Got Board Game Stark Strategy
Got Board Game Stark Strategy Tactics
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Got Board Game Stark Strategy Game

Character Cards By the Numbers

Got Board Game Stark Strategy

TWO CUSTOM DESIGNED GAME BOARDS DISPLAYING THE KNOWN WORLD: Partake in the War of Five Kings in the lands of Westeros with the 3-5-player game featuring Houses Martell, Stark, Baratheon, Lannister, and Tyrell; contest the rule of the Ghiscari slavers in the realms of Essos in a 2-player game featuring Houses Targaryen and Ghiscari; or combine. Samwell Tarly 10. Theon Greyjoy 11. Brienne of Tarth 13. Davos Seaworth 16. Jorah Mormont 17. Having played Game of Thrones dozens of times, I believe that the proper opening for Baratheon is unquestionably to take King's Landing turn 1. It's far superior if either 'Mustering' and/or 'A Game of.

In the Game of Thrones board game, each House has a set of characters cards that they cycle through as they participate in combat. These cards add a lot to the theming of the game and a lot of suspense and double-think as you try to guess which card your opponent will play.

So let’s cut to the chase. Which house has the best cards? On the face of it, every house has seven cards with the exact same strength: a ‘4’, a ‘3’, two ‘2’s, two ‘1’s, and a ‘0’. That’s where the similarities end, though. Different cards have different numbers of sword or fortication icons, and many cards have text that describes a unique power.

Got Board Game Stark Strategy Tactics

What’s a sword or a fortification worth?

We’re working on the premise that a point of character strength is worth 1 ‘house point’ which is equivalent to the value of a footman. Since a sword can kill a footman and a fortification can save one, they are each potentially worth a point – but only if you win (sword) or lose (fortification) a battle.

So initially I figured each of these should be worth about half a point to reflect they’ll be effective half the time. Then I realized that a sword on a low-strength character won’t be as useful as a sword on a high-strength character – if you’re always losing battles who cares how may swords you have, you never get to use them. In contrast, you’re only going to play your 4-strength character on battles you expect to win; in that case, any swords on your character will likely take effect. So, on a 4-strength character, a sword is worth 1 point. But even a 1-strength character can win sometimes, so I went with this:

strength 4 – +1 pt / sword
strength 3 – +.8 pt / sword
strength 2 – +.6 pt / sword
strength 1 – +.4 pt / sword

This makes Eddard Stark worth 6 points (4 strength + 2 swords) and Sir Jaime Lannister worth 2.6 points (2 strength + 1 swords * .6). Melisandre, with 1 strength and a sword, is worth only 1.4 points. This seems right to me – with that strength, I’d rather Melisandre had a fortification so I throw her into a lost cause and mitigate the damage.

So fortifications work the opposite way. A fort on a strong character will be often wasted, but a fort on a weak character will often come into play:

Got Board Game Stark Strategy Against

strength 4 – .2 pt / fort
strength 3 – .4 pt / fort
strength 2 – .6 pt / fort
strength 1 – .8 pt / fort

The ideal character for a fortification would have strength 0, but there are no such characters.

Special powers

Next I subjectively valued each of the different powers. Some of these are simple:

Nymeria Sand (strength 1) gains a fortication when defending and a sword when attacking and has a strength of 1. One or the other will come into play. I give her .4 points for the sword and .8 points for the fort and divide by 2 since each will come into play half the time – so her special power is worth .6 points.
The Queen of Thorns (strength 0) removes an order, but only when it’s adjacent to the embattled area. The power’s worth 1 point when it can be played, but you often won’t be able to use it or won’t want to lose a battle to use it – .5 points.

Others are tougher. Some examples:

Arianne Martel has a great ability to prevent an attacker from advancing when she loses. Her strength is 1 so I figure her power will kick in frequently, and it effectively kills most of someone else’s command (1 point). I give her the full point because even though it may not always come into play, when it does it’s very strategic (e.g. foiling the Knight of Flowers).
Asha Greyjoy gets two swords and a fortification when not supported – but with strength 1 how likely is she to win without support? I give her no credit for the swords but .5 for the fortification (not the full .8 since you have to have no support to use the fortification).

And some really subjective ones:

Balon Greyjoy’s power is almost a guaranteed win – 4 points for the special power!
Ser Loras Tyell’s power is tactically amazing – 3 points!
Patchface and Tyrion can mess with opponent’s decks, but you usually pay the price of a lost battle. 1 point!
Ser Roose Bolton – probably the hardest card in the deck to assess. An awesome card that might allow Stark to play an average card strength of over 3.5 all the time. That’s worth… hmm… 3 points!

Conclusion – Stark, Greyjoy, and Tyrell to the front!

The following chart shows that Stark, Lannister, Martell, and Tyrell are about even until you take into account special powers – and special powers help Greyjoy shoulder Lannister and Martell aside to join Stark and Tyrell at the top:

According to this, if everything else was even between the houses, Stark and Greyjoy have a 3 house point advantage (think three footmen) over Martell and Baratheon based on their superior cards. Some consolation for Martell though: the Red Viper, at 6.2, clocks in as the best card in the game.

Got Board Game Stark Strategy Game

Read on to continue the analysis by looking at each House’s starting units.