The 2 strength on Davos and Illyn and the lack of saves in the houses Baratheon and Lannister (compared to Greyjoy) are my main reasons to rank Dagmer higher than these guys, though you are absolutely right Davos could help to create a win situation for you very quickly.

We recently (yesterday evening) found out that the 5KE agendas became harder to play. That´s because you will usually need the kingdom locations and it´s way too easy to discard a kingdom location with one of the bandits from the refugees of war cp. It was somehow near to a negative play experiences, a river bandit (and probably and Iron throne or Sally Saan) on turn one and a second one on turn two and it turns out to be too easy to take down those locations -also there is nothing you can do about it in fact, because it´s a passive effect.

Any similiar experiences? I´m inclinéd to rank the river bandit and it´s comrades in the (standard) top 5 after these playing experiences.

Stag Lord said:

You are right that with the WED rotated Greyjoy lost a lot of good cards, but same as the other Houses. But I cant imagine them when ITE block rotates. Now they have solid save and unopposed strategy they can build. Save with Wendamyr, Zealous Deckhand and some events like Paying the iron price, that can be very nasty. Or unopposed with Veteran Looters, Wex Pyke and others like Euron with Naval support and Hooked Trident. But with ITE out, they loose all this. They dont have a good strategy through 5KE. They have almost no warships. They are doomed.

Hmmmm.

Alhtough i agree that this summer's rotation seems potetnially fatal to Greyjoy (and Martell) barring some sort of reprint or limited starter set for the two - I don't think thsi past rotation hit the otehr Hosues as hard as it did Greyjoy.

stark lost Frozen solid and the Barracks - but still ahs plenty of kill and even got the Gates as a sort of Barracks repalcement. Targaryen and Lannister are kind of stronger now than they were at this poitn last year. Baratehon didn't really lsoe a lot with Winter - they are still recovering form teh VED rotation which really set them back. (Although they did lsoe a couple of good stand cards and the last of their really good power rush acceleartros).

However - though GJ can't really pull off the speed rush the way it used to, i think it still has a couple fo competitive builds - and location control and resource denial is certainly one just begging to be exploited.

Well...there is Arya.  And Arya.  Oh, and i hate that Arya chick. 

Seriously, without Jaquen, she is really the only character i despise seeing hit the table.  Everyone else I don't mind.

Oh, and Ghost is a crutch.  Weak sause.  ;)

Stag Lord said:

What 'rotation'?  Seriously, since FFG technically doesn't recognize 'standard' as a format - people are just playing locally on their own - why  even rotate ITE block if you are playing 'standard' locally?  I'd wait another year before doing that (depending on what comes out this August - I assume their won't be a new core set so soon). 

We're goign to stick to the original time table - three years is a long enough play life for any set, and there are a couple of cards I really won't miss from ITE. And by then we'll have three and a half cycles of Chapter Packs - I think the pool will be big enough.

Add 5K Eddard to teh list - in an environment where he can be protected with cancels and saves etc - he is still a major headache who can tie up the 5K armies for turns at a time.