Ok, with the recent commentary on Martell, and the general thought that Baratheon is way behind (at least, perhaps, rush builds) I'm curious what people think is Baratheon's best card. I look at their house and still see some incredibly strong cards, but lets hear the voice of the people.

For what it's worth, my vote is for Altar of Fire. There are a ton of solid holy crest characters for Baratheon to choose from, and discarding two cards a turn with one of them by your choice is amazing. Even better then that it's only 1 cost and non-unique. This card obliterates hands faster than anything I've seen in the LCG. Sure, it's not rush, but I think it's one of the strongest cards in the game right now. I'll take a Confession every turn, yes please!

I find that when I am building a Bara deck the first card I end up with is Masey's Hook. Still, I think Brienne (PoTS) is probably one of the best chars in the game right now.

Power of Faith?

If I had to pick I'd probably say core set Robert Baratheon. Sure he's a character and he's vulnerable to well everything but get him on the table with a bit of support and he wins games faster than anything else they have going. Runners up are probably The Black Cells, The Queen of Thorns, all the versions of Melisandre and Kingswood Trail.

I think Bara's strength is really in how well all their cards can network though not just in a couple power cards. They don't just have one or two real power houses with renown they have LOTS of renown characters, it doesn't matter which is out really as long as you get some out.

I really like Eldon Estermont. Dude wins games.

After that, Knight of Flowers, Stannis(Core), Wicked Seductress

I think the conversation has to start with the Laughing Storm. Deadly is very handy & there are no worries on losing intrigue with him around (another example of Tears of Lys, Put to the Sword are missed from the old Westeros block).

Though I agree that Massey's Hook is excellent, as is Smuggler's Cove ( two great tastes that taste even better together?)

Yeah someone already said it, but I'll chime in with Power of Faith. Best rush card in the game, hands out.

Now if we are talking about an actual bara card, then I'd have to go with Core Set Mel. She completely changes an aspect of the game, and only for your opponent. Not to mention that it shuts down one of the best builds out there which is brotherhood.

Knight of Flowers is ridiculously powerful as long as no cards are in shadows. Under that assumption I think I would pick him.

If the opposing deck is assumed to be running shadows cards I'd say Princes of the Sun Brienne is very strong - really puts a kink in shenanigans during challenges.Ser Cortnay Penrose is a personal MVP. The guy is just **** good, he's not expensive, he has good strength, and his ability has been game changing in games I've had him out.

The Laughing Storm and Knight of Flowers are my most-feared, though Brienne is definitely on the short list. Black Cells is pretty frightening too, but these days I see it more OOH than in Bara.

I think my short-list would be something like:

• Melissandre (Core, but DotN isn't too far behind)
• Knight of Flowers
• Smuggler's Cove/Massey's Hook (although it's the combo of them both that really makes them shine)
• Laughing Storm
• Ser Eldon Estermont
• Fat Bob (classic)
• Brienne (do dual-house characters count?)
• Marya Seaworth
• Altar of Fire
• See Who is Stronger

Now, if I had to pick one of those, it would probably be either Knight of the Flowers or Melissandre. Probably Melissandre.

I think there's something quite telling about my short-list: no attachments, only one (high-influence cost) event on it and many high-cost characters... and many of these cards cannot be fit into the same deck neatly.

Excellent thread, Kennon. I think the conversation ought to start with the Restricted List, since obviously they were shaping the environment enough to be restricted. Well maybe not with Laughing Storm, but they sure were worried about it. So that means Laughing Storm and Fury of the Stag.Of those 2 I'd take Laughing Storm. For non Restricted cards, my next tier would be Mel, dual house Brienne, Knight of Flowers, Altar of Fire,Sir Eldon Estermont. If I had to choose, I'd probably go Altar of Fire or Brienne, depending on the build. Overall top, I think I'd take Laughing Storm or Brienne, because they slot into Asshai decks easier than Altar of Fire slots into non-Asshai/holy decks.

Core set Fat Robert - this card can be controled but when its not, this with roberts hammer is a nightmare.

Altar of Fire- as a non unique this card is disgusting in the right deck

Fox Teeth- not many people ive seen play him but my friend who plays bara has him in every deck and i hate this card

I really like DotN Melisandre. Getting an extra power for unopposed and dominance is awesome. Especially if you couple her with Eldon Estermont, CS Stannis, and the Iron Throne that gives you auto dominance. BTW, those are all awesome cards.

WWDrakey said:

You got to my comment first, but more than that, only 2 of those cards are "House Baratheon only" (and TLS is more a case of convention than necessity) and 6 of them are 3 or 4 cost unique characters. Both of these might contribute to some Bara partisans pique. Compare those criteria to what we are seeing out of the Martell thread.

In a bara/gj alliance, Hunting Spear
In a bara holy, Altar of Fire
In a bara power rush, Arena Knight
In a bara melee, Fox's Teeth
Overall best bara card? Seductive Promise.

Cards I'm surprised to not hear much talk about:

Characters:

Robert Baratheon (KotS) - This guy can set up some extremely fun decks, ala Army recursion!

Wicked Seductress- Hey, you probably heard us compare/contrast her with Castellan of the Rock on the podcast. If she's even worthy of starting that discussion, she's pretty dang good.

Locations:

Seat of Power- King's Hall used to be all the rage, and this is the same card....

Attacments:

Hunting Spear - This is the attachment that made Jeppedo (Fox)'s deck really sing when he took it to top 4 at GenCon just a couple short years ago. And there still aren't enough prevalent Weapon attachments to really neuter the Spear.

Lightbringer- Unless you have the attachment removal, this character isn't going anywhere.

Events:

Lord of Light, Protect Us- Ok, it's not technically Baratheon Only, but with the vast majority of Asshai in Baratheon, I could only really see it played from this house. It's a fantastic cancel with the possibility of returning that character to hand. Really, this is the sort of card you'd normally expect out of Martell. Very, very good.

Direct Assault- Why aren't people playing this? Amazing surprise factor.

See Who is Stronger- Well, you all know that I'm a little bit obsessed with this card.

Robert is good, but he has to be the only king in play. Granted its not like everyone is playing kings, but they are becoming more prevalent. Also, do I really want this to be my only king character? I mean the other kings are pretty strong, and need a lot less moving pieces to make work. This Robert requires a whole deck around him pretty much.

Wicked Seductress while good, is nowhere near the best card in Baratheon. She does combo quite well with Inn of the Kneeling Man however.

Seat of Power is pretty much the keystone to Bara's resource acceleration, so pretty much a staple in every Bara deck. However, again this is a case of a good card, but not the best.

Hunting Spear is actually becoming not all that great, especially against VB. Not to mention the rusted swords and the like that are seeing play. Still a great card, but even at the peak of its power not the best card in Bara.

Lightbringer is pretty awesome, but another example of a support card. You still have to have someone useful to put it on, so not the best card in Bara. The character you put it on is usually the real winner.

The events, again while awesome, are just more examples of support cards. The real winner here are the characters for Bara. They are a house that thrives off of challenges. So the characters that help make those challenges easier to win or the ones that let you do more challenges are really the cards that Bara HAS to have. The best of the best as it were.

Staton said:

Of course, if you're going to make that argument, why not do so for the Martell events? He Calls it Thinking is in the running for best Martell card in several people's consideration. Are there some contrasts between it and Lord of Light, Protect Us? Sure, but I think LoLPU is still worth considering.

Interesting thing that I just noticed. If I'm reading the FAQ right, LoLPU can also cancel duplicate saves.

The thing with Martell events is that Martell doesn't really need to do challenges. So their characters aren't really there for challenges. They're just supposed to sit there for the most part to take attachments and to add to control. How many martell characters outside of trv, darkstar, and arianne really do challenges? I mean other characters do attack and defend, but its usually just to get more cards or to control the board in some way. Viper's Bannerman might also get challenges in, but he's really there just to draw cards.

Lol, The thing with events is really that I'm going to explain characters instead....

I mean, in a general sense, I think I understand the leap you just made, but it's still a leap and the way you said it made me laugh.

Anyway, I'm not sure I want to turn this whole thread into a Martell argument. I'll just say that you're not gaining power without challenges unless you're running a Queen of Thorns of Viserys combo deck. Heck, even Taste for Blood relies on challenges and using Burning on the Sands or Game of Cyvasse in everyone's favorite way, actually stops you from claiming power for it. So that leaves you with making challenges.

*shrug* Maybe this is an interesting look at player perceptions. I only started the thread as "Baratheon's Best Card" not "Baratheon's Best Rush Card." For me, the top few cards contending to be the best, aren't rush cards at all and I might argue that the house as a whole has been pushing away from that for awhile. Now of course, this can lead to a discussion of house strengths and issues of bleed or rearranging them, but again, that's a slightly different discussion. I think Baratheon does have some powerful cards. They just aren't exactly the traditional strengths of the house.

The think I'm most surprised is to see Knight of Flowers listed by so many, but not one appearance for Tower of the Hand Robert Baratheon - effectively the same card, and plots like Stoic Resolve and Valar Dohaeris give an edge to Robert.

Haha, yeah I probably should've mentioned that Martell events for the most part let you keep around the few characters that really need to do challenges. You are correct that every deck has to do challenges, there's just not any other way, outside of a few gimmick decks, to win the game. However, Baratheon needs to win challenges, much more so than Martell. So for Baratheon, their characters are far more important than Martell characters are to Martell.

Well, I for one think the Martell vs. Baratheon comparison is actually quite inevitable. Mainly because Martell is in my opinion both the toughest match-up for Baratheon and currently one of the most favored houses. Or so I've read somewhere.

This is actually the reason why I purposefully left Wicked Seductress out of my list, since it's pretty useless against Martell, some shadowy kitchen-knife thingy always kills it, or there's no useful targets to begin with. Then there's Altar of Light, witch is all fine on paper, but do you REALLY expect to get this off against a Martell player? Actually, if we take away all of the cards that are vulnerable to Martell challenge control and VB, then we're removing half of the cards already... We're left with: See Who Is Stronger, Melissandre, Laughing Storm, Brienne and Massey's Hook. Not a set of cards that combo's well together to form a deck that can face off against Martell Summer confidently.

I understand the argument of Baratheon being developed in a different direction from Rush, and I would agree that this has been happening for a while. The problem therein lies with there being 1) two directions instead of focusing on one, 2) both of the new directions requiring draw in some fashion to function coherently, since they don't win as fast as rush (which can make do with less draw) and 3) the cards just not coming together solidly enough for a non-Rush deck, which again may be caused by the lack of draw to smooth them out. If Baratheon is to be a control house, they'd need to have the draw/card advantage of a control house (since control takes longer to win, card advantage becomes important). As it is, they're the house with the least draw/card advantage in the whole game. This doesn't mean they can't win games with control, it just means they won't usually win them consistently enough to win a tournament. Some kind of aggro/meat decks I can see working out of Baratheon, probably with the Knight Agenda and/or Pyro Cache's (but taking the Cache means leaving out TLS)... But then, the knight agenda isn't nearly as solid a draw as summer, especially after a Valar or against a Lannister. And if you go with the Cache's you again have zero defence against intrigue.

Oh, Tower of the Hand Robert, LoL and Direct Assault were good catches. Direct Assault is probably one of the best cards they have actually... nothing really beats stealing a GTM on turn 1...

Also, to be fair, I don't think the best bara card is a rush card either, I think its core set mel. One of the best control cards in the game. Completely changes your opponents conditions for winning the game.

I'm really amazed no one has mentioned Salladhor Saan from the KotStorm box. He's a great asset in my deck allowing me to nuke my opponent's locations. It's really funny to see the look on a Holy/Asshai player when their Altar of Fire get fragged early in the game.

Hard to take seriously any arguments for a control card as the Houses's best - you'll always be a step behind trying to build control out of Baratheon without draw and synergy, so i'm not impressed with any buff attachments, cancel; events of the like. I ahve to look to things that play to its aggressive strengths and that leads to characters who pack an imapct. Staton makes a good argument for the versatile Core Set Mel, and Laughing Storm has to be in the discussion. Knight of Flowers is well costed, and even when he isn't dominant (because fo Shadows) he is still cheap renown who cna be stood multiple times given a typicla deck.

But for my money, given a cost of three, the King and Lord trait, the icons INT/POW STR of 4 with renown and a darw ability - king Renly is the the must ahve card in the arsenal and the character who drives Baratheon's strongest builds. he is the House's best character and gets my vote for their best card.

Fury of the Stag is also very high on the list - but i suspect we aren't including Plots in this discussion.

Altar of Fire, buy the way, isn't as amazing as it has been rated. teh ability is offset against the control Hosues, where it is really needed sicne it is a challenge based effect. would be more impressive as a minor triggered effect, say - kneel a charatcer or pay 1 INF. Agsint the aggro Houses, its helpful in the early game, but by Turn three ro so, its often overkill. Its good - don't get me wrong, but its not nearly the House's best card.