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

We continue our Card of the Week series with this week's preview from the upcoming Illyrio's Gift, the first Chapter Pack of the Brotherhood Without Banners cycle of expansions. Last week we looked at the Dothraki that this pack focuses on, but there are plenty of interesting cards in this pack for each of the other Houses. This week we take a look at the deepening House Dayne trait of House Martell.

For those of you who have been paying attention to the House of the Sun and Spear, you know that as each expansion has rolled out, more and more trait synergy has come together for House Dayne. This has been explored in greater depth in an earlier card preview so we won't rehash it too much now, but what is interesting about how House Dayne is progressing is its alternate use of gold tokens.

In A Game of Thrones there are essentially two types of tokens: power and gold. What some of the newer House Dayne cards have been doing is using gold on cards to trigger other effects. For example, through the use of Starfall (A Sword in the Darkness, F52), each gold token on a House Dayne character gives it +1 STR. Through Starfall Healer (Return of the Others, F111), a gold token can save a character from being killed.

As the gold on characters cannot be spent*, this essentially creates a third token type, native to House Martell. What is nice about this House Dayne gold is that it is not in your gold pool and, as such, is not subject to the Taxation Phase. Round by round, your House Dayne characters can have more and more gold pile up on them for your effects.

This will change with the release of Southron Vessel. With Southron Vessel in play, the gold on your House Dayne characters can now be taken off of them and returned to your gold pool, to be spent on Marshalling or revealing cards in Shadows. This sudden and dangerous flexibility for House Martell through House Dayne will be something to watch out for as Brotherhood Without Banners continues. And if you think House Dayne is dangerous, wait until you see what's coming for Sand Snake.

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

Ludicrous out-of-House card combo: Tywin Lannister (Core Set, L40) plus Rhaegar's Harp (Battle of Ruby Ford, F84) to give him the House Dayne trait and thus turn him into a living bank. As always, beware Varys (Secrets and Spies, F97) and his Ally discard.