Thanks again to everyone who participated in the Chosen Few deckbuilding contest. Today, we kick off our look at Forging the Chain, the next Chapter Pack in the Secrets of Oldtown cycle of expansions, with some insight into what's coming down the line for House Stark.
Seek and ye shall find
House Stark has many appealing strengths - powerful military challenges, targeted kills, and defenses that are difficult to get past - but one of its less obvious strengths is its deck-searching ability. While House Lannister may outdraw almost anyone, House Stark leads the pack in looking for specific cards and pulling them out of your deck and into your hand. Examples of this are cards like Family, Duty, Honor, Widow's Watch, and Jeyne Westerling.
Search cards provide a twofold benefit in that they not only let you get a specific card, rather than lucking into a draw for one, they also slim your deck for when you do draw cards. That is, with fewer cards in your deck, you are more likely to draw the one you are looking for. Moreover, House Stark search cards tend not to be symmetrical: Summoning Season may allow you to get exactly the character you are looking for in order to make your deck work, but its effect also allows your opponent to do the same. By contrast, an asymmetrical Stark search effect like Bran the Builder's Legacy gives you alone the benefit of searching (and slimming) your deck.
While search cards are useful in finding the cards you are looking for, they are less useful (and potentially a burden on your deck) when they don't have anything to search for. For example, if you are running Jeyne Westerling in order to search for your King Robb Stark, her usefulness diminishes if you happen to draw every copy of Robb in your deck, or if Robb is killed. This is even more true in the case of locations or events that search for cards, which don't have the benefit of also being usable in challenges. If you run out of Direwolves, Winterfell Kennels can do nothing else for you.
Enter Riders of the Red Fork. Their ability is sort of the inverse of a search effect. Rather than allowing you to search for something, they can be whatever you choose to find. Of course, if your deck depends on a particular card and you have the ability to search for it, by all means, do that. On the other hand, if you find that you've got all of your components in place but have "leftover" search effects to use, Riders of the Red Fork await your pleasure. An added bonus to Riders of the Red Fork is that they qualify for all search effects. If Building Season comes out and you don't need a location, Riders of the Red Fork can be pulled out instead. If you play To Be A Wolf, no matter what type of card your opponent names, you can still get Riders of the Red Fork.
More to come
Riders of the Red Fork is not the only search-related card for House Stark to come out in Secrets of Oldtown; it is not even the only search card in Forging the Chain. In addition to Riders of the Red Fork, Maester Luwin will also be appearing in this pack, adding his event searching skills to the Stark arsenal. Further into the Secrets of Oldtown cycle, there will be more additions to this theme: Rickon Stark, Karhold Rookery, and more. Watch this space for more information on them when they come!
Hopefully we've given you plenty to discuss here in the comments and on the A Game of Thrones Forums. Until next time!