Stag Lord said:

And that, actually, is a bridge into another discussion.

In a management class once, some classmates had trouble understanding the difference between strategy and tactics in business. In an attempt to explain it, I turned to AGoT.

Deck building is strategy. It's creating the options and aligning the resources you think you will need based on your assessment and predictions of what you are likely to see in a game or tournament. The card isn't going to help you if it isn't in your deck. Your strategy is how you plan and position yourself to create your win solution, as well as deciding what a win solution actually looks like for you.

The choices you make during game play based on the situation as it unfolds are tactics. You can't anticipate everything when you develop your strategy and not everything in your strategy will necessarily be applicable to the game position you find yourself in. You have to be flexible and respond to the actions of your competition and changes in the environment.

That difference sounds like what Stag and Kennon are talking about: creating enough strategic flexibility in order to maintain tactical advantage - and reading the game position in order make the best tactical decisions. It really goes back to the "car and driver" discussion we've had before; how often does a superior (tactical) player win against a superior (strategic) deck?

This is one of the reasons I think so many people here have expressed a preference for the intrigue challenge - and why draw effects tend to be so powerful. Draw puts more of the strategic options - i.e., more tactics - you built into your deck at your disposal for any given situation. That means you have more tactical flexibility. Similarly, the intrigue challenge helps reduce your opponent's tactical options by taking cards out of their hand, limiting their ability to react to what you are doing. There tend to be more options outside the military challenge for managing character position than there are options outside of the intrigue challenge for managing card position (i.e., your relative tactical options and flexibility).

I don't know. It's related to the "challenge preference" idea, but maybe the difference between strategy and tactics - and how you plan for/leverage them - is a different discussion.

And than there´s another important point which was not yet mentioned "knowing the rules and understanding the cards". See, i like the new champion cards from the Martell expansion, if think all are very well down. But also all of them do require some deeper understanding.

I wonder how many new players don´t play these cards to their full potential, i.e. :

- Former champion could still participate in challenges, thus use stealth deadly and renown if it´s STR falls below 1, which makes it really great imho

- When i woke .... could be used on your own cards either as an evasion card or to play that Aerys oakheart, dragon thief etc. again

- finally a pinch of powder needs a good analysis on the game situation to be used at best

Of course like i wrote none of the information above should be new for the long time players, but more often than not you find a question like "can a zero str charachter participate in a challenge?" on the rules discussion board.

Old Ben said:

I disagree. A high claim constant military loss can keep your board clear of the necessary characters to successfully execute either of the other challenges. You can do it without depending on card effects to boot and even without declaring a power challenge if you can keep your opponents board wiped you can gain power through unopposed. It also has the potential to remove power from your opponents side by forcing military claim to kill renown or infamy characters. As such I do think it is conditionally the strongest challenge. Neither Intrigue nor Power have the same effect on cards that have already entered play without additional card effects. Intrigue is the seoncond best, denying your opponent options, but he will always have a chance to play out cards in his hand prior to your ability to win a challenge to remove them. It can't remove what is already in play, and can't affect power in any fashion other than unopposed, which is dependent on your opponent not being able to oppose since the challenge itself won't remove characters from play. Power challenges by itself is only good for stealing power from your opponent beyond the unopposed (with the same limitation already noted under Intrigue), but that does not effect his playing field and nets you no card advantage as both Military and Intrigue do and as such is the weakest challenge.

Now I did say conditionally. Because the game is not just textless characters but a large mix of tactical effects and deck building strategies that can minimize or maximize any given challenge icon. I think that a lot really depends on ones own playstyle and the house you choose.

I think it is interesting the icon which has the least impact on the game state and player choices (power) is the only one which is tied to the win condition itself and the best one for prolonging your ability to stay in the game and the one with the largest game board impact, is relatively easily managed in the form of saves, and easily available claim soak if you should build it into your deck.

I think I do prefer military ever so slightly ahead of intrigue, and Greyjoy military decks with discard were one of my favorites pre-LCG because I could remove options before my opponent could play them and then use high claim military to remove what characters did get played.

to dormouse you listen; on this, great wisdom he has; yes, yes, much wisdom. </yoda voice>

Well, this is based on my relatively new look on things in the current environment, but I tend to focus on intrigue. It just seems to really hurt due to the seemingly lack of easy draw. Although it seems to be alot harder these days to actually win the intrigue challenge. Military has been second on my list too oddly enough. Heck I have found myself only doing two power challenges in a game! Such a strange concept to a bara player!

At the tournament level intrigue is far and away the most important challenge because the best players will play control an overwhelming amount of the time. Playing a control allows someone to extend the game for longer and make a greater number of decisions (and potentially mistakes). Hand disruption is the best possible way to battle in a control mirror. You can assume that a less experienced player will draw 2 and play 2 turn but a vet with a well designed deck will not. So basically you need intrigue to win games against the best players and just drawing more cards will beat just about everyone else.

Thanks for making a post I actually wanted to post in.

I agree with dormouse and Finite. In general, military is superior to other challenge types, but it really depends on someone's deck and current board position. If I'm about to valar, then a military challenge is (obviously) less attractive than intrigue. Similarly, if I know that my opponent has something scary in his hand, such as a Khal Drogo, Robert Baratheon that I bounced back to his hand, etc. then intrigue might be the best way to go. For the most part though, military is the best way to control board position, including character strength and abilities, power/renown, etc.

I do like what was said about hand control being very difficult outside of the challenges phase (whereas character control is much easier with the current card pool), and this makes intrigue challenges more valuable tactically (to borrow Ktom's phrase) in many situations.

I'm a new player and I'm enjoying this topic very much because the discussion is giving me the opportunity to learn a lot about the game. Till this point I haven't changed a thing about the decks in the Core Set and Kings of the Sea, the only boxes I have, except from adding the kings characters that came in KotS to the house decks they are affiliated.

So, what I can offer to this forum in therms of an argument is just that: the perspective os new player, still full of newbie questions. What I am noticing from the decks unchanged, as FFG dispached them. I only expect that it helps add some flavour to the conversation at a curiosity level.

(Also, sorry about the hesitant english).

Anyway, right now I'm not near certainty about which deck I prefer, or which deck I think is the strongest. I have a group of friends with diverse tastings and we've been trying every deck with every player. To the moment, the Greyjoy deck seems stronger, but I don't know if it is just an idea that I have, based on the fact that it was released when there were alreay some Chapter Packs that upgraded the other decks. We are not conducting any science research, actually, and as styles of play vary almost as greatly as luck, is hard to know anything for sure.

It seems to me that the decks on CS are build with some combo options, but not that many. There is more or less a style to each House, plainly, but as they are not constucted in a "one strategy based" manner, luck seems to be a high factor to a player be able to combine cards to maximize effects. Maybe I'm failing to grasp something obvious abouth each one of them, and so not been able to conduct a given deck in an appropriate manner for it to work as strongly as posible.

What is being very interesting in reading the posts on this topic is that my newbie feeling became all to apparent when I noticed that the majority of players think of INT challenges as having the best taticts. To this day, they are certainly the type of challenge which I think of the least, using them as a support to the other types, by trying to make my opponent kneel defendants, or reducing his options to play card from his hand. Or getting power from unnoposed, obviously. As the INT icon seems to be the least common of the three in the characters of the CS, it is the most commonly lacking one on the defendant side.

I like military tactics a lot, but I guess the challenge I focus the most is power. I know, right now I must really be writing my newbie declaration... Well, that surely reflects my personal style of play. I do like to try and see things in the great picture. I manage the Titles benefits very well, comparing to my colleagues. And so I'm aware of the importance of managing game control. We were discussing about it the other day, and a friend of mine was talking that, to him, board superiority defined the game. I think he is still thinking that way, even after countless uses of Valar Morghulis and Westeros Bleed. And he wins more often than not...

But even if I try to notice the importance of board and game control, what trhills me the most is certainly rush actions. I still feel electricity when I remember one game when I got Robert Baratheon Lord claiming 3 powers for may house and 2 for himself for an unnoposed power attack with claim 2. With the other challanges that I won that same round, I flyed from a modest competitor to 14 power tokens, almost winning. It was sure a simple thing, I do wanted to be able to stand him and attack again, or something like that. But it gave me thrills just like that!

So I love to carefully construct some game situation in which I'll trigger a bunch of effects and rush things up. As I'm still playing with pre-constructed decks, I'm not putting in the picture the strategic planning of deck building, and I'm also without the thrill of seeing my own work in this aspect come to life. I don't have any doubt that it will change the game a lot. Right now, the decks we play are not our friends (even ones that sometimes seems to be upset with you, as I expect to happen with decks you build), but strangers. So we are relying in stranger's strategies to work our tactics. And luck.

Hope to have brought something mildly interesting about the perspective of a newbie. And hope to eventually get out of this place. But, for that at least, I have no rush at all. :]

And thanks for all the fish! :]

finitesquarewell said:

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will. - or to citate Luke "NOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo". ;-)

Seriously military and intrigue are both important and i originally said that i try to balance all kind of challenges in my average deck, but i still think power is the most important challenge, even for a control power ( i consider myself to be a control player and remember those happy Bara times with blackwater bay and mammoth rampager :-) ).

A good control player should at least pay some respect to that challenge, because he needs to prolong the game to establish his control mechanics. You usually can´t withstand a rush deck without a good base of charachters with a power icon.

Actually, on a quick aside, there might be some differences on the importance of the challenges between Joust and Melee. It's harder to completely stall all the other players in melee, so control needs to be balanced better with power gain - It's no use controlling the board if you can't stop them from winning the game. As such the power challenge rears it's crowned head in melee, where I feel the game is more about winning the game than kicking your opponent, and making him/her stay down.

Then again, having no viable intrigue or military defence in melee can really, really hurt you... since everybody sees you as a good way to get some unopposed power for themselves...

...this might also actually contribute to why control -type players like to play Joust, and tend to think less of Melee. Since it's impossible to totally control the game in melee, it's more about controlling the metagame (not seeming too strong at the start and thus pulling too much aggro on yourself, thinking ahead with your choice of titles and initiative etc.). For example, at least in our playgroup, a Lannister shadows deck running Tunnels of the Red Keep seemed to always get the same reaction - it was beat down right from the start, since nobody could stop it later on. Thus the player never had any chance of actually winning the game. This also means that all those effects that also benefit some other player, that control players usually loathe, can be used very tactically in melee.

I think the point of this ramble was to say that you can possibly play a control deck focusing mainly on intrigue/military in a joust, but one should not try that schtick in melee. It's power that wins the game there...

Picking up where Drake started, has anyone tryied the KotS Kingsmoot variable? What do you think of this type of game?

I just played it once, a game of FIVE players. It was really a mess, the titles changing hands a lot since a player with a title was an obvious target, and since there was too many opponents, it was hard to defend from all of them - and harder to defend effectivelly.

I thought it very interesting that changing the goal of the game made everything obviously different. Every challenge has a place, at least to gain the correspondant Title. Unnoposed also gives you a Title, so the tupe of challenge with less defendants, or the opportunistic play, was always a thing to be counting for.

Anyway, with four opponents, it was very difficult do control the game board, not to say impossible, but if anyone got any chance os standing in higher ground, it sure gave the only opening to winning we could predict. Everything else was unpredictable. And that made the player with the best arranged game board to be a target of everyone else. And for all of that, I thing Military and Intrigue challenges had the crown of the game.

As we are begginers, we didn't paid much attention to INT. It's a mistake I'm willing to not commit again.