“How many knights?”
“Few enough,” the maester said with a touch of impatience. “To be a knight, you must stand your vigil in a sept, and be anointed with the seven oils to consecrate your vows. In the north, only a few of the great houses worship the Seven. The rest honor the old gods, and name no knights… but those lords and their sons and sworn swords are no less fierce or loyal or honorable. A man's worth is not marked by a ser before his name. As I have told you a hundred times before.”
“Still,” said Bran, “how many knights?”

–George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

Knights snag the imagination. Riding tall, astride snorting steeds, with armor polished and glinting in the sunlight, they can symbolize the great virtues of a bygone era. Strength, valor, honor, and loyalty to their vows and their lords. George R.R. Martin presents us with glimpses of such shining knights in his fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire , but he presents us even more detailed looks at knights ridden with all the failings of humanity. False knights, pompous blowhards, cravens, spineless servants with no sense of decency, and monsters who abuse their power, taking what they will from the weak and the innocent.

The power of arms

A Game of Thrones: The Card Game provides us the opportunity to command many of these Knights , and as the A Tale of Champions cycle draws our focus to the great tournaments of Westeros, it’s only natural that we see more of these armor-clad figures appear. Trial by Combat , appropriately, introduces five new Knights . The Starks, Lannisters, and Baratheons each recruit one, while House Targaryen gains the service of two new Knight characters, the tireless Exiled Knight ( Trial by Combat , 90) and the lethal new Dragon Knight ( Trial by Combat , 89).

Just as lords and ladies need knights to lend strength to their armies, so do knights need lords and ladies to serve, and House Targaryen welcomes those Exiled Knights who swear their swords to the service of the mother of dragons. In A Song of Ice and Fire , two notable knights both sought out the Queen of Dragons to offer their swords after they had been exiled. First Ser Jorah Mormont and then Ser Barristan Selmy, the former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, swore their vows to Daenerys Targaryen.

Thematically, the Exiled Knight’s attachment to the Queen gives him purpose and strength. Mechanically, the Exiled Knight plays into one of House Targaryen’s classic strengths, the play and control of attachments. The Targaryens count some of the best in-house attachments, including Aegon’s Blade ( Core Set , 102), Shade of the Evening ( Queen of Dragons , 4), and the Bloodrider’s Arakh ( Queen of Dragons , 3). Given any attachment, the Exiled Knight need not kneel to defend, and Shade of the Evening both grants him an Intrigue icon and allows you to take a card into your hand every time he wins a challenge.

Meanwhile, the Dragon Knight provides House Targaryen with another highly-efficient addition to their constantly evolving burn decks. Indeed, because the Dragon Knight has Ambush, it offers you a tactical element of surprise and control. You can bring it into play during a challenge you initiate with an Exiled Knight wielding a Bloodrider’s Arakh, and kill any defender with a Strength of one or less. If you make it Summer with the Crown of Meereen ( Queen of Dragons , 6), or if you have any additional burn in your hand, the Dragon Knight becomes even more lethal.

Separately, each of these Knights offers House Targaryen new strength, but in combination they reveal the true strength of arms a Knight can bring to the battlefield.

Exiled, doomed, bought, and false

Each of the Knight characters in Trial by Combat captures the spirit of the house to which it belongs, and the assembly provides a mix of the true knights, petty mercenaries, and corrupt swordsmen depicted in George R.R. Martin’s fiction. When this Chapter Pack arrives, its Knights will allow you to reenact both the gruesome slaughters and the heroic victories of A Song of Ice and Fire .