This week, I Skyped in a couple guest hosts, the always entertaining Nick Agranoff (The Nickler) and rounded out the viewpoints with a newer player out of Canada named Taylor. We had some pretty great discussions all around, but the recording was just too huge, so I've had to cut some stuff. So, Nick and Taylor if you're listening and your favorite moment is gone, I apologize. We're still a little longer than normal, but I was loathe to cut any of the chapter pack discussion because I feel that we had a lot of good stuff. Give it a listen here.

Out of curiosity how did you determine it was too long? Seems to me people enjoy the cast and if they get to a part in convo that bores them they can FF. I bet there are a lot of people that want the directors cut now.

Man, why do people gotta hate on the Ward? First thing I thought when I saw it is I'm gonna make a Bara player cry by swiping all of his Renown characters. Threat from the North plus 3 Wards! Imagine the power gain. IT WILL BE GLORIOUS.

Dennis, it's a file size issue. There's a limitation to how large of a file that I can upload for a single cast, so I had to make sure that I could squeeze in under that limit. That said, most of what I cut was some extended love for GenCon as Nick and I tried to convince Taylor and other players to make it there if they can only go to one large, organized event, as well as some props and slops. There were a handful of jokes and comments that were cut as well, but by and large, I don't think most people will miss what wound up on the floor.

Had to stop listening due to a fear of spoilers. Two new charactors in book 5--click off it went.

Ah well, sorry to hear that. We don't go out of our way to discuss what those characters did in the books, but we do sometimes comment on how Nedly a card is or is not not. Sadly, you may not want to listen to many of our episodes going forward then. Since these cards are being released, we're only going to discuss them more and more.

I only recall the one spoiler at the beginning on like the 2nd card. And it wasn't much of a spoiler since the last few episodes of the show have already given that much away anyways. Good episode though (the blog and the show!). It was interesting to hear the reasons why you guys put certain cards in your top and bottom 5.

I don't think the GJ maester (what's his name? - he's so forgettable even in the books) deserves bottom 5, if only because he can be used to trigger Wendamyr's "then" ability since GJ really doesn't love influence that much. It won't be helpful on a Valar round, but the vast majority of Wendamyr saves will benefit from him.

Maester Kerwin! He also cancels any effect that targets one ironborn, not just triggered. I would say he's almost an auto-include. The only reason I wouldn't include him would be if I already have plenty of 1str characters and I'm worried about Threat.

Kerwin isn't terrible, but out of the cards in this pack, do you have any thoughts on what you'd vote to take his place in the bottom 5?

Kennon said:

The good news is I'm waiting for the fifth book to come out in paperback--and I'll be caught up!

Kennon said:

I haven't had a chance to catch up to this episode yet, and for some reason I insist on listening to them in order, but my bottom 5 from the pack:

Futile Gestures

Both Martell Cards

Turncloak

Last spot is either the bounce river plot or Ward.

Kerwin being able to counteract Search & Detain, Varys, any of the Stark Murder effects, etc etc makes him pretty valuable in my book.

As for ward, I could see using reek to steal a character, then using ward to steal reek.

Could be pretty cool.

Sounds pretty nedly if you ask me.

Kennon said:

Probably Volantis. A unique location that helps give you OOH GJ mercenaries doesn't seem that great. Futile Gestures is a close runner up.

AGoT DC Meta said:

Since it reduces all mercenaries by 1 as a passive and is an influence, I could see a Targ summer deck playing Volantis, but that's it.

No love for Volantis? It reduces the cost of any Greyjoy cards you splash by 1 gold each turn. That seems not too terrible, particularly if you have a use for the influence.

Was a fun podcast.

About the martell attachment….. its in the bottom five for sure, but i would play it just for the synergy that could have with the martel melee house attachment and taste for blood….if you could have all 3 att x3 and you defend an intrigue with a ….mmm a house messenger for example, and you loose…it's 9 powers for you!!!!! (1 for each att so if you manage just 5 or 4 att it's still 5 or 4 powers!!!)

I forgot who was the other guy……You should go to gencon, it's going to be great!! Btw, we have to order from this site too….and we are in Chile so imagine the difficulty of having complete sets (which we have!!!!…even the season ones at least x1)…..we have to share between 4 though.

Hope we will see you all in gencon for some drinks.

I heard that josh top4ed in days last weekend….is he going to report in the next podcast? (¿tomorrow?)

Kennon said:

That sucks…I just typed out a reply and it booted me out so I have to retype it.

In short, it's playable 3 ways:

1) Compensating for the OOH penalty of GJ mercenary characters. There are 2. Only one of which is arguably "playable".

2) Splashing as you said, GJ or mercenary characters. You'd want to do this for combo effect or some sort of synergy, like playing Asha in a Bara noble rush deck - but then you have to pay 4 gold for her, only the neutral reducers would work for her. As for mercenaries, there aren't that many mercenaries I would want to play, especially with Daario floating around. AND, then you would still have to draw into Volantis and the OOH character at the same time. You could run x3, but the opportunity cost for that is too high, especially when most houses have a lot of already efficient characters that you wouldn't need to go OOH for others.

3) Running a treaty agenda. This would be interesting since you are already building a deck with the detriment in mind, so randomly drawing into your copy of Volantis would only help speed up your engine.

So I expect a Shagga player would look at this and smile, but it won't really see any competitive play. Unless Greg decides to do something with it. (New 2C1C segment? "What would Greg do with this card?" lol)

AGoT DC Meta said:

As for hoyalawya's suggestion of runnning it out of Targ, they do probably have the most playable mercenaries, but Brown Ben is free, and The Titan's Bastard and Dragon Thief are jumpers. So you're looking at a 1 cost, 1 infl location to reduce maybe Exiled Knight, Fariweather Followers, and Daario himself. I'd be better off running Khal Drogo's Tent.

AGoT DC Meta said:

I agree about Khal Drogo's tent being better. What about cutting a single Fiefdom for Volantis? The Fiefdom you likely want for the influence anyway. This is same cost at 1 gold for 1 influence. Targ Summer is playing Fairweather Followers anyway. Switching 1 limited for a non-limited that if you get before any of your 3 summer mercenaries reduces their cost by 1 without kneeling and losing the influence sounds like a decent trade-off. Again, this is the only deck I see running a copy of Volantis.

HoyaLawya said:

The only benefit over fiefdoms is that it's not limited. If I knew that I'd be drawing enough mercs to be able to use it every turn, then maybe. Regardless, that limited use is why it's bottom 5 for me.

I might play several of the new Kingdoms over the Fiefdoms depending on the traits if I need the influence.

Bomb said:

How many of them do we know at this point? What are the traits on them? It may not get worse than GJ mercenaries.

AGoT DC Meta said:

Yeah, I think they only get better- the other 2 I remember seeing are Stark Lady (Brienne!) and Martell Lord (TRV ooh, yikes)