How about:

House Arryn:

You may play House Arryn Cards at no penalty. You may play Stark and Baratheon Cards at -1 Penalty. +2 Gold.

House Tyrell:

You may play House Tyrell Cards at no penalty. You may play Lannister and Baratheon Cards at -1 Penalty. +2 Gold.

I also thought an alternative could be "Start with the Eyrie/Highgarden in play" and then they could make a more applicable version of those cards.

I'd always imagined a Tyrell Agenda that read something like:

"Support of Highgarden"
House Baratheon or House Lannister only
Reduce the gold penalty to pay cards with the 'House Tyrell' trait by 2
You may not include cards that are 'House Baratheon Only' or 'House Lannister Only' in your deck or plot deck unless they have the 'House Tyrell' trait.

Let's you splash Tyrell's with any house affiliation (i.e. Enemy Informer in Bara, etc) but isn't an auto-include as it restricts you from including non-Tyrell good stuff that you'd otherwise run.

Not too hot on the Tyrells myself, but House Arryn could be well developed enough through the books for their own House expansion.

House Arryn would be based around their haughty ideals of Honour - devaluing a plot card's claim, for instance, to represent their isolation from events around them, or a Marillion character kneeling to remove Traits/Icons from an opposing character - representing his mockery of them in song. Direct execution of characters could be done via a Moon Door location, and characters like Mya Stone with a Joust keyword (or similar mechanic) can represent the narrow path up to Sky. A Sky Cells location could kneel influence to remove power from characters with Renown or Infamy, too. I see it as a combination of Lanni Control and Bara Power, though working in the longer game rather than a rush. They'd have a decent helping of Knights, too (like the Royces), and locations to represent the fertile vale, and hugely difficult to traverse mountains (with the old claim devaluation).

Rather than the Martell strength of deliberately losing challenges, the Arryn strategy would be to devalue what is thrown against them (be it through Claim, Strength, Number of Characters involved, etc) in order to survive, rather than their direct power to attack everyone else.

I'd had an interesting thought for an Olenna Redwyne/QoT card - 3Gold, Str2, Intrigue as her only icon with the effect "When The Queen of Thorns participates in an intrigue challenge, you may choose to claim as if it were a Military or a Power challenge. If you choose to do so, you must declare your intent at the outset of the challenge."

I'm pretty new to the game, so no idea how/if that's a balanced card, but it seemed cool enough to me.

Murmur said:

I would change the card to 3 strength and the gametext to "Response: after defenders have been declared,kneel 2 influence to change the effect of winning the challenge to that of another challenge type.". It´s the old card gametext of teh ccg card Double bluff which i liked very much.

In general i would prefer Tyrell and Arryn cards just the way they were introduced in the ccg expansions.

i always imagined house Arryns game mechanics to key off limited people in challenges, in reference to the geography of the Mountains of the Moon, a lot of location cards and effects that can limit attacking or defending charcters based on how many locations of a certain trait are on the board.

jack merridew said:

Joust Mountains? Hehe. I like that idea.

Alright so imagine there a House Arryn expansion set, in it there are location cards for the castles Snow, Stone, and Sky. Each of them a 2 gold unique,

Kneel Stone to select an opponents character. that character cannot participate in a Military challenge this phase

Kneel Sky to select an opponents character. That character cannot participate in a Intrigue challenege this phase.

Kneel Snow to select an opponents character. that character cannot participate in a Power challenege this phase.

I just find that to be a very Nedly theme for House Arryn to be able to limit who is able to attack you, i would also LOVE to see a card for the Moon Door, something like kneel Moon Door to select an opponents attacking charcter, that player may choose to keep the character in the challenege or remove him, if that player loses the challenge attached character is killed (cannot be saved)

Attachment: Myrish Observatory Lens. Marshalling: Kneel 2 (3, 4?) influence to look at your opponent's hand and discard a card from it (Limit 1 per phase) - "Inside was a fine new lens for the observatory, from Myr by the look of things. The lenscrafters of Myr are without equal."

Needs moar characters, though. Lysa, Robert, Alayne Stone, Marillion, a couple of Royces, Lysa's other suitors (who's names I can't remember), Mya Stone, Ser Vardis, etc.

Starblayde said:

Confession?

jack merridew said:

*searches cardgamedb*

Aah.

Yeah, similar. In fact exactly the same. Ahem. But you see where I'm going with a denial type of strategy, right?

Old Ben said:

From what I've seen (though never got to play) old school HoTh House Tyrell was pretty cool.

I'd be delighted with FFG producing some kind of 'Wardens of the South' deluxe box that brought back dual-house Tyrells again. Or just a box with a load of Bara, Lanni and Neutral Tyrells, plus an agenda and a couple of plots that could let you rock out some kind of feasible 'All Tyrell' build.

Not only would that bring into the game a subset of characters that we haven't seen much in the LCG, it'd also be a cute way of introducing a quasi Seventh House (in the way that DotN gave us Wildlings and Night's Watch.... with varying levels of success/competitiveness) without completely screwing up the game's balance.

Long story short; I want to see cards with smirk inducing titles such as 'To be a Flower', 'Fury of the Rose' and 'Herald of the Petals'. If FFG prints those, I'll pay them money.

Old Ben said:

One of my all time favorite Lannister cards. Boy I would sure like to see that type of effect back.

LoneWanderer said:

Or they could introduce the Tyrells as a Baratheon theme now, and release a cycle with Lannister-themed Tyrells at a later point, like in two years or so, thus reflecting their change of allegiance.

Well, to be fair, the Tyrells have always been devoutly loyal to the winning side... it just happens that the winning side has changed a couple of times.

House Tyrell: The Kingmakers of ASoIaF

Murmur said:

Not a bad idea for their theme actually. Characters that get better/cheaper/come into play when you Gain Power / Have more power than everyone else / Have more total strength, power icons, power on characters, etc than everyone else / Win Dominance or Challenges (by four or more?) / Controlled the only King. Queen, Iron Throne, Hand of the King title attachment, etc, ; i.e. do cool winning stuff. But which shrink in size, lose abilities, discard themselves, scurry back to your hand, or shed their power tokens when you do the opposite; i.e. do losing stuff / the opposite of the things listed above.

yea thats actually not bad themes for the 2 houses.

Arryn limiting possible characters in challenges, Using Locations to make opponents overextend to attack you.

Tyrell getting more powerful with more power, effects keying off claiming power and negative effects keying off losing power.