Hey all,

I've been thinking about the kingsguard lately and how they are never really used. Presumably this is because the majority of them aren't even particularly useful in terms of utility cards. I wanted to hash out some ideas here, though, in order to maybe see if they can ever win.

There are two major styles of deck I've been considering for the kingsguard, one intuitive, the other highly counter-intuitive. The first is Baratheon. Naturally, you now have The Laughing Storm, The Iron Throne, and the new Ser Preston Greenfield from KotS; this ensures that your opponent's hand is in pain for a good portion of the game. The setback is if they somehow discard TLS - now it's hitting you, too. I haven't decided the best way to manage this yet. This deck seems pretty reasonable though, as you can still make it kind of a Baratheon rush deck, and just happen to have several kingsguard characters who help try to beef you up a bit.

The other deck is, amazingly, not Martell. It is actually Stark. The reason for this is that with the new Bolton characters, you can win defensive challenges much more easily than before. This may sound strange, but I think the only way to play with the Bolton chars is to play defensively. They are cheap enough that you can play more expensive locations that allow you to win challenges, and trigger off of you winning them (such as Winterfell Castle, Winterfell, and especially Frozen Outpost, one of the sickest cards in a defensive Stark deck). With Frozen Outpost, if you ensure that you go second every turn with high initiative, you make them less likely to attack, because if they do, you'll just stand your chars and then be able to go on the attack with them on your turn. Finally, a card that is underused and undercosted in a deck with high initiative is Host of the Bear - my thanks to fellow board member Stasis for abusing the heck out of this on me on OCTGN recently.

All in all, I like the concept behind the defensive deck that kingsguard represent, but just think they don't have enough good, effective characters to make a difference in any tournament game. What do you think?

Currently I think that they dont have enough things going for them. The neutral ones aren't that interesting and the agendas good side only works if you have a kingsguard character while the negative side works even if you don't. I see them more as a melee theme when you are using the different titles the lord commander of the kingsguard title is nice when you are playing kingsguard

Also I would like to say that lannister is **** good kingsguard house with their clansmen, draw, gold and they also have 2 inhouse kingsguard, both of which are way better than the neutral ones.

So I'd say that we need some better kingsguard characters to make this kind of build more viable to see some tournament play.

It's interesting that you should bring them up. Jeppedo down here has tried a Stark build very similar to what you mentioned, though I think he pushed the Tullies a little more in order to have more targets for Riverrun. I think in the end though, he had issues with it performing as consistently as he would like.

These days he's actually playing them out of Lannister. A pretty standard portion of kneel really goes a long way as disruption in this kind of deck to make sure that anyone who could get past your Kingsguard is going to be knelt out. Also, Campfire Mime gives you extra Kingsguard options if you have one in play, giving you more flexibility for Muster, Kingsguard Squire, and an intrigue icon, which can be quite important since the official KG are lacking.

Really, one of the biggest strengths that I've seen in the KG agenda is the way that it shifts the challenge phase. A very common practice is to initiate a low strength attack in a challenge that you care less about in the hopes that your opponent will kneel out a character to defend and then you can force through the challenge that you do care about. The KG agenda shifts that math, by making it suddenly much, much more profitable for your opponent to defend and win those sorts of chump attacks. And trust me, throwing out very many of those can really start accelerating the KG player.

Maybe I'll see if I can get Jeppedo to post a little more of his thoughts on the deck.

I like the Bara idea, although without TLS that would be bad, and I don't like having to depend on that one character for something like that. But the deck itself seems crazy, and if you can keep it out there, very brutal indeed. I kinda forget about that Preston a lot.

The Stark idea I have been doing a while, and I love it. So much defense stuff in it that it is crazy. Frozen outpost is brutal, and just the stark characters you can use are awesome, to go along with the KG. I think this deck is very playable, and can really mess with some people when you consider all the Stark challenge phase control(feigned, lethal, Catelyn), that you can really control the game.

KG are very playable indeed I think. And Kennon nailed it, it changes so much of the game for the opponent I don't think they can really plan out for the turns as easy, beacause of chump challenges. Play the high initative and always make them go first and you are good to go normally.

Is Stark Kingsguard really that much better than simply running 2-3x of Winterfell ?

I agree. Winterfell is a big bonus to playing Stark Kingsguard. Stark has the best defensive cards.

However Lanni has better Kingsguard characters and is better at shoring up the intrigue weakness.

I've tried both and I'm not convinced they're that great.

danach81 said:

i don't think stark is that weak to intrigue, at least not with the advent of the boltons. not to mention those tully septons which don't kneel to defend. (plus cat, anti-shadows sansa)

KG agenda is often played in melee, especially in Martell and lannister. When you play correctly with the titles, it is possible to take many powers quite quickly by defending the challenges unopposed by the others.

Martell is actually the best house for them in melee, because of Achemist shop and the new dagger, that give your KG Stealth an deadly, that is important for defenders. And they've got Arys. And good strength boosts like rumor of war...