Reviews for N00bs - A Time of Ravens: A Song of Summer

A Song of Summer

Overall Theme: 7.5

Overall Efficiency: 7


This chapter pack introduces the Seasons mechanic, specifically Summer. Summer is the kinder of the seasons: the mechanic generally opens up possibilities, gives you more income, and buffs. Martell and Targaryen see the most synergy with Summer, and none for Winter; whereas, Greyjoy and Stark are the other way around. Lannister and Baratheon see some synergy with both Summer and Winter. Martell and Targaryen really make out in this pack, and is probably the best in this cycle.




House Stark

Overall Theme: 9

Overall Efficiency: 8


Jeyne Westerling (ASoS) – Theme: 9; Efficiency: 8

• Searching for a King allows you an easy way to bring out her “other half” (Robb Stark (KotS) or Robb Stark (LoW)), increasing deck efficiency. Running just one of her with 3 copies of a King increases your chances of drawing at least one of them on setup by 15%.
• She can search for an out-of-house and neutral King as well (such as Mance Rayder (RotO)).
• She can’t do anything if another Queen is out (she’s insecure), although there aren’t many, but that still brings her efficiency down slightly.

House Lannister

Overall Theme: 6.5

Overall Efficiency: 5.5


Summer Tax (ASoS) – Theme: 6; Efficiency: 3

• Condition attachments can be discarded more easily than general attachment as they are prone to general attachment hate (read Targaryen) as well as a couple of other condition attachment hate: Maester Cressen (Core) and Maester of Lemonwood (BtW).
• Lannister can benefit itself or harm others from seasonal effects, and this is a good example. Attach it to your opponent’s card in summer to power choke; attach it to your own house card in winter.
• This card has very limited usefulness. There are no real builds for Lannister for either season, and including this on the off chance that your opponent is playing a season is just silly.

Lion's Gate (ASoS) – Theme: 7; Efficiency: 8

• This is one of the best (and only) cards for trait-manipulation. It’s cheap and fairly easy to pull off against renown characters or brotherhood characters.
• King’s Landing trait helps with King's Landing (SaS).
• Play out-of-house in Stark with Old Nan (BoRF) and Abandoned Fort (RoR), or in Greyjoy with Horn of Dragons (ASoSilence); or play those OOH in Lannister since they typically have the gold to pay the gold penalty.
• Play in combination with Dissension (QoD), Varys (SaS), or Ser Arys Oakheart (PotS).
• This also helps with your own dudes. For example, playing with Tarle the Thrice-Drowned (RotO) will allow you to always have a unkillable dude for claimsoak. And you can give him the Raider trait at the same time to give him stealth (Euron Crow’s Eye) or other buffs (Longship Silence).

House Baratheon

Overall Theme: 8

Overall Efficiency: 6.5



Priestess of the Pyre (ASoS) – Theme: 9; Efficiency: 7

• In a Baratheon summer deck, this is a helpful card.
• The intrigue icon is helpful since it’s something Baratheon is typically weaker in. This will see more play in a control build with more Asshai, especially if she can be made into a tri-con with Shadow Enchantress (OSaS) or The Power of Faith (KotStorm).
• Overall, this card probably won’t see as much play as its Targaryen counterpart Fairweather Followers, because Baratheon doesn’t have as many options for repeatable events, however an example combination is with Small Council Chamber (SaS) and Condemned by the Council (AToT) for devastating hand and location control.

Selyse Baratheon (Core) – Theme: 5; Efficiency: 2

• This ability is so ineffectual and inefficient. It needs to be summer, you need to pay a gold, and a card gets shuffled back into your deck (not to hand). There are much better abilities.
• See the other version of Selyse Baratheon (Core) for a slightly more playable queen.

Summer's Champion (ASoS) – Theme: 10; Efficiency: 9

• Renown and Knight trait sync perfectly with Baratheon thematically.
• Slightly higher strength to cost makes this a good deal if you can keep it summer long enough to reap the rewards.
• Even if it switches to winter you still keep any renown you’ve earned and at least 2 strength for dominance.

Summer Port (ASoS) – Theme: 8; Efficiency: 8

• These can be very effective reducers in a summer deck, especially because they are not limited. I wouldn’t rely on only these however, since the wrong opponent could seriously muck up your ability to reduce cards at the key moment.
• Getting them on setup still isn’t a drawback if you run A Time of Ravens plot to draw a Black Raven for your first turn.

House Targaryen

Overall Theme: 9

Overall Efficiency: 7


Dragon Sight (ASoS) – Theme: 9; Efficiency: 6

• This is an intriguing idea that makes a fundamental change to the framework action of challenges.
• Can be very powerful, since in my experience this results in either chump opposition or unopposed challenges; sometimes though, when your opponent really needs to win the challenge, you will kneel out all his dudes, which is great.
• One downside is the cost and conditional effect on it being summer.
• Another downside is that stealth doesn’t work with this card, and Targaryen has a lot of stealth characters, including ironically all of its Dragon characters. The reason for this is that you won’t have any characters with stealth participating in order to declare stealth targets since the opponent declares defenders first.

Fairweather Followers (ASoS) – Theme: 8; Efficiency: 9

• Targaryen has a lot of repeatable events (most notably Forever Burning (Core)) so you can usually get this character to participate in multiple challenges, both as attacker and defender.
• Summer is a lot easier to pull off in Targaryen because of the attachment recursion, which gives you easier access to ravens, even if you’re playing against a winter build.
• Mercenary trait makes it vulnerable to Ser Arys Oakheart.

Red Warlock (ASoS) – Theme: 9; Efficiency: 5

• Although the Asshai subtheme for Targaryen is a little weak, this can be a very powerful card in the right deck, even out of house. If you are running few, but critical attachments in your summer deck, this may be a good card.
• This card may be surpassed by Spending the Winter Stores (QoD) for attachment search.
• It’s a little expensive for what you get, but 2 cost would probably be too cheap.
• Ally trait isn’t that much of a downside since you already get the effect when it comes into play. Use in combination with To Be a Dragon (SB) to pop in back into play to get another ambush attachment.

House Martell

Overall Theme: 8

Overall Efficiency: 6



Starfall Bannerman (ASoS) – Theme: 9; Efficiency: 5

• Starfall Bannerman’s efficiency is lower and so it’s worthless running outside of a very heavy House Dayne deck. Running 3x this card in a summer deck and your House Dayne characters can become beastly.

Maester of the Sun (ASoS) – Theme: 8; Efficiency: 7

• I wish this was x3 in the pack, but it’s not.
• This is one of the few saves in Martell, and summer is essential to play it.
• Play this with Darkstar (PotS) for an awesome combo. Discard Darkstar from your hand to save a character from being killed, and that should seriously swing your board position for the better.
• Usually saving characters are locked down from participating in challenges to keep them standing for their effect, but with the vengeful keyword, you can have more options.

Knights of the Sun (ASoS) – Theme: 8; Efficiency: 7

• Put that leftover gold to good use to make some beefy knights.
• Play in combination with Starfall (ASitD) to get twice as much strength for each gold token on it.
• If you are playing summer, you are probably running the Kings of Summer agenda for draw, but characters with the House Dayne trait are often knights, so Knights of the Realm agenda is also a possibility.
• Army trait allows for synergy with Training Grounds (LoW).

Open Market (ASoS) – Theme: 6; Efficiency: 5

• The benefits of this card are arguable. While it could be useful in a pinch to pull out a critical card when you need to, you are often destroying your hand advantage to do so. And you won’t have it to play until the next turn since you’re getting it on dominance.
• If you have the gold to spend, you could keep pulling out The Viper's Bannermen (PotS) that you sacked to keep drawing cards from it. Not a bad combo, but expensive.
• You could combine this with Regroup (KotStorm) to do some fancy discard manipulation: get a great card back to hand and put a card on top of your discard pile to draw back.

House Greyjoy

Overall Theme: 4.5

Overall Efficiency: 5



Fishing Net (ASoS) – Theme: 6; Efficiency: 7

• For two gold, this totally locks down a character that doesn’t kneel to use its character ability.
• Two gold for attachments is always questionable, since they can be easily discarded, but this may be able to shut down your opponent’s key character long enough to get some unopposed challenges.

Scavengers of the Sea (ASoS) – Theme: 3; Efficiency: 3

• Greyjoy has such a shortage of good cheap characters that you may actually be desperate enough to play this. Even so, it only has one icon.
• If you’re playing against Martell (and odds are you will be if you play competitively at all), then you’ll get to discard a card from their hand, otherwise it will be your own hand.
• If you discard a Warship from hand you can get it into play with First Mate (SB) or Weathered Crew (SA).

Neutral

Overall Efficiency: 9.5


Kings of Summer (ASoS) agenda – Efficiency: 9

• Extra draw is always a good thing. This agenda is especially helpful for Targaryen and Baratheon who struggle with good forms of draw. Summer is typically about increasing and opening up your choices.
• Run this agenda with Black Raven to ensure that you get the benefit.
• Because of the downside, if you are running this agenda, you may not want to use Crown of Meereen (QoD) or Crown of Azor Ahai (KotStorm) since it’s too easy for an opponent running White Raven (TWoW) to screw your draw.

Black Raven (ASoS) – Efficiency: 9

• Makes it summer and gives additional 1 income at Marshalling – the gift that keeps on giving.
• Ravens are hard to get rid of, so these are necessary if your deck relies on Summer. Your opponent must win a challenge (most likely military) with a Carrion Bird, play a White Raven, or play Ill Tidings (IG)

Carrion Bird (ASoS) – Efficiency: 10

• This is probably the best cheap neutral character out there. I often run it in any deck, even if it doesn’t have a season.
• It is really efficient – one of the few 1-cost characters with stealth. (Others include Bastard of Robert, White Hatchling, and maybe Ranger of the Watch). Since it has stealth, you can always at least oppose military challenges.
• This is the best card to protect against opponent’s running a season. You want to have some way to get rid of that White Raven, especially if you have Wintertime Marauders staring you down; or that Black Raven if your opponent has the Kings of Summer agenda and is drawing tons of cards, for example. Raven attachments are immune to typical attachment hate.
• This can be useful in trait-manipulation decks, using Old Nan, Lion’s Gate, or Copper Link (GotC), to remove a character from play. Give an opponent’s character the Raven trait, win a military challenge, and it gets shuffled back into the deck.

A Song of Summer (ASoS) – Efficiency: 10

• This is a really good plot. There are very few 5-income plots, and even fewer since the Restricted list. This still has a good initiative and a decent text effect, too.