Reviews for N00bs - A Time of Ravens: The Winds of Winter

The Winds of Winter

Overall Theme: 5.5

Overall Efficiency: 5.5


This chapter pack introduces the Seasons mechanic, specifically Winter. Winter is the harsher of the seasons: the mechanic generally chokes resources, hates on characters and locations, and burns. Greyjoy and Stark see the most synergy with Winter, and almost none for Summer; whereas, Martell and Targaryen are the other way around. Lannister and Baratheon see some synergy with both Summer and Winter. Greyjoy is pretty much the only house that makes out well in this pack, but unfortunately it’s necessary if you want to play winter.



House Stark

Overall Theme: 6.5

Overall Efficiency: 5

Ranger of Winter (TWoW) – Theme: 8; Efficiency: 7

• This is a sub-par card that becomes an awesome card if it’s winter (with the exception of the Ally trait).
• Consider playing this in a Stark defensive deck with Winterfell.

Maester Vyman (TWoW) - Theme: 4; Efficiency: 2

• 2 strength characters are not good because of the burn and terminal kill effects of Targaryen and Venomous Blade (TBoBB).
• I’m not a big fan of “passive-aggressive” abilities on characters (i.e. ones that are meant not to be used, but serve more as a deterrent), since in this case, you need to have him ready and standing all the time in hopes that you might be disrupting that targeted kneel or kill. You don’t use him in order to “use” him.
• If you’re playing a maester deck, then you might want to include him, or just play Maester Luwin (FtC).

Northern Cave (TWoW) – Theme: 7; Efficiency: 6

• This is a pretty good ability, allowing you to overcommit on a critical challenge knowing you can take out the overage of strength.
• Since winter is necessary for this effect, play with A Time for Ravens (ACoS) to get the White Raven out; otherwise this is a 2 cost blank card, which is not good.

House Lannister

Overall Theme: 4

Overall Efficiency: 4.5


Scavengers of King's Landing (TWoW) – Theme: 3; Efficiency: 4

• This is a pretty good efficiency without the drawback, and even then usually Lannister can handle discarding one card if it has all its draw options out (Tommen Baratheon (SA), Golden Tooth Mines (Core), Gold Cloaks (AToT)).
• If you’re playing against Stark, you won’t need to damage their hand more than usual since you’ll be winning your intrigue challenges against them most likely.

Janos Slynt (TWoW)t – Theme: 5; Efficiency: 5

• This is a strange ability that might find some usefulness against Martell and Targaryen, which tend to have more builds with influence, and the better events using influence as a cost. This might be a better character in melee where players might have more influence-costing events and abilities. However with the growing popularity of Paper Shield (QoD), influence-costing events may also become more prevalent.
• Lannister winter would be an interesting build; it would choke other players gold with White Raven, and not hurt yourself too much since Lannister gets tons of gold.
• The exclusivity of the mediocre ability and the Ally make this a so-so card.

House Baratheon

Overall Theme: 4

Overall Efficiency: 2


Son of a King (TWoW) – Theme: 3; Efficiency: 1

• This is one of the most useless attachments in the game. Bastard trait does absolutely nothing, the +1 strength is marginal.
• There are 16 kings in the entire cardpool; 10 of those have renown (actually 6, since there are 2 or 3 different versions of the Baratheon kings.)
• Why play a card that gives you +1 strength and the rare possibility of marginally hurting a Baratheon rush deck? You don’t.

The Wall (TWoW) – Theme: 5; Efficiency: 3

• This is a really expensive location, especially given that if it’s not winter, it’s blank.
• Thematically it doesn’t seem to fit Baratheon too well (not talking story here, but house theme).
• There might be a good deck with this using The Stewards (AKitN) agenda to make all your awesome Baratheon characters into tri-cons. You’d need to play A Time of Ravens and Building Season to make sure you get all your pieces into place, but once there, a wall of non-kneeling tricons with renown is pretty intimidating.

House Targaryen

Overall Theme: 4

Overall Efficiency: 2


Valyrian Spirit (TWoW) – Theme: 4; Efficiency: 2

• A powerful effect, but for the most part pointless. It’s the only Targaryen card with a winter effect, so you would have to think really hard about why you would even want to build a Targaryen winter deck.
• Yeah, it might be convenient on rare occasions to be able to play dead uniques, or get those events back, but for the most part this is a useless tool in the toolbox. I can’t imagine a deck that would utilize this effect for a win, mostly just to keep you in the game. Use the slot on a character that will win challenges instead of losing enough cards to make you feel like this card is necessary.

House Martell

Overall Theme: 4.5

Overall Efficiency: 6


Obara Sand (TWoW) - Theme: 5; Efficiency: 7

• On her own she is decent in terms of efficiency. Military and Intrigue with stealth is not bad.
• Sand Snake trait synergizes with Obella Sand (DB) to make her a tricon with vengeful.
• Her ability is questionable, and you should probably only do this if you require a very specific setup hand, and in that case you should run 3 of her to increase your chances of getting what you need.

Underhanded Assassin (TWoW) - Theme: 4; Efficiency: 5

• A 3-cost, 2-strength ally is not great in terms of efficiency.
• The ability is interesting and requires some thought to build into a deck. It can be used to draw weenies into a non-critical challenge in order to kneel them out for other critical challenges.
• This text works against your own characters as well.

House Greyjoy

Overall Theme: 8

Overall Efficiency: 6


Ice Fisherman (TWoW) - Theme: 9; Efficiency: 6

• It requires winter, so you will need to run White Raven. Otherwise it’s just claim soak.
• One of the few real resource choke cards out there. It gives you a gold from an opponent which makes up for the 1 gold loss from White Raven, and essentially gives your opponent -2 gold.
• Conscriptor trait does nothing.

Frozen Sea (TWoW) - Theme: 7; Efficiency: 6

• Summer is actually very prevalent in many competitive builds, so the odds that this can get discarded are good.
• The ability is very good, limiting your opponent’s options against you and increasing your ability to dedicate your characters to only two different challenges.
• In melee, this probably wouldn’t make much of a difference since if you are weak in a challenge most players will pick on you in that area anyway.

Winter Armada (TWoW) - Theme: 8; Efficiency: 6

• This is a risky card: it has a great benefit and a great detriment.
• This can be expensive to play If it is winter, however, this card will be great for intimidate characters such as Victarion Greyjoy (KotS), or a tricon like Euron Crow’s Eye.
• Add a Support of Harlaw (KotS) and you have almost as much rushing power as Baratheon.

Neutral

Overall Efficiency: 7.5


Kings of Winter (TWoW) agenda – Efficiency: 8

• If you’re running winter, there’s no reason not to run this since there is no real downside. (Except of course, if you want to run another agenda.)
• Greyjoy and Stark, the most likely candidates for winter season, don’t have great draw so it’s unlikely that they’ll ever have more cards than the opponent, unless you’re playing against a Lannister Clansman deck, and even if they don’t, you won’t have a downside unless it’s summer.

War Horn (TWoW) - Efficiency: 6

• This can be pretty expensive and wasted if you don’t get it to be winter. Summer can be very prevalent in the environment, so you may not get to use it.
• Pretty easy trigger for Greyjoy and Stark, or even Baratheon.
• This seems to be very good location control, unless your opponent has something that can handle attachments. For alternatives, see The Price of War (KotS) or Condemned by the Council (AToT).

White Raven (TWoW) - Efficiency: 8

• Makes it winter and takes away 1 income at Marshalling – which means it hurts your opponents but also hurts you.
• Ravens are hard to get rid of, so these are necessary if your deck relies on winter. Your opponent must win a challenge (most likely military) with a Carrion Bird, play a Black Raven, or play Ill Tidings.

Mance Rayder (TWoW) - Efficiency: 5

• A 3-cost tricon is pretty good especially since he doesn’t really have any negative traits or passive text.
• His King trait allows you to search for him with Jeyne Westerling (ASoS) if you’ve already pulled all your copies of Robb Stark.
• His Wildling trait synergizes with the wildling agendas (The Free Folk, The Last Giants), but then you may want to consider the other Mance Rayder.
• This card has a few things going against its ability being efficient at all: it requires winter for its text to be available, your opponent has to run kingdom locations to see any benefit, and Mance has to stay alive to get the power from the locations. Only a few Kingdom locations actually see much play (Kingdom of Shadows, Bay of Ice, and maybe Shivering Sea), so using this ability will be difficult.

Ser Arthur Dayne (TWoW) - Efficiency: 8

• 4-cost 5-strength is decent. One of the better Kingsguard characters out there. Kingsguard characters tend to get bonuses on defense, and this is where he shines.
• Playing him in house Martell in a tribal House Dayne deck allows you to utilize the House Dayne trait with Starfall (ASitD), Southron Vessel (IG), and Dorne (PotS).
• Combine him with his weapon, Dawn (TRS), to make him 10 strength(!) and to get a good kill effect.

Carrion Bird (TWoW) – 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, 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.

The Winds of Winter (TWoW) plot - Efficiency: 8

• This is one of the better 2 claim plots, and is fantastic if you have a winter deck, or even if you don’t have it on the chance that your opponent will.
• The income is about on par with other 2 claim plots, and the initiative is better than many at 2 (compared to Mutual Blackmail, City of Soldiers, and The Power of Arms), but about average relative to all combined.
• -1 Strength to opponent’s characters is great for Greyjoy intimidate decks, and for Stark murder decks (using Grey Wind and Shaggydog), maybe a Stark/Targ alliance using Winds of Winter and The Long Winter (ACoS) in combination with burn. It’s a possibility.