When the Core Set was introduced last year, it brought back into the game the Night's Watch. Not many characters, but three major characters and Ghost, which provides some great support cards in the LCG format. The latest batch of Chapter Packs also adds some more cards to the Night's Watch, and although it isn't possible to run a Night's Watch deck, these cards are proving to be important additions to the LCG format. I'm going to take a look at the Neutral Night's Watch cards, and just a cursory look at the in-house cards.

First we have Jon Snow and his direwolf, Ghost . Both of these cards should be considered as strong contenders in any deck that is being built. They have great inherent synergy with each other, providing event immunity to each other. Ghost would be solid enough with just stealth and 3 STR, but the ability to save Jon or any other Night's Watch character makes him money -- if you are running even only 1 Night's Watch character (other than Aemon), you should also run Ghost. Jon's ability to gain power when you win a challenge with him or Ghost is almost better than renown, as you could allow Jon to claim 2 power when both him and Ghost are involved in the challenge. And he even works if you win a challenge in which your opponent's ghost participates!

Maester Aemon is great claim soak in the current environment, unless you are going against Targ who likes to burn him to death (apparently, this new breed of Night's Watch isn't as adverse to getting attachments). When Valar hits the board you can also sacrifice your Aemon to save a different Night's Watch character, preferably Jon Snow or Benjen Stark. When there are cards that start to add icons to characters, Aemon can also find other uses, but he seems to work best as a 2 gold reusable save. The Targaryen version of Aemon in Change of Seasons is slightly better, but only for Targ. Paying four gold for the Intrigue Icon and the Learned crest doesn't pay. Stick with the Core Set version unless you are running Targ, and even then make sure the Seasons don't work against you.

Benjen Stark is such a powerful card in the current environment with his dead pile recusrion ability. The idea is to kill off Benjen after your board has been cleared via a reset, so make sure you have a way to save him if your opponent (or yourself) plays Valar. Bringing back all your dead characters is incredibly helpful in the LCG environment. Sure, it helps out your opponent, but you can often make the most of that situation. After Jon Snow, Benjen is the second most useful character from the Night's Watch. Hard to argue with his 3 STR and Stealth with MIL and POW icons.

Samwell Tarly is the Maester Aemon of card draw. He's cheap, and in this Raven-rich environment he should be drawing you cards every other turn at a minimum. If you are fortunante, you can use him every turn. Some players forget that the Carrion Birds are also Ravens, so don't forget to trigger off of them as well. His only weakness is the lack of icons, but that used to be the norm for Night's Watch characters.

Last we have Janos Slynt and The Wall. Janos is an alright card, but very situational and not much better than Core Set Janos (who is almost better in Winter if you are using the Agenda). The Wall is expensive, but in a dedicated Bara Winter deck this card has to ability to make Baratheon very difficult to get attacks against. Also, being able to use Maester Aemon or Ghost to save Robert or Melisandre' is pretty nice. The Wall is a much better card than Janos, but in the right decks both can be useful.

JerusalemJones said:

I might be having an anurisim, but is there a janos in the Core Set?

Well, then I will feel rather stupid, but for some reason I keep thinking its the same one they reprinted in the ITELP. Of course, I might be getting the decks I've played against lately mixed up,

Yeah, I'm not seeing him on Tzu site, so I guess if I ever write up another one of these I'll have to do more homework. Still, Janos isn't that great a card, even in Lannister, unless you aren't counting on using his ability. But I miss the discussions on cards and tactics, so who knows. This whole thread started out with my musings on the Valar/Benjen connection, and from them became more of a "Using the Night's Watch" to help newer players understand ways to use the cards. Screwing up Janos hurts that, though. At least it wasn't a major focus of my post.

I just thought i was blanking out.

I agree 95% with your analysis, i use every card you have listed. I like the Wall, I tried to make it into a multiplayer deck, but i think i need to go 1v1 as i can't play enugh characters per turn.

I have janos in my quicker, non-kneeling lannister deck (he replaces renemy infomer and gives me an extra str). But yeah his influence cost adder only hurts less then 10 cards.

Eh, it was hardly that great of a faux pas. I just finished reading the article and was about to tell you how good it was. :-) I really like the Night's Watch characteres and plan on trying to build a deck around them.

Stark seems like as good and Nedly a house to base them in as any. But Stark seems to run best in Winter, and that might make it harder to come up with gold for all the neutral NW guys. Any suggestions?

I'll post some more ideas as I work them out. And thanks again for the write-up JJ, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I know there's a bunch of new players lurking around here (as evidenced by all the "newb" questions, myself included!); I think its quite unfortunate that we lost a lot of the old online community between the board switch and the LCG switch, and I think we just need some of the more experienced guys to start a few conversations to really get us all rolling and building that sense of community back up again. :-)

Thank you! For taking the time to write up all your thoughts, I mean. As RJM said, that's very helpful for us "newbs." (Speaking of which, it's great to be part of a game community where that term isn't a pejorative...)

One way to make it easier is to run The Gift and The Neck locations in Epic Battles. Both of them are 0 cost, and reduce the cost of Night's Watch and Creature characters by 1, respectively. It may slow you down at times, as both are unique and in Winter the gold curve takes a hit, but they are a good addition. Plus, since they are 0 cost and not limited, they can be played during Setup, giving you a better chance to draw more cards after Setup. Card advantage is a big plus in this game, so if you are playing Winter you definitely want to run A Time for Ravens plot to hurt any opponent running the Kings of Summer agenda.

Great post! I have to chime in with RJM and Arma on there being many of us 'newbs' hanging around.

As an addition to the night's watch musings, I was thinking they can be a good way of bolstering the greyjoy and martell decks with quite limited cardpools. This also helps with the problem in resource providing locations as you can put in The Gift(s). And if you also use carrion birds and ghost, then also The Neck.