Fantasy Flight Games

Choose Your Side

Published 24 March 2016 | A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

Choose Your Side

No Middle Ground Is Now Available for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

"I am khaleesi, heir to the Seven Kingdoms, the blood of the dragon,” Dany reminded him. "It is not for you to tell me what I cannot do.”
–George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

In the godswood of the Red Keep, Eddard Stark meets Cersei Lannister—a simple conversation between the Hand of the King and the Queen. Yet the fallout of that conversation decides the fates of hundreds of lives and shatters the peace of the Seven Kingdoms, perhaps beyond repair. Now, you can take your place in the growing tensions that drive Westeros with No Middle Ground, a new Chapter Pack for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game that’s now available at your local United States retailer and online through our webstore!

No Middle Ground continues the path of the Westeros cycle by following the main events of the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire. Here, you’ll find recognizable characters like Hodor, Halder, and Ser Horas Redwyne, each ready to fight for their chosen factions. This Chapter Pack also quickly increases the options available to every deck with five new plot cards—three loyal to their faction and two neutral. With new cards for every faction and plenty of new plots, you’ll be able to revolutionize your decks with the addition of No Middle Ground.

A Trio of Plots

By the end of the Westeros cycle, the eight factions will each have received a loyal plot card that both typifies the faction and provides a significant boost to the faction’s other cards. No Middle Ground is unique in that it contains three of these faction-specific plots: one for the Night’s Watch, one for House Stark, and one for House Targaryen. These plots are undeniably powerful, and as we’ll see below, they may well define their factions for years to come.

The first plot card is For the Watch! (No Middle Ground, 67), a plot that boasts a universally impressive effect. While For the Watch! is your revealed plot, you cannot lose, and your opponent cannot win, the first challenge made against you each phase. Understandably, this plot is a huge boon for the Night’s Watch. It means one less challenge that you need to defend to gain power from The Wall (Core Set, 137), while reducing your opponent’s options. You might even be lucky enough to catch a plot like Sneak Attack (Core Set, 21), completely neutralizing your opponent’s turn.

For the Watch! even breathes new life into cards like The Sword in the Darkness (Core Set, 140). Your opponent is unlikely to put much STR into a challenge that he knows he cannot win. With that in mind, it should be relatively easy for you to win by five STR, trigger The Sword in the Darkness, and prevent your opponent from making any additional challenges this round!

While the Night’s Watch gains a purely defensive plot, House Stark gains a plot that can make their opponent’s challenge math a pure nightmare. House Stark’s loyal plot from the Westeros cycle is Wardens of the North (No Middle Ground, 62), and it reads, “Challenges Action: During a challenge in which you control a participating Stark character, kneel another Stark character to have it participate in that challenge on your side. (Limit twice per round.)” Not only does this allow you to suddenly bring more forces into a challenge, it bypasses the necessity to have the appropriate challenge icon, meaning even your Direwolves could participate in intrigue or power struggles.

House Stark has justly established a reputation for being hard to face on the field of battle. Although they may not have many events or unexpected tricks, their sheer number of options makes it very difficult to decide how you want to make your challenges. When you combine Wardens of the North with cards like Lady (Taking the Black, 4) and Winterfell Kennel Master (The Road to Winterfell, 21), battling House Stark can quickly becomes more trouble that it’s worth.

The final loyal plot in No Middle Ground is Blood of the Dragon (No Middle Ground, 75), and it directly supports one of House Targaryen’s most enduring themes: “burn,” or the process of reducing the STR of enemy characters. Though its stats are unimpressive, Blood of the Dragon can make any opponent tremble in fear—while it’s revealed, each non-Dragon character has its STR reduced and is killed if its STR is zero.

In addition to automatically killing many of the supporting, one-STR characters in the game, Blood of the Dragon combines exceptionally well with Daenerys Targaryen (Core Set, 160). Daenerys’s global STR reduction combined with Blood of the Dragon can kill characters with two STR as soon as they enter a challenge against you. When you add that to the extra boost this plot gives cards like Dracarys! (Core Set, 176) and Plaza of Punishment (Core Set, 173), you can be sure of one thing: the fields of Westeros will burn before the onslaught of House Targaryen.

You Win or You Die

Tensions in King’s Landing continue to grow, but they cannot grow forever. Sooner or later, they will explode, and when they do, the consequences could be dire for everyone in Westeros. It’s time for you to choose your side. Pick up your copy of No Middle Ground at your local retailer today!

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The copyrightable portions of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game Second Edition is © 2015 Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. Licensed by George R.R. Martin. The names, descriptions, and depictions applied to this game are derived from works copyrighted by George R.R. Martin, and may not be used or reused without his permission. A Game of Thrones: The Card Game Second Edition, its expansion titles, Living Card Game, LCG, the LCG logo and Fantasy Flight Supply are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved to their respective owners.

No Middle Ground

Published 28 September 2015 | A Game of Thrones: The Card Game

No Middle Ground

Announcing the Fourth Chapter Pack in the Westeros Cycle

“You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron Throne the day King's Landing fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake.”
–George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce No Middle Ground, the fourth Chapter Pack in the Westeros cycle for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game!

In the aftermath of the Tourney for the Hand, Eddard Stark searches for answers to the questions that caused Jon Arryn’s death. Across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys Targaryen rides across the Dothraki sea to Vaes Dothrak with a massive khalasar and her husband, Khal Drogo. The Great Houses stir restlessly across Westeros, watching and plotting their own bids for power. From the sands of Dorne to the icy forests beyond the Wall, tension grows with every passing day.

Enter the unrest and intrigue of A Game of Thrones with No Middle Ground, the fourth Chapter Pack in the Westeros cycle! Like the other packs of this cycle, No Middle Ground follows the events of the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire, introducing iconic characters like Hodor and Gendry to the game for the first time. In addition, you’ll find five new plots in this Chapter Pack—three faction-specific and two neutral—that vastly increase your options for building any faction’s plot deck.

Iron Raiders

As new intrigues fester in the alleys and courts of King’s Landing, the men and women of the Iron Isles return to the old ways. The ironborn never embraced the faith of the Seven that is followed throughout Westeros, and now, you can bring the blessing of the Drowned God to your own decks with the Priest of the Drowned God (No Middle Ground, 72).

Priest of the Drowned God can prove extremely useful to any deck that focuses on the faith of the Drowned God. Not only does Priest of the Drowned God offer a valuable intrigue icon to House Greyjoy, but this character’s ability reads, “Each Drowned God character you control get +1 STR.” Obviously, this effect boosts the STR of the Priest of the Drowned God himself, but it also makes Aeron Damphair (Core Set, 65) and the Drowned Men (Core Set, 73) more imposing. As you play more Priests of the Drowned God, you can increase the fervor and zeal of the ironborn, making your Drowned God characters more dangerous in challenges and less vulnerable to STR reducing effects like Dracarys! (Core Set, 176).

Once your devotion to the Drowned God is at its height, you’re free to raid the helpless, weakened inhabitants of the green lands to the east. You can play Loot (No Middle Ground, 73) to pay the iron price and take your rightful spoils after you win any unopposed challenge. When you play Loot, you can discard a number of cards from your opponent’s deck equal to the cost that you paid for the event. Most importantly, however, you can only use gold from your opponent’s gold pool to pay the cost of this event! By playing Loot, you essentially strip your opponent of gold, removing his ability to play many events, and discard cards from the top of his deck, potentially providing more potent locations for Euron Crow's Eye (Core Set, 69) to steal.

The Threat of Winter

As House Greyjoy returns to the Drowned God and the old ways of its past, chill winds blow across Westeros. Winter approaches and those too weak to withstand the cold will freeze.

In your games of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, you can use winter’s cold to your advantage with The First Snow of Winter (No Middle Ground, 79). This powerful plot, inspired by a champion-designed card in the first edition of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, returns every character with a cost of three or lower to its owner’s hand at the beginning of the challenges phase, which gives you a useful way to destroy a swarm of cheap characters or re-center the game on your high-cost characters. Although The First Snow of Winter hits your own characters as well as your opponent’s, you can gain some unexpected advantages: for instance, you may use The First Snow of Winter to “reset” Ser Jorah Mormont (Core Set, 165), returning him to hand only to play him again.

If your opponent is holding powerful characters in hand for fear of Wildfire Assault (Core Set, 26), or if you’re just trying to destroy your opponent’s hand as fast as possible, you may get some benefit from Wraiths in Their Midst (No Middle Ground, 80). This plot reduces the reserve on each opponent’s revealed plot card by two, potentially forcing them to discard cards that they had wished to keep. What’s more, Wraiths in Their Midst can tempt your opponent to overextend and play more characters than he otherwise would have, giving you the chance to follow up with Wildfire Assault or The First Snow of Winter.

You Win or You Die

Join the plot of A Game of Thrones as it advances with No Middle Ground, the newest Chapter Pack in the Westeros cycle. Prepare your schemes and gather your warriors—you can look for No Middle Ground at your local retailer in the first quarter of 2016!

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