the Core decks are "all over the place." Rather, I think the themes are rather focused (usually only 2 or 3 of the themes that characterize the House). Granted, the "Highlander" composition of the decks and the limited combos this enables (not that there are many built in in the first place), makes each card seem pretty solitary, but that's not the same as themes. Because of the single copy, the 2-3 themes in a Core Deck all feel like "main deck themes" rather than the usual constructed strategy of "main theme with 1-2 supporting themes of various representation." You are correct - you usually need the CPs to help focus a theme and make it reliable within an LCG deck. I just think that has more to do deck composition than representation of too many individual House themes. After all, you can focus a Core deck theme pretty well just by upping the copy numbers without supplementing different cards from CPs. I think the lack of synergy in the 4 Core Decks has more to do with copy number than the availability of effects.

That said, I don't think the Greyjoy deck should include 1 or 2 random cards of unopposed-by-stealth, unopposed-by-effect, warships, mill, saves, cancels, location destruction, and resource control. I think they should choose 2 or 3 of those. Like the other Core decks, the copy number will dilute out the synergy between those 2-3 on its own (particularly given that the GJ Core deck will also include a number of cards that are intended to work for any House, according to Nate). This is what I mean by "depth" in 2 or 3 themes instead of trying to get all of GJ's traditional themes represented in one set.

well if you look at the core set decks among 30-35 in house cards there are at least 3 main house themes with at least 2 sub-themes (i.e. clansmen, melee cards, saves [other houses], etc.). That means that for every 10 cards you have you will have 4 themes (3 main plus two .5 subs) going on....

I am assuming the same ratio will hold true for GJ, who aside from winter has no real themes in the chapter packs (outside of winter there is maybe 4 playable GJ non plot cards: To be a, Fishwiskers, salt wife and foamdrinker (and i streteched there a bit) Dragon chaser is close, but not with lack of influence in the environment). That gives you at least 5 themes to work with while getting only 40-ish cards (taking out kings/queens, plots, and resources). So, you have less then 10 cards per theme and even at 3x cards for 2 themes you are still going to be lacking focus.

Lars said:

That is a very good point as well...I have to say I think I used Veteran Looters in almost all of my decks, whatever the theme. Same pretty much goes for ITE Euron in many instances (although I was hugely fond of WED Euron, before my hiatus, I found myself using ITE much more). I guess a guy can dream lol.

Well if the reprinted: Veteran Looters, Here is my Husband, Whirlpool, The Shield Islands that would be fine. Even a variant of ITE Euron, his immunity and tricon would make him good... and triggering the mill to then trigger other greyjoy cards would be good.

I think milling is fine as a secondary effect on cards that boost other themes of Greyjoy.

Lars said:

Well, it seems we are defining "theme" a little differently for the discussion. "Clansmen," for instance, is not something I think of as a "theme," You can build a "theme deck" featuring the trait, but that's not the same as a House's strategic or characterizing theme to me. Baratheon is pretty good at getting a lot of little, weak characters out on the board while getting the resources together for their stronger, more expensive characters, then rushing the board with Renown. That's (one) theme that characterizes the House. The fact that they all have the Asshai trait is "thematic," or even a theme for building the deck, but it doesn't, in itself, get you any closer to winning. The trait is a way of creating the synergy within the House theme, not the theme itself. In my way of looking at it anyway. On that front, I agree that the Core decks are "all over the place" because there isn't a lot you can do to tie cards together, through traits or whatever. (There's some, but not much.) But in terms of the overall strategic themes that characterize the "flavor" or "personality" of each House, the Core decks do concentrate on just a few each.

That's why I am currently more intrigued by the "Ironborn" trait than the effect on Kraken Tatoo. It potentially lets me create the synergy between the House themes myself.

So yeah, I anticipate that the GJ deck will be as "scattered" in terms of things that tie the cards together as any of the others. I don't anticipate a lot of built-in synergy among the cards. But I would far prefer to see them limit GJ to just 2-3 strategic points (say, unopposed, location control and saves) with the stray card for other things commonly associated with them than to try to evenly represent everything GJ is known for in one deck. (FFG certainly did not evenly represent everything the other 4 Houses are known for in their Core decks.)