Hello and Welcome Back, Loyal A Game of Thrones Fans!

The A Sword in the Darkness Chapter Pack from the Defenders of the North expansion has probably not yet cooled on your Friendly Local Game Store's shelves and already we are back at our weekly card preview with a look at a card from the next pack, The Wildling Horde. Next time we will dig a little deeper into the LCG vaults, but looking at The Wildling Horde, we just couldn't resist spoiling this card. It is one of the coolest cards that will be made available for one particular strategy and so this week we will be taking a quick look at that strategy through this card.

The card in question is Frostfang Peaks and the strategy in question is the "mill" deck. The name comes from a certain other card game, which we need not mention here, but the strategy applies across games, and is, in essence, forcing your opponent's deck into their discard pile.

Unlike some games, in A Game of Thrones you can't automatically lose by drawing the last card of your deck, and therefore milling in and of itself is not a winning strategy. However, if you consider the basic elements of the game - drawing cards, holding cards in your hand, and putting them into play - the discarding strategy can be really frustrating for your opponent and really handy for you.

The mill strategy is all about putting your opponent's cards somewhere they can't use them against you. For the most part, if a card goes to the discard pile, it stays there (with a few notable exceptions). If your opponent has cards that are critical to the "machine" of their deck's functioning, there is no better place for those cards to be (for you) than out of your opponent's reach. What milling has as a sort of compliment to the intrigue challenge, which also discards cards, is that it never even gives your opponent the opportunity to get the cards in hand.

The House that is especially good at milling is House Greyjoy. There are plenty of cards in the House of the Kraken that discard your opponent's deck one way or another - Harbor Thug (The Tower of the Hand, F51), Drowned Disciple (Kings of the Sea, F13), and some others pictured here - and you can build a pretty strong deck around discarding your opponent's deck, denying them vital cards, and then stomping all over them with House Greyjoy's other specialties like stealth and intimidate.

Which brings us back to Frostfang Peaks and why it works so well with Greyjoy's milling capabilities. What is especially cool about Frostfang Peaks is that 1) it is not unique and therefore its ability stacks if you have more than one copy in play, 2) if it is Winter two cards is a lot of cards to lose (and Greyjoy has other cool stuff that works well with Winter), and 3) Frostfang Peaks' response happens every time you reveal a plot card.

Point 3 is interesting because it happens automatically, without you having to do anything other than reveal a plot, which you would do anyway. You don't have to earn that discard through a successful challenge, or by winning initiative - it just happens. Moreover, there are other opportunities to reveal more plot cards, such as Island Rookery (The Raven's Song, F73)[ ], The Tides of War (Refugees of War, F100), or Bran Stark (Core, S13). With Frostfang Peaks in the right Greyjoy deck, you could be discarding a significant portion of your opponent's deck every turn. While you still have to win challenges and rack up power to win the game, making it so that your opponent's machine stalls for lack of support will go a long way towards making that easier.

And that's it for this week's card preview. We hope you've enjoyed it and have plenty to discuss here and in the A Game of Thrones forums. Until next time!

Based on George R.R. Martin's bestselling fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones: The Card Game brings the beloved heroes, villains, locations, and events of the world of Westeros to life through innovative game mechanics and the highly strategic game play. The Living Card Game™ format allows players to customize their gaming experience with monthly Chapter Pack expansions to the core game.