We arrive at last in the 5th week of our ASOIAF league’s second season down at the ol’ FLGS, and in this final round I am facing Cam with House Lannister. Cam and I have played a handful of games of this matchup (in terms of factions anyway), and I know that it’s probably going to be an uphill battle for House Greyjoy. The Ironborn lean so heavily on What is Dead May Never Die that some games will naturally come down to
- Did the Greyjoys draw What is Dead?
- Do the Lannisters have Counterplot?
- Did they roll a 3+?
Game Mode: Dark Wings, Dark Words
Opponent: Cam, playing Lannisters
For the scenario, we rolled Dark Wings, Dark Words. The randomly selected secret mission mode is a tricksy one, and rewards patient play and careful planning. It can feel like a lot to manage at times, and sometimes the action on the Tactics Board can create large point swings. The two lists I had to choose from were:
One of Cam’s lists is an 8 activation Kevan in Crossbows setup with Knights of Casterly Rock, the ubiquitous Gregor Clegane, and a couple of 5 point melee units supported by Maester Pycelle, Petyr Baelish, and Roose Bolton as NCUs. I was almost 100% sure this was going to be his pick, which meant that Euron’s disruptive tactics cards and Sow Discord were probably going to be my best option. There’s an argument to be made for the Balon list as potentially being better at just surviving to score objectives but 9 activations seemed like a really important advantage to seize as well. At the end of the day I elected to go with Euron, because I figured it would be more or less playing into the Lannister’s strengths if I chose the more aggressive Balon strategy.
Cam won the roll to place the first piece of terrain, and went with a forest. He placed the woods close enough to the center objective that I couldn’t make my preferred “low wall on center” drop, so I tried to achieve essentially the same outcome with a weird placement of the terrain feature. With this arrangement, the wall covers a heads up or right side alignment and both positions on the flank. The Woods will still offer me Fortified from anything charging through them. Cam then placed a corpse pile on the open side of the table, and I dropped a bog to jam up the side with the woods. I won the roll for choice of sides/first player, and Cam chose the side he was already on.
I felt that my best position was going to be had on the left side of the battlefield, leveraging the Bog, the Woods, and the Wall to slow down the damage output of the (non-Kevan) units in Cam’s army. I honestly don’t remember what Cam deployed first, as it couldn’t affect my choice to place Euron in the middle of my line. 4 speed Infantry can’t really be anywhere else and be effective, so there’s no reason to be cute about it. Cam was deploying such that he kept options for Gregor and his Cavalry as long as possible, but by using the Drowned Men as early drops I was able to delay committing bowmen to the table until I was pretty sure where everything was going. I think I did make a mistake here though, because I truly didn’t need both of the naked bows on the other side of the map - in fact, they got in each other’s way twice as I was looking for flank shots in the middle turns of the game. It might have been better to drop bows next to Euron toward the Corpse Pile, and push the Drowned Men out a little further, just to present a little bit wider of a front.
I elected to start as First Player in Round 1 which was the usual prelude to violence as both of us maneuvered our forces into position for Round 2. I made what probably ended up being a game losing mistake here, giving up a point to dig into my deck for more action off of the Letters zone. At the time, the logic was that I might need the extra cards to score the center objective successfully. That ended up being nowhere close to necessary, as Cam ended up moving Gregor over to the far objective where he remained for the rest of the game (scoring 5 of Cam’s 9 points) and being unable to get his Knights of Casterly Rock into a meaningful engagement in his turn with the initiative. This is where my deployment started to bite me in the ass, as I got jammed up on the left flank and couldn’t get much of anything done with the Bowmen on that side. I also spent a Wendamyr token to shift that was kind of weak just to be able to make an attack in the front arc with Asha’s bows that ended up doing essentially nothing. By the end of the round, the Knights of Casterly Rock are set up to probably charge the Drowned Men.
As I’m going first in Round 3, I figure it’s not unreasonable for me to block Horses with Petyr, and trigger Letters, weakening the Knights. If I make this play, Cam has to either maneuver and march them away, or charge the Drowned Men immediately. If he doesn’t, the Drowned Men will charge the Knights, who’ll then have to burn their activation retreating an 8 point unit away from a 4 point unit. Cam recognizes this and elects to charge the Drowned Men. I do have What is Dead in my hand, but I know that Counterplot is lurking somewhere on his side of the table. With the Weakened token, this charge will usually do 6 hits (9 hits after the charge rerolls, a third of which should be lost to the Weakened token). If I save one of those (and with six chances to do so, it’s likely I will) the Drowned Men will reduce that to two total wounds, which means they can’t die. On 7 hits (slightly better than the expected outcome for Cam), the Drowned Men can still only die if I fail a 5+ Panic test. Then, if all of that doesn’t work out, there’s What is Dead vs Cam’s Counterplot.
So naturally Cam punishes my hubris by rolling 10 hits, and after the Weakened token, it’s still 9. I save less than two of those, his Counterplot works (even without controlling the Crown zone, sadly) and that’s the Drowned Men gone. It’s hard to look at that result and not conclude this was a mistake, but on average, those Drowned Men shrug the cav charge off and live to fight on. The real mistake probably was not having Asha drop a Panicked token on those Knights in round 2. I didn’t even end up using the token I placed with War Cry. If I were really thinking ahead I could probably have made my charge blocking Drowned Men a lot safer by taking Sow Discord from only a 42% chance of success (with the 7+ morale of the Knights when in range of that Corpse Pile) to a 72% chance of success. Remember that Panicked tokens let you choose which specific dice to reroll, which means that they’re a fair bit stronger for changing the probability of success than simple rerolls alone on morale tests of 7+ and higher. If the Cav lose their Lance ability there is virtually no way they’re killing those Drowned Men through a Weakened token. But I didn’t even spot this play until it was far too late to do anything about it, so the Drowned Men died.
Oh well.
Gregor scores a point, and I score two from objectives, so we finish Round 3 tied at 4 points. Somewhere in here I used Cunning Ploy to get the Drowned Men turned around and moved into position to threaten the Knights.
In Round 4, I immediately Sow Discord the Knights, trying to blunt the Lance charge I know I am going to take this round. They fail their test, which is great for me. With their immediate threat significantly reduced, I take Horses again to move the Drowned Men I have left to cover the rear arc of Asha’s bowmen, but can’t block the rear charge into the Blackguard that I know is coming with just that maneuver. I make another mistake here. At this point, there is no reason at all for me to do anything other than
- Charge the Knights with the Drowned Men, now that Horses are blocked, or
- Move the Blackguard forward with Euron so the wall is poking out the back of his tray.
Even without Sundering or their extra dice, those Knights are still charging me in the rear arc for 6 dice at this stage. I just let that happen, took 5 wounds, and failed a panic test. Then got shot up by Kevan, and charged by the Guardsmen. What is Dead #2 didn’t meet a Counterplot, but now I can’t score the objective. I had to work my ass off getting Cam to burn Weakened tokens on my units, but I was able to stop him from scoring Mission 8, while I did net a point from it, which made the score 6 to 5 in my favor.
In Round 5, I immediately drop Mind Games on the bags and claim it thanks to Petyr on Swords, thinking that by doing so, I probably guarantee claiming it on a subsequent turn. This would have been true, but it ends up being a huge punt. I should have War Cried Kevan’s Crossbows, and still block Swords with Petyr triggering Bags then on Cam’s turn Sow Discord Kevan’s unit. That’s 72% likely to turn off the free shot from Crowns, which is a lot better than what I did. If I play right and the crossbows get switched off, Cam would have to take Bags to stop me claiming it for real, and if he does that, I get 2 wounds back from Varys anyway. Instead, I fail to spot this option, Kevan gets the extra attack, and there’s just enough damage done to the Blackguard with Euron that I can’t heal through it, and they die. Somewhere in here the Halberdiers take a huge bite out of one of my units of Bows, which ends up being the final nail in my coffin the following turn, as I’m unable to keep them alive when he charges them dead with his first action.
Thanks to my aggressive clearing of the Active Missions, there are none left for Round 6 (This was wrong! See note at the end of the article - Future Craig.), so this will come down to who is the fightiest. Down all this material, it’s probably not going to be me. I end up making a handful more mistakes here that also prevented me from having a way back into the game. Notably, I could have taken Letters to draw the last two cards in my deck before running out of zones on the board to play We Do Not Sow, and made better use of my final copy of Cunning Ploy. I did get an attack off of Predictable Maneuvers that nearly killed the Knights, but even if they’d have died at this point I just didn’t have enough actions to deal the damage needed to scratch out a victory.
Cam used his remaining units movement well to prevent me from retaking the center objective with the Drowned Men at the end of the game, so we end up with a final score of 9 points each, with him winning with 14 points destroyed to my 5.
This matchup is extremely mentally taxing to play. I still struggle with the sequencing of triggers playing Greyjoys, and Euron has even more start of turns/when a unit activates effects to juggle in addition to the base deck. Add to that the fact that Counterplot is uh, particularly strong against What Is Dead, which is sort of an important effect for Greyjoys, and this is not a simple game for me to win. That being said, if I make even one fewer of the significant errors that I committed during the course of the game, I would be in a much better position to win. Cam played well too - he left me few easy choices as he worked the Knights of Casterly Rock into position to cause me significant problems, and my bad sequencing made sure it paid off for him.
With this round in the books, I’ll be heading into the league playoffs in the middle of the pack with a 3-2 record. For round one, I’m looking at a Greyjoy mirror match and have really no idea what to expect. I’ll probably bring the same Balon + Euron lists as I’ve played since Round 2 of the League, but there’s this Asha list that I’ve played one game with that’s kind of making me wonder if it might not be a mirror breaker…
Until next time!
Editor’s Note: An astute reader (thanks willybunks) pointed out that you reshuffle the mission deck in Dark Wings, Dark Words if you run out of cards. I have been playing this game mode wrong for over a year, and have probably taught some people this wrong way of playing it. If this is you, I am sorry. Willy pointed out that not being able to score more points in Round 6 from the Mission deck may have (depending on what was there…) cost me this game. He’s right, so don’t make the same mistake I did!
