"Sheath your steel, blood of my blood," said Dany, "this man comes to serve me."
- George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, Volume II: A Clash of Kings

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

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who braved the winds of winter to come to our Days of Ice and Fire event and participated in our A Game of Thrones tournaments. Congratulations go out to David Bergstrom and Erick A. Butzlaff who won the Melee and Joust, respectively. It was a great tournament and we hope we can host another one like it sometime soon.

This week, we continue our preview of the upcoming Of Snakes and Sand Chapter Pack from the Brotherhood Without Banners cycle. We've been spoiling a lot of Martell cards lately and we thought we'd take a step back and have a look at one of the Houses we haven't given as much time to lately, House Targaryen.

For those of you who attended Days of Ice and Fire, House Targaryen was something of a theme, decorating our program guide and other giveaways, courtesy of one of our most popular artists, Tomasz Jedruszek.

The Queen of Dragons

In honor of House Targaryen, we thought that this week we would take a look at another one of the developing sub-themes from Brotherhood Without Banners, the Dothraki Queensguard. In previous card previews, we explored the "stacked" challenge aspect of the new Dothraki. This week, we present the third Dothraki member of Daenerys' Queensguard, Jhogo.

So far, we have seen Rakharo and Aggo*, the arakh and bow of traditional Dothraki bloodriders. Like Rakharo and Aggo before him, Jhogo, too, has an ability that triggers off of a successful military challenge, although unlike the others' "stacked" abilities (abilities that emulate other challenge claims), Jhogo's ability allows you to draw cards for each Dothraki in the challenge, a real advantage if you can pull it off. The question of using Jhogo then becomes whether you want to give him stealth by having him attack alone or whether you want to draw several cards by having other Dothraki in the challenge. Picture a scenario in which you have all three of your khalasar's bloodriders screaming into a military challenge: assuming you win, there is then an explosion of responses - discarding a card, moving a power, and drawing cards**.

Another aspect of the Dothraki Queensguard sub-theme is the attachments that further strengthen the bloodriders. Rakharo has his arakh, Aggo has his bow, and Jhogo has his whip. Like most Targaryen cards with ambush, Jhogo's whip can be an unpleasant surprise for an opponent, removing characters from what he may have thought of as a won challenge. What is more, if Jhogo has the whip, that's an additional character removed from the challenge. A potential downside to this is that the whip stands characters it removes from challenges, so you may have to deal with them later, but if those characters are killed as claim for a won military challenge anyway, then it's no great risk to you.

So that's it for this week's card spoilers. We hope we've given you plenty to discuss here in the comments or in the A Game of Thrones forums. Until next time!

* In Illyrio's Gift, F9 and Rituals of R'hllor, F33, respectively.
** If you also happen to play Blood-Crazed Screamer (Mountains of the Moon, F53) and Deadly Khalasar (Illyrio's Gift, F14), things could get especially ugly for your opponent.