Hello and Welcome Back, Loyal A Game of Thrones Fans!
We hope you're enjoying Baratheon September so far with the release of Rituals of R'hllor. As we announced last week, Kings of the Storm is shipping to distributors now, so before the end of the month the deluxe Baratheon expansion should be in your hands, fueling your power-rushing ambitions. For those of you, however, that aren't bannermen to Robert, Stannis, or Renly, have no fear: as always there is still plenty of new and cool stuff coming out for all of the Great Houses. Both Defenders of the North and Brotherhood Without Banners have put a lot of very useful and interesting neutral cards into the game, like the Wildlings and Brotherhood, and Kings of the Storm is no different, although this week we will be taking a look at some even more broadly useful neutral cards: plots.
Plots, as we all know, tend to have big, asymmetrical effects that affect each player differently, generally with your plot cards giving you an advantage while giving a disadvantage to your opponent. Since at least two plots go off every round (many more if you're playing a Melee), there can be quite a lot of dust to settle by the end of the Plot Phase and the post-plot environment will tend to set the tone of the rest of the round. With only seven plot cards available to you over the course of the game, the choice of which plots to include with your deck is a crucial decision. Often, the strategy of your deck can be driven by plots, with some of them devoted to what your deck does best, and the others geared up against what your opponent has aimed at you; examples of these are City of Lies (City of Secrets, F19) and Fear of Winter (Beyond the Wall, F40). Depending on how you build your deck, you can find plot cards that do both.
This week's first plot card is The King's Law. While this serves up some more ammunition for House Baratheon's anti-Shadows theme*, any House that finds itself troubled by Shadows can make use of this big effect. Of course, there are action windows between this plot's reveal and its effect in which to save cards in Shadows, but unless the cost to bring a card out of Shadows is zero**, or there is some gold left over between rounds (a la Planning Ahead), this plot will effectively wipe out most cards in Shadows.
Up next we have Lineage and Legacy, a card that again plays to House Baratheon's icon spread and Power Struggle-triggered events, but can easily work its way into the arsenal of any deck. For example, a House Martell deck can kill two birds with one stone by removing the icons for one challenge and then de facto canceling the other***. A Siege of Winterfell (Lords of Winter, F48) deck that is leaning heavily on military icons and less so on power icons, can be stalled for at least one round through this plot card. If the Siege player has also revealed Storm of Swords (Lords of Winter, F53) the same round, its engine of destruction will suddenly gum up, hopefully long enough for you to change the board position. In A Game of Thrones, a lot can happen in one round, so choose your plots carefully and be careful how you play them!
So there you have it, two new plot cards that will hopefully find their way into lots of different kinds of decks, coming soon from Kings of the Storm. We hope these cards have given you some food for thought and lots to discuss here in the comments and on the A Game of Thrones forums.
Until next week!
Bonus Question: Kings of the Storm includes two expertly-crafted Baratheon decklists (thanks to Jonathan Benton and Wade Freeman), but there is no deck that can't be defeated. Even with all of the boosting Baratheon will be getting, those cocky stags can still be taken down. What is your favorite anti-Baratheon strategy?
* City Watch (City of Secrets, F7), Margaery Tyrell (Tales from the Red Keep, F67), The Black Cells (Tales from the Red Keep, F68), etc.
** Venomous Blade (The Battle of Blackwater Bay, F115), Syrio Forel (Tales from the Red Keep, F77), etc.
*** For example, through The Prince's Wrath (Princes of the Sun, F22)