Attaching Your Claim to A Poisoned SpearAn A Game of Thrones: The Card Game spotlight by guest writer Matt Ley
You might love to hate them, hate to love them, or sprinkle them into your decks like candy, but however you approach them, attachments are an integral part of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game.
Today, as we begin looking at the cards from the final Chapter Pack of the A Tale of Champions cycle, former World Champion Matt Ley addresses the use of attachments and explores some of the attachments you’ll find in A Poisoned Spear.
Matt Ley on getting attached to claim replacement:
Attachments… It’s always hard to find room for them, especially those that attach to your own cards, and it’s even HARDER to justify their inclusion if they attach to your characters, the game’s hardest cards to protect (just like the books). The very real possibility that your character could be destroyed means a potential for a two-for-one loss in card advantage. Plus, there are already multiple ways to control attachments directly, so when you consider all the attachment hate AND character hate… and the gold you might need to invest, the game has yielded very few, truly playable character attachments.
However, A Poisoned Spear brings us a set of attachments we are ALL going to have to look at long and hard.
A horse is a horse of course…
A Poisoned Spear gives our favorite characters some sweet rides into battle. Every house gains a Warhorse that affects the claim passively, replacing normal claim effects with a special, themed effect–much like our good friend and Ally, Pyat Pree (Queen of Dragons, 17), also known as “Fat Free.”
First, let’s talk about the general terms of these cards. They are all one-cost, so not a huge investment. They are all Warhorses and Creatures. They can only attach to characters of their matching house. Since they all passively replace claim when you attack alone, it’s very hard for your opponent to protect himself from their effects. Even Cat o’ the Canals (Refugees of War, 84) isn’t safe! Also, these let you run zero-claim plots and still benefit from winning a challenge (although this cuts the other way with plots of claim two).
With these basics out of the way, let’s take a look at a couple Warhorses from rival houses!
Bad Horse, Bad Horse
House Stark gets the very rugged-looking Northern Courser (A Poisoned Spear, 102). Not much explaining to do here: YOU get to decide who dies to military claim, rather than your opponent. Take your beefy character, attack alone, and instead of killing Random Chud #83 or that annoying Maester Aemon (Core Set, 151), you kill their best character.
Northern Courser certainly has to be in the running for the Thoroughbred of Sin. (Sorry, that will be my last Dr. Horrible quote, I promise).
You can lead your horse to water…
(I’m running out of horse sayings!)
Horses are a huge part of Dothraki culture. As a male, being unable to ride was tantamount to existing without any respect or power, and for Khals, it usually meant a new Khal was coming.
Putting out your Dothraki Stallion (A Poisoned Spear, 112) means discard pile manipulation and effect draw for Dothraki players. Power challenges are arguably the easiest to get through, and house Targaryen is very good at working with attachments, so this card might see a lot of play as well. Obviously, there are quite a few combos that could work with this card as well, and Targ already uses discard recursion well with cards like Street Waif (A Time of Trials, 32) and Lady Daenerys’s Chambers (Core Set, 180).
Overall, every house has a Warhorse worth close scrutiny, and it is really hard for me to choose my favorite one. When you add the other interesting cards for each house and a VERY interesting plot, A Poisoned Spear offers a tremendous finale to the current cycle.
Thanks, Matt!
We’ll be on the lookout for solitary riders. Meanwhile, as we get closer to the release of A Poisoned Spear, Joe Becker returns next week with another spotlight to explore the impact that written decrees can have upon the Great Houses and their fates.
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Attaching Your Claim to A Poisoned Spear
