New player seeking advice on unique/non unique ratio's

By Desertspiral, in 4. AGoT Deck Construction

Hi there,

I've recently just started playing this game and think it's really great. The other night i was reading over the rules again and realised that once uniques hit the dead pile they are essentially locked out.

My house of choice is Barratheon and outside of milling myself with Asshai initiates i don't see a reliable way to maintain board position with a lot of uniques (which most of my deck currently is), so my question is do people generally run more non uniques and just 1-2 copies of key uniques or do they bite the bullet and just run the uniques with saving mechanics?

Hope that all made sense, cheers and thanks for any replies

DS

It really depends on what you want the deck to do…

If the deck is built around using a few key characters, then you would want to make sure that you maximized your probability of drawing them, and also including some save mechanics. But, as you will see when browsing through tourney-winning lists, there is also merit to including one copy of certain unique characters. For instance, say that there is a character who has some good ability, is a great value (i.e., amount of gold Vs. board impact), etc.; it is often worth including it as a 1x. The benefit to this is that you won't be too broken hearted if or when it hits your dead pile. If a card does not exactly fit the "main" mechanic of your deck, but is in-house, and just too good in-and-of-itself to pass up, it is often worthy of inclusion as a 1x or 2x.

Also keep in mind that as a 2x, in a 60 card deck, it is often the case that you will only see one of them in a given game. So, if you see both, just attach one as a duplicate. But, if the first one dies, it isn't necessarily too damaging to your game overall; you just risk drawing a dead card later on.

The answer is twofold:

1. It's complicated.
2. It depends.

Also keep in mind that if you tend to run a Baratheon deck, there is a lot more potential for resurrects than with most othe houses. I run an Asshai deck from time to time, and there is a lot of focus on getting Melisandre out there and keeping her. In some games I've brought her back 3-4 times over the span of a few rounds.

In short, if the deck you're running has a very specific focus on several choice characters, I recommend having at the very least 2 copies of each, 3 if possible, so that you can maximize your chances of drawing and protecting them.