WotN Gambit Cards?

By DragonWhimsy, in Battles of Westeros

Can someone fill me in on the basics with the gambit cards that come with WotN? Especially the Lannister ones. Wondering how that changes the options (I only have WotW at the moment).

I discussed the Gambit cards from the Wardens sets over on BGG. Here is a quote, 1 and 2 from Wardens of the West, 3 and 4 from Wardens of the North in both cases:

Stark

1. Big Morale swing if morale is low on your side.
2. Interrupt opponent's attack to make all your units on the board stalwart and give all the opponent's attackers minus one attack die (minimum 1).
3. Give all Stark units Deflect, a keyword that lets them discard order tokens to ignore hits.
4. Interrupt opponent's attack to give 3 units Defend, a keyword granting Stalwart, Heavy Armor, as well as the ability to discard the token to roll the counter attack simultaneously with the attack.

Lannister

1. Start playing again after passing during the command phase.
2. Steal a card randomly from your opponent and give him one from your hand. If not used by the end of the round, discarded back to owner's discard pile.
3. Give up an order token to gain a command token this round.
4. Force opponent to play card using a different leader.

Yeesh, Stark continues to seem overpowered to me when it comes to Gambit Cards. And I don't mean I wish the Lannisters had more powerful cards, that would just make it worse. More like I want the Stark cards depowered to Lannister levels.

I think this remains an optional rule I'm going to skip out on. It's just seems like too much.

Thanks for the repost, it was very helpful!

Yeah, I think the Lannister Gambits are more subtle, but still generally more situational and less powerful. So far, I appreciate number 1 and 4 for being a decent power level, but 2 and 3 are pretty useless.

My thought was to just mix the cards together and do a draft, ignoring what is supposed to be for Stark and what is supposed to be for Lannister. So, in that case, mix all the cards together and deal 4 to each player. Each player picks one secretly and randomly removes another, then pass the remaining two cards and do it again, keeping both the chosen and the discarded cards secret until played, each Gambit only being usable once and only when you have momentum.

I could also see just printing out some modified Lannister cards, like "Draw an extra order card and roll a die for an extra order token this turn" for number 3 and just Draw 2 cards, then discard 1 of any card in your hand" for number 2 on the Lannister side.

I also don't agree that the overall power level should be lower, because Gambits need to be good in order to justify giving up momentum. I'd love to hear what you think about my ideas for changed cards, or if you have any ideas, too.

If I were to go hog wild, I'd even add a couple, like a Lannister Gambit called "Forced March" that lets you reactivate a commander's unit and two other units in that Commander's Zone of Control. I could see having a Stark Gambit called "Wolf Pack" that lets all red Stark infantry units move 2 and then only attack if they are part of a coordinated attack and all Blue Stark Infantry units move 2 and attack normally this turn.

I think I prefer the draft over making up original cards. But then I've never been one for house rules really, I usually prefer just adapting what's already there. Just personal preference.

Though I'm not sure I would really want two different "hands" to keep track of with both leaderhship cards and a hand of gambit cards. That's probably why in the official rules you just pick one. Otherwise things start to get fiddly. But if someone doesn't mind that it seems a very fair way to go about it and wouldn't unbalance anything to my mind.

Honestly #3 for Lannister doesn't seem too bad. At least if you can discard something like a morale order token and then play a "move three units" card or something. But that really depends on the scenaro and how many command tokens you're getting and what leaders you have to play them.

Last night I was playing scenario 5 from the core set... two turns in a row I rolled 3 green order tokens while only having two green units to move... and not particularly wanting to move them anyway. In a totally random statement... I won the scenario by taking Catelyn Stark. Woo hoo! It was a hard fought battle though as that victory conditon was the last viable way for me to win the game at that point.

Getting back on topic, I'm curious as to the Tully and Clansmen gambit cards now.