Join the Brotherhood

“I held a castle on the Marches once, and there was a woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today, nor tell you the color of that woman's hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades. Sometimes I think I was born on the bloody grass in that grove of ash, with the taste of fire in my mouth and a hole in my chest.”
   –Beric Dondarrion, A Storm of Swords

In Westeros, the Great Houses are everything. Your House determines your culture, your values, your allegiances—and though a lord or lady may rebel or betray their House, they are forever condemned for their oath breaking. In such a world, the brotherhood without banners stands apart. They follow no Great House—instead, they fight for the innocent, the smallfolk, and the memory of a murdered king. Will you be counted among their number? Or will you play and die in the game of thrones like every other House?

The Brotherhood Without Banners—the sixth Chapter Pack in the Blood and Gold cycle for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game—is now available at your local United States retailer! Within this expansion, you’ll find sixty new cards, including a new agenda evoking the brotherhood without banners, and the leader of that forgotten fellowship, Beric Dondarrion. As new economic options and bestow cards round out the Chapter Pack, the Blood and Gold cycle comes to a thunderous conclusion.

Controlling the Game

As Beric Dondarrion and his outlaws enter the game for the first time with The Brotherhood Without Banners (The Brotherhood Without Banners, 119) agenda, other factions pursue their own interests in controlling the game of thrones—especially House Martell.

House Martell often excels when reacting to their enemies' actions: biding their time, taking vengeance for any slight, and moving carefully to control and outmaneuver their rivals. They receive several more tools in The Brotherhood Without Banners, beginning with Dornish Spy (The Brotherhood Without Banners, 115). This character adds another piece to the Martell theme of icon removal—removing challenge icons from enemy characters and stopping them from even participating in challenges.

With cards like Nymeria Sand (The Road to Winterell, 35) and Attainted (The King’s Peace, 55), Condemned (No Middle Ground, 77), and Imprisoned (True Steel, 116), you can lock down plenty of your opponent’s challenge icons—but chances are good that a few will still slip through. Fortunately, you can just ambush the Dornish Spy into play: when this character enters play, you can remove a challenge icon of your choice from a character until the end of the phase! And because this character only costs three gold, you can recur it with Flea Bottom (Oberyn’s Revenge, 98) to get the same effect again.

The Martells most often win by controlling their opponent—but one of the greatest dangers is that your opponent will rush to victory, claiming additional power on characters with renown. Killing these characters isn’t always possible, especially if they’re protected by duplicates or cards like Bodyguard (Core Set, 33) and Iron Mines (Calm Over Westeros, 92). In those circumstances, you’ll be glad to have Locked Away (The Brotherhood Without Banners, 116). Locked Away is an attachment that can be attached to any of your opponent’s characters—and when the next marshaling phase begins, that character is returned to your opponent’s hand, no matter how many saves he has in play. Of course, your opponent has an entire round to remove Locked Away, but if he can’t, he faces a significant loss as his most important character is returned to his hand.

Over the past few months, we’ve also seen a rising alliance between House Martell and House Baratheon—combining the control and stall elements from both factions to devastating effect, and even claiming the North American Championship at Gen Con Indy 2017. That deck receives a powerful tool in King's Blood (The Brotherhood Without Banners, 108).

This attachment, like Locked Away, needs to stick around for a little while to have its effect. It can only be played on a Bastard or King character… but fortunately, both Baratheon and Martell have plenty of Bastards. King’s Blood reads, “Plot Action: Kneel attached character and sacrifice King’s Blood to discard X power from each opponent’s faction card. X is the number of gold King’s Blood has.” Joining the Vanguard Lancer (Core Set, 57) as another way to remove power from your opponent’s faction card, King’s Blood is a powerful tool to slow the game down until you have full control.

A Flaming Sword

With the release of The Brotherhood Without Banners, the choice is yours. Will you connive and scheme in the shadows with the Great Houses or fight for a higher ideal with the knights of the hollow hill?

Pick up your copy of The Brotherhood Without Banners (GT21) at your local retailer today!