"Any knight can make a knight," said the scarecrow that was Beric Dondarrion, "and every man you see before you has felt a sword upon his shoulder. We are the forgotten fellowship."
- A Song of Ice and Fire, Volume: III: A Storm of Swords

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

First and foremost, congratulations to our Gen Con 2010 World Champions:

Melee World Champion, Brett Zeiller
Joust World Champion, Alec Irwin
Overall World Champion, Erick A. Butzlaff

Special distinction goes out to Erick who now has the honor of winning the Overall World Championship twice in a row!*

Congratulations to all Champions and to everyone who played in our tournaments! In the weeks ahead we will be running articles by our Champions on their winning decks, their strategy, and their tournament experiences at Gen Con 2010. Stay tuned for more!

In the meantime, we hope you are enjoying the first Chapter Pack of the Brotherhood Without Banners cycle of expansions, Illyrio's Gift. We think it is a fine harbinger of things to come as the expansion continues to roll out and the last pack in the cycle should be just as cool as the first. Before we get to that pack, though, we want to take a look at one of the developing themes of this cycle, that of the Brotherhood.

It would be hard to talk about the Brotherhood in this cycle without first talking a bit about the agenda introduced in Rituals of R'hllor, the upcoming second pack in the series: The Brotherhood Without Banners. In essence, The Brotherhood Without Banners gives your Brotherhood characters a mild form of the Infamy keyword**, although power on them can be claimed in power challenges.

So far we have just seen the lightning lord, Beric Dondarrion, embodying this theme of a power-empty House card. Without the Brotherhood agenda, Beric Dondarrion is an early-game powerhouse, but he does make you hesitate to actually win any unopposed challenges (and attack in power challenges) if you want to keep him effectively immortal. Enter the Brotherhood agenda and suddenly the lightning lord comes alive (so to speak) as a component of your board. Of course Beric Dondarrion is not alone in being able to take advantage of this agenda; he also has the help of his fellow Knights of the Hollow Hill.

With Rituals of R'hllor we introduce two more members of Beric's band of outlaws, Thoros of Myr and Tom Sevenstrings.

Once again we have two reasonably-costed neutral characters (Thoros even has Renown), who light up under the new agenda. Granted, while Beric is probably your go-to for actually participating in challenges, Thoros and Tom's abilities make them better as support players, at least while your House card stays empty and if you're running the Brotherhood agenda, it should stay that way.

Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr, and Tom Sevenstrings are just three of the Brotherhood characters that will be appearing in this cycle of expansions and with each Chapter Pack there will be more added. For those of you looking to build your own bands of outlaws, keep an eye on the Brotherhood Without Banners cycle and watch out for Lem Lemoncloak, Lady Stoneheart, The Mad Huntsman, and more!

So that's it for this week's card spoiler. Hopefully you will have plenty to talk about here in the comments and on the A Game of Thrones forums. Join us next week for battle reports from our Champions. Stay tuned!

* The only other players with similar records are Greg Atkinson, 2004 World Champion and 2010 Joust World Champion, and Tzu-Mainn Chen, 2008 Melee and Overall World Champion.
** From the Core Set rulebook (p.21): 'When you claim power or move power to your House, you may place it on any card with the "Infamy" keyword instead of placing it on your House. Power on a card with "Infamy" does count towards your victory total, regardless of the card's type.'