Although I''ve done a little bit of competetive play in the past few months, my preference has always been for fairly Nedly decks. I might put all 3 Baratheon brothers in a deck together, but no Wildlings of Dorne, or Maester Bob nonsense.

I''ve already found that in order to have a decent game in a tournament, a deck often needs to sacrifice some of the purest aspects of theme, but I''m concerned about what the new cycle will do to the decks we see.

From what I can piece together, by the end of the next cycle, we''ll have OOH reducers for all 6 houses, plus 6 major traits - I think we''ve seen Lord and Lady, can''t remember what else.

Do people think this will be the end of even broadly thematic decks in competitive play► will trait synergy and stupidly powerful combos be the way forward► a lot of the Targ cards which have been spoiled already look quite a bit like Power Creep - will they be ubiquitous in non-Targ decks too►

anyone else mistakenly think this said ''all nerds must die'' ►

You know, for a second there…I kinda did.

Mighty Jim said:

I think many have been arguing for broader trait support for a while. What we''ve been seeing is house-theme support, which many have also clamored for. There is still a lot of design space to explore, so I don''t think Neds will be ignored. While I see your argument that these locations might break down the walls of thematic in-house builds, even in the books there are inter-house politics. I think they will actually be seen only sporadically in alliance-style decks with some characters splashed, but really most effectively to get the double bonus of OOH martell lords for example. Since they''re unique (I believe) and you have to draw into them, I don''t think many competitive decks will run them ultimately.

I also don''t think people will splash Griff and Illyrio will be splashed out of house because their abilities specifically benefit Targ cards or Targ themes.

There are a number of different kinds of "Ned." You have to have all three brothers in a Bara deck, but a different kind of Ned would never think about putting all three brothers in because they certainly did not work well together and in some cases actively plotted against each other or tried to manipulate one and other.

Understand I''m not saying you are wrong in how you build your Nedly decks, I''m just pointing out that there are other ways of building decks by self-identifed Neds. Someone could create a deck with Griff, Young Grif, Quentyn, Daenerys and Tyrion and lay claim to being Nedly. Here we have three different Houses represented in the same deck.

I would say that the tools for expanding thematic decks is growing not shrinking. Whether that means there are more unthematic power decks available now is really no different than the current environment in my mind.