I was looking at FFG's announcement about the new Board Game for Thrones here:

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I was wondering if anyone is familiar with the art on the Tyrell screen. If its from an expansion (like all the other screens) that would make those "House of Thorns" people's day (you know, like a hidden indication that it may be coming eventually). On the other hand, if its a card already (CCG or LCG) that I don't recognize please tell me because the art is badass and should get sleeved up in a deck on the grounds of good looks alone. I'll pay 5 gold for an army if its going to look good while it pummels my opponent.

Just thought I would share.

Actually, I have to say that I had the very same thought, when I first saw that screen (as all the others have the art from the respective boxes). A good conspiracy theorist would also note that there is quite a bit of 'House Tyrell' cards in the current set of CPs, and if they make them a whole new House, they might give them an Agenda that allows them to use all of those OOH without penalties.

Oh, if only...

Dunno. I would interpret the recent influx of new Tyrell cards as a sign that they do NOT plan to make them a new House in its own right, but plan to rather develop them as a Bara/Lanni sub-theme. The almost total absence of ouse Arryn from the game, however...I bet if there is a Seventh House to come, it'll be Arryn.

I don't expect them to add House Tyrell as a 7th House, but have a House Tyrell themed expansion that will have lots of Lanni, Bara, and Lanni/Bara cards with the House Tyrell trait.

Mathias Fricot said:

The art didn't look familiar to me, but I did a quick search at the Dabbler for CCG Tyrell cards (not that they couldn't repurpose art, I couldn't tell if there were actual "roses" in the art behind the sigil) and didn't see anything similar. It does look like a Tomas Jedruszek piece though... which probably means new(er). I don't think he did any work on the xCG before Iron Throne Edition.

And no, I don't see them adding another house. I would agree with WWDrakey about the possibility of an agenda (Treaty with Highgarden?). At one point I'd suggested they (and House Arryn) get their own expansion boxes... they could recycle cards from their respective CCG expansions.

Ya i think there are a lot of ways to incorporate them flavourfully without having to introduce another House Card.

I would rather see a limited new "house" for a cycle theme rather than neutrals. We keep going through a rinse-repeat-groan-restrict wash of

1. introduce new neutral faction with kooky mechanic.

2. You end up seeing a variant on each house until...

3. They figure out which house they can exploit the new "tribe" with the best and we see a ton of those decks.

4. Either a card gets restricted, or people tech heavily against it, or people realize the new shiny thing is not as good....

I think each new neutral "tribe" gets its own "house" symbol on the corner (they can keep the grey color, or maybe do a black border). And an alliance agenda that poses no penalty if used with the neutral house card, but puts a price on using it with a house card, (Or a house card like the neutral one where its more of an agenda/house card combo...).

Why not have a limited cycle arryn set with an alliance agenda. But price some of the cards expecting them to be played OOH (So you get a cost reduction as a benefit to losing access to the variety of one of the 6 houses).

My proposal isn't to reduce the number of cards each existing house gets, but to simply change 80% of the neutral cards we get to have their own faction and thus each other cycle (as we tend to do so) introduces a focused faction where some of its cards are dual housed and post cycle might garner an occasional card.

Would wildlings have been as broken (or Val for example) if they were their own house and didn't have easy access to Targ Burn, Masey's Hook, etc?

I kinda doubt that House Tyrell or House Arryn could hold a stand-alone faction because… well, what would they actually add to the game, mechanically?

In the CCG, Tyrell had a little control and counter effects and a few characters that didn't count str during dominance, but mostly they were just Lani/Bara multi house cards. I think that was more important in the CCG because players needed more chances that a pack could work in any given house deck they were building (since the cards you got were random) but now?

Arryn's save by attaching characters to locations and mass-conversion to your house via treaties was more interesting and would be less 'gray' added to the game… but I feel like their decks were oddly too aggressive for the Arryn's of the books.

But heck, we're missing several sub factions that may be easier to integrate into the game. I'm looking at you House Umber or Karstark