I know that traits and crests do not have actual meaning on their own (except shadow). They only intereact with other cards. But I hope they have something in common and we can quickly get the idea of this trait/crest.

This is what I know (correct me if I am wrong). I want to get some answers like this:

1. army: Most army characters have high str and have military icon.

(Do they have other common properties? what kind of intereactions do they have with other cards?)

2. maester and chain: they can do some combos if using maester's path.

(If I don't use path, does the trait maester play any role?)

Traits and Crests are more thematic than functional. Characters with the Noble crest are usually highly placed in the nobility (in Westeros or elsewhere). Characters with the Holy crest are usually priests or religious people. Characters with the Learned crest usually have a lot of knowledge. And characters with the War crest usually live and die by the sword.

The functional side appears when cards interact with specific traits, like Dissension or Knights of the Realm.

The crests' interactions with cards are primarily

Holy: Power of Faith, a few specific events/locations in Bara, and Confession.

War: Die by the Sword, Price of War, Frozen outpost, Pike Phalanx and Power of Arms

Noble: Power of Blood, Ghaston Grey

Learned: Outwit, Schemes of the Scholar, some citadel events.

The traits are too numerous to list, but some of the more common to be played out of any house are;

Knights: Knights of the Realm Agenda, Muster, You Swore an Oath, Tourney for the Hand

Maesters: Chains, Citadel Events, The Maester's Path, At the Gates, Forging the Chain

Others common and supported traits include Armies, Dragon, Ironborn, Raiders, Night's Watch, Wildlings, Clannsmen, Tully, Bolton, Brotherhood, King, Queen, Direwolf, warship, king's landing, kingdom.

Some traits with negative interactions; Knight, Ally, Refugee, Mercenary, Traitor, Dragon, Kingdom.

anohter generally common feature of armies is the NO ATTACHMENTS keyword.

andrewaa said:

Sorry if this comes out wrong, but do you have a specific question you are trying to ask?

As others have indicated, traits and crests are included in this game to allow for nuanced card effects. They create a level of granularity that allows for more specific effects that would not be viable without them. If the War crest did not exist, Power of Arms would not be a viable card concept. The same is true of Power of Blood and the Noble crest. The ultimate effect of traits and crests is that they make many more card concepts viable. That would be the inherent idea of including them from a designer's standpoint.

My specific question is "the generally common feature of some traits", just like the answer given by dcdennis.

As pointed out in op, I know that traits and crests are created for themes and intereactions. However, I hope that most cards with the same traits/crests should have some card function in common, and if I get the common idea for a trait/crest, it's easy for me to build a deck .

For example, since 2/3 of army cards have no attachments keyword, if I build an army deck, I would know that one good point is that they won't be affected by those dot attachments. Or if I want to add a no attachments card into my deck, I would think of an army card.

Another example is maester. Only a few maester cards have militrary icon. This is a common feature. So if I want to build a maester deck, I have to figure out a way to deal with this problem.

I can do this myself by looking at all cards in the deck list. But since I am new to the game, I don't have enough experences to figure out all common features. So I want to ask this question on the forum to let you talk about your understanding about some traits/crests. Any traits/crests is ok for me.

ps: The common feature also includes common intereactions with other cards. e.g. Power of arms can support war cards. Does any other cards can support war cards?

Sorry for the abmuguity in op.

andrewaa said:

Hmmm…

Noble characters are usually Lords and Ladies, but Lords and Ladies are not necessarily Nobles.

War Crest characters I think all have Military icons and most are no attachments or no attachments except… as Dennis indicated.

Most Holy characters are Intrigue and Power icons only. It's fairly rare for them to have a military icon.

Most learned characters are Intrigue and Power icons only as well.

The rest of the traits you kind of have to figure out on your own. The largest ones are:

• House Tully - Stark - There are a lot of Stark cards that interact with this trait and they focus on defense.
• Clansman - Lannister - These are mostly military and focus on having a smaller hand than your opponent.
• Asshai - Baratheon - These are mostly Holy and Intrigue/Power characters
• Dothraki - Targaryen - These mostly focus on winning Military challenges.
• Ironborn - Greyjoy - The more powerful effects out of Greyjoy tend to require the Ironborn trait.
• House Dayne - Martell - These are usually knights as well and focus on synergy with each other
• Maester - Neutral - A trait that mainly interacts with chains and The Maester's Path agenda
• Wildlings - Neutral - A trait that interacts with the Wildling agendas giving Wildlings +1 Str, Stealth, and reduced cost
• Night's Watch - Neutral - A trait that interacts with the Night's Watch agendas and gives characters challenge icons
• Knights - Neutral - Most have military icons. There a number of plots that directly interact with them. There is also an agenda that allows you to draw extra cards if you have the majority of knights in play.

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more.