So, it's a new year. Let's try for some more strategy and theory discussion in 2010. Here's my latest question:

Which challenge do you concentrate on?

We know that newer players often think of the game primarily in terms of the military challenge until they gain more experience, but what does anyone really do once they gain that experience?

Obviously, there are some House specific concentrations (Stark = military, Lannister = intrigue, Baratheon = power), but think about some of the discussion we get from new players. Every month or so, someone comes in and says "We just just got the game and have been playing the Stark core deck against the Lannister core deck; how could Lannister ever win?" Then, some other new player comes in the next month and says "We just got the game hand have been playing the Stark core deck against the Lannister core deck; how does STARK ever win?" So there must be something going on other than the fact that military "always" beats intrigue, or vice versa. There's probably an affinity to the player and their type of game play, right?

And before you say "I always try to balance all three," fess up! No one really tries to "balance" all three when they build a deck. They build a strategy around one or two challenge types while trying not to neglect the others. It's not the same thing.

So, which challenge type do you concentrate on? Why? What do you think this says about the kind of player you are?

I'm a Stark - Greyjoy player and I concentrate heavily myself on high initiative - high claim - military.

To do so I usually play lots of low cost char and some "key" char to search with herald (or to be a wolf). I use also some "stand up" event and some "kneel event" (Distraction).

Now that martell are out I must admit that my decks will change a little bit and I don't know how ;-)

ktom said:

i think it's the case that i never shook off my n00bishness, because i really, really dislike including characters in my decks that don't have a military icon, haha. seriously, when deckbuilding, generally speaking, i usually weigh number of military icons as more important than icon variety or a number of other things that probably *should* be more important. (obviously different deck types have different icon requirements, but i shy away from things that aren't heavily dependent on military.) i just feel helpless without a hefty quantity of military icons, though; and whenever i draw a character without one, i usually experience a brief flash of deckbuilding regret. military really just seems to be the easiest and most natural way of keeping an opponent in check (obviously best backed up by hand manip of some sort, etc.).

I find myself choosing Intrigue challenges in-game over the other two more often than not, it seems, especially in this meta of easy claim soak with Refugees and easy saves like Aemon, Viserys, Iron Mines, and Risen from the Sea, four cards I see everywhere. And I much prefer building decks around Intrigue icons, with a secondary focus on Military icons. Maybe that's why I loved Assassination events so much. Power is usually what I think of the least, although that has bitten me at times.

But it's such a relative thing that I almost find it strange that we as players would prefer one over another. Maybe it is very psychological and this is just another type of Rorschach test, which ktom mentions.

I don´t prefer any type of challenge since i´m playing all 6 houses equally and have always around 12++ decks. However i think that the challenges types are very close to each other at the moment. That´s because a concentration of a challenge type left alone won´t win you the game. These days we have a somewhat equally distribution of cards that response to won or lost military/intrigue and power challenges. Just one example, i think it was rather unusual in the past to have an event card that allows resource (location) control outside of a military challenge (famous if not notorius examples in the past were put to the torch, favorable ground). In the nowadays LCG enviroment we have the price of war (for military), condemned by the council (for intrigue) and support of the kingdom (for power). I think that´s a very interesting process.

Another aspect of the today´s enviroment is that intrigue is probably the weakest type of challenge at the moment (if you like to make a ranking), that´s because of the shadow mechanic and the latest release of the intrigue loving charachters in the Martell expansion- granted these charachters are only available for a singular house, however it should be threat to live in the fear to find a 6 str, tricon army as the result of an intrigue challenge.

While i said i prefer no challenge, i would after some consideration rank the power challenge at the first spot, because there are too many ways to work around weaknesses in military power.

i don't focus on one particular challenge when deck building (outside of unique house themes, i.e. direwolf pup instead of bastard of robert).

what i do do is have a preferred order that i try to win in during challenges. I'll generally focus on winning an intrigue and power challenge every turn and will often 'chump attack' on military more for the purpose of kneeling out defenders (and if i win bonus!). winning an intrigue challenge gets a card in an area (outside of shadows, but thats a different thread) thats hard to get to via card based effects and power challenges get me closer to winning and put more pressure on my opponent.

Old ben is correct that the house martell guys do change they way i have to approach challenges, but that just means saving intrigue for last against them.

Although this doesn't fall under challenges, I have had this question in my mind I've been meaning to post. Perhaps this is a fitting thread to post it being its on strategy.

How viable is mutli house decks? That is do a lot of people incorporate out of house cards into their decks and to what degree? How does this affect your overall strategys?

Well, for me it completely depends on my deck's abilities and what's in my plot deck.

Normally (playing Martell or Lanni), I tend to push pretty hard on Int until the reset. Once a reset shows up, I still focus on Int, but start leaning on Mil a little bit more to make sure I can keep control over the board. Traditionally good draw from these two houses allows me to build up a hand advantage early, and then transfer that to a character advantage after a reset. Pow. challenges for me are an afterthought most of the time with these decks.

If I'm playing Stark (traditonally poor draw/Int) or GJ (triggers off of UO), I tend to lean heavier on Mil right from the start and hope that Ruled by Decree will hit my opponent's hand.

My preference has always been to go after my opponents hand with Int though.

Stalkingwolf said:

well they reprinted a plot to help people play Out Of House (OOH) cards in alliance so the structure is there for however far you want to go. I also have been warming up to the martell treaty agenda a bit. They can add control/draw to some house that are missing it (and thus negating the -10 power a bit) or they can add rush/closing elements to control. I really like The Red Viper in Lanni (not that they need help, but with two closers that are hard to remove (tyrion) they don't have to worry about missing control as much later in the game.

you will most likely find people playing OOH for draw (see old Queen marcella), character control (Oakheart), or Cancel (Chapter pack Eddard and Iron Throne Queen of Thorns).

While there is a definite correlation between house played and the inherent focus of that house and the challange it leans towards, I do tend to focus on a particular challange. For me, intrigue is by for the most important challange. Dealing with cards before they ever get played is much easier than after the fact. No need to draw kill cards if I can strip the character from your hand before you play them, thus also helping me to continue winning more challanges. The same can be said for locations, while events also don't need to be canceled if in your discard pile.

Being able to limit your opponent's options is always the most important aspect of deckbuilding for me, so intrigue (and military to a lesser extent) is my primary motivation. I've often found myself looking for borderline characters with intrigue icons while playing houses with traditionally weak intrigue stats (Stark, and Greyjoy's are often smaller strength non-uniques these days).

Much like Longclaw, I find my relative tendancy to ignore the power icon to sometimes hurt me as once I manage to gain control of the board it can take a while to actually then win, giving my opponent more of a chance to come back than I would like.

Holy Crap, I just spotted The Sheik running through here!

It really depends on the House I'm playing. If I am playing Stark or Greyjoy, I never plan on winning the Intrigue challenge, so I concentrate on Military and power. If I am playing Martell or Lanni I focus on Intrigue and military. In Bara I focus on the Power challenge. ~I still can't get Targ to do anything but lose.

kpmccoy21 said:

But why? Both Houses have great intrigue cards/characters and can establish a strong game position for the challenge if the player is willing to build the options into the deck.

Even given all the changes to this game over the past few years in terms of card pool, distribution etc - i am still convinced that a commitment to the intrigue challenge is the surest way of winnning tournaments.

Given the ease fo resets, given the fragility of characters once in play and esepcially given the limited draw options available in the current format - the best way to control your oppoents position is to deny them resoruces. covnersely, the best way to protect your position, and come back form damaging blows is to build up massive card advantage. Thus - no matter what Hosue I play, easily 80% or more of the characters will have the intrigue icon and I am much more likely to cut a pricey MIL/POW character in the final cut down than i am an intrigue character.

Even out of Greyjoy. I'm not convinced Stark has a good in House intrigue base - and its a big reason why they are the weakest House at the moment in the US metagame.

I am a newer player who got my Core set (with my first AGOT cards inside) last year for Christmas. When I first started playing, I think I had a fairly good idea of when to use each challenge, and the benefits of each. As time passes, I find myself more and more in love with Intrigue challenges, and my current favorite deck is a Targaryen deck heavy on intrigue icons. I can think of very few games that I have lost where I am able to successfully win intrigue challenges, followed with a Valar Morgulis. With the addition of Shadows, I think Valar has only become stronger.

My favorite easy combination: 1) hand destruction, 2) Valar, 3) bring out Free Cities Mercenaries during the Dominance phase. Plenty of room for other good stuff, and a pretty devastating change in board position...

So it sounds like the general idea most people go in with is "establish a dominant board position and let power come," meaning that the power challenge usually lags behind while either military or intrigue is used to establish said position.

This seems to be the hallmark of a control player to me. Are we really mostly a bunch of control players in this game or have the rush players just not been posting? Seems like if you think primarily in terms of a rush strategy, your preferred challenge would be power.

Is that a fair assessment/summary of what we have so far, do you think?

ktom said:

and i love to take advantage of this early on in a game. i can usually get an unopposed power challenge off in turn 1 and a very weakly defended power challenge in turn 2. its great for support of the kingdom, seductive promise, etc.

I'm not sure if we are all control players or if LCG seems to be nudging us that way...a lot of the control elements are really hard to get rid of right now, especialyl the attachment based ones (lanni, bara, and martell have in house control attachments, targ still has burn which it can plan ahead for right now and with pinch of powder and milk there is no lack of nuertal attachment based control) in other words i'm hijaking this thread to ask fro some form of nuetral attachment control....

well - a lot of the older opsters who still contribute ARE control players. I do think the current environemtn is still about a turn to slow to relaly have rsuh be considred effetcive. From what I have read - at both stahleck and Black Friday, control decks were able to shut down rush pretty quickly.

Lars wants more atatchment control (as do I) but I really wnat a couple more Vigilant characters for Baratheon or maybe some harder hitting anti Shadows tech to empower Self Stand Robert and Never kneel Loras. Just a touch more unopposed for Greyjoy and they'd be pretty close - one more charcter like the Bannerman would be great.

Which brings up an interesting point (since we're hijacking the thread for a "this is what I need for this strategy to work" list):

Is the Power Challenge the only way to rush? On the face of it, it certainly seems so - since it is the only claim effect that takes a direct step closer to the win solution. But we have seen Military and Intrigue rush before; they just depended on an outside, reusable effect (and extra challenges) that rewarded the player for pushing that challenge type. It really only took one card (War of the Five Kings) to make military rush viable out of at least 2 Houses. GJ rush (for unopposed) is the closest thing we have to it now.

ktom said:

I had an interesting game this weekend. I played Martell, and flopped a location and the Red Viper (POTS). On my turn I played The Breaking of Oaths to get an extra intrigue challenge, went second, marshalled Shadows Politics for a third intrigue challenge, and played some scrub for claim soak. Opponent didn't get a great character base set up, limited icon selection, and I had a helpful event or two in my hand. I also played Taste for Blood on my Viper.

By the end of the turn, I had 6 power on my Viper (5 from renown, 1 from Blood), had 5 unopposed, and claimed Dominance. Was this an absolutely amazing draw? Yes. But I did achieve 12 power on my first turn without grabbing any from my power challenge...

and one milk of the poppy away from getting that chopped by 2/3rds...

By the way it´s very interesting that Martell got an awesome renown potential, it´s a new aspect for the house in my book. There´s the Red Viper, Harmen Uller, Ser Arys Oakheart, Darkstar and the shadow army from the latest chapter pack, so there are 7 potential inhouse charachters with renown, there are also some neutrals which can be played and the reinforcement events (all charachters have renown) fit nicely in the Martell revenge theme. To the spears also adds the potential to shut down a game pretty quickly.

Hmm... interesting to consider. In my very early acquaintance with the game, yes, I fit the n00b stereotype and clawed my way to some kind of military presence on the board. Of course, right at the outset, Lannister had a plethora of solid intrigue icons without even trying to build for it at all. As I progressed, I came to see the intrigue challenge as a real focus. As I've matured as a player though, I like to think that I find myself opening up more. If push came to shove, I probably still try to favor the intrigue icon while deckbuilding, though part of that is an extension of the house I play more often than not. During actual gameplay though, I think one of the few redeeming traits that I have is an ability to thoroughly weigh the pros and cons of any given challenge in any given order in regards to current gamestate. There are many times when the power challenge just to hopefully stall them for an extra turn can be more important than the military, or killing the threat on the board is more important than the potential threat in hand, and so on.

That's a really good point Kennon. So much of succesful play is actually contingent on knowing the right timing of the challenge pashe adn being able to anticipate how its going to effect the next turn (or more) Its like thinking a few moves ahead in chess. teh fartehr out you think, the more likley you are to win.

i lost a match last night that i had well under control, becuase I didn;t relaize how close my opponent was to picking up sveen more, give two renown chaarcters, one who didn't kneel and a third who had stealth. my reset would ahve devastated him, but i held off on it for on turn while i got myslef positioned porperly with saves in depth and charcters in hand - thinking I had the game. Had i but blcked one or two challenges i gave away unopposed - it would have made all the difference. Timing and porjection are SO important in this game.

That being said - you'll still win more than you lsoe if you shred your opponent's hand and build up your own./ If you're getting your ass kicked militarily - there's always Valar. Ther's not enough draw to come back form hand shredding and Bounty is gone with the dodo.

Yes, I find myself defending as often as reasonable possible these days in order to slow their power. Especially considering how I generally am playing slower, control oriented Lannister decks, you just never know when the extra one or two unopposed is just going to hand your opponent the game in a couple turns.