Quill & Tankard Regulars - Issue 13

Today in Quill & Tankard Regulars we have a slightly different take on Beware The Sphinx, concentrating more on a card with peculiar and unintuitive interactions, than actually difficult rules issues. So, no tale of heroes or clever ploys today dear listeners, but rather one of woe. Of great promises left in the dust, with the sound of fleeing feet. Hark then, this tale of woe and be still...

Beware The Sphinx - Neutral Faction

Beware the Sphinx is a series of articles concentrating on important cards with several peculiar, complex or unintuitive interactions. An emphasis is kept on both new and competitively relevant cards. Remember, the Sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler.

“Ser Barristan loves his honor, Grand Maester Pycelle loves his office, and Littlefinger loves Littlefinger.”

Today in Beware the Sphinx we're looking at one of the most peculiar cards in the whole LCG cardpool. Under the waves we all wear seaweed for wigs, oh, oh, I know... Oh, oh, no, not Moon Boy (AToT), even though he is quite special, in his own way. No, what we're talking about today is the only new faction ever added to the LCG cardpool... the Neutral Faction.

The Neutral Faction house card was introduced in the first Chapter Pack of the Brotherhood Without Banners Cycle, and has not seen much play since then. There are quite clear reasons why this is the case, and with the recent influx of unique Free Cities reducers for out-of-house cards, it might be relevant to go through those reasons.

The most obvious cards to compare the Neutral Faction to are the Alliance (QoD) agenda and the Treaty agendas (Treaty with the Isles (CoS), Treaty with the North (LoW), Treaty with the South (CoS)). Like those agendas, you are still limited in not being allowed to work around the House X Only deckbuilding restriction... but if you're running one of the agendas from another House, then you're at least getting to use those cards from your original House. Since those cards quite often contain many of the most powerful effects for that house, you will necessarily be missing out on a lot... and be especially limited in your choice of events. The only really fruitful way to get to use any of the House X Only cards with the Neutral Faction is to concentrate on Shadows and run the City of Shadows (CoS) agenda... However, even there you won't getting any advantage over running a regular House, since the Shadows character cards are not played from your hand.

Another large drawback to the Neutral House is the fact that it does not grant you house affiliation with neutral cards. At first glance this might not seem like a big deal, but there are quite a lot of powerful effects that you will be missing out on. The most obvious one is the new City plot, Manning the City Walls (CD), which only allows you to put into play an in-house Army... and with the Neutral House card, there just aren't any. At least At the Gates (GotC) in it's errata'd form still allows you to search for a neutral Maester, but your options are more limited than for a player running another House. Other effects you will be missing out on include Called to Court (ODG), High Ground (QoD), Ser Addam Marbrand (LotR) and even Spending the Winter Stores (QoD). But the lack of a House Affilition doesn't only deprive you of some decent effects, it also leaves ALL of your cards vulnerable to one of the more powerful, but oft' forgotten meta-cards in the game... Men With No King (SA). And if that wasn't enough of a downside, our old friend Meera Reed (TftH) can also remove all of the text on Neutral Faction at the drop of a hat, since unlike agendas, House cards are considered to be in play.

Now, back to the reason why the Neutral Faction was relevant again, the Free Cities locations – Tyrosh (AHM), Myr (AHM), Pentos (CD), Braavos (VD), Norvos (VD) and Volantis (VM). These cards would appear to promote a deck with cards from several different Houses, so it would seem natural to try and run them with the Neutral Faction for further reduction. However, all of these new Kingdom locations are similar to Bay of Ice (KotS), in that they have the House affiliations of all of the Houses... leaving the Neutral Faction as the only House that will have to pay a 2 gold OOH penalty for them, and worse, this isn't mitigated by the reduction on the Agenda card, since they are not characters. Even Hollow Hill (ASoSilence) won't help here, since it again, only works on characters. The only real method of trying to fit these pieces of a Sphinx-like jumbled puzzle together would be the Alliance (PotS) plot, and that is a thin straw, at best.

Poor Neutral Faction – so close, but yet so far.

Dear Archmaester

Dear Archmaester collects interesting, unusual and unexpected rulings from the FFG Rules forum.

Q: Dear Archmaester,
our irritating Martell control-freak just put Noyne (THoBaW) on the table... thankfully he won't see EVERY card I draw right? You know, since you draw 2 during draw phase...

A: No. Cards are always drawn one at a time, so the Martell player will be able to see every card you draw. For further info, see here.


Antti Korventausta (WWDrakey) is a self-proclaimed Finnish AGoT philosopher and nitpicker, who also used to practice Quantum Mechanics, but found that it paled to AGoT in both interest and complexity. As a Stahleck regular and judge, he sometimes has oddly vivid dreams of understanding portions of the game. In AGoT, he'll play anything as long as it's suitably twisted... often ending up with something that has horns on it.

Helmut Hohberger (Ratatoskr) started playing AGoT in September 2010 and has never looked back (although his wife has, longingly). As a German, he loves rules - and I mean *loves* 'em. Try triggering a Response at the end of a phase on his watch, and he'll probably invade your country. He has actually read the FAQ, and was made a judge at Stahleck 2011 and at various other events. He sometimes answers rules questions on boardgamegeek and the FFG rules board. Some of his answers haven't even been contradicted, corrected or expanded upon by ktom - there is no higher accolade for a rules board morlock.

Every Maester needs a Raven on his shoulder. As a Finn, Iiro Jalonen (Ire) got pulled under the waves by Krakens years ago, and has never looked back. A self-inflicted Shagga and active member of the global AGoT community, he has always strived to know the rules of the game, in order to make them do ridiculous things.