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A Hidden Agenda

Announcing the Final Chapter Pack in the Kingsroad Cycle

Marywn smiled a ghastly smile, the juice of the sourleaf running red between his teeth. “Who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around? Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords?” He spat. “The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.”

    –George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of A Hidden Agenda, the sixth and final Chapter Pack in the Kingsroad cycle for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game!

Schemes, secrets, and mysteries pervade the sixty new cards of A Hidden Agenda (three copies each of twenty individual cards). Drawing the Kingsroad cycle to its climactic conclusion, A Hidden Agenda returns players to a Westeros forever changed by the War of the Five Kings, expands the traditional themes of each Great House, and asks the question, “Who is truly pulling the strings?”

   
• Are the Lords of the Great Houses the powers to watch? In A Hidden Agenda, the Lords show their appreciation to those who serve them in the form of powerful and inexpensive Favor attachments.

   
• Should the Lords be less concerned with each other and more concerned with Daenerys Targaryen and her three growing dragons? A Hidden Agenda gives new shape to the threat these Dragons pose.

   
• Or are the kingdoms’ advisors the ones who are secretly pulling the strings? You’ll find new Maesters and other schemes coming out of the Citadel.

Throughout the Kingsroad cycle, its Chapter Packs have introduced new cards and tactics to blend into formerly established mechanics. Appropriately, A Hidden Agenda concludes with a wide sampling of these mechanics: the Bannerman trait, Shadows, cards at your command, decks without agendas, and the Maester trait. Each offers a different path to power, but only one House can sit the Iron Throne!

Masters of Manipulation

Wars are fought by archers, footmen, and mounted knights with swords and lances. However, they begin and end according to the designs of the Lords and Ladies with enough talent, cunning, and charisma to manipulate the invisible threads of history and animosity that bind the Great Houses. Indeed, to such individuals, war is merely another tool they can employ to achieve their larger objectives. Other such tools may include espionage, sabotage, marriage, and assassination.

One of the most devious of all these characters emerges from the shadows in A Hidden Agenda. Littlefinger (A Hidden Agenda, 112) made his first appearance in the Core Set and then, again, in the King’s Landing cycle Chapter Pack, Secrets and Spies, but as he constantly does in the novels, Littlefinger reveals another aspect of himself in this new version. Core Set Littlefinger (Core Set, 141) represents his role as the wily Master of Coin; he enters play as an Ally and offers additional gold to whichever player controls him, even as he uses his Stealth to maneuver around opponents’ defenses. The Littlefinger from the King’s Landing cycle (Secrets and Spies, 84) represents the quick-witted Lord who plays two rival Houses against each other to his benefit. This new version, however, more fully represents Littlefinger’s personal ambitions and his eye toward an endgame that finds him claiming as much power as possible.

Accordingly, the Littlefinger from A Hidden Agenda comes with the Shadows crest as a means of representing the timely revelation of his ambitions. In fact, the player community that worked with the game’s developers at Days of Ice and Fire 2012 didn’t just build that timely reveal into Littlefinger’s Shadows crest; they also built it into his cost. Littlefinger’s cost is reduced by one for each power on an opponent’s House card, meaning that this is a Lord who aims to make his move in the endgame. He is the ultimate underdog and an expert at orchestrating surprising comebacks. At the appropriate moment, he can quickly change the tide of a game, increasing the claim of your plot against any opponent with more power than you. If there’s anything Littlefinger knows how to do well, it’s allying himself to the right House at the right time to advance his personal power…

How Will You Claim the Iron Throne?

Will you give Littlefinger the power he desires in order to gain his services in your bid for the Iron Throne? Or will you heed the Conclave’s counsel? Perhaps you’ll throw your lot in with Queen Daenerys and her dragons? In A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, your ultimate goal is always clear, but the means you take to get there may vary. When it arrives at retailers in the fourth quarter of 2013, A Hidden Agenda will add greatly to your plotting, spying, and scheming. Until then, make certain your little birds watch our website for more A Game of Thrones announcements and other information!

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Source: A Hidden Agenda (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4320)