Reacts to himself.

Reacts to himself.

Surely you'd take him WITH Tywin and Cersei as they're both loyal. Sucks to kneel them for a round, but you *did* just kill a 6/5/3 cost character, so it was probably worth it.

The days when Seastone Chair was the only direct kill effect. I mean, this card is quite broken, it requires nothing but a kneel, so when u marshal him its a 100% kill...

Lannister have exactly 10 (+2 versions) loyal characters. And for a price of 7 you will kill other character with max.price 6. And then you are left with weak board presence vulnerable to any 2 cost MIL challenge. If anything - this card is a 1 trick pony, with high investment and low benefit. Isn't it a good indicator that all Lannister decks have Tyrion and Tywin but none this Joffrey?

F.e. that Seastone chair cost 1 and is usable in ANY unopposed MIL challenge and also works on cost 7 characters. Those two cards are incomparable. Chair is straight OP and Joffrey is a jank.

to be fair, Seastone chair is limited by: need to get an unopposed challenge, the target must not have an attachment, and its effect can be overwritten by another claim substituting effect. so there are many ways to prevent it on the side of the opponent. nightmares can also prevent it, same with treachery.

Joffrey 2.0 however, requires marshaling a loyal character, kneeling such character and then kneeling the faction card. there is also the cost of the target limitation, but then again all these cannot be actively prevented by the opponent barring very few exceptional effects which would also apply to seastone chair; ie treachery etc.

just saying, its getting harder and harder to activate seastone chair these days in my meta. 1 copy of Joffrey is a lot of fun in my lanni still, because you can still choose whether or not to activate him on other loyal triggers, especially on the Bamf variation, killing for killing sake is often underestimated. killing a chud is not as useless as it seems. you need not kill 6/5/4 cost all the time, killing that 3/2/1 character can turn the tide. (my bad, marshal only not ambush)

A good card in my opinion, due to NOT being auto-include, but with enough potential to be considered a 1 off in most, a key card in some, and potential to grow with every subsequent loyal character onwards. More deck options may be Jank to some, but if they open up new potential playstyles, well worth it in my book.

Lannister have exactly 10 (+2 versions) loyal characters. And for a price of 7 you will kill other character with max.price 6. And then you are left with weak board presence vulnerable to any 2 cost MIL challenge. If anything - this card is a 1 trick pony, with high investment and low benefit. Isn't it a good indicator that all Lannister decks have Tyrion and Tywin but none this Joffrey?   F.e. that Seastone chair cost 1 and is usable in ANY unopposed MIL challenge and also works on cost 7 characters. Those two cards are incomparable. Chair is straight OP and Joffrey is a jank.

King Joffrey Baratheon is a fair card. You basically have to sacrifice your rains agenda, because of the house kneel, and give up the win condition that you will win the game quickly, because he is terrible tempo as far as power gathering goes. So basically your game win condition becomes, kill their characters and play the long game. That's why he goes best with Greyjoy who can provide with Victarion and Iron Mines so your deck can run the best killing plot, Valar. Now that sounds good but in reality there are factions which you never really want to go in lategame against, such as Targ,Nights Watch, Martell etc.. In some games he is really unreliable and that may lose you the game. He is always terrible for setup, and many times you don't draw your loyal characters, or have already played them before Joffrey. 

Regarding Seastone chair: I'm aware of the limits it has, but its cost is 1. Joffrey costs 7. Also getting an unopposed challenge for GJ is easy (stealth, reduce to STR 0 effects, Fishing net).

Regarding Joffrey: Playing this card only for 1 time kill effect is not effective because for killing one good opponent's character you paid 7 and have practically unusable character yourself making your position on board very vulnerable. You want to use him several times during the match. But for that reason you need to marshal other loyal characters. Not ambush, not put into game by other means. It needs to be marshaled. And it will mess your marshaling, because to use his effect you would be tempted not to marshal some other loyal characters in the same round (Tywin) thus risking your position on board even more.

Also I'm saying that for such deck you don't have enough suitable cards. High cost characters you want to be standing, to use them in challenges and low cost ones you can get rid of by other means and lower cost: Red Keep Spy, Assassin, Stratagem... not to mention The Things I do for Love - you can get rid of even 7 cost character or chuds if you want. But you're not obliged to pay 7 like for Joffrey, and you can use it as surprise during challenges.

My point is that there are more suitable ways to do what Joffrey does. There is a reason why rating of this card is 2 from 5 here. I do not use this rating but somebody did rate it and it pretty much reflect my opinion of this card too.

I'm not saying it's not fun to use him, I'm saying that he is not suitable for any competitive (tournament) deck. As already stated: there are better Lannister characters which work "no matter how you build your Lannister deck". And my original comment was on comparison with Seastone chair - and I stand behind my reasoning that Chair is much better and more flexible to use than Joffrey.

Joffrey is good because.. killing in the marshaling phase is strong. He triggers off himself to wreck a 6.  He can't be cancelled easily. Kneeling to kill isn't a zero sum transaction over the course of a game.

Joffrey is not great because.. outside of triggering off himself, his ability's value is very situational. There should be better things to use economy ramp for (unless it's a turn 1 Balon Nuke) You have to listen to people who think they know about tempo talk about tempo. 

Seastone Chair and Threeon FTW.

With more ways for Lanni to return cheap guys to hand (hello Ashemark), and a decent number of solid loyal Lanni 2-3 costers, Joffrey's value increases all the time as he forces the opponent to play out multiple chuds to ensure their big guys aren't mil claim or Marched.